Gimme a break

OK this has just gotten ridiculous. Yes that is snow in the picture and it is the end of May for crying out loud. I got off of work a little early yesterday thinking I could get a few things done. I pulled up to my house around 2pm and saw the white nonsense on the ground. I hit the clicker to open my garage door and nothing. I figure the power is out so I hop out of the car and head through the front door. As I open the door I hear the doorbell ringing, and ringing, and ringing, nonstop. I walk through the kitchen into the hallway to yank the doorbell off the wall to shut it up when I notice a puddle of water on the kitchen floor by the garage door. Now I'm just confused. After a couple hours of investigation I realized the little AM storm yesterday hit our neighborhood particularly hard. The wind was blowing horizontal right at my doorbell so it got water in it causing it to ring incessantly. The massive amount of precipitation we received leaked through the garage roof and on the garage door opener which killed the radio receiver for the opener. The garage roof also leaked right by the kitchen door letting water into the kitchen. Oh, and most of the plants we planted a couple weekends ago were destroyed by the snow/rain/hail mix. Oh, the joys of home ownership.

Worked over.

I've never felt so worked over after a race. I don't know what it was but after this race I just wanted to go home, curl up in bed and pass out for a month. Standing around in the cold waiting for Rhonda to collect her ribbon was pure misery. My legs ached and I could barely keep my eyes open. I guess that meant I had a good race.

There were close to 20 guys lined up with me at the start, only 13 or 14 finished. The pace from the start was predictably fast since the singletrack started 100 yards from the line. I didn't want to be "that guy" who hung everybody up so I took it easy off the line and settled in near the back. Unfortunately after crossing the water I realized I was stuck behind "that guy" so I hung on his wheel till the first road section. Passed him and a few others on the first bit of road but once I hit the BST I started getting caught up behind the expert women. On the climb I concentrated on reeling in the rest of the expert women so I could enjoy the full extent of bombing down Clarks with one way traffic. Unfortunately there must have been a horse parade up Clarks in the rain storm because the trail which was buff on Saturday was postholed from the ponies on race day. My legs were pumped from the downhill but my HR recovered so I slugged across the BST. Pre-race I was concerned about the lack of passing on the BST and my concern proved warranted. Since I start with the first group of sport men and I am among the slowest of all sports I get passed A LOT. Most people were polite, waited for an opening and went. A few didn't wait for an opening, didn't even announce their pass and tried to muscle by me. Twice this resulted in getting tangled up and once on a corner I was literally pushed off the trail into the trees resulting in a nice tear in my brand new jersey. My favorite pass was by Napoleon Dynamite himself (yes apparently he races Icup). I heard somebody approaching me from behind huffing like a freight trail. "Gosh, I need to pass" he said. I said "call it and I'll move". "I need you to flippin' pull over, gosh". "Everybody else is getting by me just fine" I said. Napoleon replied "You know, there's like a boat-load of gang members on my team. This one gang kept wanting me to join because I'm pretty good with a bow staff so you better pull over". (OK maybe I made the last line up but the rest was pretty close to word for word) He finally got by me at the first road crossing and proceeded to eat shit and get in my way on the first corner after the road. Later just after the start of the 2nd lap I saw him taking the walk of shame back to the start area. Retard. I did what I could through the golf course and BBQ alley but my energy was waining fast. I hadn't fed well and was feeling it. This is becoming a consistent problem that I need to address. Took a few big pulls on my bottle through the start/finish area and headed out for the 2nd go around. By the time I hit the BST my energy drink had kicked in and I got my legs back. I lapped a few beginners and got lapped by a bunch of experts. I got passed by Mike Oblad with about 100 yards to go but figured what was the difference between 13th and 14th so I let him go. It was actually the difference between 8th and 9th with eighth being the lucky number for a swag giveaway. I was kinda upset by that. I love swag like no other! I ended up 9th out of 14 or so with a bunch of DNF's. The race was fun but I'm not sure how many more of the mostly singltrack races I want to do until I get faster. It's pretty annoying not being able to get any rhythm going on the singletrack because I'm getting passed all the time.

Rhonda had a good race. She hung with Tasha and Dot until the climb where they dropped her. Normally she would use her mad DH skills to try to catch back on but Tasha and Dot's homecourse advantage erased Rhonda's small DH advantage and she never saw them again. Tasha rode strong for the win and Rhonda held Jolene off for 3rd.

Solitude Icup postponed

Bad year for MTB racing. Looks like Ed has accepted the inevitable and postponed the Solitude Icup race. On the website it shows the date for the race as TBD. I just hope he doesn't move it to 4th of July weekend. It's one of our favorite races but we've got non-refundable plane tickets to visit with the parental units back in Michigan that weekend.

Commuting and Racing?

Do bike commuting and bike racing on the same day mix? I'll find out today. Since the race starts right after work tonight neither Rhonda nor I will have time to get home before heading to Draper. Instead of both of us driving separate to the race I decided to ride to work and then ride to Rhonda's office after work so we could drive to the race together. The race has been shortened and I usually have more energy in the afternoon so I figured it would work out fine. If it doesn't I have a great excuse for getting shelled.

