Welcome To The Club

Sounds like the Willamette Classic was pretty much a disaster for the Rubicon/kiwi contingent. Tuckie crashed, richard crashed, adam crashed. We even lost people without crashing. Rough weekend. I on the other hand, watched some TV, hung out at the coffee shop next to my place and basked in the sun, went to the track, rode until it hurt and basked in the sun some more. So I guess Willamette wasn't a complete disaster, it went pretty well for me.

As a result, Richard's joining me on the team sick list. Sounds like he got punted off his bike in a sprint and spent the next couple days coughing blood. He came out for the yeah yeah yeahs at the roseland, apparently he's in the broken rib club now. Drag.

Speaking of the Yeahs, they took the stage late enough to let the crowd get anxious and liquored up, then proceeded to blow everyone's mind to little quivering peices. They were ON it, Karen O was slamming about the stage like she was on fire, the crowd was amping, Nick Zinner the guitarist was throwing down these crazy guitar solos from space even though he looked like he shouldn't be strong enough to hold his guitar up, tuckie was heckling random people like a true champ, everyone was into it.

Euro-pro sidenote: Horner kicks ass. Pulls the big victory in Romandie, takes the mello yello jersey and looks like he's having an epileptic seizure during his celebration. What a rock star.

Headline of The Day

From CNN (again)

"Naked carpenter: I wanted to stay clean"

OAKLAND, California (AP) -- A carpenter who keeps his clothes clean by working in the nude was arrested after a client returned home early and found him building bookcases in the buff.

Percy Honniball, 50, was charged with misdemeanor indecent exposure this week for the October incident.

He told officers he stripped before crawling under the client's house to do electrical work because he didn't want to soil his clothes, police said.

Honniball said Thursday that working in the nude gave him a better range of motion and that a skilled craftsman can work clothing -- and injury -- free.

Put Me In, Coach

You know what's stupid? Not racing.

I hate hearing about what happened in this or that race, knowing that I could have been there and would have had a killer time..

Oh well, at least I'm riding again. Still no lifting any time soon. Baby steps.

Check out Thursday's front page at CNN.com. Killer picture of a bike filling up its tires at a gas station, accompanied by an article about the skyrocketing price of gas...

p.s. My personal quote of the day for today has been "I'm more into revenge than justice..."

DT

i'm goin' harry....

The crushing pain's over, so tommorow's the first ride. We'll shoot for two hours, see how it goes. Not doing anything for a couple weeks has been driving me slowly insane. Thought I was going to come unglued yesterday when I got caught in traffic for 5 whole minutes... things are getting desperate.

Any longer period of rest tends to turn me into a bit of a lunatic...

Anyway. Ipod situation is solved. The new black 30g video is quite nice.

Supposed to be mid-60s and sunny all week... maybe i should take thursday off...

DT

meanwhile in france...

Pretty amazing how much time you have when work is slow and you can't ride or lift. It's really kicking up the blogging to the next level. Don't worry though, gimme 4 more weeks and I'll go back to updating every month or so.

Meanwhile...

Anyone been paying attention to what's going down in Frenchy-ville? That country has some seriosly liberal labor laws (say that ten times drunk), and thier system works pretty well. Poor bastards tried to pass a law allowing employers to fire employees under 26 within two years of thier hire date without cause, making the ex-employee inelligible for any kind of unemployment support.

Students and socialists had an absolute fit. Pretests everywhere, riots in the streets, general mayhem all over the place and all aimed at killing that one law. Seemed for a while kinda futile. Students vs. government.

But they won. Forced the government to overturn the law.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong. Just interesting.

Indymedia article
NY Times article
MSNBC article

DT

Kicking ass vicariously

Since I'm all laid up eating ice cream and feeling sorry for myself instead of riding for the next 6 weeks, I've decided to start racing vicariously through all my teammates. I'm starting with Sea Otter, where we did a pretty tough course with a bunch of pros, and I kicked ass. Here's one shot of me kicking ass:
Yeah, it was pretty tough, I was rocking pretty hard at the front, but I didn't stop there. Oh no. I took a break for a minute as you can see so I could give everybody else a rest, but really I was just letting everyone slip into a false sense of security. Check it out, this Health Net dude is wondering where I am. Wondering if he can relax or not.


I'm on pretty kill form and I've dropped some extra poundage from last year, so I decided to giver a little on the hill a couple times. You can see here that I'm not really breathing that hard as I string everybody out and split the field into little whimpering groups. Phill Ligget would have said something like "he's looking cool as a cucumber here," and then he'd be all like "he's really putting them in a spot of bother now!" I'm pretty sure I was in my 12.

I beat Gord Fraser in the finish, but I was out of the money. Nobody was there to give me a prize for rocking that hard.. but i know i rocked it and thats all that counts...

