Man its been awhile.

I was going to write about catching a stomach bug and eating nothing but 2 pieces of toast in 40 hours. Although boring, it could be the new diet to the stars, or to Colin. I could post my coaches' orders, but Danny Chew just tells me to ride 500 miles per week, and Mayhew just tells me to ride less and buy a powertap. I could write about "training" and how hard/fun/long/tough it is and how many kilojoules I am burning per week, but there are already enough awful "training" blogs.

Ill write about whats been going down in my taxi the past couple of weekends. In honor of MLK day Ill start with a racist confession.

Im at the greyhound dropping off and a HUGE black dude carrying nothing but a beat up duffel bag flags me. He asks how much to East Liberty, a neighborhood that I dont pick up from. I give an honest estimate of 12 bucks. We are off. He tells me that he is from Brooklyn and visiting his Aunt for a bit. Cool. We are shooting the shit when he asks, in what I can describe only as an "African American from New York" accent, "What .. you like in the bowl." I couldnt totally understand what he asked (the cab is an 8 cylinder running on 6 and makes a hell of a lot of noise). I thought he asked what I smoked in bowls. I said "Im straight man." and realized before the end of my sentence what he was really asking, so I added "Im not even going to watch the game tomorrow, but I hope the Packers make it all the way." He talked about how he thought the Giants could maybe pull it out, and how Plexico used to play for Pittsburgh.

Drop him off, 16 bucks on the meter. He was actually going to Morningside, the suburbanish type of neighborhood one past East Liberty. I told him 12, because I gave him a bad estimate. The estimate was good, he was going a mile past where he said, I just kind of felt like a dick. I dont think he even picked up on my confusion about his question.

Friday night I grab a woman at the cab stand in Oakland. She is freaking out and needs a ride to her house in Shadyside. She is crying and on the phone for the first minute, I assume something bad happened and kind of pick up the pace. She gets off the phone and tells me that her husband of four years has been cheating on her. She said "I am not unattractive, I am a good person, I am a fucking doctor and he doesnt work." Wow. It was true, she was a bit older than me,a cute blonde, and apparently a doctor. She said she has to go home to go online to freeze her bank account and call her family. She told me how she caught him texting a girl, and told him that she called verizon to have the texts sent to her, since all the bills are in her name. It was a bluff, but it worked and he admitted to making out with her twice. She then called the girl and said the husband admitted everything, at which point the girl gave more details about doing a lot more than making out. The way this woman pinned one on the other without real evidence sounded like it was out of a law and order episode. Pretty sweet.

So bike riding... Jared, Mayhew and I set out for Mingo creek for some mountain biking on Sunday. The high was 16, and we had a 2.5 hour loop planned out. Everything was going well until the end. Basically we were 50 feet from the parking lot, but there was "little mingo creek" in the way. It was 16 degrees, but the creek wasnt frozen, nor was it little. The spot that Chris and I had easily ridden across previously was under 2 feet of icy rapids. Man. We decided to head downstream to try and find the bridge that crosses the creek. Eventually the creek curved, and as the curve came upon us, the shoreline disappeared, forcing us to go up a ridge. I guess we could have turned around and backtracked, but even men in spandex are men. I cant exaggerate how steep the climb was. We were all climbing hand over head, with our bikes either being dragged behind us, or thrown in front of us, letting us climb up to them. Epic or stupid? The ground was too frozen to get sure footholds so we had to lean into the hillside (yes it was seriously that steep) while shimming from tree to tree. At one point Jared yelled as he started sliding, I wasnt sure if he was warning Chris to get out of his way as he slid down toward the creek, or wanted Chris to grab him.
If there is ever a time to have a weight weenie bike, its when you are scaling a rock face and dragging it behind you. Eventually we came across a ramshackle pedestrian bridge, after maybe 45 minutes of hiking. I started riding towards it when I flipped over my bars. I was very close to the breaking point, when Chris put out his hand to help me up. "How did that happen?" "I dont know, I guess I hit a rock or something"... Then somebody noticed the barbed wire fence that I hit with probably my head tube. If it wasn't so old and sagging, I would probably have a new sweet necklace.