Photoshopping

It's been pretty slow around the office lately, so I've been teaching myself Photoshop.  Once you learn to use it, it's an amazing piece of software.  It allows me to be artistic without having to have any actual dexterity.  I thought I'd show off some of the projects that I've been screwing around with.

Selective coloring, motion blur.  Could easily be a poster, we'd just have to change the tagline!

My idea for a team trailer.  It's based off of Exergy's (there's is better, but they've got pros on the job).  I thought the sponsor patterning was pretty cool.

Pretty simple, but I thought it was cool.  Note the Bronco Head pattern in the sleeves, side panels, and pockets.

Actual Work!  I made the clouds in Photoshop.  I'm pretty excited for this place to open because it's going to be cool.

I've decided that it's time for Bob's to have a redesign, so I put a few of those together...

It looks a little weird here, but I think it would look cool on the bike.

Pretty similar to the current design, but better.

Something different, I think it has potential.

Lucky to Have My Nipples

It was the Mutual of Enumclaw Stage Race this weekend.  For those of you not in the know, Enumclaw is in Western Washington where it apparently consistently drizzles rain all the time.  I'll get to why this is a bad thing in a bit.

The first stage was a 10K TT.  It was fast, flat, and it hurt.  There's really not much for me to talk about here.  Finished in 26th place about a minute and a half back.

Now for the exciting part of the story.  The crit is an 8 corner, figure 8 pattern course.  For some reason, Enumclaw thinks that the Men's 3 race should be the showcase event, so we were last up.  It had been raining intermittently for hours by then, it was getting cold and dark.  This would eventually spell disaster for me.  I'm not really sure how, but I had managed to not do a rainy crit in the entire collegiate season.  Having raced in dry weather for the past year means that I forgot how to corner on greasy pavement.  Some jerk caught me holding on to the barricade at the start, so I had to go off with a foot on the ground like everybody else and didn't get a very good position.  I spent a few laps working up to the front.  Once I got up there, I got in a move that I knew was doomed, but I sat on the back of it and got ready to counter it as we neared getting caught.  We were only a few corners from me gloriously escaping off the front of the race when I found myself riding my bike horizontally.  Lucky for me, Wheels in Focus was hanging in the corner capturing my fish-like motions for the world to see:

Step 1: Feet!

Step 2: Flop.  Note bonus points for the face!

Step 3: Wheelface!

Step 4: Seriously, Wheelface!

Step 5: You all really were hoping to see a picture of that dude running over my face, weren't you? 

How did I do that?

So I went to the pit and got back in the race.  I went back in at the back of the pack, so I spent a few more laps working my way back up.  Then I got to the front again.  Then I crashed again.  Amara wasn't around for that one.  So I went back to the pit and joked with the mechanics for a couple laps and jumped back in at the back of the field.  I worked back up to the front and slowly worked back to the back because of my lack of cornering confidence.  I finished in the pack and managed to not lose any time in the crit.

The road race was my big hope for the weekend.  If I could get in the move, I could easily gain back a minute and a half and potentially win.  I was told that a move had the best chance of going in the first lap on the climb, so I positioned myself to do just that.  I attacked as we crested the hill and everybody chased me.  Then I tried it again on the flats at the top.  Didn't work, so I sat in and waited for the hill to come again.  We got to the bottom of the hill and I started drilling it hoping to force a selection.  The race leader was on my wheel at the time and started shouting at me.  "Your wheel's not in the dropout!"  That was bad, so I stopped.  He was a cool guy and slowed the race down for me and I easily jumped back in, but my plan was ruined.  We went over the hill as a group, again.  A guy went off the front on the next lap and I didn't think anything of it because there were several large teams there that could easily bring him back.  That was apparently stupid of me to think.  We cruised easily around the course as he gained time through the flats, then we went really hard up the hill, then we went easy again.  The pattern reoccurred every lap until the finish, with nobody willing to do any work to bring the solo move in.  I tried bridging up, but they would chase me back then sit up again.  I don't know why.  He won by 4:15 and we had a big group sprint.  I wound up 14th on the day and on GC.  A little bit of a letdown, but it still gets me some upgrade points and more experience.

Best of Collegiate Nationals

Best Feeder:
Mesa State
The dude was wearing jorts, one of the MSU magenta jerseys, and a helmet circa 1990.  Enough said.

College-est kits:
3 way tie between Cal, Clemson, and UWP
Look at these things:

Clemson's Mossy Oak Skinsuit. It's hard to see because it's camouflaged

Cal's tie-dye skinsuit

University of Wisconsin-Platteville.  Note the fake denim shorts

Coolest Folks:
University of Montana
Obviously, I didn't talk to every team there, but nobody else drove me around all weekend.  Also, nobody else had the team motto of "UM Cycling: D*cks like Jesus."  On top of that, they brought home two top tens for the NWCCC.

Best Airport Nonsense:
2 way tie between the sign after security that said "RECOMBOBULATION AREA" and the guy at the Quizno's kiosk's voice.  It sounded like Joe Pesci meets The Waterboy.