Best laid plans

Had big plans for the weekend some worked, some didn't but that's OK. California Bob and Lola were in town for the weekend. He made the trip out to accept the quite prestigious award for best doctoral dissertation of 2007 in the school of medicine up at the U. The award has a name which escapes me but the gist of the award is that California Bob is really smart and they gave him some $$ and a nice plaque for his office wall at Genentech because of it. Since MTB'ing and especially MTB racing blow in the Bay Area compared to Utah he decided to spend some of his prize money renting a Carbon Rush from the shop and signing up for the Draper race on Memorial day. The weather looked pretty sketchy for the weekend but we were going to make it work. We picked the bike up Saturday am and got to the equestrian center around 11AM for a course pre-ride. Reports on the course conditions were sounding pretty gloomy but we were going to ride what we could. Surprisingly the mud at the top had dried by the time we got there and we had a great time ripping 1.5 laps of the course. Sunday night the weather for Monday looked glum but we were hoping the showers would hold off at least until the starting gun. No such luck. It poured buckets all night and when I checked the storm totals Monday morning I saw Suncrest has received .36" of rain by 6am with plenty more coming. The race was postponed until Wednesday but California Bob had to be back in San Fran for work this morning. At the announcement of the race postponement and Cali Bob's subsequent withdrawl the whole field of Sport Men 19-29 heaved a sigh of relief at not having to try to match his mad Cali watts all race;-)

My Ex Dentist

I've been going to the same dentist for the ten or so years I've been living in Utah. A co-worker recommended him when I moved here and I liked him from the start. He had a small time operation, just the dentist, a hygentist and a receptionist. His office was well used but tidy and his equipment was older but functional. He was very friendly and never in a rush. A couple years ago I was really busy with work and life and I waited around a year between visits. When I finally made time for a visit it was like walking into a whole new world. The entire office was remodeled. He had taken over an adjacent office, torn down some walls and doubled the size of his office. There were now 7-8 very young women running around in scrubs shuttling between four dental chairs in the back. All the equipment was brand new and the whole office had gone upscale with nice wood paneling etc. The place looked very nice and I was quite impressed. That was until I was taken back to one of the dental chairs. Immediately the hygentist (who looked all of 18 years old) began to criticize me for waiting a year between appointments. I gave my lame excuse about being busy but was due chastised. They took x-rays with the fancy new panorex machine and began my cleaning. As the "teeny bopper" (as I thought of her) was cleaning my teeth she mentioned a few spots that looked "grey" or had "some staining". After she finished my cleaning the dentist came in. The "teeny bopper" told the dentist I had three "areas of concern". The dentist gave me a brief hello, popped on some gloves, had me open wide, picked around for a few seconds, peeked at the x-rays, told me "you have a few areas of concern that should be filled" and left. It took him 2 minutes tops. They shuttled me to the front desk, scheduled me to come back for the fillings and sent me on my way. As I was driving home I had time to contemplate my experience. I was sceptical at first and the more I thought about it the more sceptical I became. See, I haven't had a cavity in over 15 years. Was it pure coincidence that now that the dentist had a fancy new office which must come with a fancy new office payment that I all of a sudden needed a bunch of expensive dental work? I think not! I work in health care and I know how things go. This blog is public so I'll leave it at that, but I knew I should get a 2nd opinion. Trouble was from who? I searched far and wide to try to find a dentist. A lot of people love their dentists but not for what I thought were the right reasons. They would tell me "oh, he's really nice", or "my procedures never hurt" but those aren't good enough for me. I want a dentist who will only do procedures if they are 100% necessary. I'm not scared of getting my teeth drilled I just don't like my body to be messed with unless it needs to be messed with. It took me two years but I finally found my man. A friend of Rhonda's recommended Dr Eric Felt. Rhonda was having a problem with a tooth and wasn't getting straight answers from our current dentist or an endontist so she went to so see Dr Felt. Dr Felt has a small little office and it was just him and a receptionist. Dr Felt actually does the cleanings, xrays and everything himself, no 18 year old hygentist involved. He was very nice and patient with Rhonda and even gave her his home phone number to call if she had any questions. Rhonda was very happy so I set up an appointment with him which I had last night. I was slightly concerned going into the appointment because if I actually did have three cavities waiting two years to get them looked at could lead to problems. To make an already long story shorter he did my exam, took the x-rays and proclaimed me good to go. Surprise, surprise, no cavities. He did see an area on one of my teeth that was a little grey but the x-ray was clean so he said it would be fine to just observe it. He also ground down an area on the front of my two front teeth where there was a residual of cement from my childhood braces that my previous dentist would always just ignore. I'm very happy to have finally found a dentist I feel I can trust and hope to be able to keep seeing him for many years to come.

So much for spring

If I get a chance I may have to run up to Alta to hike for some May powder tomorrow. I'm ready to write off spring and go straight to summer. Anything to get some of that snow melted off my trails.