Nov 10 2007
Pre-race noise
My parents are in town visiting from CT which has kept me busy. It’s a good visit but with I have a growing list of junk to take care of which has added to the stress level. Luckily, a lot of the stuff I have going on will be over soon.
Spent the morning in line at the Hair of the Dog dock sale. Got there 5 minutes early only to find a line winding around the block. Took about 80 minutes to get up to the front. 90 seconds later I’m out the door $210 poorer but 2 cases of beer richer. Got the usual case of Doggie Claws to throw in the cellar plus a last-minute addition of case of Fred from the Wood. $130 a case. F___, that’s expensive. I’ll need to s-l-o-w-l-y drink these.
The rain was a delightful sound last night. I was hoping it would continue through the day to loosen up the race course tomorrow but no luck. On the other hand, I’d be a fool to complain about upper 50’s and sunny in mid-November. I need to remind myself of the pre-school rule: “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit”.
Picked up some Barge Cement and fixed the rear wheel. Looks good. I hope it holds together but I have no reason to think it won’t so far. I also took a few minutes to straighten out a chainring tooth that probably got bent out during the chainsuck I had at Barton. A final re-toe of the front pads finished out the pre-race tune.
I’d also mentioned recently that the sandbagger discussions had been heating up which, having a win, I wasn’t immune to. Historically, I have a fairly consistent pattern of progressing up through a category and then self-upgrading. I made the same goal this year even before the season started. I’ll admit it bothers me a little because I’ve always tried to have some reasonable moral standards when it comes to self-placement. You should have some gut feeling deep down inside when you know you’re done with a category so I don’t believe in sticking around in a category after you’ve had some success. But the grey area is - what defines success? One win? Two 2nd places? 7 or 8 top 10’s over a couple years? I don’t know. OBRA has tried to address this with their “3 top 3’s and/or 5 top 5’s”. To me that seems reasonable.
Anyway, I’ve written more about this than I’d planned. I hope to give it more thought after tomorrow - perhaps Tuesday after my parents leave. I’m off to Russel St. BBQ for a Meatapalooza.