Being a Euro pro sure looks fun

Shameless self promotion

Since the Merm hasn't hooked me up with pics from this weekend here's 2 I found online from the ICC Crit. The 1/2/3 race that I took 7th in.

Me unleashing my ferocious sprint, notice it was uphill aided.

Chasing some break like a tool.
I now have permission from the Merm to wear full finger gloves in crits since I go into corners fast enough to possibly crash.

The Dagwood & some random crit in Oklahoma

Races 7 & 8 are in the book. Saturday was the annual OCC Classic the Dogwood. I initially signed up for the 1/2/3 epic 106 miler but after seeing the field grow to 30+ I figured I'd not take part in the sufferfest & drop down to the 3/4(yes I pussed). Since it turns out I'm going to have to get the whole 25 points to cat up I figured I needed to start getting some points pronto presto.

Not to bore you I set a pretty good tempo up the KOM climb & got in a break of 6. 3 juniors, some foreign guy, & super Cat 3 Bruce Dunn, & me. We set a pretty good pace working fairly well together till the Elk climb. I guess since I drilled it up the KOM climb they expected me to do the same on the Elk climb so I sat on the front & just set tempo. I played it fairly smart from here on out till Dunn jumped on the last climb before Bradleyville. No one wanted to chase so I had to pull it back by myself which took a BUNCH out of me. So I sat wheels till about 300 meters to go & tried to take a flyer up the little hill knowing I didn't have a sprint yet. The sprint came down to 5 guys & yes Dawson I got 4th, where were you?

Coker's been watching Stars & Watercarriers to much. He asked me about 4 times to carry my extra stuff. I kept telling him I was fine but he just kept asking, this was the real reason I rolled off to get away from him, just kidding Jim. Coker had a great race & finished in the pack. Pretty good for a big boy. Coker even pulled me up the first climb of the day setting a hell of a tempo & kicking of a massive draft.

Today I got up & drove to Catoosa with the BMC North boys for a 1/2/3 crit. Dawson manned up & signed up for the 1/2/3 as well. No time like the present to get some experience getting your ass handed to you. The field wasn't huge about 25 but had some guns in it. I was impressed with Cale & Jim both working very hard. Cale about had me dropped several times. You have to give them kuddos for taking the leap to 2's knowing they were going to have to take they're lumps. Well they're doing more than taking lumps they're taking part. Oh yeah Dawson lasted like 5 minutes & started taking pics. Which I'll post if he can remember to email them to me.

I had a pretty good race. Actually went for a prime but the Felt needs a new shifter cable so couldn't get it in the 11 for the massive tailwind sprint to the finish, so got 2nd in the prime sprint. The backstretch had a 30+ mph headwind that blasted you with fertilizer(very Euro). At about the 60 min mark the field just shattered & I managed to get in chase group which I got dropped out of, but I managed to stay ahead of the solo winner & drilled it to the finish & almost caught back on to the break of 6 who were playing games for the sprint. Just as I thought I was going to sneak past them they went, so I rolled in for 8th or 9th depending on who's results you believed. I'm claiming 8th since the guy they payed for 7th finished just ahead of me(payed 7 deep of course).

Not to bad a weekend of racing. Now I'm going to take Huff's advice & rest for a few days before the NW Arkansas Classic next weekend. Have to give a big thanks to my sister who came for the weekend with my nieces. She cleaned my house from top to bottom. She's now welcome @ my house anytime she wants to come down. For that matter I'll give an open invite to any reader who wants to come and be my maid for the weekend.

A short post turned long

I seem to have recovered fairly well from this past weekend & the previous 3 weeks of heavy training/racing. In the last 3 weeks I've raced 6x & done one 6 hour ride. Yesterday I took the day off the bike to recover & be able to go to the Doc with Amber. So far I've made every appointment. All continues to be well. Amber is now on medical leave since work is "unable to accommodate her condition with light duty." Lawyer talk for we don't want a pregnant woman around. Now @ least I get to see her more.

