August | 2016 | Steve Tilford

The next couple days are going to be my favorite days of the Olympics. (Not that the road cycling wasn’t great.) Tomorrow is the day for women’s racing. It is the day for MTB and also Triathlon. Both are tomorrow morning. Then on Sunday, men’s MTB.

The MTB is just going to be interesting. I have no prediction for the women’s race tomorrow morning. It is really wide open. On Sunday, I’m going with Nino. It is the only medal the guy is missing and he has been on a roll this year. Like I said before, I’m picking Sagan to finish somewhere between 5-10. I don’t think he has the speed, plus his MTB skills have to be rusty compared to the guys that have been doing this for years, even though he has been training exclusively off-road since the Tour.

The women’s triathlon is hopefully going to be a continuation of same-old by Gwen Jorgensen. She is pretty much undefeated for the past 3 years. She had a couple blips, but those blips were nothing. I follow Gwen pretty closely and she had been focused on this one event for years. Funny how the Olympics dwarf other events. You can win every race for years, but if you don’t win the Olympics, your career is missing something. Doesn’t seem right, but that is the way of sport.

I’m hopefully going to ride some this weekend too. My knee is still super swollen. I know inflammation causes more inflammation, so I’ve been pretty cautious about bending it much. The stitches are healing pretty good and no infection so far, which is mildly surprising. I have been cleaning it a couple times a day, which isn’t in my personality normally. I was thinking about taking some oral antibiotics and now am glad I skipped them.

I picked my brother up yesterday at KU Med in Kansas CIty. They pulled the chest tube out, which he says was the size of a quarter. He seems to be getting around pretty good, at least walking around, but that is probably the pain killers. They sent him home with a backpack full of Schedule 2 pills, which I told him he should take sparingly. He was on oxycotin, oxycodone and fentanyl at the hospital. Bet he sleeps a lot the next few days. He final score was broken collarbone, broken scapula, 6 broken ribs and a collapsed lung that was filling full of liquid. Hopefully the lung has been taken care of. Now the bone healing starts.

Okay, supposed to really storm this afternoon. 70+ mph winds. I like storms, but winds that high sometimes play havoc on infrastructure. No tornadoes predicted though. It is August and that would be pretty unusual.

I rode with Pat and Gwen up to Bayfield County to get their marriage license.

The trispoke that Kris was riding when he fell. I’ve never seen one explode so badly.

This is Tucker on the drive back from Colorado. He was beat. He hasn’t been himself and quit eating yesterday, so he is at the vet today. He had a fever of 103.8, so he doesn’t feel good. Hopefully it is just doggie flu or something.

Tucker’s blood work.

As cyclists, we go through more razor blades than average. We’re shaving more, thus go through blades quicker. Razor blades have improved a ton since I was a kid. But the cost of these excellent blades have become unbelievably expensive.

I thought of this when I saw a Gillette ad and they were using the newly crowned Olympic Decathlete, Ashton Eaton as their guy. I was envious of the dude. I’d have to assume that he gets unlimited Gillette products, which obviously would include razor blades. If I were him, I’ve endorse them just for free razor blades.

I think Gillette makes the best blades. I don’t really stray much. Back when I first started racing, Gillette had just came out with the disposable razors. I think you could get something like 10 for $1. Even in my penniless state, those razors were affordable. Even once in a while I would try Bic disposables, but inevitably I would end up bleeding everywhere.

When I used to go to South America and race, I used to always stock up on razor blades. Razor blades are sold in South America much cheaper. Their cost is proportional to have much the average person earns, thus much cheaper. A few times I’ve bought razor blades off of eBay and most of the time the blades packaging is in Spanish. A few entrepreneurs are having their relatives ship boxes of razor blades up to them here in the US, then reselling them at a profit. Pretty great business model.

I think everyone hates buying new razor blades. They seem so ridiculously expensive, that parting with hard earned money for them is painful. Last year at Christmas, I actually gave Trudi a year’s worth of razor blades. It was over $100 worth. I thought it was a little cheesy for a Christmas present, but it is something you need, but hate buying yourself.

I’ve used the women’s blades a couple times to shave my legs. The blades with the slimy things protecting your legs from nicks. Man, do they work great for shaving legs. It makes shaving legs a breeze. I’ve never bought them, because they don’t double up for shaving your face, but I would like to have some.

Anyway, paying $4 for razor blades irks just about everyone. I read the guy that started the $1 shave club deal sold it for something like a billion dollars. He was fed up enough that he actually did something about it. The rest of us just pay through the nose.

I’ve been shaving my legs since before I actually grew hair on them. This was a photo from the Topeka paper when I was a kid.

The gillette Venus women’s blades are great.

Tucker feels better today, but is still a little under the weather.

Steve Tilford

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Monthly Archives: August 2016

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