Since then

then being Camp Eagle, I have been pretty busy. Work has been busy as I have been given more responsibility, I suppose that's a good thing. Outside of work has been pretty busy too. Two weekends ago I went up to Lauren's and hung out with her. I did some Paydirt, volunteer trail work for the Spring TMBRA series, and then went riding. I thought it would be good to ride the trail since there is a duathlon up there in a couple weeks that I am tentatively committed to. The ride was good until I got to the back part of the loop where I discovered my cleat was loose and I couldn't get my multi-tool into the screws. I kept riding and once I got into the wooded area I noticed a disgusting high density of spider webs spanning the trail. Not only were there webs but there were bunches of spiders too, including crab-looking spiders and orb spiders. Orb spiders eat finches, see below:



Just the sight of the spiders brought me back to an encounter I had another big spider, banana spider, during a past climbing trip, see below:

I was quite disturbed by the spiders everywhere to the point I crashed because I didn't want to go through the huge web engulfing the entire trail with a big spider in the middle. It was at that point that I got onto the open trail and avoided the uncleared single track for the rest of the day. Then I rode back into college station and got some yogurt with Lauren and went to the bike shop to fix my shoe. On Sunday Lauren and I went out to ride the horses and then got some frozen yogurt and I headed up to Austin to ride with a friend. We rode Walnut under nearly perfect trail conditions, good times. I miss Austin. I was in Austin for a recruiting event at UT Austin, had a good time, saw some friends, and recruited many. Then back to work.

Fast forward one weekend to last weekend, Lauren came down from CS. We didn't really do anything which was kinda nice and relaxing.