new CX upgrade rules?

First off, Thanks to Ben for the picture, and the heads up. That's how it's going to be this year. I don't like it. People will get to cat 3 SUPER fast. Then not be very good. It's going to clog up the B races, I reckon. 5 starts in an auto upgrade to cat 3? I'm not sure. We'll see how it goes, but I think bad thoughts about this. Also, I feel it will be MUCH harder to upgrade to the faster categories. Considering how many people race the A2 race, you'll have to finish in the 3 or 4 just to get one point. I think it will take forever for people to upgrade. That said, you only need 10 points and two wins is an auto upgrade. I think it might work out. Basically, you have to be winning your races to be able to race the next one. No more consistent 6th place upgrades. That might work out well. The people racing the harder races will have earned it. It should keep the speeds and skill up. I'm curious to see how this works. Did I mention that I can't wait until cyclocross season?

There should be at least one surprise in the local ranks. Another surprise if we travel a few hundred miles. This is going to be a very interesting season.

High Five Bicycles is coming together. Look for it at a race near you.

This world is fucked.

Fucked Rd 1:

Afghanistan.

Younger brother of critical journalist sentenced to death for blasphemy, pretty much. He said some shit that spoke against the "regime" and now he's sentenced to death. No trial, no jury. No nothing. Just a closed hearing to announce a death sentence. It is believed that they're after the older brother, but "they" are denying it. Any death sentence needs to be signed off on by the president of Afghanistan, which is unlikely, but that system is still fucked.

Fucked Rd 2 (a local bit):

St. Cloud.

Something about a swastika painted on a bulletin board or something on the campus out there. Second one found lately. This is fucked on so many levels. It's 2008. Shove that swastika up your ass. There is NO room in this (or any) society for that bullshit. If you want to openly hate on a certain race (or even culture), do it to a face. Don't hide and/or otherwise be a pussy and do these things at night. Let people know who you are. If you're proud of it, own. See what happens.

And, Rd 3. a bit less intense:

Minneapolis.

Let's trade our best player to the Mets for god knows who. That sounds like a GREAT idea. The Twins are going to be the dissapointment of the season. I can't wait. Let's go Brewers!

oh...and,

guilty blood will drip off the falcons talons onto the fish gills of the enemy. is that right?

Day two of a warm weekend. (dear blog. I love snow covered trails.)

Met up with the boys again. Tim and (dis) being the only similar faces. otherwise it was a new lineup. We traded T.C., Fil, and Linsey for Jake, Little Guy, and Margaret. Met at the Moose again. I swear they have the best soy chai (with a shot) in the city. Something about it just works better than anywhere else I've been. Anyhow, Took Plymouth out again, to more areas that I am unfamiliar with. I never know where we are until we hit Wayzata. Sundays ride was a decent pace again. Some up, some down. Cross bikes don't decent fast. I should just deal with it and ride my Alan. But the Salsa is SO much better. Turned onto the road with the Wayzata city limits sign. Wound it up a bit. Just let Tim and LG roll me out. This is the point where time would like to believe he dropped the hammer. Unless by saying "hammer", he meant "Little Guy", and by "dropped" he meant "almost crashed out" he's not making sense. That threw me off my nerve and (dis) and Jake got me on the left and Jake eeked out (dis) for the win. This is the point in the ride with S-R made the assertion that we (LGR) have the best Cat 5's in the world. Hopefully not for long.

Stopped at the Caribou for a few minutes. Go add another 20 to total 60 or turn around and be happy with 40? I was planning on turning around with Margaret after 40. Jake was planning on going short as well. The only issue with that was the we don't know the route. The three experienced dudes wanted to go long. OK. We did it. Margaret knew it was going to be tough. I don't think any of us were prepared to really to go 60 this early. It was harder than I expected. Went out around Lake Independence for another 20. Some hills. Some traffic. Some tire/tube issues. Some peeing in the snow. Margaret almost died and wanted to walk for a second. I rode with her. I decided I'd go find something for us to eat when we got back into Wayzata.

