finally have internet

Ok, finally have internet! So the whole airport situation got figured out. Because my plane left 2 hours late from anchorage, i lost my flight to phoenix. the next flight was the next day. so alaska airlines gave me a hotel room. then i showed up the next day to see if i could get on a flight stand-by. well they choose who gets on the plane alphebetically, so of course, of the two flights i tried for i was always the person not to get on. o well, i only woke up at 4 in the morning for nothing. sat in the airport for a long time, until noon, kinda sucked but i finally got to phoenix. then i drove all night all the way to moab and slept in my car in the apache in hotel parking lot. woke up and drove to ogden.
OGDEN!
the race in ogden didnt start too well, i happened to hop on the race shuttle with the bus driver that had no clue where she needed to go, so i show up at the race with 10 minutes to go. i had a very slow swim, didnt feel that good, and was about 2 minutes slower than i would normally be. then in the bike, i felt super good. the course was mostly uphill, and was the best possible course for me. the goodness followed me onto the run and i was able to finish much stronger than i usually do. that was the best race of my life, i finished 27th overall, 9th amature and the race got me a #1 ranking in the nation for XTERRA Triathlons. It also qualified me for worlds in Maui. YAY! Vacation! well i got to catch the bus, so ill update later about the collegiate mountain biking.

Airport! TAKE 2

So 3 nights ago a volcano erupted in the Elution Islands sending ash straight into the flight pattern that Alaska Airlines uses for all its flights. So 3 nights of flight passengers were being forced into the airport at the same time, making everything much longer than expected. I got to the airport with an hour and a half till my flight, spend 45 minutes in line only to have the lady at the counter tell me that I'm too late for the flight. So she schedules me for a flight at 2 in the afternoon today, 14 hours after my scheduled flight. So on this rescheduled flight, the plane hit some ash and was damaged. The plane mechanics have been working on the plane for 2 hours now and im still stuck in the airport. I am sitting here with a guy who i am almost positive is in drugs. as a very happy little kid ran by, he said he wanted to make a serum that would make fully mature adults think they are little kids because of the innocence and playfulness. 10 minutes later a crying little girl walked by with her mom yelling at her, he said that that mood needed to be extracted from the serum. very odd. well ill update in seattle in however many hours it takes to get there.

Rain Rain Go Away

So in the last week and a half, there has been one sunny day, every other day it has rained all day and just been miserable. When it rains in Alaska it is not a warm rain, it is a 50 degree rain. Anyway I decided to buy myself some mud tires out of Chain Reaction Cycles sale bin. I chose the Michelin Wildgripper in the tubeless version. This tire is the best tire I have ever used in wet conditions, it rolls really fast, it rolls smooth, corners even in even greasiest sharp bends, but best of all, it didn't clog up when I climbed the steepest and wettest climb on the ride(that climb is hard to ride when dry, not to mention when its wet and slippery). The Wildgrippers are 670 grams and 1.95 inches wide. The only downside is that Michelin doesn't make the Wildgrippers anymore. So here are some pics of them.

Hammerman pictures.

Hammerman, almost.

So yesterday was the one triathlon in Alaska that I really look forward to. It is called the Hammerman Triathlon. I came into it with a lot of pressure having won last year, and it didn't help that Matt Novakovich was telling me that people are betting on whether myself or my teammate Adam Miller would win. I couldn't play his mind games so I biked off before the start to get into my own zone, and that helped, being in a forest all alone calmed me down for sure.
45 minutes later I hop in the water to warm up for the swim, and the nervousness went away. Then we start, im swimming within my limit, which is normally not super fast, but at halfway, I realize that im only 25 meters behind the leaders and with Shannon Donnelly, Alaska's most dominant female triathlete. I get out of the water with Shannon but got very dizzy in transition and had to sit down to even get my bike shoes on. So at the point of leaving transition, the big competitors are Jens Beck who was 2 minutes ahead, Andy Duenow and Adam Miller 35 seconds ahead, Luke Kiskaddon and Jason Lameroux 1 minute back and Matt Navokovich 8 minutes back.
Within minutes on the mountian bike leg, I pass Adam and Andy. Andy keeps up with me for quite a while till the most technical singletrack of the course. The uphill of death is what blew the gap, it turns out I was the only one in the race to ride the hill. Once up that hill I finally see Jens up in the distance, and I chase after him for the majority of the bike course until another singletrack section where I pass and get 25 seconds on him. I come into transition in first with a huge crowd cheering only to hear the crowd start cheering again much sooner than I had hoped. Jens was on the way and he is quite a runner. He catches me which was to be expected but I hung with him which was not to be expected. Eventually he pulls away.
In the end, Jens was the winner with me 55 seconds back, Andy 6 minutes back, Jason and Luke 7 minutes back, Matt 9 minutes back and Adam 10 back. A great race for me and a much better run than normal. Even though I won last year, I think I raced better this year.

So tonight I did the only short track race held in Alaska. It was a pretty fun race, the course was perfect for me and there was a light pole at the bottom of a super steep fast hill to dodge. It was 25 minutes +2 laps. Within 2 laps local road race champ, Matt Navokavich, and I broke away from the 20 person field. On lap 4 I try to get a gap on one of the two steep uphills. That did me no good. I tried again every other lap, but kept failing. Finally at 20 minutes in I notice that Matt is breathing way harder than I am. So I attack on the closest hill and got a gap, then I let him catch me at the bottom of the next uphill only to attack him again. This one sticks. I was able to hold it the next 5 laps to the finish. My first win since heading back to AK for the summer. Ill try to get some pics in the next few days. But I'm stoked.

Toulouse is the dare-devil kitty, and Soliel (pronounced So-Lay) is the very nice looking one. Except Soliel is super annoying, and she likes to climb up bare legs.

I'm still way sore from Mt. Marathon and that was 3 days ago. So I have some pictures of my families new kittens and a bike I just ordered.