Monday, November 27, 2006

A Thanksgiving Miracle

Hello all. I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Heather and I went over to Brooks and Mary's, where Brooks had prepared a delicious feast for us all. It was a very relaxing day, watched a couple movies and ate way too much. So, in other words, a typical Thanksgiving day. I enjoyed having a 4-day weekend, and am not looking forward to heading back to work tomorrow.

Here's a picture of us before we stuffed ourselves silly.
The poor little puppies couldn't take all the excitement and had to take a little nap.

On Friday, it was so nice out that Brooks and I went for a bike ride...in shorts! Crazy. Ended up being a good 40 miles or so. Fun, relaxing ride to burn off all of our Turkey Day calories. No more of that though, as it is supposed to rain early this week and then get much colder later in the week.

Tonight I had league hockey once again. We faced off against the undefeated Team Blue. We ended up losing 6-3. I played ok, got 2 assists, but also had one of their goals deflect in off my skate. Oops. Heather was joined by Mary and Brooks in the stands to watch the hockey fun.

Heather and I met with a lender on Sat to go over financials for our upcoming house purchase. She gave us some good advice, and gave us a price range to look at, so that was nice. We may be looking at a few more houses this week. I'll keep you posted.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Royale with cheese

What's up everybody? Today was the last bike race of the season, the WI State Cyclocross Champs, right here in Sun Prairie. I had a 4min drive to get to the venue. Nice, I can handle that. It was a nice day, a bit cold with the wind, but sunny, so not bad at all.

The race was held at the Angell Park Motor Speedway, and it was a fun, challenging course. Some good climbs, fast chicanes, some fun off-camber stuff, and a stair run-up. Brooks entered the race 11 points up on Greenblatt in the WCA standings, so it was close. The field was much bigger as well, with a lot of MN and IL racers showing up. They did call-ups at the start, so both Brooks and I got front row starting positions. The first lap was hectic with all the tight turns and chicanes. A lot of rubbing bikes and racers. But then it got more strung out. I didn't feel bad, but I didn't feel good either. Both my legs and lungs just didn't have it, which I was pretty much expecting being that I haven't ridden in a week and a half. Finished up in 18th place. The real fun was at the front for the state champ title and the series title. A guy from MN ended up with the win, with Greenblatt coming in for 2nd. Brooks finished in 5th...which left them TIED for first in the standings. Wow. From what I can remember, they use number of wins as the first tie-breaker (Brooks got 2, Greenblatt got 1), so Brooks should still be the winner of the series title. We'll see I guess. Great finish to the series though, with it being that tight. Nice job, Brooks. I think that I ended up 10th overall in the series.

Right before the race. Lots of racers going for that state championship!
Me going down a fun little downhill before a good climb.
Part of the TBB support crew is pictured below. Vontoux was at his first cross race of the season. He seemed to enjoy himself.

We had a good size cheering section there for this race with Heather, Mary, Brooks' parents, and a co-worker of mine (the other Brian) and his girlfriend all there.

Tonight I had my hockey league game as well. It didn't look good from the start, as only 8 of our players showed up. So we only had 3 players on the bench at a time. The worst part of this is how tired you get by the 3rd period. The good part is all the ice time that you get. I had my best game of the season so far; I felt comfortable and my passes were connecting. I ended up scoring 2 goals and assisting on 3 others for a total of 5 points in Team Gray's 8-5 win over Team Black. That puts Team Gray at 3-1 so far this season. Nice.

And with today's race, that concludes the 2006 racing season. It was a fun season. Maybe I will post a season recap with my goals for next season sometime soon. But now it is time for a month and a half vacation off the bike before starting base training for next spring's road season. Sounds very relaxing.

Friday, November 17, 2006

Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band

Tonight Heather and I went to the Bob Seger concert in Milwaukee. Good stuff. :)

Who's this little guy, snuggling with his favorite stuffed elephant?

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Birbigs!!

Well hello there everybody. Another fun weekend here.

Tonia and Trent drove up on Fri...spending the entire day on the road because of the winter conditions that moved through WI. They always seem to have bad luck with weather when coming here...strange. Fortunately they made it on time for us to go to The Friends of Bob and Tom Comedy show at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Madison. It was a great time...hilarious stuff. It was headlined by Mike Birbiglia. Birbigelbutt.

I decided to skip out on the cross race in Janesville...with Tonia and Trent only in town until Sunday morning, I figured I would rather spend the day with them. Brooks went down there and represented TBB well. Next (and last) up is the State CX Champs, right here in Sun Prairie.

Last night we all went to the new Will Ferrell movie, Stranger than Fiction. I really liked it and highly recommend seeing it. Trent said it best; a great "smart" comedy.

Tonight I had hockey once again. Team Gray pounded Team Green, 5-2, after getting behind 2-0 in the first 5 minutes of the game. No goals for me though. But I thought I played really well, lots of chances, only a matter of time before they start finding the back of the net.

I will leave you with a teaser logo from the jersey design:

Notice the subliminally placed star. Ah, yes. More details were hashed out on the main jersey design, so it shouldn't be long before we can get that finalized.

