by Joe Doyle on January 13, 2007
Any ride off the beaten path is always more fun, and I have a route to downtown Austin that I love. I duck under bridges, ride along a creek and through some woods. Here are a few highlights:
Rocky ledges and Shoal Creek start it out.
Hilly singletrack along the frisbee golf course.
One of the creek crossings and an underpass. Note the homeless guy on the right.
Only 92 more floors and this thing is the John Hancock Center. You can help out a coupla friends who are running up the Hancock to fight lung cancer.
From a grassy knoll, my CORE exercise class has an amazing view. This week (numero uno) I weighed in at 190 and had a 19.3% body fat reading.
Congress Ave – I looked, but I couldn’t find any of those dead birds.
The Capital was designed by a guy who built the IL and MI buildings. By coincidence, those are the only states I’ve lived in.
The new Blanton museum. We went to the opening with Kir and Lloyd and got drunk on white wine and danced to Pong.
Not too far from home – the UT tower. It’s famous, but for all the wrong reasons.
by Joe Doyle on January 10, 2007
Yes yes, I won a CX race! Last night under the lights at the Dirt Derby I raced CX C followed by MTB Sport.
BUT…there was a bit of weirdness to the win. First off, I was the only male in the CX race. So all I had to do was finish (last year there would be 5-10 people in this race). Second, they switched the categories descriptions from the fall series, so the fellas who raced C last year (and whom I race CX against in the USCF races) all raced in the open class. C has been re-designated complete novice. But I didn’t know beforehand and they don’t do a license thing. So I registered, raced and won.
They pair the CX C race with the MTB Beginner race and if you’re on a CX bike you hit the barriers, if not you go around. It started at a good clip and after the first lap I found myself in front of everyone. I gave it a hard effort the whole entire race so I wouldn’t be caught by any MTBers, and I wasn’t (but it came pretty close). The inadvertent sandbagging left the win bittersweet. Next week I race open.
The Sport MTB race was fast and I think I took 6/10. I was kinda bushed after the hard CX effort and I sat in for a quite a few laps. The course was wet sand and mud, and I would have fared better on my CX bike. Oh well. At least I’m getting in some good, hard efforts. Race season in TX starts in a couple weeks.
by Joe Doyle on January 8, 2007
The King has a special place in my heart. My dad loves him. My sister, too. And all my friends from the South Side never miss Elvis night at Comiskey Park.
One of my favorite Elvis quotes:
“Don’t criticize what you don’t understand, son. You never walked in that man’s shoes.”
In my opinion, this is his best period. When he started to do more karate moves and wear the studded suits and when he was still skinny.
