I’m driving down to Tulsa in a little while to race tonight at 9:30pm, I think. It is going to be a humbling experience. My lungs are still hurting from the 4 minutes of riding hard I did two days ago. Sometimes I get that lung burn, coughing yellow stuff up, when I’m in shape, so I can’t blame it completely on having no top end. But boy, it sure felt bad.

I was on pretty busy all day yesterday. I was trying to get a few cross bikes race worthy. I glued on some good tires, but not FMB or Dugast. For one, I’m not fit enough to be competitive. And 2, sometimes there are goatheads there, which destroy tubulars.

Bill and I road our cross bikes on MTB trails over at the governor’s mansion in the evening. The trails were super smooth, but it was still challenging on cross bikes. I only have a 25 on the back, so some of the climbs were nearly trials riding. It started sprinkling when we were getting home at dark. It was super windy and in the lower 50’s.

It is supposed to be in the lower 80’s this weekend in Tulsa. That is going to be so hot for cross. A couple years ago, for these races, it was in the mid 90’s, so I guess I should be thankful it is going to be 10 degrees cooler. Two of the races are at night, so it should be cooler anyway.

I bought a new trailer yesterday at a garage sale from a neighbor. $100. It is pretty small, only 7 ft.x 5 ft. bed. It was handmade. Pretty old, from the 70’s. It is so much heavier gauge metal than what they use nowadays. It’s not really big enough to haul the stuff I need to move around, but for $100, it was a no-brainer.

Trudi got me an early Christmas present yesterday too. She bought 6 wine custom made glasses with World’s Colors. The glasses are from my friend Nathan Sheafor. Nathan is from Topeka, went to Topeka High with me. He was on the 1992 Olympic team with Lance and rode most of his career for Shaklee. His family was always into blowing glass and now he lives in Grants Pass, Oregon and has his own studio, The Glass Forge Gallery and Studio. If you’re ever hurting for a great present, you should check it out. They make custom glass ornaments for Christmas, just about anything. It is super cool.

I need to pack up. I haven’t heard from Bill yet about going. If he isn’t, then I’m taking the Isuzu, if he is, then the diesel van. I’ve been working on the Isuzu for the past couple weeks and it kind of feels like a new car, even though it has 200K miles. I want to take it on a road trip to check out the mileage, etc.

Okay, this should be interesting racing like this. I sure wish I was going to a nice, long, flatish road race.

The glasses from Nathan. I am going to treasure them.

Nathan made this for a lamp I broke while painting a couple months ago when he was back in Topeka. His dad has a place to blow glass behind their house.

My “new” trailer. It is pretty sturdy. I like stuff like this.

I got three of the same items from the same place yesterday and they all came in their own box. The UPS guy said it wasn’t that abnormal, go figure.

I snipped off the tip (deep skin only) of my little finger working on the car yesterday.

Trudi gave me this label from Vitamin Water. I don’t think they sponsor Ned. I emailed it to him.

What is our world coming to when guys with electric wheelchairs are giving rides to people that can use their legs?