September 2008 Archives

hellboy

blu-ray

hdtv

wow.

the "tear shit up" theme from 28 days/weeks later is more or less the same song as the theme from showtime's "masters of horror" series!

"We get up early, to beat the crowds," the shirt reads, followed by "2008 DNC." The words flank a grinning police officer holding a baton and wearing a hat with a crossed-out number "68," presumably making reference to activist organization Recreate 68, which staged several anti-war demonstrations during the convention.

Classy! I thought, reading the headline, it was a joke shirt made by protestors. Nope. It's a commemorative shirt made by the police so they can remember the swell time they had at the DNC, where they got to use all those cool outfits and weapons they'd been stockpiling.

fuck you, pirates.

bad, meet even worse.

tonight, i watched "oldboy" on blu-ray. excellent, excellent film (been on my to-get list for ages, even tho i saw it at least twice in theaters). this is the second film i've watched in blu-ray, and the third film i've watched on the new LCD tv.

which is to say, tonight i FFWed to all the good parts of conan the barbarian. not the real CtB, sadly, but the "director's cut", since that edition has anamorphic widescreen, which is a plus now, even though it has a re-edited ending and a ridiculous speech by conan himself. anyhow, it looked absolutely unbelievably great.

there's a line in futurama where fry is urged to go outside and see the world, and he says he's busy watching tv, and it's not just tv but HD tv which is better resolution than real life. he's not joking. having watched 3 films now, i can say: hdtv has a "look", which is the look of BBC documentaries. hyperreal and bright. maybe it's just my set. it will take some getting used to.

anyhow, the name of the fish waffle place is "sweet breams". i had to look up on the internets to find what a "bream" is. answer: a type of fish.

there's a scene in "oldboy" where the main character learns about breams. i had no reason to care about that the first 2 times i saw it, but considering i'd been for fish waffles today, and then watched a movie that mention breams, i reckon my mind was a little bit blown. not much.

on the subject of fish waffles, the owner asked me if i thought the place was "too cute". apparently i'm the only old guy who ever comes in there without being dragged by a young asian girlfriend. well, she didn't say that. but i knew what she was getting at.

the place is not too cute, i dig the ambience. they're going to get video games in there soon, maybe. now why did i go and buy myself a ps3? first i bought myself a soft-serve machine and they went and got soft-serve. then i got a ps3 and they'll have one soon. what idea will they steal from me next?

i heard about this the other day. it's been my impression (possibly incorrect) that the ukranians, much like the russians, are not people that you'd want to push around. in my humble opinion, the ukranians should confirm this impression; rescue the crew with commandos, sail their boat off the coast, and then send the pirates, and the people who fund and harbor them, straight and spectacularly to davey jones' locker.

i like dorks who dress up and talk like buccaneers. the real pirates, be they somali or indonesian or otherwise, piss me the hell off and should be eradicated, much like the buccaneers were.

since i switched my weekday rides from length to hills, my weight loss has accelerated from 1lbs/wk to 2lbs/wk.

now, since back off man, i'm a scientist, i know that this is not only correlation, but even weak correlation. i've made many other changes, like running longer and harder, and probably even eating less, and certainly drinking less beer.

but it is an interesting bit of data.

also, my climbing has leveled up. that is, rock climbing. there was a 5.10c in the gym which i didn't make last week. i had gone on it thinking it was a 5.10a, and when i came off i was mad at the rating because it was so clearly harder than a 10a. then i looked closer and found it was a c. heh. anyhow, i climbed it with (imho) grace (in my scoring system for climbing, there's no hang dogging, and climbs that are not climbed gracefully aren't really climbed), and i also did a really nice 5.10d on tuesday -- also with a fair amount of grace. the grace thing is a funny measure, i know. and since i have no idea how i look when i'm climbing, and i don't ask but rarely, i measure it on whether i feel graceful on the climb, like a well-trained dancer or a monkey, or whether i feel like an elephant trying to climb up a tree.

the climbing, i'm sure, is a combination of accumulated technique and body positioning combined with a falling weight:strength ratio (that is, assuming my strength is holding relatively steady). in fact, my grip strength is mightier than ever -- i've retained the deadlifting grip without tiring myself out all the time by actually deadlifting.

man i need to get back to deadlifting.

