May 17, 2009

Bike rides, missing cameras, and Pro Protest

Took the Trek out to Babler State Park to see what the fuss is about. Meh. Sure, it's a nice park, and it has some hills. But the hills - while steep - are not particularly long, and the rest of the lap is pretty flat/downhill. So sure, the brief hills are good for spiking your heart rate, the recovery is far, far too long. The hill by my brother's house is way better, because a) it's steeper than Babler; b) it's longer than Babler; c) way, way shorter recovery. Scenery is not as nice, though.

My camera, it is MIA. Last seen taking pictures of the Trek and niece M at my brother's place. Hopefully it is still over there, 'cause it wasn't in my bag when I got home! You can thank the MIA camera for the lack of pictures in this entry!

Pro Protest...Stage 9 of the Giro D'Italia was today, and the peloton staged a protest. I.e. didn't race. They tooled along at a modest pace for mostly the entire stage, then at the very end a few sprinter's teams got wound up and fought it out. "Ego Boy" Cavendish got the win. The protest was for overtly unsafe conditions - from various online sources there were cars parked on the course, too many pedestrians meandering around the course, and tram lines running parallel with the course. Tram lines + skinny bike tires = not good. Not having been there, I can't say for sure - but mostly I sympathize. Those guys race in some atrocious conditions, so it must have been really bad to lead to a mass slowdown. They are professionals, after all, their natural instinct is to go fast and race! To set that aside I figure they have their reasons.

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