All the leaves are brown ...

Well, I guess I can't complain too much. At least the sky isn't gray. The harsh reality of Fall has hit me kinda hard in the last few days. I spent most of October in various parts of Florida, so I sort of forgot that Autumn is setting in. I was walking around in board shorts and flip flops, going to the beach, putting on sunscreen, and basically living in my own happy little world until I had to come to stupid North Carolina. Now it's cold and I'm not happy about it. Mostly because I really didn't pack enough cool weather clothing. Back in ... September when I was getting ready for this little jaunt, I thought I was really planning ahead by packing one pair of pants (actual full-length pants, not capris or shorts), one pair of real shoes, two pairs of socks, and one long-sleeved shirt. Now I feel stupid for not packing more stuff. Oh well. That gave me an excuse to go shopping.

And while I'm complaining, not only did we have an event ruined by the pouring rain, but I also managed to get a flat on my trailer on the way there. And of course, the guys were more than willing to stand around taking pictures:



Anywho ... I've been working way too much in the last week or so, so I haven't had time to post much. What I really wanted to tell you about before I started whining about Fall was the sweet paddling I did in Tallahassee. I was traveling through Tallahizzy last week and had a day off, so I met up with this guy there to go paddling. While we were driving to the river, he mentioned that we might see some cool wildlife. I'm sure I don't have to mention my fascination with alligators and manatees, as I have written about this before, but I tried not to get my hopes up about seeing them. So we got to the river and Andy unloaded our boats. At this point, I learned that it's a really good idea to go paddling with someone who is both tall and strong because then they can load and unload the boats while I just kick rocks and stuff. Then we started paddling upriver. The water was pretty cold and really clear. Apparently the river is fed by natural springs or something. We saw these fish jumping about a foot out of the water. Mullets. Seriously. You learn something new every day. That day, I learned that "mullet" is not just a term describing Billy Ray Cyrus's hair. So I was having a pretty good time and was happy enough to be out on the water. BUT THEN .... we heard this sound that sounded like a whale doing that thing with it's blowhole (that sounds a little dirty, doesn't it?). Turns out it was these:









Yeah ... that's right ... MANATEES! At first we just saw two of them, and one of them was just a little (relatively speaking) guy. That second picture is the little guy under water. I took that with my sweet camera that I still haven't managed to break yet. If you look closely in the last picture, you can see them next to my boat. Then as we kept paddling we kept seeing more MANATEES! By the end of the day we'd seen: 8 MANATEES!, 1 otter, 2 turtles, 2 owls, and a whole bunch of mullets (the fish, not the redneck haircut). Then we (and by "we," I mean, "Andy") loaded up the boats. We went into the nearest little town and had fish sandwiches and beer. Needless to say, it was a pretty good day for me.

Other than that, there's only been the usual amount of excitement. By mere coincidence, I did get to meet up with my fun friends Mimi and Jeff for a day at the beach, which was made better by a delicious bottle of wine sent from a friend:



We didn't have any glasses, and there was no way to keep it chilled, so we had no choice but to drink it from the bottle while sitting on the beach. Keepin' it classy. Then we ended up at Downtown Disney and I wanted to die until we found the Margarita Shack, at which point I started to become increasingly happy with each delicious drink. Then of course, Jeff and Mimi had my back and they let me have some floor space in their hotel room so I didn't have to pony up the cash for one myself. Beats the hell out of sleeping in the car!

Ahh ... sunny, warm Florida ...

While North Carolina is cold this time of year, it's really not such a bad place. I did manage to get one really good mountain bike ride in on Sunday, and I have a day off tomorrow, so I should be able to get another one in. I just have to make sure I get my flat tire from last week fixed because well ... I have another flat on the trailer. Bummer. Oh well. at least I'm not working on Halloween, which means I'll be drinking and making fun of people instead. Not bummer.

Does this look infected?

My leg doesn't look so good. But it's been pretty itchy, so that means it's healing, right?

Okayalright.

First of all, you'll be happy (or maybe disappointed) to know that I did not have a nervous breakdown yesterday because of UPS.com. With stern words and a furrowed brow, I managed to finally get my urgent shipping label made.

I'm still in Florida, so that makes me pretty happy. I spent all of last week in south Florida, but I only had two events, so I got caught up on some important things: sleep, paperwork, drinking, and paddling. I even had good company on my last two outings, which is a welcome change from traveling alone. Some nice boys from one of the shops went with me one day:

I'm fascinated by manatees:

Then I had to do some drinking with Becky, with whom I worked and stayed all week. I kept a close eye on her alcohol to make sure she didn't try to pour it in my gnarly wound (which I think might be a little infected now). Then I got to paddle again! We went down to Miami since we knew we could rent a kayak for Becky there pretty easily. We paddled down the river (we did go under that creepy bridge this time) and out across the bay to this little island. There were huge ass spiders all over the place, so we didn't stay long:

The perils of drinking like a fish:

We got kinda tired of running into big creepy spiders, so we turned around and found a couple boats anchored on the beach. Becky made friends with some people and managed to acquire us some delicious beers. We also played with their cute dog who really liked chasing coconuts:

Then we realized it was going to be a long paddle back against the wind, so we said bye to our temporary beer-giving friends and headed away from BeerCanSpider Island.


