uuuhhhh, can somebody call social services ??

since wors travels to remote WI locales, i like to keep this look available for relating to the locals. it works well !! for post-race hugs & kisses from the lovely wife . . . . rather less well - but that is what daughters are for, as you see.

one of the main reasons i wanted to start this blog was looking forward for a year. one aspect of which is MK being a HS senior, a year from now - theoretically - she will have been off to school, with one semester under her belt. we will be chillin' with gretchen and nicky rearranging her bedroom. so, i want to kinda document it all, or whatever. in the meantime, we spent some of last season already in nostagia mode.

this race was a hi-lite of 08 - MK's first ever elite podium in wors. it was also the first one ever on a SS, if anybody's keeping track. it was an epic battle, with a very worthy rival in patti K more most of the race and with that battle, even tho numbers were down, she felt like she earned it.

her attention these days is directed to school next year. she's off to a pretty good start with her 2 early-app choices. one represents her long-time dream of a smaller school, with the intimacy and close relations of students and profs and individualized studies direction - with the bonus being ric damm's wicked cool new varsity cycling team at Ripon College that go with that. she is super excited and honored to be invited to a special scholarship-day competition coming up at this ultra sweet small school in a couple weeks.

her other early app school was in a different vein and represented a diferent dream - big-time and big-risk and big-rep crazy-hell-selective MIT. she pulled down an acceptance there, complete with a personalized flattering phone call immediately after the acceptances were posted on-line, also. not too shabby, for a nobody kid from a tiny public school in a nothing ice-covered town. it might be said that her insistance of stupidly riding a SS in the elite Fe field on drop bars is perhaps misleading . . or at least does not cross over past mtn biking ??

lots of things need to be looked at, and decided. many of which she has no control over, and some that need defining by her. in the meantime she is both trying to keep expanding options, and narrrow-down direction. it is pretty crazy, as i am sure any parent knows. but things could be worse than having a shot at a full or otherwise very nice scholarship from a place as sweet as ripon and being honored with the acceptance at a place like MIT. all the same, if you see a toothless old guy getting a little misty ( in this pic it was the dust, i swear - the dust ) at the races this year as we wind 09 down maybe cut him a break, and so.