The Birthday Weekend

Castner and I left my driveway to head for the Something Wicked 6 hours of Cathedral Pines race on Long Island at 5:30 am. The Garmin's ETA to Cathedral Pines was 7:34. He kept looking at the Garmin. There was some sort of adversarial relationship there that I was just becoming privy to. It was a game. He wasn't checking where the hell he was going he was trying to beat the Garmin. Sweet Lord. I was riding with a madman. By the time we had gotten to the GWB the ETA was 7:22 am. We pulled into the CP6 at 7:00 am. No joke. Now I know why everyone says that you'll "Kiss the ground" when you get out of Castner's truck. Not a word of a lie.

So I lived through the terror that I call Castner's driving and feel the emotional scarring is negligible (I've since gone dead inside) and I came home with a win in the Women's SS. It was 70 miles of tight, twisty singletrack. The first two laps I actually felt dizzy and like I had motion sickness because of all the turns. After that I just tried to stay in a rhythm and not run into any trees. Those suckers were everywhere. I think I wore holes in the shoulders of my jersey. The first lap and the last lap were the most frustrating because of the traffic. All of the others in between went pretty smoothly. Well, except for the one where I ran into a tree face first, the one where I caught my handle bar and and did a 90 degree turn around the tree and the one where I crashed on a nothing, smidge of a log like a spaz. Besides that, smooth sailing. It was a relief to have a good day after feeling so shitty the week beforehand.

My favorite trail at Waway

For my birthday I had a plan. That plan was to sleep in and do absolutely nothing. The body really wasn't into letting me sleep in. It wanted to punish me for what I had done to it on Saturday. After popping one too many NSAIDs I mustered up the strength to go on an easy ride. It was too nice of a day to waste. Mike and I headed to Waway. I didn't think I felt that bad until we started to climb up Cherry Ridge REALLY easy and I felt like hot death. I at least made it through some of my favorite pieces of singletrack before I threw in the towel and we spun home.

Just recently they opened up a Fetch in Warwick. Had planned on going there for dinner. However, all I could think about was a meatball parm from a local pizza joint. A meatball parm and a Pepperidge Farm cake ended up being the birthday meal of choice. I'm a cheap date, what can I say?