San Dimas Stage Race: Stage 1, Glendora Mountain Road Time Trial

12:00:15
Do I go when he says zero or when he says go?
Man, this guy has some really fat fingers.
12:00:30
Did I go when he said zero or when he said go? I can’t remember. I hope they don’t DQ me.
This effing sucks.
Jesus, this guy’s going even slower than me.
Later dude.
This effing sucks.
I wonder what time it is?
Don’t look at your computer. Just ride. Ride fast.
What difference does it all really make anyway?
Shut up! Faster!
Faster asshole.
Where did this wind come from all of sudden?
Am I spinning too much? Push a bigger gear.
That seems too big.
I think I should spin some more.
This effing sucks.
I only caught me 30-second man. I should have caught my minute-man by now. This is not good.
That’s a big camera lens.
At least no one has caught me yet.
I wonder what time it is?
Don’t look. Don’t look. Just ride.
I hate myself. Suffer. Suffer.
You’re almost done. Faster. Faster.
Well, technically you still have three-quarters of a mile. You don’t want to ride to hard and then blow up in the last 100 meters.
Last turn.
Sprint. No, wait it’s too soon.
This effing sucks.
Now sprint.
Man, I suck at sprinting.
Thank God it’s over.
15:50-something!?!?
Maybe I should take up sitting on my ass and watching more TV instead.
Tomorrow’s road race will be better. You can make up time there.
Tomorrow’s road race will suck. You’re not going to make up that much time.
Okay, it’s time to start training. No more beer. No more wine.
That effing sucked.
I need a drink.

"You know I'm not good at apologizing, so I'll just skip it if it's all the same to you."
- Steven Zissou

Thanks to Facebook and the big mouth of some people, within the time span of a day and a half, Adam, Joy, & Krista threw together an outlaw short track race at Hulda Crook on Thursday night. More than 10 people showed up for 20 minutes plus 3 laps of pain and suffering. The death-defying figure-eight course was even marked with cones and environmentally hazardous paint that were "borrowed" from a nearby school.


Half way through the first lap I did my best Tree Farm impersionation and took a flyer, only instead of going it alone, I took Robert Bender & Adam with me. Eventually it was just Bender & I and going into the last lap he stuck it to me pretty good, gapping me on the downhill & then drilling it on the following climb.

Willem even talked one of his friends into walking out to the course to hold up lap cards.

Afterward we all stood around and talked about how much we suffered and how much fun it was and how cool bikes are.

Then some of use rode up to the Jedi and back down to the park before it got dark.


It's a damn shame there are no more short tracks, with the exception of Sea Otter. We'll probably keep it up until Sea Otter, until the heat comes and shuts us down, or until someone keels over and dies.

Anyway, if you have a mountain bike, you like to suffer, and you don't want to go around in circles at an industrial park crit practice, come on out and try not to get taken out on our figure-eight short track. We can use the bodies.

I’m suffering from some serious writer’s block on this blog and even worse at work. I don’t know what the deal is, but the deal isn’t good. When life hands me lemons, I do what most of you would do. I Google lemons to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to do with these lemons. If you haven’t figured it out already, a lemon in this case is a metaphor for writer’s block.

Google gives me 8,810,000 entries for "writer’s block". It starts with Wikipedia’s entry for writer’s block, which is defined as, "a phenomenon involving temporary loss of ability to continue writing, usually due to lack of inspiration or creativity". No shit. I already know that. Now, how do I cure it?

Ah, here it is. Practical Tips for Beating Writer’s Block. I click on it and it gives me an article on About.com titled, Top 10 Tips for Overcoming Writer’s Block. Of course, there are 10 tips, which actually tells me only about 7 or 8 are useful tips and the other few are useless bullshit made up to complete the list at 10. I’ll go back to Google and see if someone has the integrity to publish a Top 4 Tips for Curing Writer’s Block.

No such luck, but here’s something much more interesting and related to my love for the liquor.

Top 15 Great Alcoholic Writers.
15. Hunter Thompson
14. Raymond Chandler
13. John Cheever
12. O. Henry
11. Tennessee Williams
10. Dylan Thomas
9. Dorothy Parker
8. Edgar Allan Poe
7. Truman Capote
6. Jack Kerouac
5. William Faulkner
4. Charles Bukowski
3. F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. James Joyce
1. Ernest Hemingway

According to this list, my options are to die young, go gay, or grow old and crazy and and shoot myself. Nope.

Back to Google. Here’s a link to Brainy Quotes from Hemingway. I’m a sucker for quotes. What does our old drunk suicidal friend have to say?

“I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.”

Brilliant. That solves it. Tonight I’m going to fill the well with a bike ride and a drink (or four).

I just thought of something kind of funny. What if I went to Google and typed in "writer’s block" and instead of 8-million entries it pulled up zero entries? I deserve a fifth drink tonight just for that brainy thought.

“Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go on an overnight drunk, and in 10 days I'm going to set out to find the shark that ate my friend and destroy it. Anyone who wants to tag along is more than welcome.” – Steven Zissou