Whirl Wind Activity

Things are finally settling back down after a week of craziness. Monday morning I got up at 2:30 am to drive the 2 and a half hours into LA from Buellton, CA, return my rental car and catch my 7 am flight (spend over an hour going through security at that time of day). Got home early Monday morning and spent the afternoon cramming for the Engineering Geology final exam...yuck. Just so everyone knows, my textbooks made the world tour and barely even got opened...lots of cramming was needed. Tuesday morning I got up nice and early and headed outside for a 3 hour road ride with my dad before I headed up to the Uni to write my first final. After that I headed home and crammed for my Contaminant Hydrogeology final. Wednesday morning I got up early again to do the same, only to be faced with nasty cold and rainy conditions, so my 3 hour ride was unfortunately spent on the trainer in the basement.

Wednesday evening was pleasent, Dallas and I went out for a wicked sushi dinner and finished off with tea and chocolate cheesecake..yummy.

Got to sleep in a little on thursday and spent the day packing and organizing my post school life....ie, packing away textbooks. And thursday evening I flew out east to do the Canada Cup races in Mt Tremblant and Hardwood Hills. Stefan Widmer was either nice enough or dumb enough to pick me up at the airport at midnight and we finally made it to the palace in Mt Tremblant just after 2 am. Since I was the last to arrive, and maybe because I was the only girl in the house, I was given the pull out couch in the living room..no problem, except there was no sheets or pillows to be found at 2 in the morning....oh well, I didn't feel like sleeping too much anyways :)

Friday morning I met up with my coach Steve Neal, who I haven't seen in almost a year, and did a couple of laps of the course. I was surprised, I actually felt really good, and it's always a fun course there...even when really muddy (which is 95 % of the time)

Saturday was the race, I didn't feel 100%, but it was definitley fun racing with Emily Batty, Amanda Sin and Jean-ann McKirdy. The race was really close with the 4 of us for the entire 2 hours. I think each of us lead at some point in the race. My turn was the third lap when I made it first into the singletrack. Being my strong point I put some time on the other girls and coming out for my fourth and last lap I thought why not go for it. I was super happy to see the feed zone (couldn't quiet hold on to my bottle on the third lap and it shot off out of my hand..that was a sad moment..oh well). Amanda, climbing like an animal with Emily quickly closed my gap and put the boots to me up the last steep climb. Emily took the sprint, 5 seconds over Amanda, I trailed in just over a minute behind and Jean-ann finished in fourth behind me.

Saturaday evening was the traditional le Petite Caribou party, to which I called it a night pretty early..I wasn't just a part pooper, I was really, really tired.

Currently I'm hanging out in Brooklin, Ontario at the Batty farm, they've been nice enough to take in some bikers for the week, and I did an awesome ride with Emily today. Oh yeah, last night was the best sleep I've had since my crazy drive to LA...definitely needed to sleep in till almost 10 :)

Tomorrow I've been told is pancake day..can't wait.