Hottrn'a Bastard

Summers working construction and timber framing jobs in rural Vermont left me with a unique vocabulary. I would venture to say I had a totally different dialect when at work. Hanging around with farmers has contributed a lot too. Some has left, lots I still have, especially when I go home, and most will remain unprintable. One that has always stuck is "hotter than a bastard" which is correctly pronounced "hottrn'a bastard." Correct use:

Sunday's cross country race at the Sea Otter was hottrn'a bastard.

All time record highs just happened to coincide with our two hour block of way-too-hard-for-our-own-good-anyway physical exertion. Bart has the full report up on Monavie-Cannondale.com

I've experienced heat stroke many times before. I must be cold blooded or something and for some reason my body totally shuts down when not acclimated to the heat. I have never had it hit me so fast though- 15 minutes in to the race I was feeling pretty good and riding about 30-40th (?) or so moving up a couple spots here and there. 5 minutes later I was dizzy with the chills and felt super weird. I twisted the grip shift like I was twisting a throttle and started riding slowly in my granny cog.

I let most of the race go by and tried to get my body temp under control- drinking, dumping bottles on me, riding at a recovery pace, etc. I was just determined to finish since I flew all the way down there. I figured it would be good heat training and a good suffer-fest to strengthen the mind. It ended up taking a lot of determination to get to the line, plenty of physical pain plus the embarrassment of riding so slow at such a big race. Pretty disappointing but hey that's the way it goes.

All in all it was a sweet weekend. Killer seafood dinner after the race @ Salinas Fish House and Bart and I rode over to the ocean on Monday and went for a swim. That was so nice, haven't been in the ocean in at least a year.

Riding through strawberry fields on the way to the beach. Smelled like fresh berries. mmmmmm


There were some odd pale mammals at the beach...




and some seals. cool.