Today I had good legs. I soloed 40+ miles in just over 2 hours. I loaded up the MP3 player with 3 of Brice Jones Riz casts. The combination of ramblings & music made the time go by pretty quick. For those of you who don't know a Riz cast(PodCast) is kind of a cross btwn an audio blog & an internet radio show. At the very least it was something different to train to. I did wear my new TIAA-CREFF cycling hat today in honor of Mr. Huff, so I felt very Euro in the overcast weather. Hopefully today's good legs will carry over to this weekend.

This AM had a telephone chat with Super G who's serving gimp time in the Hulk's basement. I think the Hulk's basement is a cellphone portal to China or Jim's learned to speak Mandarin. Anyway he had called me yesterday screaming about Brad winning a stage of the Tour Of Normandy. So in an effort to break my habit of not returning calls I returned his in less than 24 hours later(Hey you have to start small). Some of you have experienced this little quirk of mine. Don't be offended its just I don't usually get the message until after 10pm & I don't like to call and wake people up.

Huff has had a lot of first this week, his first Euro win,

His first Euro Crash, is he now a member of the Creed Nation? They seem to be spending a lot of man love time together.Huff Pimping his First Euro GC Jersey
Huff's first Euro Oh Shit I should have left my hands on the bars a little longer
The Tour of Normandy has a lot left so hopefully TIAA-CREFF can keep him off the deck & in yellow.
I don't have a pic of Brad's road rash so here is some courtesy of my niece Ashton. Playgrounds are tough
Aftermaths of my six hour ride, week before last.
Amber's got 8 weeks to go till Mia's fully cooked.
Will shrink in cold water.

Sylvan Springs Crit + Hell's Kitchen= Tired Scott

One of the advantages or disadvantages of being an old ass Cat 3 is you have a lot of opportunity to race. Once again I got 3 races in two days. That makes races 5,6, & 7 for the year. The results are slowly starting to come as my legs are getting under me. Saturday I drove up to St. Looey with Amber & my Mom for the Sylvan Springs Crit. They bravely sat through the chilly wind to watch me race the 3/4 & turn around and race the 1/2/3's. All the while listening to the International Christian Cyclists blare AC/DC from their van.

I figured I was going to have a rough day being the only OCC'er. For some reason in the 3/4's I decided I needed to get in a break. So after getting in about 50 different breaks I gave up on that plan & waited for the field sprint. Anyone who's seen me race crits knows I like to sit @ the back. This usually bites me in the ass and as usual it did. The course has a nice uphill @ the start finish that is kind of stair stepped through 2 turns to a flat crosswind section. This is followed by a tailwind downhill to recover on. Then on to a sweeping downhill to slight chicane to the rise to the line. I'd been using the uphill to advance my position pretty much @ will so I decided to sit back & rest, dumb. With one lap to go found myself about 10 guys too far back. So I ended up somewhere in the top 15?
No, No that's not Skippy it's me trying to warm up.

On to the 1/2/3 which was supposed to be 45 min plus 5 laps. Somewhere along the way it got changed to 60 min+5. I didn't figure this out till the clock said 58 min. No worries, by 30 minutes in my legs started to feel good & I moved toward the front. A daring move for me in a 1/2/3 race since I'm usually a little intimidated. I was getting pushed around a little but was holding my own. With 5 to go I stuck myself in the first ten since 4 guys had got up the road & the race was getting put in the gutter in the crosswind. SoI figured I'd suck it up & not get dropped. At the bell I dug WAY DEEP & went with a guy who attacked. I stuck to his wheel like glue & rode in the gutter to force him to stay on the front. So when we turned down wind he attacked again. So some how I dug deeper & stuck him. I got bumped back about 3 spots missing a wreck from the front four, so now only 1-3 had been decided. Coming out of the last turn I said F'it, stuck it in the 11 and completely buried myself to take 4th in the field sprint, 7th overall(which put me in the $$). After I recovered I realized I'd gone to the line with Joe Freaking Hill! Not bad for a 153lbs confirmed non sprinter. Don't ask how I do better in a 1/2 race than a 3/4 race? Longer is better I guess.

This is the ginormous banana split I ate on the way home from St. Looey. Took like 10 min.

