I feel so violated

I've been hacked. Or rather, someone, somehow acquired my old credit card number and has been on quite a spending spree this week. I received an email and text message alert from Discover last night and called this morning after looking at my activity on line. Funny enough, the transaction they were questioning was fine. It was the other 4 or 5 that *I* questioned that were not.

This leads me back to my old motto that people, in general, suck. Seriously. I've really, really tried to be optimistic and positive and all sunshine-y (relatively speaking, life hasn't exactly made it easy in the past year or so), but every time I turn around, people just suck. The concept of stealing someone's credit card info/identity etc absolutely baffles me - how is this okay for anyone's set of morals and values ? And don't tell me that the poor and unfortunate need to survive, too - they don't need netflix, geico or bestbuy to "survive" (all real charges on my old account) and I didnt work my arse off to get to the point where I could support those who didn't bother.

For that matter, Discover changed account numbers on us about a year ago. A real PIA since any auto billings had to be changed and I had to memorize a whole new set of numbers. Why on earth wouldn't they have closed out the old number ?? Instead, it was automatically billed through to the new account - so why did we change numbers at all !?!?

Sigh. Common sense and common decency is at a low these days. I am starting to wonder what I did in a prior life that I'm being punished for. Whatever it was, I'm sorry !! I'll never do it again !!

There's only so much of life a girl can take at one time.

Racing with the Boys

Since the beginning of my cycling career, I've heard it said that all the fast girls ride with the boys. I like to think I'm a fairly fast girl when I get in gear, and if I'm not in gear, I figure that riding with the boys will make me a fast girl (what comes first, the chicken or the egg?).

After last week's rainout, I finally got my chance to play with the boys in the season opener at Greenbelt. Before I get to my thoughts on last night's race, let me give props to Route1 Velo for their tireless efforts to keep this series alive week after week and year after year. THANK YOU !!

Everyone else must've been anxiously awaiting the race as well because the parking lot was full and the B race actually CLOSED. I lined up with teammate Sara and laughed as I saw the rest of the B riders coming to the line - the field was huge. Remember that our typical womens fields are 20-30 riders max ... I was just glad I was near the front to start. A little too close to the front, as R1V had two guys that drove the pace from the whistle and I was sitting 3rd wheel. I surfed their wheels, coming through the lone turn clean (the only time all night w/o brakes!) and unfortunately wound up on the front to hit the hill. I played the pro-drift (I'm practicing this technique for the Manayunk Wall in a few weeks) and calmed myself down to settle in. Given the size of the field, people were relatively considerate as far as bike handling. I didn't have to break out the B-field Be-yatch, which was a nice surprise.

A couple of guys did do some cyclocross moves for no reason that was apparent to me. Cracks me up - I want to get in a workout and have a good race but lets all be honest, it's a training race and I've got to go to work in the am.

The A's came through us pretty early and it was a disaster. I don't get what's so hard to understand about DON'T MIX FIELDS - the A's have the right-of-way, let them go and we can get back to racing. You guys chase the A's only to blow yourselves up and everyone comes back together anyway.

Mildly amusing: going up the hill at one point, someone was to my right but just behind enough that I couldn't see him. He taps me on the hip and immediately followed it up with "I just do that because you're a girl". It made me giggle -I responded that I enjoyed it anyway.

Once again, I sat up on the last lap as we got to the hill - just no desire to risk life and limb for the cluster that is normally the B-field sprint. I must not have enough testosterone - which will be a relief to some lucky guy at some point, I'm sure.

Hard-core Thoughts

I've often thought it'd be amusing to hear the soundtrack to one's thoughts when doing a training ride alone. My mind wanders from the solution for world peace to whether I set the alarm when I left work to how cool it is that some guy has his kid out there fishing in the park.

Today I had a pretty hard workout, making peace with Ilchester, which is a mere 10mins from my door. I left work early for an appointment and rushed home afterward to get in a workout. It had been relatively dry for hours and I thought I was going to get lucky (with the weather - get your mind out of the gutter).

I step outside and adjust my SRM ... I think I feel some raindrops. I run back inside to grab a plastic bag for my ipod, just in case, and when I get back outside, it's raining pretty hard. I clip in and get on my way. After all, I only have a month to figure out where I left my climbing legs and, hey, it's probably a passing shower, right ?

I'm soaked by the time I get to the park. By the time I get to the base of the hill, I'm giggling a little bit. Cars that pass me have one of two expressions: what is this idiot doing ? and wow, that chick is hard-core. A sampling of my thoughts during the 1.5 hour workout, going up and down Ilchester in the pouring rain:

- I must look totally hard core.

- Good thing my shoes dried out from Sunday. So they could get soaked again.

- Can't turn back now, besides the rain has to stop.

- At what point do I cross that line from hard-core to insanity ?

- wonder if that pile of mulch on the side of the hill is slippery.

- whoaaaa - yep, stay away from that the next time up.

- at least i have white shoes on. and my glasses are on the outside of my helmet straps. According to Nick Mulder, I'm very euro.

- no, no - great song but Coldplay is too slow to keep my cadence up.

- I think it's raining harder...

- never thought I'd say this, but this downhill is too long, I'm getting cold.

and that was just the first lap up the hill. It only got better, with my thoughts wandering to greenbelt races (should start tomorrow but is likely to be rained out), a big meeting tomorrow and what I'm going to wear, the physics that keep my rear wheel from slipping out when I stand up (that'd likely be that bowl of ice cream from last night) and why I am not afraid of cornering in the rain in a race but during this ride, I was terrified of it.

Anyway. I suppose this is a good reason for why we don't have those little cartoon bubbles that show the world our thought process.