April 8, 2009

Ready for spring and bike races!

Life has been busy, but boring as of late and of course with a few drops or so of stress added in, just for fun!

Busy with work, busy with bike (non-riding) stuff, bored from the last snow fall and only hoping and needing SPRING to break me out of this funk.

Tonight it will be another night of sweeping the criterium course for the races tomorrow night. I should not complain. I helped for a little over an hour last night sweeping the finishing stretch and it was not so bad. Tonight we have one last corner to sweep. It is actually the cleanest of the corners but still not good. The corners have been described as sweeping a gravel road and on some of the corners it is the truth! As I was sweeping last night, a few cars drove past me and were looking at me strangely. I am guessing they thought I was out fulfilling my community service obligations even though I made a point not to wear an orange jumpsuit or anything with black and white stripes. Still I had very interesting looks. I have to admit, I would look at someone strangely also that was sweeping a road out north east of Sioux Falls in an industrial park area. There is a purpose to all this. You see, gravel is a nasty evil with road bike tires and gravel combined with a corner is the ultimate nasty combo. You can crash in a hurry so it is necessary to sweep to make the course as safe as possible. The CPC guys have been working hard to get the area ready for the race and it is looking pretty good., just a little more housekeeping and it will be ready!

Now comes the stress part. A few of us will be there for the races in our "official" officiating attire. We have a lot to learn and I hope people are patient with all of us. We will get the process down but it might take a few races. I am pretty sure all of us will be REALLY GOOD by the end of the season and will have learned a lot! I am a bit nervous about it so I am going to re-read rules and the manual again before the race tomorrow night.

Scored a Borah neon yellow vest over lunch on the clearance rack at Harlan's Bike and Tour. They have some nice new products at their place so stop in and check them out! New bike shorts, arm warmers and a trigger point ball should be delivered to the house by the time I get home tonight. I hope this will get me out of my funk, SOON, if not, at least I stimulated the economy a bit!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

If you get into a jam or have any questions please feel free to call me.

(402) 316-4917

Anonymous said...

I planning coming down to watch an help out