After getting home @ 10pm Saturday I made the turn around @ 5:00am to check the radar & get ready to head to Arkansas for Hell's Kitchen. Once Coker decided to finally get out of bed he came & got JJ & me from my house. Then we had to do some quick rack repair in the driveway to get JJ's bike on top. The forecast had called for a 90% chance of rain. For you math impaired that's a 10% chance it WON'T rain(you know who you are).

We started in rain capes to stay dry from the 2 or 3 drops falling. I'd ditch mine 5 miles in. Coker decided to cut some weight(I think he hit his goal becasue he ate a 5lb burger in 5 min) & wore his fastened up the whole first lap. From the Hell's Kitchen climb on Coker guarded the rear to make sure no one snuck up on me. He needs to work on this because guys kept catching from behind. JJ got dropped but fought back hard to catch up before the first climb on the 2nd lap only to be have a mechanical on the Hell's Kitchen climb. So he decided to wait for Coker & head to the car & start plotting how to make me drop out so they could go eat. Bastard's! I stayed in & got worked over by the Tyson boys. Could only get help from TJ from the BMC North squad. With 2 guys up the road 1o or so guys sprinted for the last places. My legs were shot so I rolled in @ the back of the group. I guess I should have taken my chances in the 1/2/3 race. Now I've got to get a good week in & decide if I'm going to do the epic 106 mile 1/2/3 Dogwood or the 53 milder 3/4 version. Since I'm leaning toward an upgrade & may do the epic.

Amber spent Sunday @ her first baby shower. The ladies from work graciously threw it for her & anther pregger from work. She got lots of cool stuff for the kiddy. With all the stuff my Aunt gave us Saturday Mia's room is starting to bulge. We won't have to buy her clothes for @ least a year. Anyway thanks to all the ladies from work, I know they don't read this garbage but it was appreciated.

The Baby's room

I finally finished the baby's room, minus a few minor touch ups. This has been a month long process of painting, assembling furniture, & hanging chair rail. There is a lot of involved in getting a nursery up to speed. So here is a pictorial post of Mia McKinley Dunsmuir's new room.

Were the stinkiness will be taken care off, can't wait!

Who knew a crib had so many damn parts. Of yeah measure the width before assembling in the living room.

The painting begins.

Lucky felt the need to help by removing tape. He's such a good helper.

Damn it Debbie I'm trying to get some work out of her!

The magic of the shaped roller.

Close to being done. Still needs chair rail.

The sheep makes womb noises, puts me right out.

All done with chair rail installed & painted. Furniture assembled & put in place, just insert baby.

All is ok

Just a quick word to let all listening to storm radio last night. It was misreported that Dayco had been hit by a tornado. The phones were ringing off the hook with people hoping not to come into work today(go figure). We did weather 3 near passes in the tornado shelters. We had 3.5" diameter hail on the plant grounds. Dayco is a loud place but it had nothing on the hail hitting the roof. I found the biggest piece of hail I've ever seen. Not as round as this pic but probably wider. The sucker had some weight to it. The plant did get struck by lightening. This is a pretty common experience, it just f's up the works for awhile. That's all for now. Haven't sat down, ate, or had any coffee since 10pm last night so I'm beat & ready to sack out. Hope everyone else made it through the storm ok.

Its dumping everywhere

I found this quote & thought I'd use it before Skip does. "Blogging is what happens when your mind has to take a dump."

For all wondering the Mexican was from On The Border in Tulsa, OK on 71st St. tasted pretty good going down, not so good coming up. Stomach is almost back to normal, though still not eating much. Oh well I needed to get rid of those extra 5 lbs anyway.

Took the sick time to get out of the saddle for a few days & catch up on some sleep & free some caffeine from my body. Went 3 days without caffeine! Coffee is my heroin so that was quite a step. Felt a little bad about missing some training but after this weekend I guess my body was telling me something. I'll show it who's boss though. Amber & I are taking a little road trip this weekend to take advantage of my only non race weekend I'll have for a month or 2. I don't plan on spending much time in the car since the bike is coming along.

