Whew! What a freakin' weekend!

So much to say, so little time.

I'm exhausted after the Alberta Provincial Road Race today in Red Deer. The weather was phenomenal - 30C with a southerly wind from Texas. The race was one of attrition. I made the mistake of going on a ride with Harley Borlee yesterday for what we had termed a 'leg stretcher', but which ended up being a 100km anyways. The race today was 140km. Since I've been training on the track most of the season, this was probably the most mileage I've done in a very long time, maybe even since Tucson this spring! I can't say that I won, or even ended with a good ranking, but a group of three of us came across the line together after slogging almost 100kms by ourselves. A bit of cramping, wasp stings and such wouldn't get us from finishing! We completed the course in just under four hours.

Included here are some pictures from my tour of my company's Shepard Intermodal facility in the south end of the city. I've been there on tour before, but this was supposed to be more IT focused on all the applications they use 'in the field' to give us a clearer understanding of how everything works together. A group of eight of us went out for this one. It was pretty interesting and the guys that work there that took us on the tour were really great at answering questions.


Loaded container cars


Pulling containers off the car


Putting container on flatbed for transport


Adding to the pile. How do they keep track of everything? Oh right, that's my department's job...

Friday night, Joe, Doug, Kirk and I went to Yuk Yuk's Comedy Club. It was a riot. We ended up getting seated at a table right next to the stage, so you knew we were going to get heckled. It was quite funny because just before the second comedian came on, our food order arrived at the table. Halfway through his bit all that was left was the plate of sushi rolls. So he turns to us and says, "Four men, well dressed, sushi...does this scream gay or what?". The entire room howled and we cheered, especially Doug, who got heckled still more by the same comedian later on. Afterwards we went to Curtis' place for more beers, theoretically before going out to Twisted Element, but we ended up staying at Curtis' and getting bent out of control. If you check out the audioblogs on Jeff's site, you'll know what I mean.

I woke up Saturday morning amazingly without a headache. I met up with the running group for brunch and then headed up to meet Harley for our ride. We got back into the city around 4pm and I went straight to the velodrome to meet up with cp since we were supposed to be picking up the rental vans for the trip to Red Deer at 6pm. As it turns out, we didn't even get the vans until 7pm, so my entire evening was an hour behind what had been planned. I went and picked up Joe at Swan's and we met up with Bryan, Tim, Doug and Aaron at the Rose & Crown pub for a few brews. Coincidentally we also knew that Jon, Alanis and her friend Melissa were also there so we pulled a bunch of tables together and had some laughs. Raymond showed up for a bit. We went home around 10pm and then Joe and Raymond headed to the bar while I went to bed.

Sunday has been entirely travelling and racing. The day was so beautiful and I have so much fun hanging out with my teammates.


Synergy team preparing for Alberta Provincial Road Race at Balmoral Hall in Red Deer

Tomorrow I have my interview with Todd Hirsch for the Gay Canada Guide article and tomorrow evening is the Synergy Shindig and Team photo at the Velodrome. That about all I forsee on the horizon right now.