Merry Christmas! Holiday Speedo Run

Twas the Saturday before Christmas, when all through the mall
Hundreds of people were shopping, and taking phone calls
Gift receipts were printed with care
And that's when people started to stare.

'Cuz out on the Promenade there rose such a clatter
People sprung from J. Crew to see what was the matter

The children hid all snug behind moms
While Speedo-clad runners ran along

30 triathletes so lively and quick
Ran singing carols with bodies so sick
People whistled and shouted and whipped out their iPhones
To send pictures to friends and family at home

The triathletes jumped and they sang with glee
Shaking their booties and posing merrily
Their abs- how they twinkled! Their cheeks-how Merry!
(Maybe because they drank all that Sherry.)

Then away they all flew down Santa Monica Boulevard
To Ye Ol' King's Head Bar where this all start (ed)
But as they ran past, shoppers heard them all shout,
"Merry Christmas to all, now let's pour some more Stout!"

Merry Christmas!

The Peril of Having Bangs

Total Injustice: Tiger Woods and Cops who Kill Christmas

Only in America could a man drive an SUV into a tree while being attacked by a golf-club wielding wife and get fined a measly $14 more than a cyclist who rolled through a stop sign alongside a car on a country road.

Tiger Woods was fined $164 for careless driving. Coachubby and I were charged $150--each--for rolling the stop sign at a T intersection (going from the left of the T top to the right) along with a car. Apparently we cyclists were more of a threat to the public than Tiger Woods was behind the wheel of a massive SUV. (In his case, he got 4 points vs. his driver's license, we got none.)

There are several conclusions we can draw from this:

1. I need to be a celebrity to keep my momentum without paying for it.

2. Cops in Orlando are nicer than cops in Woodside.

3. My Silver Bullet frankenbike is more intimidating than an Escalade.

4. Woodside cops discriminate against pink spandex.

5. Santa decided coachubby and I deserve coal for Xmas and has appeared in the uniform of a Woodside cop to tell us so because his suit was getting dry cleaned.

Happy Holidays!

And Now for Something Completely Different- Day Laborers

I've been in school for a few months now, learning how to become a kick-ass journalist. In my (and my 15 classmates) quest to do so, I had to cover a "beat," old school.

What is a beat (n.) when it's not violence (v.) or a vegetable (beet)?

When reporters are assigned a beat, they cover a certain issue or organization over time. That way, they get to know a lot about it and write more in-depth about that thing. (They also get stuck never writing anything too negative about anything on the beat so they don't burn their sources. The beat-o-sphere is small.) Triathlon could be a beat, but not for school. (Darn.)

So, I was on the immigration beat in Mountain View this quarter. I spent a lot of time at the Day Worker Center getting to know people as best I could with a mashup of Fritalian (I learned French and Italian, but not Spanish. Not good for covering CA's immigration.) and English.

On Monday, I spent time with Isaias, one of a million immigrants trying to find work in CA.

Here is his story:

And for extra credit, here's a story on the Day Worker Center's Director, Maria Marroquin.

I haven't just been riding my bike in the Santa Cruz mountains, although I can see how a girl could make a quarter of doing only that.

The Anatomy of a Triathlete's Dorm Room

A short video because my computer can do that now.

And yes, Blogger chose an embarrassing thumbnail.