On Christmas Eve, while I was drying my last dish after baking and cooking up a storm all day, James walked in with an animal carrier containing a five month old kitten.

"I always feel so bad when I leave the house, Frank just looks at me like, 'hey man, where ya goin'?  Let's play!'  So I got him - well, and you - a kitten.  I just went out to get him a treat for Christmas but then this kitten was there, and she kind of looks like Frank, and she just had the coolest personality, so, I brought her home."

Dramatic pause.

"Wow.  Wow!  I can't believe it!"  I was in disbelief, and thinking about how much more litter I would have to scoop, and yet inexorably drawn to the cuteness radiating out from this small creature.  She opened her mouth up wide, as if to yawn, but a squeaky, breathy "mew" came out instead.

Frank was curious at first, but once he realized what had just landed in his living room was he was not at all happy about it.  The kitten would charge up to him and he would hiss.  No paws were raised and it hasn't come to blows at all that we know of; just hiss after hiss after hiss of dramatic disapproval from our lugubrious feline. 

The next morning Frank's hissing seemed to have ceased.  We were gone all day for Christmas festivities, and I was worried the whole time about coming home to find a bloodied kitten hiding in some secret part of the house.  When we got home she was indeed nowhere to be found, but then appeared ten minutes later, like a ninja, purring unusually loudly and going from one activity to the next to the next to the next with the kind of ADD typical of energetic youngsters.  Although Frank seems to gradually become more at peace with the newcomer, they're not holding hands or anything yet.  She has cheerfully carried on her campaign to win him over; she is confident and dominant, and has already started to drive the activities of the house.  Nap time.  Play time.  Food time.  Pee time.  Cuddle with the humans time.  Frank follows along with each activity, but can't match the wide-open throttle of the kitten we have named "Roxy," after Elizabeth's Aunt Roxy Montana, and another Roxy I know who's beautiful, confident and daring.

Here is a photo of the soon-to-be happy couple (Frank on the top, Roxy on the bottom):

Sometimes I jog around my oddly shaped little block.  It's about three-quarters of a mile and I try to run it at least four times, and have once done five laps around it.

So Monday's time for four laps was 35 minutes.  I walked a little bit towards the end, a bit beaten up by the Rich Oliver school I got back from Sunday night.  Today, 32 minutes, no walking and what I feel was a slightly brisker pace.  I'll drive it again now, four laps, just to make sure it's really three miles for the whole route.  The one time I did five laps I believe I did it in 42 minutes.

I'm not supposed to run because of last year's back surgery, but it doesn't hurt when I do.  Plus I run so damn slow that I wouldn't think my body takes all that much abuse from it.

Somehow my cat believes that I need him close to me today. I've been staring at the computer all morning, clicking aimlessly from useless site to useless site, looking at a little email, thinking about doing some work, and then losing direction. My cat is not helping matters, as he's planted himself firmly on my lap, making it difficult to type, to move, to think about anything of consequence other than the soft fur and how good I feel when he stretches out a paw and places it on my arm.

At around 11:30 p.m. yesterday, my grandma passed. I had a good visit with her a week and a half ago or so. She was weak, but moving around and conversing relatively well. She complained about the spicy guacamole in our Carl's Jr. Guacamole Bacon Cheeseburgers, she set the record straight about what a wonderful man she feels my father is despite a rocky first ten years or so of their relationship, and as always, continued to encourage me to put myself first and not care about what anyone else thinks. For her and my mom, two women who devoted their lives to others, to encourage me in this way is curious and I don't completely understand it.

The saddest thing I keep thinking and crying about is something my mom wrote in an email around three a.m.: "Grandpa is hanging in there but he is shaken to his core. Half his life left him tonight." They were married for almost sixty-seven years.

I'm going to go for a bike ride and then come back resolved to do some real work. No more lap time for Frank. Actual work will be accomplished.

Does anyone know how to download one's entire LJ into a text file? I was reading the help section and they mentioned that you can export your journal one month at a time. Given that I've been keeping a journal for nearly 84 months, this would take an immense amount of time. Any suggestions would be welcomed.

