August 2008 Archives

60.75 miles, 4:05 (total).

i took my normal route and added a trip to sawyer camp trail, which seemed like a good idea until a) i realized i had to do a repeat of ralston trail, which isn't a big deal but kinda lame for a route, and b) oh shit it's sunday.

the cars were stacked on 92, going to half moon bay or whatever it is that people do when stacked on 92 on a weekend, as if they're the only ones who thought of a sunday trip to the beach. i know: i used to do it. didn't take me long to learn not to, though.

i zipped past them and considered shouting "ride a bike!" but i try to represent cyclists a little better than that.

on the other hand, i ran my first stoplight today, and i was all set to run a second when it changed.

a lot of stuff happens in 60 miles and i've forgotten most of it. most fresh in my mind is the sawyer camp trail portion (i rode only 3 miles of it, which is the worst part on a weekend, of course). at one point, a group of 8-12 people, with babies, strollers, and cameras, were all clustered right in the middle of the road. i had about 1 foot of clearance on either side of the cluster. they stared bovinely at me as i approached. as i passed them, slowly, i said with the sort of exasperation that you feel during the last 8 miles of a PR ride, "come on, guys!" yeah, maybe not too descriptive of the problem or suggestive of the solution, but i think they got the idea.

on foothill, i found myself the leader of a paceline. not just one dude drafting me, but 3 or 4. neat! after a while, i inadvertently stumbled upon a trick. i dropped 2 cogs easier (i was in my middle chainring), rested for about 30-40 seconds, then flipped up onto my biggest chainring, kept my cadence steady, and dropped the lot of them. ha!

i probably should have continued on foothill to make my mileage today, but i didnt want to cover new territory. i knew sawyer camp trail would be lame, but at least it wouldn't have a surprise 20% climb.

i saw some dudes turn off alpine onto arastradero, i should look up where that goes. i know it meets up later on with foothill, that might be a nice alternative to an out-and-back.

i thought to myself as i worked on my 60 miler that 60 miles puts me mentally way closer to a full century than a 50 mile ride, because a 50 mile ride is hard, and a century is two of those back to back! but a 60 mile ride is hard, followed by a 40 mile ride, which is way easy, barely more than i do on a weekday training ride. so there you have it.

i saw another tandem today, at exactly the same place i saw the tandem mountain bike during the week. once again it was white guy in front, asian girl in back. different couple tho, and this was a road bike. i saw them later on in sawyer camp, where i almost ran down an old-ish lady who figured looking where she was crossing the road wasn't really necessary.

oh, and though he waved me on, i offered to help a dude who seemed in trouble.

i worried that i wouldn't have enough mojo left to sprint the obstacle course, but i did. i dunno where i store it but i always have something left for that. it helps when there's a fat guy on a mtb going faster than me. it doesn't matter that i've just biked 57 miles and he probably hasn't -- it will not stand!

and it didn't. now i'm tired and even with 3 applications of sunscreen, my honker is burnt. so it goes. shower, shave, taco, fish waffle, and then feasting and booze. the life of a cyclist is always intense!

BBC talk show host just said, "the reason we didn't just play part of an MLK speech is because the MLK estate holds copyrights for those speeches, and charges more than the BBC is willing to pay."

MLK is perhaps one of the most important people ever to impact the US and the world, but his idiotic heirs squelch his legacy to make a buck.

infuriating.

if john mccain is such a maverick, you know, so very "independent", why isn't he running as... wait for it...

an independent?

training ride? meh. i got no plan other than push hard. i like the bullets yesterday, so here are some more. today i:

will clinton please go away?

and please, take that crappy dem convention music with you. love train? ick.

npr reporter just said that obama was of "hybrid african-american descent".

no shit.

that's what the - means.

that a political convention is a great place to find police overreaction and abuse.

i didn't live during the time depicted in "The Andy Griffith Show" and other such shows, where Officer Friendly would rather defuse a situation than make an arrest, so I can't comment on whether police of 60 years ago would have handled things with more finesse and compassion.

but what is clear is that the days of "take it easy, buddy" are past, or never were, and now what we get is "arrested by scary looking, cigar-smoking bullies for not asking 'how high?' when told to jump."

U.S. soldiers cannot harm enemy combatants once they are disarmed and in custody, the NYT said.

You keep saying "cannot". I do not think that word means what you think it means.

yesterday, my beard smelled awesome. not that i go around sniffing my beard, mind you, although i am sniffing it now for science. today: not so good. but yesterday, i think it still had a-plenty of almond scented shaving soap in it, which made it smell like gingerbread or egg nog or something yummy like that.

i confirmed today that running up hills is way easier than biking up them. i took some of the hills that are on my bike route and they were E-Z.

conclusions: running's easy, hurf-durf.

dog eat dog

lolcops!

yay, free speech, yay, freedom of assembly.

watch this video.

okay, skip ahead to about 8:15.

she's talking about women getting the vote, huge old cheers. dr. king, more cheers -- cut to michelle's view of the crowd: old white woman hears "dr. king" and can't find it in her sourpuss heart to sustain her "woman's vote" cheering for "dr. king". frowns and stops.

AWESOME. way to go. you're voting for mccain, aren't you?

i just figured it out: all that stuff last night at the dem convention about equal pay for women, and the speeches about women, women, women, which seemed to come out of nowhere given that obama's really been running on the economy, the war, and knowing how many houses he owns; all that mysterious women's stuff was just to pander to the clinton supporters.

hey look, we care about <whatever it was that you thought hillary was going to do for you>!

that's politics, i reckon, and that's what's wrong with the system we've managed to keep for so long.

ew, and then as if that wasn't bad enough, there was the michael bay theme-songed clinton speech video, which i fortunately only heard. blah blah blah, harriet tubman, blah blah blah, i overcame adversity, blah blah blah blah blah blah, i never did get to be an astronaut, but let's shoot more women into space, blah blah blah. she did have one cogent thing to say, though: that she was in it to win it and not for the wealth, with a grammy on the wall and a gat on the shelf. hey, i'd forgotten that! that lyric sustained me for about 10 miles on sunday, where i repeated it dozens of times before realizing: only be purposely mispronouncing "welf" can you rhyme "wealth" with "shelf". heh.

anyhow, clinton said: hey youse, don't go voting for mccain. you weren't just hoping to elect me, right? sadly, seeing and knowing clinton voters, lots of them were, and aren't interested in voting for anyone else.

had to come to a full stop at the very last stopsign before my apt, there was a cop parked right next to it. as i was achieving my full stop, some tard in a van pulled up to my right angle, and refused to either make eye contact with me or take their turn (they had right of way). so i considered their ROW forfeit and went. bah.

also, at the intersection of 92 and canada, after my light had turned green, a semi and a small car ran their red lights. if i'd been less alert and zoomed out into the intersection, it would have been trouble. fortunately, i take that stretch of the route with extreme caution for just that reason.

