it's long.  sorry.

5th road race, 1st crit, 3rd omnium, 1st TTT, 5th team omnium

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the drive down sucked.  we left boston at 2 am.  i stayed awake with the
first driver and took my shift through ct and ny at 4 am, after being up
all night.  got off at 6, slept till 9: 30 am, had breakfast at bob evans
in carlisle, pa.  slept on and off in the backseat thereafter all the way
to ohio.  =)  wv had a lot of porn shops along the highway.

we were staying on the outside of town, not in the ohio u dorm everyone
else was staying in.  (so i managed not to meet ANYBODY new all weekend,
basically.)  we negotiated to get a couple extra rooms that were already
paid for so that mark and brad would have a place to sleep.  so i was at a
bike race with 4 other people (dan, karina, brad, and mark) and we all had
our own QUEEN SIZE beds.  it was pretty cool.               

and that night in the streets of athens i got to see what i missed out on
by not going to a real college.

road race was really, really hot.  i was quite unhappy during lap one, got
dropped on the 20% grade section.  stayed with some div 1 girls laps 2 and
3, lost them when i crashed at 3 mph off the side of the road twice, again
on the 20% grade section.  dropped my chain, walked a bit, would have
caught two div 2 girls if i'd stayed with my mini-pack but oh well.

i was really nervous for the crit.  there were a lot of people around from
the eastern conference who kept on telling me that this should be my
race... got a good warm-up.  couldn't get into my pedal coming off the
line, bad position at the back of the pack.  couldn't really move up for
awhile because my bike was making a funny noise.  thought maybe the bricks
knocked my rear wheel around.  mark checked and said i could get a free
lap, which i finally took at minute 20 (35 minutes to go).  tire rubber        
had melted onto my frame, but the officials called it as glue and wouldn't
give me the free lap.  i had to chase my way back on from a 45-second
gap.  brad said it kept fluctuating, but i halved the gap during one lap
after i saw the pack up ahead.  caught them two laps later.  minute 35, 20
to go.  i was feeling a bit blown so sat on the back for awhile.  got 3rd
in a prime.  nobody was attacking.  last lap, i made it up the wall second
and into the hard downhill left at 30+ mph, stayed behind the other
michele smith on the straightaway and next left.  150 m to the finish, on
brick.  i came around beat her by about 3 bike lengths, i think.  i'll
have to look at the photo.  anyway, it was the most exciting moment of my
life.  i called the shop from the finish line after i got interviewed and
I heard later that Carl started jumping up and down and yelling to everyone
in the shop that i won. =)  mark picked me up and carried me around for a
while.  i think the best part was that the three people who are
responsible for me being a cyclist today (mark, brad, dan) were
there.  lots of eastern conf people were cheering during the race and even
some drunk frat boys who talked to karina before we started.  (they asked  
what school we were from, when the race was, then puked off their balcony
some more.  it was about noon.  they didn't know our names so they kept
screaming "tufts" over and over again.)

awards ceremony was great.  eastern conf women kicked ass.  i won a brick
from the road the crit was on stamped with "athens block."  it was hard to
hold it up with one hand for the podium.  and i was unhappy about wearing
my nasty, nasty jersey over clean clothes but whatever.

pumped for the ttt.  karina and i were going strong, could see the girls
who started ahead of us when we got to the turnaround.  i wanted badly to
catch them so i really pushed the pace.  we got them about 2k from the
finish (they finished 3rd) and we ended up winning by about 15 seconds i
think.

drove back home.  stayed in philly with a upenn girl.  got photos of
dan running up the rocky steps with his bicycle.  drove from philly   
to mt kisco, ny and someone took over after that.  traveled 1 mph for two
hours at the ct-ma border, got bored, ran around outside the car a lot and
took photos.  dan sprinted for the ma border on foot.

that was natz.  that night i went to a big bike party in davis sq.  mark
tried to get me to wear the jersey and all the medals but we with
compromised with just the crit medal because i felt like an idiot.  he
said that tim johnson wore his bronze from 'cross worlds into discos in
paris or something and that girls were all over him.  but alas, it did not
work for me.  no discos, and no girls.