Why is it so embarrassing when a woman drops her purse or make-up bag and everything spills out onto the ground? I feel like it's up there with, say, being a guy whose little blue pill stash was just discovered. I don't feel shame over very much in this world, but this one takes the cake.

Route: Fountain Grove Parkway/Riebli Road
Distance: 10.2 miles
Time: 48 minutes
Average MPH: 13.0
Top Speed: 32 mph
Low Speed: 3.9 mph
Post Workout Meal: Lean Cuisine Macaroni 'n' Cheese

Lots of vertical feet in that workout, people. I could also do a 23 mile route with fewer hills, but this has more bang for the buck. At one point switching from my little ring to the middle ring, before completely cresting the hill I was climbing, my chain came off and rather than toppling to the ground as usual, I saved it. It cost me a minute to wrestle the thing back on and proceed.

I'm plagued by just as many morbid thoughts on my bicycle as I am on my motorcycle when street riding; thinking about the front wheel coming off while barreling down a hill, or one of the deer on the side of the road leaping out in front of me. I also think about what it would be like to get hit by a car from behind and sent flying; would the car run me over? What if it ran over my face? It's ridiculous, these thoughts, and I have my mother to thank. I wouldn't change how I am about it though, honestly, I think it's helped make me a better motorcycle rider.

In today's San Jose Mercury News there was an article titled Venture capital: Silicon Valley start-ups weathering the financial storm and it featured, exclusively I'll have you, MyLawsuit.com. Here is a photo (yes, my CEO is smokin' hot) and the accompanying story in case you're not able to access the link.



From left, MyLawsuit VP Marketing Christie Cooley, CEO Michele Colucci and VP of Engineering Cisco Riordan ( LiPo Ching )

By Scott Duke Harris

Mercury News
Article Launched: 11/07/2008 12:00:00 AM PST

MyLawsuit.com is still more a concept than a company, with a Web page that promises "Coming soon.'' But inside her work space at a Palo Alto start-up incubator, Michele Colucci can tick off the ways her idea for bringing the legal marketplace into the Internet age has progressed since her summertime move from Los Angeles to Silicon Valley.

Even as America staggers into a recession, Colucci personifies how Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial culture is showing remarkable resilience, even defiance.

Venture industry data suggests that early-stage investing is slowing down, and many angel investors are said to be pulling back. But at recent valley conferences, prominent investors such as angel "godfather" Ron Conway said they are hearing many pitches and have money set aside for promising start-ups. The "deal flow," as Conway put it, remains strong.

Serial entrepreneur Dave McClure, considered a start-up guru, says the valley's entrepreneurs are "absolutely" as enthusiastic as ever: "Perhaps it's misplaced," he added with a laugh, "but it's just as strong."

Colucci is perfecting her pitch, winning over angel investors and recruiting a team for her dream. A former Google ads pro is plotting online marketing and a Stanford University math student is communicating with a software team in India. And she is in talks with prominent venture capitalists. Whether MyLawsuit flies or flops, Colucci figures Silicon Valley is the only place she could put it together so quickly.

"It's the only place in the world that recognizes 'serial entrepreneur' as a job title," she said.

Silver linings

The ugly economic outlook has valley venture capitalists and entrepreneurs looking for silver linings. On panels and in blogs, they point out that the likes of Apple and Microsoft were launched in tough times, while the dot-com bust gave rise to such billion-dollar babies as YouTube and Facebook. While the financial industry melted down and Washington went into crisis mode, start-up showcases at the Plug & Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale and the Microsoft campus in Mountain View brimmed with entrepreneurial optimists.

One recent morning, two partners from First Round Capital hosted "Office Hours" at a Palo Alto cafe — an open invitation to entrepreneurs. "We had about 60 companies show up," Rob Hayes said. "There's still a lot of people out there who want to start companies and want to learn how.''

Start-up founders, McClure and others say, have to recognize that there is less money available and contract terms won't be as favorable as before. Tough times mean that many venture firms are expected to hold money in reserve for later-stage rounds for maturing portfolio companies trying to weather the recession.

