3 Years, Bad Gears, Big Cheers

Well hello all!!! Here's to the start of another joyous post cancerous bollock year! It's three years ago to the day that the old left dangly was consigned to its fateful tumerous extraction. I can't believe how big and massively important the 27th May has become for me now, it kind of sneeks up all unannounced and then arrives and hits me with such forceful emotions (which I thought I had burried good and deep in the darkest recesses of my psyche) that I get all nostalgic, humbled, thankful, overly excited about life and just generally damn happy to be waking up to the sunshine with a pulse. Mrs. Brina played it all coy this year and surprised me with a prezzie and card this morning (much to my delight as I thought she'd forgotten - she got me good and proper). Two more years to the all clear mark, big smiles all round!
As for other pressing matters at hand. I sluggishly headed up to Edmonton for a Sunday race in the pissing down rain. Leaving at 5.00am in a downpour didn't dampen my spirits too much, but racing fast, dry racing tires in Edmonton's slickest mud wasn't condusive to staying on the bike too well during the race... So there was lots of this;

Fortunately the TransRockies has plenty of Hike a Bike sections, so the course at the weekend made for good training for that (since riding up many of the mudslides was not an option). The bike was feeling rather lazy on the first lap and kept on wanting to lie down in the trees by the side of the course, invariably taking me with it. 4 wipe outs on the first lap and 1 on the second had me cussing about the weather, my bike handling skills and my tardiness at arriving at the race with 10 minutes to spare and not being able to pre-ride the route again! Never the less, I had consigned myself to a very non podium finish, but pulled things together a bit better on lap 3, and by lap 4 was with the 2nd placed rider. With 2km to go, we kicked around a steep turn, I had the makings of the guy, ready to put the power on a little, shifted gears up as the hill went vertical, but shifted my chain right up into my spokes where it jammed tight! Bugger, having lept off to untangle the damage (which had happen already before on lap 3) mr.2nd place sauntered off up the hill. I managed to get back to within 4 seconds of him by the finish - but alas, the couse was a couple of hundred metres too short! A 3rd place wasn't bad all things considered.
The piccie below is the new 'hide a chain in your rear mech' game I like to play (no wonder the shifting was piss poor).

Ah, you can't beat using grass and mud to protect your chainrings from wear and tear!

It's the big old 8hour race this Sunday (my arse is already getting nervous - new chamois needed).
All things non bike related are just that - non bike related. Work, yeah, it's still work - just heard a great quote from Gordon Ramsey on t.v. "you don't have to love it, it's just a fuckin' job" - so I think I'm going to live with the philosophy according to Kitchen Nightmares from now on!
Brina's still working like a beast at Morely and is chasing around after the skinny, cycling obsessed git she lives with to make sure he's well fed and not resembling some malnourished famine victim. We're looking forward to seeing a bit more of summer soon. The rain eased off this week (although the Rivers are full to bursting point and floods may be imminent for those edjits living on the floodplains - think about it people, it's called a FLOODplain for a reason so don't build a house there!). The sun is giving us a bit of a taster of what may be in store for our month of summer in August, and we can't wait (fingers crossed we might even get two months of summer, but don't hold your breath).
Anyhow, it's time for bed, so seeing as though today's the day it is, remember;
It could always be worse,

Livestrong
S&S.