TheAndrew.net

Sitting here at work writing my first reflection paper of the year (there will be many more to come as the COE’s philosophy of education is based on reflection, hence the name of the lab I work in “The Reflector”.)

The name of the assignment is My Life in Schools, Communities, and Society. 5-10 pages about me.

Basically I felt like posting something up because my first real paragraph (yep, the into paragraph is officially not a real one) is about family. Can’t really talk about the other stuff until my family is mentioned.

But more specifically my parents. Even more specifically a conversation we had downstairs towards the end of my junior year of high school. I told them I was through with basketball. I don’t remember if they were suprised or not. I imagine they sort of knew what kind of a physical beating I took in practice nearly every day ,thanks Scott. They didn’t tell me it was a stupid idea. They didn’t tell me it was a great idea. They just wanted me to give it some thought.

Where would I be now if I had quit that year? Probably wouldn’t have the best friend that I have now. Wouldn’t know many people here in Columbia. Hmmmm….

thanks mom and dad

Current songs:
“Feel It In The Air” Beanie Sigel ft. Melissa
“Stop the Music” P Money ft. Scribe
“You Already Know” 112 ft. Foxy Brown

It’s hard to believe what’s happening in Louisiana right now. Seems to me like its a country away.
Gas prices going through the roof, winds/rain tearing part of our country apart, and me sitting here at the University of Missouri almost immune to all of it

After checking out the course we settled down a bit in the rooms and studied/tinkered with our bikes/did homework/watched tv. Headed to bed around midnight.

Got up at 7am Sunday. Another waffle and two doughnuts for me. My race wasn’t until 11:40 (supposedly) so I had to eat enough to hold me over.
Packed up some of our stuff, got the bikes put back on the vehicles, and headed down across town to the BMX PARK

Brady helped the race promoter create the short track course around, across, and through the bmx track. It wasn’t done as early as they hoped so things were pushed back. My 11:40 race started at 12:40.

The DUAL SLALOM guys did a great job. Nobody ate it (except for Steve taco’ing a wheel in practice) and they all looked pretty good out there. I’d like to have a jumping bike some day so I can learn that stuff.

Foosh, John, and Mike did a great job in the B’s short track.
It was only Lou and I in the A’s since Brady was out with his dislocated shoulder and Chad is our champion dual slalom rider (he placed 15th at nationals last year).

It was an extremely fast race, supposed to be 40 minutes plus 2 laps with lapped riders being pulled. There just happened to be 3 riders that were much faster than everyone and about 12 minutes into the race more than half the field was lapped. So Lou and I were pulled and spared a great deal of pain.
Lapping in a short track race doesn’t happen all that often, but this course was an extremely short one. In those 12 minutes we did 8 or 9 laps

Lou and I pedaled acoss the way and showered at a campgrounds showers and as we got back to his Jeep the rest of the crew showed up from grabbing the stuff that was left at the hotel (we expected to have time to go back and shower there after our race. Wasn’t possible since things were running late.)
Headed home with a few stops for gas and some nutritions delicious McDonalds
Got back into Columbia at 10:30, unloaded the vehicles and headed back to my place.

The race weekend was good

Got to the hotel in Indiana about 1:30am Saturday. Got some sleep and was back up shortly after 8am to eat a continental breakfast and get ready for the races. (on a side note..we had 2 rooms reserved for 12 people…and it worked out fine)

It was decided that I would race A’s to get us more points. (A not so great finish in A’s can be more points than a great finish in B’s). This didn’t work out so well as I was using tires that were made specifically for mud and there was no mud. So while I’ll have a great picture up here in the next couple of days of some thrashed tires, the race sucked. Midway through the second lap (10 mile laps, supposed to do 3 of them) my handlebars came loose and when I’d hit bump, jump, or other obstacle they’d move and make it hard to ride. The combination of that and the tires caused me to stop after the second lap. I think I’ve only DNF’d maybe one other time in all the races I’ve done, but with a new bike and a carbon fiber handlebar that I didn’t care to ruin after one race it wasn’t worth continuing.
Also in the XC race on Saturday Brady, last year’s team president and the fastest XC rider we have now, dislocated his shoulder so he’s out for a while.

After the races we headed back to the hotel, showered up and went across the road to eat.
Some of us went to the local bike store afterwards and then went to check out the course for Sunday’s Dual Slalom and Short-track course.

Pic of the XC start on Saturday

Got the new mountainbike yesterday. Was super duper happy, even though I had just gotten spanked at Tuesday Night Worlds.

Stayed up ’till 3am messing with it trying to replace the chain, shifters, adjust the brakes, switch cassettes, and so on. Forgot that I would need new cables to make the switches..so when I stopped at 3am the bike was missing:
- chain
- rear derailleur
- both shifters
All thing you might consider pretty important to the bike being rideable (if you don’t see the sarcasm here you need to go try and ride a bike missing these things)(and you singlespeeders don’t count..you still can’t ride without the chain..unless its downhill..but that doesn’t last forever)

Went to CycleX this morning and was there for almost an hour and didn’t get much done. Too busy and not enough people (hmmm..if the biatches would have hired me maybe that could have changed).
Basically set up an appointment for the brakes to be bled Thursday as well as the wheels being trued. Paid way too much for cables and housing and came here to work about 15 minutes late.

