need a good ass kicking now and then

you dont learn much when things come easy. You learn lots when you screw up. Tell you what, I'm going to know everything there is to know about primitive hide tanning once i finally come up with a finished product. It's like I tried every possible screw up to see what happens, only i never meant to.  I'm finding out there are many lifetimes worth of learning to just scratch the surface of the complex skills needed for humans to live in the real world. Oh the irony. We once posessed a cultural skill set that our lives depended on and which allowed us to circle the globe. Then we completely severed all ties to it and now a tiny niche of folks today will spend their lives trying to re-learn these very fundementals of human life. Pick any one skill, even the most basic skill.........making fire. It seems one could spend a lifetime just at that. Plenty of time could be spent on technique alone, tree identification so you can competently select the right wood, cordage which is a whole other thing, and of course these are only half the battle. these get you a little coal, which you then have to have the right materials to turn that coal into a flame, and then to turn that into a bigger flame until finally you can relax and feed the hungry beast you've created. I often ponder these things in the context that our ancestors new these thing from childhood. it passed down through generations for millenia and new more about it than any scientific study of today could ever know. Anyway, this all relates to racing in a way. You'd think i would have bike fit all worked out after all these years on them, but not so. It's constantly evolving and i continue to maken discoveries by the above mentioned method of totally screwing things up to find out what not to do and by default, what TO do. Riding a bicycle is also not natural thing for the body. It is not really obvious what will work. Many totally different things work for different people because, well, we aren't evolved as bike pedalers. Guess it's what you pick up and get used to. Well i still can't nail down what I'm used to. I'll  try everything under the sun andthink I have it nailed down till one minute detail changes and all of a sudden that way of thinking no longer works. That's sortof how i felt last weekend when i swapped over to the MTB shoes and pedals. Just didn't feel right and i therefor suffered. Also sunday was the first MTB race in a long time. I realize while i am much fitter now, i was much more skilled on the trails when i was 16. This was the williams lake classic. I remember why this used to be my favorite race. Fun technical trails that go through a cave. My old teamate Justin Lindine was there. Good to see him, even if he had to crack me on the first climb. He has been kicking ass on the MTB and took no exception with mine. I was in serious trouble out there. Damage control from that first climb. No technical skills to falll back on. My legs might have hurt cause Saturday was the Black fly challenge where Cory Burns was ripping them off. Made an agreement to ride for a course record since we were in different categories. good thing, i would have blown anyway. we did hurt and smashed the record by 6 minutes. Unfortunately my dad was busy falling on his head out there in his first race ever. Fortunately it was a minor concussion, but we did have to go all the way over to Glens Falls to get him. When we got there the hospital was on "lock down" apperently because a patient "escaped". Sounds like prison to me. Hospitals are an extreme example of corruption. Makes perfect sense being in close with insurance and law.