In no particular order I'm going to start posting on this page chronologically with the newest items at the top.
Sept. 7
The biggest news ever is that I've upgraded to the future. Mark you favorites and start your engines, Mr. Kick Ass is now available and RSS feed subscribable. New Blog the old blog will disappear soon.
September 2
So last weekend just for the fun of it I decided to go race my mountain bike for 100 miles. It turned out better than I expected. The mantra was go hard or die trying. I went hard.
This past weekend I also got to camp, teach chess, and eat rice krispie squares. It doesn't get much better than that.
I'm the nerdy one on the left.
End of the Mtb Season part I
Jamie Lau managed to snag a few hot photos of me goofing off instead of racing at mt snow. This link gets to the xc gallery. Enjoy.
There may be new news soon, and it might be at a whole new location if I can figure out how to access the school's server space.
July 21
Today is Monday and I feel like I'm 17, but old enough to appreciate it. After completing my administrative tasks I rode my bike to Dave's house to hang with him and Jamie Lau (of jamielau.com fame). We drank milkshakes. We rode bikes to the swift river. Riding there in cargo shorts with a spare pair of shorts in my pocket made me feel self sufficient. Traveling under my own power with friends doing the same made the journey more satisfying.
and she's watchin' him with those eyes..
There was a rope swing. The third knot up the rope was the largest, I think I'll give it a shot. Rumor has it the water is really cold. Dave has a go of it. He confirms said rumor. Jamie is running away from the mosquitos. I grasp the third knot, take a step back and pull down. At some point your speed slows and you reach the end of the swing. Just before you start to swing back you hang for a moment, completely still hanging above the water. It is here that you must let go. This is the moment just before you discover if the rumors are true. There is no turning back.
and she's lovin' him with that body I just know it..
The first knot ended up being the correct choice before fatigue sets in. After fatigue sets in you skim your butt in the water slowing your swing and ultimately reducing your launch altitude. Sometimes I wish I were fitter in different ways. The water is cold and clear. This is the only way to get in. It would be too hard to try to wade into this water. Turning back would be too easy of an option.
and he's holdin' her in his arms late late at night..
Remember conversation? It may be becoming extinct. We had a nice conversation. How to deal with calls from tele-marketers. Hang up after the first hello that isn't returned. Pretend you called them after your first hello is returned with a 'hello'.
I don't mind talking to strangers on the phone even if they're only calling to sell me something as long as they treat me like a person. If they start with a pre-scripted spiel without an introduction or chance for input I'll give them the audience they're asking for. If they sound friendly and maybe introduce themselves then okay, Sarah, why is it exactly that I need another credit card? Emergencies huh? Can you name one emergency in which a spare credit card would save me? So tell me Sarah, how many credit cards do you own? Oh well, thanks for playing.
We ate dinner. I said my goodbyes to my friends. I'm losing speed now. Riding a bicycle at night without the assistance of man-made lights is an adventure. It restores my faith in two wheels and joy for pedaling. As I rode my one speed road bike home tonight I was able to think.
I rang my bell at every car that passed from either direction. Just to say hi. These were different critters than I. They were big, polluting and deadly. They promote waste, excess, sedentary lifestyles, materialism and indications of status through personal belongings. Driving a car is a birthright in America. That's too bad.
I played along with the charade..
Autozone cashed in and is helping prolong our dependence on cars with their new commercial in which the kid rides his bike to autozone everyday to buy parts to fix up a junk car on the side of the road. At the dramatic conclusion he's built up a rapport with the friendly staff and goes in for his final visit for the finishing touches on this car, an air freshener, and is so happy that, "at least now when I go, it's not on my bike". This commercial showed during the tour de France. Anything but riding a bike.
there doesn't seem to be a reason to change..
I felt free riding through the dark. The moon should have been nearly full, but was low enough in the sky not to help me much with my task. If riding bikes becomes part of my lifestyle does that mean I won't have to formally train as much? If I don't have to formally train as much it would be less stressfull, which could lead to better race results.
you know I feel so dirty when they start talkin' cute..
