Booty!

So when I finished my morning run UPS was there with a package for me. I wasn't expecting anything but it ended up being my bibs and arm warmers from Voler. They complete my booty list from the cycling weekend a few week(ends) ago. On top of the cycling bibs and arm warmers, I got the Castelli jersey, a gift certificate, and a set of WTB Solano racing tires. 

The Tour of Kansas City is next weekend, but I cannot go due to shooting a wedding. There are two crits and a road race. The winner of just the Cat 4 races that weekend pay out 700 bucks per race. Winner of the Cat1/2 pro series pays out just under 2,000 per race and an overall bonus of $1000 to the top point winner of the weekend. Thats some pretty good money just for spinning some tires and wearing spandex! Rock on.

It's the 5th Tuesday of the month so for tonight's track work out we will run a 3000m then break up into teams for a fun 4 x 800 relay based on the finishings of the 3000. It was supposed to be 93 today (making it around 100 on the track) but we had a small front move and and its still under 80 but humid. I'll take that. 

Cornhusker State Games Triathlon

The state games triathlon came and went yesterday. It ended up being a pretty good day for racing and I ended up racing pretty good for the day. I finished 3rd overall and won my age division as well. I put up a struggle of a swim at 10:12 for the 750m course, 32:50 for the 21k bike (just shy of 24mph pace), and 19:03 (6:07/mile) for the 5k run. I think I ended up with about the 3rd fasted bike split.

Only until after the race did I find out that there was only an 11 second gap between 1st place and 3rd.  Making it more of a bummer, the guy that was directly in front of me was the guy that won. -- There were different heats so I didn't know how close things were. I could have ran him down if I would have known. He was only about 40-50 meters ahead of me for about the last 3/4 of a mile. Instead I casually cruised in, not having the psyche to push myself otherwise. 

It was good to get out there and hammer and see all the other racers that I am acquainted with. 

I ended up looking like a half-assed Swamp Thing I was so covered in algae from the swim. The bike course resembled a busy 3rd world street on the second and third lap of the bike -- once all the other racers got out there. It turned into a danger zone having to mix with the couple of hundred people out there all pushed into one lane on a street. I basically had to say "passing" the entire time on the 3rd lap. The run was a trudge, but my pace was a lot better than my last triathlon and I felt pretty comfortable at the pace I was running. 

I used my F-Stop Satori bag for all my race gear since we had to walk in a ways to the transition zone. Worked like a charm.

A disgruntled prelude to the games

So I came to Lincoln this afternoon so I could pick up my registration packet for the state games triathlon tomorrow. I had to be at the place before 6. When I signed up for the race, they made it sound very important that you get your registration information. You could even pay them an extra 5 bucks to mail it to you. F#ck that, and now -- f#ck them.
All that was in the registration packet was a magazine and some random pieces of paper - oh, and another cotton race t-shirt, and they didn't even have my size. Nothing important what so ever! I broke up my day so I could come down and get this crap for what turns out to be no reason at all. What a bunch of BS. If I would have paid them 5 bucks to send me this crap, I would have spent the money to send them an actual bag of crap back.
My buddy Gerald said I wouldn't need to go and pick it up, and dang it, he was right. I will be writing the state games association on this one. Come on, don't waste my time and my money. How lame, I don't think I have ever gotten a more worthless race packet.
I was planning on coming to Lincoln this evening so I could get some extra sleep, but I had stuff to do today. Sheesh.

Belated Estes Trip Report

At this point, is a trip report really worth it? I was almost over the pain of having to come back to NE when I had to go and process the photos from my trip. I decided to try some new things and make Flash slideshows for the images and group them into categories. Kinda a nice presentation. Unfortunately, I have found that the photo quality is not as crisp as it should be. The contrast is lower and the darks saturation is not what it should be. Oh well.

Climbs from the weekend - Photos were few and far between. Just didn't work out too well to take pictures of climbing.

Flora - Mainly from the Lumpy area.

F-Stop Gear - Great gear. Have gear, will travel. Take photos of it along the way.

Estes Valley and Lumpy Ridge

Peoples - They let me take their picture.

Peoples Again - They still let me take pictures.

The Thumb - 4th of July evening fun. Not for the weak and queasy!

So any who, the majority of we climbers left on Thursday afternoon and when I say majority I will mention that there was a full contingency of us going. Chris, Nicole, Marydale, James, Bill, Ron, Rusty, Paul, Jesse, Jesse the Younger, Teddy and I. - Phew! Just count them, I know you won't! Somehow with all those faces, I didn't manage to even get photos of everyone. (Um. Does that really make sense?) Sorry about that. 

First night. The campground could not be found so 8 of us piled into a 2 bed hotel room (They were $160 a night!), but we were rewarded in the morning with breakfast at The Egg and I. Scrumptious. 

