Time to start racing again

This has been a weird year. I'm not talking about the Pats blowing their perfect season with the loss to the Giants, or the Celtics winning it all after coming off the worst record in a LONGGGG time, or a Tour that now has a number of riders booted for CERA, or the wild economic ride, or the insanely long presidential race (most of the year I lived in NH- so it has been long)- no I'm talking about a cycling season that sort of came and went and I had little to show for it.

Obviously this was due to the fact that I was contemplating retirement, more so that I could then mount a comeback- but then someone reminded me that you actually have to have gotten to a certain level before you can retire. And if you haven't retired you can't really mount a comeback. This whole having to do one thing before you do another has caused a great deal of confusion in my little world.

This means I am announcing my "I never retired so this isn't a comeback, but I haven't really trained so don't expect much" return to the world of cycling as defined by course tape, start and finish lines, and result sheets that show how far from the front you finished.

Saturday I'll head over to New Gloucester for the Downeast Cross Race. I'm not sure why it's New Gloucester, as Gloucester, MA should have been the "New Gloucester" sort of like New Hampshire- of course with the poor understanding of geography in this country maybe they thing that Gloucester, MA is the "original" Gloucester- who knows.

Then I head up to Great Glen Trails for the start of their cross series on Sunday- that should be fun- a bit more laid back (or at least I hope). Either way it'll be fun to go hard for a bit of time.

I've got some work to do on my bike as I have the saddle affectionately known as the "ass razor" on my cross bike right now and I that just isn't going to cut it- no pun intended. So I need to pull another saddle off of a bike to make the remounts more manageable. I also need to "rewire" the brakes so that my left hand is my back brake- one of these days I'll just do all my bikes that way so that I'm used to it all year long and not going through the hassle.

That's my story for the moment, more to come when another moment comes along.

latter- DEA

late edit- just saw an article that GW wants to ease restrictions in national parks to allow mountain biking- hmmm, may need to read up on this