Monday, November 06, 2006

New Mexico? Perfect place for Mijo!

Hello all you bloggers out there. Seems like lots of stuff has happened since my last post, so I will get right into it....so I am sorry if this ends up being a lengthy post. :)

We went over to Brooks and Mary's house for Halloween. Dressed up Sampson and watched Clockwork Orange. Good times. On Saturday, Heather and I relaxed and did not do much of anything at all. It felt good to just chill out. The relaxation was needed, because Sunday was a very busy day.

It started out by heading to Milwaukee for the Estabrook Park CX race. Heather told me as we were driving there that her season was over. She just wanted to relax and not spend the money on racing anymore this year. I understand what she's saying there. :) This was a cool course; I really liked it. Some pavement sections, fun chicanes, and a nice little mtb singletrack section. Brooks and I once again got front row positions, but as he said in his race recap, neither of us got off to good starts and we ended up actually rubbing shoulders when everyone pinched in. Regardless, we were both in the front group of 10 that lead for the first lap or so. I had decided before the race to take it easy for the first few laps so as not to blow up like in the last race, so when a group of 4 (Brooks, Sachs, Masterson, and Haley) got off the front, I didn't chase them down. I instead got in a 5 man "chase" group. We were going at a decent pace for another 2 laps, when to my surprise, we caught back up to the leading 4 riders. I was just taking it easy at the back of this group when one of the riders picked up the pace at the front, and a guy in the middle let a gap develop to those same 4 riders. I didn't want to blow myself up chasing, so I just hung with 2 other riders for a few laps. I ended up getting dropped by those 2, and rode in no-man's land by myself for a couple laps, eventually being caught by another rider right before the last lap started. What was crazy to me was how small the time gaps were. Each lap around, I could see the leading 4 in the chicanes less than a minute up on me. During the last lap, the rider that had caught me kept accelerating, trying to drop me, but I would catch back onto his wheel. Then, as we entered the last set of barriers, we could see Masterson (from the leading group) running his bike along the course. I yelled out to the guy I was with that we should pick up the pace and catch him. As we went through the last chicanes and entered a grass section right before the finish, he was running right in front of us. We were catching up to him quickly as we turned into the final straight for the finish. I launched my sprint, going around the other rider and just missed out on catching Masterson by 5 feet. Ended up getting 7th. If I could do it over again, I would have attacked on the grass section instead of waiting until the final straight, as then I am sure that I would have passed Masterson as well. Oh well, I guess. I found out after crossing the line that the reason why he was running was because of the carnage from the crash on the last lap. His bike was toast...he'll need a new rear derailleur, right Campy shifter, der hanger...that was an expensive race for him. Brooks ended up 3rd, but unfortunately Sachs boy won and took over the lead in the series. Good thing there are still 2 races left to right that ship. I'm happy with my performance, my legs and lungs felt much better than last week. Hopefully I can do well in the final races to move up some more spots in the points series.

Here is a picture of the Milwaukee River, which ran through the park where our race was held. There were hazard signs posted about eating the fish from the river. Must be clean!
Look at me, flying through the singletrack! This was the fun part, right after a loose, steep run-up section and before a fun little descent.
Brooks leading out Team Brown Bear arch-rival, Sachs boy, around some corners.
After getting back home, Heather and I met up with a home buyer's agent at a house for sale in east Madison that Heather had found online. The house had an awesome, big yard, but that was about the only thing nice about it. Really weird floor plan, crappy garage, and random walls all over the place. It feels weird to be looking at houses. But it's going to be great finally getting a house! We should be looking at more properties in the coming weeks...

Right after looking at the house, we headed over to the Sun Prairie hockey rink for my league game. We played Team White, but I was confused, because I didn't see Pat out on the ice. This was the first time that Heather had ever seen me play hockey. I played ok, but not as good as last week I thought. My passing was off all night, and I missed 2 chances right in front on golden opportunities for goals. Thankfully, I got the chance to redeem myself, as the game ended in a 3-3 tie, so we went into a 3-man shootout for the win and I was one of the guys chosen by our "coach" to shoot. I skated in on the goalie, faked a deke, then shot it upper corner for a goal. Luckily, our goalie shut out Team White's 3 shooters on their chances, so my goal was the only goal scored in the shootout, and ended up being the game winner.

Here is a picture of me in action, skating around what might be the skinniest ref in the world.

This upcoming weekend will be great fun, as Tonia and Trent are coming to visit us here in lovely Sun Prairie. Word on the street is that Tonia plans on unveiling her design ideas for next year's Team Brown Bear jerseys. How exciting.

In other news, a big congratulations goes out to Nathan "Mijo" Vasquez, as he got offered a position at BTI, a bicycle parts distributer, in Sante Fe, New Mexico. Nice job Nathan!! Yet another SBS employee getting a job in the bike industry. Terry, Monty, and Pat must put something in the water Mt Dew there. I am excited for Nathan on his big move out to NM, but I must admit that it will be sad to go back to GF now and not be able to go out with him to the Hub anymore. :(