I Hate Crashing...

...especially when it's not because of some insane last corner manuever or a big-time kamikaze hook. Oh no, the crashes I hate most are the ones that can get chalked up to dumb luck. Take the national qualifier scratch race for example: Early in the dog and pony show I was rolling along, minding my own business in the sprinters lane when WHAMMY some guy comes flying uptrack from the apron and nails my rear wheel as hard as he can. I go rolling across the track, my tire comes rolling off the rim, my skin rolls right off my legs and my bars roll right into my frame, leaving a nice golf-ball sized dent.

Fabulous. Just the thing to make my recent knee problems go away, a good crash.

Ok. Fine. I'll just attack, spend the rest of the race off the front with 2 other guys and get dropped rather suddenly with 5 to go. Sounds like a plan, eh?

Sure seemed smart at the time.

After than dismal performance, only a good ride in the sprints would make my day worthwhile. So naturally I got punted out of the gold medal round by Ryan Miller, a roadie, albiet a very fast and very smart roadie. That one mostly boils down to the fact that I had the chance to close the door on him in a big way, but I second-guessed it and let him walk all over me. Damn. Next race however was against my all-time nemesis. Big Mr. Muscles had also just been beat by a sneak-attack move when he also could have had the race won, so we were on equal levels, morale-wise. This guy can do 200s at Alpensrose like nobody's business, so I wasn't about to let him do one, instead I made him do about 4 and it worked. Barely. I was so depleted after that battle and all the scratch race shenanigans that I couldn't even bring myself to line up for the points race. Man I'm a weako, eh?

On the brightside, we smashed everybody at last week's PIR. With Walker leading me out at mach 10 - jumping the field before anybody was even thinking about sprinting - it was kinda hard not to win. Magic.

You know what else is magic? Bloc Party. Friday night we kicked it old school and rocked out to an amazing show put on by these British lads. There's a lot of talk about Vice, the magazine/fashion label/record lable/marketing machine that backs these guys. Local music snobs get thier panties in a twist when the words Bloc Party are uttered because of the sheer genius of Vice's advertising strategies. Vice is in a rare position in marketing (where thier target audience actually trusts them) and as a result, the bands and the fashions that they push tend to do really well. This case in particular is a great example of why people pay attention to them, and why they are so successful. They promote great bands. Bloc Party is awesome. We had a wicked time. Say what you want about the ruthlessness of the American advertising machine, but when it exposes me to great music like this, I'm not so pissed about it. I'd rather they get behind talented artists and use whatever "guerrilla marketing" techniques they have to get said artists into the open, instead of putting more money behind Jessica Simpson or Clay Aiken.

COMING SOON: MT HOOD, and the never-ending climbs of... Mt. HOOD.
DT