(just the first 3 paragraphs and one later in the article here, see the link for the full article):

Early on Election Day morning in the Philadelphia suburb of Levittown, Pa., Joe Sinitski, 48, stood in a long line inside a school gymnasium, inching his way toward three blue-curtained voting machines. He wore jeans, a sweatshirt and a National Rifle Association baseball cap. He said he would vote for Barack Obama, a choice that some months earlier he could not have imagined.

“I have to admit, his race made my decision harder,” he said. “I was brought up that way. And I don’t like his name. I’ll admit to that, too.”

Mr. Sinitski, a heating and air-conditioning technician, repeated a joke he had heard back in the spring about the choice in the Democratic primary between a black man and a woman (Hillary Rodham Clinton), and he used a crude term for each. But when I asked him how he might feel to wake up the next morning to the reality of a black president-elect, he said: “I do think it’s an historic election. Part of me feels like it would be really cool.”….

“For a long time, I couldn’t ignore the fact that he was black, if you know what I mean,” Mr. Sinitski, the heating and air-conditioning technician, told me. “I’m not proud of that, but I was raised to think that there aren’t good black people out there. I could see that he was highly intelligent, and that matters to me, but my instinct was still to go with the white guy.”….

We got out on a short ride today, but it was in the hills near our house, so constantly descending or climbing, and it went great. G handled it well and her muscles are more sore than her knee, so that’s a great sign. We’re planning on a bunch more rides…

Secondly, I volunteered to help out with the Portland Triathlon. I’ve got a friend who raced it and she roped me into helping out with the bike course. I had to be down there at 6:45am, an ungodly hour on a Sunday morning as far as I’m concerned, but soon had some caffeine in my veins and rode my bike down there – luckily downhill. It was a cool event and everyone was lucky the rains held off until about noon, so they didn’t affect the event at all. Most drivers are pretty friendly and happy their in a city that will close some roads and support an event like this, and lucky for me, the ones that didn’t like just kept their window rolled up and stomped on the gas pedal to drive off.

Overall a nice, relaxing weekend around home.

I really focused on staying on a wheel the entire race (sometimes I get a little lazy about that and end up working too hard) and as the race progressed, was able to start choosing who’s wheel I wanted to be on to get the most advantage (good handling skills, big body to block the wind, moving up through the pack). That was fun. It is a constant battle though if you aren’t in the front 10 or so – everyone is trying to move up around you, so if you’re in the middle of the pack & not moving up, you’re falling back because people are going around you.

There was a break of 3 riders, and I’m not sure, but think it ended up sticking. The pack couldn’t get itself together to chase and they were organized, and after a couple of laps they were out of site off the front. Good effort by those guys – it was windy and tough to hold a high speed with a small group.

So, the big learnings this time around:

1. Cornering at speed in a group 4-riders wide can be sketchy, especially for the 2 guys in the middle. Inside is easy – just follow a tight line. Outside isn’t bad, you can swerve out if you need to (but would be taken out in a crash). But the middle is tough and you’ve really got to focus on holding a good line tight and close to the inside guy to not take out the guys outside of you.
2. Tight corners and big fields are brutal – a lot of slowing and sketchiness by everyone, then a big acceleration as the field tries to match the speed that the front folks carried through the corner. Much better to be in the front if possible and have more freedom to take the corner at speed and carry speed through the exit.
3. The pace was high, but the sprint was doable at the end. I still had enough left in the tank to follow a wheel and get some good acceleration to the finish line. I need to work on my high-end sprint speed and acceleration, but I can at least hang with the 4/5 guys.
4. Speaking of the sprint – the finish line was directly into the wind on a long straight away. While you still want to be near the front, being set up a few places farther back is ok with a headwind. Each lead-out is going to be pulling for a little less time before the next one, so 4 or 5 guys might cycle through instead of 2 or 3. Need to be careful here though, as being farther back brings some additional risk. I’ll have to keep watching how to set up the sprint and the effects the conditions have.

Overall, a good time, a longer race, and definitely got more comfortable riding in a large group as the race progressed. Next week I’ll focus a bit more on the finish or getting a Prime, we’ll see. But got the Swan Island Crit on Saturday! Races a go-go!