Whorah for rain! Finally we got some rain & the river gauges are all on the up. Just in time for the weekend. But since Amber can't boat right now I think mine will stay on the wall a little longer unless Richland keeps creeping up & I bet she'll understand (I Hope).

That was a hell of a storm that rolled thorough. Took my cable out for most of the day.

The up side is that my back yard no longer looks like a dust bowl, just a mud pit. The back yard is a bad word in my house. The dogs have an intricate trail network in it so grass is sparse. Its the next big project on the house list now that the babies room is almost done. Pics to come soon.

Does anyone think its funny that the spell checker on Blogger says Blog is misspelled?

Left over Mexican Food BAD!!

This post will contain no pics to save the squeamish. Sunday night for dinner I took Saturdays leftover Mexican for lunch. No problem been refrigerated & its only a day old. WRONG! About 5:30 am my tummy started rolling. I felt very nauseas. I figured @ first it was heartburn, then the dry heaves started. Then I became determined not to puke @ work. This involved standing over the trash can for 15 min willing my lunch to stay inside me. Driving home I just knew I was going to have to blow chunks in the middle of the road. I walked in the house & straight to the bathroom where I would spend most of the next 24 hours vomiting up everything I'd eaten in the last decade. It was so bad I called in sick to work. Something I've done less than 5 times I've worked @ Carlisle. All last night was sleep for 1 hour, get up puke, go lay back down, get back up, etc, etc. I will not be eating Mexican food anytime soon. Luckily this AM I'm starting to feel better & I'm working on getting something to stay down.

Coker is know a Blogger. Check it out I'm sure he'll have some amusing things to say.

Salt Creek Bike Game

Saturday many biker gamers in a rainbow of colored jerseys traveled to the Tulsa bike course for a bike game. That's my tribute to the Bike Game.com. Salt Creek Circuit race was race #2,3,& 4 of my season. Yes you counted that right I raced 3x. A hard day for a hard man. The OG & I were the only OCC reps. OG had a rough day finding its hard to race on 3hrs sleep unless your me. He was sporting some flash new Sidi road shoes though.




Springfield was well represented. BMC North had Cale M, Super G Cone, & Emro. No Skip, but that was to be expected as the race was outside. For Mercy Missouri's # 1 Greeker made a showing along with Stay Bertsch, who won the women's, & Melissa rode well in support. TIAA-Creff Superstar Charles Bradley Huff showed up to break legs pre-euro style. Though he only finished 2nd in the 1/2/3? I think there was a little race fixing going on there but I'll have to ask Wayne's wife how that works.

My day started early with the Master's race. OKC, Tulsawheelman, & BMC against me. I felt very watched. I was unable to get in the 4 man break but ended up 3rd in the field sprint for 7th(? out of 30) in the race. Then a quick 1.5 hr rest & I was back on the bike for the 3/4 race. Once again felt rather outmanned. Did try a solo break to no avail. Came ever so close to bridging a 30 sec gap to the winning break. But had a retard moment. The peleton got within 10 sec of me & I was 10 sec form the break & I thought the break had sat up so I did too. Oops! As soon as they caught me they all sat up to let the OKC/Tulsawheelman break stay off the front. Lesson learned; wait to be caught in the break not solo. Ended up about 12th or so after the field sprint.After a 30 min cool down /warmup it was time for the 1/2/3 race. After the first lap I was wondering what the F was I thinking racing 3 races for 99mile if I finished them all? Finishing became the main focus after the pace kept jumping up to 33+MPH. Ouch! Did everyone not realize I'd raced twice already? I now know courtesy of Huff when you jump off to bridge up to a break you start from the VERY back of the group & let out a loud "YEEEHHAAA" as you scream past everyone to bridge up in nothing flat. F'ing show off! Stole my plan, I was just about to do the same thing. Anyway breaks went, the field shattered. The right combo got up the road, the field shut down. The break lapped us & we got pulled with 3 laps to go. OOPS. Who the hell gets pulled in a circuit race? Not the stunning Cat 2 debut the BMC boys were looking for.