55mi, 4:00:00, 4440 feet of climb. the route: crystal springs to polhemus to ralston trail to canada to woodside to king's mountain road to skyline to woodside to portola to alpine to arastradero to foothill to santa cruz to flea street to home.

i passed three people on my ascent of KMR, though technically two of them were on the same bike. heh. i dunno if i went any faster than my first ride on KMR, but I went more "assertively", if you know what i mean. at least, until the last mile. still, i rolled onto skyline at 11mph, so i finished strong.

just as i got to the climby part at the bottom, i shifted into my granny gear, and... dropped the chain. fack! the chain was off the chainring. that confirmed my weeklong suspicion that there was something wrong with the front derailler (probably related to the lumps i've taken in the OC and that awful pavement segment up on polhemus+92), and shattered my faith in the little plastic dingus that is designed to prevent exactly what happened to me.

now, the nice thing about this kind of bike failure is that a monkey with a concussion could figure out how to fix it in under a minute. it's not the sort of repair that requires extensive research or experience. even a republican candidate for the white house could probably figure out on the spot how to fix it. still, it takes a special kind of finesse, the kind i don't have, to fix it without getting your hands, and thus, your brand spankin new handlebar tape all gunked up. alas, poor handlebar tape, we hardly knew ye.

fully 100% of the people that passed me during those two minutes of concussed-monkey-level repairs offered assistance, even the pair on the tandem. have i mentioned i love cycling in the bay area?

i sugared myself wisely this time and did not bonk. as i reached the top of KMR, i realized that a clever cyclist, instead of sallying forth with 2 full bottles of water and 2 full bottles of sports drink, would sally forth with 1 full bottle of sports drink, 1 full bottle of water, one empty bottle, and one bottle with a dose of sports drink powder but no water. then, upon reaching skyline and woodside, the clever cyclist would fill the empty bottles. this point was reinforced as i passed the cushy rest stop on arastradero. my route has two known public fountains and here i was hauling 10 lbs of water the whole way. whelp, call it a training ride with extra overload.

speaking of overload, as of thursday, flea street from ralston to crystal springs is no longer an unknown quantity. i decided to end my ride with it, instead of say, ralston + the OC. skipping the OC is quite attractive to me, but it came at the cost of a 13% hill followed by a longer 10%, a zip downhill, and a 9% hill to finish the ride. not necessarily as fun as zipping through the obstacle course (and mangling my components, perhaps), but you know? i think i like riding, and though i hate the phrase, it really is "all good".

bleh.

i finished reading "The Art of Cycling", a great book with some boring bits in the middle. In the final chapter, the author says:

"[People] want to know, "Don't you get tired of it?"

The answer is no. More precisely, the answer is hell no."

I love riding my bike, i enjoy fixing it, and even though my repairs are perhaps substandard (my handlebar tape kinda sucks -- it's not too comfy in the drops now that i have no gel there, and it's already come unwrapped in parts) they are, after all, mine.

nothing says, "i am a retard" quite so poignantly as a "cowboy up" bumper sticker on your shiny new pickup truck.

watched the debates last night (yay, digital HD). i felt a little out of place, i wasn't wearing any bracelets at all.

nobody had anything useful to say about what would be cut after the bailout. it would have been nice for either of the candidates to say, "well, i just can't say right now. the situation will surely be different than it is now when i take office."

the Captain joined us, and suggested that instead of saying "rogue states," obama should say "maverick states". brilliant!

mccain sure is well traveled. got that.

so i had to look up what a jack russel terrier is.

doesn't look too threatening to me, but perhaps if i were wearing body armor and armed with military weaponry, i'd think differently.

Haltom City police Sgt. Terry Stayer said Friday that a preliminary report on the incident showed that the animal was aggressive.

uh-huh. aggressive enough to... pee on your boots? scratch your ankle? put a tear in your BDUs? what exactly?

i finally got around to ricing up my bike with some new handlebar wrap. i removed the gel-goo inserts that were there (and possibly the cause of the previous wraps' coming undone). so, they'll probably come off the first time i ride on them, and until they do, they'll probably be uncomfortable as can be.

but until then, the bike sure looks faster!

poppy beer.

new short route today, barely even 12 miles: parrot, ralston, fleas. parrot is still hard but no longer scary. i don't "stumble" like i used to. still not fast, still drop my cadence to 55 at one spot. but no longer intimidated by it.

i've never before taken fleas from ralston. had to run the left turn signal, which is also a first for me. it skipped me, nobody was coming into the left turn lane, and there was no motion sensor. sigh.

flea street is hard in both directions. but it's also no longer scary. a nice little 13%, some 7%, and then a 10% and you're done. i haven't done fleas from hillsdale home in ages, that has a nice little 8% at the end of it which used to de-bike me. ha!

as i pedaled up polhemus' 7% 1/4mi stretch, i wondered how i managed 5 miles of 7% just 2 days ago -- i'm not sure. the body is funny; some days it's no problem to climb, others, it's tough. today was kind of tough.

apparently, last time i wore my amphipod water bottle belt, i was a little bit thinner.

yoinks.