The one speeder chooses how hard I have to pedal. I'm okay with that. The one speeder is quiet, I really like quiet especially at night. Pedalling feels easy and the air is cool. I'm 17, but old enough to appreciate it. I remember seeing Colin riding back to Amherst one night at about 12:30. He passed in a red blinking blur with headphones in. He had ridden from Boston that night. I was jealous.
I wanna tell her that I love her, but the point is probably moot..
I'm losing speed now. I won't likely see Dave or Jamie anytime in the near future. I'm swinging towards Raleigh. This will be a new chapter in my life. I don't know how cold the water is. There is only one way to find out. I'm still hanging on. Wish me luck.
July 16
I'm in the process of packing my car for the drive to Vermont as I am writing this. It has been a little while since I've updated this page any.
The last few races did not go very well, which is why I didn't feel much like sharing those. I'm feeling a little better coming into this weekend. Another bonus is that because last weekend I scored some series points I may get a call up. Instead of starting in 65th position I might get to start in the 50's somewhere. This could be huge.
In other news I successfully patched one of my punctured tubeless tires, representing a virtual savings of over $25! Oh, and I'm quickly running out of food and have no intentions of purchasing any more until I move to Raleigh.
Wish me luck and I'll see you on the other side.
June 4
Oops I did it again. I was riding in the rain all day today and about 2 hours in I spotted what looked like a food wrapper on the side of the road. It took me about 5 seconds to decide to turn around to investigate. Sure enough there was an unopened package of honey roasted peanuts laying in the stream of water running along the side of the road. The last time I scored free food from the side of the road in the rain while riding my bike it was a candy bar. I had been wishing for tacos next time, but honey roasted peanuts really hit the spot. I stuck the package in to my pocket and rode for about 5 minutes before tearing the package open and pouring those nuts into my mouth. Delish.
June 3
I got really thirsty on my ride today because I didn't bring enough water. I didn't even notice that I was riding right past a public water supply until I saw the sign that read, "NOTICE, You're riding past a public water supply". Fine. I will. Ironically, even after I noticed that I was riding past a water supply, I could not find a supply of water anywhere. There were zero places for me to fill up a water bottle. Lame.
Project poverty is going to be a blast. I plan to kick ass at not spending money. If I ride my bike to go dumpster diving do I cancel out an SUV? Peep this Article.
June 2
Days off from training are sweet especially when they come every 7-10 days, if they came everyday it wouldn't really be a 'day off' it would just be 'I'm lazy'. Today's day off I rode my bike the beach with my sister and we took our digicams. Three of the following photos are hers and the other three are mine. Enjoy.
June 1
I finished 3rd today at Pat's Peak, which I'm okay with considering I was training through the race and not exactly setting myself up to do well. My dad finished second after breaking and fixing his chain during the race; simply amazing. I think it's about time for a new bike.
Once I start getting an income again I'm pretty sure it will be very close to minimum wage. For fun I'm planning on starting another secret project. The first secret project is my helmet that looks like my hair, the new one will be called 'Project Poverty'. I plan to document on the internet my income versus expenditures to so how plausible it is to live off of roughly $6/hr at 40 hrs a week. Actually I won't just be living off of it, I'll be doing a bit more since I'll maintain my main hobby of racing mountain bikes at the professional level. Stay tuned to see how it goes.
Massachusetts had their official state poet come up with a slogan for the highways. To promote safety and encourage sleeping at rest stops, there are big blue signs along the road with white letters that reads 'Take a break stay awake for safety sake'. I had to do a double take and verify with the dictionary, but I'm pretty sure this doesn't make sense. If you're taking a break to stay awake for the sake of safety, it should read for 'safety's sake' not 'safety sake'. And another thing, what's with people always writing numbers the wrong way. Even at a prestigious event like my sister's graduation at Bryant University the pamphlets they handed out read "blah blah blah the class of two thousand and eight". This the means the class of two thousand and the class of eight. The year is two thousand eight. Two thousand and eight is two numbers. Of course, I have to laugh because as I write this I'm listening to Mickey Avalon and Dirt Nasty.
May 27
I've been watching a fair amount of movies lately and today I watched the best one I've seen all year. Last year's best would have to be Pumpkin. 