Friday, we hiked back to Sundance Buttress at Lumpy and went up Kor's Flake. 3 teams of 3, one of 2. It took all day but was a really nice climb. Recommended. That evening we found camp and Rusty went to work over the stove making a spicy chicken vindaloo. And since it was the 4th, a group this large could not be complete without a trip to the hospital. Marydale (MD) stepped up to the opportunity and decided to try and remove part of her thumb a camping knife (a sharp knife is a safe knife) while feathering kindling to make a fire. The hospital was a good amount of fun -- even MD had a good time. 

Saturday the group split up. Half went and did Spearhead while the other half half-assed the day and went social leisure. We took it easy in the morning, some bouldered with the legendary Seth and the rest of us headed to the Ironclads. We reconvened at Lane Ranch where Seth worked and had a late lunch and hung out during a afternoon shower. Pushing back up to Lumpy, Little Twin Owls was the destination. While Jesse worked it, I tried to get to the top via a supposed 5.0 on the back side. Maybe it was because I was still wearing a full pack and sandals that it felt harder or that it was probably more like a 5.6 or so, but it was not ideal and I was not enjoying this soloing venture. I topped out and anchored off to only find that I had no shot without a full rope and ascenders -- too much work at this point. I sat on the head of a owl and gazed at mountains thinking thoughts (tell me why I don't live here again?), and thinking about nothing while others worked the route on TR.  I eventually rapped down, with full pack on again, and cleaned Chris's gear. One of his C3s was a real doozie and it took me a long time to get out. We finished the night up at some little restaurant that turned out to be mediocre at best. Oh, it was my birthday too.

Sunday: Since the majority of the group was headed back to NE today, Chris and I hiked up the the Bookend area and did The Climb of the Ancient Mariner. Super sweet route with a nice little roof and 10a slab on P1 and probably around 125+ feet of slab making up P2. The final pitch left you saying. "Eh." P2 made it all worth it in the end. We topped out in a small downpour and headed back into town since the weather continued to lay down the law of wetness. We met up with Rusty and his friend Paul at Notch-top Cafe, even though it was not open. We had drank beer and ate chips and salsa while making plans for dinner. Dinner was awesome. Sausage, rolls, bell peppers with onions, and camp fries. We finished the night out prepping our gear to climb the diamond on Longs.

Monday: This was our big day. Longs Peak. Mentioning this to Chris would make his ears perk up like a teenage boy walking by Victoria's Secret. We woke at 0230 to find completely overcast skies. The Diamond was out, and Chris lost his chubby. We re-awoke at 0545, ate, coffee, and headed to the trail head to Petit Grepon -- and watched the clouds roll into the canyon like mashed potatoes. Back to Lumpy. We did J-Crack and George's Tree before calling it a day. Going back into Estes, we had coffee and then got groceries. During this time, the weather finally cleared over Longs and it was plainly apparent that it snowed up there today. Phew! With nothing left to do we made dinner plans. It was even more amazing. Camp french fries and fire grilled mini burgers were the cat's meow while being downed with an IPA from Stone Brewing out of CA. Any sort of surly attitude was subsided by rich food. 

Tuesday: We packed camp, and went to pick up James from Seth, which we almost forgot about since there is no way to communicate up there and we had not seen him since Sunday morning. Not being able to convince Chris to go to Eldo to do Yellow Spur, we headed home.  That car ride home gets more painful every time.

Boulevard dreaming...

OMAHA CYCLING WEEKEND PHOTOS BELOW THE RANT

Sometimes it's nice to take it easy on a summer evening, kick back and relax. You crack open a beer and forget about your worries... or in my case, you forget you put a put a pot of soup on the stove and in the time it takes to get down a few satisfying sips of the fizzy, the soup has boiled over and made messy all over the stove. It's almost amazing that 12 ounces of soup can escape a sauce pan in such a short amount of time. Damned amazing.

Upon seeing this, I frowned so big that my bottom lip nearly hit me in the gonads. Oh wait, it gets better you see, I have  a gas range and right there by the burner is a hole. A glorious hole. Soup seems to like to go down that hole just about as much as I like licking, then putting back, the little blocks of sample cheese they have at grocery stores. Manchego is my favorite taste, but I just can't afford those calories plumping up my sculpted ass. 

So ... beneath the nice white enameled surface of the stove top is an absolute disaster of small pipes, screws, fittings and what have you a god damned mess of shit covered in soup. Tomato soup. It was like trying to cleanly scoop the snow off a cobble stone driveway covered with metal snakes levitating above the surface, and shit, the snakes are wearing women's panties. Sexy ones. Just ridiculous. It took ingenuity, a good amount of cursing and a rubber spatula to get it all cleaned up. All the angles were bad, tight corners, cramping muscles and nothing was sealed so you could just tell that it was dripping down the cracks. (Sounds like a bad sexual experience.)

After using a mono-pod as a kick stand to hold up the lid (finally a use for all that expensive photography gear I buy), I got all the soup cleaned up and lined the bottom with tin foil so when it happens again, it won't be such a hassle. That's right folks. When. Because stupid shit like this happens to me all the time, and since I like to drink beer while pretending to be Rachel Ray, you can guarantee that I am gonna flood the stove top again with no ark to save the giraffes and god damn ring tailed lemurs. And yes, I managed to sacrifice about 3 ounces of soup that I then watered down into 6. F#ckin' A Peter man. Ah, those peaceful summer nights. 