holy hell do those new tires add weight to my bike. my once featherweighted prissy roadbike now feels like a damned touring monster. and the steel/iron/lead in the behind-the-seat bottle holder adds an extra ton, even sans bottles. it was noticeably (ya think?) heavier carrying it down the stairs, and across the glassy/garbagey area (yeah, i'm puncture resistant now, but why tempt fate?), and even when first pedaling it up to speed. there's a noise coming from the front wheel (i think) which i must investigate. the shifting is definitely off thanks to my removal of the rear wheel.

work to be done.

now, i'm no weight weenie. as it says in The Bibble: look not at yon mote on yer frame, when there's a ginormous flapping beer gut spilling out of thine jersey, uh, ye. I think that was like Lance 7:24 or something. anyhow, to counteract all the extra weight, i've cultivated what I like to call a "training effect", whereby i pedal harder and longer week after week and get stronger, faster, better -- and all for slightly less than 6 million bucks!

i looked at a training plan for the TDPS century, and i plan to look at some more, but in all honesty, i may just stick with what i'm doing. it is clear that i have no exhausted the potential of my current routine, and it's even more clear that in the last week i've burst through some kinda training barrier. i may as well stick with my general routine for a little longer.

i was planning to integrate intervals into my schedule, but Ed Pavelka, bless him, gave me an out. He says, in one of my training books, that if I live near hills, why bother? why bother, indeed, I say. my fartlek method seems to be working. i'm grinding up hills in 1 gear higher than i was 2 weeks ago. and i'm faster on the flats, despite the added weight weenie weight of all the crap i keep throwing on my bike.

speaking of crap on the bike, i wanted to be extra paranoid and carry 2 tubes in my fanny pack, since the specialized website description of said fanny pack says it can hold two tubes. like hell it can. maybe if you forego tire levers and CO2. i could stick an extra tube and CO2 into my bento box, for extra un-roadiness. i think i'll just take the extras in my jerseys on my weekend rides. not for me: i'm puncture resistant. they're for charity, or something.

i dug out the screen for my protein shaker, and found that it was actually a screen for a different protein shaker, which i then also dug out. it actually works brilliantly -- no more chunky protein shake! yum.

hey, this crummy blog has been around for 4 years!

which makes sense, on account of i created it around the time of the summer olympics. wow, time sure flies.

the CMS side of it isn't holding up well: the archives don't work and i'm too busy with outdoorsiness to bother fixing it. the C side probably isn't much better, I daren't browse the archives in fear of what I may find there.

lame writings! like these! shudder!

"Listen up," I said to Victor, slamming my pint glass down upon the dented, dusty table. "What I'm about to tell you is the most important thing you'll ever hear."

"All right," said Victor.

"And you already know it," I said, "but you don't know you know it."

"Okay," said Victor.

"But I know it, and I know you know it," I said. "You're waiting for me to tell you. Or someone else, maybe. But it's there, in you. You just haven't seen it for yourself and I'm tired of looking at it. So I'm going to tell you."

"All right," said Victor.

"Look around you," I said. "What do you see?"

Victor looked around. I looked around. It wasn't anything new for either of us, just another Monday night at Chancellor's. Sure, it's been a long time since our last visit. Things have changed, we've changed, our lives have moved on. But Chancellor's... well, Chancellor's is like a diamond, or what the diamonders want us to think of diamonds: Chancellor's is forever. Mick, the bartender, he's new. And Chloe's new, too. But they're not new, as I liked to tell Victor. Sure, they didn't work here six months ago. But they fill a role that never changes; they embody archetypes that are always a part of Chancellor's.

"I see a guy throwing up all over the jukebox," said Victor. He pointed. Sure enough, a fat man was doubled over near the jukebox, with sweaty, scraggly hair cascading down the sides of his head and chunky yellow vomit gushing forth from his mouth, which opened and closed like an automatic garage door whose opener serves as a dance floor for the cat, splattering in viscous puddles around the base of the jukebox.

"Hm," I said.

I'd been bringing Victor to Chancellor's for nearly eight years now. We kept on coming back, ostensibly because we enjoyed each other's company, but lately, I'd begun to suspect there were other reasons. By now Victor and I were so familiar with each other that we did not really require the presence of the other to be together. That is, our actions, reactions, and interactions were so known to each other, that we could invoke the presence of the other simply through thought.

It was a preparation for death, I suppose. If fate decides that we should die apart, the one who passes shall live a little longer in the memory of the one who remains, as he sits, alone in the eyes of those who do not know him, in the company of the one who has passed. Reliving an old conversation, perhaps, filled with laughter and frivolity; or perhaps living in a new conversation, anticipating and filling in the reactions of his companion.

Our friendship had burst the chains of life, and reforged itself, tempered against the flame of death. Neither of us would ultimately survive, but in memory, in vivid re-enactment, lucid re-imagining, one of us would cheat death.

"He's dying," said Victor.

"What?" I said.

"The chucker," said Victor. "The chucker by the jukebox."

"Yes," I said. "We all are."

"Yeah," said Victor, "but he's dying faster."

"What do you mean?" I said.

"Well, look at him, man," said Victor. "He's less than he could be. I mean, you know why we're here, but what's he doing here? He's not any older than us. He isn't a cripple, or a tard or anything. There's nothing wrong with that guy. But here is is, wasted to the point of hurling, and for what? He's all by himself, he is. There's nobody here for him, even to drive him home."

"How do you know?" I said.

"I know things," said Victor. "I notice things. Look, he doesn't even know Mick. Who's gonna call him a cab? I mean, Mick will eventually, but if that was you or me, Mick would take care of it."

"So he's not just a drunk," I said, "but he's got no friends, either?"

"It's worse than that," said Victor. "You and I don't have any friends in here."

"What?" I said. "Mick's our friend. So is Erwin."

"Nah," said Victor. "Just 'cause they know our names doesn't mean they're our friends."

"What more does it take?" I asked.

"Willingness."

"Willingness?"

"Willingness."

"Look," I said. "I'm the enigmatic one. You don't get to speak in riddles. Out with it, yo."

"That's right," said Victor. "Okay, there's a willingness that defines friendship. A willingness to sacrifice, a willingness to put oneself out to convenience another. Mick might call us a cab, but he wouldn't pay for it, see?"

"How do you know?" I asked.

"I know," said Victor.

"You notice things," I said.

"That's right," said Victor. "A friend is willing, as needed, to put his friend above himself."

"That may be true," I said, "but there's more shades of friendship than you're letting on about."

"Of course," said Victor. "There's an important shade I haven't mentioned. That's what we have here."

"What's that?" I said.

"I'll tell you in a minute," said Victor. He slid himself out of the booth, and ambled over to the jukebox. Victor put his hand on the back of the vomiting man, and handed him a napkin, one of Chancellor's white cloth napkins, the good ones that only the regulars get. He motioned to Chloe, and asked her to bring a glass of water. He took the water, and the vomiting man into the men's room.

I sat for a while, by myself, and smiled. I do that, when I'm alone. I smile. I have a lot to smile about, I suppose. Life's been pretty good to me, if we're to list the things it hasn't done to me. It hasn't killed me, or maimed me, or given me a truly debilitating chronic illness. It hasn't taken my good friends away, it hasn't robbed me of family, it hasn't left me to struggle through life with an inferior intellect.

