Summer Weddings and Gold Mines

Alert readers might notice the disappearance of two events on my calendar. Another wedding has claimed two more races, in Windsor and Union Vale. The wedding will be my first time ever to Central Park, so that'll be interesting, but the schedule will likely keep me off the bike for three days straight, Saturday through Monday, the weekend before the big Owasco Stage Race. I will have to plan my training carefully.

With the wedding July 15-16, me having dropped out of Fitchburg June 29-July 2, and no interesting races on July 8-9, I'm left with 26 days of no races between the races this weekend and the Owasco SR. It's actually the perfect opportunity to test my mettle, to see how well I can stick to a hard training schedule leading up to the big event. It's also an opportunity to enjoy some peak summer weekends with friends and family and to take part in some activities that normal people do during the summer while I'm usually off racing. Who knows? Maybe I'll actually move forward with taking care of that bee infestation and the replacement window project. Oh, but wait, there will also be lots of Tour de France watching to be done...

Speaking of watching television, I watched the US soccer team lose to Ghana last night. The announcer said that the government of Ghana had declared a half-day national holiday so everyone could go home and watch or listen to the match, and they asked the country's gold mines to shutdown during the match so that there would be enough electricity to power all of the TV sets and radios. Okay, it would have been nice for the US to keep going in the World Cup, but hey, if we have to lose, I'm glad it was to a country where they're so poor that they need to shut down industries to save electricity and where it's so important for national pride that everyone goes home from work to watch the game.

See you in front of the television.