Craziest Person in Wisconsin:
The lady who sat next to me on the bus from Madison to Milwaukee.  She had two brightly colored purses, was listening to an actual walkman, and had a sheet of paper with names all over it.  She would occasionally write a new name on her sheet.  It was weird.

This is not the bus lady

Most Intense Moment:

Some things are better left uncaptioned...

Nationals Criterium

After yesterday's day of sleep, I was feeling pretty ready to throw down.  Since I was carless, I just made the 15 minute ride over to the course.  We did the same ridiculous callups as on Friday (conference champions, then randomly calling schools up in waves), except the mic went out so Boise State got shouted up to the line.  I did a move out of Kai's playbook and lined up along the barrier so that I could start clipped in with a hand on the barrier.  That was good because things were hot from the gate.  A lot of early attacks came and went.  I tried following Steve Fisher a couple of times.  Nothing came of them other than hopefully a couple cool pictures.  I managed to stay up near the front for almost the entire race, trying to go with moves whenever I felt that they were good ones to go with.  At one point, the pack came around the final corner and a few of us accelerated away from the rest.  I tried pulling hard over the short finish line hill hoping that the four of us could get up the road.  I looked back and there was nobody behind me. Whoops.  I stayed off the front for the next lap, got caught and sucked into the middle of the peloton.  That's when the big move went up the road.  Whoops.

So I sat in the pack for the rest of the race and waited for my time to attack.  With five to go, Fisher got on the front and buried himself to bring the break in for his teammate, Ian Crane.  That was an incredible effort.  You wouldn't think that a tiny little body like that would be able to hammer that hard for that long.  He brought the move back with two laps to go.  My plan was to attack on the bell lap at the slight hill on the backside.  Mesa State had taken over the front and was crushing though.  I'm sure this entirely was to prevent me from executing the plan.  I mean they had to be plotting against me.  I did finish 10th in the NWCCC after all.  Anyways, it was all I could do to move up a few spots over the hill coming into the final corner.  I took off shortly after the corner for the final sprint.  Passed a few, got passed by a few.  Finished 23rd, pretty good weekend!

Rest Day

My big plans to go explore the farmer's market and eat cheese fell through primarily due to my laziness.  I got up, ate two plates of breakfast downstairs, then came back upstairs.  I screwed around for a while on the internet, did a little homework, and took a nap.  Then I got woken up by the maid who thought we were leaving today.  I did a little more homework after that, screwed around on the internet again, and fell asleep again.  When I woke up, my roommate had left, and I was confused.  Once I figured out that he'd gone across the street for food, I did more homework.  Once I got tired of explaining higher birth rates in lesser developed countries, I decided it was time to ride.  So me and Joe headed out with no real plan other than to spin for an hour or so.  We managed to wind up at the UW campus.  It is huge!  We got to one end of it, cruised through the middle, then saw a sign that said "UW Campus Ahead."  We turned off and rode by the Capitol Building then worked our way back to the hotel.  Here's some pictures:

Joe rides for Yahoo in the regular season, Sacramento State collegiately

Not too bad of a photo considering the fact that I was riding while shooting

Also, I uploaded my Garmin file from yesterday.  Check out the Day O' Pain.  The Crit's tomorrow.  Hopefully I can put a little hurt into the guys who rode the TTT today.

Nationals Road Race

That was really, really hard.  The race started with the sketchiest part of the race, a "neutral" downhill with a possible stop at the bottom.  It was at the bottom of the hill that I realized nobody was coming up and yelling at people for crossing the centerline.  That was exciting to me.  My excitement may have ended my disguise as a cunning veteran, at least for those who didn't see me staring at the Marian bus in amazement.  Or seen the taxi drop me off at the entrance to the park (big thanks to the Naval Academy for driving me up the hill).

The overly drawn-out callups had me placed in the middle of the pack.  My nervous descending hadn't changed things much, but I quickly slid my way up to the front of the race.  I surfed the moves for about half a lap and managed to stay near the front.  Then the climb came.  I didn't think things were going too badly until I got through the feed zone, glanced behind me and just saw a moto.  I saw everybody on the long decent off the feed zone climb.  There were a lot more people in that race than in an NWCCC race.  By the bottom of the hill I was almost back to the front.  I made it back at the front a couple miles later.  More move surfing, then the climb again.  I was a little more focused this time around and managed to get over it mid-pack.  I still bombed the decent and made it back to the front of the race by the bottom of the hill.  Things seemed to calm down a little for the rollers on that lap.  Then the climb came again.  I really don't like that climb.  It's much too long and much too steep.  I was with the pack until about 30 yards before the turn to the decent.  I started to gap a little but didn't worry about it too much.  I had gained big spots on the decent the last two laps and assumed I could just do it again.  I was wrong.  They crushed the decent that time.