If you haven't seen it please do.
I rode my bike to the library to renew Atlas Shrugged, which will apparantly be made into a movie for next year. I decided to pick out another DVD to watch. Luckily I made the correct choice and went home with Adam's Apples, which was unexpectedly and darkly hilarious. It has all the key ingredients for good movie: neo-nazi skinheads, religion, and apple pie. I dare you to try to top this movie.
A few honerable mentions should include Thumbsucker, Sideways, The Edukators, and Buddy.
Sadly, I've also viewed a few terrible movies this year. I think Scary Movie 4 can be trumped only by Underdog, which I'm embarrassed to have seen any of. For some reason I find any movie with talking animals as the main characters insulting.
May 20
Being sick is so last week. This week is all about starting to train hard.
I have two shout outs I need to shout out. Firstly my sister graduated college, congratulations. Secondly my dad rode his mountain bike like a super hero last weekend. I was seriously impressed.
Hungry is the new full, and there are two types of people in the world, those who choose the easy thing and those who choose the hard thing. Being hungry is harder than being full. My new goal is to feel hunger a lot of the time. I had actually gone a long time without ever feeling hungry. By scheduling my snacks and meals and calculating out how much I was supposed to be eating, I ended up not encountering hunger for a month or two. These days I'm not calculating out stuff and just learning to be hungry in order to lose weight. It seems like everybody wants to take the magic pill that causes you to lose fat from your body in the places you want to lose it most. There is no such thing as spot reduction (losing fat from a specific area exclusively) and if it sounds too easy to be true it is. I was always a little tempted to become one of those guys on tv selling people hope in the form of a pill. I can charge $200 a bottle 'because it works'. Take three pills a day and eat less, oh yea, and exercise too.
Being hungry is the hard thing, ordering pills from TV is the easy thing. I can't explain why, but for some reason I have this belief that the hard choice is more virtuous. Recent examples from life include last week's trip to Bub's BBQ. Mister Maynard, my sister, and her friend rode bikes with me to get some of the best BBQ this side of the Mason-Dixon. Some of my sisters other friends decided to drive instead of ride bikes. Getting in a car is the easy thing, riding a bike is the hard thing. There are a lot more differences. I won't elaborate, but these could include things like environmental impacts, sense of adventure, and lifestyle. I heard growth comes from leaving your comfort zone by trying new things. For most folks driving is not a new thing.
Regardless, Bub's was fantastic and the 2.5 hour ride home with a belly like a woman in her 3rd trimester was awesome. It actually reminded me how much fun it is to ride bikes. There's something magical about riding a mountain bike with slicks at night TO some place. Usually when I ride bikes it's for the sake of riding the bike. I gain some fitness, but I always end up in the same place I started. I need to do some more point to point riding while I can.
May 6
Sunday I went back to school. This time I went to race and not study. UMass was hosting it's 18th annual Orchard Assault xc race on campus. This was a course that I had probably only ridden a dozen times despite living 500 yards from it for 3 years.
Course conditions were the sloppiest I had ever seen. Fortunately I had a lot of moral support out on the course and my sister graciously agreed to feed me bottles. Consequently, I was able to win and grasp my first xc victory of the year. Hopefully there will be many more to come.
Unfortunately I'm still a little sick. I took a few days off completely last week and I think I'm slowly improving in health not fitness.
May 3
I'm sick of being sick already. The past several days my recent illness has relegated me to my bed. Despite wanting to ride I've opted to take the advice I would give and just rest instead. Not riding is much harder than riding.
If I knew what caused all this I could fix it, but I don't. Maybe I'm canine intolerant, have developed a new allergy to pollen or wore myself out last weekend hanging out in the cold for too long after my race.
I finally started to put a dent in my 'caffeine free' shopping bag of tea. My newest whole wheat loaf was maybe the prettiest of loaves baked thus far.
I preregistered for a race tomorrow and it's scheduled to be 50 degrees and raining all day. I'm still doing it.
