when a young man's fancy turns to glove

3 days to go. 

Arsenal plays Barca to a draw, amazing considering how badly they were outplayed. I've become fairly obsessed with Arsenal after listening to hours and hours of "It's Up for Grabs Now," the hilarious podcast with Alan Davies.  

Federer lost to Berdych in 4th round of Sony Ericcson, after losing early in Indian Wells. 

I have to stop bidding on ebay, have a wheelset coming I don't need, because I didn't expect to win, and a crankset that I need even less, but the fact that it is coming makes me want to buy a frame to put it on.  

But most importantly, the internet frightens me.  A friend mentioned "baby Einstein" and all it took was typing those words into a google image search to find this:

Happy Easter, have a good weekend.

Sprung

Spring has sprung, and with it comes various countdowns. Number of pts off the playoff hunt for the Rangers (something like 10 with 5 to play), number of games under .500 that the Knicks will finish (a zillion, but oddly not nearly bad enough in the woeful east to be considered terrible), and number of days until the Mets opener (13). It was a beautiful weekend in New York and I happily made it to my first bike race of the season. No small feat considering that I had been out of town for a week and hadn't reset my alarm clock to Daylight Savings, so woke up thinking I had about an hour to get ready, turned on NY1 and realized that I had to leave within 10 minutes if I had any chance in hell of making it.  Sprinted down Flatbush and got there just in time.  The race itself was pretty uneventful other than someone trying to bail in the middle making a sharp turn directly into me.  Fortunately I was able to hold both of us and he was tremendously apologetic.  

Red Hook Crit was the same evening, didn't race it, just watched, and it was a blast.  

Good vacation in Seattle, Vancouver, and Orcas Island, will put a couple of pics up soon.  

Stop the madness

All I needed was a simple wrench, I should have just gone to the hardware store, but no....Having just undergone the second part of a root canal I talked myself into some retail therapy and decided to stop by Conrad's, a bike store in a very odd part of Manhattan that is not on the beaten path from anywhere to anywhere else, unless you are coming from, say, Tudor City Dental, and happen to be going back to work on the Upper East Side, and even then it isn't really on the way.   I had commuted on my track bike today and had just realized that I didn't have a wrench in my bag of tubes and patches, since I normally am on road bike with quick release.  I could have easily hedged my bets, and just assumed I would get home without a flat, but it seemed like a good excuse to buy something, and the novocaine was still wearing off, so why not?  They had 2 wrenches (single speed 15 mm spanners), a beautiful, simple Campy "peanut butter wrench" that cost 40 dollars, and the usual Park Tools for half that.  As pretty as the campy was, I couldn't justify 40 dollars for something I didn't actually need at all, but probably could do 20, and the Park Tools one had a pedal wrench on the other side as well, which would actually be useful, potentially (I have one at home, but it's huge and heavy, portable wouldn't be all bad). So far so good, except for the fact that it has a mothertruckin bottle opener on it as well.  Just to be clear, I love beer.  A lot. (This might be one of the problems, many of us beer lovers have trained ourselves to be able to open bottles on many different sources).  More than most things.  However, I am really sick of bike companies putting bottle openers on everything from seats to tools.  Those damn flip flops you always see at the beach are bad enough, but at least in that case, it's the beach, where beer is prevalent, and one often does not have pockets.  

Yesterday

Olympics are over, racing starts 

(for real this time, think we knew the Feb FBF date was wishful 

thinking) in earnest this weekend.  Knicks really phoned it in against 

Cleveland tonight, UVa has fallen back to earth, ie, near the bottom of the ACC.  Good news is that daylight savings is right around the corner.  

Yesterdays
Yesterdays
Days I knew as happy sweet
Sequestered days
Olden days
Golden days
Days of mad romance and love
Then gay youth was mine
And truth was mine
Joyous free and flaming life
Forsooth was mine
Sad am I
Glad am I
For today I'm dreaming of
Of yesterdays
Then gay youth was mine
The truth was mine
Sad am I
Glad am I
For today I'm dreaming of
Of yesterdays

This song appeared on a ridiculous number of records,

a few of my favorites are:

Helen Merrill off her insanely good recording with Clifford Brown

Charles Mingus off an early trio record entitled Mingus Three

not to mention Blakey, Wes and PC all with great versions.

Cleaning up my CD's....

I have CD's filling up every available bit of closet space that isn't occupied by extra bike parts, cycling caps, basketballs, or tennis rackets.  So, in the interest of not having my wife walk out on me so soon, I tried to free up some space.  Of course, I can't just throw things away, or digitize them (the obvious solution), so I brought a sack full (20ish), into my office today to give a listen to, things that were on the "maybe I could just toss this" fence.  Considering I receive a lot of promo cd's to review and that a friend is a DJ who made me a lot of joke mixes, I should be able to get rid of most of them. 

A few thoughts:

The Lucksmiths - good, solid Aussie indie.  Good songwriting, solid band, have a surprisingly easy time deciding to toss, not very special, can't see needing to hear them again. 

Skip James - just beautiful, one of the eeriest voices I can imagine, blues from 1931 that sounds oddly fresh.  No way I can toss this.  

Charlie Palmieri - considering I am dancing in my chair I can't toss it.  Salsa the way it should be. 

The Makers of Smooth Music - this is the problem with having a friend who is a DJ, don't know why he made this atrocious mix, but I'm sure it worked within the context of his show.  But, we aren't in that context now.  No brainer - toss with great satisfaction. 

George Jones - Some collection that people seem to rave about online as "good George Jones."  I think that is an oxymoron.  Toss.  

Maddox Brothers and Rose - this was the hard one.  Important to the history of music and arguably fun I decided I couldn't toss, in spite of her voice giving me chills, in a bad way.   (Mazza, up your alley?)

Come Rain or Come Shine

This beautiful standard was stuck in my head on the ride in to work and I decided it was appropriate, that it serves as an homage to my

 commute:

I'm gonna love you, like nobody's loved you
Come rain or come shine
High as a mountain, deep as a river
Come rain or come shine
I guess when you met me
It was just one of those things
But don't you ever bet me
'Cause I'm gonna be true if you let me
You're gonna love me, like nobody's loved me
Come rain or come shine
We'll be happy together, unhappy together
Now won't that be just fine
The days may be cloudy or sunny
We're in or out of the money
But I'm with you always
I'm with you rain or shine

It shouldn't surprise me that it was stuck in my head since I've been ob

sessed with it lately, playing many versions over and over, transcribing Grant Green's solo on the great Stanley Turrentine album Up at Minton's, and generally driving my wife bonkers with it.  

A few favorite versions are 

1) Art Blakey - Moanin'....Lee Morgan just kills me, actually makes me laugh out loud. 

2) Sarah Vaughan

3) Frank Sinatra

Loyalties?

I attended a lot of schools, which makes rooting for various teams more a question of labor than heart.  At the moment, UVa is the one making me most proud.  I never actually was a student there, other than a couple of summer school classes, but they have always been my home team as I was born and raised in Charlottesville, my father was a professor at UVa, and both of my brothers went there.  I went to basketball camp there, and was a ballboy during the Sampson era. They have a 2-0 start in the ACC after a good win last night over 18th ranked Georgia Tech. Will the good times last? Probably not, but at least it should be more fun, now that they have gotten rid of huge curmudgeon Dave Leitao,

 (who happened to drag down another of my schools, DePaul).