Much ado about nothing.

I don't mind anyone here looking up who I am or who puppy is. Most know. My issue is search engines. What is in pictures and video is not - yet, easily indexed, so you see and hear names and the people.
However my associations I may quote or mention may not appreciate to have a Google search for them - tagged to me. Once riders are pros/ they are really public - things change. I'm OK saying Brandon...or having a thread on him or any other public cyclist.

All in the immediate family deal with data/information that should not be shared without some thought. It spills over to my forum views I think, and other forums where I posted are private/search engine protected.

No I do not wear a tin foil hat.

So off-topic, but that saddens me.

Edit: Sorry - I forgot the thread - there are no topics.

yeah ... impressive, 16 races with 13 wins.

I just don't want to have to scroll back, figure out what race he won, figure out what ****ing browser works on usacycling results these days, etc...

I have been on hold for so long that my cell phone has gone from nearly dead to full charge O_O

The hold music sounds like the type of thing that would play at a buffet in a Turkish bath house.

I think we're just too damn old.

every day I age 3 now. one for me and one for each terrible screaming child.

I was going to save, edit and rehost that image to be like 10x the size but I'm on windows 10 and this is too big a pain in my ass.

y tho

being one of the few non-idiots that works here I get stuck as the guinea pig for all new things. Apparently windows 10 is our new or future standard, so I am stuck with it first to figure out all the **** that it does poorly. Like work with docking stations, or retain monitor setups, or receive whatever ****ing windows authentication from the stanford network and a host of other things.

We made our assistant "volunteer" to be the guinea pig.

the absolute best was the 2 days it took the IT people to migrate my old laptop to the new one and watch them try and figure out why I couldn't log on to any networks, use my docking station, etc...

I'm still supposed to cover a bunch of desks when my people are out but windows 10 doesn't play nice with anything. Maybe tablets. It's probably great for tablets or some ****.

Yeah, I was as shocked as anyone at the size. The image I posted not the mental one I was blotting out with a religious icon slash meme.

I think it really drove home the point.

y. tho.

If I had mod powers that would be your new screen name. Temporarily.

So this race just popped up in the feed for Utah racing. It will be the first weekend I'm in town and also my first day of work. It's... odd.. Not sanctioned (as far as I can tell), no categories (as far as I can tell) and cheap. I've messaged asking if I can skip some of the stages and just do the RR and maybe the mountain day as who knows how that first day of work is going to go in regards to time. Not much up about it yet despite being less than a month away. It looks like the town is running the event. Could be a **** show, or could be competitive.. Think I need to message about on the FB page and see if racers are actually doing it.

2017 SA-LO Stage Race

http://i.imgur.com/HxBihxk.jpg

Found here along with a lot of other pertinent info. Looks like a really cool race to introduce yourself to all the good local roads.

Saw all that stuff. It's an interesting format (check out the hill climb, kinda enduro style). Already managed to spawn quite the discussion on the UT cycling FB page. Glad there are people active on there. The post on their definitely brought out some people that ONLY race USAC sanctioned anything.

Only fear in an event like this is the possible lack of waiver / event insurance. I've done the non-sanctioned thing in OBRA before and that doesn't bother me. And I'd like to support a new, startup type race butttt not if it puts me at a big risk.

And they have to let me skip a stage cuz there is not way I'm making a 3pm race on my first day of work. Utah and their refusal to do anything on Sunday is going to be a big life change for me..

The answer to getting a beer with the game on Sunday is always

WY tho

So, usacycling's ranking system... Apparently some cycling miracle happened today and two of my results from the weekend magically morphed upwards, er, downwards...improved... in ranking numbers such that yesterday I was a 60.xx and today I'm a 56.xx and now currently ranked 7th for elite crit nats registration.

So that kind of makes me question the validity of the whole thing. Of course, if it keeps me in the top 30 once everyone is registered and gets me a call-up at nats, that would be...pleasant... but maybe/probably if it happened to me it'll happen to 80 other people and you'll need like a 54.xx ranking to be top 30 and get a nice front row seat to the big show.

Anyway, this is all very strange. Took me two seasons to get into the 70s and now all of the sudden I'm in the 50s. Not sure what's going on. Maybe it's just a glitch and tomorrow I'll be demoted back to 60s.

Edit: so now I'm ranked 50th in the nation in crits. Buwahahaaha. Think I'll go eat a cookie and celebrate.

Speaking of races without insurance, there's an unofficial run what ya brung evening training crit in Charlotte that I used to do and is a pretty popular ride among racers.

Last night there was apparently a crash, a bad one. The road is open but half coned off, just an industrial park. A tractor trailer appeared and bad things happened from there, although I'm not sure what. One guy has broken ribs, broken vertebrae and a head wound. And oh yeah, no health insurance.

I can't help but think I wouldn't race bikes in uninsured races of I didn't have personal insurance. Some folks are raising money online and look to be doing well for him.

That's one thing I like about my club races, we are usac insured. Our entry fee is only to cover the insurance cost and permit fees (we use 5 or 6 courses, so 5 or 6 permits).


Too bad about the crash, hopefully the guy heals up quick

That's awesome, but yeah ranking points have a high degree of randomness.

I wouldn't be relying on USAC's insurance either.

If you have no health insurance, your deductible is $5,000, which is likely quite a large sum for most people without health insurance. The maximum coverage is $25,000, which is chump change for a serious injury.

The USA Cycling Coverage is thus pretty much a joke. No way is it adequate if you don't already have health insurance.

And if you do have your own coverage, your policy is primary, and USA Cycling Policy pays 70% of the bills above the deductible, after the primary coverage is exhausted.

Which means it saves you Zero dollars if you have your own insurance.

I'm pretty sure a couple folks on here were able to use the USAC insurance to cover some of their crash-related bills. IIRC, Shovel and CanuckBelle were able to get some money through it.

Also, it must be paying something, because when I attend the annual promoters meeting, we are told that USAC race fees are going up due in large part to increased insurance claims, which are pushing up premiums.

That's a pretty tight coverage window for injuries that can be traumatic. I guess it lets they say they cover injuries while not having to pay an arm and a leg. I guess it's better than nothing.

Reminds me of the coverage I bought in grad school (I was on a fellowship that gave me an allowance for health insurance but said I'd have to buy it myself - from the one choice the university offered). Seems like it was a grand a year, but the first time I went to use it they said, "sorry, we're secondary if you have anything else and it looks like you're eligible to be covered by your parents' insurance until you're 24, so we'll only pay after theirs runs out" (and my folks had no deductible, no copay, insurance up to a couple million or something insane through work). Pissed me off because I'd wasted that $1k that I didn't need to spend because it didn't do anything (and I just pocketed for the next year or 2 until I was in eligible for parental coverage), and I needed some medical treatments that I didn't want my parents to know about (the reason I'd gotten the personal coverage) and they got the insurance notice of coverage anyway.