Da Troof

So you know there were a few raffles this year to help send people to CX Worlds. Right?

The one for Jeff and Gunnar. Well I bought a couple tickets for that to support them.

Then there was the one for Sue Butler that I only heard of by noticing a rare tweet by ErikV. So i bought a ticket or two for that one.

And the last thing really wasn't a raffle until a wicked cool wheel company called ZIPP jumped in with a raffle prize for all donors.

The one for Jeff and Gunnar drew first and my name wasn't among the list on the BikeReg email blast. I was honestly a bit disappointed, maybe deep down I hoped for one of those super fancy coaching packages or something. I dunno.

Then there was Sue's. Honestly I skimmed the list and send the money in not as a chance to win, but to send some support to a deserving athlete who's organizing body doesn't see fit to support 100% of the travel cost to get to worlds. I did notice the "out of town winners are responsible for shipping charges of larger items." and figured, bah, why worry about that.

Then of course I got an email from Sue on the 2nd:

You are the proud winner of a fancy new wheelset. I said I wouldn't pay for shipping on large items out of town. You are about as far away as you could be. But they are sweet wheels. Still boxed up from Reynolds. Are you willing to pick up the cost of shipping? Let me know.
Thanks.

Sue Butler

And I just about pooped my pants.

I had to go back to the webpage just to figure out what wheels i just won. But seriously. ME. I WON WHEELS? What do i need more than any other bike stuff? Wheels.

Once I Figured out that they were a set of Reynolds 2010 Strikes i had to check to see if they were Clincher or Tubular (aka Road or Cross).

Clincher. But hey. My road wheels are completely hosed. It is pretty sad actually. My good "race" wheels exploded from overuse and just age (Rolf Vector Pro circa 1998). After the 4th broken spoke on the front and 4th on the rear and being stranded a couple times... well... they aren't getting ridden anymore.

leaves me with a 105 32 hole CPX22 wheelset i bought off Il Bruce a good 4 years ago or so that I've already had to replace the rear rim on and currently is my tied and soldered commuter wheel.
then my old 105 laced to a Sun MA14 or something (label is faded) that i built up in 1997 using 3 different groups of spokes (fat pulling, super skinny static and oval bladed radial for non-drive side).
then i have a set of neuvation off branded wheels. bladed spokes but heavy as hell and I've broken a good number of the spokes in the rear already (the rim is kind of fucked), but I got them along with a useless front and the heavy ass rear wheel that I have a training tire on for $80 two years ago.
Oh and the front wheel that I rebuilt after the brake track broke open in Maine using teh Open Pro rim i bought off JLS.cx for $20 at Turtle pond last year. That rim is laced to a 1985 campy front hub with 32 2.0 straight gauge spokes.
There is of course the matching set of ultegra and mavic open wheels on my wife's Lemond that I don't touch.
leaving only my tubulars (i'm doing this all from memory).
My Tubular wheels, the Grammo CX, were sent to me to test by Thom K (now of Service Course Velo), aka free. But then the front one was destroyed in an unfortunate incident (being understated). Chip came through with a front wheel loaner and G-ride gave me a wheel destined for the garbage, an old campy rim that he raced on in highschool. But it made the tubular set complete.

This is all from memory mind you.

So. Point being. My road wheel selection sucks. Esp for racing here in New England where the competition fucking off the hook and serious, and everyone knows I don't have the talent or the time to spend overcoming equipment deficiencies. But I still raced what I got because that's what I have. I may complain but it hasn't ever stopped me from participating.

Anyway.

These reynold strikes were going to be HUGE. heavy but for a flat course like ninigret or the thursday night time trial, or something else flat and fast. These would be sooooo needed and appreciated.

Then...

well Then Chandler CYCLOWHAT announced that Zipp was coming to the party with a raffle for supporters. Then he said they were teaming with therollercam.com to broadcast the raffle drawing life.

It was tuesday at 8pm. Tuesday (this week) rolled around and I got distracted and completely forgot until Timmie tweeted a reminder. And I totally needed it.

Hopped on there.

First name out of the hat after 60 minutes of chandler trying to get TJ's connection sorted out and other stuff was Mike Golay. That son of a bitch won a Westervelebvenwahtwehgthth 8. A kick ass belgie beer. But I'd made a point to stop drinking the week before and I was holding steady so I was wicked happy someone I knew won.

Kind of still reeling about that when Timmie pulled the next name out and it was mine. For the wheels.

The ZIPP 101s.

And

I

was

floored.

WHAT?

No way.

(again - no clue about them other than the video they played about them)
$600? crazy.

Wait. That's just for the front wheel.

Holy hell.

These are nice wheels too.

Two pair of nice wheels might seem kind of crazy, but man do I need them.

I actually thought maybe I should sell them. They'd make a very small dent and help a bit but... I really would use these. I really actually NEED these.

I was going to wait until I had photos of the wheels but as good as I've been posting photos, that's not going to happen.

Myerson says repeatedly enough that I associate the phrase with him "you make your own luck." And to a degree that is true. But there is an element of random chance that we cannot control, and for that I am thankful for.

Huge Thanks to Reynolds and Zipp for putting up the goods for the causes.

I will be appreciating them oh so much this year.

heddwch
G

Bittman

Love that guy and his new Opinion page is good.

like links? check his latest:
http://bittman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/beyond-the-acronyms/

I'm pretty flabbergasted by the vegan shopping list there. W T F

The whole point (as i get if) of being Vegan isn't replacing your daily/weekly Hot Dog dinner/lunch with a processed Soy hot dog. CCC made some twitter comment about it when the big O unveiled the plan on her TV show. I guess he's a regular viewer, although he claims he was channel surfing and saw Pollan on there and stopped to watch it.

Bittman's not perfect, but he's also the first to say he isn't. But he has a big audience and that's a good thing.

And he strongly advocates cooking your own food.

I was going somewhere else with this. But I forget.

In the mean time, anyone hungry for some Calamari besides me?

"to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world."

Many of you who grew up here going to the schools of New England may have had a more direct education on the history of Robbert F Kennedy. I've never been drawn much into political history, or recent history for that matter. It will set a point when I say RFK's assassination happened before I was born.

Music is often my spring board for inspiration. Sometimes the songs don't lead me into much more than just entertaining tracks.

This song a bit more than that.

I've heard it before. But as with many songs, sometimes the lyrics don't strike a chord or you don't hear them a certain way until by some chance, randomly it seems, they click.

And when they click. Wow. They click. Maybe this was the first time that the sample from the speech really clicked.
"Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world."

Like I mentioned my framework of reference for that quote was a weak shade of gray. Many people probably knew instantly the reference. It took me a few minutes of digging to find it. and the full speech.

And before getting to that one I hit me was his Mindless Menace of Violence:

No, i never saw the movie "Bobby.

Listened to that... before hitting on his speech from Thursday, April 4th, 1968.



It struck me all in that I wonder, really wonder, if RFK's assassination wasn't this country's "A Sound of Thunder."

Certainly the Kennedy family isn't well loved by all, a bunch of bleeding heart silverspoon liberals. But some how, it seems, this one, Bobby, was different. Maybe he wasn't. I don't know his whole story, just the headlines. Just his speeches.

His compassion doesn't seem fake to me. here over 40 years after his death, what would he say about this place, this country that he loved.

Would we have had to send friends like Eric Marro to Iraq? We are all grateful and fortunate that he came home and it is with a great bit of honor that we should remember Feb 7th in his honor and those who he fought with and for. There may just have been a different conflict, but maybe no conflict. Again, living in the past is only good if you can take it and use it to set a course for the future. Reflecting on the past helps illuminate a course.

I could tie it into food, but time is now threatening my conclusion. Not that I have one, other than maybe it is worth introspecting a bit on that RFK guy, and realizing how little progress we are making in this country towards compassion (can anyone say health care for all?) peace (using bullseye targets to identify "liberal" problems) and the rest...

I will close with this quote from RFK:

"For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter."

ah hell one more:

"Victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed."

heddwch
G

yeah - not dead yet

either too busy when i have inspiration

or

not inspired when i have a few minutes



I have images to post, i have a few stories to tell.

Some involve the fact that in order to win stuff you have to enter raffles or what not. If it means supporting someone like Sue Butler by buying a couple raffle tickets or spending some cash to see what 20#skull can come up with on his DVD.

Oh and it was 15°F out there this morning. Kind of cold.

But good lord am I happy with the studs. Have I mentioned that? What a winter to have them for. I've been on ice nearly every day.

Some gracious and wonderful soul ran a snow blower or shoveled a path from the road on Warren ave up to and across the washington bridge down to gano. Means no more hike a bike, but it also means 100% solid lumpy ice across the bridge. Thank you each and every one of those 480 studs on my tires for keeping me upright on sheer ice.

heddwch
G

[almost] Perfect week

Cold-Weather Warriors from Jay Mallin on Vimeo.

Hit pretty much all the extremes this week. Except the heat related ones. Snow, Ice, Freezing rain, Slush, Wind, cold temps.

And I made it in every morning this week on the bike. The only non-bike commute home was after the trainer workout at Casters in PVD. But I rode my bike from the office to the shop and then sat on the bike inside for over an hour. So I'm still calling it a perfect week.

BUT with the streets and the melting and the stuff- i'm walking to the remote location. It is a gorgeous sunny day out there right now!

Did you read this?

If not you should:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/a-food-manifesto-for-the-future/

This is why...

I am happy to have studded tires on the bike right now. W/O them the ride home would be pretty f'n sketchy!

Statement as of 1:27 PM EST on February 2, 2011

Special Weather Statement

... Flash freeze expected across most of Rhode Island this afternoon...

Sharply colder air will move south across Rhode Island this
afternoon and cause wet and slushy surfaces to freeze.
Temperatures may drop 10 degrees within an hours time. The drop
below freezing is expected to take place soon after 2 PM in
Providence. The freezing line is expected to reach the South Coast
of Rhode Island by around 4 PM.

