Shitty times right now

Yesterday I spent avoiding direct following of events. However I did have the TV on for a few minutes after hooking up the router to see how much better the internet worked on it (answer insanely better) but broadcast TV was there and so was the hearing.

I avoided most everything...  but more out of life keeping me busy than anything else. I was not in one place for long. I was on the bike, I was fixing microscopes I was meeting with installers and building bikes.

Did we know this was coming? Yes. 100% absolutely no question. Was it going to be this bad? Many said no, it won't be any different. Some still say that. There's no difference in the parties. They are all still corporate shills and until we move away from that none of this matters.

Except they are wrong. The democrats are just spineless fuckwards with too much respect and decency to pull the same shit the republicans are but that's what the GOP is exploiting to the fullest. The repugnicans don't give a shit about anything but power and this seat on the Supreme court. This is their hail mary, their swan song, their ultimate goal. They are literally power hungry frat boys who can't be told they are wrong.

I'm a white dude, privileged without the privilege, confusing i suppose. Never included in the groups that the assholes getting headlines grew up in. High school, yeah I knew about them. Knew who they were, didn't know what they were doing. Got a better glimpse of it in college, the assholes on the crew team talked about what they did to their girlfriends when I was around sometimes, but mostly they stopped or changed the subject if i happened to get with earshot. Why? I was different. Always was. an often unhinged ball of rage. Plenty of incidents of that growing up with the same group of classmates. I'm still prone to that but very well controlled most of the time now. But that's probably an element of why I was excluded, that and I never had any money or any sort of status beyond being almost as smart as the genius kids, almost as talented as the artist kids, almost as good of an actor as the best in the school, almost as good as the best violinists. But always too shy and emotionally frustrated. The culture I grew up in (the 80s) spoke of all this fun stiff you could do, parties, girls, sex, drinking, drugs...  yeah nothing. I found the drinking eventually but not till college. High school was fucking bad for me. But worse for others. At least I made it through it.

My siblings all ran in vastly more popular social circles than I did. Maybe not huge and for the most part not in the frat boy asshole ones, because, well, they aren't. Once I think maybe it was home from college, my sister was talking with a friend about one of the other musicians, they described him as one of those creepy quiet guys who just stares at people. That's what I remember but the context was more involved and it felt like they were talking about me. Yeah, I was quiet, unconfident, jealous of the boisterous assholes who could talk to girls, so I just watched. I wasn't staring but watching and staring are tough to distinguish.

Another thing, I grew up not in a pack of girl hungry boys. My closest friend in HS, well he never showed any interest in girls, and he is quietly completely gay now. College, pretty much the same freshman year. I don't think i've mentioned that to many if anyone before, maybe I wrote it here super wasted once (I'm definitely feeling good about being the not drinking version of me - it is good). But those circumstances definitely impacted what I did and how I grew up in those developmental years.

I've been distracted by reading, researching i suppose, following up on threads. Finding a tweet to embed and share here. Maybe the story in VOX about sixteen candles, but then maybe not, leaving it here as my own rambling for now.

But that sort of helps to set the stage for who i was, and how I got to where I am now.

I didn't tweet yesterday about the hearings, I didn't post about it. I did say something about trying to get through the internet but it was too painful, to raw, and absolutely nothing surprised me or shocked me or was new. But it all was overwhelming, overloading. I need to be able to function for my kids, for my family, for my jobs. I can't curl up in a ball and hide. I've also found that while rage tweeting constantly, or facebooking or all that, isn't going to change the politics in Washington. Adding my voice to the noise, while maybe seen as supporting to the rest of the rage tweeters/facebookers, and don't get me wrong I 100% support all of them...  what do I say to support? Nothing seems easiest. If I say anything I'm going to get attacked for not saying enough, or saying the wrong thing or saying something that could be interpreted as wrong. So. I stayed very busy. And tried to be functional. But I gave in and did say something. I deleted it of course. I did try to read a book to distract myself, but it didn't work.

And I still slept like shit thinking about it all. And now I'm late because i'm writing and thinking more about it. And really doing very little good even at trying to write to get my thoughts in order.

The hearing. If it would have done any good or impacted the outcome in any way I would have watched it. As a rule I don't watch news, I vote. I function and direct what I can locally, and try to live in a way that stays true to moving forward. I hope that things can change. And those who said it doesn't matter who you vote for. Fuck. You.

It matters. Yesterday was case in point. And maybe that's what I can say. Or need to say.

Either way it is too late for that and, shit, I really hope this shit gets sorted out before the horrible bratty asshole nominated gets put on the bench.

okay - now i go do work...  pissed off and still unsure if i should say something and if i do what...

stay strong out there - don't burn out yet, this is a long fight, a long game, it may take our children to fix this fucking mess and we have to be there for them.

heddwch
G

And after all that I went and did post to twitter and Facebook...  this:

and what happens? 
"I'm absolutely completely disturbed by the news. wishing i knew what to say, how to support those who need it, deserve it and didn't get it when they most desperately did.