3 hours, that is. 43 miles of a planned, oh, 12. i got off canada and rode up king's mountain road. whereas i've been doing lots of short, steep hills, KMR is long (>5mi) and gradually steep (7-8% most of the way, with 11% bits). i recognized it immediately as I got on it: early on this year, after i'd decided that driving to canada and going out-and-back was too easy (ha!) i went looking around woodside. i drove all the way up to huddart park and decided i'd have to be insane to try to climb KMR.

well, it turns out that huddart is actually where it stops being easy. someone was kind enough to put "2 mi to top" and "1 mi to top" markers on the road. after "1 mi to top" the grade went up a little. at about .25 mi to the top i saw another cyclist -- he passed me at twice my speed, which was a sad 5-7mph. still, for most of the way, i stayed aerobic, which is good -- used to be i couldn't climb 100m of 7%, in any gear, without going anaerobic.

while climbing, i thought to myself that while i have climbed hills much steeper, they were all measured in yards, not miles. heh.

at the top, i took a left on skyline, thinking i'd ride to page mill, or maybe alpine, assuming one of those intersected skyline. i rode and rode for what seemed like quite a ways, up what then seemed like a boring incline, but was 5% at least. then, it went the other way. i had a good 5-10 minutes of 30mph descent through twisty roads.

WHEE.

and then, when i got to the way out, my mind was blown. it was woodside! i'd thought woodside was far behind me, but i guess KMR veers way off to the N and woodside goes a bit S. in any case, i gained an important piece of roadie knowledge from the shopkeep at the grocery there: the location of a water fountain. i asked if he could fill my bottle (having not brought enough water, not planning to go so far) and he told me there was a fountain outside. the water left an icky taste in my mouth but not as icky as the taste of defeat (thought of that somewhere around mile 35).

speaking of mile 35, i bonked a bit early today, and it sucked. that's how it goes. i pushed through and finished strong. total climb today: 3550 feet. time: slow.

anyhow, next time there's a local century i care to join, and it goes up KMR, i'll know what to expect. i'll expect to get passed by a whole bunch of people in webcor jerseys. but i'll make it to the top ;)

i forgot about the girl i raced with. she didn't know it was a race. she "on your left"ed me on sand hill, and she was going on to foothill/junipero serra, it turned out. so i didn't push for the stoplight, she did, and so she got a nice fat head start. she wore an "ironman" jersey, so i figured she must be a tough guy (oddly, she pedaled hard down sand hill, while i coasted at the same speed. some kinda physics lesson to be learned there, which i think has to do with my greater ass, i mean mass, giving me a lot more potential energy up top of the hill). the race ended in a draw as i was unable to catch her before the stoplight at the bottom of that footpath by stanford. curses! the race would have gone on past the light had it been green.

also, my butt hurt pretty much the whole way. too much riding or something. beh.

also, i really enjoyed arastradero, it was scenic and all, and had a really nice rest stop which i did not use. but, unfortunately, it smelled like horse pee pretty much the whole way.

speaking of horse pee, i saw two horses on horseshit bridge. Bowdler says horses aren't allowed there and I believe him. Fucking hippies! they waved me past, while i was on the bridge, like i was going to... uh... i have no idea what. yeah dudes, i'm coming past. thanks.

finally, watching all the people on the Tour, i Get It. It's a ride, not a race.

I didn't really get that before. What's the point of riding 100 miles if you're not going to be timed like in a marathon? The point is to get your friends and families out in the nice weather, on a scenic stretch of roads, on bicycles. It's to evangelize this great sport and bring more people to it. The point is that hopefully the people you manage to convince to ride (not race) with you will Get It too and start riding (or racing!) on their own.

That's what pissed me off so much about the honker on canada. The girls he honked at were clearly not "seasoned roadies", but amateurs out for the fun of the ride, probably not even regular canada riders. and because some douchebag with a horn doesn't like cyclists, he had to try to spoil the experience for them.

Looking at the Tour For Woodside, I basically did the half century route, I guess. The century would have killed me, with 8600 feet of climb. Reading the route blurbs, it's clear I need to start climbing King's Mountain Road, which I guess I already knew is a local roadie climb. It seems local bike events will feature it. I should learn to love it!

with some downsides. i was dozing through the obstacle course and hit the great granddaddy of potholes. fack. no obvious damage, but that's the second time i've hit it and it's not good.

apparently, today is the "Tour For Woodside". There were hundreds of people participating in what, to me, appeared to be an incredible number of routes. I was dying to pull up to someone and ask them if they were Touring For Woodside because it had run out of tax dollars, but I restrained myself.

