darwinian evolution

my dear roommate betsy told me this evening: "if darwin's rules applied, you'd be dead- cause your instincts are bad."

i laughed for a good fifteen minutes. this, as much as anything, serves an excellent way for me to re-cap my trip to LA this weekend, where i went down to ADT to do some race/TTs

• poor instinct #1- i should never assume my wallet is in the pocket i left it in after going to the bathroom, only to find out it is gone 3 hours later, ouch....along with the $200 cash that i just withdrew from the ATM to make money transactions easier this week, double ouch.
  
• poor instinct #2- i will never trust officials to be my holders unless i know them.
  
• poor instinct #3- just because i am exhausted and tired does not mean i will actually sleep. (okay, perhaps that isn't an instinct...but i will leave it here anyway)
  
• poor instinct #4- that fucking awesome CD case that i made up to DJ the last road trip to LA wasn't where i thought i left it. instead, i turned over my room til 1:30am just to find nothing. now, i know it is the glove box of karla's car, from 5 months ago. stellar.
  
• poor instinct #5- just because i was fast friday for a pre-ride, did not mean i was fast saturday. i had an awful day.
  
• poor instinct #6- a faster track does not mean going faster. i was ready to have a bunch of PRs. however, instead i went slower.... lots slower.
  
• poor instinct #7- forgot to pedal after buffing my 500tt start, which gave me officially the slowest 125m split of everyone (even people who finished 5 seconds slower than me). that hurts. also even though gio told me to be careful about not soft pedaling in the centripetal force in the curves-- i totally did just that.
  
• poor instinct #8- while all the women (and people in general) are super friendly and encouraging at hellyer, i shouldn't have assumed this would be the case everywhere. some people might not think my skinsuit is funny. some people just snubbed me, even after i went out of my way to be friendly and small talked. so, i shouldn't assume all people to be welcoming of visitors.
  
• poor instinct #9- although people might be empirically faster than me, that doesn't necessarily mean they want to race faster than me (or will even ever pull through at a medium pace).
• poor instinct #10- coffee at 9pm will not necessarily give you a caffeine high, especially if it is weak-ass coffee. (okay, not an instinct again, but a false assumption)
  
• poor instinct #11- the clutch is a bit further away from my left foot than i think it is
• poor instinct #12- don't let someone fall asleep while they leave a stupid book on tape in the CD player that plays twice during the hours of 11:30pm and 1:30am. (well, not an instinct again, but poor judgment)
  

well, there were several other poor instincts of the weekend, but that is from the top of my head.

anyway, trip to LA was a whirlwind....my TTs pretty much sucked balls. the 45 lap scratch race was no fun at all to race. a field size of six sucks- especially when the racing is so negative. the 48 lap points race was better, but that was just cause i decided to fuck it and do whatever the hell i wanted, and treat it more like an open training session than a race. anyway, although i wasn't particularly happy with anything-- it wasn't a waste. i definitely learned some good stuff, by doing the wrong thing...and it was good practice on that track. getting used to a 250m was harder than i thought...but i have a lot of time to mull things over before i go down there again, and am confident next time will be better. anyway, that was this weekend. sorry this isn't very funny, but i am not particularly jovial at the moment.