ZZZZzzzzSSSSHHHHHhhhhhh

That's the sound the bike racers made as they WHIZZED by us during the Elgin bike race on Sunday. We had fun sitting in Kim and Doug's front yard and also riding our bikes to different vantage points on the route and cheering. More pics coming -- this is one I stole from Roland, who is much quicker with the downloads!

OK, here are a few more. Unfortunately, I was trying the "speed burst" feature on Lenore's camera, which, it turns out, results in pretty blurry photos, so I didn't get a decent one of the women's pro race. I have to figure out how to get the movies off of the card next.

Here we are in Kim and Doug's yard -- the riders have just come up a long, steep hill. We rode up it to get there, and it's a killer. These guys did it anywhere from 8 to 18 times, depending on their race! The entire loop through Elgin was a little over 5 miles, mostly through residential neighborhoods.

(part of the hill)


They were averaging around 25-26 mph. The announcer mentioned that 1 mph can make a big difference in a race like this -- I know when I kick it up from 10 to 11 mph, it's REALLY tiring!! (heh heh)

Some other vantage points. That rider on the far left is actually in the race, but I don't think he knew what he was getting himself into. He had already been lapped once, so at this point, I think he was just trying to stay out of the way. He took it in good humor and got plenty of cheers though -- he was kind of like the Jamaican bobsled team.


Hopefully this works -- here's a little clip of the riders coming at us on a straightaway.

If you can't view the video here, it's up on YouTube.

Lenore, my dad and I also went to see the Chicago Bandits play the Rockford Thunder in Rockford. It was a great game (we won!), but our seats sucked. It was "bring your dog night" (how stupid is that?!), plus there were at least 25 girls teams there watching, so it was packed. But we made the best of it, and conditions improved considerably once the sun went down. That's one of the more poorly laid out fields I've ever been to as far as sun positioning and visibility from the bleachers. Two of the three women's toilets were broken (handles snapped off -- what the...), so Lenore and I were giving plumbing lessons on how to flush a toilet manually, from inside the tank. In hair news, here's the latest update on Lenore's head. It's maybe about 1/4 of an inch long now?