Archive for July, 2009

A lot has happened since my how-to-website on the 22nd, including my birthday! I’m now 20 years old! The big two-oh! So I guess this is gonna be a quick summary…

My Birthday

It would be fair to say that I got to celebrate my birthday THREE times! Which was awesome. First, Friday at work Jill had baked me a cake, and everybody signed a card, and Emma sang me Happy Birthday! The cake was delicious and the card was really nice, so thanks guys!! Birthday #2 was that night with the regular crew (minus Del and Sarah). Right after I got out of work, me and Slade and Shields went and fufilled what had been lots of just talk, and jumped off a bridge and into Seneca River. Facebook is full of picuters, I’ll put a one up here too sometime. Us three met Zdanowski, Hannah, Knickerbocker, and Lindsey for dinner at Tullys, where I ate >17 tenders and still had to buy cigars. Ya see, I ordered 15, like always, but it did look like a lot this time and everyone for some reason thought that I could never eat that much. And as I struggled to eat the last 5, I didn’t think I would either. Which was odd, since I always order and eat 15. Since it had become a challenge, I tried my best to eat all 15, and the deal was that if I couldn’t, I would buy everyone cigars. And I just couldn’t bring myself to eat that last tender, the sundae couldn’t have helped…but anyway I bought everyone cigars for the ensuing bonfire at my house, and it really about worked out bc they paid for my dinner. It wasn’t until at the bonfire that Zdanowski confessed to adding many tenders to my plate, and that I actually ate like 17 or 18!! Jeez… the bonfire was really fun…many games of never have I ever took place, and the nice cigar that Dan and Lindz got me for my birthday was good…and I slept in till like 10 the next day, which was great.

I think it may be safe to say that in some ways, twitter replaced what I was doing with this journal. But, twitter is just snippets, so I think that this still needs to be here. I have been riding my bike a lot in the past week and change, since my last update. And I definitely have plently to talk about too. Here goes, in “reverse” chronological order.

Ride for the Rescue

Yesterday, Sunday July 19th, was the Ride for the Rescue and despite getting a flat tire I had a great time. It was tough getting up and ready to ride on three or four hours of sleep, probably the lesser considering the couch in Zdanowski’s basement was not the most comfortable thing to sleep on, especially trying to share it haha. The ride itself was great, I was the first person through the first water stop at 15 miles, having started near the back and worked hard to bridge up to the leaders, which became me and 3 others. But, when we were going down from Bennet’s Corners toward Shaneateles, I hit a thumb sized rock on the shoulder with my front wheel and after hearing the huge bang sound it made on the carbon rim, was thinking “Phew, that was scary” up until 100 meters futhur when it became apparent that my front tire was losing air. So, I flatted, and the others rode on…I told them I was fine because I had a tube, pump, and tire levers with me, everything that I needed to change a tire. I wasn’t truly excited, but hey it was a good chance to make use of all these gadgets I had bought for this purpose. Problem was, when I went to put my new tube on…the stem was way too short for my deep dish carbon front wheel. And the part that got me the most was that I had my regular front wheel on earlier in the morning, and decided to use the aero wheel last minute… So I waited (some time…we must have been pretty far out) for someone to have a tube I could use or something, and I talked to just about every person doing the 62 mile ride asking for a long stem tube. A few people had them that came by in about 20 minutes, but even the “long” stem tubes weren’t long enough!! So I waited some more, was about to call my Dad until I realized that my phone was out of batteries…sweet. I considered asking my dad to drive up to the inner harbour and get my other wheel and bring it to me…since I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to be able to change the tube. Finally, someone came by on some Ritchey carbon wheels, and had a super long stem tube with him! I traded him for the “long” stem that I had acquired…and in another 10 minutes I had my wheel pumped up to about 80 PSI (pretty soft, really) and was on my way!

