Marriages and Bike Races

Rob and Lauren got married on Saturday! They are classmates from U of IL, and they are among the 36 people who studied abroad in Versailles with me for junior year. It is beyond a little surreal as they are my age!

It was a very short and sweet ceremony. Liz was super nice and drove me, and it so happens our friend from Versailles, Marine is visiting and came to the wedding too. Actually, Liz, Marine and I made a small detour to the Walgreen's on the way there ... Liz had gotten a framed graphic poster for Rob and Lauren, but she hadn't had time to wrap it. We felt super classy walking into the Walgreen's dressed for a wedding the way we were. We felt even classier wrapping the frame in the Walgreen's parking lot before heading to the reception.

The reception was in a beautiful eclectic village of reception type buildings. Our particular building felt like a large mansion with a gorgeous backyard. Hats off to Lauren :)

The best part was being able to catch up with everyone and taking lots of cheesy Versailles reunion type pictures together. Everyone seems so grownup and elegant all of a sudden, and I still feel like an affordable house builder/cyclist/hippie.

Today was the Evanston bike race, which is part of Superweek. I didn't actually race because I don't have a Storck, and non-Storck bikes were not allowed on the race car. In stead, I rode up to Evanston with Bernard, Loren Bo, and Joe to spectate.

Apparently this course is notorious for being quite dangerous. One corner in front of the Burger King is called the BK Stacker because of bottleneck corner. We checked it out while watching the men's 4/5 race, and it looks like they've put in a lot of effort to make it safer, notably pinching the road off with a parked car and cones before the corner as well as using plenty of old mattresses.

I was almost tempted to race just because some shop or team brought a fleet of Tarmacs for neutral support! The plan of action was, steal Liam's ancient, many times crashed Trek for a few laps, crash it out, get a Tarmac, and ride off with it.