87 miles, 5600 vertical feet in a little over 8.5 hours, and I'm never doing the full thing again. Turns out the second 52 miles of the course that I've done before is a lot harder if you have to do the first half to get to it. The 86 degrees, sun harsh enough to give _me_ a farmer's tan, and 10mph headwind screwed a lot of people into dropping out ( Read more... )

About half as hard as I expected, but only because I did half as much as I was supposed to. Actually, my race was pretty much over before it started. First I get woken up before my alarm by _thunder_, and then on my way around the half of the course between larrygreenfield's apartment and the start, I become the first person to discover that the low point is full ( Read more... )

8/18 Duncan Sheik/Vienna Teng
Station Square free

8/19 The Brain Surgeons (ex Blue Oyster Cult)
31st St Pub $7

9/9-10 Gaelic Storm
Station Square

9/10 Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Star Lake

9/12 Kyler England (a zephryite's ex)
Club Cafe

9/24 Roger Waters ( Read more... )

With a little fiddling, I even managed to get the bike started last week. Though when I went to turn if off, the switch went past the off position and straight into "short-out-and-blow-all-the-fuses" oops. Thankfully, I have a spare switch. Less usefully, the last owner broke the head off the drain screw for the brake system, so now I must ( Read more... )

I finally got around to acquiring a motorcycle last weekend. A Kawasaki KZ400 22 months older than me, to be exact. It's not exactly working, which is all well and good since I won't have my license for another month. Actually, given that all my weekends until mid-october are booked, and the list of things to fix is longer than I expected, I'll ( Read more... )

I got home from the concert last night to discover that [redacted] broke up with my machine. Trouble is, I have no idea who [redacted] is or why she hates me. I am, however, pretty sure that I'm not Steve.

Badger State Games in 1:30:41.7. The race managed to just fit in between two lines of Midwest thunderstorms, which left the road damp at the start, and probably scared off the less-serious crowd, leaving most of the same faces as last week. Unlike last week, everyone took off at the start before things settled down after the first few miles and I ( Read more... )

Big Granite in 1:32:05.7, good for 59th of 150 overall or 9th from my wave. Stupidly I let the only other guy in my age bracket beat me by 2ft at the finish. None of us expected to do so well on a slow course on a mid-90s & humid day - if we'd known how close we were, we might have tried to break 1:30, but that might have resulted in flying off ( Read more... )

Or maybe it was just yesterday ( Read more... )

I haven't gone further from Pittsburgh than Ohio or Ohiopyle all year. However, now I get to do something about it :

5/27 Detroit
6/15-6/27 Milwaukee
8/25-8/27 NYC

It'll be nice to see my parents again, though I'll be spending most of the time refinishing their kitchen. The rain is playing hell with my plans for the Wolverine Marathon or Big ( Read more... )