We did. Back to Caribou. Pretty sure Tim hit up the Ben & Jerry's. Some training regimen he's on. I went to the Starbucks looking for Odwalla bars. Nothing. Went to the gas station across the street for a clif bar. Nope. Find out there is a Lunds "1/2 mile to a mile up the road". Go there. The grocery store actually has food! Got some energy bars, dried mango, an orange and an apple. Enough food. Go back to the Caribou. Still sitting around by the fireplace. We eat. Little do I know that Caribou has bagels. That could have saved me some trouble. Oh well. We sit and recover for a bit, supposedly everyone is hurting by now. oh well, what are we going to do? Sit in Wayzata? No. Ride home. So we leave. Pace is pretty slow, minus the lowest gear sprint on the way back in. I thought I had this one. Jake didn't know the rules, so didn't sprint in his little gear, THEN, he let's me know that he can't get into his lowest gear because the limit screw is set for his other wheelset. Likely excuse. Oh well. Jake makes it a sweep on day 2.

We make it back to town. We take the Cedar Lake trail in. Have I ever mentioned that absolutely hate snow covered roads? Yeah. They're slippery. Do not want. Oh well. Make it home. Tired and sore. Next time I break out the chamios butter. Take a shower. Eat some food. Take a nap. Life is good again.

Evening.

MCF Banquet. More fun that I expected, but I think that may be in part because I had nothing to do with the festivities. Pretty much talked to Jake, Julie, Spencer, Katrina, and Tim for the evening. It was a really good time.

That said.

I really have a good feeling about the team that I'm now on. Very good group of guys. I'm very excited about this. This is a team that I feel at home on. Very good for me. Thanks guys.

OUT!

catching the cold out to lunch.

the cold has left the office for a few days. Up into the 20's today. That's enough for a bike ride. Today we took advantage of that with a 40 mile trip out to somewhere. Wayzata? I'm not sure. I play the following game. West, I believe. Caribou Coffee...

Yeah, easy 40. Out and back. Not much in the way of inclines. A couple really little ones. Spencer, Tim, Fil, T.C, and myself...Linsey started, but was reportedly having some trouble with breating. (Not a good thing. I hope she's ok.) Pulled a "sprint" to some city limits sign. I pretty handily took that one. I'm chalking it up to mechanical advantage this time. We'll see what happens when everyone gets on their road bikes. The way back we also sprinted (minus Tim), but this time in our very littlest gear. 39x26 in my case. I think everyone got me in that one. I don't spin CRAZY high RPM's well, apparently. I come to that conclusion by this and my fairly lacking performances in the Coldsprints series at Grumpys. (which I did not contest this month. I decided I'd rather eat food there than race. You can't do both without puking...Hell, if you're Jake, you can't do either without puking...) Most of the way back was on some shady iced up bike path. I didn't care for it. I think my bike handling skills are whack. I don't do well when it's slippery. Almost ran into TC on one occasion.

Anyhow, we made it. Got a little cold, but not too bad. Got pretty dirty. I had to wash those clothes immediately, and I cleaned my bike up. It's ready for tomorrow again...High around 42 degrees tomorrow. That sounds like a plan. WAY better than a spin class. Cheaper too.

In other news,

I finally got a beginners ASL instructional book, and am excited to learn a different language.

I decided on what to go to school for. That is good news for this guy.

The bike development and subsequent import seems to be going well. It will be a very small run, to say the least. Road and Cross. Maybe one track frameset. Unsure yet. Some very interesting developments happening that are at this point under wraps.

Thanks for paying attention.
-Jason

I wonder...

if Heath Ledger decided he'd swallow a bunch of pills if he was told he had ten minutes left to live...

I have no class.

what if...?

What if you were told that you only had 10 minutes left to live? More importantly, what does the answer to that question say about you?

If I were told that I was going to be dead ten minutes from now, I really don't think that I'd run around do a bunch of crazy stuff. I wouldn't go get super loaded. I wouldn't eat anything fancy. I wouldn't go do anything illegal. It's easy to say what I wouldn't do. It's harder to say what I WOULD do. I'm pretty sure that it would depend what kind of a mood I was in at the time. First option, if I'm feeling a little randy, I'd probably go set myself up to die at some amazing time. Like maybe just go by some Mcdonalds and die eating something disgusting in the corner of the "restaurant". Maybe go drop dead while crossing the street. Something confusing. I'm not sure. More than likely I'd get introspective. Probably either put on an American Nightmare cd or take a walk and think. Maybe both, I do have an MP3 player. I'd probably be fairly somber, but I don't think that is unreasonable. I'd probably just want to be left alone and die thinking about life. I wouldn't want to be in a big group of friends pretending to celebrate my life while knowing full well I'll be forgotten in some amount of years only to be remembered on occasions few and far between when some sort of random stimuli drums up a thought. I don't need that.

