The Belmont bunny - it's now a local legend ... :-)

WD :-)

Yeah sometimes you have to look twice t decide "OK, is she still wearing her clothes from last night, or does she have to work on Saturday morning?"

In a related note, this morning I saw a police car with lights on, administering a field sobriety test at 8AM; One asks oneself "Is someone still drunk from last night or fulfilling the code that 'You can't drink all day, if you don't start in the morning?'"

Also, this morning I saw an older woman with a Dunkin Donuts bag sitting in a lawn chair in front of the liquor store, also before 9AM

"Breakfast of Champions" I said to myself as I trotted by

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

I saw someone on the Dawn Patrol this morning who made me think "Did I ever tell this story ...?" from my days at the other gym, with the indoor track



It turns out I had,; sorry for repeating/plagiarizing myself

http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...ost=4553065#p4553065

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

1) Did my long run at 3:30am on a Sunday due to family obligations. Live in coastal Florida, and lots of weddings over the weekends in fall. Had to take a mid run bathroom break and stopped a beach access where there were two port a johns. Came up to the door and thought I heard something (had my headphones in), but still opened the door. It was a young couple having a very 'romantic' time in there. I don't think that is considering sex on the beach, but I could be wrong.

2) During Augusta 70.3 a few years ago (I want to say 2012) I remember seeing the aftermath of a great girl fight. There was literally pieces of different colored weaves everywhere on the street corner.

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IG: NCGregory8778

I've seen couples getting it on in lifeguard towers as the sun was coming up; don't worry, they don't tip over easily that way [trust me on this]


OMG, some of the "Crime Scenes" I'd see outside the bars in the Gayborhood!!! Once, every windowbox on one side of the block had been dumped out and there was dirt and vegetation everywhere!!! I could only imagine a pair of angry 6-foot-plus drag queens going to fucking TOWN on each other and using any "weapon" in sight

Oh! The florality!!!

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

A Possum climbing onto a patio in suburban Virginia Beach

2007 IMLou, dude offered me a hit of his joint around the 10 mile mark on the bike; in La Grange there was a dead squirrel on the side of the road that someone put a small hat on its head

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All I Wanted Was A Pepsi, Just One Pepsi

Team Zoot, Team Zoot Mid-Atlantic

I caught the tri bug in college. Then joined the Army, spent a year in training environments, and ended up in Korea. While in Korea I decided that cycling was possible in between field exercises so I ordered a Tommasini from Colorado Cyclist. That was 1989. We spent so much time in the field tho, that I wasn't able to really put down miles until we moved to the DMZ, the heavily mined and patrolled 4km strip of land separating the 2 Koreas.

The DMZ was a great cycling area. The roads were in pretty good repair and there was almost no traffic. Sure, there were often minefields on both sides of the roads, but they were marked. One just needed to stay on the road, no big deal. Until it was.

One day I was flying along feeling fast, powerful, and pleased with myself in the insufferable way of 2LT's everywhere, when I fumbled my water bottle. It hit the pavement and went zinging at 90deg right for the minefield only 6' away. I really only had time to cringe, but in my dramatic memory I imagine(?) long fractions of a second ticking by as I saw it heading right towards small suspicious protuberances from anti-personnel mines that would bound up, detonate, and take out a squad.

The water bottle went into the field, bounced off of a tree, and came back on to the road. I circled back and picked it up the water bottle thinking, "dang, that was pretty close".


Pic was taken at Camp Casey, a US Army base about 20kim S of the DMZ. Was just after the annual Korea-wide US Military bike race.

[URL=http://s465.photobucket.com/...zpsxmt6yqdf.jpg.html][/url]


Re. the inevitable "You look like an idiot in that pic". Of course I look like an idiot. Duh.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

Wow - I can understand people having their wedding on a tight budget. But how hard can it be to put aside $100 to have your honeymoon in a Motel 6?!?