Many large venture firms were already focusing more on less risky, later stage investments, some VCs say. But that trend created an opening for a new wave of early-stage and "seed'' venture firms such as True Ventures, Alsop Louie Ventures and SoftTech VC. Meanwhile, several start-ups have been launched on shoestring budgets through "boot camp" programs like YCombinator and LaunchBox.

Helping to spur innovation is the fact that advancing technology and the Web's maturity have driven down the cost of launching Internet companies. Some entrepreneurs are surprised to find their funding requests are regarded as too small.

Syncplicity founder Leonard Chung, who is 28, learned that lesson in start-up economics on the way to securing $2.35 million in first-round funding from True Ventures. A partner at a larger venture firm, Chung said, was impressed with Syncplicity's data-management technology and business plan, but balked at Chung's initial "ask," or request, of $2.2 million.

"He said that's not big enough," Chung recalled. "He said, 'I need an answer on this: How can you tell me with some level of confidence that I'll be able to invest $10 to $15 million over time?' That's the thing I could never answer."

Syncplicity, Chung figures, simply shouldn't need that much money to succeed. In his pitch, Chung suggested Syncplicity match the success of Mozy, a data backup company that Josh Coates founded in 2005 with $1.5 million in venture backing and sold to EMC only two years later for $76 million.

In the end, Chung decided to take $150,000 more than his "ask" to address the economic downturn.

Running lean

Conway and star entrepreneurs like Marc Andreessen say start-ups should try to raise as much as possible. But Mozy founder Coates said he turned away VC interest once he had enough to execute the business, and that Chung was wise to do so as well. A lean budget encourages smart decisions, Coates said, and "raising a lot of money makes you stupid."

Like many start-up founders, MyLawsuit's Colucci is seeking the right formula. At age 43, raising three sons while working through a divorce, Colucci stands out among the prototypical techies who live on Top Ramen and sleep at their cubicles. She was an attorney who later applied her entrepreneurial instincts to Hollywood as a writer and producer.

Colucci said she's been impressed by how so many successful people in the valley, unlike Hollywood, try to help others succeed, opening doors and suggesting solutions. She's had coaching from Astia, a group specializing in women entrepreneurs. One associate pointed her to the Indian software team building an engine to match lawyers with prospective clients.

Stanford student Cisco Riordan, a 20-year-old junior, joined the MyLawsuit team after hearing Colucci's presentation at Plug & Play. And Colucci's pitch to Sand Hill Angels impressed Christy Cooley, who had worked at a couple of start-ups before joining Google in 2002.

Cooley, having prospered on options, decided to return to the start-up world as an angel investor, but the recession has made her more conservative. At MyLawsuit, her investment is "sweat equity."

"I love start-ups," she explained. "I love the feeling of trying to build something that wasn't there."

Vegas at the racetrack on November 2, 2008, was windy. In June, we had a rogue wind that blew through around 2 a.m., according to reports, picking up our new 250 dollar canopy and crumpling it up like a rejected page of earnest prose destroyed in frustration by its author. This time around, the wind was relentless, starting first thing in the morning and not easing up until the early afternoon. But this time around we were wiser; we'd anchored our canopy 2.0 to several buckets of water, heavy steel motorcycle chocks, and generators. The canopy may not have ever gone anywhere, but the wind was just pummeling it and us. The canvas sheets on our new canopy were flapping around noisily, my hair was whipping around and making me irritated, and James and I frequently glanced at each other, and then at our canopy, and then at the heavy objects we'd tied it to.

Eventually we took it down and stopped stressing. It wasn't hot, or terribly sunny, so shade was not an imperative.

During Sunday morning practice the wind was so forceful that it was blowing us all over the track. One turn at this track is a long, fast, right-hand sweeper, and during the Sunday morning windstorm the wind was pushing me wide so hard that I came off the track suspicious that James had adjusted my suspension.

