Don't leave food in your car in bear country.....

As I'm writing this, there is a Pimp My Ride episode on where a outdoorsy girl is showing where a bear attacked her car in the San Bernadino mountains. He opened the door and got inside in search of the food she had in the car, accidentally locked himself inside, tore up the inside trying to get out, and then pooped in it! They showed what looked like a ripped open bag of cheetos and a Clif bar wrapper on the seat. There are claw marks everywhere on the outside, and the inside is really trashed. He tore off door panels, etc. She said that when the sun heats up the car the poop smell reappears. ugh. I guess she is going to be ecstatic to have her ride Pimped and De-Pooped!!!

I'm glad there aren't bears at Kettle after seeing that car.... we'd all be in trouble!

Now they are fixing up the car and are showing a hammock that pops out of the trunk for when she goes camping. It looks like the paint job is going to include giant stylized bear claw scrape marks on the hood and sides of the car.

Anyway, last weekend I worked the Clif booth at the Shamrock Shuffle expo Friday night. There were alot of shufflers shuffling by at the expo, but not as many as I expected, given that 30,000 people had to pick up their registration packets Friday or Saturday. Maybe the rain kept people away. The people watching was ok. The Potbelly booth had a roulette wheel where you could win different thing, such as free sandwiches or Potbelly items. The enthusiasm of the women running the booth made it fun and made it not so bad to wait in line - they cheered everytime someone won something. I got a handy Nalgene-type water bottle the first time. I was trying to win the lettuce head-shaped stress ball (there was something strangely appealing about it, all green and squishy), so I had to go back and try again later. She made sure I hit the "stress ball" on the roulette wheel the second time around, with a little "help". I also filled out a survey to get Saturn cowbells which will be ideal for 'cross season next year. I don't think the woman doing the surveys had any idea what the cowbells were for, until I tried to explain it. It probably still sounded kinda strange.

Last Sunday I went to see the Parkside race. I got up in time to make it to the afternoon races. Another nice day! Almost perfect. Two out of three amazing days for the parkside series this year. Lucky racers. I heard the women's field was big, would have liked to have seen that one. I didn't see as many familiar faces at this one, but it was nice to catch up with the friends that were there. Congrats to Chris S. on getting second in the Masters 30+ race and then going back out there and doing well in the 1,2's as well. I was sorry to hear about Kim's grandmother. My condolences to both of them. I'm sure the last couple of weeks have been tough.

I shipped a box of goodies off to my little nephew and brother in law for their birthdays. It took a couple of hours to wrap everything and draw cool little pics on the labels of each present. The pictures I drew on the labels give a little hint at what's inside, without being too obvious.

Last night NZ Wendy had a game party at her house. The people that hadn't seen the slides of her Africa trip got there early. The rest of us got there later, and ended up playing a game called Rigamarole. It was fun, but no one was really that into playing games. Most of us hadn't seen each other in a while and wanted to talk. We were like an unruly class who wasn't paying attention to the teacher. She had to keep reminding us to focus. It was a pretty fun game, though. Examples of stuff we had to do by drawing cards in different categories: count the number of tatoos on everyone on your team and win the corresponding number of points, sing the first couple of verses of the star spangled banner (I can't do that but we found out who was a good singer!), compare the number of piercings one team has vs the other to see who has more, read the ingredients label of a food to the members of the other team while they have their eyes closed and make them guess what food it is. (I completely stumped the other team by reading the label of a bag of Clif Shot Blocks! Not even the rustling of the bag gave it away!) Wendy is taking guitar lessons, so at the end of the evening she ended up reading the words to the songs she was learning and we tried to guess what the songs were without hearing the music.

I have been trying to study for a continuing ed test but it's been really hard to put everything else aside and concentrate on it. The phone keeps ringing, for one. I am hoping tomorrow I can do that.... I've just had too much other stuff to get done lately. Gotta work on the taxes too.

Some people are going on a riding trip on the trails near St Louis next weekend - I really wanted to go, but being injured, it's probably a really bad idea. And I have so much to get done in the next two weeks. I don't think I'll be able to go. Which is too bad. With racing every weekend during the season I don't end up going on fun trips like that. Next year, I guess.

I really liked Gina G.'s performance of "I'll Stand by You" on AI this week. She's the rockingest female on the show - a good thing. I also thought her cover of "Call Me When You're Sober" was better than the Evanescence version. I hope she hangs in there, partly because I like her spirit, because she's from around here, and because she used to be in former teammate Lisa K's band Catfight.

Good luck to Holly K. in her first expert race in AZ at the NMBS race this weekend! I hope it went well.

Happy Birthday to Carlos!