Jennifer Dilworth Hynes — mtbchk

Well, I didn’t race at all on Sunday.  We went up Saturday for our day trip to Uwharrie.  It was a great group of 17, with four very patient guys.  (Tom Mathews is a saint).  As much as I love Uwharrie, I wasn’t feeling it.  I certainly don’t have my climbing legs like I normally do this time of year.

Earlier in the week, I was talking about going out to dinner with the “girls” from the former Corning plant.  Since the place shut down, we’ve kept in touch and Renee happened to be in town.  So, it was girls’ night out Saturday.  However, with the day trip (Brian didn’t go) and girls’ night out and last weekend’s trip to Myrtle Beach, I realized I hadn’t really seen my fiance in two weeks.  Then, he says he’s not racing Uwharrie.  Now what am I going to do?  I went out to dinner, and it took THREE hours.  We didn’t do anything special, the service was terrible.  By the time I got home (late, for me), I knew I wouldn’t race Sunday.  So Sunday was a relaxing day with Brian.

I got a call this morning about interviewing for a job I’d really want.  Keep your fingers crossed!

Also, I’ve been obsessing over the honeymoon.  Brian has made all those plans, but for some reason I’m suddenly transfixed by St. John.  Here’s the house we’re renting:

Yes, it’s a little castle.  I’m so stoked.

Cory came through with the goods.  He called yesterday to tell me that the bearing kit I bought (labeled as a kit for a Titus Switchblade) was all wrong.  But he happened to have bearings that would work.  The only thing in the kit that was right was the horst bushings.  We traded bearings and he got me fixed up and on my way today, so no worries about riding the SS at Uwharrie.  That’s good, since during my ride yesterday at Catawba I noticed something is loose in the back end of the Misfit.  It could just be the cassette lock ring, but it might be the rear hub.  I need to take a closer look.

OK, I know this is slightly vain, but I’m getting married in a few weeks and I want to look my best — sooooo, today I went for my first round of spray on tan.  It’s JUST like the Seinfeld episode!  (Except I don’t look like I’m from Central America).  It was actually pretty cool, and the girl at the salon in Dilworth (!) was very helpful in explaining all the steps.  I bought a package of 5 sessions, which should make me nice and evened out by the wedding day.

Tomorrow is the Dirt Divas day trip to Uwharrie.  It’s turning out to be a gorgeous weekend, so I’m definitely looking forward to it!

Off to change the fill valve on my downstairs toilet!

It’s been a long winter.  So, it’s time to update the blog, thanks to the prodding from several friends.  I actually think about it a lot, but so much has happened that it’s hard to decide where to begin!

Let’s see…. since my last blog entry (in chronological order)….

I finally did an endurance race in which I felt like I did everything right.  I did the Tree Shaker 12-hour here in Charlotte at Renaissance Park.  Minimal pit stops, and kept pace with the leader the entire time.  If memory serves me right, I ended up just 10 or 15 minutes behind 1st place.  It was funny because I kept seeing her at the same place on the course on every lap.  I’ll have to remember how I ate and replicate that again.

I started working seriously long hours, like 12-13 hours a day, 6-7 days a week, very minimal riding.  No blogging (of course).

I worked on my wedding plans.

As of January, I started looking for another job (if you want to know details, you’ll need to buy me a beer).

Since January, I’ve been looking for a job, planning a wedding, and working on my house.  The house has come a long way.  I’ve reorganized everything, and we have a storage unit now for all of our non-essential stuff until we figure out where we’ll end up.

Last weekend, the rank girls and I went to Myrtle Beach again to sell raffle tickets at the car show for the MS Society.  Same deal as last year, except this year we celebrated bachelorette-style.  Nothing too crazy — we’re all too old for that.  But it was silly nonetheless.

Today, I spent the morning painting the trim in the upstairs guest bathroom.  I hate painting, but it needed it.  I had the floor replaced in there several years ago and the flooring people never painted the new trim when they put it in.  Huh.  I’m really bad at painting, too.

So, that pretty much catches up the last few months.  Exciting, huh?

Riding and Racing for 2007:

I rode my SS yesterday at Catawba for the first time in a while.  I’ll go again today.  Man, it hurts, but I have a bad feeling that I will have to race it at Uwharrie this weekend.  I tried to change out all my pivot bearings on the Titus the other day and got frustrated.  I admitted defeat and took it over to Cory.  I don’t know that I’ll have it back in time.  So the question is, do I race SS class or the SS in the Sport Women’s class?  Either way I’ll get crushed.

We’ve decided that due to the extraordinary amount of time, travel and funds it takes to race the regional circuit, that we will only do a handful of select races this year.  I don’t have a job, we’re getting married, my car has 175,000 miles on it… yada yada.  So, it’s “local” races and a few select out-of-town races.  So far, we’ve agreed to Uwharrie and Catawba Riverfront, Burn (me), Cowbell and ORAMM (Brian).  We’ll see.  It might be nice to take some time off.

Y’all keep bugging me and I’ll keep this up.