Geeky Yet Waterproof

A few weeks ago I got to see some of my high school friends again, because Sarah was having a party at the neighborhood pool. Morning practice that day had cured me almost completely of the urge to swim, but the heat of the day and the blue water prevailed over my will.
After a while we were all starting to freeze, so we got out and sat around a fire eating hamburgers and roasting s’mores. I tried to break my previous record of two hamburgers and seven s’mores in a row, but I only made it to six s’mores this time, because — thank goodness — after some time they took away the s’more materials.

When it was dark, we were all sitting around trying to think of scary stories to tell each other, but didn’t progress much farther than, “Somebody should say something scary!” — that is, until Troyce suddenly exclaimed, “Did Eamon bring the Mercedes?!” And before I knew it, Troyce, Joe, and somebody I didn’t know were marching out to go “sit” in my car.

As we were all sitting in the dark car blasting Franz Ferdinand through the speakers, somebody had the idea that “we should go to 7-Eleven and get a slurpy to pour on Sarah!” So we drove half a mile to the 7-Eleven to complete this mission. When we got back, we responded to Sarah’s “can I have a sip?” with, “of course!” *pssssshshhhhhh*.
It was a great success.

But soon afterwards, I discovered my cell phone had gone missing from my pocket. We looked for it all over the car, but unfortunately it was on vibrate mode, so calling it didn’t do any good. I figured it would turn up eventually, so I borrowed someone’s phone to let my parents and Iza know I didn’t have my own with me.
Later, some of my friends started calling (on the other phone) to say they’d been getting constant foul messages from my phone. At first I thought someone from the party must have taken it as a joke, but after further investigation nobody seemed to have it. It then dawned on me that it might have fallen out of my pocket at the 7-Eleven and somebody took it.

I won’t take the time to explain the steps we took in trying to figure out if somebody at the 7-Eleven did indeed take it, but unfortunately that was the case and I’m currently (partially) phoneless. So until an iPhone finds its way magically into my hands, should you need to contact me, call my old number but with a 6 instead of a 3 at the end. (The number of my sister’s phone, which I stole BORROWED for an extended period of time).

Although it was at the time still Winter here in Oregon, I spent the last weekend at the beach in Waldport with Iza, her family, and Mark’s cop friend with his two (younger) boys.
The ocean water being about -200°, we didn’t go wading past about two inches, but we roasted marshmallows on a camp fire and made (many) s’mores.

On the way back, I got a few rather frightening photos when we stopped at a friend’s house for a barbecue…

The one in the orange is yours truly.

Last Friday, my dad and I made our triumphant return to the Alpenrose Velodrome, which I hadn’t seen since track season last summer. Alpenrose is one of the steepest velodromes in the country, with banks sloped at 43°. It was scary going around the track for the first time in so long, but I quickly got used to it.
This was also the first time I was able to try out my new track bike, which I got last December for Christmas, but hadn’t been able to ride until now! Track season lasts only in the summer, so I’ve been eagerly waiting to try it for five months.
The bike is amazingly light, and I can accelerate really fast. Part of the reason for this is the pedals we put on: your shoes lock in like with any normal clip pedals, but to release your foot, you have to pull a little lever on the back of the pedal. Now, remember that this is a fixed-gear bike — so you can’t stop pedaling to pull said lever! It takes some getting used to, but after a while I could do it without any trouble.

I had three races: a ten lap scratch race (which is just a regular race), a 15 lap point-a-lap race (where the winner of each lap gets one point, but nobody else does), and a 15 lap points race (every fifth lap, the top four people get points).
Having been away from the track since last year, the best way to describe my first two races is with the word “pwned”. The last one went a little better though… I didn’t get any points, but then again most of the racers didn’t, and I finished in the middle of the pack, even though most of them were fast 30 year-olds. I probably would have come in a few places farther ahead, but somewhere in the middle of the race a guy wiped out directly in front of me — all I saw was him cartwheeling in the air and his bike flying, but he miraculously landed on his feet, and the race continued. He was surrounded by other riders when it happened, but somehow nobody hit him, although I had to swerve up-track to avoid the crash, which cost me some speed.

It was fun racing at Alpenrose again and getting back into the track culture. And I didn’t even have to face my worst fear: not being able to clip out, and tipping over in the grass!