Driving and walking surfaces may quickly become icy this
afternoon... and both drivers and walkers are urged to use extra caution.

Thompson

Ya know - for as much as I talk about them - it could be worse. Right? At least I'm positive about something.

funniest thing i've seen in a long time

everytime...

cracks me up hard core everytime the car starts...

i've seen it about 15 times in a row right now and can't stop laughing at that point...

I Got You, Babe

Some people are posting this clip:


But this is the one to post, at least for the Movie fans.


And yes - just like every other day I suited up for the cold, and headed out into the sleet. It was 25 degrees. It wasn't going to be rain.

WRONG.

It was raining. I'd smugly thought how much it would suck to have your windshield ice up. 30 minutes later I had ice covering my glasses. Haha Jokes on me.

Oh and the tidal waves of frozen salty slush were actually pretty cold.

But I warmed up on the ride wicked slowly/walk the bike section over the Washington Bridge. So that by the time I got here, racing the plow truck up Hope (okay trying to stay in front of the city's F250 with the blade on the ground) only my toes were cold. These booties have officially blown up I guess. The cuff still works and that's worth it but I think it is time to make the investment in some winter shoes.

Which of course means that once they get here we'll be 40+ degrees until November.

And you know what?

I'm okay with that.

when i read this...

When Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France back in 1999, he showed us a pedalling style with a very high pedalling rate, even in the mountains. Many experts have referred to this technique as one of the main reasons that Armstrong could beat his opponents so easily. With a high frequency it is easier to remove lactate from the legs, but it requires a high degree of special training to be able to maintain a high pedalling frequency.

(source: here)

When I read that quote I think he could beat his opponents because he had the best doping program in the peleton and the best management organizing the infrastructure behind it.

It is a brief article, raises some questions - something to think about i suppose, and a good time of the year to think about.

Personally I still think no matter what your most natural cadence is, to sprint you need to spin a high cadence. But sprinting at the end of the race or for a prime or a town line or to jump away from the pack to try and break away, that snap, the quick acceleration is always best done at higher RPMs. You're going to be anaerobic anyway best to take advantage of the benefits of how to make horsepower. Torque is probably not as easy to train as is leg speed (certainly takes more time and effort, dedication, living like an athlete blahblahblah). Leg speed is pretty simple, esp if you are not trying to raise your preferred cadence beyond where it is comfortable, to raise for the ending sprint. Doesn't take much to work on coordinating the muscles to spin in excess of 150 rpms. Not that you would ever sprint above 150... but you know there's a lot of people getting beat by juniors and they have much smaller gears than you. Think about that (or not, esp if you've already thought about it 25 years ago when you started this crazy sport).

heddwch
G

Perspective

http://gritandglimmer.com/blue-bucket-gratitude/

give that a read

Crazy part 2

Okay - so i guess I was only a few minutes from the ending. I mistook the scroll bar for representing the whole article and didn't check to realize that the comments went on for a good bit.

The ending isn't so bad. I hope Floyd can find contentment.

My ride home was pretty decent. Some sections weren't plowed very well if at all and this snow, when packed, is wicked shifty and it flat out is a challenge to ride on. There was a hell of a lot of two wheel drifting. Yes even with the studded tires.

But I have to say it is pretty exhausting to ride in that stuff. Fun and all that, but it takes way more watts than normal. Good. But frustrating in a way. Would be great if it was this hard to ride to work say in august.

It is what it is.

Dog is pacing back and forth wondering why i'm not feeding her. HELLO you eat at 5:30 or 6... but She's got other ideas tonight.

I suppose I should feed her and start working on dinner for the other girls.

heddwch
G

Crazy

I rode in to work today.

It was a f'n blast. And a parking lot for those in the polluting steel cages.

Time to head home. My clothes are dry. People around here have vacated and I hear a plow truck caught fire and started exploding and what not over by the Hospitals, no way am I headed down the gauntlet to the remote facility.

I'm going to head down on my wicked low traffic sneaky route through the city, across the lonely and bumpy Washington bridge to a hopefully decently (well has been pretty consistently the best cleared stretch of road anywhere) plowed Veterans Parkway. It is easy to keep clear because there are no cross streets and only roads that T into it from the left (as I'm heading home) and the plows make a long easy sweep and have been good about keeping the berm all the way to the curb.

We'll see how it is this afternoon.

I was honestly hoping that the loop in the radar showing clear stuff would move overhead. But i's been staying over Norwich/Plainfield and not heading this way. Meanwhile the blue to red on the radar keep trading places and the line moves from south of the house to north of the city. The sleet's going to make it interesting.

I did have a chance to read the first 2/3s of the Landis interview over lunch finally. HOLY SHIT. Wow. But then, it sounds logical and completely believable. And the first thoughts were, Hey Monsanto=UCI or maybe it is Monsanto=Pharmstrong.

Sad.

truth, honesty, doing the right thing... don't matter so much to far too many people... and then when you're ass deep into your own manipulated lies, the shit starts smelling good... sigh - those are from the hip comments, unfiltered...

sigh

kind of depressing

okay - not kind of - really depressing

Time to hit the snow time to have some fun riding home.

Upgrade

Just because you want to stay in kindergarten your whole school career doesn't mean you should!

MABRAcross Public Service Announcement from In The Crosshairs on Vimeo.

Thanks to MABRAcross for the PSA.

I mean Kindergarten is great, snack time, nap time, story time, recess, easy homework.

But seriously how fair is it to the new 5 year olds in Kindergarten to have to be in a class with a bunch of 10 year olds?

Yeah, there's a good number of "racers" who are essentially like a 10 year old doing Kindergarten for the 5th year in a row.

Just because Diane doesn't force you to upgrade doesn't mean you shouldn't do the right thing.

Thank You Gary

Seriously. Thank you.

Let me first state the obvious – leaving aside the fact that USDA’s own organic standards do not allow the use of genetically engineered crops, Stonyfield is absolutely and utterly opposed to the deregulation of GE crops. We believe that these crops are resulting in significantly higher uses of toxic herbicides and water, creating a new generation of costly “super” weeds; pose severe and irreversible threats to biodiversity and seed stocks; do not live up to the superior yield claims of their patent holders; and are unaffordable for small family farmers in the US and around the world. We believe that organic farming methods are proving through objective, scientific validation to offer far better solutions. We also believe that unrestricted deregulation of GE crops unfairly limits farmer and consumer choice.

I still stand by the fact that their flavored products are oversweetened but hey- he can put as much sugar as they want in there if it keeps funding the work Gary is doing.

(for the record - there are lots of very good points in the comments about how WF SF and OV could be doing a better job and where they fall short... hopefully those who have as much negativity can put their $ where their mouths are)

Beautiful

Gotta say this film is awesome. kill the sound on the basic footage (i don't like the sped up track) and it would be perfect. I know it probably is there deliberately...

Braised Lamb Shanks from Fast Boy on Vimeo.

Read the backstory here. Yes it is from FastBoy, aka Ezra. I'm jealous of his work space for cooking. A big long butcher block counter would be awesome in the middle of my kitchen. Move the Fridge over into the pantry and make a long table/bar/island opposite from the sink and stove out of that stuff. would be luxurious.

for now I'll stick with my cutting board next to the stove. Not going to wear a spot out in those tiles no matter how long I cook standing there.

Linkage

Yeah so i've been slacking.

So much good stuff out there to read. Like this piece: "Triathlon is a Stupid Sport"

I know some good guys who are/were triathletes and they pretty much have said nothing different than what was written there.

Entertaining at least.

Then the other big shoe dropped is from that Kimmage guy. How much time do you have?

Because it is going to take a long time to read it. I would start with the TimesOnline article but they want you to pay money for content. I don't like paying money for content, esp if I can find it for free.

I'm sure the times article is much shorter. But i guess the whole interview is probably the better thing to read anyway. Raw data over the processed stuff. Draw your own conclusions and leave the artistic writing and design off the table.

Mahk McCormahk posted this video up on FB this morning.

crazy shit.

Maybe US Open cycling should try something like this, or really just do roller races on real rollers... not 500m pedal as fast as you can on a fork mounted fixed gear on no-resistance rollers.

I'm going to head to Casters again tonight. Hopefully Freddy saves me a trainer, one of these days I'll get a new one ordered. We'll see, for now i'm fortunate to be able to use a shop trainer to get at least one hard workout in this time of year. Not enough to built, nor consistent enough to focus on one specific skill, but it gets my HR up and the watts going better than the commute (other than me trying to ride on the bike path in the snow).

I suppose if I got the Mt Bike together maybe it would be possible to ride in on the path.

Weekends lately have been about moving snow or hauling kids around, maybe this weather will for another snowday or two on us and I can work a bit more on the bikes. Actually kind of hope it doesn't.

I need to chop the top off the snow piles around the parking spot. Can't see to back out into the street. Not ideal. The piles are taller than the mini-Van right now and extend all the way out past the pavers into the street. I spend a couple hours this weekend moving snow, widening the path to get the van in and out, but didn't really do the whole chopping the top off the mound.

Okay - instead of reading more of the Kimmage I wrote this... I'm actually debating use a branch of a tree and some carbon black and printing the damn thing out.

inadvertent snow day

Today! Yes!

Well there was the dentist appointment today. Got the car dug out and she started RIGHT UP! Well after the glow plugs cycled off boom instant diesel rumble.

Got it shoveled out (only a few patches of stubborn ice mounds to deal with) and managed to get the kid picked up, for a very long appointment. Took much longer than anticipated/usual. Once the kid was returned, and seeing how I prepared well enough to leave my work stuff at home (keys, card to open doors and what not) well by the time I got home, ate some food, get back in - being there for a few hours seemed kind of pointless, and with nothing on the calendar today and craziness starting tomorrow? Choice was made for me. Simple as can be.

