Tour Tour Tour Tour Tour Tour Tour and I dunked today

The magnificent Tour de France has started and today I dunked a basketball for the first time in like three years. All is well in my world. I’ve short-tracked two weeks in a row now and each time I have had my ass thoroughly handed to me on a muddy, bloody platter. I was really determined on Wednesday night to get the hole shot (“hole shot??” I hate that term. I’m going to come up with a better way of saying “I secured a good position in the opening seconds of a mountain bike race”…maybe Dave Towle can help me with this) but I ended up having another pedal snafu as well as a nice touch of wheels with 2 people in my area AKA in my way. I liked the course setup this week much better though and after one lap I was making the most of the wider sections and motoring by people, passing maybe 5 or 6 people. Coming around for lap three, I again tried one of my world-famous surges but this time I ended up on the ground. A guy dressed like Capitan America just edged me out as the wide trail become narrow and I touched his handle bars leaving me with a little more blood trickling from last week’s almost healed wound and my handlebar’s rotated about 300 degrees around my top tube, not before letting some silly brake and gear cables get in the bar’s way. After collecting myself, checking my bike’s pulse (sorta flat lined) and watching some 15 dudes pass me, I remounted and began the furious chase I’ve become known for out there. I picked off 5-6 riders but for a second straight week I let my overzealous lungs and erractic handling skills get the worst of me. But as they say, there’s always next week and I hope to improve on whatever back of the pack place I managed the other night. The short track photos below demonstrate two things - 1) me chasing Capitan America after he crashed me out and 2) me being completely boring over one of the two rhythm jumps (I need to let it fly over those things!) I’m tired. I’ll explain the other 3 photos tomorrow. Sweet dreams blogosphere!