Pure tourture: 'cross and the dentist

Teammate Chris Chis was on the sidelines at Saturday's GP of Gloucester 'cross race. I hadn't realized Chris was going to be there, so I was pleasantly surprised when I heard him cheering for me from the sidelines. I guess the story goes that Chris was going to race at Gloucester, but got sick, so instead decided to come and watch his friend. Cheering for me was a bonus. He got some great photos, thanks, Chris, for cheering and for picture-taking!

Early in the race, coming through the beer garden
this is defiantly a highlight of sport:
drunk fans!

Climbing the shockingly-steep roller
I forgot to shift for this on a few laps
and had to muscle my way over the top

Down into the off-camber section...
The 'cross bikes handles better than I expected,
but it's no trail bike.

So that was that, a great race. I'm looking forward to the next one. Another team mate, Pete, was also at Gloucester, where he rode into the top 20s in the master's race. He has an awesome gallery of the men's pro race here. Check it out, Pete has quite the eye.

In other torture-related news, I went to the dentist today. For the first time in my life, I have a minor cavity, which the dentist found during my last cleaning a few weeks ago. I went back today to have the cavity cleaned out and capped.

Fortunately, my new dentist caught the cavity early, so I was spared the unpleasantness of drilling. Instead, he used a dental rotary sander to clean out the tooth, than he flowed some plastic sealant onto the tooth, preventing further decay from occurring.

The whole procedure took about 15 minutes, and was, I think, I lot less unpleasant than other dental procedures such as even a regular cleaning. Unfortunately, the dentist replaced the torture of the drill with a different kind of torture: the looming threat of wisdom tooth extraction.

Apparently, all four of my wisdom teeth have emerged, but the lower two are stuck in the soft tissue around the top of my throat. Although this doesn't feel painful to me, I've been advised that it makes the teeth more susceptible to painful infection. So now I've got to heed the doctor's advice, or if I follow my instinct, which is this: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

If anyone has any thoughts on wisdom tooth extraction, feel free to weigh in.