Linda raced so hard today, she raced her face off.

for lilly bella

one of linda's precious (frickin') napkins that are never to be used, under no circumstances (except when she says so)...becomes the official Madera Feed Zone napkin.

madera day 1....pics from the women's crits

two cats and a nut in Madera





for flandria...this is why marscat was calling around the bike shops...we need a nut for this

me to a guy at a bike store this morning:


"Do you have recessed nuts?"

um...let me rephrase that.

skipped out of the office for a ride at 9:30 today.

a misty morning with a lovely tailwind that made me feel supah strong. i found myself looking down at my heart rate monitor out of habit tho I wasn't wearing one. look up, look up, i kept reminding myself. look at the mist blowing through the trees. look at the city appearing through the fog. sometimes, all this training gets in the way of a good bike ride.

years ago, before all this bike racing my favorite joy was to get up early on a saturday morning and go for a ride on my old green three speed with the totally worn in brooks saddle that felt like buttah.

this was when I lived in SF. i'd wake up at 6:00 and be out the door. I'd wear stretchy tights (no padding, with visible panty line) tennies, a lightweight jacket, a walkman (about the size of an encyclopedia) and a backpack with a book inside. the book was for the cafe that I would stop at out on the pier. i was into John Updike at the time and was loving the Rabbit series. the cafe was never at the end of the ride, but right smack in the middle. I'd stop and get coffee and read and then when I was good and ready (sometimes a couple hours later) I'd get back on the bike, fire up U2 (or is it UQ?) on the Walkman and ride and ride, to the next cafe. i never ever thought about heart rates, but I did like going up hills and in SF it's pretty easy to find a hill.

today was kind of like that: my schedule called for a 2.5 hour easy ride. but I found myself thinking about crits and TTs and checking the clock, making sure I completed my workout (and also got back before sundown). But sometimes I wish that I was just out in my stretchy tights and tennies, riding around town with a book in my backpack.

but I shouldn't complain. am I complaining? It's rather nice to have a job where I can take off and no one notices i am gone. (maybe I should worry about this?) and sometimes when I do go for a ride during office hours I hope and pray that I am not side-swiped by and SUV. I mean how would I explain that?

Just what, people might wonder, was an SUV doing in your cube.

ouch that hurt.

the whole goddang time i was thinking about my sammich in the car. peanut butter, marmalade and golden raisins. yum.

i discovered pretty quickly that my breakpads would screech everytime i squeezed them -- a lot like the terrified squeek Daisy makes when we go to pick her up:

"Eeeeech i'm scared, you're getting too close!"


i'll just use the front brakes, i thought. no problemo.

along comes the decent.

"eeeeech, i'm scared, i'm going too fast! "

sideways looks from proman.

"eeeeeech, i'm scared, i'm going too fast!"

sideways looks from Tibco.

"sorry," I say, "i took the bike in on Monday and they swore that they'd fixed them. i even tested them on Tuesday, or was it wednesday, well anyhow, sometime last week. and they worked fine."

She's really not interested.

as we cross the overpass, i want to hop off my bike and quietly toss it over the edge.

on we go...i get popped the third time up that hill. the follow motorcycle tries to get me to dig a little harder.

I want to hop off my bike and take his. see him dig a little harder...but really he was so sweet.

after the race i got that feeling. you know the one where you're whacked out on endorphins and you freaking love everyone.

"Good job, good job, you can do it," to a bystander zipping up their jacket.

"Way to go, way to go," to a man emerging from a port-a-pottie.

"Looking good, looking good," to a cow on the side of the road chewing grass.

post race. that's why i race.

gotta post something because the longer i don't, i won't. i'm getting my hair cut today.

i'm really not fond of my hair and don't know what to do with it. i think i inherited this from my mother who has always been obsessed about her hair. She's been known to take a plastic Bic shaver to her bangs and reduce them to shreds. in fact she has been known to carry a plastic Bic and take it out for emergency trimmings in restauarnt bathrooms.

she used to practice hairstyling on my head: pixie cuts in the bathtub, the surface of the water coated in trimmings.

Eric Dibble who lived up the road called me a lightbulb after one of my mother's ventures into bathtub hairstyling.

"Tell him," my mother said, "Well at least I'm brighter than you."

Which I did, like a fool.


When Linda and I were travelling in Australia, we got sloshed while wine tasting. By 10:00 am we had visited four or five wineries and the tour ended at 1:00, or sometime later that day. We started refusing wine samples if you can believe that. On the way home, the tour guide turned on a video in the van. We let the headrests support our heads and watched. He played the movie "Shakespeare in Love" with Joseph Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow who dresses up to play the part of Romeo.

She's wearing a wig, I pointed out, a little manwig.

I truly regret making this observation all those years ago because now linda likes to refer to me and my hair as "Manwig".

Does manwig want to get a video tonight?

Does manwig want to go out for din-din?

She can be merciless sometimes, that Linda.