I was thinking they were guests of the wedding [let's go out on a limb and say they were cousins, just for fun]

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

3 good stories:

#1: riding south on SR347 south of phoenix(before Riggs rd), several cop cars go racing past. My riding partner gets a flat, while we are changing the flat, a cop pulls up about 20' from us and lays spike strips down on the road and stands there holding a shotgun. Doesn't say anything to us. About 5 minutes later, he picks them up and takes off. We start riding again and don't get very far when a small p/u truck comes racing across the open field towards us with a couple of cop cars right behind. There is a barbed wire fence between us, but still. About 50 yds from the fence the guy turns and then starts doing circles in the field. Eventually he bails out and runs, but the cops tackle him. We finished our ride.

#2: 2004 RAAM, I was going downhill in WVA about 27MPH at night when I see an opossum right on the white line(there was a nice wide shoulder). I decide to go to it's right, hoping that it would continue running in the direction it was facing. Of course not. It turned and ran for the treeline on the right side. I hit it pretty much exactly in the middle. I did attempt to bunny hop over it and that probably kept me from crashing, but I definitely hit it. My chase vehicle was totally freaked out, they thought for sure I was going to crash. They said after I hit it, it just kinda rolled off the side of the road and was still. Not sure if it was dead or just playing dead. I didn't stop to find out.

#3: Late '90s riding at the end of Pecos Rd in Ahwatukee when it still was just a dead end. All of a sudden I found myself surrounded by tarantulas all over the road. Probably a hundred or more. I'm almost certain that I didn't hit any of them. After I got to the end and turned around for the ride back, they were all gone.

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_________________________________________________

LLLEEEEEEEEEEEERRRROOOYYY JEEENNNNNKKKIIINNNNNS!!!

The US Military Cycling Championships (Europe) were held at on an unused air strip at a USAAF base in '93 and '94. Ramstein or Spangdahlem, IIRC.

Let me preface this with mentioning that AF Military Police types have always struck me as an entirely humorless lot. Police types, civilian or otherwise, need a sense of humor because they come across a lot of silly shit in their jobs. But whereas I'd thought that I could get a laugh out of just about anyone, I've never been able to get a laugh out of AF MP types that were guarding a facility that I needed to get into.

If the Glider moves, kill it.

During the Time Trial, '93 Champs, a glider came down on the air strip, right in front of 100's participants, family, and spectators, hanging out at the grandstands/admin area. The glider ended up about 40m in front of the start/finish, but well off of "the line" so it wasn’t really an obstacle. It leaned over on a wing giving us a good view of it's cockpit. The big Plexiglass bubble opened, up, the pilot climbed out, walked towards us, thru the crowd and then casually headed off towards the buildings behind us. Probably to phone for a mighty big tow truck. We were all mildly amused, and then we went back to paying attention to the Time Trial.

This was right at the end of the Cold War so the forces in Europe were still wired pretty tight. AF types are particularly sensitive to infiltrators because it's a lot easier to blow up parked F15's then it is to blow up parked tanks.


The race organizers must have formally requested MP support because we had a bunch of them hanging around practicing their obsessive professional humorlessness. They didn't pay the glider any more attention then we did.


The glider just sat there. 200lb of gossamer thin aluminum and a big Plexiglas canopy fully opened over the tiny cockpit. Because the cockpit was tilted towards us, we could see every detail of it's interior. But it was out of the way so we didn't pay it any mind.


About 30 min went by. Then suddenly a mess of MP vehicles came racing towards us and screeched to a halt all around our area. The leaped out of their cars, drew side-arms, and charged thru the crowd to assume a defensive half-perimeter around the open glider that we'd come to ignore. Unsurprisingly, the MPs were very serious.


They treated the glider as if it was Soviet stealth insertion platform with a Spetnaz death-squad hiding under the plainly visible pilot's seat Half of the MP force hunkered down behind event "stuff" like plastic garbage cans and vinyl banners, providing a base of fire with pistols, rifles, shotguns and even a few automatic weapons. The other half of the force prepared to rush the glider, no matter that a blind man could see that there was no one in the cockpit.

Imagine that you're standing there, all clad in lycra and with your bike at your side, and at your feet is a sober youngster in the prone behind his M16, using your pair cycling shoes as cover, looking for all the world like he's about to spring an ambush. You can't help but look down and ask, "dude, wtf are you doing?"

The assault force rushed the glider, taking it totally by surprise.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

When I was in Hawaii I would taunt the Marine MPs I would mountain bike with, "You can't spell wimp without MP". WTF Doc, that is wrong. Great bunch of guys and unlike your experience with AF they were hilarious.