Cone boy caused a little mayhem in the field though. He's not a popular boy in Tulsa. He was pulling into the wind & I was screwing with him a little refusing to get off his wheel. So he rode over to a cone & swerved @ the last minute. Now I knew it was there & swerved to & started laughing. Well no one else thought it was funny & A LOT of jawing ensued. Even a 90 lbs JR. was lecturing him. The whole time Jim & I were laughing our asses off. We had to salvage something out of a crap performance. Oh well.

So I ended up with 90 race miles in my legs. Legs stayed strong the whole way & I was even able to try & bridge(unsuccessfully) in the 1/2/3 race. This AM only my back is a little sore. So I'm guessing my form is coming along although slowly. Next weekend is an off weekend for racing before a triple race weekend. Have some work to do this week as a few glaring problems showed up in the races with my fitness.

Please don't piss in the wind

The thing about riding bikes is that it fun. Has been since the first time I could ride one more than 3 feet without crashing. Most people hang up their wheels when they turn 16 to move onto cars. Those that keep on riding & more perversely racing are a strange breed. Lets face it anyone willing to take ridicule for playing with a kids toy is a bit off. Those that race are even more off because of the conditions there willing to ride in & the stupid shit they are willing to do to there bodies. Shaving legs, enough said.

The beauty about riding bikes as an adult is you tend to gravitate towards others who ride bikes. So we create this big oddball community of characters. Granted I am probably the king of the dipshits here. I have bike stuff from the 70's for Christ sakes. But I digress. Yes Oddballs. We are all a bunch of loons. Ask your significant other. They'll tell you. Part of this "community" is a rich tradition of poking fun @ each other with a big stick(little sticks in Skips case), some times literally(ask ICC I poked him with a tree branch that I carried over a mile to jab him with).

So I'm sure those of you reading the battle of witts in the comments in the previous post are wondering what the F? Just a few "squirrels" having a light saber fight. Now if I was Skip I'd put those numbers he likes to throw around to use & do a little body math. Skip 100lbs soaking wet. Shane 200+lbs no problemmo. Know what happens when 200lbs sits on 100lbs? Oo00O I know the answer, its the reason I can run so damn fast. You get crushed. Poke the bear & the bear shits you in the woods later.
Now new rule on my blog. You can make fun of me, I can make fun of you(if I have a waiver), but keep the ribbing of each other to a minimum. It runs the comments up to much & everyone becomes more interested in the comments than what I have to say & we all know a blog is a big neon sign saying "Look @ Me".

On another note Shane you & I need to start planning a Girls bike team. Because lets face it my kid is going to be Fast & she'll need a good lead out girl & Sophia is a prime canidate.

February or July?

I'm a little confused by the weather. Am I really supposed to working on my tan in February? Shorts & jersey just doesn't seem right for the last day of the month. But I won't complain too much since I know we'll pay for it eventually in one form or another. Anyway I managed to get out & have a good bike practice in anticipation of this weeks up coming bike game. I figure it was warm enough yesterday for everyone but my mother-in-law Debbie to get outside. For her I worry it might have still been a little too cold.

When I pulled into my drive my neighbor immediately hit me up to help her load some furniture. Being neighborly & wanting to help the rainbows out I sad sure. Well it quickly went wrong. First item loaded A.O.K. Then came the dresser. Got it about half way into the truck when the drawers shot out @ the speed of sound! I believe I actually heard the sonic boom. My first instinct was to Run! But my feet were locked in place as I stared wide eye & the broken aftermath. Well long story short I spent the next 1.5 hours rebuilding drawers. Not exactly the way I had planned on spending my evening. But shit happens & I got everything patched back together.

Skip has made a return to blogging. Once again trying to confuse everyone with numbers that only have meaning to him. So here are some numbers for him. I figure I can put 10 dynes pretty easily sitting in the saddle. Or 100 erg's if I put my mind to it. Or more interestingly I average about 2 galileos when going from a stand still.

Since I can't keep up with Sophias cuteness or the shear anticipation of the semi annual Skip blog, I've added a few more bells & whistles to dazzle my readers. I've put up a few more links & added music videos which I'll swap out every so often. The first one is Outkast for my Hip Hop wife & her mother.