I try not to dwell on what it has done to me, on what good things it's withheld, on the times it's led me down paths which went nowhere, but took from me precious moments; seconds and minutes and years which will never be mine again. No, to think too long on what I've missed, by fate's hand or mine, would lead me to a place I know all too well. My regrets would lead me not far from where I sit and smile, just a couple dozen paces over there, by the wall, to a jukebox caked in another's vomit, where I could stand and drink and try not to remember why it is that I'm standing by a jukebox, drinking.

Victor emerged from the men's room, alone, and came back to our booth, where he slid into his seat.

"Where's what'sisface?" I asked.

"He's finishing up in there," said Victor. "I did what I could. I did what was needed."

"For friendship?" I asked.

"No," said Victor. "For community."

I laid my pen down, between my notepad and my glass of whiskey, turned my eyes up, toward the ceiling, and smiled. Cobwebs laced the air above, spanning the distance from the walls to the ceiling fans. The blades of the fans had long since deteriorated into nothing, leaving behind a skeletal frame, an echo of a once useful thing. It sat now, unmoving, casting shadows and outlines upon the floor and tables of Chancellor's, reminding us of its glorious, useful, notable past. A past filled with action, and memories, and utility. And now: hollow, empty, uselessness.

I stared across the table at the worn, torn, dusty cracked leather of the booth. Victor was sitting in it, still, I saw him. "Community," he said. More than community, though, was presence; the one sustaining the other, propping one up when the other stumbled, ensuring a future for each other.

"Community," I said, quietly, breaking my smile to utter the word, "presence, and place."

"Community," said Victor, picking my smile up from where I had left it, "presence, and place."

i think i gave myself a thumb blister changing tires.

i have to say, i'm pretty jazzed at the idea of a century through palm springs.

it's been on my mind all day, and yesterday too. that's good!

can't.

there's a tour de palm springs. that's my old hood. i'm seriously considering riding the solvang (half?) century, so if i can do TDPS, solvang, and something up here, i'll have (half?) centuried all the places i've ever lived.

wow, i was just gonna mention TDPS but now, in writing this post, i've come up with a thrice-more ambitious plan!

the TDPS mentions that the 100 mile route has rolling hills but nothing steep, which is what i'd expect. well, i'd expect it to either have no hills or be kill-yourself steep, and since it's got a modest name like TDPS and not "kill yourself ride up to the top of mt. san jacinto", i suspected the former.

it's in feb so it won't be 120 out, only 90 or 100. i should shoot for the century, shouldn't i?

yes, and i should do it while not worrying about punctures, heh.

is that when it gets mind-numbingly boring, like when some dude is talking about being a contemporary of kerouac and then going to cleveland, i can switch over to mp3s without twiddling with the remote.

i really like my bike.

i wondered today why it doesn't have a name. i considered shirley, as in "shirley, it's got a name" but i don't think it's a shirley.

because they surely are

- hard to put on the rims
- heavy

really heavy. noticeably heavy. not as really, noticeably heavy as me, but still pretty heavy.

i got grease everywhere. i need some of that mechanic's hand stuff. i got better at putting the tire on when i did #2, but it was still a PITA. had to use the tire irons for it, not necessary with my racer tires.

so i guess my dream came true after all, after a fashion. not exactly huge mountain bike tires, but still not slick racer tires like i'm used to.

who left the capslock on?

anyhow, forgot to mention that my ass, today, was the least sore it's ever been after a 50 mile ride, which pleases me. those ridiculously expensive bike pants were worth it.

urinary tract problems, get thee to the nunnery!

yesterday, as i arrived at the jamaican place for lunch, the cops were dragging a dude away in their car. that is, they were stuffing him into it as i arrived. okay, maybe not stuffing. and there was only one cop. and the dude went in all by himself.

but he was handcuffed.

i'm surprised it's the first time i've witnessed that, considering that the jamaican place is basically in epa.

but now i've forgotten it.

i burned my lip with the goo inside my japanese fish waffle today.

that wasn't the funny thing.

i went to the bike shop and walked out with "all condition armadillo" tires, which i had seen mentioned on the internets as being the gold standard for puncture resistance. now that i think of it, why was i reading about puncture resistant tires before today's puncture? more premonition-type stuff? i guess.

anyhow, they're made of space age stuff which isn't light. my fellow roadies will laugh at me, but not as much as i'm laughing at their shaved legs while i pass them. sure, okay, they're probably faster than me in a crit, but i'm starting to get the feeling that i'm a distance cyclist.

so now i've got these ugly, heavy, not-recommended-for-racing puncture resistant tires. with some luck, i'll get really out of practice at changing tires.

it apparently took me 21 minutes to change my tire. with a ride time of 3:40, that means i beat last week's time by 10 minutes.

the software is so crappy that, although the watch can figure it it, the software can't tell me my average moving velocity (that is, toss out all the 0es). and i can't delete data points but one at a time. so i need to delete approximately 20 minutes worth of data.... can't.

bleh.

i was pwning the ride. for those of you not familiar with "pwning", it can be defined as what michael phelps did at the olympics. i was going 1-5mph faster than last week at every point.

this is odd, because i did nothing in my training to warrant an increase (though i suppose rest is a factor), other than read about interval training and plan to maybe do some in the future.

at this point in the posting, you should go here and check out the very cool photography, taken of pro racers just after their finish of the giro d'italia, which is the tour de france's lesser known (here!) brother. i look like that right now, only i have a laptop.

i had a nightmare last night that someone had put big, fat, knobbly mountain bike tires on my beautiful road bike. i fretted and argued with whomever it was, and finally resorted to waking myself up to escape the terrible situation. i convinced myself, without leaving my bed, that it was all a horrible dream, and managed to go back to sleep. somehow.

turns out this was a premonition, of sorts.

i had, as usual, many great thoughts on my ride. my weekend ride is nothing if not entertaining. i passed Bowdler and his family on canada road, and wouldn't have noticed him (rather unlike me, i tend to watch the riders) because i was focusing on the numbers. the numbers, by the way, were very good. back in my hiking days, i harnessed a great force which i called The Power Of Pissed Off. It had to do with being 10 miles out on a hike with hot water, mealy clif bars, no sunscreen, and poison oak all around. that pissed me the hell off and i hiked faster and harder. whelp, i've been generally pissed off the last week or so, and maybe that had something to do with my (relative) speed today (speaking of speed, i was nearing woodside on canada, pedaling "my fastest" and patting myself on the back, when a guy zoomed effortlessly past me. to my credit, i get passed by fewer people each week, but this guy smoked me rather shamefully). i've been dragging around a lot of nervousness, and maybe that translated into muscle twitch. it should not, actually, worry should hurt my performance (so maybe i'd do even better if i don't worry, be happyed!). and i took a pretty long run yesterday, then proceeded to stressfully drive around the bay looking for Something and dehydrating myself rather severely. not a good setup.

