Well since the laser sugery two days ago Beckham has been ah, mercurial to put it best. He wakes up so happy and then he has to have the contacts put in and he just gets pissed off beyond belief. He just hates it when we put in his contacts. When it comes to everything else he is fine, happy fun the whole bit but the eyes must really hurt and be pretty sore too! I am volunteering for the Fall Classic on sunday and I think I got the best position, my job is to pre-ride the course early sunday morning an make sure the arrows are in the right place. That and helping out with the set-up saturday night. I hope to be around sunday to see the racers finish. We got some really cool swag for helping, a cool shirt, a pair of woolie boolies and I got my sweatshirt prize for the local series overall. So far with two days before I'm supposed to ride it I have two maybes and a sort of sure to go with me. I though it was the best possible option for volunteering, I don't have to stay in one spot the whole time and I get to ride my bike, far! Other people at the meeting didn't think as highly of this job, oh well it's going to be really fun! Today the lenses went in ok on the right and then a bit of fighting on the left eye. yesterday was by far the worst in a while, we got the right one in and then the left wouldn't go, after all of the hassle just for one I bailed to get to work and popped out the right one and left him without any to come home later and get them done when he wasn't fussy. It really sucks to do this everyday. The sky was great about 6.30 this morning, the colors went from bright pink to almost green in spots, really amazing stuff, the ride to work was bland and pretty dark, I need a headlamp now to get the first mile of the ride done without crashing, after seeing the porcupine a few weeks back I worry about hitting him and going down hard only to have him pissed off at me for hitting him and possibly hurting the prickly guy. I really wish I still had my old commute, this one is way too short, 2.5 miles isn't a tenth as fun as a 9 mile ride through the woods with the animals and the weather with the sun just starting to come up in the summer at 5.20 am. The sky on some of those mornings was unreal, if I was on the road I surly would have been hit by a car, I'd be looking around at the clouds and sunrise that I'd hog the whole path. One of the mornings last fall I was riding up to work and it was a pretty rainy night/early morning and coming out of the woods onto the path there was a bit of water laying on the ground and since it was pretty cold I was looking for ice with my lights when all of the sudden I heard heavy breathing and footfalls all around me, pretty freaked out, as I am afraid of the dark, I really had no idea what was going to jump out and grab me, the boogieman, the blair witch, Jason, who knows what I thought. Well, it was a big herd of elk that were spending the night in the hollow that sits at the bottom of the hill near the road, I guess it's pretty warm and nice there and the elk just chill there with their friends for the night. One of the elks who after I shined my light up there had to have had 12 or 14 points was just glaring at me, as though I had ruined his morning, he was the one who I had heard in the first place and he was running up the hill thinking i was a threat! Hah! The other 10 or so were just laying on the other side of the path looking around as though nothing happened, what is that about big things being sissies?! He didn't want anything to do with me, and we saw each other about 20 more times in the ensuing weeks as I still rode to work over the rapidly freezing ground. Another time I was going through the same section a little ways down and the elk was standing on the side of the path about 20 meters away, instead of charging and forcing me to do a sprint workout he just started running next to me at the same distance for a good 300-400 meters, it was the coolest thing almost like he was playing with me. Looking over as he looked at me and kept the same pace the whole time, aobut 18 miles an hour. Really amazing to see big game playing with a harmless human, shitloads better than watching them kill them on the OLN shows between the Giro/Tour and Vuelta stages (which starts tomorrow.) The strength that they show when they run just makes we jealous at how regal and graceful they are. More next time on a cool night ride on the cross bike on dirt roads.