I rode slowly out to the event for a warm up (about 45 minutes from my house) and enjoyed the sunny day. The warm-up was about right. Got there, signed in, and the women were already going, so I rode circles in an empty inner parking lot to keep the legs moving. Unfortunately, we didn’t get any time to ride the course before our race started, so I really had no warning for the trickiest parts of the course. That would have definitely helped…

Anyway, back to the start line. It was a somewhat poorly attended event, and we only had 11 of us in the Cat 5 race – which is nice considering how tight the course was. The referee runs through the event, explains the primes and the mechanical lap rules, blows his whistle, and we’re off…I step on my pedal and quickly realize I’m in my small chainring and large cog – the easiest gear – and the field is quickly accelerating away. I kick myself because I actually thought about the gear to start in during my ride in, but just forgot to actually get in the right gear before the start…

Anyway, start dropping through the gears and am on the back of the pack. The guy at the front is really pushing the pace – moreso than I expected – and pack is strung out single file immediately just trying to hang on. A gap opens in front of the guy ahead of me and I can’t close it, and boom, just like that 3 of us are split off the back. We start working together and don’t lose too much ground, but aren’t making any up either and the main group gets a 1/4 of a lap or so on us. It doesn’t help that one of the guys in the group can’t corner worth crap so any time he’s on the front every corner is a huge slow-down, speed-up process making everyone work that much more. It was during this part, where we were just busting to try to catch the main group, when we were going up the back side that I threw up, just a little, in my mouth. At that point, I knew I was riding hard enough and had to back off just a tad to recover, then put the pressure back on the pedals.

We ended up dropping the bad-cornering guy, catching a guy that had dropped from the pack, and were 3 again for the last 5 laps of the race or so. We did get caught & passed by the race leader – but only that one guy – and really kept hammering through the entire 30 minute race. I ended up 8th.

So my analysis goes something like this: being in the wrong gear at the start hurt, then the pace accelerated enough I couldn’t catch up. If I started in the right gear (at least the big chainring!) I would have been up in the middle of the pack and would have had a chance to hold on and stick with the main group. Who knows after that…they were away for a long time, yet never got close to lapping us, so I think I could have hung with them if I had contact and at least been in the mix at the end. Oh well…

A few notes:

• Pre-ride the course at or near race speed. There were a lot of corners and I was taking many of them without braking at all by the end of the race, but not at the beginning. Understanding that line earlier on would have helped a ton!
• Be ready for the sprint off the starting line. I wasn’t expecting this – but in my race and in almost every race that followed us, there was a surge right near the beginning of the race to try to split the field. It’s going to happen, and you’ve got to be near the front to be a part of it.
• In a short race like a crit, be ready for a very high sustained effort. I expected intense, but ‘recovery’ was getting a lap in the draft. Would have been a little better in the field, but I haven’t had a that much of a sustained effort for that long in a long, long time!

Well, that’s enough for now. Back to a little bit of work and off to the Monday night race at PIR!

The wind was tough – it was almost a direct headwind on the back stretch and tailwind on the front stretch. Speeds were slow on the back, but it was a lot of extra work to try to get away, and on the front speeds were high, but again, with a tailwind, hard to get away. The corners offered some interesting opportunities to get away if you played it right, but no matter where you jumped, you’d get hit by the wind eventually and would need to hold off the much bigger advantage of the pack in the wind.

At the end of the day, I didn’t have much left at the end (pulled a pretty fast lap, pulled a second time, and was pulling coming into the final spring) and was tired anyway because I had played an ultimate frisbee tournament over the weekend, and finished 10th out of 11. Learned a lot about the wind this week and that I really need to suppress my desire to up the speed of the pack in the middle of the race. I’m ok with doing my fair share, but its really hard to put the hurt on from the front.

Gonna race the Sunset Crit on saturday in the 4/5 category, and plan on racing cat 4/5 for the last three weeks of the Monday PIR Crit (I don’t think its much faster, just a bigger field and twice as long). Just going to sit in for these races, see how its played, and jump when it seems interesting and chase when it needs to happen. All about getting in shape, understanding my capabilities, and trying out some tactics at this point.

A few notes on the race:

1. Pace is slow in this group. Very few of the racers are willing to get out in front and lead the pack. I was a bit too ambitious with this and cranked up the speed a couple of times, but then got stuck on the front and was a bit blown out by the final sprint.
2. There are some guys that are willing to work…need to be more outgoing & talkative during the race to get a few folks to work together and up the pace. I see this as an advantage to me – I’m a decent sprinter, but not the most explosive, so whatever I can do to tire those explosive guys out – without doing too much damage to myself – before the finish is a good thing.
3. Pavement is very good and smooth at PIR and the corners are not very tight. The track is wide, so if errors are made on the inside, it’s easy to drift out. This is good practice for taking these corners as tight as possible and really learning to maintain speed through the corners (and putting the hurt on the people that have to slow down more).
4. Some of the riders in this group are not so good at holding their lines in the corners and as the inside rider, will drift out…need to watch out for this and stay near the front of the pack to stay out of danger!