the Something was a seat-rail mounted double water cage, to jut out behindus my bike. not only to make me look cool (like, as cool as the guy with shaved legs whom i smoked around mile 38. he was with a lady friend, who also had shaved legs. i was dying to ask them if they used the same razor, but i restrained myself), but to be able to leave my camelback at home, thus allowing me to wear my Arrogant Bastard jersey, and thereby looking cool. no leg-shaving required! hah! in truth, it may have been my lack of camelback that helped me. i had about 20oz less water on me today (with leftovers at the end), and no leg warmers and jacket. it may be the lack of that weight, but i'm betting that it had more to do with aerodynamics than weight. the camelback creates a lot of drag.

now, maybe the effects of drag are minimal at my average speed, but they do count for something at top speed, which is still much slower than that one dude (though after he passed me i kept up until i remembered i was racing myself, not him).

here is one of the funny thoughts i thunk to myself on my ride today: a dude and i were at a stoplight which led to an incline and it was red. wait, that's not the thought, that's the setup. the thought's coming soon, after a little more setup. (as an aside: windows updated itself and rebooted itself right in the middle of my data dump from my HRM. that's not only rude, but i feared my german HRM software would plotz from the interruption. fortunately, it seems not to have corrupted itself, so i didn't lose any of my important papers please.)

so, the light turned green, and he hops out of his seat and does the "i saw this on the tour de france" swaying of his bike from side to side, glumping down hard on the pedals. meanwhile, i'm in a low gear, and i spin up to 95rpm and zip past him, never to see him again. now, finally, the funny thought: "that's not working for you nearly as well as my sit-n-spin method". ha!

as i turned on to sand hill from whiskey hill (mmmmm, whiskey! which reminds me, last night i had some wild turkey 101 rye. the 101 means it's 101 proof, which is rather freaking high, just as you were thinking. now, some weeks ago, a spirit guide told me that he likes to let his whiskey breathe. since then, i leave the whiskey sit for 5-10 minutes, after pouring, before drinking, and it improves most whiskeys enormously. in this case, it allowed a lot of the harsher vapors to evaporate, and while it was still not exactly smooth, it was eminently drinkable, with really great aromas, oakiness, plenty of rye character, floral sweetness, and, of course, a bit of burn. contrasted to the last time i tried it neat (years ago) and it nearly choked me to death.) i actually pulled over and checked my rear tire, thinking i had a flat. heh, no, i had no flat, it was merely the shock of transitioning from a -3% grade to a 7% grade, which threw my senses for a loop. i laughed at myself, apologized to a rider whom i inconvenienced, and proceeded on my way.

i stopped at portola and alpine for a sunscreen break. hops had given me a little plastic container for sunscreen, which was a great idea and a great help. my weekend rides exceed 3 hours (on account of i'm faster than i was last week, but i'm still slow) during which it would be ill advised not to reapply sunscreen (lest i end up looking like magnus backstedt. magnus who? go click on that link, i told you to!). unfortunately, i encountered the same problem that i had last week: the fucker wouldn't fucking open. argh!!! i removed my gloves and tried to use them to provide traction. no help. i'm strong enough for many things, but not really great at opening things, and it doesn't help when they're small and i'm all sweaty. i was spending way too much time on opening the dingus, and not making any progress, even employing tricks which helped last week.

i made an executive decision. i feel bad about it, actually, really bad. like that one time when my parents gave me some vienna sausages to take on my trip to lake cahuilla, and my mom said that grandpa really liked vienna sausages, but when we got there, everyone said they looked like little peckers, and laughed at me for having them, so i opened them and we threw them into the lake. i don't think i even tried one. then, grandpa died, and i've carried the guilt ever since.

anyhow, the dingus, frustratingly malfunctioning as it was, was a gift of sorts from hops, and she was very pleased that she had a dingus that fit my need so precisely, as it did, or at least, would have, if i had even once been able to get it open on the road in a timely fashion. but at that point, my choices were between destroying the dingus to get the magic juice out, or sustaining a horrendous sunburn. i was wearing my tank-top, too, but it's my schnozz that really worried me. anyhow, i threw it at the ground, and it taunted me, failing to break. it did this twice until i really put some effort into it and smashed it but good.

i was able to salvage enough sunscreen to apply another coat, but i really could have used more later, which i did not have.

anyhow, i got back underway. and then, about a mile after the turnaround point on the appendix of my ride, i had a blowout. not a leak like last time i got a flat on the road, no hiss or fft-fft as the wheel went around. no, it was a POP! like a balloon, and i pulled over immediately. i credit my cleverness for walking into the shade before changing my tire. yay me.

now, this was the first time i'd changed a tire on this bike entirely by myself (Bowdler helped me the other two times), and the second time i'd changed a bike tire in my whole life. i was really bummed that i wasn't going to set any speed record today. it was my rear tire, too, which is much more complicated to repair because the chain is there.

i went about it carefully. in the 10-20 minutes i was there changing it, at least that many people asked if i was okay, needed help, and had all the gear i needed. once again, i was reminded how fortunate i am to live in such an excellent place. more on this in a moment.

i located the problem, the tire had a blown out hole in it, about the size of the presta valve, with rubber streamers pointing out and everything. a real explosion.

i found no debris on the inside of the tire, and nothing poking out of the tube. when i located the hole in the tube, there was a little white thing in it, which i pushed out. it turned out to be a piece of crystallized mineral, or something. it looked like a piece of stalagmite. it was big. i figure it worked its way into the tire, then into the tube, sealing itself in, until pressure was applied to the opposite side of the tire, which then caused an explosion.

i ended up fixing the tire admirably, re-figuring out how my CO2 pump works, not getting too greasy, and not screwing up my chain. shifting is now a little off, like every time i've removed the rear wheel, but my training schedule does not permit a trip to the bike shop for something minor, and i think i know how to fix this problem, so i will have the pleasure of expanding my bike repair skills.

speaking of which, i had several takeaways from this experience (takeaways! i'm ready for management!):

1 - i was able to safely man-oo-ver my bike after a total tire failure. no need to fear a blowout any more.
2 - i was able to replace the tube on the harder of the 2 wheels. no need to worry about that any more.
3 - the bay area has awesome people. i only hope all my flats are on the well-traveled paths.

now, i've ridden by people changing flats before, just as many people rode by me while i was changing mine, without offering help. in my case, it was because i worried they'd call my bluff and i knew nothing. well, now i know something, and i'm going to be one of those awesome people who offers help and parts next time i pass a person with a flat.

as i approached ralston, i figured my 50 mile route can be divided into two parts: the part that is the ralston ascent, and the part that isn't. the second part is easy. i used my same strategy from last week, of taking it easy, and i reached the top in very good shape.

all in all, an eventful ride. just what i need to entertain me on a sunday.

with my recent spate of harsh movie criticism, namely, not liking star wars or the matrix or... uh, i don't remember what else, but it was total crap -- i worried that if i were to watch again the greatest movie of all time, conan the barbarian, i'd find some reason to be dissatisfied with it. i feared that whatever it was that caused me to see the lameness of star wars, be it age, boredom, wisdom, whatever, would remove the veil of awe from my eyes and let me see the awfulness of CtB.

whelp, no such luck. still the greatest movie ever. it even managed to surprise me with my favorite part, which i'd managed to forget. well, to be fair, it's only recently my favorite part. you know, when the attack begins on darth vader -- er, i mean thulsa doom -- at his death star -- uh, mountain of power, that is -- conan slices a guy up, then turns to a totally innocent candelabra, which had done him no harm, and viciously, mercilessly, and entirely gratuitously kicks it down.