There is a young man that we talk with at the races named Garrett. Garrett's a nice kid, maybe 18, and he has a mop of curly, crazy brown hair that's usually hidden underneath a trendy beanie or cap. He has cute pictures of himself on MySpace looking sort of emo, as emo as a motorcycle racer can look, I guess. Anyway, I'd never really talked much with his dad aside from some 'congratulations' here and there, but Mr. Willis came by and chatted with me and James quite a bit on that windy Sunday. At one point Mrs. Willis walked by, and Mr. Willis said, "Hey pig!" She looked, then laughed indignantly, saying "the sad thing is that I looked." I asked Mr. Willis what she calls him. "Toad," he said. Later that day I saw Mrs. Willis riding pillion with Mr. Willis on their scooter, and looking like a couple that's been in love so long they have almost a handful of grown children. It was strangely sweet and it stuck in my mind.

I got a bad start in Formula 2 Novice, my first race. A bad start means that I get scared by the pack of riders all vying for position in the first five or six turns, and I just roll over and expose my belly like a submissive dog, letting everyone and anyone pass me. Once things clear up, I spend the rest of the race picking people off and working my way back up. If I could be braver on the start, I would put myself in a position further ahead with faster riders, and my experience has shown that when I ride with riders that are just a bit faster than me, I easily and without any hint of issues step up to their pace.

During the race I had a good battle with Jo, a racer I'd been competing with all year. He looks kind of like Mr. Clean and is friendly yet somewhat awkward. I passed him, then I passed him back and stayed ahead of him at the checkered flag. I was frustrated with my pussy start and wanted to change this behavior. I talked with James about it and he inspired me. "Don't dawdle!" "Find the hole and just go in it, like I do." "Put yourself where you want to be, they will get out of your way." In the second race, Lightweight Twins Superbike Novice, I got a significantly better start, and even ended up passing a man named Zoran, a legendary SV racer who happened to be tootling around on a new concept bike he built and was testing out. He was tootling, but I was still thrilled and amazed to find myself passing him by. I also was ahead of Jo before the first turn, and ended up beating him by more than two seconds. I played the game of chicken with a few riders in those treacherous first few turns and I won. It was awesome.

Another highlight of the day was watching 14 year old Elena Myers win two big races. She beat lots of men, but more impressively, she beat teenage boys that are older than she is. God I wish I'd started riding when I was younger.

James won four races, which thrilled me, but there really wasn't anyone significant there for him to race against. But we were still tickled. He also got a nice write-up in RoadRacingWorld.

We've been vacationing in Vegas since then and having a great time. My life is blowing up in about four other ways right now, so much to write, so little time.

Look it up in a dictionary. Find this photo:

Facebook's constant ads for diets and engagement rings are starting to offend me. Every now and then there are ads for homes for sale or jobs, but it's mostly Hollywood style diets and freaking rings. It's untargeted and patronizing.

In other news of the Facebook world, I'm playing a fairly retarded car racing game on the thing. It's something to do. James plays it too.

I've also reconnected with several childhood friends I haven't seen or heard from in almost twenty years. Neat.

Love her, love her, love her. Love how she finds more solace and truth in middle America and its inhabitants than in big cities like New York or D.C. Love how she worships testosterone and sex and girl power. Love how she loves Sarah Palin, even as she doesn't quite understand how she feels about the rumors swirling about Palin's religious beliefs and how they might apply to public policy. Love that she loves being an opinionated pain in the ass. Oh, how I wish I were so bold!

I too love Sarah Palin as a person, as an image, and how she projects strength, leadership and femininity without either objectifying herself or having anything to do with the whiny feminist establishment. She is totally unlike any other female politician in national American politics.

Being a girl who races motorcycles and loves shoe shopping, can you blame me for being a fan of a moose-huntin' beauty queen? :)

A beady-eyed McCain gets a boost from the charismatic Sarah Palin, a powerful new feminist -- yes, feminist! -- force.

