Swansong

Half a foot of fresh is plenty of snow to drag me out of bed at 4:30 on May 12. Maybe not in February, but in May I’ll do it. I won’t say this is our last storm of the year, but it is probably the last one. We didn’t need headlamps, and birds were chirping as we started the climb if that tells you anything about what season it is.

Up high, visibility was terrible, so I didn’t take a single picture, except for this one as we transitioned at the bottom of Holy Toledo and began our ascent back up to Cardiff.

The snow was surprisingly fun. Not deep, but fun. It had come in heavy enough underneath that we weren’t bottoming out on a hard crust. And it was light enough on top to provide plenty of face shots. Who’d have thought I’d regret having shaved my beard in May?

Back at the mouth of the canyon, it looked more like spring, with green sprouting up between the rocks.

While taking in the view, there was a mountain goat sighting (actually, it may have been the chupacabra). Can you see it?

How about now?

That may be it for ski season. I’d still like to get up on Timp for a little fun in Cold Fusion, but these things have a way of never actually happening. We’ll see.

Another thing I won’t experience again is drooling on my stem while I try to stay in the group that’s desperately chasing Peter A. Peter got a forced upgrade to Cat. 2 this week. Steve said it was a little sad seeing him trade in his B flight number for an A flight number at the DMV crit last night. Peter has absolutely dominated every race he’s entered since Harvest Moon last fall. And while it will be nice for someone else to win, nobody begrudges his success, because Peter is a class act and an all-around good guy.

As for DMV race results, Cam P. kept the Revolution Cafe Rio streak alive with another win last night. Steve was the only other Rev-Rio rider in the Bs, and got a solid fourth. That’s four weeks out of four that a Revolution racer has won. No pressure on us next week, right?

On the topic of pressure, how about that breakaway group in the Giro stage today? Ordinarily the chase group times the catch to be a lot further from the end, but watching it unfold today was just awesome. I’m a little disappointed at the lack of big-time GC contenders in this year’s race, but that hasn’t made the racing any worse. I’ve said it before: the Giro is better than Le Tour.

One more thing that’s coming to an end is Lost. I would have given up by now, except I’ve invested six f’ing years in that show, and I’m going to see it through. But it has become egregiously terrible. The only thing worse than Tuesday night's episode will be the finale. It’s beyond not entertaining at this point. It’s anti-entertaining to watch it because it’s so frustratingly bad.

And what's with the worse-than-Jackie-Chan audio sync? I mean seriously? At least in the Jackie Chan movies, they’re trying to make it look as if the Chinese words being formed by the actors’ lips are on the same timing as the English audio dub. But Lost is like the highest-budget show on TV, and they can't even be bothered to sync the audio track to the video of the actual actors saying the actual words in the same language?

I don’t even care how it ends at this point, I just want it to be over. This season should have been about resolving unresolved questions, as should have the last and probably the one before. It’s hardly done that. It’s just introduced more questions to keep viewers curious about answers continually tuned-in in hopes that the show will throw them a bone and resolve something for once. Most of the time I just quit watching well before a show gets this bad. But the finite, serial format has me wanting to endure to the end. At least there are only two episodes left.