Through The Lens:

Look what College did to him, originally uploaded by erictwright.

Hey everybody just wanted to point you to a new sidebar addition. my little middle brother Steven is now in Burkina Faso as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Girls Education and Empowerment program. *chuckle

Bonne chance mon frère ( see they kinda speak French there)

I’m really proud of him- and he’s got a blog going. ( more proud of the whole Peace Corps thing, but a little proud that he took up blogging)

Only one post so far- but there should be more when he gets to an internet cafe and learns how to figure out the French keyboard layout.

so go check it out. http://stevensburkinablog.blogspot.com/

Sincerely

Eric T. Wright
Burkina Faso PCV Blog Readers 2008 Association Treasurer-Topeka Chapter/ Gadsden Auxillary

Well the BAK. It was quite the adventure.

I had planned my flights with a not much fudge factor, so when I got to Birmingham and I had trouble with the American Gate Agent checking my bike box and then my flight being delayed I started getting a touch antsy. Then I got a call from Mom asking me if I had heard anything about the storms. Apparently there was the “storm of the century” brewing in Kansas ready to spit millions of tornadoes directly into the path of incoming jetliners.

Well I managed to work out the car details where Dave and Brandy graciously picked up my car at the airport despite a sketchy key copy. That way I didn’t have to pay eleventy million dollars in car parking fees.

We landed late in Chicago and my 50-minute layover became a ten-minute one. Luckily I had on running shoes and had been practicing my speed-work so I did some Chicago Midway Intervals and made it in time to board. Alas the flight was delayed . . . for hours. (By the way do you ever feel like a jerk when you run through the airport and get to a flight then have to wait for five minutes to board- then all of those people you passed while running calmly walk up to the gate and board- I feel like one of those stupid stop light racers. I wonder if the walkers get that same smug sense of satisfaction)

After all of the drama I landed in KCI after midnight. We got home and I stayed up late chatting with the brothers then I had to reassemble the bike- a procedure on which I had only a tenuous grasp. I ended up staying up all night- taping my bars fiddling with my chain, cables, brifters, cogs and sprockets and pre-flighting every little detail.

I trudged into the kitchen bright and early and had an awesome breakfast of Blackberry pancakes. (My mom has been on a pancake kick- after some foodie columnist said it was the in thing (i love you mom- not complaining, just saying))
I then loaded my bike sans pedals onto a semi trailer got on the bus and met my uncle- and we drove what seemed like 12 hours to the magnificent western Kansas town of St. Francis- a mere seven miles from the Colorado Border to begin bicycling across the great state of Kansas.

I’ll pick up with more in a bit

(ed. note) This post is late, but not backdated - so deal with it
Well the race didn’t go as well as I wanted, but I finished. I started off the day before getting sick, bronchitis and cold type stuff- Val kept telling me to just decide that I wasn’t sick. But you know its not going to be ideal when I don’t even eat dinner the night before.

The day of the race I took a bunch of meds so I could sort of breathe. My swim went well in the muddy river, we had a current which helped. I think my swim was 22 minutes or so. Normally on a 50 free in the pool i take around 50 seconds at a distance pace- and a 22 minutes 1.5k ends up working out to about 45 seconds. I didn’t have the best strategy though. Because I was unfamiliar with the course I stayed about 75M out from the shore. I didn’t see until later but most of the swimmers swam out to the center of the the river to get the most current. dumb on my part.

I did well on the bike averaging around 22mph. I didn’t get cramps which I attribute to the 4 endurolytes that I popped before the race, but I made another mistake. I didn’t want to wear my Garmin Forerunner in the water so I bought a cheap timex to keep my lap splits. I didn’t think about the fact that I had pulled my cycle computer off my bike so I on a course that involved several laps I didn’t know how far I had gone. I had a gu packet that I ate too early so I kind of bonked on my run.
I had great transitions between the segments, but my run was deplorable. 6 miles of slow running in hot and muggy Louisiana I was passed so many times on the run it wasn’t funny. I finished 35 seconds off my goal pace of 2:30:00 but my run was over an hour. an hour 10k is pretty bad, even for me.

I didn’t run the race I wanted to but I did it despite not feeling well so I am not too disappointed. I finished 4th in my age group so no hardware. Then I had to drive 8 hours home through the night and I lost my voice. I had to stop and take several naps at rest areas but I made it home in one piece and in time for work the next day.

Wild Art, originally uploaded by erictwright.

a twofer yesterday at the park. To stave off snarky comments from Marcy’s devotees these were enterprise features, “wild art” is a painting of a giraffe on the Serengeti.

I’ll update this post with some words but wanted to throw some photos up to brighten your Monday. You can thank me later.

foggyhollow_6_ew.JPG, originally uploaded by erictwright.

Back out at the farm shooting pictures

Luther Deavers of Atworth, Ga. jams at the Foggy Hollow Bluegrass Gatherin’ on Thursday, June 5, 2008.