They were mysterious to me for a long time. But I think I get it now. Is it like Google Reader? I think I love Google Reader. It keeps track of blogs that I read. It's a reader, I'm a reader, we're all readers, yay! I feel so informed, so plugged in. I feel hip and trendy with my empty cup of Red Mango yogurt (kind of like Pinkberry, a trendy L.A. yogurt chain) and Blackberry by my side. I love Silicon Valley, but just as much I love zipping around sleepy Santa Rosa on my scooter. Santa Rosans don't get how I always say my area code before I give my phone number. I always say, "four oh eight, four oh six," and they type into their systems '707-408-406'. It's annoying and I feel frustrated with them for being country bumpkins. It's only an hour north of San Francisco, just like San Jose's an hour south, and yet it's worlds and worlds away.

I want to start a blog, for the purposes of internet marketing for my new company. But, I don't have anything interesting to say. I don't know enough about law, consumer law, trial attorneys, or even fundraising in Silicon Valley to say anything interesting at all. And even if I could say anything interesting, I probably shouldn't since we're still in "stealth" mode. Not stealth mode like I can't tell my family and friends what I'm doing, but I'm certainly not going to go post information online about it.

Perhaps I should push on with The Sister Report (TSR), my blog about women's roadracing. That would at least give me experience at doing this.

A silly blog post that happened today:

Road Racing Diva Caves to Temptation

I love the way they approach clothing for "women who kick ass." They avoid falling into the cliches of pink and cutesy and "hee hee I'm a girl and I race", it is just serious style, athletic prowess and hip color palettes.

Anyway, I had my best race weekend ever at Infineon a few days ago. At the end of one race, I had thirteen riders (12 men, 1 woman) behind me and 25 in front. At AFM races I usually only beat about four or five crotch rocket jockeys. I'm not entirely sure how this happened, either.

At a track day last week, James helped me work on a change to my body positioning that helped me brake harder and turn the bike more quickly, and he also got me thinking more critically about my choice of lines. Something was just different this time though. I guess my expectations were low, but I'd shaken off some more fear I was clinging to involving AFM race starts. AFM race starts are so insane. Sixty racers all piling into the first few turns, weaving and shaking and bumping and hoping to not all fall down like a house of cards. I hate this part of the sport. But it's not going to go away, and I think I started to figure that if I'm going to do this, I have to do it like I mean it. So I did, and found myself ahead of quite a few people, and I held my position.

I had one battle with a sweet, bespectacled wedding photographer during Formula IV. He ended up ahead of me after we passed each other a few times, but at one point we were side by side going into turn seven, looking over at each other wondering who was going to back down in the game of chicken, and I won. I was on the inside of the turn, but hey, it definitely took some "balls of steel" as he put it.

I'm encouraged by these results. My laptimer said I did a couple of high 1:53s, beating my year's goal of 1:55 by over a full second. On a 75 horsepower SV this is actually a pretty decent laptime. I will continue to do push-ups, squats and abs in the gym, along with riding my bicycle every chance I get. These things will help me go faster.

Or maybe just a runner's high, I'm not sure. I left work early yesterday to drive up to a meeting in San Francisco with Michele, founder and CEO of my new company, and Rob, an angel investor. He wanted to meet me and just make sure I was a living, breathing internet marketing professional, but I still felt nervous and on the spot when he peppered me with questions about our marketing plan. According to Michele, who also happens to be a beautiful, brilliant, feminine, warm and engaging divorced mother of three, I did great. Plus one for me.

I drove home, got changed into workout clothes, and hit the street around ten to eight. It was still quite warm out but a perfect temperature for a run. I started off, dreading my workout but glad that I'd made it this far, and my legs and my body felt great. Weird! I felt like a champion. I kept jogging along, pretty slow, probably a ten minute mile pace which is pretty difficult for me to maintain for even three miles, and busted out eight laps around my local park. This amounts to four, yes, count them, four miles. Forty solid minutes of running, something I've never done before in my life. Well, not true, I did a 10K when I was living in Dublin, Ireland, in 2003, but I walked for some of it and got 'er done in an hour and ten minutes.

The most exciting thing was that I still felt pretty good afterwards. I was amazed that, instead of busting my ass to train off the track to make racing easier, my racing was making my training easier. Or maybe it's both. Either way, I was damned excited and came home feeling absolutely high on everything in my life: my professional life, my fitness, my hobby, my boyfriend.

