I added a section in my links for listings for bicycle rides occuring in Georgia. Take a look! I’m going to be signing up a for a few of them, since I had such a great time doing the Circle the Bald, and the Gambler. Since I never know what my schedule is, I’ll probably only sign up a week or two in advance, except for one.

After facing Brasstown Bald last weekend, and realizing there’s no fucking way I could do that right now, I’m going to skip the Bald Buster this year. However, I am going to sign up for the Six Gap Century. This will have me climbing all six of the Gaps: Wolfpen Gap, Neel’s Gap, Woody Gap, Jack’s Gap, Unicoi Gap, and the dreaded Hogpen Gap. All told, this will be over 10000 ft of climbing. The ride is in September. I have months to prepare.

So we went downtown last night for the Twilight Criterium and got to watch the Women’s and Men’s races. The men’s race was quite exciting! Trent Wilson, the contender from Jittery Joe’s cycling team, managed to hang with the pack the whole race and positioned himself for a great finish. It came down to the usual suspects: J.J. Haedo from the newly formed Toyota United team, Gord Fraser from Health.net, and last years winner Vassilli Davidenko from Navigators. Davidenko won the race on a well-timed attack from the hill up Washington St. Trent managed 6th place, which is his best finish yet. The crowd was really rooting for the home town guys.

All in all, it was a great race. Can’t wait for next year.

More info on the Milford Hills fraud

Here’s some more details on the fraud that took place in my neighborhood. The sooner these clowns go to jail, the sooner their properties can be sold to legitimate owners. Somebody is gonna luck out and get some nice homes for a good price. If I had the money, I’d buy another one.

Here’s a followup story

They misspelled my name of course, but they got the details right. Right now we’re considering our legal options. Anyone with any ideas, feel free to leave a comment.

So I woke up this morning, got on my warm riding gear, and went downtown to ride in the Gambler. I chose the 50k route as opposed to the 100k one. I’m not quite ready for that yet. It took about half the ride before I got into my rhythm. Once I did, I was climbing hills in the big ring and didn’t even notice. That’s the first time that’s happened to me. I felt good! I felt like, when I finished, I could have done the 100k. I learned a lot from doing the Circle the Bald ride. Eat lots! Drink lots!

Part of the ride was that you got a card at every rest stop to build a poker hand. Mine wasn’t too bad. 2 pair, 2s and 4s. I should win something. I think the best hand I saw was 3 aces.

I got back from LA yesterday night. I’m glad to be back on the right coast. It was cool being over there for about 2 days. It didn’t help that it rained on me the whole time. Anyway, I’m glad to be back.

Chris Horner, a previous winner of the Athens Twilight Criterium and Tour de Georgia (and just about every other race on American Soil) is the 2nd stage winner and now GC leader in the Tour de Romandie. See the Velonews article.

Chris Horner is someone you have to root for. He dominated US cycling, went to Europe and was a bust, came back to the US and dominated some more, and now is making a name for himself on the Davitoman-Lotto team. I have him in the top twenty five in the Tour de France this year. He’s pretty good!

Home sales suspect in Athens Subdivision

So I’m looking online at the Athens paper today and here’s the article that I see. Turns out the real estate agents, lenders, and developers that were involved in the sale of homes in our neighborhood are all crooks and are going to jail. We’ve long suspected there was something screwy with our neighborhood. The homes were purchased but were all empty. Turns out they were bought by developers and resold for crazy money. The new owners couldn’t find renters willing to pay the crazy rent to cover the crazy mortgage, so the houses would get forclosed on and the process would start all over again.

I’m glad this has happened. Maybe now we’ll get some real families in our neighborhood and the quality of our neighborhood will increase. There’s a neighborhood cleanup day on sunday, and I’m gonna see if we can do something about the crap house that’s next door to me.

October 23rd in San Jose California, I will be sitting down to take the dreaded CCIE Lab exam. I have approximately 6 months to learn everything I need to know, and more importantly, discover how to calm my nerves. I intend to pass that test on the first try. It’s a less than 25% pass rate for people taking the test for the first time.

This will be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

Floyd won the Tour, Haedo won the stage. I wish I could care more, but I’ve had a long day. I got up early and drove the airport. I came very close to getting bumped off my flight to LA and would have had to wait 12 hours for the next one, but I got lucky and got on the plane.

5 hours is a long time to be in the air. Add to that the fact that I didn’t get breakfast, and only drank one cup of coffee on the flight, and you have the ingredients for a massive headache. Plus it took me an hour of driving to get to my hotel once I got my rental car. LA is fucking huge.

It’s pretty cool though. Palm trees everywhere , and Brea is at the foot of some mountains. I’m not sure what range it is, but it’s pretty.

I’m gonna take a nap then get some dinner. After that I’ll plan my day for tomorrow.

Well, I got up this morning at 4:30, packed my shit and drove to Hiawassee for the Circle the Bald bike ride. It was 37 miles and there wasn’t a flat mile in the whole thing. I had to walk my bike a few times, but I finished it. My legs are like lead right now. Some highlights: I got to ride up the steepest road I’ve ever seen, Owl Creek Rd, which is right beside Brasstown Bald. I thought I’d made it to the top, rounded the corner, and saw a horrible sight. The road seemed to go on forever, and there were many people walking their bikes up it. I soon joined them. my legs were wobbly. My frickin face was wobbly after trying to climb that. Aside from that, and a few other steep roads, things went well. If my legs were stronger, i’d have had a better day. On the plus side, the descent was frickin awesome.

I’d intended to stay and watch the TdG stage today, but I was so tired and wet from getting rained on all day, that I just packed up and left. I missed an epic race, with Jason McCartney taking King of the Mountain and Tom Danielson edging out Floyd for the win but not by enough to take the leaders jersey. Popovych had a good day coming in right behind those two, with none other than Cesar Grajales, the pride of Athens, coming in 4th.