April 27
The play by play race report actually starts Saturday pre-riding the course. I was nothing short of super jazzed on my pre-ride because I had spent the bulk of Friday in BLs pro shop tuning my bike. After spending last season on Stan's tubeless set up, I was psyched to try out UST. I remained psyched until about 3/4 of the way through my first lap of the course Saturday when I flatted my rear tire. It only took until ride number 3 before I managed a half inch slice right through the tread.
Unfortunately I was uncharacteristically unprepared for this race and did not own another UST tire, nor had I brought sufficient tubes. Plan B: I drove to the local Performance Bike store front and was thoroughly disappointed. After years of shopping through the catalog I was expecting stepping into the store front to be similar to walking into Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. It wasn't even close and none of the employees looked like they rode bikes. They had one UST tire available so I called around to another shop in the area. The phone call went something like this:
"do you have any UST mountain bike tires in stock?"
"umm, we have Specialized"
"ok, are they tubeless?"
"let me check"
The answer was no, which resulted in me paying too much for a less than ideal tire at Performance, BUT I was able to pick up a pair of winter booties for $15.
Crisis averted, I said my prayers to flat gods that night got ready to rock Sunday. I must have accidentally prayed to the wrong gods because it ended up raining all night with a healthy dose of thunder and lightening for good measure. The water level of the pond at the park actually rose enough to cover some of the trail that went along it's edge.
Lap 1: Ride as hard as I think I can without blowing up too early. Check.
Lap 2: Catch up to a twin and ride on his wheel for the next lap too.
Lap 3: Still with twin, start having a conversation while riding up the biggest climb on the course and realize I must not be trying hard enough.
Lap 4: Make the pass and jump onto another dude's wheel who is going much faster and wearing trek gear trying to drop me like a bad habit. I go faster than lap 3.
Lap 5: Trek dude flats, I gain a place and toss him my spare tube while crossing my fingers in the hopes I don't need it later. I don't, and finish unscathed.
It turns out they paid 10 deep so I was able to pick up a check that paid for 30% of the trip's gasoline. Nice! Home boy in the Trek gear still owes me a tube.
April 1
I moved again and this time the house has a website here. One of my favorite things about moving is discovering the new local grocers. Different parts of the country all have their own grocery chains. Some have more amusing names than others, but the novelty of a new one is always sufficient to put a smile on my face.
Last week I was in North Carolina where Food Lion is the king of the super market chains. Actually the local Harris Teeter was nicer, and Kroger was an honorable mention. These are, of course, evaluated based on name only. I haven't shopped extensively at any of these grocers.
This past summer's road trip yielded one Safeway card and quite a few stops at other grocers. Piggly Wiggly comes to mind as an early stop along the way, but sadly, I can't recall too many others. It's hard to imagine that a cross-country road trip could have anything exciting enough to trump my memories of regional grocers, but apparently this is what has happened.
New Jersey was able to boast Shop Rite, Path Mark, A&P, King's, Stew Leonard's, Leroy's Wondermart and my two personal favorites, Food Basics and Super Food Town. Food Basics is where I did the bulk of my shopping, because as the name implies, they carry the basics. This place had amazing deals on all of my usual food staples: dry beans, pasta, IQF veggies, bananas (44 cents/lb) and fresh fruit when in season. Sadly I can't say I've ever been inside of Super Food Town, but it was my favorite store to ride my bike past just for the name. It sounded like a pretty fun place to shop.
In 508, MA where I'm from we used to have an IGA (Jimmy's), which has since been replaced by Shaw's. We're also able to claim Stop 'n Shop, which is taken one step further once you head north where you can 'Shop 'n Save'.
Today I took a walk to the local IGA (Adam's), with a grocery bag in hand. It was nice to see an IGA again. On my walk home I realized how nice it is to have the super market infra-structure that we take for granted. You can go anywhere in the country and be able to buy purchase most of your usual favorite foods. There are flaws in this system of course, but it sure is convenient.
March 24
North Carolina boasts a more enchanting weather forecast for this upcoming week than local 508, MA. Luckily I'll be in Raleigh for the rest of this week.
Do you ever find yourself having independent thoughts, ideas of your own, or well researched opinions? Well no need to worry anymore; the solution to your problem is here!
