Saturday, May 28, 2005

French France

I think it's safe to say that the journey back from France has amounted to the worst travel day I've ever experienced. I'll spare the gory details, because ultimately that would take away from the great time I had while in Morzine. What an amazing trip! I have to say that there's something really nice about going to a ski town at the beginning of summer, before their summer season starts. The place was a veritable ghost town. The lifts weren't open to take the guys up, but there were mini bus shuttles aplenty. Since I was still fairly ill, I took lots of pictures of people riding. I didn't actually do any riding myself until the last day of the trip, but I absolutely loved the r&r that being in the Alps afforded me for a week.

As for pictures...well, I took about 100 a day. There are tons to sort through, and between Craig, Chipps, and myself there's probably enough to fill many mags worth of galleries. I might get 'round to creating a proper viewing page, or see if I can get Andy to host some on ShitShifter for me, but in the meantime here were a couple of popular snaps. The first is the one I took, and the second is how it looked from where Chipps was standing.




I'm going to quit now. I'm sitting in the airport in Dallas waiting for my third flight of the day which is 2 hours delayed. My body thinks it's 3:30 in the morning. I'd like to write more about the trip, but I think I'll wait until I'm more fresh.

Friday, May 20, 2005

Sick of being sick

I had a falling out with a friend a couple of weeks ago. Among the many reasons why this is unfortunate is the fact that I fell ill during my visit (a layover between events) and probably should have taken myself to a doctor then, but I had too much work that needed doing. So, I didn't do anything despite going to bed with a fever, chills, and an aching body at 6 o'clock in the evening. Getting rained on the next day while loading the trailer probably didn't help either, but my motivation to 'get outta Dodge' was pretty strong, such was the state of the relationship with my 'friend'. Since I have bad lungs, I've wound up with pneumonia. This is the last thing I needed to have happen, particularly in light of my overseas flight tomorrow. Obviously, what was originally planned as a week of riding in France will probably wind up being nothing more than a week in France. Nothing to shake a stick at, as I've never been, but I'll have to deal with the inevitable departure of everyone for the days' ride while I sit around and eat a baguette avec frommage, or something.

I can't decide at this point what's worse about this situation...the illness or the issue with the friend. I've had about two weeks to think about what happened, and although I've tried to put myself in his shoes I really can't see that there was any justification for the treatment I received. I've given some serious thought to laying it all out in an email, but I don't think I'm the one that needs to be reaching out here. In the past I've done the best I can to support this guy through some of the stuff you have to deal with in life, and at this point I'm feeling like it was all in vain. If I went into the details of what happened, I'm sure the reaction would be "well that's silly", and truth be told it is really silly, and the unfortunate result is that this guy has done some significant damage to what was probably the most solid friendship he had (not that I'm tooting my own horn, or anything). I can't imagine that this is what he wanted to have happen, and since he's generally very stubborn he's probably sitting around wondering when I'm going to get 'round to apologizing to him. Honestly, I feel no motivation or need to do that. Although I'm bummed that the friendship seems to have dissolved in the span of about 10 minutes, that sort of toxicity is not something that I have to deal with.

If there's a lesson here, it must be that I need to make sure I appreciate the people that I do consider my good friends, and to make sure that I never put them in a situation that resembles this one.

So, to all of my friends out there, you are all great and I'm genuinely blessed to know you. I can't wait until the next time we get to hang out.

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Censorship sucks

I've been censored. We had this other blogger for our demo tour (www.fitforwomentour.blogspot.com). Some lawyer came over to the web guy at Trek who set it up for us and said it had to be shut down. Apparently, the company doesn't want to have ties to any more blog sites. We didn't break any rules, but we can't use it now. No one is happy. Well, the lawyer might be...I guess there's going to be some message board somewhere, but I'm not sure how that's going to work yet.

Anyhoo...I'm way behind on lots of posting. I'm in the middle of nowhere, Texas at the moment. I'm not sure what time zone I'm in, and I'm in desperate need of several nights of quality sleep. I'm hoping that will come while I'm in Houston.