At the corner of woodside and canada, there was a douchebag standing in the crosswalk shouting at cyclists to "honor the stopsign". i laughed at him. as always I was well past him by the time I thought of a biting retort.

coming down sandhill some jerks failed to observe etiquette. i was stopped for a red light, and they pulled in ahead of me. now, i've only figured out by watching that you're not supposed to do that. that was the first time i've seen it happen. so i let them have a nice head start off the light, up the hill, and once they got out of their saddles, i showed them how to climb a hill.

i did a similar thing to an "on your left"-er. now there's nothing at all wrong with "on your left"-ing, in fact, it's a courtesy. but it always wakes me up out of my stupor and challenges me to keep up, draft, or pass. i keep on saying it but i keep on thinking it: my hill training is making me stronger on hills. i am still easily blown away, but if i get "on your left"-ed right before a hill, i'll frequently be the one to the top first, especially if it's a hill that i know.

speaking of hills i know, i decided to explore a little today. i took alpine up from santa cruz to portola, instead of my usual route of the other way around. i had been fearing alpine all week because of how fast i descend -- it must be steep, right? wrong! it's super easy, way way easier than the opposite route. as i rolled easily to the top, i was cheered on by some girl who thought i was with the Tour. heh.

then, on the final descent just before whisky hill, i glanced at my speedometer and saw i was moving 38.5! Holy crap! A record! And I wasn't even in an aero position, and i was coasting. Wow.

So I decided to take Junipero Serra out and also explore Arastradero. I did. After I got to the end of it (it was also plenty easy, with only one memorable hill, which I will get to in a moment. if you watched me you'd think it was tough, but I was pretty beat this morning, and vowed to have an easy ride. i failed, as usual.) i went back up alpine for another lap. this time i got down in the drops and pedaled down the fast spot, but i only got to 39. huh.

now, about that hill. it's a little steep (though nothing to worry about) and i was huffing-and-puffing my way up it, and this woman, whom i had seen wandering around lost in her car on the lower part of arastradero, honks at me from behind then pulls up in front of me, across my path, and pulls over. it was obvious she was going to ask me for directions.

now, the first thing that struck me was that here i was climbing a hill, and she decides that she's so jeekee important that i'm going to hit "pause" on my effort-generator, pull over in the middle of a hill, and tell her that i have no fucking clue where her rich-ass friend lives and no, this isn't Milpitas.

She could have, had she given half a thought to what I was doing, pulled over another 30 feet up at the top of the hill. my vehicle is human powered, and my gas is, so to speak, my ass. i felt slightly bad as i ignored her "scoos me!" and pedaled on up past her.

now if you think that's rude of me, you may be right. maybe i am rude on the bike, but i think overall my karma is at least neutral. just an hour prior i pulled over and gave directions to two cyclists who wanted to know where alpine ended up. this was before i'd gone up it yet, and i told them (heh) it was "uphill all the way", which, geographically speaking, is strictly true. but it is the sort of climb to sneeze at.

i also offered assistance to two cyclists, one of whom actually needed it but was already well taken care of by the SAG van. i offered anyhow, because it's now my policy.

I also shook my fist angrily at a motorist, in sympathy for some newb-bikers (on the Tour) who were the victim of said motorist's entirely unjustified (seriously, they were both in the bike lane, wtf?) angry honking. screw you, jerkwad, it's people like you that keep people away from the sport.

on canada, i saw a group of people walking with a nice golden retriever. i looked back and saw that in his mouth, his jaws stretched to their limit, he held an enormous pine cone. he sure looked happy but i dunno how he'll be able to open his mouth wider to drop it.

i saw a "sheriff" at a stop sign, trying to entice cyclists to stop by offering them cups of dubious liquid. i think the guy standing next to him was the same jerkoff that shouted at the canada/woodside intersection. can't be sure, though.

weather included plenty of strong crosswinds, bleh.

she inquired about my beards.

i told her the full story. and then i bought a ton of cheese.

down 18lbs since may. dunno how far i'm going this time, but surely to 185 at least.

i was having a discussion yesterday with Curly and Vic. Curly recently lost over 40 pounds, Vic is down some 50 or 60 from his high. I explained to both of them that I'd lost about 40 lbs before, and then, I did it two pounds a week with lots of exercise and lots and lots of dietary restriction. I dunno whether I count as a yo-yo dieter, since this is my second big weight loss push in 10 years. Maybe I count. I gained weight in the pursuit of an athletic goal, which I guess is somewhat better than gaining weight through sloth and video gaming (/me looks around. oh, nuts.).

In any case, next time I do a deadlift cycle, I'm doing it without significant fat gain. There are plenty of deadlifters with low body fat. But back to my story.

I'm losing weight this time around with lots and lots of exercise, and very little dietary restriction. The beer I've cut back on these last couple months, but the spirits intake has increased. Two days ago I had carnitas for every meal, and I'm eating plenty of crap all the time. That's the point: I've got a diet that is sustainable and an exercise basket that I truly enjoy, from which to pick workouts that burn more calories than they induce in hunger (unlike, sadly, deadlifts).

So here's to the plan. Whoopie.

1 - forgot to open window last night, having closed it for asshat smoker. woke up to smell of dank apartment. this place doesn't smell good when it's closed up.

2 - dreamt of parents' dog, whom i will see in a week or two. might have been an accurate vision.