We added another two inches of snow here today. Not to bad but enough to warrant a shoveling.

A painful clunking coming from the left rear of the passat motivated me to take the EZ-up out of the back, and clean up some of the season long accumulation. Maybe the bottle left over from the delicious home brew Paul gave me at Plymouth Day 2 was the culprit. Or the tent itself, or the bottles of anti-freeze in the secret compartment. Hell maybe I should check the spare under the carpet in the back too. Hmmm. Well it got cleaned up anyway.

Before heading to the dentist I fired up the ancient laptop. A Dell Lattitude 486DX I think. Lattitude anyway, the serial and model numbers have long since worn off the back.

Wouldn't you know? No problem starting up Win95 (installed using a parallel zip disk mind you - nice cracked and trimmed down to 95 meg version). Or starting the diag software.

So after getting it all cleaned out I climbed in with the 'puter plugged her in and noticed the inverter light was flickering. Ah damn. It was the cig lighter adapter causing the phantom power issues. Simplest answer is often the correct one.

Timing? Bang the fuck on right in the middle. No difference in sound from the engine when switching to basic mode (a good sign). And the fault code was exactly as I suspected 00575 MAP intermittent. So time for new vacuum/boost hoses, when it warms up.

Hopefully the clunk will go away and I can put off doing the rear struts for a while. It isn't so much the cost as the daunting task of completely taking every last bit of brittle plastic out of the interior to get at the strut tower mounts. Probably will take a bit of a bottle of MAP gas to get some of the hardware apart too.

Not something I want to do in frozen temps with slush and snow everywhere, ice frozen into nooks and crannies you'd never expect.

And now that the snow has stopped falling and lunch has been eating - car dealt with, maybe it is time for a walk with the dog. Temps are warm. But then she looks so comfortable sleeping on the couch right now. A nap sounds almost like a better idea.

Now to get the commuting beast ready for tomorrow's ride in, aka trainer wheel from last night removed.

Be safe out there
heddwch
G

3100, 20 and -1

Number of posts: 3100. nothing significant about it but it is still a number that isn't 3099 or 3104 or something random. Like the odometer certain numbers get noticed. The Passat was parked at 222,222 for a good bit of time. Going to have to dig that beast out for tomorrow though now that I think of it. Shoot. Should have thought about it when I could have let the sun do some work as far as clearing the snow and ice off the windshield. Oh well. Have to put it in service to do a Dentist run for one of the kids tomorrow. I think the timing is retarded on it, the harder than normal cold starting and the slightly smokier running and smoother/quiet idle sort of clue me in to that. I'd check it but the only laptop computer with the diagnostic software on and a serial cable connection is 15 years old, and well, i guess that's kind of a long time to expect a computer, much less a laptop to work. Only way to check the timing is with a computer, which normally isn't a bad thing since everything is managed by the computer and the maps and sensors and what not and you need it to work on it. Might have to focus on trying to get that ancient laptop to boot long enough to pull the VWTool software off and try and make it work on a not so ancient one with a serial cable so i can get the damn car.

Well hey, there you go some good old gewilli rambling incoherent words.

20. That be vertical leap in inches right now. Not much I know. esp considering i'm tall and stuff. But white men can't jump right? Well walking down the hall to my office I wonder if i can hit the acoustic tiles with my head, by jumping. So today I gave it a shot. And I knocked the hell out of them. If I'm not careful and don't time the jump to hit the tiles in the middle i could probably mess the supports up pretty good. don't want to do that. So then I thought, well I wonder if I can knock them from a standing still position instead of with a running start.

Yup. 20" is just from the top of my head to just past the tiles. Maybe I can get more elevation. Dunno. But all i remember is never hitting the 20" range before. Numbers like 15" stick in my head. And those might have been added by hand extension. Can't make your head any higher lifting a shoulder.

-1 was how cold it was at the house when i left to ride in. Probably would have been better if I wasn't pedaling in circles waiting for 10 minutes for my co-worker to get to the meeting spot. I nailed the clothing for my head, trunk, arms and hands, and from mid-thigh to ankle. BUT the upper half of the thigh from the top of the leg warmer to the bottom of my baselayer on top was a bit cold. And I went with two pairs of med-thin socks. Probably would have been warmer with just one pair of socks. Toes were cold when i got it.

Once we hit the washington bridge and had to walk up to it, then ride slowly and bumpily across the snow covered solid ice my legs had warmed up (it seemed) but my toes weren't getting warmer. 50 minutes of riding from door to door and ~8 min of pedaling slowly in circles in the sun waiting. Took it pretty easy because of the 10mph headwind and mark had played too much squash the day before and his legs were jello, so i just kept the cadence high and his shadow in my periphery vision. Seemed to work out okay.

Tonight we're going to try and make the indoor trainer session work with the ballet. Timing isn't perfect and that may be a deal breaker. We'll see. I could send em all home early and just ride home, and maybe it will come to that next week or something.

And yes, everyone is tired of me talking about these tires but i gotta say, they hook UP. There's a good number of spots along the road where the ice goes way out into the middle of the lane or across the road and I have no pucker factor anymore. I've tried locking them up on skating rink smooth ice a few times and all i've done is just skid in the direction of momentum. No slipping out sideways like happens with unstudded tires on ice.

And no - not all tires are alike. These Marathon Winters are awesome. Freaking buzz saws. yeah heavy as hell and slow... but bacon saving. And I probably won't stop talking about them until I put some Marathon Plus tires back on when the ice threat has passed.

Okay...

i didn't watch this till just now but it sort of sounded similar to what i have been thinking.


But then what if your goal is a whole season?

granted i didn't say anything special but Negacoach's comment about general now specificity later...

i wasn't as focused about writing exactly what I did this past year, in terms of training and a training diary.

probably should make a better effort, more focused effort to document everything.

even though i'm not using power... maybe i should get batteries for my old sigma HR monitor at least as a start again for doing stuff like last night. Not the worst idea. I suppose I could look online for a used/heavily discounted Polar downloadable HRM/bike computer, but then that starts the question of recording commuting time, although it would more accurately reflect all saddle time. Should i spend more time doing steerage-way on the commute? Questions to ponder.

Right now my ancient trainer is broken, Saris isn't honoring the lifetime warranty because the Cyclops trainer that I have was made before they bought the company so they are offering a discount if i sent back the old fluid unit... the fluid part is working fine still, just the frame needs a spot weld job, wish I had a welder or friend with one here in town. still doesn't fix the issue of the slop in the clamping mechanism (too many years of a lot of weight at the end of a long lever working it back and forth).

(yeah - over-thinking that for the moment)

Ya know what? It kinda feels good to be back on the optimistic side of things. I still don't know maybe as much as many people about this subject and don't have the years and years of high level competitive training most of the Masters around here do, but it is back to being fun thinking about it.

Thinking unstructured riding now, Monday night indoor sessions at Casters maybe... adding bits and pieces here and there as the weather permits keep track of what i do and look forward to loading up the specificity in the summer.

One crazy idea

esp coming from me...

Last night's training session got me thinking, what's effective? How do you gauge judge everything, what do you do to get fast?

What to focus on...

is it possible to get elements of training written down...

Seems it all comes down to goals, what are you trying to accomplish.
And in that there are the periodization and targeting of types of races, road races, crits, time trials and then of course Cyclo-cross (i'm somewhat torn between the classical cyclo-cross vs the more modern cyclocross lately).

Each does require a different set of specifics, but bottom line they all require more or less that you're fast on the bike, fit and well adapted to racing stresses to be successful. that or just wicked smart and able to push well past the physiological and psychological limits most people have built in as self preservation mechanism.

One thing that has stuck with me is if you aren't a true sprinter or a true climber just work the VO2 Max intervals.

And I got thinking about the fact that there isn't a huge diversity in types of "workouts" for cycling.

You've go the 2x20 minute intervals, the 6-8 minute ones, and then the 20 second ones.

Everything else just seems to be a variation on those. Long distances/time adaptation seems to make a difference in the pre-season but what i've read seems to suggest that the difference between 2-4 hours isn't terribly significant and you don't really get the benefitial adaptation until you hit hour 5 through 6.

Recovery recovery recovery. Don't screw up the recovery, focus on nailing the supercompenstaion range.

It seems that these last two years have shown me it takes a good couple months to adapt to racing, and there isn't an easy way to compress that for me and deal with life.

I haven't tried to distill anything into making sense for a while now. But I probably should. One thing that seems self-evident is that I need to modify my expectations for September and October cyclocross racing AND race as much as I can in August to get a jump start for the season I really do care about.

Adding the Monday night sessions and maybe a Saturday team ride should do enough to get me through the winter with the commuting. Then maybe work in some of the other three: 20s, 6-8m, 20m on a regular enough basis for them to be effective.

Part of the problem is I have forgotten more good advice than I can remember... but it is all in there somewhere waiting to be spurred into action, work out a frame work and fill in the holes.

And a good deal of what I need to do is still the mental side, get over the limits, like at turtle pond on the hill, dig deeper at that moment i have to, not when I want to. Figure out how to make sort of situation work. But given time and travel race location and what not, I'm probably going to try and just focus on the closets road/crits to me and get to them when they work in the family schedule... Not get to crazy until maybe july and definitely august. But last year it was pretty barren as far as crits and what not go on the weekends (yeah there's wells i know - i suppose i could maybe thinking about that for sunday mornings)...

just random musings... but on the right track i feel... things feel different after this weekend.

like i've maybe pushed through that mental fog i was creating. Somewhat more energized and focused.

better in a way...

in a good way...

now if i can get that ancient trainer fixed/warrantied then things will be looking up...

g

Soup, it is good for the Soul

We needed something that could be quick and ready to eat when we got home that would be okay sitting on the stove for a few hours. Soup and Chili are two good options. The dog tends to leave the big pot alone when it is on the back burner and hot. She's taken the pans off the stove but up until now she hasn't tried to get the big pots when they are full (or empty).