Thank you to everyone who is pouring every ounce of rage into the disaster that is the republican party's dehumanizing women right now. Thank you for fighting this battle.

To those on the sidelines or who didn't vote in 2016 or voted 3rd party: Sure you may have thought it doesn't matter who you voted for back when you had to choose between a lesser of two evils, but you are probably a white guy that also doesn't really care about women's rights.

That 2016 election was 100% about women's rights. And you said that they don't matter."

two people i know from TDI world pop in with their MAGA bullshit...  debating deleting their comments or not...

Ouch...

No crash but it was a pretty damn intense morning on the bike. Finally? Not specific anything training but riding single speed with a couple guys on geared bikes AND being late and having to spin my ass off to get there just as Burke and Green were rolling away from 7 stars was a good way to start the ride.

Also did the ride, unintentionally, on zero calories. Hell I didn't even have any significant carb foods the night before. Dinner was salad and some chicken. I guess there were a few in the garbanzo beans in the salad. But the point, i was one in a fasted state, and running on purely stored stuff. I was hungry, empty stomach was pretty grumpy but I kept dumping little bits of the second coffee in there from my water bottle and it was good.

No it is decidedly proven that CX is a glycogen demanding activity and that no it isn't the best to do full Keto style. BUT like training for anything best to keep that as a backup. Or a baseline. Also helps activate fat burning and i am fat(er than I want to be). But also since the first race my skinny pants are fitting more easily than in august. Marginal gains or something.

It was wet but I got dirtier at Midnight Ride than today. Did flop the bike into the water, burke went swimming and we were all half way to the knees in water at one point or another.

Felt good.

Came home, made more coffee, hooked up the new router (the old one had been dying, it is now replaced!) Added a bit more penetrant to the plugs on the van, started some laundry.

All on my day off. Well I was going to lose 2 vacation days, now I'm just going to lose one after today. But then I still went to work anyway. But only for a couple hours, then stopped in to say hey to my brother and Vinny. Vinny said if i busted anything and needed tools I didn't have to give them a call when it comes time to do the van. And JW said he'll be in the area and could be back up this weekend if needed. Not sure I'll get to it this weekend. But I probably should. Fuck too much to do. Okay - nope - i have to drive early Saturday (hot engine - tight engine - fuck no not trying it then) Sunday have to be able to take Kid 1 (coming home from college this weekend) back to the train station with her stuff while other car is up at the Textile river regatta. Maybe next weekend will work. I'll have both cars and only one driver. Would be a good time for that. Not sure how it fits with racing bikes.  Sunday is probably a def nope given this weekend's regatta schedule. That shit is like ALL FUCKING DAY! Oh well, I'll bring a book, maybe make it to Bosscross so as not to totally lose the whole weekend.

Life is complicated. Yesterday i was freaking out about the van, so much so that i figured maybe i should just have someone else change them.

But.

I'm a pretty fucking good mechanic, I understand the shit. I'm not an engineer and won't try to design or calculate shit, but I know how stuff works, understand materials to a pretty complex degree. I know from watching someone heat the shit out of a stuck plug and not be able to get it out with an easy out that he made the aluminum head expand and hold the plug in tighter. But hey, I also haven't done this before and that has me cautious, and anxious.

So we'll see. how this goes.

man that was all over the place...

or normal for me i guess...

Tons to do, racing will happen when it happens and I can't force it too much, gotta be zen, gotta be water flowing over and around the stones in the river. Flow and move and bend and continue on....  adjust to the obstacles

and now eat...  i am freaking super hungry, I guess body is saying 'HEY DUMBASS I NEED STUFF" Not eating much lunch and then not eating the rest of lunch until 4:30 maybe wasn't the best idea. Oh well...

heddwch
G

Hey cx Nationals Registration JUST opened

Got an email telling me so: https://legacy.usacycling.org/2018/cx-nationals

but yeah I'm not going to be there.

It was a great weekend of racing, poop water and constant pedaling and not enough recovery for the HR to drop down much and then sand and running and HOLY CRAP THIS IS HARD but so much fun stuff yesterday on the cape.

Race reports still feel odd, maybe i'll write one for the next one.

Figuring out what the next one is actually is a bit more challenging than I had imagined. Or I knew it was going to be this challenging and I've put it off until now.

I just went through the NEBRA.us calendar and BikeReg and Maps to figure out when where and how far everything is.

But there are two big weekends on the calendar that it is just me and the kid - the weekend of Oct 6 & 7 and Nov 3 & 4. That covers 4 of the Zanc SSCX races. The first two being pretty damn close, the next ones not so much but also going up against really rad on the cape.

