As a person who at times fancies himself to be a "funny guy" I rely on peoples reactions to tell me exactly how funny I am. While Jennifer will surely tell you that I quite often find myself to be irresistably funny, I think that from time to time, I really come up with some hilarious stuff. I know it's good if people laugh. I know that I'm dealing with a looney when people laugh like this! The laughing Yogi

Holy shit, my brother graduated from college. I am shocked, not by the fact that he graduated, that was to be expected, but only that it seems that only recently that I was in school there. Crap-ola, I feel old. Just wait until I've graduated from "gradual" school, then we'll see who's ancient! I'm posting some pictures, just so they're preserved for all to see on the internet.

While looking for live Giro d'Italia footage this morning, I stumbled upon the municipal trampoline champianships for girls in the Milan area. Funny funny shit on Italian TV, that's for sure! I would hope that we in the US could emulate such terrific TV.

Ok, another bicycle note, and then some real life details!

Cycling is great. Except for the crashes. I should really not be posting this anywhere that my mom reads, but knock-on-wood, no crashes for me yet. I keep hearing about these spectacular pileups happening to guys all over the place. Last Saturday, one of my teammates was taken out by a crash in a beginner's race, mangling his front wheel and the guy in front of him at the same time. Then, last night on the local training ride/race there was a pileup big enough to make it onto the local news. My teammates all made it out ok, though one broke his nice carbon Fuji. Shit luck man, that's 1000 bucks down the tubes.

In other news: We're headed home for the weekend, well actually headed up to the Twin Cities. Ian and Kelly are both graduating Macalester. Apparently Ian is super relaxed and is looking forward to the road ahead, whatever that means. Kelly is thinking of chilling a bit, ignoring her debt and forging on with Med school. Good luck on that. It'll be great to see the whole family again, not to mention feel awkward hanging around at Macalester with my family. It still seems like the recent past when I myself graduated from that illustrious institution. "Dear old macalester, ever the same..."

To all of you involved in the whole whirlwind trip of the twin cities, thanks for putting us up, too bad we couldn't have stayed another day or so. Anyway, more catching up will undoubtably be had at Jude and Michelle's wedding in August. I shall certainly drink and debauch at any convenient opportunity.

A fun, exhausting weekend of bicycle racing is behind me. I love riding my bicycle but sometimes it kicks me in the ass. This past weekend's race was the Tour de Ephrata (pronounced "Eff-ruh-tuh") in Ephrata, PA
home of an early religious settlement, quaint stores and a host of restored hot-rod cars. The race was divided into three stages, the road race on Saturday, then an uphill time trial Sunday morning and a criterium Sunday afternoon. The road race was good, especially exciting was dodging the Amish in their horse buggies and then on subsequent laps, dodging the horse-puckey on the road. I've got a picture from the lovely "Mount Pain Time Trial" an event which indeed lived up to it's name.

The criterium saw a fair amount of skin rubbed off on the pavement, fortunately none of mine did so. I did my normal thing of working too hard early in the race and then sprinting from about twice as far out as I should have. Oh well, I guess that's life. I've just got to manage the "learn" part of the "Love and learn" adage.