Going back to Cali , week in review, SMP deer problem

Heading to San Francisco later today for a weekend with family. MTB trails are a disaster here anyway and ME riding the road is a disaster. 4 days off will be good. I have 8 straight days of riding in since I landed back in the U.S. Only 1 commute in last week (#11 on the year :-( ) and none this week. Tuesday Nite Crit Practice was rain free but the pavement was still wet in spots. Very sketchy, guys barging up between other guys, half-wheeling, then indexing though turns. Very stupid. Then the car on course on the bell-lap between turns 3 and 4. If it was stupid before this, it was mega-stupid now. More than a couple cool guys almost came to grief. I did it on my 'cross bike. Staying in the pack is too easy on my road bike, but i'm not strong enough really to go off the front or get into breaks, so I need to make "staying in the pack" harder. Hence the cross bike. I typically don't put out good watt spinning a low gear so tying to hang in with a 42*12 highest gear is tough. Wednesday Hill Ride was rain free, amazingly. Did OK up the first 2 climbs until guys ripped it up near the tops. I like the Woodland climb but now the course goes straight further down Renner then west on Praire Start. Never really "raced" up the Praire Star climb since I live at the top of it and should at least cool down for 60 seconds or so before rolling into my garage. What the hell, who cares. I was near the front hitting the bottom of the climb, going pretty quick. Wasn't sure how this climb played out to know really how to go at it (unlike the Woodland climb). Teammate Joe used his gravitational advantage on the downhill approach and came flying by. For whatever reason I jumped on his wheel, then realized I needed to just sit-up and shut it down. Should have stayed where I was and just drafted right up it. Anyway, lesson learned for next week.

Shawnee Mission Park Deer: As most of you know, the deer "problem" out there is pretty bad. I love deer and love to see them. The real problem is with the Parks Department's lack of making any reasonable decision years ago when this issue first came up. I've already seen the end result of all this first hand. Last week while I was riding home from work down the Millcreek paved trail, I spotted a baby deer walking right down the paved trail towards me. I stopped and it walked right up to me and past me. Couldn't have been more than a couple days old. It was barely walking and was obviously distressed. No adult deer anyway which surprised me. The little guy just walked past me, I petted it on the back and it just walked away into the bushes underneath Shawnee Mission Pkwy. I felt like crap. It's parents died or were hit by a car, or they left it to take care of there other babies, or the parents got snipered leaving a bunch of baby deer to limp around and eventually die, get hit by cars, ect. I don't have the answer to this problem, other than a decision should have been made years ago instead of dilly-dally'ing around for 4 years, just to make the same decision. Now that hunter/snipers will be out there selectively thinning out the deer population, it might be a good idea to break out my old '80's day glow riding cloths. I wouldn't recommend anything brown. I sure hope these Park Department appointed Snipers have some common sense and DON'T shoot the 2 mature deer that have 10 baby deer right behind them. I think i'd lose it if I heard of that happening, but we'll all know it's happening as we see more baby deer stumbling around by themselves.