Other options? well I could head up the Night Weasels, put gears on the bike I guess. Could try BossCross maybe.

And then Gloucester. I don't feel any better about the decision to race the 40+ event than I did then. Maybe the 3 is the way to go? I'm slow right now, but I'm having fun racing. Kind of just want to keep it singlespeed and have fun. But Night Weasels ain't not single speed race and Fruitlands isn't either.

What's left? What other options? makes it feel strange and kind of isolated for the NoHo event too. Slow and old cat 3 is kind of a rough spot for these high end venues like G-ster and Noho.

And then do i make it back to SupercrossCup again this year?

So at the moment feeling pretty bummed and odd about the season going forward. A great start. Def prefer the low key grassroots stuff, almost wished G-ster and NoHo aligned better with Chicago and NYC marathons so i'd have the other weekends open.

And no I haven't looked at the soccer or HS Novice Crew (yeah the youngest kid is currently a 2 sport athlete - a middle schooler rowing for the high school team) calendar to line up where and when or even if we have info that far out.

Maybe I can make a few things work still.

The  bottom bracket on the Crockett is creaking louder than any of my BB30 bikes, may need to take it apart this week to re-grease it all. Maybe i can find my big jar of plumbers pipe compound instead of the stupid bike specific grease that doesn't work for this application. Or i clean the hell out of it and 609 that shit in place.

My back was bugging me and the running didn't help, but then it actually felt better last night and this morning than it had since Wednesday.

And I figured out what brought it on all of a sudden. grabbing my wallet and putting it in my pocket as I went out of the office for a lunch meeting. Sitting in a hard chair with it in my pocket (right side) for 90 minutes in an intense lunch meeting well...  that sure as hell fucked it up and makes sense. Thanks to John Mosher's anecdote i realized what happened and damn am i going to work to make sure I don't do that again anytime soon.

Feeling good after racing, need a couple more weekends like this to make things right, but going through the schedule is threatening to put a damper on shit.

Hopefully there's time tonight to sit down with the other variables on calendars I don't have easy access too to make sense and start signing up more in advance than the day before or day reg closes.

And yes - i COULD race KMC this weekend, but $46/day PLUS parking each day is pretty damn steep even for me, also it isn't a fun drive, and the turnout is low, and most of the folks I know aren't going to be there. It is fun riding there, just not driving there, and I haven't raced the event in a long time, I probably don't need to remind myself of the stuff in the past, but maybe they've changed it but still, value doesn't seem to be there, if it was $31/race and free parking? I'd probably go - and no the $25 difference isn't a total deal breaker but there's no singlespeed race and nothing really compelling other than there's nothing else close enough to race this weekend.

Maybe i just try and ride - or maybe I do night weasels instead (and wreck my thursday at work? - perhaps - dunno).

This whole racing thing is fun, I missed it, happy to have a few under my belt, now just wishing I could do the every weekend thing again... oh well. It is what it is and maybe the not racing will be motivation to train so i'm not as slow when i actually have a chance to race.

We'll see

heddwch
G

staring at a blank page

wanting to write - getting interrupted - or sitting here staring.

being here to help - helping - is good.

still much to do.

life eh?

stumbling through - (written earlier in the week)

2018-09-21



This song gets me to pause every time it pops back in a playlist/mix...

blank page here for a bit - saw a video, a link to someone with a new sponsor.

listening to this song a few times to chill/steel myself before checking the vid.

one of the gang is suggesting we get together in the same old skinsuits we all used to race in but, well, shit, I dunno man, that band broke up, talk about bringing it back? nah that's bad. too painful. so many uncertains. strung out the convo last night on twitter, made sure the one who blocked me was in most all of the replies, bet he didn't even see any of the thread, guessing he heard about it from somewhere else or just used the non-him account to watch...

A big part of the current cloud is the missing kid. The hole left by their not being here is pretty significant. Feel isolated and alone a bit, much more connected to that one than anyone else. Even if I felt pretty much in the dark in June. layers on layers.

very little reminding me of the good stuff lately.

my brain seems esp good at reminding me of the bad shit, the shit I have regrets or lost opportunities, or yeah all that shit some people can just move past, I'm usually pretty good about it. But sometimes I get sucked back in too easily.  And when the emotional batteries are drained there's no reserves to keep shit from spinning out of control.

Wing stall...

Fighting to regain control before crashing hard... 

there's a good chance of surviving the full crash...
but it takes a very long time to get back to normal...

5 years isn't enough time...

hell I don't think there's ever going back to normal. there's only learning how to deal with it, there's only hiding it from others, but mostly hiding it from yourself.

Racing both days this weekend but of course what happened wed night when I got home.

