SSWCXC09

How to make such an awesome, epic adventure as my trip out to POrtland, OR at the beginning of this month as concise as possible?

Let D-dubb do the talking! Follow this link to read his "report" of numerous shenanigans we undertook on that trip.

I bought the ticket approximately one week before I had a mini meltdown and stopped training to race my bike. So, I went out there with ZERO fitness and ZERO expectations, excepting to have fun.

It was great to travel again, it was great to race, it was great to do a group ride with 50 insane singlespeeders drinking PBR in the 45 degree rain, it was great to reconnect with family, etc etc.

If you are a CX racer and you have never done a Cross Crusade series race, you are missing out. This was my 3rd trip to Portland for a cross race, and even without fitness, my sweetiemeow or my mandymeow I managed to have a blast, slipsliding in the mud and rain and oh yeah, beating d-dubb in the process. (okay, okay, i got to take the "shortcut" so I cut off about 10 or 30 seconds and caught up to him.) But, i definitely outskilled him. He'll even admit it!

I have tons of happy memories from this trip, and here are some:

• staying up till almost midnight the night before my 4 a.m. wake up call to fly out there catching up with a dear friend
• getting locked out of the townhouse we stayed in and hoofing it around Portland with a 50 pound bag rolling behind me. I flew all the way across the country to lunch at a Chipotle.
• Early morning shake-out ride on the empty streets of industrial portland trying to figure out where we'd be going later that day
• 2.5 hour ride with nothing to eat or drink in the 45 degree rain, my longest ride in approximately 4 months or more
• the gray, foggy, filtered light and gentle sound of rain sifting through green green trees filling my head and surrounding me as we rode the fire roads of Forest Park on the outskirts of Portland with 50 other crazy people
• getting a free pair of argyle socks just for participating in that silly ride - feeling special that the promoters remembered i had been out there
• super cool bike-art exhibit/pre-race party in down town portland
• the noise, the excitement, the silliness of the SSWCXC 09 race
• walking by the men as we walked to the women's line up to start the race, feeling like we were running some kind of gauntlet staffed by mad max's henchmen
• catching d-dubb in the first 100 meters of the race, out-skilling him with my awesome "awakened" mud skills
• DRUM CORPS!
• heckling a guy dressed up like 16 yr old britney spears to ride a muddy run up and then almost peeing myself when he endoed spectacularly in the mud, uphill
• costumes, costumes, costumes!
• d-dubb's wife diana's cheery nature and williness to document the adventure with photos!
• reconnecting with my cousin after many years, and spending some time with her beautiful family
• Most amusing: with no fitness or training, i wound up 8th out of 38! wow.

Lots of things I didn't do, lots of people I didn't get to talk to. There will be another time, but I don't know when. I do know, I want to race my bike again, and soon.

But, before then, I have 8 days of studying to get out of the way and hopefully one last pesky exam. We shall see.

Photos are here:

Single Speed CX World Champs 2009

Sometimes, spellcheck isn't enough

I intend to blog about Portland momentarily.

But, I need to share this tidbit, it's too good not to!

Sometimes, I get email forwards from people that talk about "real-life" situations that are almost too funny to be true, and I wonder... "is that made up?" I swear, this is not made up!

I have been screening resumes at my job for a few weeks now, and yesterday I received another one via email. I skimmed the cover letter and almost fell out of my chair after reading the second sentence:

Due to the economic conditions, my employer is down-sizing and after 21 years I am being laid.

Holy. Crap.

I felt obliged to let her know about her tiny omission - but I found it hard to believe her claim on her resume that she had a "keen attention to detail." Really?

Mud Bath in Boone

Last weekend, against my better judgment, really, I went with Andy to a cyclo-cross race just outside of Boone, NC. I had ridden my bike 3 times in the previous three weeks but hey – the forecast called for a muddy fun course and I thought it would be fun to remember how to drive my bike through some of that stuff.

It was a foggy, damp, gray day, and the race, swirling up and down an abandoned golf course, was a hilly, muddy, and challenging feat. By the time the first minute of the race had passed, i had already lost at least 20 seconds to the leader (Beth!). I was well out of contention the entire time, and my body seemed to have limited me at about a 75% effort. But I had fun. AND, I did not break my bike. I had a huge smile on my face pretty much the whole race. All in all a good day.