This weekend I felt like a racer. So many little things I wasn't able to physically or mentally grasp at the start of the year are finally starting to come together; things like always being either on the gas or on the brakes. Things like downshifting my bike while braking so hard it feels like I'm doing a massive bench press, also with only half a butt cheek on the seat of my bike. Things like walking away from a race weekend and still feeling strong, in shape and full of vim and vigor. I still have so far to go, but that's what keeps it exciting.

How on earth does one train oneself to not ease back on the throttle when another racer comes into the periphery, with only feet to spare as they pass? How is it possible that I feel like I am racing my ass off, yet I come in with a lap time of 2:18 (placing third out of six in my novice race) and my class winners post 2:08? Where does the confidence to pass come from? Having raced for many years brings this experience, I believe. We were pitted next to Bennie "Bear" Taylor, a 9 or 10 year old little fast guy on little fast bikes, and his mom was telling me that he struggles with having the confidence to pass too. He's learning it at the age of nine, but I'm learning it at the tender age of 33. He's also learning it with his mom, dad and helpers encouraging him and working on his bike for him; meanwhile, I get tough love from the man. What's a girl to do? I do appreciate the tough love, as it will only make me stronger and hopefully not a girl about whom others say, "well of course she's fast, her boyfriend takes care of everything for her..."

It looked like rain, and rain it did. I got two practice sessions in Saturday morning before the skies opened up and ruined everyone's afternoon. My bike was working great, as always. I had the second fastest laptime in the slowest practice group; hopefully next round they'll bump me up to group 2. Honestly though I think that my peers were just a little bit disturbed by the cold, cloudy weather. I just told myself to be smooth as always, do most of my braking straight up and down, and trust that faster riders can do much faster laptimes on my bike despite the chill in the air.

I was really looking forward to racing Clubman again; Clubman is a novice race the AFM runs on Saturday afternoons. Typically once you race clubman and beat the qualifying laptime by three seconds or more you're not allowed to race it anymore, but they just relaxed the rules to allow you to run the race twice after spanking the qualifying time to allow for new racers to get more experience. But it started dumping rain around 11 a.m. and finally around 2:30 they called it a day and canceled all the clubman races. Oh well!

My first race on Sunday, Formula IV, was the first race of the day. There was one round of practice sessions, then a riders meeting, the national anthem and away we went. I was hesitant the first half a lap because I had much less faith in my fellow riders to not bin it while running around, vying for position, so I unhappily took a spot towards the back of the pack and set about trying to work my way back up.

I was riding well until the lap after I passed Brian Paoletti. Coming out of turn seven and into some esses, I kind of "forgot" that there was another left hand kink coming out of them and was headed for the dirt. I tried meekly to make it and then decided I would just ride through the dirt and back onto the track where the track turned right again. Brian passed me back, but then I passed him again somewhere. I was finding that I was faster than my peer group going through the carousel; people seemed timid about carrying corner speed through there. But then I was weakest going into seven and nine, the turns requiring heavy braking after quick straights. An occasional rider would sneak by me there.

Then, I was battling with Mike Adrian, a rider who was impossibly slow at the last race. I couldn't get over how much quicker he was, and it infuriated me that I was behind him. I passed him in the carousel, then he passed me back in nine. On the last lap, I passed him in the carousel again, thinking that I hopefully would have him this time, but then he snuck by me again going into nine. He even hesitated, unsure that he really had it, and I could have counter-stuffed to his stuffing me. But I didn't. Oh well. It's only club racing. But god damnit I wanted to beat him! Zoe, another girl racer on an SV, was gridded ahead of me, got a stronger start and stayed solidly in a pack ahead of me, but my laptime was still better than hers. I ended up with a 1:56.2 best laptime, my best ever at that track.

650 Twins was an unbelievable disaster. Not for me, but for many others. It was mayhem around every turn! Crash here, crash there. They ended up having to roll an ambulance and then restarted the race. After the restart, the mayhem continued, and another ambulance scurried out onto the track. Another restart. At this point, Shandra Crawford and I were stopped in turn 7 with a pack of riders, waiting for track officials to decide where to send us while the medics did there thing. She called the chaos "bowling for bikes." Pretty descriptive turn. Both she and I were apprehensive about going back out there after yet another restart, but James encouraged me, saying, "but there's gonna be fewer riders out there! Of course you're going back out!"