3 - it's 7am. where the hell is my sunlight? what is this crap?

arrrr, mateys. in search of the runner's booty, today my fleet of double masted sauconys sailed afar upon the high seas of hillsborough pavement; away upon the hilltops and beyond, to the edge of the known world and farther still. no distant shore awaited me, yar, avast, and dubloons. nay, though i ran for no less than 1 houaaaar and a harrrrrrf, i saw no end to my jourrrney.

water, everywhere, and not a drop of it to drink, nor rum, nor even tasty whisky. i run, i do, to atone for the sins of the week, be they grog, or booty, or carnitas, of which i had much this week, arrr. though me peg leg had its timbers shivered today, yar, i feel right ready to head into work for a good bit of pillage.

yarrr!!

as i was finishing breakfast this morning i heard someone fiddling with a key in my door. i wondered if hops had come home early. i got up, looked through the peephole, weighted against the door to prevent any but the strongest of giriveks from opening it as i peeped, and saw a confused looking chinese man with a yellow tape measure.

deciding that he was no threat, i opened the door and said "howdy". he froze in surprise, confusion, and possibly fright that i had no pants on.

now, you probably thing i mean "froze" like for an instant. i don't: he remained frozen for at least 10 seconds, staring, wide-eyed, before he said, "this is supposed to be unoccupied."

"nope," i said. "think you've got the wrong place".

he kind of nodded and left.

heh.

i've never encountered more stinky trucks on a ride, ever. as i was coming up the arse end of bunker hill i thought "finally, a hill with no stinky trucks." then i thought that i should not think such things, but i thought i was in the clear and thought it anyways. well, the joke was on me. right at the top, a sewer sucker. ugh.

and then some stinky-ass suburban on my final incline to flea street. double ugh, this one was just some asshole, not even a construction truck.

lately, instead of counting sheep to get to sleep, i visualize pedaling in circles. not only does it help me sleep, it helps me pedal. last night i also tried thinking up names for the route that i imagined last week. i came up with: Hill-U Kill-U.

well, today i wasn't ready for Hill-U Kill-U, most probably because last night I drove up hillsdale to refresh my memory of its steepness. since it's a prominent climb in Hill-U Kill-U, i decided to wait until i'm more ready.

today on my ride, I decided its name was Hill O'Ridely. the ride is fractal: it is nasty, brutish, and short, as are each of its climbs (with the exception of ralston). i have no idea if bill-O is short.

anyhow, the route: up crystal springs to flea street, up parrot, down de anza to hillsdale, down hillsdale, up flea street, up ralston, down ralston trail, over horseshit bridge, up the arse end of bunker hill, and home. 2222 feet of climb, 17 miles.

surprisingly, ralston was easy! i guess 8% doesn't seem like much of a climb after a bunch of 15%-ers, or maybe it was because i hadn't already racked up 2000 feet of climb and 45 miles. now, i suppose i didn't push too hard on any of them, and kept myself mostly aerobic. still working on my training goals, whatever they are. importantly: i had fun. also: i didn't get killed.

THE DECISIONATOR HAS CHOSEN
ps3

while dining on fish waffles the other day, i discovered in a gaming mag that "fallout 3" is coming soon.

fallout 2 is the second best game ever made, after starcon2, of course, so i'm excited.

excited enough that i'm pretty sure tomorrow morning i'm ordering a ps3 in preparation. also, ps3 = more rachet and clank.

1) jeans. i fit in them again. i'm down to pre-deadlift-push waist size. oddly, i'm way heavier than when i last wore these jeans. must be all the added beard weight.

2) muse: hullabaloo. i really really enjoyed this. muse is great.

3) lagavulin. chefjef asked me: do you like lagavulin? i said: lemme find out. poured 2 glasses and though i still think it's too thin-bodied for an islay, it has a tantalizing aftertaste: smoke without the sweetness of a smokey bruichladdich, and pure smoke without the bandaids and garbage of laphroaig.

It happens pretty regularly, go through and we should be able to ask the Arilou what the hell they have been doing to Earth all this time.

pre-ride. the shiny stuff all over me is the new magic sunscreen that lasts 8 hours at a time. i can say for sure that it evidently lasts at least 4 hours and 45 minutes. i just hope the cure isn't worse than the disease!

soft serve machine was broken at the fish waffle place, what a letdown after 71 miles of promising myself ice cream. argh!

we did get the batsu, tho, which is a game-like way to eat your fish waffles. they come in a jumble with a wasabi filled fish waffle mixed in. hops bit into it and it brought tears to her eyes. choked me up good, too. heh. icky icky icky. but fun.

first, ride a 50 mile route that ends 20 miles from home. then, ride home.

