excessive celebration

we are spending the day in Manhattan. Hopefully we are about to see lots of excessive celebration. Grrr. I just got a prize for being one of 250 most spirited fans. Yee haw.

balmy

I waited until it warmed up a bit. 20 degrees was as long as I could wait. Perfect for gravel.

rebuild time

eggbeaters break all the time but they sure are light. Today I attempt to turn 8 beat up pair into 5 working pair by stealing and swapping parts.

Boy Racer

So I read Boy Racer. It took a few hours. Its an okay book. Sort of interesting. Its hard to have a great story when you write an autobiography when you are only like 25 years old. Cavendish has always seemed like kind of a jerk to me but maybe he isnt as bad as I thought. Last time I read a cycling book, Floyd Landis decided that he had doped afterall a few days after I finished it. One thing that is very interesting about Cavendish is that all of his scientific numbers, such as watts, say that he shouldnt be any good. Still, he dominates sprints so there must be more to cycling than just the numbers.

November

So... November went by without any posting. I wasnt riding my bike, so I didnt feel like updating much. I did do one muddy cross race in Topeka. It was fun except for the fact my pedal broke about 10 minutes in and I rode the rest of the race with essentially one leg.

The highlight would have been our trip to Costa Rica. It was awesome. We rented a car and cruised all around the country. Went to the mountains and stayed at the base of a volcano and enjoyed relaxing in the hot springs. Then we motored across the country to the Pacific Ocean for some beach time. We zip lined, surfed, hiked, and generally hung out. Even caught a Costa Rican cycling race in some little town called Fortuna. We were there the same week as La Ruta, but it was traveling the opposite direction as us, so we didnt see any of it.

Costa Rica is pretty amazing when you travel around on your own. It is still undeveloped and pretty poor. We were pretty much off the grid the entire trip. No T.V., no internet, no phones, it was nice. Our little hotel on the beach was cheap, not as cheap as the $10 rooms next door, but we did have A.C. We really tried to live it up Costa Rican style. Eating at little shantys called Sodas for most of our meals and doing a ton of walking. We did some Kayaking, played with monkeys, and got rained on a lot (most of the country is a rain forest). It was quite an adventure.