Okay, I know I left this blog alone for a while, but give me a break! I was taking a 19 credit semester while trying to be competitive running and cycling. I pulled it off, but it didn't leave much time for fun, games or blogging.
So this is a ressurection of the blog and myself. I just spent an entire week, as in 7 full days, on the couch. You might wonder why I would do such a thing? Well, I raced my first criterium in Syracuse last weekend and it ended badly. Somebody (I won't name names, but you know who you are!) cut across from the outside of the pack to the inside on the last corner as the pack started sprinting toward the finish. I don't know exactly how fast I was going, but it must have been at least 30mph when my front wheel got swept aside and I dove side-stroke style onto the pavement for a long painful slide. I split the flesh on my ankle open enough to see the bones and took a lot of skin off from there all the way up to my butt on the right side. Long story short, I did not complete the race, I did wait for the ambulance to clean and bandage my wounds, and somehow I did get credit for finishing the race and wound up with a 6th for the Syracuse Race Weekend stage race.
The reason for ressurecting the blog just now is to start off the summer's travels. Tomorrow I'm flying to New York City to stay with Jules and Sarah while attending a forum on global climate change at the U.N. Just after that, I'll fly to Rome and take trains to Florence for a week-long seminar on the ontological definitions of geographical information systems. I'd explain what that is if I really knew. After that, I will take full advantage of just over two weeks of free time and an Italy-Spain rail pass to practice some Spanish and hopefully see some America's Cup action in Valencia.
After that, I will fly out of Rome, not to the U.S.A., but to Dar es Salaam for Steve and Loyce's wedding! That might take a couple of weeks, during which I'll visit the University and the beach. Following the wedding, I have to somehow get to Kigali (please, no food poisoning or black mambas this time!). I'll fly out to Addis Ababa, where I will have 12 hours to find a hostel and eat as much Ethiopian food as possible. Then, I'm off to Rome, New York, and Albuquerque to see the Peace Corps Bukoba ladies, and finally back to Buffalo for fall semester.
All in all, I have reservations for about 12 flights, a rail pass, and two and a half months of travel. It promises to be a wild summer. Oh, I forgot to mention that I'm doing all this with just an EMS Daypack.
I have to brag a little bit about the post-semester racing madness. I've been doing on average two races every weekend, including a 1:30 half-marathon followed with a 2nd place road race (cycling) the next day. The next weekend I got 7th in a 5K and 5th in a tough road race the next day. The next weekend I won a road race, and finally last weekend I did the Syracuse Race Weekend, placing 3rd in the road race, 8th in the time trial and scoring a sweet pavement-dive in the criterium. I'm a little dissapointed that I can't race all the way through this season, considering how good my results have been so far. Maybe next year. I had intended to go to the French alps and run the Mount Blanc Marathon this summer, but those plans were shot when I crashed in Syracuse. Next time, next time...
If you've given up on reading this blog, come back! I've made some promises to update at least a few times while I'm wandering around and I *intend* to keep them.