DT

all photos from www.steephill.tv.

meds (an update)

Vicodin is pretty rough stuff. Flexerall (some crazy muscle relaxer/sedative) ditto. Not sure how people can get addicted to this stuff and still function. It's like I've been on a two second delay for the last few days, I'll think about doing something like picking up a watter bottle to take a drink, the muscle command will lose a few details in translation, then two seconds later I'll watch myself knock the bottle off the counter onto a computer keyboard at work. Thank god for public transport. Likewise, everything I said in those first few days afterward fell about 20 yards short of making any sense at all. I'd think of something, the sentence would rattle around in my neck for a few seconds and come out as some slurred idiot rambling. Somehow dealt with those unpleasant jackals from the insurance companies within the first 48 hours while in a waking coma.

Friday was my first completely unmedicated day (ran out of vicodin... muscle relaxers scare me) and yeah, chest hurts, back hurts, head hurts, but it was manageable. Nightime sucked a big one though. Seems to be no way at all to avoid resting on or compressing or stretching that rib. That one stupid rib.

Feeling a bit manic without the ability to ride or lift.

Had dinner with my parents and watched Big George take a big dive at Paris-Roubaix today. Felt good to get out of my highrise box apartment (as cool as it is) and hang out in a big house with a few spazzy dogs. Nothing funnier than watching my previously submissive smaller female collie-dog mount and try to hump our much bigger young male collie. She's awesome.

Sounds like Tuckerman had a pretty sweet ride at Sea Otter and ended up 20th. Results are here. Good thing too, cause I told norrene beforehand that if he didn't beat Gord Fraser I was going to kick him off the team and send him home, so I guess he can stay.

Picked up the new Placebo disc "Meds" today in the spirit of the occasion. Pretty good stuff. Mostly about drugs, believe it or not. Solid album, it'll take a few more listens to see if it's as good as the last one, but signs are good.

DT

Mullet Haiku (extended version)

Shampoo stings my eyes,
I will never feel that twice:
slick hair smells like gas.

O! Squirrel brother,
Your tail, my hair. We are one.
Yet I must eat you.

I liked that foreign
legion movie so much, I
grew me one them hats.

Brown edged tank top sticks
to my white clumpy armpits
Somehow I get laid.

Flowing down the back
helps to keep mind closed, hate
released by short top

My hair is slammin
like Stone Cold. Can I get a Hell
yeah? Hell yeah. Hell yeah.

This super cool hair
and a bucket of chicken:
What more could I want?

my slick snakeskin boots
my silk shirt with rooster prints
always colored jeans

Lynnrd Skynnrd didn't
win no spelling bees. Who cares?
They rock the trailer.

Razor set to one.
Do front and sides and then stop
Reaffirm my style.

Metallica is
for first graders. Nothing rocks
harder than Winger.

Dogs urinate where
they so choose. And so do I.
Red and blue lights flash.

Teen runaway, I
hate my dad. Yet I am one.
Fly, thunderbird, fly.

Ponytails are for wimps.
But if you let that hair loose,
you are my brother.

New white tank top tucks
neatly into tight black jeans:
redneck romeo.

Short like your schooling.
Long like your prison sentence.
The penal haircut.

Bald on the top and
long on the back. Behold my
glorious skullet.

My mullet and me
like to climb up a tree. We're
the best friends that could be.

Dad likes my mullet.
The nurse calls it a critter
carpet. My head breeds.

One day I will dip
and race cars. Until then I
ride my bike, chew gum.

With long hair in place
how else can I rebel? Hand
me the bong uncle.

Under the Christmas
tree: tight black jeans and a comb.
I've been extra good!

Short for dad. Long for
the daughter mom always wanted.
Everyone's happy.

Jacked Up. again.

Not much to say about this one. My truck happens to be out of commission, so I drove Jenny's car to the race on Sunday. It was a road race, flat, exposed, crazy crosswinds, and a big break that we almost caught on the final lap. I was pretty cooked. Hitched a ride in the team van back to Vantucky, picked up Jenny's car, went to save a friend stranded at the bus station and gave her a ride back to Willsonville. Must have dozed off for the half a second it took to aim the car straight at a center divider on I-5 north. I jerked back to conciousness on impact.

Managed to escape with a broken first rib, a banged up knee (steering columns are hard) and a sore everything else. No airbags were involved, so I took the brunt of the 60mph impact with my chest.


How's that for accuracy? Couldn't have hit the divider more on the driver's side unless I had opened the door and jumped out at it. Awesome testament to the safety of the honda civic. And seatbelts. The fact that the car sustained this much damage without transfering too much of it to yours truly is quite astounding.

So the only question now is how much will it cost to repair the divider (yes, it's very damaged, and yes I'll have to pay for it). As for now, I'm taking painkillers, muscle relaxer/sedatives and a few days to recover. The doctor says 6 weeks for the rib, but I think he's full of shit. I'll give it a couple. 4 max.

DT