Bruised and Loving it!

Rode the Wiss this morning with Christian "my Muslim brother", Corlino "the Italian Stallion", and Colin "the Professor". I was one of the chumps I love to hate today as while rolling out to the Wiss on the Kelly Drive path I flatted. I'm not a chump b/c I flatted as that happens to everyone. I'm a chump b/c both my spare tubes, YES BOTH, like 1+1=2 kind of both, had holes in them. So immediately I went from having 4 seemingly good tubes (this includes what were in my tyres on my bike) to 3 flat tyres immediately. Man what a chump I was, but luckily, Colin the Professor had a spare and off we went to a rocking warm ride through both sides of the Wiss. ***Note to self, check tubes in the seat bag when they've been in there for 3 years or more***

Colin pushed the pace the whole time which was NUTS considering he and I were rocking out at this chic Marissa's holiday Party until early in da morn (I got home by 2:30, he wasn't home until 3). I was rocking out with just the homemade Egg Nog and water, but the Professor was educating us on the many fine brews. So considering how well he rode today, he's definitely the Rockstar and I'm just a Groupie...
Total ride time just under 3:30 hrs. Though we were only on the trails for about 2 1/2. I had my first bad move on the bike in 3 rides so far as I hit a rock with my right pedal and it unclipped just as I was ready to crank hard and I hit my knee cap on the stem. OUCH! As usual I'm just a little gimpy right now.

OH SuperquadroupleSnap! I found another block-rockin' beats Electronica radio station on iTunes, 1.FM-Trance. I keep finding myself turning it up and then when I'm downstairs I'm like, oops, I hope my neighbors aren't pissed! Speaking of neighbors, my crazy one, has been a ghost the last few months. It's actually sorta weird as normally I would see him every morning when I left for work and then when I got home. He's like a hermit now and luckily he's keeping his crazy dogs all quiet!

Wow, Christmas is just 7 days away starting tomorrow, the Dreidel's been spinning for a few days now and Kwanzaa starts soon too. Where has this year gone and what will 2007 bring?

Cool, it looks like the fine Ms. Compton (soon to be a Mrs.) won Cross Nats for the 3rd time in a row. We'll have to call Katie something cool like Hat-Trick Katie now. http://www.cyclingnews.com/cross/2006/dec06/UScrossnats06/?id=results/UScrossnats0613

And it looks like Joey T. missed being the collegiate champ by 2 seconds. Great job dude! It's been cool seeing you step up everything this past year.


And now onto a rant.
OK, I flew with Delta out to Cinncinati this past week. All their employees are wearing buttons that say something like "Say no to US Airways" b/c US Airways is planning to take over Delta while Delta is in Bankruptcy and all the old Delta faithful don't want a change in corporate ownership as that's scary b/c it will mean that the Delta execs will be pushed out. Seriously WTF are the rank and file employees smoking!?!? If I worked for a company which was driven into bankruptcy b/c of inept execs, then wouldn't it be prudent to be taken over by a more successful competitor which seems to be riding high at the moment? This was my thought before I even experienced this:

I was supposed to fly back to Philly by 6:20pm on Friday, but there were some delays and so the flight was pushed back 30 minutes. Well the plane ended up coming into Cinci on time and so they started boarding on time. Some people didn't show up as they saw the flight had been pushed back to 5pm and so the people who were wait-listed were allowed to board the plane. Well the original ticket holders showed up and so Delta then had to force the wait-listed people back off the plane and let the correct people board. Then something else happened and we just sat on the plane for another hour just hanging out. So we didn't even leave Cinci until after 6pm. This is just the beginning...
We finally get back to Philly and wallah, no bag. I talk to one of the Delta baggage claim dudes and he's like, "we put it on the next flight out after yours." I was really cool, but I was like dude, you're crazy, why didn't it make my flight, I checked in at the airport 3 hours ahead of time, isn't that what I'm supposed to do? Well it ends up that they totally messed up a flight from the day before from Cinci and that b/c of that they kept on packing each flight up with the bags from each previous flight. So what they did, instead of totally pissing off one whole flight from delayed baggage, they pissed off 5 or more flights b/c they kept on bumping current baggage out for the previous flight's. Crazy, crazy, crazy... So when you hear some sob story about Delta being bought out by US Airways, tell them it's about time someone bought them out!

I finally got my bag today at 6pm delivered to my house. Though of course they said it would be delivered between 9-10:30am Saturday. I stuck around until almost noon waiting, then I went out for a ride and came back and checked on their lost-baggage website that it could come between 9am-9pm. Then at 10:30pm last night I got a phone call at my house and on my cell stating they tried to deliver it in the morning yesterday, but no one was home. WTF? They had all my phone numbers and they could have called right before they showed up to make sure I was home.
Then today they called at 2pm saying they'd swing on by in the next hour or 2 and they showed up at 6pm. Seriously, I was going to do my shopping this weekend, but it looks like I'm going to have to again push it off until the weekend right before Kwanzaa again!

Time for bed!

Congrats to all those who raced Cyclocross Nationals!

-BC