Hey guys,

     Here's the numbers for this weekend:

      Rutgers Garden Criterium, March 2nd

           Men's C (~35 starters)
               15th Erik da Silva
               17th Joe Kopena

           Men's D (~30 starters?)
               8th Michael Zajac

     Adam told me on Friday that he wasn't going to race because of the weather, but he travelled up to watch and help out.

     As for the other guys, all I can say is:

           What a bunch of mountain bikers.

     We get up way before the crack of dawn, drive around for a long time, then stand there for hours in the rain and all they managed to do was eat a box of donuts as they missed the start of their race...

     Before getting into more details, let me take this opportunity to really thank Adam, Ondik, Beth, Megan, and Debbie for coming out to the race to spectate and help out. Well, at least Adam and Ondik helped out a lot (and it was really appreciated). The girls just seemed to be there to keep the three ninnies warm as they totally failed to do any racing. But, still, it was really cool to have people there.

     - Travelling

     We made one U-turn that was clearly an error. It may be true that it may have been my fault as I totally failed to keep right and stay on the correct highway. We made a bunch more, but I blame the directions. Let's just say, we never use mapquest again. It mixed up a Georges Rd. with a Georges St. and we ended up having to call Ben from Rutgers to straighten us out.

     I will also point out that, although I was running on typical Joe time in the morning, I was way ahead of Mr. Hall. In addition, I had to laugh when he gave us a call during the trip to say "I need gas, I've only got a quarter tank left." when that was the same thing he'd said before we left over an hour before that. Regardless, he could not be placated and we had to make a tour of Trenton looking for gas. We can now report with certainty that there's nothing there.

     Travelling there day-of was definitely questionable. It was utterly unholy to set the alarm for 4 am.

     - Racing

     There's not much to say...

     Zajac did well after he got some accounting straightened out with the officials (they'd wrongly put him down as lapped, which he clearly wasn't). I didn't see Erik after the start. There was a lot of confusion about the start times, and things went off earlier than I thought, so we didn't get to warm up at all. It just sucked to be freezing cold and have chunks of ice for legs when the race started. The corners would have been hard for me even if they were dry, I think, and certainly were awful in the rain, but there wasn't any way I could keep up from a cold start. Still, I guess it was an ok opener. Could have been worse. Certainly I didn't feel like I have fallen so out of shape as to be in the wrong category.

     The one thing I will relate about the race is this: The one sharp corner was pretty narrow and featured a wooden fence about a foot away from the road and a lot of slush and snow along the road and on it. At some point, going through this corner, there must have been a guy trying to come by on my outside as I went into it because all of a sudden I heard a "Nooooooo!!!!" followed by that crunching noise tires make on snow. When I looked back, sure enough, someguy had ridden right into the snow. It was pretty funny (he didn't seem to be hurt, and I didn't think it was my fault---I held my line and he shouldn't have been trying to sneak by in that little strip of road outside of me in those conditions).

     - Socializing

     The really sucky thing about the weather was that it really put a damper on hanging around and things like that. But, I am glad to report that we had the loudest cheering group there. It was great to come around to this huge cheer every lap (well, except that one lap. I'm not sure what hapenned, they must not have been paying attention or something).

     - Summary

     It was still a fun weekend, and I'm so glad the season has finally started. It's great to have such a big team. I can't even really blame the guys for missing the race (it was a real downpour at points; I kept looking for the Ark to show up). One thing that I do really like about real bad weather is that it heightens that feeling you get when you come home, look around your apartment, and wonder what planet you were just on.

     (sorry this is kinda short and lacking details, someone else will have to fill in. if the boss sees me doing bike-team stuff one more time, my ass is grass...)