For those that didn't know him, this is Brett. Brett was a great friend to not just me, but everyone he had ever met. He riding his bike south on Interstate around 12:30 yesterday when a garbage truck drove past, and turned in front of him. He was headed downhill at the time, carrying alot of speed. He had no room to stop when the truck turned in front of him and took the corner. Brett was killed.

Brett was unconditionally nice. Seeing him with anything other than that goofy smile on his face was rare. Brett worked sales next to me at the Gallery. He did well selling bikes not because he could rattle of specs and weights and material names and suspension designs and all that. He was good at what he did because people knew that he was truly happy to be helping them with a bike. Customers knew that Brett was not a "salesman," he just wanted people to be happy.

He was a great racer. Not in the sense that he had an impressive list of victories or a signature "move" or something. He was great because he pushed himself and had a great time doing it. I watched him achieve his finest result on Sunday, 3rd in the singlespeeds at the Cross Crusade at Rainier HS. I saw every lap, and could tell that he had finally found his limit. He was riding right there, right up next to it. No reserves, holding nothing back. He fucking went for it. After it was all over he knew he had given everything, and was so happy he looked like he would burst at any moment. He could have finished 300th instead of 3rd and I think he would have looked the same, knowing he had ridden to his true maximum physical capacity. He didn't take off to shower and recover after he finished. He stayed to cheer on his friends who had yet to race, and to be with his friends that already had.

A world that allows a perfectly good person like Brett to die before his time doesn't make any sense. My heart goes out to Sarah.

I'll miss you buddy. We all will.

DT

man i'm hungry

there is no better way to kick back after a hard cross race than with...

And now a bear stuck in a bridge.







all of todays entertainment stolen from How To Avoid The Bummerlife.

not much more than meets the eye

Yeah, I finally saw Transformers. Guess what? It rules.
Optimus Prime kicks ass, just like he did when I was a kid. The human dialogue and backstory wasn't just bad, it was painfull. It was awefull. It was excruciating. The auto-bot and Deceptacon dialogue was obviously bad, but it was bad in the same way it was in the show, cause you know, robots are not so good with the syntax, remember? So it's not really bad, it's gloriously silly.

Anyway. The movie is 2 hours and 15 minutes long. At least 45 minutes of that could be cut out and left in Hollywood. Pretty much all the non-transforming bits of people going bla bla bla, i'm an acqward high school kid, bla bla bla unrequited love, bla bla bla, i knew you really loved me bla bla bla bla bla. As much as I cringed and heckled through these parts, I was smiling ear to ear during the bad-ass transformer battle sequences. They are massive, sprawling triumphs of modern special effects, they are rediculous and totally perfect. As we left the Mission theater, the 4 people I was with all agreed that it was retarded, but my inner 8 year old was screaming "I WANNA GO AGAIN!"

DT

wrapped up like an dead fish

Nationals and 2007 are finito. Complete. Done. Over with. The cycling end is done. Had a slightly better showing in the kierin, but still couldn't escape the reps and the minor finals. Attended a small end of season party at a super-posh condo by Redondo beach. We drank too much Pacifico, toasted with Veuve Clicquote and watched Ricky Bobby twice.

Now it's back to the gym, back to the fridge and out to the cross races for some spectating, wound scrubbing and broken bone stabilizing. I'm taking the day of the singlespeed CX world's off, as I need at least one race to be that beer-soaked shirtless guy jumping around screaming at my racing friends and throwing Cozy Shack at people. Looking forward to it.

DT

200m

Everything I could've done wrong, I did. 12.01 on an indoor board track and qualified 23rd. Only top 12 went to the rounds, so it was a short day. 3 months after I did a 10.6 outdoors. I'm out of the team sprint.
Not many funny jokes i can make about that one.

crappy luck and robot wisdom

Quite the morning in LA. The sun's strugling to get through the brown sky, but still managing to get everything up to a nice 85 degrees. Huge cannonball run Sunday night at top speed to get to LA before the sun rises and the track opens. Saw nothing but torrential rains and white lines until we rolled through Sacramento. Finally arrived in LA around 4:30am. Driving in Los Angeles is like running the Indy 500 in a Toyota van. Same amount of cars as Portland rush hour, but spread across 6 lanes, everybody doing at least 90mph, and everyone using at least 3 lanes at a time.

stupid gates...

Had a rough morning in the standing 250tt yesterday. Legs felt great, bike felt great, everything was going well until I sat down in front of the gate. This start is crucial. I have one lap to prove that I can start fast enough to ride second behind Blatchford in the team sprint. So the countdown begins, gets down to 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, GO and I'm sideways. Not sure if I jumped too fast and got ahead of the gates or if one of the gate arms didn't release completely, but either way, I avoided going down by a whisker and ended up aimed uptrack. Not so good. Got back on it and after that everything fired perfectly, but Des said I lost between 3 and 4 tenths because of the horrible start. Ended up with a 19.1, same time as last year. So had I not missed the start, maybe would have ended up around 18.7 or 18.8, good for third. Either way, fast enough to stay in the team sprint, so Saturday's the big day.

Seemed like a tough day for most of the NW contingent. Heather wasn't happy with her 500, Beardsley didn't like his kilo, The Mantis' team pursuit team fell to Rock and Republic for the silver after one of the four riders drops off only halfway in. Good thing this is only the first day. Plenty of events left to go.

Sprints are today. Gambling a bit on the gear, riding something relatively small, so we'll see how that one goes.

DT