That whole ordeal had to have taken an hour, and I was pretty sure that I was the LAST person out on the route. The first person I caught was the guy who spoke before we all left who had been on the streets and the Rescue Mission had enabled him to get his feet under him and get his life back together. I talked to him for a few minutes, then continued on my way. I met up with some people riding mountain bikes helping eachother up the hills (literally, with an outstretched hand on the other’s back) and got to the second waterstop at Skaneatles with a pretty big group of people. I actually stopped at this one, since I wasn’t really in a hurry any more, and topped off my bottles with Gatorade. The people running the stop were really nice too. So I continued to catch people…and worked really hard to catch one group that seemed to be going fast enough, seeing as how hard it was to catch them. In that group was the guy with the Ritchey wheels whose tube I was using, he had said that I would probably catch him haha. I never really caught names, but this was the group that I rode to the finish with. It was me and three others, one of whom I realized was Del’s Uncle, who I’m guessing is Mr. Scheutzow, since he is Emily’s Dad. We talked pretty much the whole way back, it was pretty cool. The view across Otisco Lake was awesome, the sun was out when we got there, and you can see all the back across the lake. I made sure to point out the Crysler mansion when we passed it, and since Mr. Schuetzow had been talking about it, I picked up the pace a few notches after we crossed rt. 20 all the way to the park. Only problem was that I lost all the people I had riding with except him instantly and he only held onto my wheel for a minute, so I got to the park by myself haha, it was a “good crank” as he put it. The Marcellus HS baseball team were the ones manning the water station, so I ended up talking to Jon Quick for a while and it was when Mr. Schuetzow asked those guys if they knew a Ryan Delsomething that I was like hey yeah he was my best friend in HS, we graduated together, and I told him that I knew Emily too, and he confessed to being her father haha. And another one of the guys we were riding with asked them if they knew …shit I can’t remember her last name right now… Emily something and it was like yeah I graduated with her too! Small world this is….

I performed my best impression of Mark Cavendish to the finishline to leave the other three that we were still riding with in the dust haha, I was still feeling pretty fresh really… I saw Jeanne and others from work, and the people that we worked with at the RM on Friday after I got there, and had to explain to them why it took me so long haha. I also caught up with Rich from the OCC club who I had started the ride with, dropped when I bridged to leaders, and he said that he eventually caught up to the leaders and finished with them. I shoulda been there! But then I wouldn’t have met Mr. Schuetzow…so everything works out. I saw one more Marcellian serving food there, never knew her name but she was the girl that was my height (not really but close) as a freshman on the girls bball team, she knew my name. And they had blooming onions from Outback and bottled Orange Crush soda…so good. Mr. Schuetzow took my number and said that he’ll get me on an email list for some rides on the weekends with those guys, which should be cool. All in all, I think that with the money I raised that even though it may not be the $2000 that was the most someone raised, I think that the Rescue Mission really is doing a good thing and that by doing what I can, I really did help to make a difference in the lives of others. If 63 miles sounds daunting, there are many shorter rides and I would definitely recommend joining the Ride for the Rescue next year for everyone!

Saturday

I got to sleep in until I was no longer tired which was a marvelous start. And as promised, I went on a bike ride with Kaity at 2. I rode down to her house and we went 14.5 miles out and back on Pleasant Valley, and she did really well. I had to grab my brakes downhill sometimes, but it was good. We stopped at Eric and I’s favorite rest spot, by the stream that follows the 13 curves where it crosses Pleasant Valley. I also found out that Kaity had a twitter so now I have some friends, woohoo!

I pretty much chilled until the night, and Del got back late and had chores to do, so I did him a solid and picked up the cake and ballon’s for Sarah’s birthday party at Dan’s. I knew Dan was having ppl over, but I didn’t know it was for Sarah’s birthday (which was the day prior) until Del called and asked me to pick stuff up! Dan was freaking out a little bit about having too many people, so he told me that we didn’t have room for shields and so Eric made other plans before he realized that we did have room, which was a bummer. And so when we got there, it was just Me Dknick Del Sarah Zdan Hannah and Johnny Mars. Seven people isn’t really a party, so we called some more and I ended up driving down and picking up Shannon, who I’m pretty sure had fun too haha. So yeah it turned out to be fun, Del ended up going to get the funnel, or more accurately I drove him home to get the funnel lol, and of course I had to do one after we got it but I don’t think that was really gonna have much effect on anything. Not sleeping couldn’t have helped, but I had a good night’s sleep the night before…anyway it ended up being a lot of fun. Knickerbocker was soooo funny, he fit more of Zdan’s pantry into his pants than I would’ve ever imagined possible, I’m laughing right now just thinking about it (lol!).

