Bye bye Alex...

...don't let the door hit your ass on your way out!

Ok maybe that's a bit mean, but honestly it's about freaking time. Truthfully Alex Smith (the former 1st round draft pick of the 49ers) isn't actually gone yet, but after ending up on the injured reserve today and already having lost his starting job as QB to JT O'Sullivan, he might as well already be gone. I'm certainly not sorry to see him go (and will quite pissed if he's back again next season).

The Niners have all sorts of issues, but one of the most embarrassing (IMO) is the amount of money they paid to a QB for being nothing more than the 1st pick overall in the 2005 draft. That may be how it's done, but only in professional sports could that be true. Unproven at the professional level leads to a huge amount of uncertainty. Can you imagine if normal jobs were like this? Get out of college into a job paying far more than the average pay, only to keep your job when you still can't perform it after 3 F***ING YEARS! Wouldn't that be great? It was when the 49ers picked up the option on Smith that I really felt bad to be a fan. I couldn't understand how easily the coaching, owners, etc were just "overlooking" the obvious flaws and inabilities in this kid to be a pro.

Now I'm certainly not a football expert (I know far more about baseball than I'll ever know about football), but regardless of the number of OC's he's been through, any other job in the world other than professional sports and he'd have been fired in the first 6 months (if not sooner). The kid has made $30+ million for 4679 yards in 3 years (Alex Smith on Wikipedia); I'd say he made out just fine, though not exactly a stellar career that I'm sure he'd prefer to have had.

Some other team will probably pick him up as a reclamation project and perhaps he'll amount to something. Maybe he'll be able to have some kind of decent NFL career, but honestly, I think the football world would be stunned to see him live up to the #1 spot that he was honored with 3 years ago... (course he wouldn't be the first)

Great weekend

I love having Good Friday off when most others do not :). Although at times it would be more fun to have some friends off so that we could all go do something for the weekend, but it does allow me to just go have some fun on my own. This time I went out for a ride and ended up with 73 miles logged for the day (though my avg speed sucked as usual; we won't mention what or how long it all took ;), but at least it was somewhat normal for me).

Rather than drive somewhere close to where I would be riding, I just left from home (save gas) and road over and up Montebello. This meant passing by the accident site for those two poor cyclists from a few weeks ago. There's a small memorial setup for them and definitely makes you think about what can happen.

Made it up Montebello with only seeing a couple of cyclists pass me on their way back down. I made it up pretty quickly compared to passed rides then turned around at the top for a rather chilly ride back down. I decided I wasn't done climbing so I decided to head for Portola and ride Old La Honda Rd too. As I got there I was having second thoughts (my legs were a bit tired), but road it anyway. Took a bit longer than normal, but that's ok. It was wonderful weather so even inside the trees in the shade it still was comfortable.

Made my way to Woodside and out a few miles on to Canada Rd before turning around at 52 miles out and headed home (course home was still 21 miles away ;)). Aside from my rather sore ass and exhausted legs, I still felt pretty good (definitely a positive feeling knowing what's coming).

Saturday was other activities including an attempt at basketball and bowling (clearly I suck and basketball and bowling, well, I USED to be good ;)). Sunday my legs have really been hurting so I've been taking it easy...

There's always the story of Nahoko's fish and frogs, but I'll discuss that later.