!!!!!!! Mr. MISANTHROPIC !!!!!

I carved this pumpkin Friday, sort of represents how I felt all weekend:

A few years back, I bought myself this nice red snowblower, seeing as how I was (then) a new homeowner with quite a spacious driveway and a good length of sidewalk which I was now in charge of, I figured what the heck.

So, the thing has run pretty well, over the past few years, and gotten me through a handful of decent storms. I would say overall it is an item of mediocre quality though. The plastic snow chute is kind of cheap and has fallen off a few times. Also, last year, the kill switch somehow broke loose, never to be seen again. For the remainder of the season I would have to kill the engine by prying the spark plug cap off with an instrument such as a rake handle, or other implement (I did try this at first with wet, gloved hands, and I received such an electrocution, that I am sure my heart stopped for a minute).

So last night, I decided I should probably get the thing ready, since snow is really just around the corner here in New England. I got my tools all together, located a nice little microswitch that was leftover from another aborted project, and headed out to the gee-rage.

I messed with the wires that were dangling loose, where the old switch used to be located. I finally figured out, through more bouts with minor electrocution, which one was the wire that when grounded, would kill the spark. After some hasty soldering with my $12 soldering iron, I was ready to find a place to drill the hole where the switch would go.

I decided on a nice open spot on a piece of plastic shroud, adjacent to where the engine speed control lever is. In the inadequate light it seemed like a decent choice, and I was in a bit of a hurry as my hands were starting to get cold.

I fired up the hi-speed drill and pushed it home, right through the shroud, and also right through some fucking part of the carburator, which holds gasoline, which promptly started emptying onto my pants.

I need to get a new pair of glasses ASAP – I hate my current black rim glasses because everyone in the world has them now. OK, voting time, which one do you guys think I should go for?

A.

B.

C:

4:

This is a pic of me finishing my first cross race, at the Canton Cup, 5 years ago. Check out the bad hat/helmet and the lace up shoes. Also the horrible yellow tubular Tufo tires. What did I know?

Race report on Bikeman site.

Two days of bad racing up at Cape Ann this weekend for me. I won’t come up with a ton of excuses,  It was a “Perfect Storm” of fuck ups, if you will. Getting the wrong number and starting dead last on Saturday did not help things, and it pretty much went downhill from there. I spent a good part of each race in the land of beer guts, and helmet mirrors. Arrgh.

One more weekend of racing like that, and I’m done. Seriously…

Anyway, here’s some pics from the weekend:

Bike rack of the national champ…the colored SRAM hoods are pretty damn sexy:

The joint I stayed:

Tea time for Trebon?

One reason I did so shitty is a general lack of sleep. A consolation of that is that I got to see this every morning:

This thing would turn out to be everyone’s enemy if you were lucky enough to race after it got used:

And now for some random videos from the weekend:

This weekend is the big dance, up in Gloucester, MA. Should turn out to be a soup-to-nuts ass kicking. Good luck to all the homies racing up there. Now, just stay the hell outta my way or I’ll run your asses into the tape.

Once again, last night was marked by slaying myself on the trainer, followed by a trip to the hombre pictured above, for a recovery burrito,