It's Official

After a 5 hour class and $35 it's official: I'm now a Catagory C USA Cycling Official. Well, maybe it's not really that official, I still have to wait on confimation of my test passing and time for processing by USA Cycling, but it's about 99% official. I went to the clinic with the full intention to nod off through most of it, but was suprisingly captivated for most of the 5 hours. Our clinic host was Mike Hanley, who has not only been an official for longer than I've known how to ride a bike, but he was also a mechanic for the 7-Eleven Pro Cycling team in the days of Andy Hampstead. Most of the clinic was Mike telling war storries from officiating and being a pro mechanic. One story from the Tour de France where, as a mechanic for 7-Eleven, they were giving Andy Hampstead a wheel and had pulled off to the left hand side of the road. Scrambling out the car to make the change the passenger side door was left open, and the DS and driver for the Panasonic team car decided to smash the living crap out of the passenger door of the 7-Eleven Car. It surely had nothing to do with the 'stupid Americans'. Moral of the story, don't pull off to the left, even if you're in the TdF (or think you are like most Mr. Dentist Cat.5's out there). Before leaving Mike and I had a discussion about how awesome Paul Martin is, and with him being our Team Director our team is most likely going to win every single race. In the end we all got our licenses and now no longer have to pay out our collective asses to have the proper number of officials at our collegiate venues. That, and I can probably make a little extra green at some of these races I travel to over the Summer.

Also, I am very humbled to be mentioned in the blog of the Purdue Cycling Club president for my mockery of his statement that for him "hills don't even exist anymore". Good luck with that Brian, besides isn't criticism the highest form of praise? Or was blog title imitation, I forget.

PezCycling again has confirmed its place as the coolist cycling website with their article celebrating the traditional 32 spoke as non-aero as possible wheelset. It's a great article particularly because of the stereotypical Italian shop mechanic they somehow found to build up the wheels in his shop that is filled with odd tools as old as time. It gives more evidence supporting the fact that the traditional wheel which has gone through a hundred some years of evolution and refinement, still has something to offer over the tech-marketing driven wheelsets that have only just developed in the past 20 years. There are no FEA codes being run on bike wheelsets that I know of, so any wheel designing going on now is just as thorough as those taking place in the time before computers.