On the road again......

I got back on the road again. It was nice. I havent been out on the road it was nice to get back out there. I meet up with the Keaton at starbucks and we down river des peres and up through south city towards the arch. Stopped and go some oranges from the one and only Soulard. 4 for a dollar. Can't beat that. Then went and chilled by the arch for the mid ride break. Got the classic arch picture. This has to be the most over taken shot in the world. It makes you feel artsy though when you take it. The river is still pretty high.
You can really tell by the Lewis and Clark statue. Then it was up washington ave through fopo back to webster.

When we got to webster there was a suprise waiting for me at my car.

He yelled at me this morning for parking in the lot so I moved my car over and not directly in front of Ben Franklin. So i decided to go talk to they guy about it. I was pretty pissed off. I had to wait for like 30 minutes for him to get back from Lunch. I go in there and we start yelling and hes just being a jerk. Nothing was being accomplished so I decided to just walk out and forget it. Then I'm walking out of his office and mumble fine i wont park here I'll just tell everyone else to and he comes storming out of his office and is yelling "Son you got something else to say to me" and I say" no sir, I'm just tired of dealing with a dick." He didn't like that so much. So I start yelling at him in the front of the store. He then threatens to call the police and see what they think. I was like whatever i'm done with this. I was like have a nice day go back to your frames and balloons. So BEWARE of the crazy Ben Franklin owner.

yeah.......

So I have nothing to write about when it comes to cycling. I haven't been on the bike in about a month and half. I have been busy with everything you can think of. I have been skiing a lot and probably will be for the next month or so i could care less about riding right now which kind of sucks. I just dont feel like getting back on the bike.

XC IS OVER!!!!!!!

Cross Country is over whoohoo. The season is over and I had my last cross country race EVER. Kinda sad but then again not really. It was a good season the team has changed a lot and isn't as much fun but I'm happy I stuck through and finished out all four years. Now its time to get back on the bike and I am happy about that.

That is pretty much it. I've been really busywith school and other things. I'm almost done with my college applications so not too much longer and I will hopefully know where I am going. I got new skis a couple weeks ago they are pretty ballin' they are twin tips also so i'm gonna have to try and pull some crazy stuff on them. Can't wait to get skiing again and on the bike again.

Peace
Mike



happy austin?

Walker, Texas Ranger

This past week I've been waking up and noticing that Walker, Texas Ranger has been on TV.
I haven't seen this show for ever. Its nice to see Chuck Norris Kicking some ass instead of doing Mountain Dew Commercials or trying to sell excercise equipment.


Seeing this also reminds me of when I was up at Brown University earlier this year. One night we stayed up till like 2 in the morning with our RA Mike and told Chuck Norris Jokes. Warning their not all that funny unless it is the middle of the night. This also reminds of this video of Chuck Norris getting his ass kicked by Bruce Lee and seeing Chuck Norris getting his ass kicked is something you don't see everyday. I couldn't get the video on my blog but here is the link.

Peace

bikes, guns and fried fish... what else can you ask for?

My mom and my brother are down in New Orleans doing some college visits so it is just my dad and I for the weekend. I woke up around 8:30 and went out to do my workout. I had a crazy hard workout today. 2 hours with three 5 minute race efforts and then a 15 min race effort. It freaking sucked. When I got home My dad was in the yard messing around with his father's day gift that just came in.

Believe it or not that is a pellet gun. My older brother got it for my dad. The thing has a scope and a silencer on it. It is freakin crazy. The thing even has a little kick in it when it shoots. I took a shot with it and i popped myself in the eye with the scope I wasn't ready for that.

After that we were off to the Skeet club. I was excited because I havn't gotten to shoot lately b/c of cycling and just being busy. I use to shoot a lot. I use to be a captain on CBC's skeet team but ended up stopping that and doing Ultimate Frisbee. I was also excited because I got to see hot my "shooting" specific lens worked for my radar's that i missed ordered. The lens worked out pretty well. I shot ok. We shot 3 rounds of skeet. I shot about a 20/25 which is ok considering I havn't been shooting much. And after that we went and shot sporting clays. Sporting clays is pretty cool because you get to shot at a lot of differenet and challenging shots. We shot another 4 boxes of shells(25 shells in a box.) I have a massive bruise on my shoulder. Im not use to shooting so much. It was fun. It was nice to get some quality time in with my dad.

After that we went over to my brother and sister in laws house. We fried up some fish it was fun. It was also nice to play with my niece and my new nephew. I'm off to go do some summer reading.

Peace

State TT and other stuff

Last weekend was the State TT.

It went pretty well. I got third with a time of 31:43. I was happy with my time. I was on Austin's bike which was nice. The only problem with that was that I had only ridden it the Saturday before the race. I think if I would had some more time on the bike I could have done better but, who knows. Martin was first with a time o f 29:23 and Keaton was 2nd with a time of 31:21. Yeah that is right we swept that.


