Yep, I still cannot parallel park.

But, my yoga teacher still let me borrow his car (1986 Honda Accord... that's almost as old as me) for the weekend for a solo trip to Roanoke, VA. Shhh... don't mention to him about the parking. That's 6.5 hours of driving mostly on highways, which is something we don't really have back home. Behold such a rare sight that it had to be documented. Plus, Virginia has quite the scenery with the Blue Ridge Parkway (totally not the Blue Ridge Parkway in the background by the way and yes those are skull earings made by the lovely Gretchen Diehl)...
The 4th of July weekend marks my 1 year of bike racing. I was getting dropped from the cat 3/4 field last year at Fitchburg. I headed to Virginia because I couldn't take off that much time from work (with grad school hopefully starting soon) to race there again this year. Virginia was a nice change. Friday was this uphill timetrial, which is probably the most miserable race invented by man. Tried to get Brian Walton to share with me the secrets because he apparently holds the course record. Saturday and Sunday were crits to complete the omnium. In between, I got to hang out with my buddy Chris that taught me how to shift gears on a hybrid that he sold me 2 years ago. After purging the destruction that was the entire month of June, I felt ready to finally want to race again.

It was a crazy weekend with basically me versus the entire Team Marshall Mechanical. I still haven't won a legitimate roadrace, but I somehow managed to take the omnium. It was a battle, and I totally have the wounds to show because I crashed today and somehow very luckily managed to still podium with a broken rear derailleur.

The people in Roanoke had such a friendly disposition. When I asked one of the officials where the results were, he asked if I was a junior. This nice couple took photos and then printed them for me and gave me them to me right after the race. The race announcer asked me how I pronounce my last name... lol... I love it when they do that. This one nice man, James, who owns a bike rental store made me coffee and he took one of the paper things with my name on it from the pit wheels and asked me to autograph it. Geeeez... totally not that status.

But, in the end, I can't believe it (also can't believe the car+me survived the trip), so here's to 1 year of racing and 2 years of riding. I'm hoping for many fun-filled years to come.