I'd picked up a few things for soup makings at WF.

Oh a side note before getting to what I added to the "pantry" check out this price comparison video. Worth the run in. Mostly. They line up Safeway, Trader Joe's and Whole Foods.
Then you can check this link (or skip to it).

I'll give you the spoiler, WholeFoods was the cheapest. And for many of their fresh produce (unscientific study) the organics, at least the dirty dozen are often not much more than the pesticide loaded stuff. AND YES, sorry, pesticides are toxic. They kill stuff. Sure you can kill yourself drinking water. But that takes a lot of work. These pesticides are really much closer to something like arsenic or mercury (metallic not organic). Well they screw up your nerves first but hey - we've got drugs to fix that. And high blood pressure, cholesterol. Oh and I know there are plenty of people with genetically high Cholesterol levels and what not, and people who feel that the only remedy are drugs. Not true. Fish oil and Flax seed will fix all that (well for nearly everyone willing to stick with it and maybe give up some of the volume of bad foods) w/o the drugs. But hey, people don't want to fix the problem, they just want the bandaid. Sorry, inconsequential tangent.

So yeah - back to wholefoods, eat organic, buy the store brand do yourself some good for a change. And seriously, never EVER EVER EVER buy strawberries that aren't certified organic. Those chemicals they use are HORRIBLE.

Oh - right the soup.

Grabbed some parsnips and turnips along with the spinach for the pizza for the soup at Whole Foods. Yeah wicked long sidebar just to get to buying organic parsnips and turnips.

I did something different for this soup. I've had two butternut squashes sitting on top of the fridge for at least a month, maybe longer. One of them had a sticker "roast whole at 375" hell that sounded good. So after risotto i fired up the oven and stuck the pair of them in on a sheet pan.

And then I promptly forgot about them. For a long time. Hour or two. Yeah. Couple hours. I kept smelling something like very fresh artichokes and wondering what the hell that was.

Well i figured it out eventually and hey they were COOKED. but you know what? Since I left them whole the insides were PERFECT. Wicked smushy. Skins were all leathery but they came right out and I was able to scoop the guts out and wind up with absolutely PERFECT squash mush.

Literally the BEST way to cook them. Thanks to Black Horse Farms, INC. over in Coxsackie, New York for the label with the cooking suggestion. I've always just cut it in half and baked but that gives it a skin on the meat of the squash. And peeling these sunofabitches is a pain in the butt.

This was great. Just took time. And since i totally forgot about it and slightly overcooked it, wow it was perfect.

Started the soup with a bit of grated onion in some bacon fat and butter (ATC went through the chemistry of why you cook onions in saturated fats vs olive oil). Got those going, added some carrots and celery and a bit of soy sauce. Then chopped parsnips and turnips and some olive oil. Then the squash (I used one squash and froze the other one) and 2.5 cups of really well geletanized turkey stock (in the fridge it set up like jello after i made it). 1 cup of red lentils and water, some turmeric and ginger powder and a splash more of soy sauce and maybe 3-4 cups of water.

Let that all cook till the bits were soft and the lentils were cooked through, then I added about a cup of freshly washed and chopped spinach. After a few minutes of the spinach hanging out in there, just as it turned bright green I grabbed the immersion blender and made it smoooooooth.

Popped the lid on, slid it to the back burner and we headed to Ballet/trainer work out at the shop.

When we got home I stuck 1.5 cups of water on to boil in a pan, then once it hit 212 degrees I dumped 3/4 of a cup of cous cous in, turned off the burner and covered it while the soup was on high coming back to a simmer.

10 minutes later the soup was simmering and the cous cous was done.

Scooped the cous cous into the bowl first, then covered with soup to a desired consistency. Then put some thin slices of Jarlsberg cheese on there and for my bowl a couple circles of Sirachi (lee kum kee brand with, no preservatives or HFCS) and a bit of fresh ground pepper.

Two bowls of that for each of us hit the spot perfectly.

Hey it is RAINING and everything is melting. Nice. The car did have a good solid layer of ice all over it and that has softened and is dripping.

A good deal of rain too. At least it warmed up, as much rain as is falling in snow would be an inch or two an hour. That would have sucked.

This might be good for attempting to ride in to work tomorrow. But of course we're looking at more snow for Friday... Hey, at least it is winter. Not so bad right?

heddwch
G

Problems with Pacing

I had one last night. Hit the Caster's Indoor trainer session Fred ran the workout, and it was a good general all around work everything kind of trainer session.

First intensity I've had since the last CX race. No, not Wretham, I did a good handful of laps there but didn't race.

It hurt, it was hot inside (body is still cold acclimated) and like I said I messed up the pacing on a few of the intervals. The first screw up was the leg speed drill, no feed back (aka cadence/speed) meant that I probably started higher than 95 rpm and upping the cadence every 30 seconds left me a bit higher than I could sustain there at the end and it hurt. Which isn't a bad thing but it got to the point where the front of the calves started a slight spasm and made it hard to maintain the spin. But that was okay. Other than i noticed my recovery was taking longer than I had gotten used to it a month or so ago. Great, I've let myself slip.

I think we did a low cadence drill next, biggest gear seated for 30 then standing for 30... 4 min of that. Followed by the biggest gear from a dead stop to as fast as you can go for 30 seconds.

That's where i screwed up big time and over-reached. Basically did a final sprint effort instead of something i had to repeat 3 more times. Couldn't do another one... tried to catch the 3rd but it wasn't happening... after the interval I had to head outside to cool down. The good thing is, you cool down wicked fast when it is 20degrees outside and you have a wet jersey on, and the jersey stayed cool enough. I haven't been that close to puking in a while. The pizza I had two hours earlier probably wasn't the best idea either.

But I managed to recover in time for the final effort, an increasing simulated hill (i think that's what Freddy called it). Get a moderate effort up, then every 30 sec shift and keep the same cadence. 5 min of that.

Oh i forgot the around the "world" drill, aka simulated Paceline. Everyone started at a threshold pace and we went around the group one at a time holding a max effort for 30 seconds and then coming back to threshold until the last person went. That's how the workout started. I got on the trainer a bit early as everyone was setting up, got an extra 15-20 min off variable cadence warm up in.

All in all it felt good to just about puke and get that work in.

Now it is raining. or sleeting. On top of the snow we got overnight. Only about an inch and a half of snow. it was 22 degrees this morning so that stuff is light and fluffy. I'm thinking about just waiting till the rains come this afternoon before starting to clear anything. The snow left on the cars now will be better than letting ice build up (temps are still below freezing and it is rain falling, not sleet).

Dinner when we got home from that was good, hit the spot... i'll keep the food stuff in another post so as not to confuse those who are too manly to want to read about cooking and food and what not.

heddwch
G

Time to move on...

New England. The trash talking Jets came and took out the trash. They dismantled two of the arguably best quarterbacks of all time in back to back weeks...

Of course, if Brady had let his hair flow, and not exhibited his U of Michigan wussiness (nothing good has come out of that wanna be Ivy League big ten school) wearing that Balaclava, well I'm certain they would have won.

Heck Rex Ryan wore a sweater vest. Bill Belliwritesthechecks[NOT] just wore his thread bear cut off hoodie... but Brady had to wear a balaclava? Really?

Wow.

Anyway... check this link out. Very funny. Should take your mind off the loss for a few minutes.

Oh and Pizza tonight. Holy crap. It was wonderfully tasty.

Chilling

At the bike shop. I'm not riding right now because i don't feel like it. I suppose I could but really don't feel like it. So what's better than riding the bike? Hanging out around them.

The space here at the new Caster's location in PVD is pretty cool. Definitely an urban kind of space. it is a converted garage/auto detailing shop, but Reed and Mindy did a great job putting the space together, nice layout to the place.

The weekend is actually turning out to be pretty nice. Chill morning, made a couple cups of coffee in that ancient inexpensive espresso machine that still actually makes pretty good coffee, esp if i don't over-draw it.

Not sure what's on the menu for tonight, but after dinner I popped some corn, the old fashioned way, in a pot on the stove. Dancer was impressed. And actually so was I. Great corn flavor and nothing fake about it.

Being surrounded by bikes here brings me to my own dilemma, what to ride this season? Race the Blue on the road/crits? New chainrings/drivetrain? Would make sense, thinking about putting the Giant as wet weather duty and keep riding the Blue when it is nice, but i have a ton of work to do to get the giant to fit the way the Blue does and man I'm not even sure how the Klein fits into the equation. Riding the trainer right now isn't going to happen in the bike room, too many bikes piled up, literally right now. Monday looks like a good project day, we'll see how it shakes out though.

Maybe it is pizza night... hmmm

or pizza tomorrow (not sure i have any Mozz in the house)

well - i'm just staring at a blinking cursor

i feel like taking a nap

major focus on recharging batteries this weekend

bike? ride? haven't pedaled circles since Tuesday last week.

heddwch
G

Maine Shrimp Risotto

Risotto tonight.

Put two of my girls on the plane to head down to VA for the 4 day weekend, my dancer is here with me today, Modern tomorrow, an audition for Summer intensive on Sunday, Ballet on Monday and Character on Tuesday.

So we swung through Wholefoods on the way home, picked up some Maine Shrimp (on sale right now), a crazy wild rice blend and some fresh rosemary.

I was going to do the salmon but lord love a duck $15 a pound for something is a lot of cash... shrimp was less and in season and only a few states away vs a continent (Alaska for the wild stuff and i forget where the pale Atlantic stuff is from).

So we were looking at the rice and i was ready to scoop up some Arborio rice (you know classic risotto stuff)... time to stick the stock in the rice...