The week (condensed) – Slade’s Camp slash my Day Off and working with the RM Friday

Getting 6 hours of sleep per night (which I guess is my fault…) and just looking at a computer screen for so many hours a day for so many weeks was realllly starting to add up. I had thought about taking this whole week off…but obv didn’t. So when Slade invited me to come to his camp for a night, I told him I couldn’t leave that very night haha I had to go to work at least the next day, but I asked Dave for the day off on Thursday and worked hard Wednesday to finish all my work and got out early. Slade drove me and Knickerbocker up in his van and Jack drove up later with Tyler, Nicky, and Gretchen. I got to swim a couple times and even though the water was a little cold, it felt really good. The night was a great time, some very interesting games of kings, the interesting part being the rules that Slade came up with… I actually slept really well, Jack and Tyler and Gretchen left early in the morning cuz Jack had to work or something like that. Slade took the rest of us to Sackett’s Harbor, to get the “best french toast in the world!!” as he put it haha. It was at the Tin Pan Gallery, which was a really cool restaurant. We sat outside and it was just beautiful out. The stuffed french toast was soo good, but like he said, difficult to finish! There was just so much butter and cream haha, if I was to go again I think I would try to Blueberry Bread French Toast, I saw someone with one of those and it looked delic., or the cheesecake waffle…it all sounded and looked so good haha. Not cheap, but worth it. Then we wandered around the town, I definitely felt like I was on vacation aka like a tourist lol. We wandered up to the park and after trying to do a frontflip and almost breaking my back…we found some people who were dressed up like 1812 times, and they were cooking in a Dutch Oven. We went over and talked to them, and realized that they were like our age and that was their summer job, and there are like kids camps going on at the park and that’s what they were doing. The dude had a real 1812 rifle and was going to shoot it, but he was out of black powder…but we got to hold it and it was pretty sweet lol. Nicky took a picture on her phone that is on Fbook, but I can’t get to that to put it up here right now, I probably will if I have time. On our way back to the car we got some home made ice cream which was really good and then we drove home. We got home by like 3, I tried my very best to talk Slade into doing our bridge jumping on the way home but he had class at 5..lame. It was so nice out that I was definitely going for a bike ride, and Shields asked me if I wanted to go on a ride and so it was like old times! He hooked up his speaker to his bike and everything…there were a few differences from a few summers ago tho. First, it was him that was just trying to keep up most of the time, and he was the only one of the two of us that was wearing basketball shorts haha. It’s been a really long time since I’ve done that haha. We went close to 20 miles, I did 25 including the to and from my house, which was really good for Eric having not left the couch in like a year. I didn’t really break a sweat until my way home, but that’s ok with me really. All in all, the day and a half off were really relaxing and just what I had thought that I needed. It was almost like having more than that off, since I did “work” Friday but it did not involve looking at any computer screens…all of the interns and some HR people, like last summer, spent a whole day at the Rescue Mission in Syracuse. We helped this time mostly set up for the Ride for the Rescue, which was really cool since I was doing it. So I got a sneak preview of part of the course (not sneak really, the routes were posted online) putting up mile markers for the 10-mile course and of the main area setting up the big sign, loading and unloading all the stuff that they had to take over there from the main campus in Syracuse. The two people from the RM who we worked with were super energetic and awesome, I saw both of them Sunday and they were excited to see the “OBG Boy doing the 62 miles!” Haha so that was really good, and Friday night I pretty much just went to bed early, did an easy-ish ride on my trainer as I recall.

Sunday the 12th

I got up early enough to look at the OCC ride which was leaving from Onondaga Middle School, which is just 7 miles down the turnpike so I headed out to that. There were 37 and 63 mile options, and I went there planning on doing 37…ended up doing 63 haha. I hadn’t biked since the Sunday prior so I was definitely hurtin at parts, pretty early in the ride we did a big climb up Fox road…which was yet another reminder to my legs that running and basketball and swimming don’t mix well with cycling, especially when they keep me off the bike entirely… Which is why I lost the lead group, not a big deal though, I rode with this one other guy. Damn I wish I was better with names… anyway it was pretty uneventful minus the fact that we took a wrong turn (or, didn’t take a turn more accurately) and went right through the Onondage Nation (the indian reserve). I didn’t really think that was big deal either, but after we finished, Wayne who had waited for us told us about this one time that some club riders got shot out in there… There’s more to it than though, not like they were just riding through. Apparently some asshole flew by them super fast and honked so they gave him the driving finger, and then mistakenly told that same driver that some f***in asshole almost hit them back there, and it was the same guy…he might’ve just shot in the air, but they heard a gunshot and didn’t look back. But the guy that I rode with told a story about how when he played lacrosse for West Genny (probably a really long time ago) he used to go in there on his bike to get stuff for his lacrosse stick, and once when the tensions were real high went in went through a roadblock that they were having and they let him in…different experiences for sure. Well it’s been over a week since last Sunday so I forget what I did the rest of the day but it probably involved a nap, those long rides really tend to wipe me out!