CHRISTMAS RELAYS UPDATE!!!  The race is this coming Sunday, 12/17, at 9am!  You will need to arrange your own rides and make sure that all your team members are on time.  I suggest that team leaders, if not the whole team, arrive at the parking lot no later than 8am to pick up their team numbers and shirts.  The first leg will need to start warming up around 8:15 for the 9:00 start time.  PLEASE NOTE that they will not wait for you to start the race!

the teams are:
1. Matt Paquet, Tom Bill, Simon Bill, Yu Hsiao "The Out Of Shape Superstars"
2. Mike Laccabue, Jean Feng, Connie Shieh, Austin Cheng  "Three Pods And A Pea"
3. Alex Lu, Alex Cheng, Alex Shei, Alec  "The Alex/c's"
4. Abhi Vaishnav, Steph Cham, Judy Liang, Gordon Shyu  "The Fantabulous Froshes"
5. Brian Bedord, Dan Siebel, Theo Lin, Harold Pan  "Fast and the Delirious"
6. Angela, Rosa, Pooja, Mara  "The Dinosaurs"

All the stuff I learned from biking to school (courtesy of Alec):

• You learn to beware of wearing long pants of a light color! However, dark pants are ok (grease doesn't show up as much)
• On those wonderful winter frosty mornings, you almost feel sorry for those who don't wear gloves.
• You feel good when you beat your neighbor who drives to school cusof the horrible traffic on wednesday mornings.
• Even though the street may look flat to the regular person, you know if precisely if it has a slight incline or decline.
• You enjoy biking down McClellan away from school but you have a profound disdain for biking up McClellan towards school.
• You know and can predict exactly all the traffic patterns of all lighted instersections along your route.
  • Imagine an intersection with sides numbered 1,2,3,4 clockwise:
    1. Side 1 and Side 3 go straight across
    2. Side 4 turns left to Side 1 as Side 2 turns left to Side 3
    3. Side 4 and Side 2 go straight across
    4. Side 3 turns left to Side 4 as Side 1 turns left to Side 2
    5. repeat steps 1-4
• Sometimes if your in the left turn lane and there's no cars in that lane, the sensor doesn't pick up that there's a car there and the left turn light never turns green for you.
• You end up memorizing which gear you use at specific parts en route and it becomes muscle memory to the point where you unconcsiously change to certain gears at the exact same points along your route every time without even knowing.
• You learn to hate biking across the steven's creek overpass because the way the North 280/85 highway onramp criss-crosses with the bike lane and there's always rush hour commuters who never yield to bikers who wish to move across the lane.
• The most annoying type of turns are left turns at crowded lighted intersections because its always impossible to find cars who are willing to let you move across a lane infront of them.
• You like biking down Orange because the street is so narrow and theres not enough room for cars to move both directions when there is a crowd of pedestrians and others going to school so you always end up beating the cars.
• You don't even see the stop sign, you just weave around any cars who happen to be there.
• There is no such thing as at a red light, if you can bike across the intersection before the next car comes.
• If you do end up stopping at red light of a crowded intersection ie: Steven's creek and Stelling you know how to be courteous to other drivers by moving as far left as possible so that you do not block them from making a right turn and you do not obstruct the flow of traffic. =)
• You never forget to change to a low gear before you come to a stop. (makes it much easier to accelarate from rest)
• You hate it when you get headwind, because it slows you down so much.
• You get very annoyed when you miss a green light by 5 seconds which totally interrupts your rhythm as you screech(my lovely brakes) to a halt.
• You understand that a mudguard on a rainy day can mean the difference between a soiled back splashed with grimy road gunk and a clean one.
• It's nice not having to wait for someone to pick you up.
• You have actually planned the best route to and from school that most efficiently uses the least amount of energy and time.
• Always wear a helmet because cops love to give tickets.
• You have your own biking parking spot designated just for you, but sometimes somebody "borrows" it without knowing and you say to yourself "who took my bike parking spot!"
• You get to know your bike parking spot neighbors
• You wonder why the office forbids you to lock your bike to the fence.
• You know the best position to carry a bike over your head as you try to climb over the huge jumble blockade of bikes in the bike racks.
• A huge pet peeve is the smell of car exhaust in the early morning.
• Sometimes you get lazy always biking hunched over, so you bike sitting upright with no hands instead.
• You know that if you leave your house by 7:20 you will make it to 1st period on time.
• Biking to school has an uncanny ability that wakes you up for 1st period (most of the time)
• You probably can figure out which day a certain new squirrel was squished on the road.

At last, here is the mighty Boeing 777.  In 2 days I will update with a picture of the production model 787.