First Draft.

This is the start of a story idea. Feel free to critique. Try to be gentle.


"That man thinks you're pretty, miss Jane."

"How do you know that, Pete?"

"I can hear it."

Jane looked at the large youth in puzzlement. His slightly chubby face showed no signs of joking, his tone had been incredibly matter of fact.

"What? What do you mean you can hear it?"

"I can hear it."

Asking for a better explanation from an eighteen year old with the mental capacity of an eight year old rarely yielded clear answers. Jane regarded the six foot three adolescent as he sat across from her in the more than half empty cafe before proceeding.

"What do you hear?"

"I hear his brain."

"You can't hear someone's brain." She scoffed.

This was a bad idea. Pete was 230 pounds of, more or less, a child, and he began to get angry at the sound of Jane's derision. His protests immediately drew the attention of other patrons.

"Okay! Okay! What can you hear from my brain?"

"You think I'm lying, but I'm not!"

People were beginning to stare. Jane needed to calm him down. She had only been working with Pete Jacobs for three weeks and hadn't yet had to face him in a state of agitation.

"Okay, Pete, I believe you. But can you show me again? Can you listen to my brain again?"

"Sure." he said, calming down a bit.

Jane immediately thought of something completely unrelated to anything in the cafe or the conversation they'd been having.

"Oh!" Pete said, excitedly, "I want nachos!"

Jane gave him a look of incredulity. She had thought of nachos, thinking there was no way he could guess that.

"Miss Jane, are we going to get nachos for dinner?"

She was still not sure what to think.

"Yeah. Yeah, we can go get nachos."

On the drive from the cafe to the taquería Jane continued to test Pete's mind reading.

"Cheese cake. A fast car, it's red. An old lady, your mom, she's dead now. That's sad. June 18th, it's your birthday. A giraffe." He was never wrong. As soon as she jumped from one thought to another he could say what it was.

I'm going, going, back, back to Cali, Cali!

Ok, so I'm actually already back. But I'm getting more and more reestablished here in the wonderful San Francisco Bay Area. More specifically the South Bay.

I've finally got a car. A sweet little Toyota Wagon from '88. It's a five speed manual, and once I get a roof rack on there it'll be one sweet little bike race mobile.

Also, I've got place to live, stating in June! And to sweeten the deal, I'm moving back in with my old housemates from before I moved up to Portland! So I'm pretty pumped on that action.

As for my injured knee, it's getting better. I'm able to ride pain free now, at least when I'm going easy, so I'll be riding easy this week, and will probably test out some light weight, high reps lifting in the gym to see how it goes. I think my knee can handle it, and I know the resistance training will help strengthen my tendons and help minimize any chance of future injury. Also, I'm gonna start stretching more regularly, also to help minimize future injury. Preventative maintenance, yay!

In other news, I'm officially one upgrade point away from my Semi Pro (Category 2) upgrade on the road. Which means, really, one more race and I'm there. I'm pretty excited about this because it means that at most of the races I'll be doing I'll be racing against pro riders. This will only help me to get stronger as a racer.