gleedle gleedle dee

All members of the house are home after a long weekend of biking, working and hotel staying. Kylie, Mike, Tina and Kim went somewhere in Georgia to race their bigger bikes (well, bigger than mine) and it seems as if they did well. Mike finished second and Tina was leading her race until her pdeal came off four miles into the course. Bummer, but at the same time a confidence booster I am sure.
This weeknd for me started off with a long night of sitting in Conor's house playing guitar and listening to the Shins way too loud (so loud that the neighbors came up and told to chill out). We went out to the Admirable after playing at his house and continued to buy tequilla shots until we couldn't remember out names. We split up from there and rode our wobbly bikes to our own homes.
Saturday morning didn't exist for me and I got up around 12:30 completely groggy and wondering if I would be able to do well in my races later on in the day. A subway sandwich and two hours of practice later the races started at my new home (aka the Weaverville BMX track) . My races were fun since I was racing a few of my new buddies and we were able to talk smack to each other through out the afternoon. The last of my motos ended up with a full gate (8 people) and we all had a blast jumping the second jump on the course heading towards the first turn which almost ended in a pile up due to everyone going for passing moves. It was a fun race and I came out ahead of the carnage.
But tommorow is my first day at Pro Tree Care and it must be time for me to head to bed.

I have recently decided to move to another tree company. It was a bit of a tough decision in that I was really excited to stay with Above All Trees for a while and see the business grow and potentially move up myself. But after three months of being the only consitent employee and a number of other griping points, I started to get a little fed up and needed to move on. So now I am going to be starting with Pro Tree Care on the 23rd of June. It seems as if Pro Tree is going to be more in my vein of arboristing (yes, I did just create a new verb) in that the climbing and rigging systems I am going to be using are not old school climbing and rigging techniques. So i will be learning a lot of new things and dusting out my cob webs and bad habits that I have formed with Above All Tree.

The summer rains have started. Not as consistenly as I remember them out in Black Mountain, but there are "predicted" thunder storms in the afternoon every day this week. After the past few 90 degree days it is nice to have a cool afternoon rainstorm that soaks everything.

Before it all dwindles away...

Lexy made the comment the other day that no one had been writing on the blog. It was dying. Mike came back, racing resumed,(unofficial) summer came around and I took up a 40 hr/week job (whine, whine, whine) and suddenly, writing on this silly little thing didn't seem all that important.

And then I got sad and my friend Christine asked how I was doing and I said, "not too well" and she said, "well, are you writing?" Then I remembered how I used to write a ton as a little kid and as an emo high schooler, but then sort of fell out of the habit once college and bikes took over. I try every once in awhile to write, but usually it's just poems in German that I quickly read over then crumple up less someone who knows German and can recognize terribly written poetry finds it. I hadn't actually written, pen-to-paper style, in far too long. So it's about time. Only, I suppose saving the blog isn't saving my pen-to-paper draught. Oh well. You can't win at everyting.

Sometime last week I was bombing down some trail within the Ledford Maze at Bent Creek, not really paying attention to anything apparently, because suddenly, my handlebars clipped a tree and I went flying off my bike. I tumbled to the ground, my bike a few feet beyond the tree and me a few feet beyond that. I was only a little scrated up, but I sat there for a while, feeling really disappointed with myself and hurt, and I realized that that pretty much summed up my mental state of the past few weeks.

I've been agonizing over a boy. And basically, it feels like getting tossed off my bike and laying in a sorry pile of pain where no one else is aware of what's going on because I'm half-lost somewhere in some maze, alone and pissed at myself. And not wanting to get up at all.

That's been going on for too long now, and the other night, I rejected my friends' offer to go see the Sex and the City movie with them (I'm admitting right here, and here only, that I actually kind of like that show. Please don't tell anyone.) I couldn't do it. I couldn't see people run around being all happy and dumb and having their stupid little love lives work out for them in the end. So instead I did my favorite 2 hour road loop from my house and sat at some overlook on the Parkway, feeling very much like I did the other day after getting tossed, only this time there was no literal tossing. I then got a call from the very same Christine mentioned earlier (I'm admitting right here and here only that I do, also, carry a cellphone with me when I ride. Please don't tell anyone else that, either. My reputation is going down the drain...) and she said the group of girls were instead coming over to my house to make dinner. Friends. Sigh. They're there for you, sometimes, usually at key times. And I love them for that.

And today, when I frantically called Lexy to see if he could pick me up a case of Sierra Nevada Pale Ales from Ingles (because the West Asheville Ingles were plumb out, and I needed a case, NOW)...he said, "sure" with no questions asked. I'll let you know what the case is for if it winds up working out for me. The case is an integral part to a huge masterplan. Which probably won't work out at all, because I later got a call from Lexy saying the Swanannoa (or Oteen, who knows?) Ingles was also out of cases. Bad sign. I'll have to get one on the way to work tomorrow. But I'm determined to see this plan carried out, whether it works or not.