I caught on with 2 guys from the West Point team.  The military was helping me out all over the place.  One of them only stayed with for about half a lap (what about not leaving a man behind?).  I worked with the other for a while until we saw something wonderful: a pack.  We thanked and congratulated each other as we approached what we thought was a splinter of the D2 race.  Then we got a little closer and realized that it was all a mirage.  It was a bunch of D1 riders.  We asked them how far the D2 pack was up the road.  "A long ways."  That's a letdown.  We continued on ahead of them to the climb.  I fought for a while to hang with the Army rider.  Then I fought for a while to keep pedaling.  I finally made it over the climb and on to the last lap.  I was solo now.  Kind of.  The D1 pack had caught me again.  I wasn't allowed to work with them, so I rode on one side of the road while they rode the other.  They would pass me, then I would pass them, and we played that game for a while.  They finally got away from me on one of the last rollers before the final climb.  Did I mention that I don't like the length or steepness of that climb?  I really didn't like it the fifth time around.  Once I got through the feed zone, it was time to climb the road that we descended at the start of the race.  That was even steeper!  It was all I could do to keep upright at times.  A rider told me afterward that he had literally gotten off the bike and walked up the hill.  I came up behind a D1 rider paperboying up the hill.  I was gaining on him slowly, then I saw the photographer.  I had to catch him quickly in order to have a cool profile pic!  So I did and gimped my way over the last 100 yards to the finish.  44th.  I'd like to know how many 3s finished ahead of me.

Big thanks to UM for driving me around today after the race.  They're super cool and had a super cool van.  Seriously, Bob's needs one of these.  6 racks inside, sound system, GPS, very nice.

Tomorrow is the Team Time Trial.  Since I am a one man wolf pack, I'm thinking its beer and cheese ride day.  The cabbies keep telling me about the farmers market with all the cheese samples.  I think that sounds like a lovely mid-ride stop.

Airplanes!

A few observations about my day of travel to Madison for Nationals:

1. My bag holds a floor pump.  Good news.
2. There's birds in the BOI terminal.  They're pretty friendly too.
3. Southwest should consider not putting two flights to Phoenix in the same gate one right after another.  I nearly boarded the wrong plane.
4. I understand that UI is the sponsor of airport wifi, but stop redirecting me to their homepage.  DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?
5. I think I just saw Lebowski.  He was abiding.
6. Tamale in the Phoenix airport.  Good stuff for now, might come back to bite me once I'm trapped in a sealed cabin for a few hours.
7. Hertz is terrible.
8. The bus driver is a cool guy.
9. The taxi guy is also super cool.

A Letter to Hertz

Dear Hertz:

            My name is Brian Parker.  I recently flew into to Milwaukee, Wisconsin with the intention of renting a car from you in order to complete my journey from Boise, Idaho to Madison in order to compete in the 2011 USA Cycling Collegiate Road National Championships.  Despite several attempts through various methods, I was unable to give you any money to rent a car.  I tried really hard.  Your representatives did not.  They were very knowledgeable about the bus that runs to Madison.  It’s almost as if they’ve had to give that information out on more than one occasion.

            I am very displeased with the level of service that I received from your company.  Not only have you lost my business for life, you’ve probably lost most of the Idaho cycling community’s.  As a 21 year old college student about to graduate with a business degree as well as being a frequent traveler due to cycling, I am not a customer you want to lose.  Additionally, I am the only collegiate cyclist competing in Nationals this year and therefore am being watched very closely back home.  I am going to copy this letter to my blog, as well as post my experience at your counter on several social networks so that everybody back home knows what to expect from you.

            When I spend money on anything, whether it be a rental car or a gallon of milk from the grocery store, I expect the company that I am paying to treat me well and do everything in their power to provide me with the service that I want.  That did not happen.  I tried giving them my debit card, which they could not take.  The reason was some sort of vague inability to “authorize” it.  I don’t know what that means.  There were several variations attempted to get the debit card “authorized.”  I called my bank and was told that there was no reason that this should be happening or that there had even been an attempt to get anything done with the card.  I later used said debit card to purchase the bus ticket with no problem.  After that inexplicable debacle, I told them that I could call my mother and put it on her card.  At this point I was told that this could be done but I’d be charged an extra driver’s fee along with the underage driver’s fee.  The fact that your representatives were trying to charge me more because they couldn’t help me just blows my mind.  Every time an attempt to give you money failed, your representatives would respond with something along the lines of “there’s nothing we can do.  The bus is outside.”  I had to offer up solutions such as calling my mother.  Then, to top of this whole magical experience, once I got my mother on the line and they discovered that she was not in Wisconsin, I was told that you can’t take credit cards over the phone.  If my mother was somewhere close enough that she could just swing by and take care of things, why on Earth would I need a rental car so badly?

            Your actions have put an opportunity for me to compete for a National Championship in jeopardy.  I was rather excited to find that you offered a discount to USA Cycling Members, but suddenly 15% off doesn’t seem worth it.  I look forward to seeing how you handle this situation and earn back my business.  Remember, Idaho is watching.

Sincerely,

Brian Parker