AWESOME.

and everything before that and everything after that, also awesome. awesome to the max.

i needed that. pushed myself up to 1:06, with a super slow pace that took me about 6 miles. of course, i can't be sure because all i had with my was my POS garmin, which kept on losing sats.

my parts are all sore from the week's biking, running, food poisoning, stress, sailing and work milestones. maybe i'll have something left for tomorrow. or maybe not!

i thought of a pithy remark about why i run, but boy is it NSFW, so i'm not posting it.

dean karnazes is coming to speak at my local running shop.

more importantly, he's holding a "fun run" beforehand.

i'm excited! last time i was in his presence, i had a PR run the next day.

last friday i sailed with my usual crew in the SBYC beercan, and we finished so last that they assumed we didn't finish. we got off to a really bad start because nobody had looked up what our starting time was so we started late. but we recovered from that pretty well, until we had a near-collision that dunked everyone and had the skipper ready to kick the hull of the other boat. we even recovered from that, though it shook me up a bit. then, we made some poor navigational choices and ended up with no wind. though we finished the race, without any wind, we came in dead last.

this week was different. we had 2 different crew members, one of whom was an experienced racing captain with excellent helpful advice. two people brought copies of the routes and start times, so although we were a little off, it was a matter of tactics and not an epic blunder like last time. we worked well together, and i learned quite a lot from the fresh perspectives of the two sailors i'd not met before. we had a really poorly executed rounding, where we had only moments before finished de-rigging a small jib and rigging a genoa, because we were running out of wind. we had to jibe to make it to the mark, and then i was instructed to human-pole the spinnaker and raise the headsail, two tasks which (for me at least) are mutually exclusive. i raised the headsail which i suppose was the correct choice, but in the confusion (the guy doing foredeck was not the person i was used to, and he was saying and doing things i wasn't expecting) i forgot to blow the spinnaker halyard. fortunately, the skipper was up to the task of shouting, and shouted at me until i remembered.

miraculously, it all came together, a combination of skilled sailing and light, forgiving winds, and we rounded the mark to beat upwind, overtaking a couple of boats, and tactically blocking another from finishing (fun! and legal!). we dropped off a crewman at the club and headed back to TI to put away the boat. sadly, we didn't make it back to sbyc in time for dinner, but we did get back (and through the giants game exodus) in time to see that we came in 2nd. now that i think if it, i'm not sure if that's second in our class or 2nd overall -- it might actually be 2nd overall. anyhow, we did great, and since it was the last sbyc beercan, we ended with a much better race than had we skipped this race.

afterwards, i ended up having pupusas in the mission, or on mission, i dunno which. the Captain and i cursed the hipsters who were ruining the neighborhood, like the one who walked in front of us with his skinny legs, tight black denim, cowboy boots, and back-pocket flask. i had to hold in my laughter. ha! dork.

got home just after midnight. what a day.

also, as we were bringing the boat back in, i announced that i had failed to locate one of my beards and worried that it may have been lost at sea. that got a laugh, from me, too. i found it shortly after.

if not for samples, i may have bought a full-size portion of this aftershave that has left me smelling like the white house rose garden.

bleah.

was it the ride? the recovery drink? last night's 5-year-old bbq rub? last night's leftover indian food?

in any case, bleeeagh.

32 miles today. maybe running isn't the best recovery activity, physically, but it sure is good mentally, and spiritually, too, if you're into that.

played around with gearing and cadences to see what i could do about my speed. i didn't really go any faster than last thursday, when i did the same distance via a different route. i felt faster, and this may actually be a tougher route. we'll see when i check the profile on sunday (if i remember to check it, or care to check it).

i'm not icing my knee today. i injured it right off the bat when i got my bike, or maybe i re-injured it, which seems more likely. since then i've iced after every ride. back then i had discomfort, if not pain, after each ride, but that hasn't been the case for a long time.

i suppose preventative icing is not a bad idea, but it's a time-eater.

i went much longer than intended, and i'm sure i was running faster than my target 11-12 minute miles. at one point, i actually said to myself, "remember, you're a cyclist, not a runner." a ways after that, i told myself to pound sand, and broke into a sprint to the finish line. funny thing is, it was a much, much better sprint than i've ever done before, in form, speed, and heart rate.

a lot of what i've learned cycling has crossfed into my running. cadence is one biggie. at one point i had to sprint to cross traffic. without even thinking about it, to increase my speed i increased my cadence -- not my stride length -- and barney rubbled across the street. it must have been rather comical!

i ran into neighborhoods today that i've never visited.

i broke down and bought the pair of super-expensive bike pants (shammies (no, i won't spell it the french way) that is) at the bike shop on sunday.

that means that now for my weekday rides i get to wear my expensive bike pants, instead of saving those for the weekend. the expensive bike pants are really far superior to any of my other pants, which is to say that my arse is only irritated after a ride, instead of very irritated.

i can't wait to see how marginally irritated my arse is with my super-expensive bike pants!

some time between when i figured out how to countersteer and yesterday, i forgot how to countersteer. worse, i was doing exactly the opposite: pushing on the inside handlebar. doh.

today i had plenty of practice doing it right, up and down sawyer camp trail. i saw a deer and a fallen tree which a park employee was chainsawing into pieces. later i saw some other parks guys cleaning some toilets and i considered telling them they'd gotten the short end of the duty roster today, but there's no need to rub it in.

it began to sprinkle up there, and i picked up the pace a little to get home without getting too wet. near the end of hte trail i encountered a chinese woman with her blast shield down. that always makes me laugh, especially on a day like this when there's no sun at all. what's it for, then? rain? that'll only make things worse.

i felt plenty-o-cruddy this morning, thinking i owed this to lack of sleep, lack of peace-o-mind, lack of sunshine. turns out, it was just lack of bicycling.

i'm cycling three times a week. i'm still slow as could be, but i'm also losing weight, which will help. i'm thinking of modifying my training to include more ride days (because i enjoy it) and/or to include speed work (because i'm slow) and hill work (because that's where i'm at my worst).

today i tried something on the hills which was an extension of my ralston ascent (sidetrack: ascending some incline on sunday, i thought to myself, "i'm not a bad climber, but unfortunately, i'm not wearing my climbing shoes. ha!") strategy: i kept an 80rpm cadence rather than my 90 goal, and used 1 gear higher than i normally would have (which is to say, 1 above absolute granny). this seemed to keep my HR at an acceptable level, and give me a slight boost of speed -- though i'm not positive whether i'd get a better gain from easy gear + high cadence. have to pay more attention next time. so much room for tweaking and improving, hooray.

