We just got back from a little mini vacation to NEPA. Angelique’s father got married. Nice ceremony and a great party. I was the ‘official’ wedding photographer for the day. Funny. I’ve never done wedding photography. It’s definitely a creative skill. I have new found respect for wedding photographers.
It was nice to visit the hills of NEPA again. Angelique and I both realized we miss the mountains, woods and wegmans a lot! It was an enlightening trip…
Did my second mountain bike race two weeks ago. This time on an actual mountain bike. What a difference it made! No cramps this time, but I still managed to crash. I’ve been riding the mountain bike more and I feel its starting pay off. I can tell I’m getting a little quicker through turns and trusting my abilities more. We’ll see this Sunday at Dillon State park, another race. Angelique took this nice photo of me at the last race:
I don’t know why she didn’t post this! She made a cute little owl in a craft class a few weeks ago. Deezer likes it. Yeah! Deezer likes to give it ‘presents’.
One of my favorite cds right now: Tapes N Tapes
Oh man this is amazing!
“I spend a lot of time with my Friesians and they definitely ‘moo’ with a Somerset drawl,”
so i bought the new fall fashion issue of vogue last night. i love doing that every year, picking up a phonebook-sized tome of glossiness. but it was bittersweet for me. i love fashion. i have always liked to keep up with that world. but every other page had a model swathed in fur. uuggggh. and it’s often designers and brands that i really, really like: marc jacobs, miuccia prada. burberry. it has come to the point where it sickens me. it just looks INSANE, and in a bad way. the chinchilla NEEDS its gorgeous grey fur, not us. the lynx, the fox…why should we as humans be wearing that???is it because it’s beautiful? well, that’s right, it is beautiful! it’s not necessarily the aesthetic of fur that bothers me because of the fact that nature has created some remarkable things. but it’s the suffering and cruelty and killing that i can’t reconcile with, no matter what. that’s why i don’t necessarily mind faux fur. i know andy doesn’t even like faux fur because of what it implies, and i see that point, too. but my heart wouldn’t be so heavy if i knew that i was looking at faux on every other page instead of the real thing.it’s also amazing to me how the fashion world barely gives a damn about animal rights. along with the fox stole goes the real crocodile gloves, the leather bag, the suede boots. noo! i don’t want to seem like a hypocrite especially since i still have leather things that i use. i mean, i put an indefinite moratorium on buying leather goods for the past year or two, but i still wear some of the stuff i have because i can’t see throwing them out. but the hermes ads really got to me. there’s a woman in a mink poncho leading a beautiful horse. so the horse is okay to remain alive, i guess. and the cole haan ad with the woman in a fur-trimmed leather jacket petting a gorgeous springer spaniel. cats and dogs have all the luck, indeed! i’m just surprised that everyone thinks all of this is a-okay and they wear this stuff. including people i like, such as kate moss. she surely doesn’t give a damn.and i just saw a cover of w with christina ricci wearing a fur coat. and all the models. they don’t care either. geez.
stella mccartney has it right. go
stella! i love you! she did an anti-fur
video for peta. seek the truth my people!
anyway, there are things that were enjoyable to look at, though. like the kooky equestrian 1960’s type balenciaga.
ya gotta love style.com for looking at pictures of runway shows like this. very thorough and easy to navigate.
Man, honey. we gotta be more on the ball about this blogging business! sorry everyone. Not much to report here. Lots of work lately.
I found this guy’s blog, another vegan bike racer. Pretty cool, wish I had a track locally.
http://cycling.thenoisies.com/
This weekend should be busy. Crit on Friday night in Marysville and a mt. bike race at Caesers Creek State Park on Sunday. Fun. Fun. I’m hooked on mountain bikes again (along with all other bike forms), I bought my old Trek 6700 off of Campbell (my boss) and will tune it up this weekend for the race. I haven’t been on that thing in three years! If you’re wondering its still not as fun as cyclocross though. that’s the best.
Other news: Camera Obscura is good but not as good as the new Concretes cd. Very good again. Not as catchy as the last cd but it has grown on me.
Being vegan rules! see ya.
so what does it mean when you’re getting all your new music information from public radio? hmmm. (how about the classical pianist who covers elliott smith tunes…interesting.) anyway, i was listening to a segment on npr about jose gonzalez. he sounds like nick drake and has that “sleepytime” feel which is nice. he’s coming to columbus in october, and he’s playing at the wexner center. i like the wexner center (we saw belle & sebastian there) so i think i’d like to go. this photo is courtesy of infinitefurby on flickr. he’s got some other good photos too.
Race report from Lake Hope OMBC Mountain Bike Race: Sunday I attempted my first mountain bike race. Well, kind of. I had the bright idea of attempting it on my cross bike. It was fun at first, I was blazing fast and killing it. Powering up the climbs, muscling around riders, I even did a dismount/remount over a log pile. It was about 45 minutes into the race and I was in the lead and thinking I could hold it to the finish. Then I could tell I was getting a little tired. I chugged some more Gatorade and tried to focus, but it didn’t help. Going around a loose left turn with some roots and I went down. Ate some sand! Scratched my elbow, shoulder, knee and just below my eye. Lucky I had sunglasses on or my eye would have been completely screwed. I got up quick assessed the damage and rode on but should have known my muscles didn’t feel the same. I started to cramp. No. I’m talking CRAMP, like locked up rolling on the ground screaming (literally) in agony. Never had cramps that bad. I would ride along and just lock up and fall over. It was terrible! A few crashes and cramps later I rolled through the finish a broken man.
But I live to fight again. I’ll be back…
Turns out it was a bad day for Angelique also! She rolled her ankle and got a nice sprain while waiting for my sorry ass.
Next pic was from the Springfield Criterium, two weeks ago. A fun super safe race that was about 45 minutes west of Columbus. It was the first crit I’ve done that I didn’t see a crash in. Amazing! They do exist. Decent size field in the cat 5s, about 25 riders. I felt good but knew it was only a matter of time before the heat caught up with me. I could follow the attacks but couldn’t put in any myself. To bad, all I needed was a little kick in the end and I could have taken it but the heat got me and I settled for 6th. Not bad, I was happy knowing I left it all out there.
You missed it. I should have taken a photo of dinner tonight. Yums. Fresh sweet corn on the cob with homemade black bean soup. Yums.
