Burned popcorn and mountain bike races

Why oh why can't I make microwave popcorn at my apartment without it burning? It just burned within 60 seconds! And, all the popcorn wasn't finished!

In other news, this weekend I did my very first mountain bike race. It was the 1st Ontario Cup cross country race of the year and it was really good. I came third, finished the 15 km in 1:12:05, which would have been reduced if I hadn't been slowed down at the end of the course by this girl who hated descending, but hey, she motivated me to push hard on some of the uphills. I'm glad I didn't do the "try an o-cup" class, which Ben did. It was badly planned with a start time along with the older male class which i can't remember the name of, but suffice it to say it was a bunch of guys who looked like George Hincapie with shaved legs who were pretty serious racers. This lead to some difficult race dynamics for the slower racers and to a result where nearly half of the contestants in the "try an o-cup" didn't finish the race due to minimum lap times (which weren't enforced... but they asked people to pull themselves out of the race voluntarily so many people did). Anyhoo, Ben didn't have much fun and will be doing the beginner cat with me next time.