My favorite moment was on the last lap of my race. A cat 3 guy (they started about 1 minute ahead of us) lapped me and then promptly broke his rear derailleur. He coasted the downhills, ran like a demon on the other parts, and on the last downhill descended so fast and with such disregard for his safety that I about had a heart attack on his behalf. We got down to the bottom, he lost momentum, and was sprinting as fast as I was riding to the finish. Guess you had to be there, but mass props to him. He just barely stayed ahead of two guys chasing him.

Afterwards I pitted for Andy, using a freakin’ mud puddle to clean his bike off in a pit the size of a teaspoon. No hose, no space in the pit…. Thank GOODNESS Will Bolt of the Bolt Brothers was there and graciously allowed me to borrow his super nice brushes. Nice people are all around you, sometimes you just gotta ask...

It was super fun to see people I haven’t seen all year and extremely refreshing to not give a flying foopy about my result. Matter of fact, I gave up two spots in the last lap just to let those riders have series points. There is clearly some competitive instinct left in me because I felt the need to announce that, but… am looking forward to 2010 when I will have my cpa exam behind me and will be able to once again focus on world domination!

Really I just wrote this post so I could share this photo my buddy D-dubb took. I love it!

3 down, I hope?

Today, I took test #3 of that blasted CPA exam (Regulation, for those in the know). Where did the last 5 weeks go? I don't know. Funny that a measly little 3 hour exam can suck your life, nay, your soul, right out of you. Well, me, anyway.

And as I stayed inside, day after day studying and not taking care of my body or mind, somewhere along the way Mother Nature worked her magic and summer gave way to Fall, and here we are at the height of leaf season. And me, silly girl, head stuck in books or wasting time on the interweb.

Andy got sick - really sick - about 3 weeks ago, and I had a Very Stressful Event that sent me over the edge as well. As often does with me, I stayed off the bike for longer than my body really needed, hiding behind the excuses of "not racing" and "need to study" to keep me in my self-imposed exile. I can't say I was any more productive by robbing myself of endorphin producing exercise.

Yesterday, finally, FINALLY I got out. Not for long, but long enough to appreciate the view coming up old 70. Still my most favorite climb. Makes me realize how freakin' lucky I am!

I didn't feel too good about that test today. But, all I need is a 75. I don't find out for another month. (!) Keep your fingers crossed? And only one more to go, if I passed.

Next up: I am going to Portland for some bike racing fun! I am going to suck. You can't undue 3 weeks of no riding in 11 days. I don't care! I think I will add some bling to my uni. Bejeweler, anyone?

Cara is an idiot

I used to be so good at making sure every little i was dotted, every little t crossed.

Now, it appears, I almost let "something big" slip. I know the saying goes "almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades", but really, this has taken me straight to the edge. I am glad Andy is on his trip to Iron Cross so he didn't have to hear me silently implode when I realized what a huge blunder I had made.

My CPA exam section? That I scheduled for this coming Friday, the 16th? That I felt really confident about because I was able to review the material a second time which hadn't happened on the last two sections? Uh, yeah. I didn't realize the review program was divided into two segments and I had only done one. 20+ hours of tape and 14 chapters completely unseen by me.

Do. Not. Panic.

I was willing to suck up the reschedule fee on this one - there is no way I could have gotten all that done in a week AND worked 50 hrs as I have been AND maybe exercise a day or two. No way.

I should feel like a failure, but... mostly I just am glad I could reschedule. It should be funny to me. Mostly it's just annoying. AAAAGH!!!

I really want this done. I want to be a pathetic veggie garden growin', bike racin' fool again. But in the meantime, I guess I'll gets my learninz dun.

It seems as this image, drawn by my bro more than a decade ago, still holds true for me.

I agree with Stephen Colbert

You know, I have tried to stay away from politics on this bloggity blog. As my missives were originally written only for my little mommy, and she and I differ drastically on matters of politics, I feel like it's important to not offend, even if I am always right. ALWAYS.

But, I think, in this one occasion, maybe just maybe it's okay to diverge.

Why, Cara, why do you agree with Stephen Colbert, and on what?

Bears.

That's right, one of the major threats to America: Bears.

What has brought me to this incredible conclusion?

Last weekend, 9/19 to be exact, I was standing upstairs (where we sleep) and did my usual first thing in the morning check out the window to admire the gleaming white boxes that house our bees. What did I see?

Something kinda sorta like this (minus the beekeeper!)

