I left my street I'm a guillotine Pulling away In my machine, Where have I been, now?

Two weekends ago, I did my first cross race, Sucker Brook Cross in New Hampshire. It probably wasn't ideal to make the first ride on my new cross bike and my first cross race the same thing, but I'd say it worked out. Jeff Elie was there too, and we both lined about as far back as possible (in a sport where the hole shot is crucial), so we had to move up the crowd. In a group of 82, Jeff got 32nd (with no rear shifting for the second half) and I got 58th.

My only food prior to the race was a melted/frozen Balance bar (back-seat find), so after the race I needed food and coffee. Also, my car needed gas. On the way back, I took a random exit and found a gas station that charged me $2.79/gallon and sold me a sandwich comprised of ham blocks and the sort of cheese that tasted like it should be spelled with a z. About a mile later, I found a strip of restaurants and gas stations selling $2.56/gallon gas as far as the eye can see. Welcome to New Hampshire

Bryan trued my wheels, and the Spooky was ready to go again..

This past weekend, I did the cat 4 and cat 3/4 races at Blunt Park. It was cold and wet for the first race, though being the first race of the day, the course wasn't too sloppy yet. I managed to start in the third row, though from the gun, my tire did more spinning in place than going forward, and I again found myself near the back of the group. It was a tough course, and while it was mostly rideable, there were some technical sections, most notable a log across a straight in the woods. I rode it once, and it made a sickening crunch (and I still don't know on what), so I ran it every other time. I got 24th out of 42 finishers, which while proportionately close to the week before, certainly felt faster. Congrats to Jeremy Durrin on the win (on Sean K.'s bike, in his first cross race ever...asshole), and Jeff Cronin on his 16th place (also first cross race).In the 3/4 race was an absolute mudfest, and against faster guys, but I was in it for the experience. This time I managed to line up in the first row, and right after the start, someone overcooked the first corner (a hairpin on tarmac) and went down, stalling most of the field. It was a very different course than the first time around, in fact feeling sloppier with each lap. On the second to last lap, I successfully recreated my landmine crash (still no pictures, I'm afraid) over the aforementioned log, but I limped back to not last place (just), with blood, dirt and lumps to show for it. Inadvertent mega-sandbagger Jeremy Durrin got 2nd place (on Sean K.'s bike, in his second cross race ever...asshole), and Sean K. got 5th. Jeff did it too, and got 17th.

Thanks to Crossresults for the fast results listings.

I stayed with Umass people this weekend, which was fun, and I went into heavy food/race coma on Sunday, so I stayed an extra day, which was extra fun.

I lost a few letters from my front wheel (presumably because of all the mud), though the result is kind of neat.The other side only lost the a from Bontrager.

Jesse had more Good News for us.

Continuing the "...a placeholder" tradition, of capturing Newton's finest parking, here's a couple more, in the interest of science of course.

First, this Lexus which would be taking two spaces, were it in actual parking places to begin with. I suppose this sort of thing happens when as soon as the driver in in the car, they make the presumption that the length of the car in in fact the width, and the width is actually the length. I suppose it could be because the owner wants to protect the car from dings (though someone could park between the Lexus and the Subaru), and realistically, in this case, the body of the car serves to protect the engine, which IMHO is the part worth protecting in this case.

Case #2 is another Lexus (which based on empirical data, is no coincidence), and in this case the owner of the vehicle has decided that the obvious solution to a full parking lot is not to go to the other (empty) parking lot and walk around the building, but to simply park directly behind another car in the lot. I would have trouble saying this isn't the result of garden-variety laziness, given that I saw the owner stand a few feet behind the car, hit a button on his key chain, and wait for the vehicle to open its own trunk. After loading his bicycle, he hit another button to make the hatch close itself. No doubt in this span of time I could have walked to my car, opened and closed its trunk several times, and walked back inside, but I was too distracted by the slowly enlarging crevice of trunk access.

For this week's video, there's some Talking Heads from the Old Grey Whistle Test. All the video I've seen from this show has been excellent (especially this Ry Cooder session). Shame it went away in 1987.