My Saturday Night Live

I have had a long, rather boring day. I was able to catch up with IUP Cycling club's vice president, and we worked out a few details for the club's first few weeks of this "spring" semester. After that, I hopped on the bike for a bit...

and then just kind of sat around looking for job opportunities for after I graduate. Honestly, nothing looks to promise much excitement, but I do suppose beggars can't be choosers and I just won't go into it.

While I'm on the subject of plans for after graduation, I am happy to report that earlier this week I made contact with a local cycling club in Northern Virginia. From the sound of it, they seem like a nicely knit group of riders that will help me reach my goals of becoming a cat3 cyclist... hopefully by the end of the year. I'll post more about them later I suppose.

This is the view from my window on a night like tonight and I'm not all that crazy about this snow. I'll be honest, I'm not used to being so "bored" on a Saturday night, but I had some help getting my mind off of things.

In front of me tonight is the live Versus coverage of the Santos Tour Down Under. This six-day stage-race turned into a great event on it's final day as the sprinters were keen on trying to topple the young overall leader, Cameron Meyers from Garmin-Cervelo. In a brilliant display of tactics, Garmin-C had their wits about them and played their cards right from the get-go to fend off Matthew Goss, Michael Matthews and their respective HTC-Highroad and Rabobank teams. I enjoyed the race a lot and I think it was great to see a brother of Cameron Meyers, Travis Meyers, on a rival team no less, (Sky) put in a huge effort for his brother on the last lap to not only secure a 1-2 finish for his teammates Ben Swift (fitting name indeed) and Gregory Henderson, but also his brother's overall race win.

I hope that's not all too much over anyone's head. I've had to reread it a few times to make sure I know what I'm saying. What I mean is, this race proved to be a fight all the way down to the line. I saw riders really fighting for their lines and wheels as things got fast on the last lap. Shoulder checks and body leans were happening all around the front end. It was cool to see so much aggression right there in front of me and the overall stage and stage-race wins were well deserved.

They always talk about it being a part of the sport all the time, but I hadn't seen it live, for myself, I guess other than the obvious head-butting that went on during last year's tour.

That cost HTC-Columbia's Mark Renshaw his continuation of the tour. It's a part of racing, but even he admitted that last one was probably a bit less necessary. In races, I've touched wrists and even made some handlebar to handlebar contact with other riders for position as adrenaline starts to pump and positions become more and more important. I can definitely see myself shouldering a guy, but that's really a last resort kind of thing if I feel like I'm in danger. They say to never take your hands off the bars in the final sprint. I've seen some riders lose their win over it.

I ate too much today...