It’s been a preposterously busy work week, and that means that my actual career is infringing upon my imaginary careers as a bike racer and writer that writes about bike racing. In a realistic sense this is a good thing, as working can be a very lucrative thing to do. It allows me to earn money which I can then spend on things that I don’t have the time to use. (I have a closet full of ascots which are just dying to be slung around my neck, but sadly there’s not enough time for regatta-ing these days.) But my working time limits my riding time, and it kills my writing time,so much so that as I type this paragraph here, I am uncertain as to whether I am doing any of this writing write at all.

But if I am to take a step back and think about it, these are good problems to have. I have a steady income and my career allows me the flexibility to enjoy a bike ride during my working day. I really should be thankful, as I never had free time when I was younger. Growing up, I always had jobs. I started out shoveling the excess that was spilled when the dump trucks delivered sand to my father’s small precast concrete company. (The "shop" as it was known, was attached to the back of our house. So it was easy for me to pop out back, shovel a half ton or so of sand, and head back in to catch Looney Tunes.) I was paid a dollar for each time I shoveled the sand. In paper money! I felt like the biggest mover and shaker in the second grade.

I worked in the shop throughout grade school, cleaning cement mixers, sweeping up and doing whatever I was told. And I learned many things, first and foremost among them was that I REALLY didn’t want to have a career in the field of precast concrete. In high school, I got a job delivering pizzas and thought that I had gone to heaven, as I didn’t end the day covered in a crusty mixture of cement, water and sand and I was able to work with people that were my own age. The guys that worked for my dad were older and definitely shaped my sense of humor and view of the world. I learned to gripe like a construction worker, and discovered that mercilessly tearing each other down was a fine way to pass the time. By the age of twelve, I had amassed an encyclopedia sized collection of "rooster" jokes. It never really came in handy though, well until the internet started anyway.

College saw me continuing my consistent employment. My parents paid as much as they could for school, but the plain fact was that I was on the hook for the majority of my schooling, and adding insult to injury, supplies for art school were ridiculously expensive. In order to be able to obtain the material to complete my projects, I had to scramble for cash. In my freshman year I was working weekends in a bar as a busboy. I worked at an awful nightclub in Kansas City’s bar district for an owner that showed up at closing time with a .45 automatic and a rottweiler before emptying out the safe in the back and heading out. I couldn’t be bothered by the dodgy nature of the place though, I had a Letraset habit to support.

In fact, my need for supplies eventually became overwhelming. I had a serious Pantone problem by junior year, and I was working seven days a week. I spent mornings laying out business cards and envelopes for a speedy print place, and on weekends I was a night doorman. I had little or no social life. There was about an hour’s window on Saturday night when I could meet up with friends. I clocked out of my doorman’s job at midnight and raced to a place called the Gulf Ball Lounge, which usually stayed open and hour longer than most bars because it was in a terrible neighborhood. I would then guzzle as much beer as I could before heading back home and beginning the whole week over again.

I finally felt like I had made it when I landed a job that had weekends and (usually) nights off. Suddenly flush with free time, I of course decided to participate in the one of the most time consuming and exhausting activities available. I began to race bikes. There has got to be something wrong with me.

This week’s training is here, there’s not a lot to look at. I’ve been eating out quite a bit so I’ve ballooned out of my Val Kilmer scale, forcing me to create a new infograpic for my increased girth.