whelp, i got it right in theory, unfortunately, when i hit my 3-miles-from-home marker, i was at less than 67 miles. even worse, i was at some fractional mileage and i was way too tired to do even simple math. even much more worse, i was right at the entrance to sawyer camp trail. so i did 2 or 3 roundtrip miles there, which on a weekend sucks more than i can describe, and ended up with 71 miles, 4:45, with 3800 feet of climb. i continued the 3 weeks tradition of babying myself on the weekend and did not take ralston. i had fewer stops, too, because we got this magic sunscreen yesterday that's spf 40+ and lasts 8 hours. i'll tell you tomorrow if it works.

the weather was not my favorite, but it was favorable. chilly as could be in the morning, that is, the first 20 miles, reaching up to tweak 80's nose late in the afternoon, but staying "nice" the whole time. i kept my ego in check for the most part and managed not to bonk, die, or otherwise inconvenience myself greatly on the ride. my HR stayed below 160 the whole time, and only topped 155 a couple times. mostly i aimed to stay below 135, and i did. i'm faster at 135 than i was a month ago. what's that? training you say? indeed.

speaking of which, i've settled into a more traditional training breakdown of shortish hill fartlek on the weekdays and a long-ass ride on the weekend. it seems to be the way to go.

now, fish waffles. with soft serve! lots and lots of soft serve. lots.

it's frobuary 1, YOMHC 0x32!

not really a mohawk anymore except technically. if i wanted to be a jackass i could do it up all 70's punk style, but i missed the 70s without missing them, if you know what i mean, so i have no urge to embarrass myself thusly.

instead i embarrass myself by combing it all over to the side, looking like either hitler or gary oldman in the fifth element.

of course, i couldn't be mistaken for either of them with the 5 inches of braided beards sprouting from the sides of my chin. that's how i make sure people don't think i'm hitler returned.

the Captain has let it be known, though not in so many words, that i am carrying the weight of all of beardsdom upon my, er, chin. taking one for the team, as it were, growing the beards that dudes everywhere wished they had the life circumstances to allow them to grow.

they do have expiration dates, tho. the hairdo, on the other hand, is a keeper.

not even a second wind. awful, cold, overcast sf weather.

it curled up my magic underpants and chafed my leg. ouch.

yesterday i was talking with Curly. He came excitedly to my cube to tell me that he'd attained, after 6+ months of being a runner, a "runner's high".

as far as i can tell, i get a "runner's high" pretty much every time i go for a run, which is why i come write the gushingly enthusastic blog posts. i posited that perhaps what i experience is not a runner's high, but more of an intermediary runner's middle, and asked him to describe his experience. what he described was a state of euphoria followed immediately by a burst of energy. yup, that's what i get. pretty much every run.

i told him as much, and admitted that there's no equivalent that i know of for biking. sure, biking is more fun overall, and i get a second wind around mile 40 on my 60 mile route (preceded by a bonk on mile 30!), but i never quite get the runner's high. or so i thought.

today i did probably my hardest route ever, though not necessarily my hardest ride: i climbed parrot, then zipped down de anza, then a tiny bit of hillsdale (up) before taking de anza back, to bunker hill, to a long, gentle climb to san mateo's golf course. hilariously at the time, while the long gentle climb took about 10-30 minutes, the reverse course, at 35mph, took about 2 (exciting) minutes.

it was at about this time that i began to, well.. dissociate. not exactly an out of body experience, not exactly a runner's high. but definitely something new and interesting. riding a bike is potentially much more hazardous than running, because road hazards inflict more damage, so i wasn't "zoned out". the opposite, in fact; i was focused entirely on the ride. unlike the runner's high, it was not accompanied by a burst of energy.

riding, i came up with a route i'd like to try sometime soon, it being the most hellaciously hilly 20-or-so miler i can locally imagine:

parrot to de anza, quick roll to bunker hill, up bunker hill to the cross street at the top, nice flat to a roll down to polhemus, polhemus up to ralston, down ralston, up crystal springs (never taken this route) to hillsdale, up hillsdale (never done this either), up de anza, and then reverse parrot if i'm in the mood for more pain, or roll down thru the obstacle course. maybe next thursday. yow.

to prove to myself my assertion that running hills is easier than biking them, i ran parrot today, same route i rode yesterday. it's about 3.5 miles up -- the .5 can be dropped when biking, but when running, i count it! i took polhemus/crystal springs back down, including the obstacle course. i gotta say the OC is much, much worse on foot than on a bike. i spent much time running on the yellow line simply because there was no other place i could be where i could see oncoming traffic, or oncoming traffic could see me. there's no shoulder, no bike lane, blind curves over narrow bridges. but, it's a fun road to run.

i also ran toe/midfoot instead of heel. it made a huge difference, much more comfortable. dean told me to do it, so i did.