There's plenty more I'd love to tell you about, but it's going to have to wait. I've got some work to do.

Public Service Announcement:

I'm interrupting your regular programming to let you know that I am about to go completely ape shit on UPS.com.

Thus, no real blog post at this time. Maybe tomorrow.

time flies ...

As usual, I really don't know where to start. The last time you heard from me, I was at home getting ready to go work my ass off at Interbike. I did, in fact, work hella hard there. I did get a couple chances to ride mountain bikes in the desert, which turned out to be really cool. It was weird at first, since there were no trees and I've always equated mountain biking with trees, but then it was pretty sweet. Now I can sort of understand why people like the west so much. Our last ride there was one that we kinda squeezed in right before dark. We're slow, so the last quarter or so of our ride was by moonlight, which was alright, since there were no trees. There are plenty of stories that go along with a week in Vegas, but I'm going to leave those out for now. I also really should have taken more pictures, but the only one I took was this one on that last ride:

I flew home from Vegas and was warmly greeted at the airport by all three of my roommates. Pip even worked really hard to make me this sign:

It's a little hard to read in the picture, but it says: Rossina. I hope UR pretty as your picture in the catalog. Thanks mailorderbrides.com! Dumbass couldn't even spell my name right. Oh well. It was well worth the effort. Thanks Pip!

After Vegas, I was home for two days and then I took off for Orlando. I did some events and then had some time to go for a ride. The trails around here aren't anything like the trails back in Arkansas. For starters, this state is flatter than .... crap, I don't know .... something that's really flat. They make up for it with a shit ton of unnecessary turns and stuff. It was alright though, it's just hard to get a good workout in on stuff like that. In any case, I did see this huge ass turtle just kickin' it next to the trail. I think he was mad, cause he hissed at me a lot:

Sorry you had a bad day, little dude.

I always like to get at least one picture of every trail, so here's the one:

After I finished things up in central Florida, I had a couple of days off, so laid around at my friend Kellen's house for a little while before heading down toward Miami to get a ride in on one of about three trails in south Florida. On the way from the car to the trail, I ran into what is probably the ugliest creature I have ever seen in person:

Bleh. It looked all pissed off. Then again, I guess I would be pretty pissed off too if I looked like that.

So I found the trail. It was nice to be out on my bike, but I have to say, there's a reason mountain biking isn't that popular around here. It sucks. So I rode for about 45 minutes, and was a little irritated the whole time about how crappy the riding here is. Then I quit paying much attention and started to let my mind wander. This was a bad thing. I came around a corner and hit a root and did this weird sideways endo thing. It's hard to explain, but all you really need to know is that I ended up on my ass with my bike on top of me. After that I was like, "fuck this," and I headed back to the car. After careful examination, I realized that I had hurt the following: my pride, my hip, and my calf:

Yeah. There's a pretty good chunk of my skin missing there. Ow. Actually, it didn't really hurt that bad until my "friend" Becky poured rubbing alcohol all over it and then started prodding it like a stupid science experiment. But maybe now it won't leave a nasty scar.

After giving up on biking for the day, I decided it was about time to bust out the kayak. I took a little cruise up and down parts of the Oleta River. One thing I figured out is that if you're scared of alligators, then everything pretty much looks like an alligator.

This little bridge thingy was kinda cool, but I didn't go under it. I thought, "If I were an alligator, I'd totally hang out under there ... all Billy Goats Gruff style." So I just took a picture instead. The rest of the river was ... pretty river-like:

As I was heading back toward the take-out point, I saw these little dudes up on shore:

See the funny guy on the left? I like to think he was smiling at me. I followed them along the bank for a little while and was able to get another good picture of them:

I got so close to them that I could have reached out with my paddle and smacked one of them upside the face, but I didn't. It didn't take me that long to get bored with them. All they did was eat stuff and then put their paws in the water.

I took my boat out, put it back in my trailer, and avoided the piercing stares of some Cubans nearby. Then I realized ... "crap, I need a shower." I noticed a bike wash nearby. The wheels started turnin' and pretty soon it was a Ross wash. So for the second time this week, I showered outside with a hose. It's actually surprisingly pleasant and it really saves a lot of time. Although it's probably not gonna work out so well for me once the weather starts to get a little colder.

Alright. I'm kinda tired and I have a lot of crap to do tomorrow. I'm out.

Home, Sweet Home.

Holy Crap. It's already September 17th? Where the hell have I been?

Oh that's right ... home.

It's been nice. I've been busier than I thought I would be, but still it's still been pretty damn good. I've slept in almost every day. I've ridden my bike quite a few times. I've spent a lot of time on my couch. I had to spend my first two weekends home in Oklahoma because my best friend from high school got married, which was alright since I got to see my mom:

I did have to go to a karaoke bar, which I normally wouldn't do, but Reina really wanted to have her bachelorette party there. I didn't sing. I just sat there smiling smugly at how I was clearly a superior human compared to most of the people there. I also had to wear the following: a dress, lots of makeup, heels, and fake nails. It sucked. I mean, I was flattered that Reina asked me to be in her wedding, so that was great, but come on ... you all know me ...

