ok, she gave me forty bucks

we can cut out the middle man.

getting ready to sweat out the storm.

before you make your way

the other night i made something out of eggs.

sunday morning we witnessed the guy in the neon be verbally assaulted for pulling his car out into a huge line of motorcycles. what a douche.

then we went and purchased a washing machine with delivery on wednesday, but guess what....

here comes hurricane ida!

message from the darkside, there is

after i rode this morning i had coffee with shea before she went to work. afterwards i had to do some snooping on the van to see what the problem was and came up with nothing. after that i took the zuma to get the lance from shea so i could take some bikes to the shop. when i returned it we had lunch at new york nick's before she went back to work and i came home.

when i was riding to get the lance from the parking garage the right hand side mirror on the zuma came loose so i just took it off and threw it in the storage compartment until i got home. now that i'm home and have ridden all day without it i think it looks kind of cool without the mirror. it might go back on. i'm just sayin'.

looks like he sent her a worm

went for a ride this morning and it was 45 degrees.

i have this watch that my mom got me a long time ago. it is a numbered edition g.i. joe watch by fossil. i put a different band on it but have the original in the original wooden box with the original pewter figurine and the original paperwork recording the number. this is such a great watch.

the last sunday

been riding the zuma a whole lot since the napper van took a dive on sunday while the dogs and i made our way home from the woods. with the help and direction of shea's dad i also made a minor modification to the zuma. pure looks.

horn road

neither shea nor i had ever been to a corn maze until this past sunday.

it could just as easily be an ice woman..

like she told her old man now

the bank job, she said...

it smelled pretty freakin amazing in there

after my last post about panache cyclewear i received an email from mr. powell stating that regardless of the fact i'm a retard i should still send the too large size medium jersey back in exchange for the more appropriately sized small. i happily obliged.

friday past, we returned from a windy, cool walk with dogs to find a nice little package from panache on the front door step. just in time for the fenner/wantz ride the following saturday.

thanks again for the awesome customer service! if anyone who reads this needs some new stuff, get it from panache.

how to unbalance a rebalanced washer

how to rebalance an unbalanced washer

coordinated: not me.

shea made me an order of chicken and waffles this morning before the fenner + wantz ride.

it was nice to see a handful of the porc army representing.. er.. actually none of them had porc jerseys on that i saw. hmm, i just thought of that. anyway.

man, i rode like crap today!

family reputation

how do you figure?

the new whip. just riding around on a saturday.......

time brings new wisdom

so what?

a couple of weeks ago, as folks were backing out of, and finalizing travel plans to the six gap ride, i decided at the last minute to order myself some new kit.

due to financial constraints i set about mulling over all of the local bike shops along with numerous websites in search of the perfect deal. after much distress and himming and hawing one saturday i finally decided to order the houndstooth kit from panache cyclewear. size medium across the board and set for three day delivery.

well, that's not exactly how it went. monday i was at work wondering if things were going to ship. usually when ordering online you get notifications when things are being sent to you, and you usually get them pretty quickly. nothing. so, being nervously anxious, i started sending emails to panache confirming that all was well with my order. bounce.... my emails started to bounce back stating the recipients email box was full. uh-oh....

after finally corresponding back and forth with a mr. don powell, the owner of panache, whose was the only email that seemed to work, my order had morphed into their high end 11 bibs and the matching 11 jersey to boot. the change in order was due to them being temporarily out of the houndstoooth bibs in my size and the very accommodating mr. powell offered the 11's in stead at no additional cost to me. i couldn't argue, and this, in fact, made my anticipation even that much worse as tuesday and wednesday passed away, turning into empty squares on our refrigerator calendar.

thursday came. i was out running errands, picking up a base layer, and decided to swing by the house to see if any packages had arrived. low-and-behold there was a fed ex package lounging on my doorstep, addressed to me, sent by the friendly folks at panache.

well, to make a short story long - the kit is amazing! beautifully made out of fanatastic materials... however, due to my recent ________________ (insert whatever you want) i am sorry to say that my sizing bearings are all messed up. i am no longer a medium in some things. bibs, yep, still a medium. my vermarc jersey in a medium, yep, fits fantastic. my specialized jerseys, size medium but feeling a little airy and loose. but.. what.. oh.. cannondale jerseys, size small, yep and it fits remarkably. what does all this gibberish mean?? as you may or may not have guessed, the size medium jersey i ordered was too big. i did not find this out, however, until after i had already detagged and washed it and carried it all the way to dahlonega with me. well crap. i did bring a back-up jersey with me, so all turned out ok.