the verdict: for any given hill, especially a 20%-er, i'd much rather run it than bike it. on the other hand, for any given flat/downhill, i'd much rather have my bike. on the whole, for any given route, i'd prefer a bike -- because then i can easily double the route! i missed going really long distance today, though i did manage at least 7.5 miles, possibly as many as 9.

my tummy was off, way off. it still is. too much whiskey and not enough chilli last night, i think. or something.

anyhow, i was tired. i did a little extra warmup before heading up parrot. parrot kicked me in the gut, hard, several times. but i pushed on. i learned a valuable lesson: standing or sitting, i'm not going to be able to change to an easier gear while going 4mph up a 20% grade. that's just all there is to it. i can dishonor myself and walk up, or do little circles on the road to shift gears, or just grind the fuck outta my knees, but i'm not able to shift. sure, i can move the chain around a little and it'll make awful noises and maybe chuck my derailler off, but it's not going to shift.

so next time i'll choose my gear wiselier, which is really pretty difficult. i want a high-ish gear to get a standing start, but then i want to downshift to spin at the cadence i've kicked into. that works very well for me on 6-13% grades. maybe i'm just doing it wrong. i dunno, more experimentation is needed.

just as i was coming up ralston trail, which i'd planned to do in a whole bigger chainring than usual, a maintenance truck was coming down, blocking the whole trail. worse, he wanted to talk! someone had reported a downed fence in the vicinity, but neither he nor i had seen it. he was a cyclist too and wanted to bitch about drivers who honk at him when he's in the gorram bike lane. i can relate, buddy, i sure can. on sunday some stupid hooznatch mistook my bike lane for a right turn lane. she had a whole right turn lane to herself but had to impede my lane. wtf? anyhow, it's all part of road riding. so it goes.

anyhow, he finally said goodbye, and offered to back himself up the trail so i could ascend unimpeded. that was nice of him, i thought, until i got to the top of the hill and found that his fuckin truck was blocking the trail exit! argh! i had taken the hill in the bigger gear as planned, but had to downshift to man-oo-ver around his truck. sigh.

and then, and then as i was descending polhemus, some retard threw a fucking tree at me. yep, that's right: he hit a little bump and a god damned tree flew out of his truck bed at me. i had had my eye on him, because people in trucks are stupid drivers generally (hi chefjef!) and moreover, he had a tree in his truck. whelp, i missed the bulk of it though i did get sodded. i laughed at the absurdity of dodging a flying tree on the road and continued on.

by the time i got to ascension drive i had talked myself into, well, ascending. so i did. i hopped out of the saddle and took the whole street in a huge gear. i've never made it up there so fast, and a quick glance at my barometer told me it was a (relatively easy for this ride!) 10% grade. my HR went from 120 to 170 in about 45 seconds. wow! but i owned that hill like never before. i got into some kinda rhythm, and i think i was actually pulling up on the pedals -- circles while standing! even tho my HR was near its max at the top, i hadn't entirely blown myself away, i had a little more hill in me for next time.

i guess i can gauge my fatigue level by my speed through the obstacle course (actually, i think that one of these days i'll take parrot the other way to get home w/out taking the obstacle course... i just didn't have that in me today, parrot looks just as hard in the other direction!). today i took it at around 22mph, whereas on sunday, after 58 miles, i took it at 27! so i'm tired. i have no idea how i did 57 miles after burning up all my glucose after parrot on sunday. energy drinks i reckon.

anyhow. i'm good and tired. i've got that post-ride glow. still glurply in the stomaccio, but that's how it goes some days.

is that so wrong?

according to imdb, the really great actor who played the husband in "once were warriors" also played... wait for it...

boba fett's dad in those piece of shit that lucas dumped on us last decade.

wow. well, good for temuera's pocketbook. but he's way better than that.

that i only really form an appreciation for a bottle of scotch once i'm near the end of it?

i got to love my mackillop's choice caol ila when i had 3 glasses left.

now i'm digging the talisker 175, and i've only 1-2 glasses left, prior to that i didn't care for it.

tonight i'm really getting the brine, which i'd never ever gotten before, and which is kinda the point of any talisker.

once, a heck of a long time ago, i got my hands on the soundtrack to the movie "once were warriors". the closing theme is a guitar wankfest with maori chanting, and i've always loved it. for some reason, though, i never got around to watching the movie, until tonight.

it's not a happy movie, and in fact, the closest thing to happiness in the movie is when one bad guy beats another one nearly (or hopefully) to death. the ending is weak and at times the acting goes just a little over the top. but for the most part it's an excellently acted movie, frightening in its violence and disturbing in its revelation of what life is like for some. it's got a lot of stuff that you'd probably have to be a new zealander to really get, but most of that is gracefully explained.

some scenes are cringeworthy, to say the least, but this is only a testament to the skillful acting and direction.

so if you enjoy movies about domestic violence and face tattoos, i highly recommend "once were warriors". also, it has a cool theme song.