March 17
Today I will have spent the majority of the daylight hours in a tree. Pruning apple and pear trees is a lot like having a bonsai tree, but the fruits of your labors are literal.
March 15
I went bouldering to local rock gym this week. Bouldering is a really hard game. Unfortunately, it's one of those things that you can't do both casually and well. For me it will just have to be casually. When it gets warmer out and I have at least one hangboard installed in my domicile there's a good chance I'll start to boulder more frequently than once a year. Maybe better too.
March 8
I have ridden in worse weather that today's weather. Luckily, most of the time this is a true statement . I've already invested the time into some foolhardy rides, which enable me to make that first statement and justify, to myself, riding in nearly any weather condition.
The weather graph predicted temperatures hovering around 50. I don't think it crept above 42 today, which relegated my hands to my armpits about every 20 minutes. Aside from my hands, I was dressed really well for the 40 degrees and rain.
To cope with those 'other' issues surrounding riding in the rain, I finally settled on a new system, which can be summarized as: bag balm + petroleum jelly = magic.
No balms, petroleum or otherwise, shall be necessary tomorrow. I'm expecting sun and a wonderfully crisp 38-43 degrees. It doesn't get much better than that. Uh, in early March in Massachusetts anyway.
March 7
Somewhere around 24 hours later the answer is Xubuntu 7.10.
I relearned several things from this computer adventure. If it is not in need of repair, don't attempt to repair it.
Your neighbor's computer operating system will always appear more desirable than your own. I'm not very good at computers; and there's a really good chance I'm going to get wet tomorrow. 
March 6
Today was a day of epic battles. Battle the first was with my legs, after 3 hours they said 'no'. This was of course an unacceptable thing to say. The reply was 'funk you, let's finish this ride like a rock star'. So we did, both me and my legs. You read correctly. No, I haven't named them, yet.
Epic battle the second involved sitting on my butt in a chair instead of on a bike seat while trying to find a suitable replacement linux distribution for my computer which already had a perfectly functioning linux distribution all dialed in and running fine. I'm 7 hours into this battle at the moment. The final solution may be Kubuntu 7.10. Time will tell.
Battle three was less epic, but more delicious. About 5 hours after dinner I decided it was time to eat again. It was not time to eat again. 'Oh, but yogurt (and cottage cheese, hard boiled eggs, soy nuts, rich chocolate ovaltine) is good for you, so it's okay'; it's not okay. Losing weight, or fat rather, is an epic battle because it takes a long time to do it well. Being a little bit hungry a lot, is much harder than being a lot hungry for a short period of time. Crap.
Sorry no pictures today.
Feb 26
Today I took my mountain bike out on the road with the slick tires on. I rode over to the local paved equivalent to singletrack. See.
Feb 24
I went mountain biking on the cape today with my Dad. Should I call it trail riding because there aren't any mountains? Nah.. I keep re-discovering that my Dad is a warrior. It was almost 40 degrees in the sun with just enough snow cover to keep things interesting.
Not only did he come out for a road ride yesterday, but at twice my age he came out today too and hung in like a trooper for 3 hours out on the snow and slush. We got muddy, there were mechanical issues, and then we got beers. It was a pretty complete day.
I'm smiling on the inside. Actually I'm not too fond of stopping or taking pictures with a point and shoot digicam. I'll remember to smile in the next ones I swear.
Feb 23
Most of yesterday's snow melted for today's ride. Aside from one really sketchy section of bad pavement covered in slush, it was a pretty nice day out. Around hour 3 in the saddle my hands started to get a little chilly, but that's to be expected.
Here are a few images from day's ride, illustrating a typically gray Saturday in February.
Feb 22
It snowed here in 508, MA today. The last time it snowed I took my cross country skis out for a little spin around the local park. Here are a few images brought to you by my 3.2 mega pixel point and shoot from that first snow day.
For today's snow day I took my mountain bike out and rode laps around the house. Seriously. I had my super skinny knob-less road tires on for reduced traction and I just putted around the local park and the front yard. I fell down a lot and loved every minute of it.