It was actually a pretty cool wedding. It was really low-key and there wasn't that much fuss, but having those fake nails annoyed the living shit out of me.

I also spent two days at the Tour of Missouri. That was well worth my time. Brett and I got to watch George Hincapie take the sprint to win stage 2 in Springfield. It was neat to see such high-caliber riders racing right there in Missouri. That's gotta be a step in the right direction for American cycling.

This past weekend I had the bright idea to go race my mountain bike at Devil's Den. I didn't ride much all summer. Instead I was generally either driving or drinking beer. So I'm still not sure why I thought I'd have a chance at a race, but I went anyway. We did two laps and there were only two other girls in my class. One girl left us in the dust midway through the first lap. I managed to stick with the remaining girl until about halfway through the second lap. Then we got to a bitch of a hill climb and I was like, "this sucks." Needless to say, I let up and she took off up the hill. So, I finished 3rd. Which sounds great until you add "out of 3." Brett managed to finish 2nd out of 10, which is really awesome, so we stuck around for the awards even though I didn't care ... until I got my award which was $40 in a pint glass! My entry fee was $35, so even though I sucked, I still made $5! Bonus!

Last night a bunch of us went to a Bela Fleck show. Normally I'm not a big fan of the banjo, but this guy makes the banjo kick ass. The rest of his band can jam too. I wouldn't say it was the best show I've been to, but I felt like it was worth the price of admission.

Other than that, my time at home has been pretty uneventful. I've been sleeping, reading, and working here and there. I've had to box up a whole bunch of bikes, make some long phone calls, and write an ass-load of e-mails. Speaking of e-mails ... I forgot what is probably the most exciting news of the last three weeks. After one particularly frustrating day with my computer, I finally decided to pull the trigger and order a MacBook. I am SO over this Windows bullshit.

That's really all I've got for you right now. I need to get back to the shit load of stuff I have to get done before I leave for Interbike on Saturday.

I'm out.

I get by ...

With a little help from my friends.

So I've been home for almost a week now, and I have to say, it's REALLY nice to not have to be on my feet all day. Hotter'n Hell was really fun, but exhausting. I ran into a bunch of Arkansas peeps who used to be customers at the bike shop, so that was pretty neat. I also got to hang out with my pals Mimi and Jeff, who are always really great about feeding me, housing me, and giving me delicious beers whenever I'm in Texas. Or New Orleans.

Speaking of good friends, I completely forgot to mention the Fossens (Heath and Heidi) in my last post. These are some first-rate people who always take good care of me when I'm in Madison. After 10 days, staying in a hotel and eating the same food every day was really getting old. So when Heidi sent me a text message saying she was cooking, I bolted right over there. As soon as I walked in the door, Heidi poured me a glass of wine. I did some laundry, chilled on the couch, and then ate some hella good lasagna. Then I drank more wine and sat around some more. And I didn't talk about bicycles one bit. It was fabulous ... until I had to make an appearance at work. But it was a much-needed break and I did manage to make it back over there several more times. It's always a nice time checking into the Hotel Fossen.

I also got to hang out with Maggie, who is the funniest female I know. She's probably the third funniest person I know in general. We're going to have a talk show together someday and it's going to be fucking hilarious. So imagine how delighted I was to discover one morning that Maggie was going to be working the demo with us. I have to say, it really made the day much more enjoyable. As you can see from the photo, we were made to be friends with each other:


So, I got to see the Fossens and I got to see Maggie, but what was really awesome was kickin' it with all of them AT THE SAME TIME! On what I think might have been my only night off, we all went to eat tacos and drink beers. It was a magnificent time and as I sit here and tell you about it, I start to miss Madison. I mean, really, look how happy we were:

I didn't get to see Andrea, except for about five minutes. We just couldn't make our schedules work out. She's all busy getting ready for an Ironman and stuff, but maybe next time I come to Madison, she'll be all busy having fun instead of training.

So anyway, I'm home for a much-needed break now. I'm not actually off work, I'm just doing work from home. Although I plan to have a couple completely work-free days next week. I'll be doing a lot of this: And also a lot of this:
Yes, that's my (sort of) new sweet ass kayak. I'm planning on spending quite a few early mornings out on the lake catching the shit out of some bass. Fish fear me. And those chicks ... they are fantastic people who put up with my shit on a regular basis. Especially Helen and Teena. Teena is the one I always go to when I want to whine about something. And Helen ... well, I live with Helen ... that alone says enough.

Since this post seems to be mostly about friends, it would be wrong of me not to mention DANGER! She is the best dog EVER. She's been living with my parents since I'm never home, and I miss her all the time. So, I took a little detour through Oklahoma City on my way home from Texas to pick her up. Pictures really do no justice, so I've posted these videos for your veiwing pleasure:

That's Danger and Brett. Brett wins the prize for the funniest person I know.

Danger is still recovering from ACL surgery, so I wouldn't let her go on a walk with Helen and Gracie. She was pretty upset about it:



Alright. I'm gonna go pet Danger some more and then go to bed. I'm out.