Well, I got in.
In means I'm one of 1800 riders in the Cheq. 40 mountain bike race that leaves Hayward on a crisp Saturday morning in September.
In means I'm one of the 1800 who are not the 900 that didn't get selected in the random lottery.
In means I'm racing and not the designated shuttle-bitch for the 3rd year in a row!!
In means I've got motivation to keep me riding hard the whole summer long so that I can finish relatively close to my riding buddy, and my own goal of 1:45, NOT!
In means I can now try to devise a way to use my helmut cam in a race where when I finished last year my face was so dirty (pix will post at later date) that I'm considering making some sort of wiper for the camera's lens.
In is good and makes a very stressed out man a little happier.

A couple weeks ago I came home to find my desk top trying to turn itself on. Turns out the power source failed and fried the motherboard on that 3 year old E-Machine! I got the verdict from the computer guru as I was in the process of breaking my cell phone holster, and having just broken my roller-bag the day before a trip. That was not a good day. That seems to be what God has in store for me this spring. Your typical every day monotony for a few weeks and then the real bad day.
Take today: tried riding my bike inside on my rollers to be interrupted every 5-10' by phone calls. I chose to ride and talk on headset which eventually got me back to working out uninterrupted. My realtor team of Mom and Dad put my condo on the market this morning and already had someone who wanted to see it at 5PM. Dad was to get the lockbox (different from the Al Gore lockbox) to my pad in time for the prospective buyers to have a gander. Too bad he drove 2 hours to find out he didn't have the keys to put into the lockbox (my brother has his keys because he has Dad's truck). But why call my fiance and get her keys? Why go to my brother's work and get the keys from him? Nope, he decided he'd done enough and left the people who want to see my place a note saying he'd get the keys in the lock box tomorrow, (he's sending Mom to do it). So I found this out at the same time I thought it would be nice to chill out and watch one of my Netflix dvds. It won't play, I take it out of this laptop and the dvd is broken. So then I try to use the UPS website to tell them to stop trying to deliver my new desktop while I'm out of town (like they apparently tried today after I had left my abode), and it won't let me. I have the tracking number, and it won't let me change the delivery date, neither will the automated phone system. Nice. Sure hope I get home before their 3rd attempt and they send it back. Do you think Best Buy will give me free shipping twice?
My chiropractor asked if I could reduce my stress level. HA! A handful of barbiturates would do the trick!

It's a lesser world without Kurt V. His brain failed him, or he failed it. He died of brain trauma after a fall.
He said that he wrote everything with one person in mind as his audience: his sister. Why not write for everyone: "you can't just open the window and make love to the whole world!"
I'm glad he was recognized for the talent he had while he was living. He will go down as one of the greats for Am. lit.
Wouldn't it be great if he got the epitaph he wrote for himself: "All I needed to know God exists is music?"

I got out to do a group-ride yesterday in the rain. I broke out the Murray for the 43F, 30-something windchill morning. The weekend before my honey and I had fun riding a tandem through the fog. No fog this weekend, but it constantly rained. Luckily I had my Cub Foods plastic bag duct-taped to my helmut so I mostly got wet from sweating under a few too many layers. There was a guy with a new bike who made the ride a little fast for my March legs on the 40+ pound Murray. I wonder how much weight the rain added? I bet if I would have worn spandex it would have been easier : P

Today I've been working on cleaning out old crap so I can sell this abode and buy one big enough for two, and a dog-cat combo. It's amazing to me how fast stuff accrues when you can just pile it somewhere and forget it. This is the first place I've had on my own and it's got a lot of space to store junk. Luckily Mom is coming down Tuesday to make sure I get rid of the Budweiser clock from high school, and the cancelled cheques from 1994.