The weekend

Okay – it wasn’t really raining – the roads were wet, I’m exhausted… and with everything my wife had scheduled for herself… hair cut… meeting with the other two mom’s about the girl’s birthday party planning, these three girls are inseparable AND their birthdays are 4 days apart 6th, 10th, 14th so well they are gonna have a nice little party with the 26 other girls in the class and a host of others… should be a crazy event…

Being tired as poop is my own fault – but the second pot of French Press using some high test fine ground coffee is helping but not much…

Coffee… someone asked about decaf and all that… I’d invoke the google MoFo image but I’ve got my own opinion… if its too much in the morning – cut back to two cups instead of three… for a while back in Michigan I had got to the point of making a full 12 cup machine of coffee before I left for work. Drinking two (12-16 oz) cups before and during the drive, then drinking some of Jeff’s stuff in the stockroom, and finishing up the rest of the mornings stuff in my thermos. Total of like almost 64 oz of pretty powerful coffee. I may have mentioned stuff here but I think it was before I started the blogger stuff… I had major anxiety issues, stuff I knew would be okay but I couldn’t get over it and was loosing sleep, and being really stressed. Not fun. A week vacation in Maine in a cabin helped. I bought a 750 of Powers and 1 bottle of Jameson drank that during the day as toddies or just with water and had a few brews or wine with dinner, but no coffee. I did have one cup of a nice English tea to start the morning to help initially with the headache but that’s it “detox” was crazy. It was nice in a way – I got a chance to read 4 different books in a week… and I when I came back to work my coffee intake was down to a manageable 1/3 of what it was. I know I’ve got an addictive personality, I don’t need a psyc doc to tell me as much… my dad was a hard core alcoholic, but quit cold turkey when my mom kicked him out… he was drinkin in the morning, all day… all night… at work, in the car, fishing, pretty much almost never sober for a very long time… then it changed. Honestly part of the AFD purpose was to reinforce that I knew I didn’t need something with dinner. Down side is well… what else is there to drink? Water. Yup. I don’t like soda, except for the occasional Coke/root beer, but not with food. Milk? Nah it makes me break out, I have it with my Muesli in the morning but that’s about it and that’s once or twice a week. Juice? I just am not a big fan of sweet beverages. I drink my coffee black. I do put one sugar in a cappuccino. But short of wine/beer not much else I like to drink. Anyway what the hell started this whole introspective tanget to myself….?/??? oh… decaf poisons and what not…

How to cut down on the caffeine in coffee and still enjoy it.
1) Use the coarse grind at the store grinders. (or grind it at home very coarse)
2) Use the darkest roast you can tolerate.
3) Use as little coffee as possible to make the brew
4) Drink the coffee black

For me that works out very well. At work I make a 10 cup pot, but I only use 3 coffee scoops (6 tablespoons) of very coarse ground French roast (1-2mm mean size of the grounds). It is a cheap flat basket type drip maker. If I were to make that same water to grounds ratio with a light roast the coffee would taste weak, look weak and be yucky.
1-3 are pretty self explanatory, eh?
4… black? Yup. Black. The additives like sugar, milk or cream accelerate the uptake of caffeine in the coffee. And everything else in the coffee. Just like drinking Gatorade gets you hydrated faster than drinking Water (if you are to believe those commercials). The sugars and whatnot in milk and what ya put in there pump the stuff more quickly into the blood.

There is a reason people never drink Dunkin Donuts coffee black. It tastes like CRAP. And if ya are ALWAYS putting loads of cream/milk and sugar (or sugar substitute – don’t get me going on that) the coffee is for color, caffeine and heat.

Its a lot like mixed drinks. People drink the froofiest stuff and like it because they can’t taste the alcohol. They drink for the effect. I like irish and scotch whiskeys… but not rye or sour mash ones… and sure I could mix em with a coke and not taste it but why? You’ve gotta embrace and appreciate and like each component for what it is. I dunno people are definitely strange.

And its raining, and the youngest just woke up from a nap… fingers crossed she falls asleep but she’s getting louder and louder…. And my wife is only 10 minutes into her meeting. Oh freaking JOY… pouring rain. No car seat (in my wife’s car with her)… and a deluge outside.

Here’s to all yall folks out there who don’t have this to deal with… there is the part of it all that returns such joy that you can’t describe, but can just look at another dad and go, those good days… they ARE worth it… and the other dad says yeah, worth it in every sense.

A guy around here is fond of saying “Nice guys finish Last” (who said that? I forget and am not online to google right now)… my quip to follow that is:

“Nice guys may finish last, but they die happy!”

What is the point of finishing first if you can’t enjoy the process? What is the point of finishing first if you are always hustling everyone?

But there are plenty of instances of Nice Guys finishing first… I think… (she feel back asleep fortunately)

Oh and some jackass (Charles Buki; Alexandria, VA) wrote in to Bike mag and went on and on saying stuff I generally agree with sort of… then he writes this freaking gem:
“Fifth, when we come upon riders in distress, even sometimes in competition, we help. We throw a lifeline. A spare tube. A chain tool. Roadies, by contrast, preen pose and in general are not the same kind of community.”

WHAT THE FUCK? Dude go sit and spin on a pile of Ponderosa Pine Cones. That’s the biggest sack of horseshit I’ve heard. Maybe its just me. Maybe me coming from a slight bias of a Mt Bike background accounts for me always checking with people on the side of the road to see if there is something I can do. Doesn’t every one?

Look at the team racing? Do Mt Bikers on the same team work together like Roadies do? Nah, not in my experience. Sure they are there for support, spare tubes and what not… but its different.

He goes off and talks about Apple computers and all that too… and ends with the freaking kicker:
“Whoa… you guys don’t shower between laps like roadies would!”

Okay then here this might point to my Cross fetish… but roadies showering between laps of a Mt Bike race? WTF is this dude doing.

Not to mention what am I doing? Am I helping to bridge the gap? Or just fueling the flames? Where’s the balance? It really isn’t different than some c la n dude saying all the purtridly r ac ist stuff. It divides. It ain’t good. I shouldn’t get as worked up as I do but its in my nature… that passion, that emotion… its my albatross…

3.5 pages and I should really stop babbling on and on…. Man why does it have to freaking rain? WHY…. Why…. Crap I got more rides in, in the winter!

(a few hours later)

My wife came home, and took the girls off to the Mall. Doing a bit of shopping for the party it ain’t for a while but it might as well be next week!

I’m here… started a load of laundry, D/Ling pics off the camera to the HD on this thing. Violating every principle I have about images. “Pictures on a Hard drive might as well not exist.” At least in terms of archiving. If that HD dies you are SOL… $25,000 to get the data back off if one of the two motors die? Its not IF the HD will die its WHEN…

Hard copy back up. Well maybe I’ll get around to it. I hope.

But Hockey is on. The devils are kicking some Carolina ASS… too bad NJ is down 3 games in a 7 game series… they win tonight and they have to win the next 4… well they did that against NY Rangers… but Carolina is a different team… Drinking a nice Labatt Blue, watching the rain outside… and the game on the Tooooob…