The weather has finally started warming up in the area less than 10 days before the Grand Fondo events. Riders can choose a 35 mile ride, a 62 mile ride, or a 100 mile ride. These riders are mostly local riders who are not going to have time to acclimate to the increased heat. The pros and elite amateurs that race the closed courses downtown should not have this problem.
Tulsa Tough
In less than two weeks, Tulsa will host a three day bicycle race known as Tulsa Tough. Saturday and Sunday feature road course events west and north of Tulsa, while downtown hosts closed course races for pros and elite amateurs on Friday and Saturday nights.
What Tulsa Tough is known for is the River Parks Criterium, better known as Cry Baby Hill. This Sunday features a humongus hill, fans in a variety of costumes, beer swilling riders, and officials who somehow get people to “mind the gap” when the pack comes through.
An event like this requires thousands of volunteers, and for the fifth event in a row, I will be helping out. I primarily drive supplies to the rest stops on the road courses, but this year I volunteered to help where needed on Friday.
Still cool and wet
Although we finally managed to have an 80 degree day Thursday, May is going to be the coolest May since I moved to Kansas 15 years ago. The last time it was this wet was in 2007, the year of the flood. Flooding is not likely this year, since the rivers are still low.
AFL round 11
The Greater Western Sydney Giants got to the airport to fly to Brisbane to play the Lions. Because the Giants had been in Melbourne 13 days earlier to play Richmond and the new 14 day quarantine for all people leaving Victoria, the Giants have to fly on game day. At least they are going north and not east, where jet lag is a real issue.
Hawthorn will take their bye a week earlier and reshedule this week’s game.
AFL hit by WuFlu
Victoria has had another outbreak of WuFlu, and as a result all of this round’s games will be played without fans. Some of the games will be played later in the week. This mostly affects interstate clubs coming into Victoria and Victorian clubs traveling interstate.
Haven’t talked about the footy.
Considering the name of this blog, I am ashamed that there has not been more about footy on it. What is even more embarassing is I have not been following footy this year. This post will be a start in correcting that deficiency.
Coming up on the mid-point of the season, Geelong is third, two games behind the Western Bulldogs. The Cats are lucky to be at 7-3 with some of the horrowshow quarters they have played this year. They play Collingwood, the team Australia loves to hate, this weekend.
Locally, the Tulsa Buffaloes open their season in exactly one month at home against the North Texas Devils. The Devils are playing their first game ever. I haven’t seen a live footy match in almost two years. Can’t wait to see a game that promises to be competitive, if not highly skilled.
More drying out
The garden and my driveway are finally drying out. Since this is my weekend, I got some strawberries and blueberries before I left work. The strawberries are huge and not that tasty, so I am dehydrating them.
I got my second flush from my mushrooms, and will dehydrate them next week. I was wondering if my peas were ever going to set pods. I get home from work this morning and see dozens of pods. Now if I can just keep those four lettered, four legged locusts (AKA deer) away from them a few more days….
Drying out
After 10 consecutive days of rain, it will finally start drying out the next three days. Wednesday the 80 degree mark gets smashed as the high should be 85. Days have remained cool, but the nights have really warmed up last week.
Vacation
At Walmart, schedules are set three weeks in advance, dropping on Saturday. Since I have had the same schedule for the past three months, I don’t check right away. I checked my schedule last night and saw my vacation on it. Didn’t realise it was that close.
Pissing on your customers part 3
Most of the regional track meets were held last night. After work, I went and bought the local dailies, figuring the results would be in the papers. Both papers are printed in house, so this should have not been a problem. The good news was neither paper had any results.
The bad news was the Independence Daily Reporter had a story on a conference track meet that was held the week before. This would be two days after the weekly Montgomery County Chronicle had a better story on the same meet. The name of the Sports Editor at the IDR is Nick Dailey. Putting the cherry on top of this cow pattie, this is special edition they charge double for.
When comparing the other sections of the papers, I noticed the Parsons Sun had headlines that were complete sentences and actually told the reader what the article was about. The Reporter? They had sentence fragments that seemed to be written by someone for whom English was a third language after Klingon and Martian. This made the headlines about as useful as a bag of football bats.
I could go on, but I prefer to keep these posts short. Besides, there is always “Pissing on your Customers, part 4”.
Footyfried 