May Days

here in austin the signs of summer have arrived! Its going to be 90 every day this week. barton springs is the place to be, and riding around on the bike means bringing extra clothes with you everywhere. Its really fun so far, talk to me in july and we will see what i have to say.

what have i been doing? you ask.

well, i have been doing a lot of jiu-jitsu. i had to take a break in mid april due to this weird ear condition where i got fluid trapped behind my ear drum! the pressure that the fluid caused in my head made me feel like i was getting punched in the back of the head every 3o seconds for about a week. awful, really bad, not good.

so i went to the clinic and they put me on some drugs. the label of the steroid they put me on (insert doping joke here) warned that use of the drug would lower the effectiveness of my immune system! rad!

sure enough, my ear clears up and i spend the next week and a half sick with a head cold. crap!

last monday i went back to working out and jiu-jitsu, and this past week was great but very difficult, hard workouts and the heat combined double the challenge. but the challenge is the whole point of choosing activities like road racing or grappling, we the people who like to do these kind of activities thrive on the discomfort we create for ourselves, we need it for some reason, we are probably not well mentally. but we like it.

aside from working on my skills with jiu-jitsu and thinking of competing at the september naga tournament, i have started to crave some speed biking and have tentatively marked septembers tour of austin as a nice comeback race!

as for day to day life in austin, i really miss my new england friends. i am shy. thats right, even though i talk your face off if i know you, i am very shy around those folks i don't know, and that makes being in a new city kinda hard. but i am working on it.

there is more to type, but i have to go to work now...may update part II is forthcoming...