I passed my CCIE Voice written exam today. This means that I can now schedule my lab test. This is a huge achievement for me, and I’m gonna celebrate tonight by eating at the Grit, the best restaurant ever.

Jason McCartney, of Discovery, has some huge testicles. he spent most of the day out in front. There were a couple of categorized climbs, and a lot of uncategorized ones. He would get caught and then attack again. He didn’t hold on to the win though. Fast Freddy, the best climbing sprinter in the race, lived up to his word and won the stage after hanging with the pack during the final climb.

Tomorrow, Brasstown! I’ll be on location after riding in the Circle the Bald ride tomorrow morning. I won’t have my laptop, so no on-location blogging, but I’ll have a kick ass report after I’m done.

The time trial today went pretty much as I expected. Floyd Landis won, with David Zabriskie not too far off. The big surprise, at least for me, was how well Tom Danielson did. Floyd only beat him by 4 seconds. Last year Floyd beat Tom by over a minute and it was only on the slopes of Brasstown that Tom was able to make up the deficit to win the race.

With time trialing skills and amazing climbing skills, I’ll have to put Tom D as the favorite to win this race. With that combination of skill, he’s going to be a contender in the Grand Tours, no doubt.

Today’s race was from Fayetteville to Rome. The finishing circuit in Rome was what made this day interesting, as there is a steep (19% grade) hill right before the finish called Clock Tower Hill. This super steep climb right before a very quick descent to the finish line made for some technical racing. I was pretty close in my guess of the winner, as Haedo came in second. The winner was Popovych of Discovery Channel, with Fast Freddy coming in 3rd. He’ll win a stage this year, I’m willing to bet.

Popovych surely benefited from the experience of the Discovery Team, since the finish was so technical. It took some good tactics, and that’s what won it for them today, with Popo accelerating over the hill and getting a good gap on the downhill to the finish.

There was a Lance sighting as well. I’m not so much interested in Lance, he’s retired, and I already got a picture and autograph back in 04. I’d like to see Bob Roll again, and maybe get some good pics of Tom D and Floyd L dueling it out up the final switchback on Brasstown.

Tomorrow’s stage is from Chickamauga GA to Chattanooga TN and is the individual time trial. We’ll get a very clear idea of who’s in this to win it tomorrow. You’ll see Ekimov have a good showing, along with Tom D, but I think it’ll come down to Dave Zabriskie or Floyd Landis. Floyd has kicked ass this year so far, but Dave Z took the individual time trial at last years tour de france to get himself the yellow jersey. He’s good. So we’ll see.

The opening stage was a good one. Lots of attacking, breaks going up the road and getting reeled back in. Fun stuff. A break of 4 riders was finally allowed to go down the road, getting about 11 minutes on the field at one point. In the end it came down to a sprint between Lars Michaelson of CSC and Fred (Fast Freddie) Rodriguez of Lotto-Davitamon with Lars taking the win. Funny thing though, while the riders were making their 4 circuits of the 2 mile finish area, Freddy had to change a tire and a bike, each time having to catch up with the field. Makes you wonder if he’d have won the sprint if he hadn’t had those difficulties.

Stage 2 is starting off from Fayetteville and ending in Rome with 3 circuits around downtown Rome including steep climbs up Clock Tower Hill. I love finishing sprints that involve steep climbs. It takes a special kind of rider to win those. Lance won this stage in 04, and Peter Wrolich of Gerolsteiner won it last year. I think we’re going to see the sprinter from Toyota-United, Haedo, make an appearance. He would have contested the sprint yesterday but his leadout man got caught up in the crash and he had to lead himself out. I think he ended up in 7th. We’ll see if his team can get him in position this time.

The 2006 Ford Tour de Georgia is getting started in Augusta tomorrow! I’ll be thinking about cycling all week long. On Saturday I’m going to ride in the Circle the Bald ride and then watch the finish at the top of Brasstown Bald. The past two years I’ve bitched out of watching the mountain stage, but not this year. I made sure I’d be there by signing up for the ride. No way I’m missing it!

No. I’ll go ahead and kill the suspense. This isn’t about anything new really. I made it to CCVP and I was pretty stoked about it. It was hard! So I took a week or so off from thinking about Cisco or any certifications really. Well, now it’s time to get back on the horse.

Now, it’s CCIE. This is Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert. It’s the granddaddy of all Cisco certs. I’m going for the Voice classification, which is made more difficult by the fact that it’s the newest CCIE, and there’s fewer study materials available. Regardless, I’m studying for the written portion of the exam right now. So far so good. My CCVP has prepared me pretty well for this. I’m going to try to take it on Friday.

After that, I’ll start studying for the Lab. That’s the part that’s really hard. After I pass that, I’ll celebrate for a couple weeks, and then I will be doing, in this order:

MCSE (7 exams)
Cisco Unity and Call Center Express
Avaya ACS and ACE

I think that’s all of them. All together this will be 14 exams. I’m shooting for a year and a half to finish them all. Obviously, I’m not really concentrating on any of that right now. CCIE is all I’m thinking about.

Saul Raisin, the pro cyclist from north Georgia, is recovering from his crash. Saul coming out of coma.

Hope he can get back on the bike soon.

I passed my final exam. I’m now a Cisco Certified Voice Professional. I’m giving myself a week off of studying, and then I’m starting my CCIE Voice written exam.

Here’s a couple links to some Athens sites that I’d never seen before:

Overheard in Athens –I’m sure you’ve been to Overheard in New York. This site’s like that, only instead of New York, it’s Athens. It’s pretty funny.

Athens Exchange –looks like a bunch of articles about Athens shit. Maybe they’re talkin about you in there.