Okay so we've got the rice simmering in some shrimp stock right now, dancer is watching some 70s Electric Company.

Dancer and I got home and immediately started peeling shrimp. Shrimp shells, a carrot, celery stick and a rosemary sprig into water and brought to a boil makes a brilliant and very fast stock for making risotto. And that was the first plan of action.

While the stock was working I diced some sweet onion and melted 4 tablespoons of butter in a wide pan -was going to find a link to it but i'm coming up a bit empty.

So 1.5 cups of this rice mix (can't find a link to that stuff either - a bulk item at WF). in with the onions, get it nice and hot - then straing some stock in until it is covered.

Then stirr for a bit and cover the pan, then stirr, and cover.

Added another sprig of rosemary and some Pinot Grigio wine to it.

And just now added some mushrooms (Crimini).

It smells wonderful and yes, dinner is going to be late. This wild rice stuff TAKES FOREVER to cook.

But that's okay - it's worth the wait. Sauce already tastes amazing.
Oh I added on pressed clove of garlic and some salt to the butter and 1/4 of a large sweet onion.

4 large crimini sliced just went in there.

The 3/4 pound of peeled Maine wild shrimp will get plunked in just barely before we're ready to eat. They cook in about 30 seconds. Literally.

Thanks storm

So yeah, no one will have to read about me riding to work tomorrow, because well they have preemptively closed. Awesome. NOT. So looking forward to the ride in on those super light 920 gram tires of mine with studs in them. Oh well, i guess no talking about how awesome and heavy they are. What the hell will the peanut gallery use to make fun of me tomorrow... my lack of polish in the writing? Maybe, that's pretty good, esp since this stuff is so well constructed and edited and man the money those copy writers and editors are costing me is outrageous, I would be better off hiring a Cycle-smart coach so i'd have nothing to write about anymore.

Oh wait - i write about food all the time now. Susie-home-maker. Yeah, right forgot, dare i be something I'm not. The f'n storm has me on edge but whatever.

I'll still try and get out and pedal around in this "storm" but then I know it is pretty much going to kill any change of having a race to help get Jerome ready for worlds. He'll be fine, there's always a trainer... should be kind of okay, right?

Is there a better

mid-ride snack than Little Debbie Oatmeal pies? No, not really... until now:

Home-made Oatmeal Pies

Good lord those look good. No transfats, no fake stuff, no preservatives (beyond sugar and the acid from the lemon and what not).

I know, some people are bored silly since i've been writing more about food. Oh well. I haven't checked the counter stats in over a month. Mostly because I am not writing for the counter. Although with the Bandit Cross promo it may seem different.

Speaking of that...

Bandit cross is in danger again from a winter storm. Snow removal would be possible, but the problem is, as we found Saturday, once you get a handful of laps on a snow course when it is cold enough for the snow to stay snow, well it just gets really fast. But it is either really fast or REALLY slow. Well to be specific it is really really slow, then suddenly really fast.

We'll see what happens.

Had my first slip on the tires, but it was a quick slip then grip and I never lost it. Snow on lumpy glare ice while turning across it downhill. Must have dropped from a peak into a valley of ice for a second. Caught me off guard but was also very cool to have enough grip to not eatshit on the ice.

You can't be stupid with them, and lordy are they wicked slow and heavy. But that measure of confidence is pretty nice.

Oh and Doug's well thought out and articulate comments are on the money too, that movie is about preaching to the choir it would seem, but that is what they said about Food Inc, and that reached a big audience beyond the expected target demographic.

It is true, lifestyle has to change first. For me it was moving out of michigan and exchanging a 75 mile drive each way with a 2-10 mile bike commute and swapping out lower quality for higher quality foods. I'm sure if I had had a physical and blood work when I moved here wearing size 38" jeans it would have been different than now. My weight is way back up compared to my low of 185 but it's a healthy weight and i'm essentially back to where i was when I started the driving... after 5 years of riding every day and racing and what not...

Video Goodness

Check these vids out.

5ème Manche de CDM cyclo cross - Zolder from Web Petitesreines on Vimeo.

(okay there's one, click over to the Vimeo page and check out the rest of the CX vids).

The difficulty of the course is really on display in these. Twitter (okay Chabot) mentioned that you can see how hard these courses really are. Stuff that the live feeds just don't convey as well.

Russ is going to be out of town but if anyone wants to bring some vid equipment to Wrentham on Saturday it would be a great chance to put some great footage together! Now I'm not saying it will be easy to put a masterpiece together like his, but hey he has set the bar incredibly high.

Yes I know there's a winter storm coming mid-week. After Saturday morning's adventures in setting up a snow course I feel much more confident about making a course through whatever mother nature can hurl.

Photography

That's incredible, really amazing.

great commute

thanks to the tires. yes i probably could have ridden in w/o them, been all proud of myself for negotiating all that ice, but wow how nice is it to just ride through w/o thinking about it. Picking a smooth line. TONS more ice out there this morning, good bit of snow too, mostly just coverage, not depth.

Great way to start the week.

This is what racing in the snow is like

Bandit Cross - Wrentham, MA 01.08.2011 from Russ Campbell on Vimeo.

Russ had some driveline issues and parked the bike and picked up the camera. This was racing in the snow. First couple times through the deep sections were tough but it gets easier. Temps were cold enough that the snow stayed snow and the rare wipeout meant just brushing the snow off.

Next week, come on out. We'll set up a new course, and make it happen. Adam pushed to have two twenty minute races so we did. I timed/ran my mouth, and then we reversed the direction and sent everyone off for one pre-ride lap after a quick break and then did 20 min again. The first lap of the first race was 4.5 minutes. But JT started in the back and eventually went on to turn 6 laps in 20 minutes. Second race was much the same, although resultsboy did an admirable job of holding the holeshot/lead for a lap. Brant Hornberger was turning some impressive laps.

Most impressive was Donny's ride up from PVD, in that weather. That was pretty intense seeing him riding up. Also the two kids from Rutgers, Molly and Eric? They got there early and helped Russ chip up the glare ice where we crossed the road (dog walker's vehicles packed it down and it froze solid and sheer). Yes, they drove up from NJ that morning to do the race.

We're doing it next week. Saturday. Same time, same place. Do it to give Jerome some traffic to race through, make it a race to help our local U23 kid heading Worlds.

Thanks to those who came out!
G

It is ON tomorrow CX 11am & Noon t

Gonna be there tomorrow, where? Wrentham MRC/Training race course.

First race is at 11am. Come early and help bed in the course/set up. Or show up and do the 11am as a warm up/B-race/seeding race before the Noon main event.

11am is a loose start time. We'll send yall off and if you are late, no big deal. Once the Noon race starts it is for real though.

Although when i use the word "race" i mean getting together and riding around, no numbers, no officials, no lap cards. But i do have a stopwatch and will try and make the noon "race" as real as possible (time first two laps adjust based on fastest dudes and tell you how many to go and all that).

Course? We'll see what it looks like. Show up between 9:30 and 10am if you are feeling generous with your time and want to help get it ready to race (which may mean nothing more than riding laps for a bit re-learning how to ride your CX bike after a couple weeks off).

This will be good. There are people coming. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone that shows up.

Hard Core but so true

I would contend that meat and those products aren't completely the problem, in so much as nearly all the animal products consumed are fed worse than people are eating and are about as healthy as the average obese western diet eating human.

Plants are just way more picky about growing. They need certain things. But then, many plants like corn and soybeans grow with lots of chemical help, so even eating plants you need to find ones that grow in a positive way too. They don't have feelings but they sure can have a measure of health.

How many drugs are you on? How many should you be on (zero). As always there are genetic conditions that do warrant maintenance meds (Type 1 for example), but that clean program guy (watch the video but try and tune out the BUY MY SHIT parts of it) says it pretty well too, fucking spot on if you will.

The food you eat is either killing you or sustaining you.

You have the power to choose.

What choice are you going to make. It isn't just about exercise. It isn't just about reducing your fat/sugar/calories/animal products.

And fucking "in moderation" is fucking bullshit. Moderate amounts of toxic shit is still toxic. See, my language is fucking going down hill, which tends to decrease the efficacy of a message, but demonstrates a bit of underlying frustration, and my passion for it.

*deep breath*

eat well

save this damn country some money

A Steerage Way commute

just moving the legs fast enough to keep the bike upright and moving towards my destination...

Steerage way is defined as: The minimum speed of a ship, below which it does not answer the helm and cannot be steered.

That's about what it was like today. Brain going way faster than my legs. Thinking about tomorrow, thinking about getting some large format images ready for a potential exhibt/show, thinking about all sorts of stuff. Even stuff about what happens at the end of august, sort of in the frame work of tomorrow. What happens if you throw a party and only a few show up? Plans that I had been making in my mind to have a party on the weekend of the 27/28 here in NE to celebrate me finally hitting the "okay it is alright to say you're old now" four decade mark, was told in simple and plain terms, "If you want a party for your birthday you have to plan it." Now I'll be in Seattle for that weekend it looks like. Oh well. Yeah, I seem to be unable to figure out how to spin the shit positively around my birthday. Inevitable. Finally thought that 2011 would be the year I would be able to take positive concrete steps to make it not my least favorite day of the year. Maybe I'll try again in 10 years. ANYWAY. Yeah like i said. brain running in overdrive. not really a good thing.

Oh and did I mentioned all this was while I was just not pedaling very fast?

When I would hit patches of ice I'd be thinking how nice it is to have the studs. In the day you can see where you're going far enough ahead to pick the right lane. At night in the dark you may start in one lane and suddenly you're on sheer ice. Now? it's nice, no panic and i can safely get over it or move off it w/o eating hard core shit.

Slow? yeah. Noisy? yeah. But this way the walkers and other folks on my commute can hear me coming. Not so bad.