another half century, to bring my weekly total to just over 100 miles.

time: 3:33
distance: 51.25
elevation gain: 3000 feet

looking at my records, apparently my first 50 mile ride took me 3:09. i've gotten slower!

this one, though, had a different route. same as last week, only i extended it out past page mill to bag the 50. i actually had to overshoot a little because there was an island on the road where i need to u-turn! heh.

i said this about my previous half century:

i zipped down ralston and took ECR home. I had to do some noodling around the 'hood to round it up to 50. i whistled for nearly the entire last 8 miles.

yeah, that explains the time. this time, just as i had 46 miles under my belt, i went up ralston. now, i can hit 35mph coming down ralston. i couldn't go over 6mph up it today without bursting my heart. but i was proud of myself as i relied on my training to make a strategy at hte bottom of ralston, where i really wanted to turn right (heading down) but forced myself to go up, at a pace which i hate (70 rpm) but which enabled me to make it.

another thing that made me happy was that i paced myself well, apparently, because i had plenty of juice left for a sprint through the obstacle course. just as i was emerging from it, up the last tiny incline which, at the end of 50 miles, can be a lot more painful than it ought to be at only about 2%, i got passed. "oh hells no," i said, popped it into ludicrous gear, pegged my heart at 175bpm, and beat the dude up the hill, legally thru the intersection, and then lost him on the downhill. yay. sure, i'm not out there to race, except when i am ;)

the weather was crud to start with, cloudy, overcast, chilly. i went out with a jacket and leg warmers. the weather probably helped me a lot. even though i much prefer sports in sunlight, i didn't get a solar beatdown for the first 1:30 of my ride. by the time i got to whisky hill and sand hill, i was ready to lose the extra coverings. i pulled over and began taking stuff off.

two roadies shouted as they went by, asking me if i needed help. i really love riding in this area. i thanked them and said no.

then it was time to put on more sunscreen, but i couldn't open the gorram little sunscreen container. argh! i struggled and struggled and probably added 5 minutes to my ride time before i could manage to open it. finally i succeeded, and got some sunscreen on me, especially on my burnt areas. then, as i descended alpine, the fookin sunscreen container jumped out of bento box, knocked me in the leg, and rolled out into the middle of the street. heh. it narrowly missed getting run over by a car.

(i'm really a little disappointed that i didn't beat my old 50 mile time. i guess it's some consolation that this route was probably more difficult.)

when i arrived home, some douchebag was smoking right by the entrance. i waited for him to finish, a car drove up, he came up to the car, i went up the stairs, and when i reached the door i had to unlock, i noticed a smoker's shadow behind me. he was back by the door.

great, a dope dealer in my building. i sure hope SMPD don't no-knock the wrong address, break down my door and shoot my dogs.

ride profile (altitude is in meters because that's the way the germans want me to use my software):

kevin smith says the WATCHMEN movie is good. really good. really really good.

he'd know. that's exciting! i guess.

the hill on alameda is not 20% grade, according to my atimidingus, it's 10%, followed by 14%, followed by 9%, followed by 11%. i forgot to pay attention to how long it is, but i'd WAG that it's 1.5 miles.

now, my altidingus is by design inaccurate, and the dude who claims 20% grade measured it with a calibrated weight on a string, which obeys the laws of gravity, which, once you leave the quantum level, are much more easily dealt with than the laws of pressure. so there you go. on the scale of "hills i enjoy climbing" it's about a -20.

i saw a dead baby deer. roadkill. :(

i almost became roadkill myself, twice, by aggressive left turners who really didn't want to give me any room no matter how close i got to the curb.

stinky air today, and i don't mean coming out of me.

finally, i paid attention to my odometer whilst going thru the obstacle course. the dufus on tuesday was inconvenienced by me for a maximum of .6 miles. wanker.

i just spilled part of my recovery drink, and i do not understand the physics that made such a spill possible.

i removed the cover from my shake-it-up cup, and drink spilled out of the lid! what?

vacuum action? bubbles spontaneously coalescing into liquid? swamp gas?

2 nights ago i was fortunate to sample some of the 18th century old potrero. at > 125 proof I expected it to be flaming, but it was inconceivably smooth and delicious. i also had some wild turkey rare breed, which was a full frontal attack of sugary mapley banana-y goodness. it was also much smoother than its proof would suggest.

so last night, with those two fresh in my mind, i had a bourbon roundup.

buffalo trace: the best of the bunch. sweet, maple, a suggestion of smoke.
michter's american: more rye character, grainy. subdued, subtle sweetness.
russel's reserve: not as good as i'd remembered. more grainy than the BT but less so than the michter's. hints of the rare breed, but not enough to satisfy.
old potrero: not a bourbon by any stretch, so maybe it's unfair to say that it blew away the other three. it blew away the other three.

rare breed seems to best all my bourbons, though i left out "eagle rare", which is BT's answer to rare breed (or is rare breed the answer to BT's eagle rare? dunno). of course, as with all tastings, set and setting play a huge role, and may have elevated the RB beyond its deservings, or the inverse.

still, old potrero sweeps them all, effortlessly.

a nice thorough lube job fixed sunday's shifting troubles. since this is occurrence #2 of this problem, with the same easy fix both times, i think the suggestion is clear: I should do this weekly.

while i was at it i wiped down some of the surfaces and now the bike is shiny again, kinda. shiny makes me faster. i need a v-tec sticker to go even more faster.

today i finally gave sawyer camp trail a try. i shudder to think of what it's like on a weekend. on a tuesday it's like a not-too-busy foster city trail, small hordes of people taking up too much room, although very rarely taking up both lanes. it didn't seem like it was all uphill, but it seemed downhill on the return trip, so i guess it was. i don't reckon i did the whole thing, i turned around at mile marker 5.5. tuesday is easy day, remember?

i didn't get honked at but i got flipped the bird. give, and so shall ye receive, toolshed. he really wanted me to see it, too, as he left it up a long time. the bird is expressive but not detailed, so i can only guess at his major malfunction. perhaps he didn't like the fact that he was too pansy to pass me on the left in the obstacle course, and was not aware that i have as much right to the road as he does. add to teh fact that i was moving at 27mph in a 25 zone, and he didn't have much to complain about. i wish there was a hand signal for "why don't you pull over and see how much pain i can deal out when i'm flowing with testosterone and endorphins?"

this is why i shouldn't ever join critical mass, i'd mangle a motorist. heh.

actually, it's be more like "why don't you pull over and we'll see if i can get these roadie shoes off in time to have the balance for fisticuffs?" probably not.

i've been having tons of trouble with the roaster ever since i replaced the drive shaft. it'd get caught on something internally, change direction, get caught again, and get stuck in an seizure of fast direction changing, which led to underagitation of the beans, and an uneven roast (or flaming beans).

well, reviewing someone else's version of the same roaster, i realized that that little white unknown thingy that fell out when i took it apart, which i never put back in, was a teflon washer. hm, what could that be useful for?

maybe... keeping the metal-on-metal junction of the bed+driveshaft from sticking?

aha!

i took it apart (ugh) put the washer in place, and am roasting now. it seems to be turning smoothly, not changing direction at all. still a little wobbly because of my poor drilling job, but waaaay better than before. hooray for using all parts!

i hate it. i see it everywhere, especially on teh internets, and it bugs me. i saw a particularly egregious and inexplicable example the other day at a mexican restaurant. i don't remember the sign exactly, so i paraphrase:

tacos
burritos
tortas
sopa's

argh! wtf?

look, asshole, if you're going to shout and scream at your kid/wife/goldfish at 11:30pm and 7:30am, the least you could do is have a tirade that lasts long enough to entertain rather than just interrupt.

