cycling funk

I’m on day 13 of no bike riding. That may be a record. I have all sorts of lame excuses for not riding my bike, but the bottom line is that I guess I just needed some time off. The unfortunate part of my cycling funk is the timing…while I needed the break, I wish I would have waited until after track racing was over. But I didn’t really have a choice. It crept up on me, and once it started, I just couldn’t stop it. In fact, it’s still going. I’m hoping to change that tonight.

So if I haven’t been riding my bike, what have I been doing? Mostly I’ve been working, spending some QT with the family at the lake, went to see Talladega Nights, and I even went running a few times (which is unusual for me…and it made me very sore). Oh, and I finally got to watch an entire NASCAR race last Sunday too. It’s been a while.

I have to say that I was pretty disappointed with Talladega Nights. It had so much potential since there are so many NASCARisms that they could have exploited. But instead, they just took the “just-let-Will-Farrell-be-Will-Farrell-and-it-will-be-funny” approach. Don’t get me wrong, that approach has worked before…more than once even…but I don’t think it worked this time. It had a few good moments, but that’s about it. My sister and I agreed that we should have seen “Pirates of the Caribbean” instead, strictly for the “hot guy” factor (i.e. even if it turned out to be crappy, at least we would have got to look at Johnny Depp for a few hours). The highlight of our trip to the movies was the sweet car we saw in the parking lot afterwards (keep in mind that we were in small-town Wisconsin) – it was an old school Trans Am that said “Daytona 500 Pace Car” on it. I tried to get a picture with my camera on my phone, but it didn’t turn out very well. So I looked it up online, and it looked like these. Who knew?

Since Talladega Nights was a disappointment, I treated myself to watching the entire Watkins Glen NASCAR road race on Sunday. It was raining in WI, so it was the perfect day to watch NASCAR. My guys all had a rough day, although Elliott did okay for his last day with Yates…hopefully he’ll turn things around in the #19. And Kasey started out in the front row, but just kept falling back throughout the race. With a few laps to go, he had worked his way up to somewhere in the top 15, but on the last lap, he decided to take a little jaunt through the sandtrap by the "bus stop". So he’s still sitting a few points away from making The Chase. DJ’s season has been as disappointing as Talladega Nights…the only time I ever see him getting airtime during a race is when he’s getting passed by the leaders. I'm not a huge fan of road races, but it was actually a pretty interesting race to watch - there were a record number of cautions for that track - and the last lap was exciting. I was happy to see Happy take the win from Doughy Smoke. I see one of my favorite races is coming up...the Bristol night race (it's like watching velodrome racing under the lights, but with cars instead of bikes)...but it's on TNT and I don't have cable!

I've got to go de-funkify now.

SS