In lieu of the last paragraph of my last blog entry, I had to chuckle to myself on today’s ride when I saw a sign here in Solvang advertising “Dental Art.”

Neato.

Hola amigos!
I haven’t updated el blogarino in a while, so first I’d like to wish everyone a happy new year. 2007 has started off well for me; I’m in California now after a very lengthy day of travel on December 31st. We started the day around 3am, then flew from Boston to Los Angeles at 6am, then flew to Oakland at noon, then took a bus to Santa Rosa around 4pm. I stayed up until 9pm local time so that I could wish Mayo a wonderful new year and then it was off to bed. Zonked. Since then, all we’ve done is ride our bikes, which makes it fortuitous that the riding here in Santa Rosa is pretty darn awesome (we = me, Robbie, and Omer). It’s nearly inevitable that we’ll run into lots of climbing, which makes for great training. Plus, although the weather has been relatively cool, it’s still totally manageable and right now we’re on a warming trend. Specificially, we sometimes set out in the morning when it’s in the low 30s, but generally we can bet that it’ll be in the 50s without much difficulty and 60s too.

Among the sites when riding Sonoma, Napa, and Marin counties are police warning signs. Most notably, “Speed Checked By Radar.” I see this sign at least a half dozen time daily and it’s beginning to bug me. Now I understand that there are other options for checking speed, like by aircraft or a police just driving alongside a speeding car, but speed checked by radar is the most obvious sign and really goes without saying. I mean honestly, what else is going to happen?! Are there really smart police here, doing calculus derivatives to calculate a maximum speed?!

Sammy Speeder drives by Police Officer Paul at 7:15am. Sammy passes Cory the Cop at 7:39am. If Paul and Cory are parked exactly 20 miles apart and the speed limit on this road is 65mph, does Cory pull over Sammy for speeding? Use calculus to find Sammy’s maximum speed.

I think Paul and Cory deserve tickets for being nerds and Sammy deserves a gold star for smoothly evading two police officers in 20 miles.

My favorite sign found nearby is the one that advertises “Creative Dentistry” …ummm, what?! Look Doc, I think it’s neat that you dyed each my teeth the color of the rainbow, and filed them down to very cool shapes like stars and hearts, but I’d really just appreciate a standard set of chompers. Thanks bud.

Well that’s it for now. Hopefully I’ll be more timely in my next update.

About three months ago Tommy told me that my hair was getting too long. After 90 additional day of growth, I decided that it was time to heed his advice. What follows now is the anatomy of my haircut. To begin, here is my head with about 6 months of growth. I’m not trying to cheat here, so please note that there is a shadow around my head. That said, I do have a pretty sweet afro-in-the-making. No styling gel there, my friends, that’s 100% Teddy!

Next step was the first hair style to choose. I went with an oldie but a goodie. Do you all remember the hands-down, no-questions-asked coolest haircut of the early to mid-90s? I’m talking about the sweet hairstyle that could be found on 97% of all male (and 7% of female) students in elementary schools across the country. Yup, it’s the bowlcut. Call me Lloyd Christmas, because this was one awesome ‘do! To add to my style points, I decided to leave a little something special on the back in the form of a rat tail. Also a thing of beauty.

Now onto the second hair style of day, I opted for the mohawk. The first rendition of this mohawk looked more like a rodent placed on a shaved head, as seen here. (Coindicentally, this picture is of me and Mayo saying goodbye for a long while. It’s also moments away from me departing for a bike ride - that’s not my typical choice of attire.)

In order to kill this rodent afixed to my head, we had to shave it off. Here’s the final product…

…and the deceased rodent: