Stevie's Hurtin'

Im hurtin', but it feels good. I've put in some heavy hours on the bike this week as I'm coming to the end of my third week of a build period and the legs are definitely feeling it. It seems as if I've moved to the only place in the world with wilder weather than the island. On Sunday I had to bundle up in my jacket, gloves and leg warmers and had to turn in after two hours as I was too cold. Today, however, it was 83 degrees and I couldn't get the water into me fast enough. This is pretty much how every week seems to go.

Today was probably the roughest day of riding I've had since getting here. Intervals and 50km/h winds, along with the 80 degree heat left me pretty beat after riding. At home, I would like to ride for 2 hours into the wind and then turn around and ride with it at my back for the ride home as the legs don't have quite as much left in them for the second half of the ride. Here, though, all of the good riding is in the same direction and everyday I turn around to head home after about 2 hours of fairly easily ripping along at 40km/h and wrestle with my bike into the wind for the 2 hour ride home. Today I found this harder than usual, and for the final hour all I wanted to do was come home and watch Wedding Crashers while eating pancakes and drinking coffee, but instead the apt. seems to have fallen apart. Handyman that I am, though, everything is fixed....sort of.

The toilet gave away earlier in the week, and Lord knows I need a working toilet, so I dove elbow deep into the back of the thing to inspect the situation. I managed to mend the problem by jamming a dime under the stick on the end of the balloon thing to stop it from running and set the top back on all cockeyed to hold everything in place. It ain't pretty, but it does the job. Today, however, the hot water heater lost its mind and sprung a leak, spraying water all over the storage room. So I grabbed the duct tape and applied enough to slow the spray to a drip. Good to go.

Another breakthrough this week came when I became desperate enough to ask the main building staff if I could use the business center to fax some stuff. Marv told me that if I were to interact with them that I would be subjected to a heavy fee and some other stuff, so I've been hiking an hour to the library to get computer use. Yesterday I needed a fax machine right then and there, though. Low and behold the two most beautiful women are working the front desk and were more than happy to let me use the computer and fax machine. Not only that theres an assortment of free cookies laid out for me to dig in to. What a treat.

There are 3 races in the area this weekend, a TT, Crit and Road Race and I had originally planned on doing them all. After the long, rough week, though, I think I would like to stick to only the Road Race as that's really where I'm looking to gain experience and I'd rather not go into it having a 20mile TT and 45 mile Crit in my legs from the day before. I'm hoping it goes well but I think I'm really just going to try and have fun and gain some experience as opposed to going into it feeling as if the world will end if I don't win as I did in my first race. My real goals lie further on in the season so I guess I'll not get bent out of shape in these early races.

Anywho, better get back to the swampartment and make a pancake.

Stevie