Updates from Philly

HOI!!!

Fall in Philly has been kinda strange so far. October was supposedly one of the rainiest Octobers Philly has had in years. Now November is here and it has been 65+ ever since. Definitely can not complain about riding in shorts and a short sleeve jersey this time of year.

I attempted to race cyclocross last weekend. The race was the Cat and Kitten Cross race in New Jersey and we drove through a really pretty area to get there. Apparently the race was the wedding reception of a Kelley Benefits guy and a chic from VanderKitten. How cool is that?! I went with the Penn Cycling team. We managed to get properly lost and missed my race. Fortunately the race promoters were really nice and let me ride the men's B race. I wish I had been able to get to mine on time because the course was fun. Nothing too exciting, but lots of technical switch back type things and TONS of mud. After one lap my bike must have weighed 50 lbs. Well maybe not really, but it was really really hard to pedal!

I wasn't able to race on Halloween, which I heard was ridiculous. But it's okay because I was having fun and getting paid to ride my bike. One of the cool things about work study jobs here at Penn is that they allow you to work with some really cool non profits. I had the great fortune of getting hooked up with Neighborhood Bike Works back in September. I get to ride with the road racing team on Fridays, help the kids fix their bikes on Mondays and on Saturdays I lead the Mountain Bike Club ride. I haven't worked directly with kids for a long time and I had sort of forgotten how much fun it can be. The kids are great (for the most part) and its cool to see them get stronger each week. Sometimes I feel like cycling can be intimidating and cyclists can be elitists jerks, so its refreshing to work with kids who don't care about their V02 maxes or watts/kg or yearly mileage and instead just want to ride bikes and go FAST.

Last week I started lifting again. Ugh! So sore!!! Lifting really helped me a lot last season though, so I'm planning on sticking with it.

In other, un-cycling related news, I adopted a kitten last week. His name is Amos. He's a sweetie pie. Got a little bit of a cold/cough, but that should be cleared up soon.



and more pics here. And for those of you who were wondering, yes, I am well on my way to becoming a batty old cat lady.

Other than that, things are pretty much the ush. Skool is hard. It gets dark really early. Axel got a job at Eastern Mountain Sports. He seems to like it. They're moving him to Morristown NJ next week, so we'll see how that goes....

Back to homework. Kthxbai!!!