Omaha Cycling Weekend Photos

Links to OCW event photos found below.

Last weekend was the Omaha Cycling Weekend and I am finally getting around to saying anything about it. As some of you may know, it is one of Omaha's premier bike racing weekends which entails a short Saturday morning time trial, a twilight criterium and another criterium on Sunday which is seated in down town Omaha. It being my first year at the event and my first real stint at road bike racing, I was quite impressed by the whole situation.
I initially went in just planning on doing the TT on Saturday morning, but after that went pretty well, Mr. Eric Brunt convinced me that I should do the criterium that evening as well. For those of you that don't know what a criterium is, well, look it up. Unfortunately, I took to long to post about the event, so I won't bother going much into details, though I am sure my interest could be sparked with beer.
I did however shoot the Cat 3 and Pro 1/2 on Saturday with minimal success and happened to talk to the pace car driver that evening about riding with him and shooting the next day during the races. -- At the time, I was not planning on racing since I could barely walk after the race that evening... but low and behold, I felt fine the next morning and raced that afternoon, leading the field for the majority of the race and learning a few lessons from all the other bike racers.
It was a very entertaining experience to say the least.
I then jumped into the pace car, a new BMW Z3 roadster and shot the Pro 1/2s race. Seeings how the course was a three turn (one of them being a 270+ degree hair pin) loop measuring about .5 of a mile, I got quite sick staring thru a 400mm telephoto lens while sitting and shooting backwards in the car. The CAT 1/2 riders were really crushing it and I was trying my darndest to capture the action while not hurling on the hand stitched BMW leather. They say a roadster like that will get you chicks, but after trying to get comfortable in those seats in any sort of position that was not facing forward, I can pretty much guarantee that you won't actually be getting laid IN the car.
With that said here are the links to the fruit of my labor as well as my friend and shooting partner Justin Limoges photos as well. Enjoy and happy pedaling.

Our images are available for purchase, and after looking at the images, you may find that our photos are not really like the standard event photographers. We don't work in bulk and we don't charge f#ckin' 12 bucks for a 4x6. We are artists and professionals. If you see something you like, and would like a different "treatment" (black & white, color selective, etc.) done to an image, let us know and we will be happy to work with you.

Lucas Marshall's OCW Criterium Photos

Justin Limoges' OCW Criterium Photos


P.S. Justin and I are professional wedding photographers as well. Keep us in mind!!

When new shoe runs go bad...

More Storm Disaster Photos

As many of you know, last Friday Omaha was hit by a storm that was equipped with straight line winds that tore a good section of Omaha a new one. Wind speeds were clipped anywhere from 90-120 mph accompanied by a ridiculous amount of rain in a very short time period. It was amazing.

I was chatting online  with the Jer and procrastinating a run that evening when I decided to get it over with. As I put on my new running kicks and a my new multi-panel running hat, that keeps my head from frying like an egg, I looked at the radar online. There was a storm approaching but it was still way outside of town. I thought,"I've got time to put in a 6 miler before it hits" and told Jer that I "am gonna go get my run in before the storm hits." I stepped out the door, hit the START button on my watch and pounded down the hill. I was about a block an a half away and felt a small drizzle of rain and started to think this maybe was not the best idea. 

My mind was made up only a few feet later when a gust of wind that nearly took off my new hat and sand blasted my bare chest (and nippies!) with more sand than I cared for. If that wasn't enough, two trees in the park I was beside snapped and toppled to the ground. I spun on my heals and double timed it back to the front porch. 

My crazy neighbors were on it checkin' things out and no sooner to my arrival, the air began to fill with small debris and the wind blew the furniture off the porch. Eric and his room mates emerged from across the street on to their porch and we waved at each other like a couple of school girls returning from summer vacation. I, still in my cute running outfit, pranced across the dampening street and was topping out on their stairs when the wind went all crazy banshee on us. A limp fell onto a fan I just pranced by and as we all stared as my house across the street literally became to disappear with  the sheer density of debris and rain.

There was a loud crack from behind Eric's house as the tree in his back yard snapped and attempted to hurdle the house. Unfortunately, it didn't and smashed the side of his roof and house and landed literally right beside us at the front of his house. Acting again like little school girls, we scampered into the house and into the basement for safety. 

Waiting only moments, Eric and I returned upstairs and found that someone had built a makeshift shower in his kitchen in the form of a huge hole in his roof. We grabbed pots and pans and coolers to collect the water that was rapidly accumulating on his hard wood floor.

I went back outside and watched as the storm began to calm down. 

I borrowed some flip flops, which I have yet to return, and fjord-ed across the street to my place to change, grab a rain coat and my F-stop bag filled with all my camera gear. It worked wonders walking around the neighbor hood as well as biking. The rest is in the photos. 

I was lucky enough to only be without power for about 20 hours. Out of the said 130,000 + that had their power knocked out I think only a few thousand are still without this evening.