Does wanting to be left alone in the last moments of my life mean that I'm not a very exciting guy? Sure, it may be the case depending on who you ask, but does what I want to do with my last minutes speak volumes about the sort of person that I am? I'm not sure. I'm not a psychologist. I'll never know. I suppose that is up to someone that is not me to decide.

I guess I'm not really going anywhere with all of that, but what would YOU do if you were told that you had 10 minutes left to live?

congradulations

Julie (and in turn Ben) in successfully completing the USAC Mechanics course. You'll be a worthwhile addition to the pit. I hope I can see you out there at one of the races this fall. Man, I can't wait for these seasons to begin. And for it to not be so damn cold out.

Anyways. Good job Julie. You're commitment to racing while not actually racing yourself is pretty amazing.

Starting to shape up a bit.

The road bike is back together. That's nice. SO much faster than the cross bike. It just goes. I love that bike. Rode it a couple miles to over the Stone Arch bridge and met with TC, where I jumped in his car and drove a bit over to this guy Arts house in Dinkytown. We rode some trainers for an hour. First time this year. Does this mean that training has started? Not really...? Didn't ride too hard. Threw in a couple of 20-30 second harder efforts. Mostly just trying to make sure my legs still work. I haven't ridden hard since Jingle Cross and haven't ridden for an hour since who knows when. August? I felt good, though. Felt good to work hard. I really like it. OH! I rode for over an hour on the computrainer over Christmas. That was more fun.

Today my wife, her dad (monty), and I got registered for the Horribly Hilly Hundred. 100 or 200k ride just west of Madison, WI. Last year registration (1000 riders) filled up in something like 4 hours. A lot of those people had to walk up the damn hills. That isn't cool. Walking a bike is a shame. I'm signed up for the 200k, but I'm pretty sure I'm just going to do the 100k as fast as I can. 60some miles at as fast as I can give it. That should be fun. I hope I can meet up with another guy or two to rotate with. Even a solo ride will be fun. Good training? Either way. Fun times. Finish the 100k and then meet up with wife and new dad and ride more with them. Basically the goal is to hurt myself as much as possible without doing any long term damage. So that puts me out of town the weekend of June 14th. No racing for me that weekend. I'm ok with that. Sometimes things like this are more important. Last year I finished the 200k in something like 8 hours and 9 minutes. I also was down for about an hour and a half when my bottom bracket tried to work itself out of the frame and make it so I couldn't shift chainrings, and just sketch me out, because my BB had worked itself about a 1/2" out of the frame. I kept thinking I was going to die. That bike wasn't worth it. I think the fastest we went was something like 54.5mph down one of the hills. That was fun, Albeit terrifying.

It's the same route as last year. This year I know what to expect and maybe more of what to do differently. Hopefully I'll be in better shape this year as well. I should have more miles in by then. Last year all I had done was commute. This year should be more impressive. The goal is 2.75 hours. That'll be pretty much flying, I think. Not an easy goal. But easy goals aren't worth making.

We'll see.

It happens from the time we are small children. Parents and teachers tell us to spend as much time gathering as much information as possible before acting. Instructing us to spend as much time in deliberation as possible. "Stop and Think", "Look before you leap", "Haste makes waste". They're all meant to slow us down and to make us disregard our initial reaction. For better or for worse we are taught to ignore a "gut feeling" and think past it. Oftentimes we are without the information that is needed to make a difficult decision. When we take the time to think, we think of only the things that we are capable of thinking about. The things we know. Do we ever really know the whole story? Can we know the entire impact that these decisions will have on us? There are lots of situations, particularly at times of high pressure and stress, when haste does not make waste, when our snap judgments and first impressions offer a much better means of making sense of the world. Why, then, are we taught to disregard that feeling?