Even just making steerage way this morning it didn't take too long to get in. And is sure is nice to see the sun.

okay now maybe i should go back and edit some of the too introspective shit out of the above but right now i'm going to say fuck it and leave it... read it in a bit, maybe delete it... maybe i should just start a new web log and put it over there... nah

Twitter Drives my Pandora

Yesterday GCD commented about it being a Black Keys day. So I dialed up a Black Keys station and made it two songs. Fortunately Resultsboy made a comment about dubstep that elicited a pretty funny comment from some old long in the tooth wicked hip bike racer, and revealed more about resultsboy than I'm sure he wanted anyone to realize.

Anyway. A dubstep station kept me going yesterday.

One thing I'm learning, what ever station/music GCD is listening too is one I don't generally want to hear at work. He listens to old man white bread stuff. Bob Seger, Rockabilly, The Black Keys are three stations I have [not yet deleted] created out of his tweets. Not bad music just not what I'm digging.

Myerson mentioned The Smiths Radio and I hit that and it's good. Works for the occasional change of pace from Daft Punk, Deadmau5, The Mighty Mighty Bostones, The Young Dubliners, The Dropkick Murphys, and KEEN Beats (mostly a Gorillaz station).

Now on my station list is another genera that I hit occasionally. Hound Dog Taylor. So when old man [anti-winter] Solobreak put up a link to a kick ass (totally kick ass) recording and song from John Lee Hooker I knew what the theme for today at the office was going to be. Start a new JLH station and then add some variety!

I was singing the blues at the top of my lungs in the house getting the recycling out this morning. And with luck I won't be alone tomorrow, cause if I am the birds are going to be hearing a couple good blues improve verses.

Dog came over when I paused for a second and either wanted a pet to keep me from singing anymore or to say thanks for the killer blues melodies.

Come race/ride on saturday

the same place i've been trying to convince people to show up at for a while now.

No, it won't be balmy, and no it probably won't be very dry.

But, I don't think of warm and dry when i picture ideal cyclocross. I picture wet and cold. Snow or rain wet. not soaked from sweat wet.

But i know plenty of people would rather figure out how to install some offenders and go for a long road ride and forget about cyclocross completely for 6 months.

I'm hoping a few people might take the middle of their day on Saturday and come see if we can't make a cyclocross race break out.

NOAA says there will be about 2" of snow or so falling over night up at Wrentham. Nothing like the storm that dumped 2' or so on the same field.

Going to give this a try because my feeling is that someone has to. I complain loudly about CX racing in August, grumble about racing in the heat of September, and well... time to put some action behind those words.

Maybe we can generate some momentum. There have historically been a few winter cyclocross series... and what got me excited about the sport wasn't that we raced around in hot temps on dusty courses, no, it was cold, the conditions were adverse, it took a tangible something else that one time I had more of than I do now but I still have some, and it used to give me an advantage. good luck deciphering that cronoman.

Anyway, I hope to see a few like minded individuals out there, I can't hope for a huge number of people because plainly not many people read this, and most that do probably won't come race. (yeah, i know, i sound really positive and shit with that eh? totally sounds super self confident and positive and all the stuff that it isn't). Bottom line i have my expectations set pretty low. If anyone wants to come out a bit early and design the course with me (with the snow it could be a blank slate) that'd be cool. I'll probably just stick the the basic wrentham course with only one wrinkle that I think it needs. Those that show up will see what I mean.

Be safe out there. I'm very happy to be on studded tires this week. The ice hasn't gone anywhere and the day's melt just turns into sheet ice for my ride home. And with the long stretches of ice in the dark you wind up often in a situation where you don't have a choice but to ride over it. These tires really make a difference, even though they are loud and heavy, it is nice to have them, I feel very fortunate to have this pair. 240 carbide studs in each tire... loud and grippy.

Wrentham CX

Okay.

We're going to make it happen. Pack the cross bikes, the booties, and the beers. Lets meet at the MRC training course in Wrentham (same place for 1/1/11 that didn't happen).

Yes i know there is snow forecast. I'll still be there.

Lets make it happen. Come on out. See you there?

STUDded tires

Are pretty damn awesome. Yes they are. Today was the first commute with them and yes, about 90% of the commute was clear and dry, 10% was solid ice, either lump or sheets. And it was nice having the traction.

No coasting with these suckers on there. Nope. You gotta pedal the whole time or you ain't going no where. But on the plus side: I've ridden the bike twice since the 16th of December. The most recent venture was the 45 jaunt on New Year's (I'm not counting the attempt to ride at Wrentham on the 30th) and well the most recent was with the studded tires, so I didn't really feel the dramatic difference (weight/speed wise).

It was a bit more work getting there and back. And no these aren't tickets to ignoring the ice, esp the frozen ruts, but they are a huge measure of not sliding around. Pretty damn cool.

I like the fact that sunrise is staying constant this week but sunset is getting 1 minute later each day.

I don't like the fact that snow is forecast for Friday/Saturday. Damn it! Although I'm actually thinking it will be a good thing for the CX race at Wrentham. With snow you can make a racing line w/o flags and stakes and tape. SO....

Mark the time as busy - come out 11am. I'll be there early to work in a racing line. Two races. First race is a seeder for second race. You only do second? You start in the back. Will be most awesome. Trust me. Esp since G-ride won't be there with his incessant bitching and whining and complaining.

It will likely be cold and muddy, kind of how a cyclocross race is supposed to be. I hope to see ALL YOU YOU there. Because really, who reads this except my CX friends.

So as it is I've managed to pretty much completely book solid this week and the first two days of next week at work today. Starting the new year off with ultimate productivity. Oof. Good to be wanted/needed eh?

Oh and (yeah i'm taggin this with food for this reason only) IF you make that turkey soup i posted the other day, well... unless you want pasta with turkey and flavor (and no broth) cut the amount of (non egg) noodles down to less than 8oz. Putting that whole package in there worked great for last night but i have a couple partial quarts of the stuff that's just noodles now. Still tastes wicked good. Oh wow was it wicked good. Add some parsley on top (flat leave Italian stuff because is there anything bad that comes out of Italy? best bike race, amazing women, great food) and some Melinda's XXXtra HOT SAUCE on top and boom! so good.

Simple night tonight food wise.

My brother brought over some organic Vanilla beans and i added the guts of 1/2 of one to the single batch i make in the cuisinart ice cream maker (2 cups milk, 1 cup organic valley heavy cream, 2 teaspoons organic vanilla extract, 3/4 cup organic sugar, and 1/2 of a vanilla bean's guts). BOOM. Should be good. It is in the freezer setting up now.

Yes this was posted with my Cr-48, which i am solidly in love with. Google is awesome. Join the borg. So tempted to try putting the OS on a stick and running the other lappy on this OS. Lappy, I've so fallen out of sorts watching Strongbad and company. So a Michigan thing for me (even if Strongbad wasn't from michigan).

And on the subject of Michigan, what the hell is up with MSU and bowl games? Seriously! I didn't see the game but looking at the score, who f'n showed up to play? Come ON! Oh well. Just a damn game. I was far happier watching Page kill it on Sunday.

Oh this week is going to be insane and last night I was already dreaming promoter nightmares even though Saturday is just a get together and race each other, not a real "race" but doesn't change the fact that in my dream the whole NEBC women's elite squad showed up early and I was looking at a flat featureless field of grass, no course, no place to register, no one else to do anything. Not sure why it was the Red and White, but the only face I recognized was Wellons for some reason. Weird. Damn dreams. Okay - So tell me you'll be there and I'll stop stressing about Saturday. Seriously. Show up. We might even get the mighty Myerson to show up and race. Rooter is talking about going to NC the following weekend so shit he'd better show and get some cross racing redemption. Esp after his epic eating shit on that course after going for the first lap prime! Hard to forget that day.

Good Times.
Oof it is only monday. Media tuesday. Be prepared for the onslaught. Just hope that fucking snow is mellow and not like the last batch we got!!!!

heddwch
G

Turkey Noodle Soup

So, soup day.

Picked up some bionature stelline pasta. Had some Turkey left over from a breast I used half of for some peanut sauce pasta in the freezer, and yesterday I made stock from the drumstick bones left over from the BBQ turkey I made over NBX weekend (yeah that wasn't my best offering, but the collards that day were good).

So I cooked that stuff down a long time, and the stock essentially solidified in the fridge, it was good. Stock was made with the drumstick bones and leftovers, carrots, celery tops (had bought a bunch of organic celery and just chopped the top 2" off for the stock), broccoli stems, maybe some onion, i think a bit of garlic but I don't remember. Some salt and that's about it.

Cooked for a while. Actually made the stock over two days. started it on new year's eve then plunked the pot in some ice overnight and then brought it up to a boil, strained it and then simmered and skimmed and then bagged and froze it once it cooled down.

Anyway.

Put a bit of olive oil in the stock pot. In three batches brown 1.5 pounds of diced turkey, not cooked all the way, just get them some color and pull them out into a bowl with a slotted spoon.

Once all the turkey has been browned stick 3-4 diced carrots, 1/2 an onion, 1 rib of celery diced in with the draining's from the cooked turkey, add a touch more olive oil and cook the veggies for a bit. Then I added between a teaspoon-tablespoon of dried Thyme (i'd use fresh but i don't have any).

Just before adding water I tossed a tsp of rice wine vinegar to deglaze a bit. Then 5 cups of the stock and about 5-6 cups of water. Brought it to a boil. Let it roll for a bit, then lowered the heat and added the browned but not cooked turkey and I pressed three cloves of garlic in there, a sprinkle of salt

Next up about 10 minutes before serving I'm adding about 1/2 of the pasta (8oz to be specific). It isn't egg pasta so it just keeps swelling. If I put the whole 16oz bag in the soup it would probably suck up most of the fluid. So it is simmering right now. I said screw it - there's enough volume that i put the whole bag in there. Could be a mistake, we'll see.

