Archive for the ‘General’ Category

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Car fixed!

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

After two days and some extraneous parts I finally have my VW fixed.  I had to replace the wheel bearing and a tie rod end that I broke.  The bearing was the toughest part to fix, without a press I had to take a hammer and punch to drive out and press in the press fit type bearing.  I also had to take the steering knuckle off of the car to change it, that is a different way than I have seen before.  Most of the times with other cars you can replace the bearing without having to take so much of the vehicle apart.

Other than that there hasn’t been much of anything going on recently.

Later

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Finished reading

Saturday, August 15th, 2009

I just wanted to post that I have finished reading “Without Remorse,” by Tom Clancy.  It is an awesome book, now it is time to go and read the next in the series, “Patriot Games.”  From previous experiences the books are A LOT better than the movies that are based off of them.  Now it is time to go and shoot the Big and Rich concert that is being held at Stadium View.

Later

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It’s been a while

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

This last week has been interesting.  I have now found someplace to get some money from, thanks for the reference Matt.  Riding has been getting more and more frequent.  I am trying to ride 2 times a day for a total of ~4 hours.  I also have been losing weight like a mad man, which is a great thing.  I hope to be ready for the last couple of WORS races this year.  I am pretty sure I am going to do the race the lake.  I don’t know if I will die while on the 93 mile course or not since the longest I have ever done was 80 miles.

Good luck to all who are racing this weekend.

Later

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Iola recap

Monday, May 18th, 2009

The race day started off good.  I went to pick up Lanser and head over to Iola.  I made it a point to bring my camera and shoot some photos before I got to go and have fun with the pain.

When Don said, “GOOOOOO” it was off.  I managed to get a third row start in the wave.  Off of the start I got pinned behind somebody that couldn’t get going and Jeff got a head of me and I was forced to stop for a second.  Once I got passed that obstacle it was time for the awesome gravel road climb that they have there.  I managed to get some people on the climb to the top.  Once we get to the top the sand trap got a lot of people including me because of people ahead of me.  Once we got passed that the race started to settle down and then it was time to pace myself.  I managed to get through traffic really well the first lap, then all of a sudden I was coming up on the clydes that got pass me when I was forced to stop those few times.  I managed to put 4 behind me on the first lap and then I thought that I was in fourth and just kept hammering it.  On the next lap I managed to get 1 more and put myself in what I thought was third.  Then after an uneventful second lap it was hammer time.  I picked up the pace a lot on the third lap to see if I could get some more clydes.  About half way through I managed to see Welnak on some of the switchbacks and then I tried to pick up the pace and try to run him down.  To no avail though, I get done and then I go and look on the results board and I got a second.  I can say that that is the best result I have ever had at that venue.  My time was 1:23 for the course witch is about 8 minutes faster than last year.

That is about it for the race, on the school hand I am glad to be graduated from school finally.  It has been a long time in coming and now is the time to try and find a job.

Later

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2/3 done

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

ONE MORE FINAL!!  I am happy to say that.  The only thing that sucks about that is that it is the final for macro economics.  I have been busy with trying to get all the paper work done for substitutions and other things done.

On the riding front, Monday I was going to go and ride at the camp and then I met up with some people and went for about 14.5 miles.  I can’t wait for the pain to come on Sunday.  I THINK that I am ready for the race in Iola.

Later

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Fun Times

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

Hello, I am excited that there is only 5 weeks left to school.  That day is finally coming and I can’t wait.  I have a pretty boring couple of weeks coming up.  The newspaper is slowing down on campus and there aren’t that many assignments lately.

I have been contemplating going to Platteville on April 18th for the time trial that they are hosting.  I love the course but I don’t want to drive down myself.  The course itself will challenge me because of all the sustained climbing that they have in the course.  I have been ramping up the intensity of the training the last couple of days.  All I can say is that I don’t like doing the speed work for the first couple of times because the pain sucks.  What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?

On the personally photography front, I have been shooting very little lately because everything else is taking over all of my time.  I do have some new stuff that I am happy with.

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Armstrong crashes

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

I was reading velonews.com and I came across this article talking about how Arrmstrong crashes and breaks his collar bone.  I know from experience that that injury kills (hurts a lot).  Hopefully he will be ready for the TdF in July.  It took me about 6 weeks to recover from my injury.

This last weekend I got about 75 miles in, needless to say that I am tired and would like to take endless naps to recover.  I will be riding more and more trying to get ready for racing in May.

Later

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Team Meeting and some interesting stuff

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009

Last night was a good night, I got my film developed and am now ready to print some 8×10 and 11×14 for my independent study.  I really don’t like the dark room because of the amount of time, it is going to take me the rest of the day to bump out 6 prints plus my contact sheets.  It is nice to have the three roll tanks here for developing film, I could do six rolls of film at once instead of going back and forth 3 times with the 2 roll tanks.

After that I got that done it was off to the team meeting.  I thought that it was interesting and did learn some stuff about the team.  I hope that the group ride is on Wednesday this year so I can do all three in the week.  Brian Matter showed up and gave a speech about his last season, it is awesome that he made it to the world cup and finished on the lead lap.  I couldn’t imagine 60,000 people lining a course and cheering.

Jersey'sHere Shawn is explaining how the jersey sizing will go.

team-meeting-2Here is another shot of what Shawn is doing in the front, TRYING to explain what is going on this season. ;)

Brian MatterHere is the world cup competitor from Sheboygan, Brian Matter.

team-meeting-6

Brian explaining how his season went last year and answering any questions that were asked.

team-meeting-7Jason explaining what the new bags will look like, depending on which model we go with.

I can’t wait for the new season to start, next week looks promising on the temp side.  I think that I will be out there next week plugging along to get some miles in before the first couple of road races start, I will hopefully compete in 1 or 2 races before the mountain bike season starts.  Now it is off to the dark room to print my 6 prints for after spring break.

Later

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Weekend wrapup

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

Hello all, the weekend went well.  On Saturday I went to shoot the Men’s Tennis team.  The game was a lot less organized than I thought it was going to be. There was only 1 official to officiate three matches simultaneously.  Needless to say you could get away with anything that you wanted to during the game where the official was at a different court.  The viewing platform where I was was sort of crap because it made photographing hard.  There just happen to be a pipe right where I was looking with my camera.  I have also found out that the camera that I have is just too slow for that kind of action phototgraphy.  I would miss a lot of shots just because the camera has a slow high burst rate.

Tennis player

I am officially in love with my new lens, it makes shooting a lot less complicated.  All I need is a wide-angle version of what I have.  This is where you can go and look at it.

Last week when I was driving home my car decided to have a problem and quit working.  I am going to be taking it apart this week/weekend and see what the problem is.  I would like to say screw it and get something else but we will have to see.  It all depends on what is the problem with the car.

Now it is off to go and take care of some school work today.  I can’t wait until the ewather warms up and I can take my bike outside.

UPDATE:  I just figured out part of the problem for the car.  Evidently cylinder #4 is dead, so that means that I am going to have to pull the engine out of the car and pray that there isn’t any significant damage to the cylinder wall.  I am guessing a piston is either broke or melted from overheating.  THAT SUCKS!!!

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Stupid people

Friday, February 27th, 2009

Today I was almost hit by 3 people driving out of control. One guy on campus did a 180 in the middle of the road right in front of me, almost hit my car. People need to learn that snow=slippery and that you can’t go fast across it.

Snowy landscape.

Just got done photographing STOMP. That looked interesting to watch, I only got to watch the opening sequence then I had to go. I can post the pictures that I have gotten from that later for your viewing pleasure.  Now it is off towards home

I will have a partial website up later this week, hopefully.

Later

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