so brightroom.com, the company that takes care of the pics for the ride turned ‘em around quick this time. i can’t imagine how tedius it is to go through each pic and look for a number on a helmet. anyway, me and taka had about 10 pics total, but the shadowing was pretty bad in most of ‘em. anyway here’s team tandem at the top of el tigre:

and this is this was the final stretch:

alvaro:

james:

costin:

yeh, great time, i can’t wait until the next one <3!

i went out for lunch and it felt like i was in laughlin. weird weather.

according to this okcupid persona test, i am:

the manchild - random| brutal | love | dreamer (RBLDm)
“hopeful.awkward. soft-headed. fire intrigues you. you are the manchild.

okay, manchildren have some good qualities. they can be unpredictable, brash, magnetic–and therefore highly charismatic. particularly, you’re passionate and are often a hell of a lot of fun. but we’d like you to consider not using okcupid. you can be unthinking and hurtful, and we think you like seeing bad things happen. you’ve had a moderate number of relationships, but broken a disproportionate number of hearts.”

i love how these things can tell me who i am by me answering seemingly-unrelated questions. anyway, their analysis is freakishly accurate. i love how they even ask that i don’t use their service <3!

i like how this show covered the same day as the one from last week, just from different perspectives in a pulp fiction-like way. although while i enjoyed it, i’m sure the writers are trying to find subtle ways to make sure they can stretch this story out as far as they can without people losing interest.

lots more questions this episode… why does that guy need to keep entering in the numbers into that old computer? why was there the same logo on that shark that was trying to eat sawyer (part of the island’s security system?) this whole story’s starting to sound a lot like resident evil (and wasn’t michelle rodriguez in that movie?) but i hope that’s not the actual plot line. i’m sure the writers throw out red herings here and there to keep everyone guessing. eventually though, we’re gonna have to find out what the hell is going on, and i hope they can keep the story interesting because half of my interest right now is just trying to figure it out. and damn, the best scene was when kate was crawling through the ventilation system and they had that deep cleavage shot… they’re just gonna have to show more of that if the storyline gets stale.

and what does one snowman say to the other snowman?

is how much the final bill on the boat was. damn mechanics never giving it to you straight. when i first called they said it sounded like a $300 problem, when i showed it to them they said it was a $600 problem, when they finally got in there to see the problem it was a $900 problem, and now that i’m getting ready to pick it up, it turns out that it was acutally a $1089.93 problem. anyway, we’re picking it up saturday morning.

haha, i saw this sweet ride on the 405n near the 605 interchange. in the episode they showed that the car has like some huge recliner in it with a bunch of tvs and can turn into a badmitten court somehow. anyway i felt like i had seen a celebrity:

damn, my window is dirty.

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=54hvr3e.8hx44ohe&x=0&y=-9pgftm

kodak prints are really cheap now too… only $.15 each.

we were just like those dogs:

taka’s bicycle seat was practical joke big thanks to james:

team tandem:

the new faces of racing:

i’ll upload the gallery of photos later on.

this trip was just as fun if not better than the last. the new crew was me, taka, costin, james, al and marvin. this time we had trucks too, so the logistics were much more simple. traffic heading down early friday afternoon was pretty smooth and we got to our rooms with out much issue. when we got there we started eating lots of tacos and i did a fair amount of boozin’ (5 shots of tequilla and 2 beers =p). james introduced us to some super-smooth tequilla called don alejo. but at $7 a shot (in mexico), the rest of my drinks were cuervo. anyway we played some poker and passed out at around 11a.

the next morning we woke up really early hoping to get there in better order than we did last time, but the taxi we took didn’t prove to be any more efficient, and we had to listen to midi tv program theme songs for the hour long drive, but there were some sing-alongs that passed the time. the actual bike ride was really fun. taka and i got lots of attention because i was raced out from tip to toe and taka was just wearing these little green shorts and some bathing suit top with huge ass jlo glasses (heh, costin). we finished the ride in just under 4 hours which was as good as i could’ve expected. taka was a real trooper too. the only intentional break we took was at the top of the final hill since we were out of cool water. coming down the final stretch, one of my crank bolts became loose, i tried to fix it with the tools i had, but it was no beuno. so we rolled kinda easily until we got into town, and then i pulled my boat into ‘jose’s mechanic shop’ and he fixed us right up. after that it was just the final sprint into town and we were done.

everyone finished pretty well too. costin, al and marvin all finished faster than their previous times and james finished it without having to take the truck of shame and we were all there to cheer him on when he crossed.

later that night we went to dinner and then papas and beer like last time. al got all mad when we had the mariachis play ‘la bamba’, but everyone else was digging it. we had’em play a traditional song afterwards to balance it out though.

i can’t wait until the next one. i was telling taka that maybe since there’s two of these a year, i’ll ride the one in april solo and we’ll take the tandem to the one in september if this becomes a bi-annual tradition which it looks like it is going to become. pics to come.