russell has a noodly appendage

troy and i busted it out to our other host housing. our gamble paid off. we're with a nice professional couple who has one high school aged son in the house and two other children off at college. they also have a wireless network and have better things to do than attend to us. that's great. i hate hosts that hover. we're in harleysville. not too far from the other place. when we arrived, they had a peach crisp that was made with some awesome local peaches. they have ripe pears for me to gorge on. its the good life.

we rode the course yesterday. the most convoluted twisty race i've ever seen. check out the map and directions. there are few roads we stay on for more than a mile. solomon drove the van while dan navigated and gave troy and i the heads up via the radios. pretty sweet deal. troy and i motor paced. tom did something else. as usual. motor pacing is a great way to prepare for a race because it gets the legs moving and you can ride at race pace (25-30 mph) but it doesn't take so much out of the muscles. the heart rate gets up but the legs don't get as tired. we got lost a couple of times, but that was ok. i'm glad i saw the course. there are some crazy obstacles. one lane bridges that you enter on an off camber turn after an 18% downhill; wooden bridges that drop out from under you. the caravan cars will get air on that one. between the twisting and the steep hills, this race will be hard. very hard. the front is going to roll quite fast while the rest of the pack clogs. and that's just getting to the circuit. the circuit is 4 miles long and we do it 13 times. there's a grinding hill in there that takes it out of a rider. that took several hours. came back home for a nice chicken curry with vegetables from the garden. apple-rhubarb crisp was for dinner. not bad.

the "mess that is the english language". even the nerds don't know what to do with it. "Who's to say that the "nominative-ablative-dative-accusative-verb" syntactical ordering is either correct or ideal?" yeah, i was going to ask that too. i'll bet tom (not peterson) knows the answer.

gotta get a new razor.

things i've forgotten to include in other entries. tom brought 5 pounds of oatmeal. he cooked pasta in a tea kettle in the room at the mad river barn. he used to eat a lot of tuna but then found out about all the mercury and so now he eats a lot of canned chicken. tom likes salad. he's constantly making a salad with either tuna or chicken on it. he eats a lot. tuna or chicken on just about anything is a meal for tom. tom also snores. its loud. dan can sleep some 12 hours a day. he wears ear plugs to ensure that he's able to continue sleeping until noon when everybody else is up and about.

i don't know why tom wears his helmet and gloves while he rides the trainer. i'll ask.

another group joins the fray over teaching evolution in school. see flying spaghetti monster alternative to intelligent design. they have about the same scientific merit (intelligent design and flying spaghetti monster, that is.) did anybody know that there are still 17 pirates in the world? arr, matey, arr.