Well that was too fancy a forward. All I meant to say is that I've tried to live my life on the snap judgment side of the situation. I've often faltered due to not thinking things out enough, rather than over thinking them. Why does the thought of my future scare me so damn much? It is honestly terrifying. Maybe that's just growing up, but I really feel like something isn't right in my world. I'm usually fairly antsy, but much more so than usual lately. Maybe it's because I've been relatively dormant since I moved back from Philadelphia. (It stands to reason, my life has changed a bit.) I haven't been on a skateboard (under my own power) for years. I have all but stopped listening to Hardcore, much less going to shows. I don't table animal rights literature. I don't even hang out past 10 anymore.

I intend on getting my life a bit back to straightened out. If anyone has any good shows that I need to go to, lets hear about them. If anyone wants to hang out, let me know. I just need to be a bit more active in my own life. I've faltered lately.

As some of you know, I'm trying to start my own bicycle frame company. Called "High Five Bicycles". Nothing super fancy. Trying to offer a solid frame at a reasonable cost. Trying to stick with aluminum. Cannondale and Specialized both had MASSIVE success with their CAAD and E5 frames, respectively. I'm going to try to see how similar a product to that I can make. Just a damn fast race frame that doesn't break the bank.

But it's terrifying. To do it correctly will take a lot of money that I don't have. To do it to easy (feasible) way will take a long time, a lot of dedication, and really, the ability to live without seeing any real results for quite some time. Am I ok with that? I think that I am. It's just hard to commit to something.

That is where the first paragraph of this blog came from. I'm thinking too much. I know what I want to do, and I know how to do it. It should be that easy, right? It isn't. The longer it takes for me to come up with money and designs for this sort of thing, the more time I have to think about it and change my mind around. That isn't good. I'm in the same boat in a similar situation regarding school. I can't go until the fall. That leaves all of that time for me to look at schools and programs and try to decide which sounds best for me. The more I look, the more I see, the more times I change my fucking mind. I think that it's really going to be a last minute snap decision. I guess the only thing that really has been consistent as far as a "dream job" goes is that I'd be working for myself. I've had a lot of different ideas of what I've wanted to do with my life, and the only think that the really have in common is that it would be my own business. I guess it's go time. I found the thing that makes sense. For this week at least. We'll see how I feel this time tomorrow.

I need to try to stop thinking so much. I need to get back to snap decisions. Deep down I know what is best for myself. My heart has always been stronger than my head. I'd like to keep it that way.

a new year.

And I've been busy with it. I think I've worked less than 7 days since christmas. I've been away a lot. Went to Spooner, WI for New Years. Ice skating and snow-shoeing. Good times. More enjoyable than I would have thought. I like it outside. Now I'm in New York. Have been on the East Coast for a week. Spent a few days in Philly. Eating a ton of food, which is great, and terrible at the same time. Horizons, Govindas, Soy Cafe, Red Bamboo, a bunch of others that I can't remember the name of. A ton of delicious, basically. Saw a bunch of old Philadelphia friends I haven't seen in a while, and that was nice. Talked to a couple of my old bosses. Everything seems mostly the same. I like Philly. I just wish it were more green. And less ghetto/dirty.

I like New York, which is only funny because I've spent most of my life hating it. It's big, it's loud, it's dirty, it smells...just a bunch of no good. I think I've felt that way because I've never spent more than a day there, and never without my bike. I find it is a lot easier to enjoy a city that you don't know when you don't have to get off a bike to look at a map. It's just a lot slower paced on foot, and I like that more.

Art. I get it now. I never did before. It's pretty rad. I got over myself, mostly, I think. Perhaps something inside me shifted to make it valid. I don't need to understand it. I can't explain it, and I won't try. Art is cool with me.

Yeah. Who knows. Getting time to choose something to do for an education. I think I might have it figured out. I've "had it figured out" no less than three times in the past, though. I have no idea. I think the game is just going to be register and sign up for some classes. Take it from there.

That's all I got, mostly. I just wanted to congradulate a friend of mine on his engagement. That's pretty cool news, dude.

FUCK!

It's very cold. I hate it.