California is the place to be if you're looking for the latest in self-beautification. It seems like every corner has at worst a nail salon, at best a day spa with waxing, botox, and custom goatee management. Why are people so worried about their looks? I guess it just comes with the territory. If you're going to pay $780k for a 2 bedroom fixer-upper (actual median price in San Mateo county), why not drop a few grand on some puffy-ass lips? Or nipples?

Being a relative newcomer to both the California scene and idea of actually making a living, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I found myself in dire need of some microderm abrasion treatment, or perhaps some majorderm abrasion, as it turns out. After extensive research, I concluded that the best way to remove pesky skin layers from my legs and arms would be to ride down King's Mountain road on my ass, in the rain.

This weekend sucked. I was on a group ride with the Alto Velo 'A' group. They were supposed to be fast, but I was hammering those bitches uphill. I was late for the ride start (duh) and had to run my 'race only' Zipp carbon wheel in the rear since it had my only decent cassette onboard and I had no time to pull the switcheroo. The Zipp takes tubular tires, and in case you haven't heard, tubular tires attach to tubular rims with glue. Apparently this was popular during the Civil War or something. Last summer The Rog helped me glue and set the tire, so you know that bitch wasn't going anywhere.

During the descent of King's Mountain, in very uncharacteristic rainy May weather, the guy in front of me lost it on the yellow line. Three or four jukes and I knew he was going down. He clipped out (at 25mph), foot checked the pavement while in a 2 wheel slide and recovered. It was amazing.

So amazing, that when I was thinking about how I would describe it in this VERY blog, the same goddamn thing happened to me. My rear wheel got a little loose in a sharp, wet turn. Nothing major, I recovered after a little shimmy, and then WHAMMO. Fresh pavement injection.

During the safety maneuver my rear tire decided to let go of the rim. The result was a Beloki-style sideways skid, carbon rim vs. pavement. I slid across the oncoming lane and into a pile of old leaves, just short of a cliff. The tubular tire had rolled off the rim. Without thinking, I popped up and stretched it back on, trying to appear the hardass who can crash hard and keep rolling.
Only today when I removed the tire for regluing did I realize that the whole tire had failed. The fabric rim strip (a permanent part of the tire) was still firmly glued to the rim. The rubber casing of the tire, however, was no longer bonded to anything. What the hell?

In hindsight, I'm glad this happened on a group ride 15 minutes from home instead of a 50mph race descent (ie next weekend at Mt. Hamilton). Hospitals suck, and I think I got off easy this time. Sheff's advice: check yo self! and check yo tubulars!

I just finished a nasty email to Continental, demanding a new tire and $50 for the all the crap I had to buy at CVS yesterday to stop bleeding. Dear Continental:

Work today was awesome, my jeans were stuck to my leg at the end of the day and I got puss on my chair during a lunchtime seminar. Put it on the expense account, dog!

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I raced bikes this past weekend, hooray! Saturday was the infamous Cat's Hill criterium, which will now be known as the Cat's Hill Crash Every Lap Fun Bang-Bang. I don't have any pictures of the cat 3 race, probably because the photographers were too busy pulling bodies out of each corner. For the uninitiated, Cat's Hill takes place in Los Gatos, which is carved into the side of the Santa Cruz mountains.

As the name suggests, there is a crazy steep hill each lap, 22% for about 150m or so. This obviously leads to a bit of infighting amongst the pack to be at the front for the 90 degree turn into the hill. The start is mayhem, 100 guys battling it out for the first corner...but awhoops! Nobody told the lead motorcycle dude to get his ass on the bike. The gun goes off, and there he is, 20 meters in front of the madly rushing field, STANDING beside his motorycle in the middle of the street, a look of "Oh Shit" coming through his tinted visor. The pack swarmed by him, he fired up the bike, and then basically tore ass through 50 cat 3's at whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh full throttle.

Coupled with the super narrow roads and horribly shattered concrete pavement, it was a disaster. I maintained position in the front half and still saw no fewer than 8 major crashes in 20 laps with several riders bouncing off my hip to the tarmac. The steep hill was oddly not decisive, aside from stripping off the danglers. With 5 to go, the field was down to less than 50, but that didn't stop a street-wide crash in corner 1 to bring things to a screeching halt for all but the top 15 on the last lap. Oh well. Position, position, position. I'm glad I survived...safety first!!

The next day I got up at 4:30am to drive up to Berkeley for a big road race. What the hell is up with a 7:30am start time? Kill me now if this is how NorCal racing rolls through the summer. The race was 72 miles, with 2 big climbs and a ton of rollers each lap. The weather was hot for the first time this season, and that made life difficult. I dictated the pace on the climbs on lap 1, made a brief appearance in a break, sat in the middle of the pack on lap 2, then sagged a bit on lap 3. Everyone can climb out here. Even the muy grande hombres. I've never seen anything like it. By the end of the 3rd lap, my left kneecap was swelling up something fierce. I let up a bit to stretch it out and couldn't put power down at all, losing contact with the now-shattered peloton. Disgusted with my first DNF since starting bike racing, I drove into Berkeley to make fun of all the hippies. Man, there are a LOT of hippies still around. I had no idea.

Back in Menlo Park, I made my weekly pilgrimmage to Trader Joe's, just a few blocks away from the casa. I was reminded why male cyclists get a bad name in the broad sense, and more specifically, why most of them never get laid:

"Gee, this charcoal sale sure is stupendous! I bet I can fit at least 2 bags in my oversized Camelback. But I might need to perform some finite element analysis simulations on my 900 gigawatt laptop to make sure that I can adequately utilize my handy dandy helmet mirror at ALL TIMES. Also, do these women's Performance shorts from 1989 make me look fat?"

The greatest part about this picture was that the INSTANT I saw this guy, I whipped out the Razr camera...and he saw me do it. He was all "shit, I'm getting blogged today" and I was all Crocodile Hunter on his ass around the store, stalking him behind the bread case. Then, BAM! Got him.

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I'm kind of a badass around here now. After all, I did just finish riding my bike in a parade. A couple weeks ago the town of Woodside, known for lavish estates, horse poop on the roads, and SUV's the size of Tom Danielson's ego, held its 50th anniversary parade thing. Unfortunately, the parade route was the one and only road to the base of King's Mountain, a juicy, switchback filled, 30 minute climb to Skyline Blvd....so I rode all up in that shit.

Everything was going well until the local Cub Scout troop starting chucking candy at me from their float. This caused a backlash of anxious young onlookers to run into the road, seeking said candy to fuel their diabetic-leaning habits. The death stares I received from angry Dior-clad mothers (in the process of yanking their 5 year olds from my path) were priceless.

Then, there was the merry minstrel (menstrual?) leading his band of morons. Dude tried to stop me and took a swing with his flute. I friggin HATE the Lord of the Rings.

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