And my goals for the series (last race is August 25th):

1. Get used to the criterium format,  riding in an unorganized group, and bumping/contact during the sprint.
2. Figure out some tactics and the right balance for me for pulling & upping the pace versus sitting in and waiting to be strong at the sprints.
3. Try some break-aways and see what happens…From what I understand, this will be tough in the Novice category because all breakaways tend to get chased down rather quickly, so it’s really hard to put any distance on the pack.
4. Get stronger by chasing down breaks, attacking when I feel good, and finishing with a strong sprint. The race is short (~30 min), so that let’s me be very aggressive with pushing the pace, yet being able to recover quickly and have something left for the sprints and chases.
5. [Edit]: Sit in more, but stay near the front and out of the crashes/fracas. Someone went down hard this week a few riders behind me and got pretty scraped up and some equipment broken. Want to stay out of that!

Next race is Monday, can’t wait to get out there again!

One amazing thing was that bike parking was scarce and bikes were locked up next to just about anything you could get a lock around. BikePortland had a nice little write-up about that.

I was bummed to not make the event, but caught the speech on TV and was definitely inspired. I’ve mostly heard Obama in sound-bytes, but listening to his 30-minute stump speech is impressive, regardless of your politics. He’s an inspiring speaker and I, for one, hopes he gets into office and can use his charisma and brains to bring the US back to something that many of us don’t feel like we have to apologize for…

I finally got some miles under my belt last weekend…not quite a hundred between both days, but an intense group ride on Saturday and a 4+ hour solo on Sunday (with plenty of wind, ugh). Got on my bike yesterday to run downtown and watch the prologue of The Mt Hood Classic and, wow, were my legs dead! I felt surprisingly good on the Sunday ride (once I remembered to eat….I think that’s half my training, remembering to eat before I completely lose it) and even had some juice left to hammer up the hills to my house at the end of the ride. But getting rolling yesterday hurt. Of course, once I got warmed up things were rolling again, but it took a while.

Kind of realized this weekend that I’ve got to ramp the miles pretty aggressively if I’m going to be ready for this. I don’t need to get a double in, but at least get one century in! 8 weeks and counting….

Oh – and the Prologue event was pretty cool. It was a short, flat, no wind, out-and-back time-trial course. 1.7 miles. The winner finished it in just over 2:45….that’s an average of 37mph! Talk about hammering. (bikeportland write-up) They’ve got a hilly crit tonight at Mt Tabor, a local park that is a dead volcano that I’ve ridden up and around many times. I’m debating whether to blow off my drawing class and go watch the race instead, I’m sure it’ll be cool.

Luckily I had a few extra days of vacation to use around the house and added shelving to the garage loft. It was a great project for me after returning from my Grandpa‘s funeral just a day before I started the project. He was a woodworker all his life and worked with his hands often, and I definitely spent a lot of time thinking about him while working on this project. I think there’s a lot of value into pouring yourself into a project and giving your brain some time to work things out (mostly) in the background while your hands are busy.

It’s and interesting place to design shelves for, and my design has changed multiple times. Its only 4′ deep x 4′ tall and its ~9′ off the ground (the joist in the above picture is the floor of the shelf), so having a wide enough ledge to maneuver on is important so the shelves can’t be too deep.

I’m definitely still building my tool collection, and a few of my in-laws were gracious with their Home Depot gift cards, and I’m now a proud owner of this :

I started off by screwing 2x4s to the walls at the shelf height. These will provide full-length backside support for each shelf. I decided on heights of 1′ from the ceiling and 1′ below that. This ends up being a little tight and limiting to what you can place, but I think it will be useful. If I were doing it again, I’d drop the bottom shelf 4″ or so to give the extra space to the middle shelf.

Using joist hangers was a pretty easy way to attach the cross-supports to the wall-mounted 2x4s & to the front-support legs. The hardest thing about those is that, because you drive nails at an angel, which provides excellent pull-out support, they are pretty hard to get to end up at the exact right height – which was important because they supported the cross beam between the wall and the front-edge legs. Making sure each one of these was aligned pretty well was probably the thing that took the longes through the whole project.

After getting the supports up, it was time to place the shelves. G caught me a few beers in after getting the two shorter shelves placed.

And finally, after getting the other shelves up, I could start hauling the storable items up to the loft.

Luckily, there’s still plenty of space up there. I’m in a bit of a purge phase right now, so I can’t imagine running out of space anytime soon. But if I need more shelves, the building will go a lot faster the next time around!