HAVE SOME COURTESY PLEASE.

i seriously hosed dinner.

portions, cooking, cleanup, everything. prep was okay, but i was missing ingredients, had too much of everything, picked the wrong pan, and put things in in the wrong order.

at least i had decent beer.

the spirit guide at the whisky shop told us he likes to let his scotch "breathe" before drinking it, giving it 1 minute per year of its age.

i tried this with several scotches last night and it seemed to greatly reduce any harshness or alcohol burn. really improved the enjoyment in several cases.

yay america.

i had 2 applications of sunscreen today (took some with me) and apparently both missed a rather sizeable part of my left shoulder.

that's gonna be pretty painful. yay.

sad.
sad.
sad.

we give too many guns to all the wrong people.

i didnt think horseshoes could get more redneck.

the people at the noodle house were happy to see me (though they couldn't believe it was just me by myself). the girl at the fish waffle place said it was good to see me (and she's the second person with red hair dye i've seen less than 24 hours, so that's got to mean something, though i dunno what) and gave me 2 extra fish waffles.

gosh darnit, people like me! or at least, they like my business and my silly mandibles.

i took my camelbak today, plus a water bottle, for a grand total of about 124 oz of fluids.

i planned for a big long ride, and i got it. well, i did a little less than i wanted for today, however, i made decent time and executed solid technique. 47 miles in 3:15, which i guess comes out to not so great a speed. 2875 feet of climb. what's more important than all that, though, is that today's ride brings my weekly mileage to 88. yay me!

the route:

crystal springs up to 35 to bunker hill to that first road at the top of bunker hill, out to polhemus, down ralston trail, over Horsecrap Bridge, on to canada, chat with Bowdler and his family for a bit (he's lookin trim! it's because he's drinking beer again), canada to woodside to whiskey hill, up sand hill, around all the way to alpine, down alpine to junipero serra, out that road about 3 miles (shoulda done 4.5, doh), u-turn, santa cruz to alameda, alameda to ralston (i finally managed to make the proper turn when alameda becomes discontinuous, another yay me) up ralston for a final challenge (hey, it's got 6-8% grade! just what I want at the end of my ride!) and then down thru the obstacle course.

my new dingus has, in addition to its altimeter (actually, in concert with, i'm sure), a thermometer. so i can tell you that it was 92F as i clumb ralston, it was 85+ for most of the rest of the route. i suspected as much which is why i took my camelbak. it didn't matter much at the end of the ride, but i suspect that the extra 10lbs (plus the 2lbs from last night's beer excursion) dragged me down on the early hills. maybe it was just my imagination, but it felt like i was working harder for the Same Old Same Old.

i dont think anybody honked at me today. weird.

i kept up with some dudes on canada and paced them for whiskey hill, passed them on portola. they seemed to be in good shape, with good technique and all. i dont quite understand how i manage to pass some people. usually i pass people and then they pass me on the next hill, but that did not happen this time. that's the closest i came today to camaraderie.

my left upshifter is stuck-ish again. last time some lube on the derailler seemed to fix it, i hope this time it's the same deal. the upshot of this is that i forwent shifting to my granny in several places where i would have, because shifting out of it might actually topple my bike, with the amount of force it currently takes to upshift the big wheel. i got a better workout, i reckon.

man, this "pc sport" program that came with it is buggy as hell. portions of it are unlocalized from the german, it crashes all over the place, and random things (like "copy chart to clipboard") plain don't work. but at least i can rest easy in my knowledge that no scientologist's code has gone into it. whew!

or maybe i didn't, but no time to look now.

the beard style is not catfish as previously named. it's Mandibles.

i dreamed last night that i was in some sort of scrape, and i summoned the characters from Watchmen.

i pointed them out to whomever was with me at the time, calling off the names i could remember. "There's Nite Owl, there's Hooded Justice..."

Rorschach didn't come. Too bad, he would have been useful.

the olympics, particularly the opening ceremony, will always have a bit of a fond spot in my memory, due entirely to what i was up to during the 2004 opening ceremony: earning a nickname.

but the antics of the corporate ownership of the olympics, both NBC and the IOC, make me a little ill, and a lot unwilling to watch. having become just a tiny bit like an athlete myself, it saddens me that people who work as hard as olympic athletes are under the thumb of such a thoroughly corrupt group of people. i wonder if the olympics will ever be wrested back into the hands of the world's people?

according to the internets, nbc altered the order of the nations of the worlds' appearances in the opening ceremony -- to put the usa back at the end, to create a more suspenseful experience for their viewers. fine. but this coupled with the extreme effort, worldwide, to keep americans from viewing the olympics through any source other than nbc, is sickening.

here we are in the land of the free, and a chinese ceremony is not to be found anywhere on youtube, or anywhere else legally on the internet? i respect the efforts of the athletes and coaches, but i want no part of such a freedom-hating machine as the olympics.

bleh.

i'm off to participate in some athleticism of my own.

is the business card for Drake. also probably a bunch of loose cash. who knows what other treasures i will find when later today i search them?

if i lived in the city, i'd be very excited about cindy sheehan on the ballot.

sure, she's a bit of a nutjob, and i haven't read anything about what she'd do if elected, but i have a pretty good guess, and, just like ron paul, i perceive that she has no ulterior motives and will actually do what she says (er, what i imagine she says) she'll do.

of primary import, though, is that she'd get pelosi out of power. pelosi, who doesn't know what the word "representative" means, coming from a city that overwhelmingly supports impeachment of the president, yet suffers from a representative who has and uses the power to squash any impeachment attempts. also, some other crap, but i don't know much beyond that she seems rotten enough. i don't pay much attention to sf politics.

my time with friends last night, my past and upcoming sailing trips, and the fact that i found that song that was bugging me have all elevated my mood and my outlook for humanity. also, i'm very much not hungover. good change is coming, i think.

yesterday evening, after taking Spu to the Whisky Shop in sf (where I pressured him into a second bottle, heh) we navigated streets and public transit to get to The Toronado for its 21st birthday. I was pleased with myself when after exiting MUNI, I knew the route to the Toronado. I'm really getting to know my way around sf, as long as you ask me how to get to the Toronado.

We arrived and ordered some beers. Tattoo was in a splendidly good mood, I've never seen him so non-angry. I've got a kind of fearful awe of the guy, based on his anger when customers aren't as fast with their cash as he is with his beer, so I had a 20 ready before I even ordered the 3 beers. When he barked out the price I held out the 20 only to discover it was a 1. I must have had a pretty funny look on my face, he nearly laughed as I fumbled to find a real 20.

