Cross is king

You guessed it! Another weekend update! First things first, Michelle has been working up some culinary delights lately so you’ll start seeing more of that here.

Om nom nom!

To start things off, I hustled Friday morning to get my new engine lid on the Porsche. I picked it up at a swap meet a month or two ago, but just recently had it painted by my friend, Tom. Tom was able to match the aging black paint perfectly, and the new lid looks amazing without a bunch of spoiler holes.

After work on Friday, I stopped by Orchid Euro to get some more work done on the Jetta Limo. Things were moving slow though, so I snapped a couple sunset photos and we spent most of the night instagramming and eating Chinese food.

I headed home early because we’d be up at sunrise for the start of cyclocross season!!!

Of all the bike racing/riding I do, cyclocross is my favorite. It’s the absolute best and very much the absolute worst 45 minutes you can spend on a bike. A lot of times when I’m racing on the road it’s 29 laps of positioning then 1 lap of action. In cross it’s constant action. You’re passing or being passed in every turn, and riding on mixed terrain means you need to bring both fitness and handling. That’s just the bike part. Really the best part of cross is the atmosphere. Michelle comes and can watch most of the race while also helping as my pit crew, and most of our bike friends are there racing or spectating too.

Opening weekend means Nittany Cross. It’s a very popular race about an hour away that draws racers from all over the country. With over 100 fresh and equally excited riders in my race, it’s probably the most hectic race start of the year. The key? Getting a good starting position and surviving the first lap. I registered late this year and got staged 59th! Oof

My plan was to stick the outside and take a wide line through the first turn to hopefully get around the inevitable pileup. It worked sort of ok, and I was quickly picking off riders to settle in around 30th through the first two laps.

Things were going great which I should have recognized as not a good sign. I’m still not sure if there was a specific trigger, but during the third lap my lungs locked up in an asthma attack. Every breathe became excruciating, and I started dropping places rapidly. When I finally made it around to the pit, I couldn’t spot Michelle, but yelled for some teammates to have her grab my inhaler from the car. In hindsight it’s a pretty dumb move to leave that in the car… anyway, I suffered through another half lap just trying everything to open my chest up and limit the losses. When I finally made it back to the pit, Michelle was there with the inhaler. Two quick puffs and I’m a new man. I jumped back into action and got to reclaiming as many spots as I could. My friend, Bob, has passed me earlier so my whole race became an effort in chasing down Bob. I got to him with half a lap to go, and we battled until the last corner where I used some aggressive cornering to close the door on him and claim all the glory of 67th place.

Bob and I also have a season long post-race fashion contest, but that will have to wait until next week.

We hung for a little bit more, but headed home early to get some errands done.

Recovery!

Michelle’s:

Today (Sunday) was another early start, but this time for cars and coffee at the Bethlehem Steel Stacks. Cars and coffee is kind of a new thing where hundreds of classic, exotic, rare, and hellaflushstancebro cars gather in the early morning to shoot the shit and appreciate stuff you don’t see everyday. Once again my beautiful wife was up early too to cruise up with me and hang out!

My early morning attempt to rinse off the 911 backfired horribly, and looked dirtier than the cross bikes from yesterday.

We got over it pretty fast and proceeded to walk around and take in the sights.

After explaining the current epidemic that is douchey stickers on Volkswagens, Michelle found what she would later crown her favorite.

A beat up TR6?! I’m definitely not complaining though as I’ve always wanted one of these too 😉

We walked around some more then hopped back in the car for the drive home. But first some pictures in front of the stacks!

At this point you might be thinking “wow that’s a pretty full weekend!” and you’d be right. So once we got home, I mowed the front lawn and we jumped right into our afternoon project of finishing the patio retaining wall.

In case you missed it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnE2SFpFgPA) we built a cinder block retaining wall last week. The weather was finally dry enough so today’s goal was paint and the wood topper.

Just a little more clean up to do and it’s all done!

fin.