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All I Wanted Was A Pepsi, Just One Pepsi

Team Zoot, Team Zoot Mid-Atlantic

Re. AF MP stories.

'91-'94 I was periodically sent to work with European-based AF attack squadrons during their exercises as their "Ground Liaison Officer". As the rare infantry officer that they might glimpse, I felt under some pressure to represent the infantry well. All sorts of hilarious misadventures came out of those assignments. Like the time my unit refused to let me travel to the distant base with my assigned weapon. Military weapons are not allowed in personal vehicles and no HMMWV was available for me to borrow. So I went to the PX and bought some generic plastic yellow Uzi looking thing, painted it mat black, and fastened a chest rig to it.

During the exercise, I treated my weapon with such care that I was repeatedly asked if I had been issued live ammo. It stayed on me at all times. I did not allow anyone to touch it. I was excruciatingly careful to keep a straight face and no one ever was the wiser.

So the MP story. The site was simulating a NBC attack so we were all under MOPP4, which is to say, wearing the whole chemical suit to include the mask. I needed to go to a different bunker so I headed out. Once I got there the MPs, as usual, required me to show my ID. But then after showing my ID they wanted to look at my face, to ensure that it matched my ID. Of course, that was impossible because I was wearing my M17A1 Field Protective Mask.

Nothing makes a person pissed off faster then trying to run around and coordinate shit wearing an NBC mask. You can barely breathe in the damned thing, have to holler to be heard and you can barely make out what others are saying. Just the act of trying to communicate with someone is enough to make you gasp for air.

I tried to get across, between gasps for air and sweat pouring out of every pore, that because we were under chemical attack, if I lifted my mask so they could see that my face matched the photo on my ID, I would then die. But they were AF MPs. There guidance was that they needed to confirm that ID pics matched faces. They were not given any info about exceptions that could be made when folks were wearing chemical masks. They were going to do exactly what they were told.

My attempts to convince them that they needed to be flexible were for nought. I was determined to make this situation fun. So finally I acquiesced and, holding my ID, pulled my mask off so they could see my sweat soaked face. Which is when I pantomimed choking and gasping and collapsed on top of them, making sure that when I hit the ground I blocked the door to the facility. Now no one was getting in or out. I was so completely unresponsive for so long, they called the medics. I might have taken a nap, I don't remember. I let the medics revive me.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

This all happened this weekend.

Pulled up to a store to refill water bottles and to buy more food. The bike racks were full. One bike had a large flatbed trailer blocking everything, almost large enough to tow behind a car. Trailer had a bunch of moving bins stacked on it. Then the owner of the bike came out. Lumberjack shirt, cargo pants, bushy beard. Ah they are from Portland! Then it made sense.

On the same bike ride a smallish Hawk swooped in and grabbed an adult bunny from the bushes next to the road. But bunny was too heavy to fly off with. Hawk was flapping furiously but best it could do was hover 3-4 feet off the ground - right in front of me as I was riding right for it! Just as we got very very close it dropped the bunny with a wet thwump and flew off. I was sure hawk would perch above and come back later for its meal, but 30 minutes later the dead bunny was still on the pavement.

Stopped by a public restroom 5 minutes into an awesome trail run that goes through a greenbelt past a little farm. Ran straight out of the bathroom and almost stepped onto a large gray tabby. The cat was sitting in the middle of the trail next to the restroom. It absolutely did not care that it almost got stepped on. Decided to make it all my problem and I stumbled to avoid stepping on it. Cat did not flinch and did not as much as look in my direction.

That must've been what the bird I saw wandering along the roadside was going after ... as I ran up, he took a big flap and I realized that the "large black chicken" was a turkey vulture

What an ugly motherfucker, too

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

I just saw a good one yesterday - out on a ride and about 75-100 yds ahead of me I hear a loud screech followed by a bang. A Jeep coming towards me had taken a corner onto a small side street too hard and too fast and slammed into a tree on the wrong side of the road. A small dog scampers away from the wreck, and my first thought was that it ran into traffic and the driver tried to avoid it. Just then a woman gets out of the passenger side of the Jeep and runs towards me after the dog, yelling it's name. I ask if she is alright and all she says is "That's my dog!" and keeps running. I go up to the vehicle and a teenage girl is getting out of the driver's seat and a younger boy is getting out of the back. Front left fender of the Jeep is all crunched and it's leaking coolant, and the woman left these two kids in order to chase down the dog. I ask the girl if she is OK and she replies in a petulant teenage girl voice "Yes", as if annoyed for being asked.