Starting to feel like I’m not going to have the loan money left over that I need. Guess we’ll find out.

So today will include: work, class, cycling meeting, work on the Cannondale until it’s rideable.

Here’s the bike in my garage before I started tearing it and the Giant up

sushi for the first time a minute ago. Homemade Korean style sushi at that. Thanks Moon.
I expected it to be much worse, so maybe I’ll try it again sometime. Maybe there’s a reason I know so many people who like it.

My first class starts today. Then I have to grab my bike out of a closet here in the Reflector and get out to my car to get over to Two Mile Prairie for Worlds.

It looks like my biggest problem of the semester might be eating. If I’m not able to prepare meals ahead of time and pack them for lunch I’m going to spend lots of money on fast food. Not eating will not work with the riding I’ll be working into my schedule.

This week should be quite the week. A huge change from the past few weeks where all I really needed to do each day was ride my bike.

Work most of the day today.
Tuesday I’ll get my new mountainbike in and ride Tuesday Night Worlds at 5:30. So basically ride Worlds than pick up the mountainbike from UPS on the way back into town (no I’m not going to carry a huge box containing a bike while riding my bike..I’ll have to drive)
So Tuesday night will be spent tinkering with it and whatnot.
Wednesday is hopefully going to be the first ride with the new bike and the first cycling meeting of the semester
Thursday I have won an office party at Deja Vu
Friday I’ll be leaving for the first collegiate race at Purdue

Of course a few classes will be spread out in here also.

On another note I’ve been very very happy with how I’ve been riding the bike. The show-me state games went really well and if I wouldn’t snapped my chain in the first mile this past weekend in St. Jo I’m pretty sure first place wouldn’t have been out of the question. So basically I have more confidence now than I’ve every had before on the mountainbike.

Its been a while since I’ve posted so I’ll do a little overviewing:
Week of 7-13: went home on Wednesday and did some mountainbiking at Landahl park just north of Blue Springs. Rode some really technical sections and then went out to ride a part that I used to ride and collected a hundred and something spider webs on my face and forearms. Definately won’t be riding that part of the park again.

Thursday I was supposed to do some clothes shopping with mom. We’re having breakfast at IHOP and she gets a call saying she was supposed to be at school an hour ago for meetings. She leaves and I scout out the deal at the mall for an hour or more then head back to Scott’s.
Meet back up with her at 4 and do some hardcore shopping…good stuff.
Met up with Erin from high school a little bit later in Liberty and had a great time eating and playing sand volleyball at William Jewell.
Don’t remember what I did Friday.
Saturday I got sick at Scott’s.
Sunday was a meal at church and booger gave a nice presentation about her trip to Nicaragua or however it’s spelled.

Monday (we’re up to the 15th if I’ve lost you) I went on a Ashland loop ride by myself. It was terribly slow as I still hadn’t eaten much all weekend and wasn’t fully recovered from being sick Saturday night.
Tuesday I got shelled at the Tuesday Night Worlds ride. Terrible.
Wednesday I did some intervals with Ben (a junior rider on the Columbia Cycling Team…which I’ll join now that I have the cash to) and had a good time. I imagine as he grows he’ll become much much faster than me.
Thursday was another ride with Ben. Went out in the heat and humidity at 3pm and rode for something like an hour and a half.
Friday was a mountainbike ride with Foosh, the new Mizzou cycling president. He did plenty of road riding this summer in St.L and Oklahoma but zero mountainbike riding as his mountainbike was here in Columbia and he wasn’t. It was good until I flatted.
Saturday mom and dad brough up their old refrigerator for us to use. Then I met up with mrs. stein at the state fair and learned a lot about hogs and rode some rides with 3 adorable little girls.
Sunday was a mountainbike race in St. Joseph. Started well but less than a mile into it I snapped my brand new chain…so race over for me.
Not my happiest moment. Picked up Steve on the way up there in Liberty and Craig showed up also. So 3 Mizzou guys representing. Good times

In between all this stuff I got a Razor phone, bought a mountainbike on ebay, made at least 3 trips to Cyclextreme for things like shoes, pedals, seatpost, chain, cassette, and built up a little worshop in my garage for biking.
And in approximately 6 1/2 hours the new semester will start. No class for me though, just work on monday from 2-10

This coming weekend is our first collegiate race at Purdue Univserity. I’ve been riding very well and the new bike will hopefully be in commission so this should be a good one!

At Scott’s for the night. Laptop has been on my lap for too long so its time to go. Click on the title of this post for a link to some new cycling pictures

still haven’t fully recovered from the race on sunday.
Got my butt handed to me during the Tuesday Night Worlds ride this afternoon. Once again it was going down a hill (I don’t have the gears to be able to keep up. All I can do is get low and hope my weight is enough for me to catch up with the others).
Had one pain in my left leg that was definately due to the race, and now I’ve got one in my right thigh.

I’ve got a cd full of cycling photos now..i’ll have plenty up on Flickr soon!

I was apparently left out of the Numa Numa craze…so if you were to now you can check it out: http://www.big-boys.com/articles/numanuma.html

Heading home tomorrow for a few days.
Adios for now