The Captain was supposed to meet us there, but he'd called to say he'd be late, on account of he was stuck in Berkeley at a post-race festivity. But, he'd said, some friends of his/acquaintances of mine were in the back room. So we went into the back room and there were some of The Usual Suspects, beer (and even sailing, sometimes) pals of the Captain's. We sat down and started talking.

The beer was excellent, by the way. I've had a disappointing trip before to the Toronado, where the beer was not as nice as I'd hoped for. Not so last night.

While talking, I looked up and saw a familiar face. It was the brewer from drake's, who'd led us on a tour. at the time I said I thought I recognized him from... where else... the Toronado! He said he remembered me, and I asked if it was because of the beard. No, he just remembered me. Score!

We got to talking about things, and he mentioned that he had a CS degree from Cal Poly! Hey! Me too! He graduated the year I started, but we talked about profs. He says I really ought to get a brewing science degree. He doesn't use his CS skills anymore, but sounded like he actually had some at one point, none of the poser crap I'm used to.

Presently I ran out of beer, and pointing this fact out to brewer, I left to get more. After a while, the Captain showed up and that was cool. More stories, laughs, and good times. I didn't get to share in them all, because Drake pulled me into a complicated game of "washoes", which is like horseshoes, played with big washers. I didn't have much beginner's luck. We played against some Toronado employees and a brewer from North Coast Brewing, and some guy who described himself as an asshole but seemed like a brewer. During our second game, the friends of friends left, and after the game, I sat back down with the Captain and Spu.

A drunk whom the Captain had run into before came over and auditioned his mad beatboxing skills for us. Actually he wasn't bad. He was desperate to find out our answer to the following question, and polled most people in the room: "beer, wine, meat, cheese. pick two." beer and meat for me and the captain, some losers said beer and wine. bah!

the back room closed and we were ushered out into a room with a TV, where we caught Phelps winning his first Olympic race, by a huge margin. someone tried to start up a USA chant, possibly even non-ironically, but it didn't catch.

Anyhow, what made the evening so great is that I'm becoming part of a community. I can show up at an event and know people with whom I did not coordinate. Even the bouncer seems to be getting to know me.

It makes me a afraid to rid myself of the beard, because even though Drake denies it, it's certainly a memory jogger.

I had to drive us all home and then bike the next day (today!) so I didn't overindulge, which was also nice for a change. I tried some excellent beers, most of them limited special editions, and Drake bought me a Blind Pig (which I'd been meaning to try).

finally found the song that's been tormenting me with its absence.

it's "children", not "gamemaster". tho "gamemaster" is kinda cool, too.

you'd recognize it as "random trance/dance hit from the 90s #873".

i stopped running some months ago to focus on biking. but my bike training schedule calls for no exercise friday or saturday. that's boring. i hiked last week but pulled a muscle and besides that, i don't like being in shade, nor do i like poison oak, both of which are present in copious amounts on any bay area trail, barring east bay trails, which make up for their lack of shade with excess poison oak. nuts to that.

inspired by dean's book and jazzed by the running of a coworker, i went for an easy run today. how do i know it was easy? that's where it gets complicated.

i have a gps watch that has no HRM. i have my bike computer, and it has a HRM, a "walk" mode, an altimeter, but no way to tell how far i've gone when off my bike. now, my old running route isn't easy, the first mile is uphill, the second is downhill, which i hate, and after that it's copious amounts of improvisational flats. i figured i'd rather have my HRM than my barely functional GPS, so i had to stick to my old route to gauge my pace -- i know the mile marks there.

all this can be solved for a mere 400 clams if i decide to run more. heh. just what i need, another computerized HRM training device.

anyhow, according to my altimeter i ascended 260 feet. whoopie.

is bernie mac dead or not?

nobody knows!

film at 11!

their attempts to spook me and make me feel "gothic" amuse me greatly.

har de har de har!! dr. todt and his filthy mask! oooooo!

because my new dingus has an altimeter, i can now say that today's "flat but long" training ride was 28 miles with 1800 feet of climb. so much for flat. it's not possible here.

this was my first weekday trip to woodside. only added about 8 miles to my ride, but it's still my longest weekday trip, and not all that much shorter than my weekend ride. the distance will add up nicely.

as i was coming down to the obstacle course, enjoying my cool down, a cyclist zoomed past me, and i thought i was spinning along at a pretty nice pace. argh! i cranked myself back up and sprinted to catch up. i never caught or passed him, but i did keep pace with him. i think the route through the obstacle course has now become sense memory, because i didn't consciously navigate, but i also didn't hit anything. my turns were nice and tight and i didn't lose a lot of speed. i maintained a cadence above 110 for about 1 to 2 miles, even up that little tiny hill to alameda, where i probably could have caught him if he hadn't turned on to alameda.

a great end to a nice ride.

youtube.

the blog is also a good read, particularly the last 2 paras here.

i am reading dean karnazes' book.

it is gripping. what a story.

at the liquor store:

1) proceed to scotch section
2) locate bruichladdich subsection
3) select a bruichladdich
4) SUCCESS.

at the bar:
1) locate bartender
2) order a bruchladdich
3a) bartender: "a what?" you: "wtf stfu hand"
3b) bartender: "sorry, we're out" you: "nuts, back later"
3c) bartender: "here you go" you: "rock."
3d) bartender: "which one" you: SUCCESS.

my new cyclocomputer arrived yesterday. it lacks one major feature over the polar: usability. 5 small, mysteriously marked buttons, really confusing menus, odd displays, and small buttons. it has two great features that the polar lacked: an altimeter, and it works (for now).

had to re-sync the speed sensor, but that may have been my fault (it might have been too far from the magnet).

the altimeter was fun, but not terribly accurate, i'm sure. i got to see the grades of various hills (supposedly 35 from 92 to bunker hill is 3%. uh-huh). either i'm faster, the polar was an underestimator, or the new one is an overestimator of speed. dunno. anyhow, it seems to have worked, i got the data i usually get, and now, since i got the premium model, i will download the data (if i kajiggered the buttons right) into some software which has xml export. hooray.

but that's not the exciting part. i'm still reading about techniques and stuff. i thought previously that i had learned to countersteer. technically, i was always countersteering. last week i put some thought/effort into it and really leaned while steering in a line, but this week, i did it right. i pushed hard on inside drop and holy crap did i make a fast/tight turn! I had a LOL moment on the bridge near sawyer camp as i did it right. 25 mph turns right on the line! yeah!

anyhow, it was very exciting.

It's Frobuary 1, YOMHC 0x31!

Got a bare-metal buzz today (mohawk buzz, that is, of course) and went in to work, only to find that there was an "all hands" meeting in which i was being awarded an award. i came to the meeting at the emailed request of my manager and got to stand in front of the company with my freshly cut mohawk and neatly braided beard, to receive a gift certificate from a high level manager who had absolutely no idea who i am.