random jet lagged thoughts

ok, not really jet lagged, just random thoughts...

When marscat and I have a lazy morning that includes lounging around reading the paper together, she always interrupts me with stories that are interesting to her. She says I do the same thing. This morning, marscat found the story about a woman comedienne worth sharing. She liked a few more too. Usually this interrupting goes on for a bit, and it makes it hard to concentrate on the story that I am reading. Marscat will stop and eventually, I'll finish my story. When we finish "our" section of the paper, we switch. I usually finish first since I mostly skim the real stories and only delve into the box scores. After we switched today, I read marscat's section and found a very sad tragic story about a woman with RA who just recently died from either the gene therapy trial she was on or a viral infection. I asked marscat about this and why of all the stories that this one just got pushed aside and not shared. Marscat had read it and was hiding it. I was surprised she hadn't torn the article out and tossed it away; she had thought of that.

Another thing like this happened at the esparto ITT. Anyone who knows me, knows that I am bad bad bad at ITTs and don't like to do distances over 2K long. Before Esparto, I really wanted to do well. I wanted to ride a 50 or 52 or something fast for me. I didn't succeed. I rode something like a 54. There was a little junior girl in the race. After my ITT, I was telling marscat that I hoped that at least I beat the junior. And marscat, being the supportive partner that she is, told me that "of course you beat her, she's like 14". Well as it turned out, I barely had a better time than the junior. But the funny thing is that before we knew the actual times and while we were standing around, the junior had told marscat that she had ridden a 50. So all the way home, marscat was just being supportive.

But... she will tell me when there is stuff stuck in my teeth, if there is toilet paper on my shoe or if my pants on backwards...if she notices.

I am almost finished reading "The Death of Marco Pantani". I bought the book at the airport since I had already finished "Lance to Landis", People(with an article about Jodi Foster), and some other trashy magazine. Turns out that Marco was diagnosed as bi-polar and had very bad coke addiction. Reminded me of Graeme Obree who suffered from depression. The Pantani book makes it seem like there were two groups of people trying to help him out. One group thought Marco's psychological disposition made cycling a good thing for him and another group thought it contributed to making his illness worse. It is a little like the chicken and the egg. Seems like there was a fine line balancing the mental illness with the intense focus required to compete like he did. Another tragic story.