The tastes I've had are awesome. Good flavor, nice and rich but not overly complex. Pretty damn yummy.

The Hoppin' John and Collards last night were awesome. Even better for lunch today.

So good.

Food.

Mmm.

Best Ride of the Year! and Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!

No question, best ride of the year so far.

Snow, wet and cold snow. Bare legs. LS jersey. The Blue Norcross bike with a set of Schwalbe Marathon Winter studded tires.

45 minutes of awesomeness.

Powering through the snow and blasting through plow drifts where the path crosses the road. It took two hard intervals to get the snow riding groove back. But man when it came through - so much fun.

throwing snow all over my shoes and my bare calves. No, not even any embro. In the sun I was having fun. If they didn't get nearly 2x as much snow up in Wrentham as here, today's race would have been epic and fun, but good that it was canceled. Makes it more of a family day, brother coming over. Going to make Hoppin' John and Collard greens an homage to the tradition of our southern roots (my grandmother's family).

I was riding and realize, really this is the best ride of the year. First ride of the year but no question it was the best. Maybe there will be better ones. Who knows. Who cares.

It felt amazing to be out, riding in shorts, in the snow, on 1/1/11.

Happy New Year Everyone. Happy New Year

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda
G

CR-48

getting use it, to the point I'm having trouble adapting back to the Dell Laptop. Very different experience but one that I'm really liking.

This thing rocks and will completely and totally and utterly kick ass when they get the USB upload thing fixed (yes that is a major pain but i'm not uploading much at the moment and can live it it).

Putting 2010 in its Place

A deliberate play on Marvin Z's Toolbox article Putting Failure in its Place.

Got home and was awake after the party last night. So I grabbed an article that I had printed out a while back and it had fallen out of the stack of mental training ones for some reason and looking for a Kid book I found it and put it on the stack.

I started reading it.

Things clicked.

So I wanted to go through the year and really examine what was a real failure on my part and what was completely out of my control.

The spoiler is, so much of the pain, anguish and bad stuff was really nothing I could have predicted or avoided. It was out of my control.

I started writing this yesterday, and this morning sitting here with a low thrumming headache (my brother and I had a couple beverages last night) I don't want to revisit it all.

It really wasn't a bad year, no. I mean there were plenty of bad things that happened and for the most part we managed to work through them, each one was a learning experience. Sometimes I feel like i'm not mid-way through the 40th year on this planet, I don't know how to deal with everything yet. And some stuff i screw up royally.

The beginning of the cross season my hopes of being something different than myself, faster, stronger, higher placed finisher was an unrealistic goal and set me up pretty well for failure. I've never been anything but the slowest of fast guys or the worst player on a team. For me to put any sort of self worth into athletics is pretty stupid i guess. So many other things i'm better at. My wife feels like she's carrying the family in CX season on the weekends.

Gotta figure stuff out for 2011. Re-think, re-focus, re-tool. Make it work.Take the lessons from 2010 and move forward.

next week friends... next week (fingers crossed)

sorry - but we didn't get an army of snow blowers put together, nor a kick ass bomardier all terrain snow thrower... or even a family of dirt bikes or quads together to create a raceable course through the snow at the MRC/Wrentham course.

Race has been postponed until the 8th.

Race one on the 8th will be a miss and out as a seeder for the noon race. Last 8 in race 1 are the last row in the Noon race. If you don't race the first race then you line up behind those last 8. Next 8 are next row etc. Total Rob Bauer style.

Granted it isn't really a race, just getting together and having fun. Hopefully conditions will improve enough w/o major equipment and attention to let us race next weekend.

I'm about as bummed (probably more) than anyone else who had been hoping to race, so my apologies, and we'll work on better plans for next time. So, next big snow, if you have a quad or a motoX bike and are willing to destroy some snow to lay a CX course and you're near enough to get the engine powered stuff to Wrentham let me know.

Happy New Year everyone. May 2011 be a great year for New England Cyclocross!
g

Damn Snow

Okay, so despite my enthusiasm and unbridled optimism that it will work w/o modification... we need machine help.

I went to the course today. Snow was drifted pretty high and while it was completely ridable/raceable where it was BB height or less, it was deep enough that my big fat ass couldn't keep traction with the rear tire.

I so wanted this to happen, but I can't afford to rent a skid-steer with a snow blower, much less get it there with the holiday weekend and all that, and have no way to get a snowblower i could find here up there.

Feelers are out but things are sparse. If you know someone with a big snow blower (small ones will get swallowed by the powder) and are in the area - let me know.

Stupid snow.

Why you want to race at Wrentham even if there is snow

On the ground.

Why?

Well for one there is great course flexibility.
The single track back in the woods is going to be great. No problems there. And there's a fair bit more single track than has typically been used in the Training races. So if we need to add more length, no problem.

Run the course on the woods half only maybe. Lap times might be short but heck who cares, it is Cyclocross, and all indications are that we aren't going to get 300 people to show up on the 1st. If we do? F'n BRILLIANT.

I hope we do. That would be unbelievably awesome. But I'm not dumb enough to think the odds are good. But really, what do I keep saying? What better way to start the New Year?

Really. Come one. You bastards live and die cyclocross and then curl up and ride the f'n trainer. You kidding me?

Get some solid intensity. Have some fun.

Look. At the most you're going to have to ride through the snow from the two track over to the single track where the barriers usually are. How long is the sand at Mol?

Are you wanting something easy and grass crit like to race on?

Come on.

Of course it is going to be hard. But hell it was nearly 40 degrees when I got back to New England tonight. The untrodden snow is flat and wet and wicked nice to ride in. I'm assuming that maybe there's a bit more up there but there's also a couple more days of sun and low humidity and warm temps.

So. Trust me. Get the bikes packed up before you get completely blotto and watch the ball drop naked on your couch at midnight or when ever it is you pass out. Set the alarm for how ever long it takes you to drive to Wrentham Developmental Center: (From I-495, exit 15. Follow Route 1A/South St. (Dedham St.) north through Wrentham Center for 2.5mi. Left on to North St. Continue on North St. for 0.5mi.) and get there ready to go at 11am.

It will be good. No, it isn't going to be a manicured course like G'ster or Canton, but come on, people bitch about those. You will need real power to win on New Year's Day.

Just think. You could be crowned the first Fastest CX Racer of 2011!

Don't you wicked fast guys want to get that coveted title?

New Year's Day Cyclocross

Seriously, come kick off the year with a bunch of your friends riding around in a race like situation. Haven't been riding? so what, neither have I, it will just be a measure of how long we can hold off the fast dudes and kids while we work on pedaling till we puke and then rally and go.

Where specifically? basically at the MRC training race course.

Rob has the vision of a month long series. We can move it to sunday maybe but that's going to be feedback based. Show up on the 1st and let me know if you wan to race on the 8th or 9th.

Goal: participation and fun. And really, when it comes down to it, what's more fun than racing your friends/enemies even if a training ride kind of race (it will be race pace intensity).

Don't worry about the snow. We'll make it work. If you'd rather strap your feet to one or two boards, well nothing we can do to get you there unless a heat wave blows in an melts all the snow giving you no choice but to drag your Cyclocross bike out.

Next year Nationals will be on the 3 and 4th and then Masters worlds will follow shortly in January.

And trust me, there will be more snow on the course then than we'll have on Saturday. Might as well get used to it.

Questions?
Commnets?
Suggestions?
(yes, i'm honestly asking - but feedback given on the 1st in person will receive the most consideration)

heddwch
G

Come Race Cyclocross

To start the new year!

Liked Ice Weasels last year in the snow?

Want to race in the snow again?

Looking for the best way to start the new year right?

Need a sure fire way to cure a New Year's Eve party hangover?

Want to get ready to go to Europe to kick some ass at CX Masters Worlds?

Saw the Deigem race and want to be a tougher bike racer than Treebooboo?

Done getting fat and slow these last couple weeks and want to kick start your year?

Racing Battenkill and need to start working on intensity?

Okay that last reason is a bit weak sauce, but that said:

Come out and race with us at Wrentham. No it isn't a real race, more a bunch of us getting together with our Cyclocross bikes to get a killer workout in together on a course. Rumor has it there might be a Growler of John Harvard beer for the winner of the noon "race." Just a rumor.

Two races. 11am and then Noon. We're going to play it by ear how the first race goes. Training style? A couple sets of two lap races, miss and out, lemans style, who knows. It'll be puking hard and fun as hell. The Noon race will be full 45min for the serious folks. Call the 11am your warm up. Unless you want to get there earlier and help lay out the course by warming up on it.

I'm excited, can't think of a better way to start the New Year. Is there a better way to start riding again after a couple weeks off than Racing CX?

Heddwch
G

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone.

Last minute plans sometimes change things for the better even if you embark on them with some reservations and trepidation.

Aside from not riding this isn't so bad.

And yeah. Back on the coffee wagon. Gonna have to maybe buy myself an aeropress and attempt to stick with one cup in the morning. I was sort of hoping there might be one in a present for me but nope.

One of the better ones has been the Cooking For Geeks book. I've mentioned it here before.

I've basically been reading it since I unwrapped it. Wicked good stuff in there. Some not as interesting but the book on the whole is worth every penny (esp if you get it on sale at Amazon or something).

So Merry Christmas everyone, enjoy the holiday break if you have one. I hope to see a good number of you NECX bitches and old farts on Jan 1st at the Wrentham MRC course.

rapha challenge

is not going to happen...

got a ride to/from work on Wed. No riding until at least next Wed, maybe Thurs.

probably not the worst thing in the world....

