Friday, January 12, 2007

Crossing Again

It's January, and that means it's time for Cyclocross here in Knoxville. I went today to help set up the course for tomorrow's race. I met John B. downtown for lunch, and then we headed over to the first race venue of the 2007 series, Morningside Park. John's been using Morningside as long as I've been involved in cyclocross here, and it's always been the first race location. But unlike this year, the race course has always been pretty much the same.

This year John was approached by Steve R., who wanted to try his hand at designing the course. John was happy to let him give it a shot. John and I got there today at abour 1:00 pm, joined soon after by Wally J. and Bob D. We started out by going ahead and removing leaves and as much broken glass as possible from the pavement segements of the course. After about an hour Steve showed up and the real work began.

It would be impossible for me to try to describe the routing of the course and do it justice, but it's certainly a tough course. In fact, the word that popped into my mind for the upper half was "heinous". Overall the course is a good bit longer than previous ones as well. It should make for some interesting racing.

But I won't be racing this year. This series has grown in popularity each year, so I think it's gotten big enough that I should concentrate on score-keeping full time. Besides, after seeing tomorrow's course...
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Trivia Answers for 1/4/07

1. What is the capitol of Canada? Ottawa is the Canadian capitol. When I lived in Massena, New York I used to drive to either Ottawa or Montreal to fly anywhere. Both were closer than the nearest major domestic airport.

2. Former presidential candidate Gary Hart watched his chances capsize and sink due to some 'monkey business' with what woman? Gary wasn't very smart about his affair with model Donna Rice. He told the media to follow him around if he wanted to, and they did, digging up the dirt on him and Donna in the process.

3. What is the significance of 'Monkey Business' in the previous question? "Monkey Business" was the name of a yacht that figured into some of their illicit time together. In fact, the most famous photo of them together shows her sitting on his lap and him sporting a T-shirt with the ship's name on it.

4. What 1985 movie did Oprah Winfrey co-star in (hint: Danny Glover was in it too)? Oprah was in "The Color Purple" as a supporting actress to Whoopi Goldberg.

5. A German tourist recently ended up in Montana due to a mix-up when purchasing his airline ticket on-line. Where did he intend to go? When he ended up in Sidney, Montana he figured out that maybe it wasn't spelled quite the same as the Sydney in Australia. He finally got to Sydney where he was going to visit his girlfriend, but he was a few days late and several hundred dollars short by then.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

And the Montreal airport offered such deluxe services as total car removal and dissassembly while you travelled.

dwcrx

Moveitfred said...

What? January and cross is just starting? Damn...we're shut down here in the NE.
Moveitfred

Big Guy on a Bicycle said...

Well, bicoastal boys, we think it's good to wait until it get's cold here in East Tennessee, though it wasn't cold today (freak warm spell or Global Warming? Hmm.) Besides, some of our racers see this as an extension of the season after racing in North Carolina in December.

Brother dwcrx: yeah, I wasn't going to mention that, but maybe there's a later post in that story...