Empty Hospital

A wise man named Fat Albert once told a misbehaving friend that he was 'like school in the summertime - no class.'. I am sometimes like an empty hospital - no patience (sic). This manifests in a couple of ways. Micro - at the beginning of races when I tear ass to try and get to the front of races instead of steadily picking through the field. Macro is that I'm anxious to get better results. My basis for comparison is a little skewed since someone in my family is a far better empty hospital than I am. Seriously no patients (sic).

There's not enough left in the season to affect a whole lot, in terms of training and fitness, which makes things a bit anti-climactic. It's pretty much just store it away as intel for next year and get a better headstart on it. Not hard to do when you are putting your bike together the night before the third or fourth weekend of the season. I gladly take that bullet for this year, though, since we came up with a pretty exceptional bike as a result of taking the extra time.

Life on our street is like Mayberry. We gave out like 6 huge bags of candy. Kids are funny. If you give a handful of candy to one kid, and that handful happens to contain 4 pieces, and then another kid gets a handful with 3 pieces, the kid who got shorted will expect you to realize what's going on and make amends, or will just take matters into his/her hands and correct. This happened several times. Also, parents absolutely hate how much candy we were giving out. Sugar buzz 'r' us. Trying to get wheels built with the doorbell going off every 8 seconds just wasn't happening.

So back to the cross thing, I'm been struck by how basically steady a lot of people's results are despite the huge volume of variables - courses, weather, rough weeks at work, bad start positions, etc - and I think I'm starting to understand this a bit better. I've fortunately been on a generally upward trend as I figure out how the fluck to race cx races, but I expect some big variations along the learning curve. Two forward, one back. I hope I can keep it that net positive for awhile.

It seems like there's more of a rage for discs now. I think it's entirely artificial. No one's talking about the logistical pain in the ass that is having discs. Get a new disc bike and keep your old one as a pit bike? That's great but each needs totally separate wheels, and we'll see what else diverges in time (brifters, tire treads, who knows what else). If the gear is all aimed at the pro level "this is the ultimate solution" end of things, it's going to kill the average player. This is a big part of why I am generally anti pro in so many sports. Pro windsurfing killed windsurfing. Pro sailing is fuckingup sailing pretty well. I don't like the trend of these things.