The summer has been going pretty well. It is hard to believe that there is less than a month left of summer. I still have to do all of my summer reading which SUCKS. The race season has been going well. A few weekends ago was Proctor cycling classic. Keaton and I loaded up the Mini van headed up there. The hotel we stayed at was pretty nice. We were right in the middle of Peoria. I didn't realize how big Peoria was. The RR didn't go so well. I was in the Race for about 30 mins or so and then on one of the rollers I just slowly moved back and before I knew it I was chasing to try to get back on and I couldn't make it back. So, I just dropped out after a lap. The next day we (keaton, Martin, Logan and I) race the Jrs crit. We were all working to try to get Logan the state jersey. The pace started out FAST. I was kinda going off after a few laps and was acctualy off but with a couple other guys we were able to get back on. I was sitting on the back when I saw a visionquest making a move. So I jumped on that chasing it down and after he was back in, I was done. I got shelled right of the pack. I finished the race riding with like 3 other guys. Logan ended up gettin the Jersey so its all good.


I didn't get a chance to race the 4's race because my cleat broke like 10 mins before the start of the race.

Winghaven was two weeks before proctor. The weather was nasty. It was drizzling the whole morning. Which made it even worse than if it had just poured. The road was like ice. The 5's race started about and hour or so late. I went down in the first 30 seconds of the race in the first round about. Some idiot in front of me hit is breaks when he didn't need to and started fishtailing and went down. I couldn't get around him and went down. I didn't feel like racing anymore after crashing and I just dropped out.

The summer is going pretty good. I am looking forward to the State crit in two weeks and then the tour of KC in 3.

PEACE

SUMMER!

So its been awhile since I've updated my blog because I've really been busy with school and other stuff. I'm finally out of school, so I should be better at updating my blog.

So lets start with Tour of STL. I got 5th in the Jrs race on Saturday but only because I lost a coin flip. Joe Earsome and I were sprinting for the line and he somewhat sat up and I didn't and threw my bike at the line and no one could tell who won or not by eye. So they went to the camera but the camera wasn't working. They were going to call it a dead heat or something like that basically a tie but they couldn't because they said they were going 5 deep in medals but they didn't even do that. I didn't figure that out till after waiting for like an hour and being late for ultimate Frisbee State tourney. Ultimate didn't go so well. We played hard we just couldn't do enough to win any of our games even though a lot of them were really close. FoPo's jr race went pretty. I stayed with the group for the entire race until the last lap. Mesa had all of their jrs in the race. It was only the Fick, Nate, and I in the race. I was upset that I didn't get a chance to sprint against Joe again but we'll have to save the show down for later in the Season.

2 weeks ago was Joe Martin. That was a lot of fun. Keaton, my Dad and I head down for the weekend. The RR was fun. The pack exploded on the first. I made it over the first climb with about 3 guys or so. We then caught some more people. By the time we made the turn off the loop and head back in we had about 8 guys in our group. We hammered pretty hard and lost a few of them. I tried to get away from the group. I got off but they brought me back in about 2 miles from the finish. I got 2nd in our sprint. The TT pretty much sucked. Heres a pic of me dieing on the TT
The Crit the next day wasn't very much fun. I didn't get a good starting spot and got gapped of after like the 2nd turn. I tried hard to get back on but couldn't make it back on. So the same kind of thing happend. I got in a group about 5 and we went around. I got 2nd agian in the sprint. I didn't have anything left in my on the uphill finish. Over all it was a good weekend. I ended up 25th. Which is about half way so im not too disappointed. It was a fun to race against new people.

Last weekend I was in Iowa/Illnois for the snake alley crit, Melon City crit, and Quad Cities Crit. It was a lot of fun. Snake alley was fun except that it rained. It poured before the race and then it stopped so we got to ride alittle bit before the race and then it poured right before the race so any of the drying of the course went to waste. The rain made the snake hard. You couldn't stand up with out slipping. On one of the laps I stood up at the finish and my back tire slipped and I unclipped on accident and almost went down. Overall a good race. I finished like 30something out of 59. Austin got 3rd I think. The next day was Melon Cities. I didn't like this race so much probably because before the race on my first lap I crashed. I didn't know there was a speed bumb at the bottom of the hill. I was with Luke, Martin and Austin and were goign down the hill and I was eating my banana. So I only had one hand on my bars when we hit the speed bumb and went flying. I slide about 30 feet or so but I didn't drop my Banana which was weird. There I am on the ground and the dang banana is still in my hand. Nothing really bad happened to my body just a little road rash on my hip and some bruises. I got a huge scratch/chunk out of my fork and my handlebar tape got chewed up. I started the jrs race but dropped out b/c my leg hurt. I rested up and then did the 5s race. I didn't stay with the group long but kept on going with some other people. I ended up 15th in the 5s race. The last day was fun. I really liked the course. The jrs race was really fast. I was with the group in the back. Then there was a crash on the last turn towards the finish. I had to stop to try to get through it. Luke and Logan went down but were ok. I rode with with 2 guys for the rest of the race. The 5s race was fun. I moved up well in the first couple laps and was doing fine. Then about 6 to go I pretty much just ran out of juice. I started to drift off the back. I kept on pushing it and was able to finish the race. I got 20th place. I was happy. The race seemed hard and faster than any other race I have done before. Overall it was a good weekend.


Peace