I'm Sorry, Ben

Morning weigh-in: 180.5#, 13% BF

Well, that "early to bed early to rise" stuff died a hard death: I worked late last night, hit the gym, then went home; I was soooo close to just staying in, but I went downtown to Which Brew anyway. It was pretty good, and I had an OK time but all in all I should have stayed home. The singer, Leechboy, really wasn't my cup of tea, and the evening dragged out to past midnight. I wasn't going to run this morning anyway, and the plan was to sleep until 7:00 rather than (non-run wakeup) 6:30, but I only got moving at 7:10 -- I leave for work at 7:30...

Blasts from the past: I ran into Heath and Hans last night at Which Brew, and I noticed that Heath was walking funny, cramped and kind of stooped over -- turns out he rode with "a bunch of NORBA guys" as he put it, and they layed down a royal butt-whooping on him. I ask him who he means by "NORBA guys," and he names a bunch of young hotshot racers from the Reading area, mostly people I never heard of, but I did recognize one name: Ryan DeWald.

I always wondered what happened to that guy. I remember Ryan D as a teenager circa 1996, riding wheelies through the race-venue parking lots on his Trek Y-bike, winning every local race and moving pretty quickly up to expert, where he still won all the time. His dad would take him to the races, and we would BS about the racing scene, the Grateful Dead, yadda yadda while the junior experts finished their extra laps, pretty cool guy. Last I remember seeing of either of them was an XC race at Whitetail: Ryan was racing for Mt Gretna and I needed to contact them, so he took off his shoe to reveal their number written across his sponsor-provided sock...

I thought maybe he just vanished into senior-expert limbo, or went off to college or moved out West or whatever. It's good to see he's still around and kicking butt, though I suspect he's a pretty familiar name/face to those who (unlike me) still follow the race scene. Apparently, his dad bought a Reading-area bike shop, and these guys ride out of there. Not sure how Heath hooked up, probably through the shop. (Heath was a hurting puppy, but he won some props from me just, for hanging with that crew.)

I asked where the ride was, and he said out by Port Colden somewhere, lots and lots of hills. I asked if there was a reservoir involved, and he said yes... hmmmm, Hamburg?