Cyclocross madness

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

The last cyclocross race of the season was out at PIR the first weekend of December. That's about a 10 minute bike ride from our house so we ventured out into the muck to watch the insanity. The rain was epic, and the temperature was in the 30's and yet we saw guys in the elite men's race wearing what I would consider summer race-wear; shorts, short sleeve jersey, short fingered gloves, or in some cases no gloves at all. There we were bundled in many layers and waterproof shells and I just could not fathom how they did it. My capacity for suffering will never be that high. But it's sure fun to watch them slide around.

We mostly watched on a muddy hill that most riders started out riding up but as the laps went on you could see how much more effort it took and more of them got off and ran. There were also more wipe outs.

We didn't even last the whole hour to see the end of the men's race. We got too cold and baring our hands to unlock our bikes was the final straw. It was then that I discovered that they way to get Jess to ride faster is to freeze her. In an effort to get feeling back to her extremeties, she left me in the dust getting out of there. We stopped at Fred Meyer on the way home and I locked her bike up for her so she could go straight inside and warm up. All part of the service.

Crunch

My slacking off last week came back to haunt me this week, as I had my first big project due for a class which coincided with Jess's dad coming into town. I stayed up till 5:30am Saturday morning finishing most of the work, slept till 10:00 or so and then we went over to the Red Bike for breakfast. It was hopping as usual and we saw our fellow bike dorks Deanne and Jonathan.

The plan was to drop me off at home to finish my paper while Jess and Chuck went to Powells. They got distracted talking about home projects and before I knew it they had a bunch of tools and the step stool out and were tackling the upstairs office door. Our house is fairly new and the settling of the first few years has tilted things enough that two of our doors won't close. Chuck, being ah, frugally minded, took a look and figure sanding down the top of the doors would be the cheapest, easiest way to fix them.

I finished my paper to the sounds of electric sanding, vacuuming and occasional swearing, but we both got the job done eventually.

I rewarded myself with an episode of season 2 Battlestar Galactica and later we went out to a Livewire show, which is a whole post in itself.

I made it through the day pretty well considering I'd only had 3 hours of sleep, but I was glad to hit the sheets finally. Sadly, my rest was short lived. I woke up three hours later with a phlegm attack and spent 30 minutes coughing and hacking. I couldn't even retreat to the guest room, since it was occupied--and besides, laying down seemed to make it worse. Instead I spent some time online researching the possible causes of my trouble. I figured it could be either dairy, gastric problems, which I have a history of, or the lingering of the cold I had three weeks ago. Either way, I was pretty pissed off about not being able to sleep. After an hour online, I successfully went back to bed for a few hours.

Today we grabbed waffle goodness at Flavour Spot and headed out to Rainier, OR for the third in the Cross Crusade Cyclocross series. We wanted to Chuck to have a quintessential Portland experience. Lots of Sorella's were out representing and I think we got 3 of the top 5 spots in the Master women 35-44. Colleen keeps saying she's 'retired' but she keeps winning the races. I hope I can ride that fast when I 'retire.'

We also got to see our buddy Rebecca, whom we met doing the Idaho ride this past Labor Day weekend (which I will one day finish writing about--really). She's doing her best to lure me out to race (as are many of my team mates) and she reeled in the line a little by suggesting I take her new ultra-light cross bike for a spin around the parking lot. It was light alright, and cornered like a dream and I almost endo'd when I forgot the brakes were disc and they worked *really* well. There were no barriers on today's course which makes the whole thing look more enticing--but I could still see the pain on those uphills. I'll probably end up trying it at some point. Maybe next year...

Here's a few shots we snapped of the action:


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Soon after we left the race, Jess saved us all from untimely death with a masterful piece of defensive driving. Some idiot that didn't know how to merge was coming onto the highway and would've totally broadsided us had she not gunned it and laid on her horn. With a car directly to the left of us, she had nowhere else to go. The other driver finally got a clue and we watched as he slammed on the brakes and his car swerved 90 degrees in both directions and nearly hit both retaining walls, while we cruised away unscathed. We all waited for the bad sound we knew was coming, but miraculously, they got straightened out and kept going. Hopefully the near death experience means they'll watch where they're going next time. The odd thing was I looked up in time from my crocheting to see the whole thing, but my heart rate never even went up, even after the fact. Neither did Jess's obviously, cause she reacted and got us clear and never broke a sweat. And people think bike commuting is dangerous...

The evening has been spent in various forms of industry--more door fixing for Jess and Chuck and cookie and cake baking for me. Cory is coming over to pick up his post hole digger and wheel barrow that we borrowed for fence building so it seems a good opportunity to thank him again with some baked goods--all of which I have thoroughly checked for poisons by sampling them myself. It's a tough job, but someone's gotta do it.