The Mexican Scotsman

Jose, get your bagpipes
And head down to the square
Seranade the passers-bye
And you'll make some money there

Jose came to this country
Looking for a chance
To make some decent money
To buy a pair of pants
But we were in recession
And jobs were far and few
So jose took his bagpipes
And did what he had to do

Dressed in his Sombrero and Kilt
With his bagpipes and maracas
Playing away for his supper
Boiled haggis with nachos

One day while he was basking
A pretty young lassie came by
She said "Jose, take s troll with me"
Says Jose, "Si! Si! Och' 'Aye!"
They spent the day together
Then she took him to a dance
Well, Jose moved most gracefully
'Cause he wasn't wearing pants

And he was born in Mexico City
Educated in Scotland
In sandals and bright tartan pancho
Jose's fashion statement was not planned

But when Jose went to the men's room
There was trouble close at hand
Cause in came Bob, the sailor man
The roughest man in the land
Says Bob, "You're lookin' pretty
In your little tartan dress
Now you'd best be off to the ladies room
'fore I pummels you into a mess"

Now you could have heard a pin drop
As Jose tongued around
His scottish-mexican blood began to boil
And it made this kind of sound...

*f'n awesome pipe instrumental*

And when it all was over
Sailor Bob lay on the floor
He looked the saddest sorry wreck
Ever blown a shore
Now, the sailors keep a lookout
Whenever they're on the land
For they knows well that they doesn't mess
With a Scottish Mexican man!

Love this song. Came on the Pandora just a bit ago. Damn awesome pipe solo/melody.

Nice find Zen...

Beers were consumed post concerts, (kind of like a cross race, you do the show so you can have a few afterwards - kind of). Saturday night some High Life was procured, and we had a few. Probably a good beer to drink between 2 and 4am after the really night stuff, kind of like drinking water. Certainly helps to prevent a hangover.

That and the commercial is pretty good.

Oh and Heidi's post is among the best ever. read it.

New England's Methadone clinic starts on January 1st. MRC training grounds. It is official, come race a bit to prolong our season and prepare for next year's transition.

Houston we've landed

We? dunno.

Made it, grabbed a quick coffee with JLS at Boston Common before managing to catch an earlier train to PVD to finish the trip.

Got all the busted stuff taken care of and nearly all of the urgent issues at least addressed if not resolved.

And I'm wiped out.

Red Eye last night and even with the complimentary blindfold/eye-shield and ear plugs i still couldn't get comfortable enough to string more than 30 min or so of sleep together in the plane.

Up for 22 hrs on Thursday, getting 6 hrs that night, then the power going out sending us to bed at 2am on friday night after the tacoma concert getting about 5 hours of sleep, then Saturday's concert and heading to my brother's house for some food and hanging out until 4am only to get up at 8am to get going for the 3pm show on Sunday. Ooh wow was I in rough shape, the lack of sleep was wrecking me more than the beer. just stuck with beer, no Port as in past years or wine or whiskey. Just some really nice beer that can't be purchased around here. Sunday night was short too, my brother's had to leave at 6am to get to the airport, and I didn't quite get the wake up timing right and when I was wide awake at 4:45 wondering if my brother's were supposed to get up at 4:30 or 5:30 i couldn't get back to sleep until after they left. That got me to the point of driving around to the Bellevue show and from there getting to the airport at 10:15 for an 11:30 flight. Made it there no problem but then there was the whole lack of sleep thing.

Describing the feeling is tough. nerves are shot, body is full of hyper energy but the brain and eyes are shutting down. this is actually pretty tough to write. Maybe i am tired.

oof

that and one comment.

Rarely do I fly direct from New England to Seattle.

Can I just say I've never seen a leaner trimmer more normally sized group of people flying than on both of the flights. Seriously. trim and fit people. Usually flying in through the midwest or other locations the population on the plane reflects the national average.

Hell the cities are pretty similar, lots of active people getting around by means other than car, but people are weird out there. Kind of funny.

But that's all okay, I really enjoy being out there and the raining cool weather felt awesome. I love that stuff. And the mountains... it is hard to explain the trees to people who call their hills out here Mtns. When trees get to be hundreds of feet tall, well... that's pretty impressive. I'm always reminded where my passion for Botany came from.

And the music. It was good. Fingers were surprisingly in tune. Granted I only played on maybe a half dozen songs and they are ones that I've been playing forever, still. Can't fake the violin/fiddle too much. esp not with a mic and a critical family listening. It was also a pretty sweet feeling. The shows were all packed and that says a lot with the current market and economy esp when other shows are not selling out. People have made our family tradition of 32 years their family tradition. It is hard to describe what it is like.

Honestly I'm not too tired to miss the bike right now, I really want to get on it tomorrow. Going to have to mount up the studs, probably fire up the Giant as well. Maybe even get the fenders on. We'll see how ambitions I get this afternoon evening tomorrow morning. Yeah Bikes.

Time for Sound Chec

At Town hall.

Last night's show went very well.

Followed it up with some killer Wa State Kobe style beef burgers at midnight and a few Inversion IPAs.

Then the massive winds blew out the power at 2am so I we all got to bed early.

Pictures, got some good ones on the Ferry on heading into the city today... still haven't figured how to upload pictures using the Cr-48, maybe i'll figure that out today.

Time to head up and check the mic's and the balance before the show.

heddwch
G

Traveling

Out here in the PacNW for the 32nd Annual Celtic Yuletide Concerts: www.magicalstrings.com

The Jet Blue direct flight from BOS was not so bad. Good bit of turbulence but no inflight wifi despite what I had led myself to believe by looking at their web page. Oh well. Maybe the flight home will have it. Or not. Watching DirectTV was kinda crazy. Realizing that no matter how many channels you have there's still nothing to watch on TV, although it seems that I'd watch more shows than not watch shows on Food Network.

First thing on the way home from the airport was to acquire some Black Butte Porter (and a Pyramid Snow Cap ale). Mmmm good stuff.

I'm in a waiting holding pattern here at FedEx Kinko's taking advantage of the AT&T hotspot.

Read a great point/counterpoint, in a way, in the PCC newsletter about vegetarianism. I'm obviously a bit biased but find the Naturopath's view far stronger and compelling. Sheds new(ish) light on the vegetarian's case, at least a few points. Love the second classification.

Point seems to really come down to the processed foods, and individual biochemical make up. Obviously we are all different. Some people can do better with certain stuff. Just the same as some people are really affected by season depression and others (like me) juts get excited when the weather gets all overcast and dim with no sun.

Although I'm going to have to upload a photo I just took on the way over, and if I hadn't completely unpacked my bag before heading to the concert I'd add the shot of Mt Rainer that I took on 16.

We could see all the mountains today. A special rare treat was seeing a snow covered St Helens.

The mountains are striking and something that I forget how much I miss until I see them again.

It is a crazy place out here. People drive the speed limit and obey and generally know about the laws. Granted the Law Enforcement is pretty hard core. Complaints about money money money and ticketing for the sake of generating revenue and being straight up no room for error (they drive 58 in 60mph zones on I-5 in Seattle).

Beer is cheap out here though. 12 pack of Seirra Nevada was $9, even for the Celebration ale.

And the solid way to get on the time zone? Get up at 5:30am eastern time and then stay awake until midnight Pacific time (3am East coast time). Makes it easy to sleep in until 8:30am. And with tonight and tomorrow night being 7 and 7:30pm shows that go for no less than 3 hours each plus travel and decompression afterwards... like in years past, I really am basically going to be functioning on Honolulu time.

And yeah I'm really writing just to write.

Adam M's rec for a place to grab a beer around South Station was great. Got off the Amtrak and walked over to the South street Diner. A REAL diner, not some diner facade, or a diner with the kitchen in back on an addition, nope, a real god damn diner that had Harpoon on tap. A Couple IPAs and 3/4 of a plate of fries (not sure why i went with the fries but hell, eating on this trip is not athlete friendly so what the hell - they were hot, greasy, crunchy and good) and I was headed over to the SL1.

And I was really looking forward to the whole enhanced security. But... saddly... it was pretty normal. Take shoes off belt, jacket, fleece... and walk through and that was it. No Ryan Kelly style groping, no checking out of my anatomy in a scanner. Nope. 60 seconds maybe, it took. Mostly just putting all my shit in the plastic scanner tubs and taking it back out.

Planned on having a few more beers in the bars but they were packed. I'd have had to get friendly with people to get close the the bar and i'm not my brother, he knew where everyone sitting at the bar in Chicago were flying off too before he finished his second beer. I thought maybe it would clear out but it got busier and busier.

Probably for the better, managed to not blow up my ears or sinuses with the pressure. Maybe it was the non-stop flight, up and down once is easier than twice.

Yeah I'm just writing to write but it feels good.

Thanks for the Email Soups, meaning to write back but haven't gotten around to it among other things.

Checked in with the work email account this afternoon and shit has exploded. Things run super smooth while i'm there and then what happens? Two scopes are down now, and a whole massive amount of other things. Could be normal and that when I'm there these things show up one at a time and are easy to manage but well, not being there they build up.

Oh I tagged this with food because of the vegetarian thing.

Tonkin

That is one dude with serious skill. He's just a natural fucking cyclo-cross racer. Dude's flat out amazing. Seriously, starting way back and then finishing 16th? Myerson starts on the front row and finish barely in front of Tillford.

bike break

time for a brief departure from the vehicle of choice... time to hop on a train, then a plane...

unless i find a bike to ride out there (doubtful there will be time enough to ride much less think or stop moving) this will be the first time off the bike for this long maybe in 6 months. Right around July 4th I'm thinking there was maybe 3 days off the bike. I might have had a 3 day spell some other time but I can't remember it, maybe the lead in to vacation but that was just two and two days off doesn't count as a break, that's a normal rest period.

Heck I think it could have been around Christmas break last year when I had more than 3 days off in a row.

Crazy. That I am.

Gonna give the Cr-48 a test run on the air leg of the trip. Battery life seems to be pretty decent, we'll see if it can make the flight from BOS to SEA on one charge.