Par II. Eric Freaking Martin.

Raced in the mbsef par for the course II today, and it went all right. Last year, former XC oregon skier and world cup skier Dave Stewart had the fastest time in 26 and change. This year Eric Martin went 25 flat!! on the same course as far as I could tell. He started before me, so he did not pass me on the course, otherwise I might have been able to tackle or trip him up, but he still probably would have skied under 26. He rides bike fast too. He could be pro skier or biker I think. He is a very nice guy to top it all off. As for my results, I went less than a minute slower than last year (but just under 5 minutes slower than Mr. Martin), so I guess that's not too bad after 35 phlebotomies in the last 39 weeks. I felt better than expected and, based on what I learned last week, I don't have to give blood this week, so I'll find out 4 sure on Tuesday at 4:00pm pst.

We went on a road ride this afternoon, it's like 55 or so degrees. Pretty sweet when you can get up in the morning go skiing where there's 11+ feet of snow, and come back down and road ride in the warm sun. Bend is a pretty excellent place to be outside during this time of year. But. There still a high percentage of idiot pickup truck and SUV drivers here. Today they were out in force, along w/ loud motorcycle riders. In fact, some of the pickup encounters today, reminded of a time in college when we went south for spring break for the purpose of riding our bikes, to get out of the wintery North Dakota flat lands to none other than Arkansas. We were actually yelled at by some hillbillies in a pickup. They saw us riding our bikes on the road, and didn't like it, and yelled: "That's illegal as shit", in reference to our riding on the road. To this day I still can't believe it; it was pretty scary, because down there, they have shotguns. We didn't get yelled at today but were honked at, and they didn't give us too much extra room.