So anyway, I'm here, drinking a Keystone Light because since the end of my ride today til now, two hours later, I couldn't wait for a beer. But the Yuenglings and ESB's were gone. And who the hell else would drink the last Keystone Light? Kind of like my Banana popsicles in the freezer---there's no point in calling dibs on shit no one else likes, I guess.

I'm supposed to go meet Christine (yup, same one, props to that girl for being awesome) and Chelsea at the Admiral, my favorite bar in West Asheville because its a perfect sqaure and the name reminds me of pirates. I really just want to shower and go to bed, but I might learn something from these girls tonight. Plus, I appreciate the hell out of them.

Which is what the point of this post was, in case you missed it. I wouldn't blame you. My head's not here right now, I'm in a perpetual state of being about to crash into trees lately, becuase of this boy and my desire to make it up to him, somehow. But in the meantime...all my friends that do talk to me--I love you guys. A lot. Thanks for being there.

have you ever had fun before?

Thanks to Susan (Adam's mom) for takign this photo and sending it to me. but no, really... have you ever had fun befire?

...and some catching up....

Since the last entry there has been a lot of things that have occured at 17 Nebraska. Two of the residents, Kylie and I, graduated from the esteemed Warren Wilson College on May 17th. The weekend that surrounded the graduation ceremony was filled with friends and family and a lot of good byes to college mates who have left the nest in order to pursue "careers" or travel to different parts of the world. The graduation ceremony was quite fun with the exception of the speaker who rambled his way through fifteen minutes of tangents that didn't really link up to anything. Later on that night was a gathering of graduates and alumni at 17 Nebraska in which everyone brought beer but was to knackered from the busy weekend to drink whole heartedly. So the fridge was full for about half a week until some one drank most of them.... The weekend ended and left many a graduate wondering "What the hell hanppened?" as they tried to wrap their heads around four years (and some times more) coming to a close. But in order to uphold the Wilson tradition of being "heady dank" and "local" many graduates have moved into different parts of West Asheville. For example, Wee Dan lives about a two minute bicycle ride away and Conor, Mary and Christine live a 7 minute bicycle ride away. So when we get low on sugar we will have good neighbors to borrow some from (even though Ingles is closer... a lot closer).

MIKEY'S BACK! Plus a few other additions to the Homestead

Pictured above is the dapper young man who showed up on our front porch this past Monday.  Turns out the stranger was Mikey! Oh, how we had forgotten!
This is the fighter jet that is now parked under our car port. Performs well, but still needs to be jumped each time.

This is our friend from Warren Wilson College. His name is Conor MacGheehan and he was the previous owner of the Fighter Jet, as well as the one who saved the day for Krauss and then made fun of her for not moving her truck for 6 months when all it needed was a jump.

This past Monday, a tall, blond, dapperly-dressed young man walked into 17 Nebraska carrying a bike box, a couple pieces of luggage, and a stack of Stripper Trading Cards (Upper Deck, no doubt) that he picked up in Vegas.  Not being the type to turn away shiftless hobos or even prim-looking Yuppies, the three perma-residents (Lexy, Lateef, and Krauss) welcomed this nice young man into their house.  It wasn't until a couple hours later that they realized that this kid was, indeed, Mikey--their old housemate from three weeks back that left sometime mid-March for a trip "out west" to fit some adventures in-between a couple NMBS bike races.  With the house complete again, the four ate dinner with Phil "The Fifth Beatle So-to-Speak" Shaw and Marshall "What's Wrong with this Picture?" Hance.  It was an attempt to bring back the family dinner. One day at a time.  Either way, Mikey moved his stuff back in and promptly began looking up future races, to see when he could get the hell out of here again.

In other exciting additions, Lateef picked up a Foosball table. It's so janky and therefore amazing. Plus it can be turned into not-air-but-still-hockey, pool, table tennis, and shuffleboard (Tell that to the Flawda boys!)  Then there's the return of the fighter jet, which is Kylie's truck: a 1990 Ford Ranger, standard, no power-steering, but one hell of a paint job done by previous owner Conor MacGheehan.  It had been sitting at WWC since September, needing nothing but to be jumped, which I finally got around to this past Friday.  Now we have a truck that won't start without being jumped taking up one-half of the car port.  We could've put the foosball table there, but darn...

the good life

Below is a picture of our basement. Well, part of our basement. The main room is essentially an indoor hockey rink, a beer pong table, a party couch, and a washer and dryer.  The back room however, pictured below, is worth a few thousands of dollars, apparently.  This masterpiece-worthy beauty of a cluster fuck resulted from the residential bikes (Mike, Kylie and Lexy's 3-5 bikes each) plus the Flawda boys' traveling arsenal of rides. All crammed into this little space, providing a nice geometric challenge and one awesome picture, courtesy of Mikey.
In a week-long shopping spree, our friend Dan wound up with two more bikes, making his total somewhere around 3800. Pictured above are a few of his bikes that he brought up with him from Florida.

Party caravan makes it way to the Panhandle of Paradise. Or makes it back up to the sliver of a state that is NC. Who knows? Gas stations all look the same, and I can't tell which direction the car is pointing.