"Okay fine," I thought. I also thought that if Shandra went back out, I'd feel lame for not going back out too. So I did. I was much more hesitant on the start and got a spot towards the back, as usual, and then worked my way back up to 33rd (out of 37) by the end of the race.

James won Open Superbike and Formula Pacific, which was really exciting. He got a bad start and was in fifth going into turn 2, but then worked his way up to first, ending it with a four second lead over David Stanton. We ended the day at a cute little bar in Glen Ellen with Josh, the Pirelli guy, and his girlfriend. We got along great at the track and overall I can't complain about a thing (except for not beating Adrian and Zoe, grr)!

I also had a new "outfit" (James likes to make fun of me for wanting to match suits with helmets):

I'm really stoked about the heat wave.  What I am NOT stoked about is being stuck inside in the air conditioning.

I may buy a new camera lens today, a Nikon 18-200mm zoom lens. 

The dress I wore to work is too low cut and I feel funny about it, so I'm going to go home at lunch to put a camisole underneath it.

This whole week it's been on-again, off-again as far as whether or not James will be racing AMA at Infineon this weekend, and we're off again.  This time it sounds like it's really off.  I was excited to wear sexy umbrella girl attire, and I even bought two new pairs of shoes last night, but am also excited to have a weekend away from the track and go for a good, long bicycle ride.

So sure, I haven't been racing long enough to truly feel I own the title of "female racer," but even in my short career I've noticed some troubling trends. 

Hair.  If you keep it long, it's going to get destroyed, no matter how hard you try to keep it soft and silky (unless you've been blessed with a mane of shampoo commercial quality hair).  I've also noticed thinning around my temples, perhaps from my already baby fine, frail hair doing battle with the snug helmet as it squeezes onto and off of my head.  I think I'm going to transition back to my natural brown and stop bleaching it, hopefully this will help it stay stronger.

Girl-specific issues having to do with long hours spent exercising in the hot sun in a leather suit.  'Nuff said.

Boys behind you target fixating on your ponytail or the sheer fact that you are female, and then crashing into you.  This has happened to Krystyna, another racer, and probably others, and I saw it happen in front of me when Zoe was in front of the rider who crashed in front of me.  He was so fixated on the fact that she was female, it didn't occur to him that there could have been TWO females in his race, and he ended up getting the two of us confused and blamed the crash on me.

Once you've spent two years spending money on bikes, a trailer, parts, suits, helmets, tires, racing schools and over $1,000 a race weekend, you look into your closet one day and notice that you haven't shopped for clothes since gas was still two bucks a gallon.  You look at your frumpy, limp hair, ill health, battle wounds, and empty wallet, faintly able to recall a former, more glamorous you, and wonder if this absolute abandonment of all things sexy is similar to the unfortunate transformation that hits most new mothers. 

I'm tired of being dirty, injured and unpolished.  But I still want to go faster...

1. Saw Ironman Friday night.  An absolutely great movie, a quintessentially great movie that reminds me of how fun it is to go to the movies.
2. Bought a Yamaha Zuma scooter on Saturday morning.  Zumed around town for a little while.
3. Rode my bicycle for 32 miles in the beautiful wine country in between Lake Hennessy and Lake Berryessa, near Calistoga. 
4. Saw a great movie on DVD, the Last King of Scotland.
5. Randomly witnessed a baby horse standing up for the first time.  The mother's birthing goo was still all hanging out of her as her foal took his first wobbly look at the world on four legs. 
6. Had a luxurious brunch at the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn, along with James' BFF Greg and his girlfriend Summer.  Brunch was free because of a raffle prize I won at my 3Js track day in March.
7. Played with an adorable two and a half month old boxer puppy.
8. Was reminded of what a truly awesome man I've got. 

The not so great...

My back hurts a lot.  I'm going in for an MRI tomorrow morning.