The woman comes back with the dog and I ask again if everyone is OK; the woman replies that her daughter just got her learner's permit and had the dog in her lap while she was driving, and it scampered across the mothers lap and jumped out the passenger window, and the girl slammed into the tree since she was reaching the dog rather than paying attention to the road. First off - what is the mother thinking letting a 16-yr old drive with a dog in her lap, never mind having it in the front seat? Second, what is she doing leaving the kids where she bolted right out of the Jeep after the dog? I hope she had fun explaining that one to her husband and her insurance company. I'm also glad that I wasn't a few seconds faster on my ride as I would likely have been right in their path when they made the sudden turn.

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"You can never win or lose if you don't run the race." - Richard Butler

The bike path I take to work was flooded this morning, and as I was carrying my bike through a particularly deep section I noticed a wake zig-zagging in front of me. It passed pretty close to my feet and I caught a glimpse of a pretty decent sized trout. Can't say that I've ever seen a trout on the bike trail before!

Other good ones-- 4 a.m. bike commute (don't ask, one time thing) in the pitch dark. All sorts of beady eyes reflect my headlight, so I quickly learn to just ignore them and barrel on-- until one set turns into a skunk at point blank range with tail raised. I braced for a very unhappy start to my day, but somehow missed getting blasted.

The other was a lunch run on an overgrown footpath through the woods. First I came across a woman's shoe, then another, a little ways on I came across a blouse and bra, and then torn panties. I kept thinking how it's always the joggers that come across the bodies, and dreading what I'd find ahead, but nothing came of it.

Was there an eye-roll involved? I'll bet "Yes"

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Hahaha pretty much!

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"You can never win or lose if you don't run the race." - Richard Butler

See my post further "upstream"

http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...ost=1591422#p1591422

"The 'debris field' stretched over 2 miles."

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Porn video discs on the side of the road in Cape Cod, MA.

A dead bald eagle on the side of the road during, no kidding, Eagleman.

Same race, an escaped pitbull cornered by police/animal control with weapons drawn under a car - yelling "shoot it now! shoot it now!" The dog had apparently launched on some poor unsuspecting bicyclist about three miles out of T1.

I do bricks out in the country and get attacked at least once a week. My hypothesis is that it is strategy to get food, their attack will cause me to panic and drop treats as I make a hasty retreat.

This may be my favorite slowtwitch thread of all time. I will throw in some wildlife stories

1. Riding in western WI, which is big climbs in and out of the Mississippi river valley, with lots of huge bluffs. As I am going up a big climb, a snake falls out of the sky right in front of me. An eagle had been flying with it in its talons and dropped it. Very freaky.

2. Same route in the spring. There are a shitload of eagles in that area. In the spring the babies are learning to fly. I rode 60 miles with a gaggle of baby eagles following me high above the entire way, their shadow in front of me on the pavement.

3. In WI on either the IM or HHH course. Cresting a hill, I came up on an enormous hawk eating a cat. He watched me as I rode by. I googled it and believe it was a ferruginous hawk.

4. Buffalo Springs tri 2010. There were a handful of guys in front of me on the bike and on one of the decents I see each one abruptly get out of aero position and stand up. As I passed the same spot, there was an enormous rattlesnake sunning itself in the middle of the road. I almost crashed as I attempted to dodge.

Just this morning had a Pigmy Rabbit fall from the sky and land about 3 feet in front of me.

Heard some rustling in a tree as I passed by and looked over to see a Hawk take off, he dropped his breakfest. The Hawk circled around and picked Bugs backup and flew directly over my head and down the road with meal in talons.

I saw a bike fight once while along the Hudson waterfront. Like, people using their expensive road bikes like longswords in Braveheart to try to kill each other. Thankfully some bystanders were successful in defusing the situation.