in a parallel universe would the situation be re-enacted the same way as this? no, it wouldn't. in a parallel universe i would be on top of my game and i would have ordered a jersey in a small so it would have fit and i would have ordered it about two weeks before six gap to ensure there was no issue in shipping/receiving. am i glad that in this universe there is such awesome customer support that allows me to order wrong size kits at the last minute and still have the items arrive in time, you better believe i'm glad. in this universe will i make future orders from panache? as soon as finances allow, yes.

another electrifying season

i'm getting sick.

today we went through copius amounts of storage bins to eliminate some excess. i found one of the last pair of skate shoes i've purchased and my first (i think) real camera.. and there was still film in it!!

afterwards shea baked us some super awesome delicious chocolate chip cookies.

bring me probable cause

we had been watching the weather via cell phone the entire trip so we weren't surprised when it started raining just north of atlanta. at some point on the trip i had received an email from the six gap organizers notifying everyone that the saturday bike event/registration/packet pick-up/etc.. had been moved indoors. we caravaned with almost the entire team weber sports team and showed up (after a minor detour, just beacause a rock is painted pink does not mean it is no longer a big rock) en mass to the middle school gymnasium where all of the events were taking place.

afterwards we drove another forty minutes back down the road to cumming, georgia to check into our hotel and then, again as a caravan, piled into the local applebee's in the pouring rain for some dinner. i made the mistake of ordering a newcastle brown ale, thus motivating me after dinner to stop at a convenient store for a six pack as post-ride libations for the following day. once back at the hotel room we realized that no one had a bottle opener, nor did the gas station sharing the parking lot with our hotel. we ended up borrowing one from the front desk to assist in the reduction of sunday's beverages. after john and i both had one beer we all nodded off to sleep as football and rain poured respectively from the television and the sky.

sunday became a reality all too quickly and unfortunately the coffee from waffle house didn't show equal motivation in arriving with the same quickness. everyone was kitted up and then piled back into the caravan for the forty minute trek back to dahlonega for the start. bikes were re-assembled. bottles filled. jersey pockets filled. creative excuses already being passed around as we all rolled to the start with two-thousand plus other participants.

the rain had cleared, but the roads were far from dry as everyone got rolling. the ride started with team weber pealing off toward the front with the rest of the race-oriented folks, and with the rest of the folks i am assuming intending to be race-oriented. i didn't bring my camera on this year's ride due to the inclimate weather and due to the fact i didn't really feel like dealing with it. on several occasions i wished i had brought it, but i guess what's done is done.

people were flatting left and right. on a couple occasions there were groups of people lying on the wet pavement in piles (what's up with that, slackers?). i was making way better time than last year, but decided (i had a good idea this was going to happen.. creative excuses) at the last minute that i was only going to do the three gap in lieu of the six gap. once i made the left hand turn, no looking back, i passed two or three riders on the third gap and after that i saw no one until i rolled into the finish... aside from some douche in a yellow mustang that veered into my lane in an attempt to mock hit me with his douche-mobile. i managed to squeeze out just over 60miles and climb a hair under 6,400 vertical feet in just at 3.5hours, which isn't that impressive - but to my defense the descents were soaked and i am not one to go balls out surrounded by thousands of crazy individuals flailing about the side of a mountain at speeds in excess of forty mph. i rode my brakes and i'll live to fight another day, hopefully.

once my transponder was returned and i explained how i intended to ride the six but changed my mind i headed back to the car and stashed some equipemtn and made phone calls before rolling back down to the finish for some lunch. at this juncture in time was when i was taken aside by one of the volunteers and ushered into a side hall of the high school the ride is based out of. i was then forced to sign paperwork and photographed at length by some organization called rodale publishing, or something to that effect. during the whole process, which was strange enough, i was spritzed down with a water spray bottle, adding to the strangeness. i was told that this situation would be happening to various degrees to a number of the people to return first from the ride.

after the recreation of a high school lunch from my distant pass came the wait for team weber....

eventually everyone showed up. don davis showed up with a time right at 5hours 30minutes for the 104.5mile route, followed by johnny about eleven minutes later, then by cody about 15minutes after johnny. the rest either crashed or were brought down via illness. at which time i was showed how to open beers with a seat-belt and weekly rides were discussed as the team all ate lunch before loading back into the caravan and heading back in the direction of the hot and humid florida.

i arrived home last night and caught up on everything i had missed while away and then promptly hit the sack. after sleeping in almost three hours this morning i awoke about 6:20 a.m. and had some coffee and breakfast (thank you, shea) before going out for a windy, sunny, hot 37mile non-recovery recovery ride.

shoestring belts

on cup of coffee number two.
gave myself a four a.m. pre-coffee haircut.
watching mash to get amped to be pumped.
leaving for six gap in about an hour and a half.