WAH! It appeared that a bear, or perhaps a ManBearPig, or maybe even a BearShark, came through in the night and tried to rob these little ladies of their precious food.

We had to get out there prontissimo and try to evaluate the damage and put them back together as best we could. Funny thing was, the hive was really only turned over and not much physical damage was evident to the naked eye, other than some smooshed comb in the honey super (that's the smaller box on top).

The bees had already adapted to their upside down home by the time we got out there and didn't like us trying to fix the boxes. Even using the smoker Andy got attacked, and I don't know if we moved too slow or what but by the time we started putting the honey super back on he was getting stung in every exposed area he didn't know he had... So I jumped in and tried to patch everything up and I received my first ever bee sting from my hives. :-( We were both so rattled we put the top cover back on without putting all the frames in.

Perhaps rather foolishly I tried to calm them down by spraying them with sugar water, and this is the result after we both ran away from the defending bees. We could only hope that the queen was safe and sound in there and was not crushed by the bear attack or our re-alignment of the hive body (the big box).

Another revelation in doing this (as it's been raining so much here we haven't been able to inspect the hives lately) was that our bees don't have enough food to get them through the winter (if they survive this stupid attack, anyway!) So, we need to start feeding them prontissimo with sugar water. There wasn't really any honey for the bear to get, so (s)he knocked it over and went on, I suppose.

Ironically enough, the most recent Buncombe County Beekeeping Chapter meeting's presentation was about how to build a bear fence. Did I jinx it by saying to myself, in my head "this doesn't apply to me"? Meh. If I had time, I would have spent all day today building a bear fence. But instead I spent 5 hours studying.

Sadly, the bear came back yesterday and did the same thing. Part of me wonders if it's neighborhood kids and not a bear, because the body was just knocked over and didn't look tampered with at all. According to experienced Beekeepers, when a bear comes through, it usually tears the hives apart. And why wasn't the second hive bothered?

Both Andy & I were dressed for work and eating breakfast when we saw it. Not exactly how I wanted to start a busy Friday - getting attacked by angry bees (that I accidentally woke up before we could put their box back on the cinderblocks). Ugh!

Now we've put cinder blocks on top of both hives and hopefully we'll find some time to get going on a bear fence within the week - if it's not too late already.

I suck at beekeeping!

But I'll probably stick with it...

Black Bear Rampage

I finally made it to a race!

I've been averaging about 5 hours of riding a week, until the week before Labor Day when I somehow managed to commute to or from work every day via bike, and then rode a ton on the weekend for a whopping 13 hours in the saddle (to some, not a lot, but really too much for me at present).

Of course that didn't really do me any favors as I was dead this week, and only rode twice, but somehow it made me think I could accompany andy to a 40 mile mountain bike race today. Our 8th anniversary was on the 10th and it was pretty much my gift to him. I know, totally lame. But that is how we roll.

The race was the Black Bear Rampage which started at the Ocoee Whitewater Center near Ducktown, TN. It basically covered all of the trails that I encountered in the Cohutta a few years ago plus some, for 40 miles of singletrack sweetnessj, and lots and lots of climbing.

I started to sign up for the Sport race, but Andy raised his eyebrows at me so I switched to expert. Let me tell you, I am not currently an Expert mountain biker! Gawrsh that was a silly thing to do. Sure, I hung easily onto the pack on the 2+ mile pavement rollout, but it took about 4 switchbacks on the singletrack before i was dropped like a bad habit that was never acquired.

I felt really quite good for 3 hours. Unfortunately, I was on the bike for 4. My official time was 4:10, as I had to stop for 10 minutes at an aid station to finish the last 7 miles. Oops And, I was absolutely DFL in my category, 25 minutes behind the next closest rider. But if you ask me, I will tell you I was 3rd. Which I was. (they split the experts up into age groups, lots more girlies beat me)

I did not fall down. Only one guy was mean to me about passing. All in all, except for the fact that I cannot go downhill to save my life, oh and I ate 3x as much food as i ever have on an endurance ride and still bonked, I had a whole lotta fun. :-) It's nice to get my racing fix without having to have the fitness to back it up.

Andy had a pretty flat day (the result of a long season racing endurance mtb events) and finished in 7th.

It was sunny and happy out and spending the day in the sweet sweet wilderness did wonders for healing my bruised and worn-out soul. Now off to bed to steel myself for another week of nose to the grindstone!