Fucking piriform locked up again. The dull super ache. Just when shit was getting better. I sat in a couple extra long meetings hyper focused and not moving and one of the chairs must have been just not right enough that I had to pop a pile of pills just to sleep. and to function. and now i have back to back races this weekend.

at least day two should be much lower key.

that is if I can move, if the drive doesn't destroy any ability to move pain free.

I survived Kalon cross, similar pain. I should hopefully make it through the courses this weekend.

We'll see what happens. Keep on keeping on. Adjust to the new paradigm, keep on moving on.

Need to push for a bit more creativity but at the moment I'm going to go do some bike building therapy for the hip/butt. For some reason an hour or more of that seems to help relax it all. On the desperate side of hope with this stupid pain.

pushing work - pushing to make it all happen.

soldiering on, carrying the weight...

heddwch
G

They bailed... so...

I bailed.

And got twitter shamed by negacoach just now for taking pictures instead of doing 40/20s.

Mentally crashed after writing that last bit today. Was kind of hoping someone would show up and I'd be able to overcome the hurdle and pedal through it but I didn't.

I rode back to the office, got my backpack and pedalled really slowly home with a tailwind.

Ran out of emotional battery today, or something. Despite eating like I was going to crank out a couple k calories this afternoon.

heddwch
G

Where are we now

Hugely personal introspective questions have been roaming in my conscious brain like a swarm of locusts.

Or maybe just really hungry grasshoppers...  or maybe giraffes?

Dunno but it has been kind of odd.

Definitely off. Riding, but mostly just commuting. Last week was destructively exhausting. Mostly just emotionally and internally, not physically although I don't think I did much to help the pedaling faster during races.

And now that Hurricane Florence, or what is left of it, is pounding the fuck out of Southern New England right now, Dirty smackdown is in jeopardy at the moment (HOLY SHIT I SPELLED JEOPARDY RIGHT THE FIRST TIME). And well looks like the weather is clearing a bit, front moved through faster and earlier than expected and has gone a bit south.

Bodes well for smackdown not being wet from both sides (top and bottom).

Maybe I'll sort it out and make a little loop in the belgian sand section and spend some time working on short laps that make my lungs bleed and my legs protest riding the single speed home.

Been reading a bit. Listening to books on tape at the shop to keep my mind from wandering. Books at 1.4x speed go by pretty quickly, but Jack McDevitt books all kind of are a bit too formulaic for me now. Good but there's so much cross over between the Priscilla Hutch series and the Alex B one that you absolutely know it is the same dude making stuff up. Finished the Scalzi Lock In book. So good. I don't know if it is a short book, but man it read very quickly and was good. First time in a while I don't have anything checked out from the library to read.

reading as an addiction substitute seems to be working okay, although I'm getting kind of tired from all the seltzer i'm drinking. It has stopped being a thirst thing and more a habit thing. But I guess that's not the worst addiction. Other than the actually whole having sleep interrupted by getting up.

I had a lot I wanted to say about the opening sentence. But can't really. I did have a moment of clarity and understanding but it doesn't come with any resolution. Lots of tracing back to me growing up, influences, frustrations, being too afraid or shy or just not enough confidence to reach out and explore and develop. KF had a good point about re-learning social strategies once sober and not drinking, and reflecting back on the summer, well, fortunately I've only had probably three social situations, maybe four, where I would have been drinking, and in all of them I wasn't much different w/o the beer than i would have been with it. And yes, I'm still analyzing the whole not drinking thing. Also completely buckled down with the fact that it is going to have to be the new me for quite a while.

Along those same lines I do feel like my stupid lower back/hip/butt is getting better. I can feel the progress. I can also still feel it when it begins to get tweaked and edging towards a spasm. And no, I haven't started doing more plans or more stretches. Maybe tomorrow.

Planning on racing both days this weekend. Single speed for both. Not sure when I'll put gears on the bike. Maybe I won't even bother. You can race Gloucester with one gear right? Not like I'm smart or strong enough to make use of being able to shift.

Shit - new radar looks wet. The heavy band of yellow and red has moved on but there's some solid green headed this way - could be kind of gross. Oh well at least it isn't cold.

Last week's post was leading into some deep stuff but i wrapped it up, packed it in, chewed on it, digested, threw it up, tried to hide it but it won't go away. Oh well. Nothing to do about it but figure out how to live with/move on and keep putting everyone else first most of the time. Fitting a bit for me in here and there in the corners and cracks out of the way.

Well, guess it is time to fill a water bottle and start getting things together for a bit of a wet CX practice. The challenge is going to be: do I bother to keep pedaling if no one shows or do I ride back to the office and get my backpack and just head home...

heddwch,
G

Definitely not hot lately

Narrator (voice sounds remarkably like the author): This was written a little big ago, like last week. No edit just post - starting new entry after clicking the orange button.