last week i went to three steakhouses. they were:

outback steakhouse: i went there on saturday after sailing. hops recommended it. i wondered why we don't go there more often, it's relatively cheap, hearty, has fantastic bread and onion soup, and steak that is acceptable. in all, a good value with decent service.

the trip to outback inspired me to try two other steakhouses that i've been meaning to try, since they're right next to where i live. they are:

porterhouse: meh. crummy ambiance, nice food presentation, good service. the place was totally dead, though it was a wednesday. the filet was not mealy like outback's, but it also wasn't well seasoned and tasted almost gamey. all in all, it was a good steak at a value not as good as outback's. the fact that i was thinking about "value" at a steakhouse is a bad sign. i wouldn't go back, particularly, especially considering...

san mateo prime: holy cow! a true winner. amazingly great sides (as opposed to porterhouse, where you get some hoity toity potatoes and green beans, all chef-y style, like 3 of each), and really great prime rib. the ambiance is top notch, with a big grill right in the restaurant where they cook and carve the prime rib. sure, the bartender has no idea how to make an old fashioned, and nobody on staff had ever heard of a mint julep (!). but the service was great, the steak was outstanding, the sides were fantastic, and the pecan pie was fantastic. also, i was very hungry.

it was a successful steak roundup. if i want cheap and so-so, outback. if i want reasonable and excellent, i can just walk to san mateo prime. and then to fish waffles.

i'm fargen rejuvenated. yeah!

the fish waffle girl says she plans to do a triathlon. she faces some minor hurdles: she doesn't know how to swim, she doesn't know how to cycle, and she doesn't like to run. other than that, it should be an easy achievement for her.

on the phone with my folks, while i was walking home from fish waffles, my mom said she heard me "huffing and puffing" and to "keep exercising and the stamina will come later". i was certainly not huffing and puffing, she probably heard the wind. i dunno if she was joking or what, she can have a very dry sense of humor.

i remembered the really funny thing that happened to me. i was behind this cyclist and got to wondering whether it was a dude or a !dude. they had a waifish figure. that didn't rule anything out. shaved legs: no help. long hair? still no clue. hairy arm? hm. i guessed guy and passed them. wrong!

after i got thru the parrot hills, my heart rate refused to go much past 130bpm. that was good. or bad. i must be training right, i thought. or, i'm overtrained. it could actually be either one. i didn't pat myself much on the back, i think it's probably the latter.

then, after about mile 45, the heart said "wtf, not done yet? fu!" and wouldn't go much below 150 even when coasting. yup, overtrained. bleh.

there was something uproariously funny that happened to me on my ride today, unfortunately, it was during the first half so i can't remember it.

i went 61 miles today. it was hard. i am tired.

i started out by making a last minute decision to go up parrot. i have this to say about parrot: holy crap. i thought flea street had a mean hill, but parrot! oh jeez... multiple 15s and a 20. yes yes, they're not for more than a couple hundred yards. but they're still very hard, and that was basically my warmup.

after that i did my regular long route, thinking i'd try for 70 today. that didn't happen, probably because of my run yesterday and the fact that i got started an hour late and the temps were 90+ the entire ride with no shade. ouch.

but i pushed myself. at some point i asked a dude if he knew where we were, and he asked me if i was lost. i hadn't the presence of mind to say "i'm not lost, i just don't know where i am". in any case, i wasn't lost, i just didn't know where i was. i had taken foothill expy. past my usual turnaround point, to get home i still just had to make a U-turn.

he said we were in cupertino. huzzah! i asked how to get to mountain view, thinking i might visit spu, having on my way to cupertino not seen any MV crosstreets that i recognized. i guess from cupertino direction you turn right at the lucky's. sounded plausible.

three things motivated me on this ride:
1) i didn't want to be home. i have some unpleasant work (work work) i need to do today.
2) the karno effect.
3) i was personally informed by the fish waffle proprietor that by today, the fish waffle place would have SOFT SERVE. i think 61 miles earned me some soft serve. not only that, if i buy a dozen fish waffles, my frequent fisher card entitles me to a fish waffle tote bag! yeah! gonna be an exciting day at the fish waffle place. and then it's back to the grind and dealing with #1, not to mention all the other crummy crap that's been piling up around here.

dean said in his book (in a chapter titled, fittingly, "fun run") that running isn't fun. my work buddy Curly, a runner, and I, a cyclist who runs, agree that most platitudes and training strategies for running and cycling are entirely interchangeable. dean's words are certainly included. today's ride was not "fun" but i sure would not have rather been doing anything else those four hours, and i'm sad that it's over.

saw dean karnazes the other day, ran an unplanned 10k with him. today i ran at least another 10k, possibly as much as 8 miles. nope, not quickly. but i took lots and lots of hills, turning around at some water tower atop hillsborough. man that town's rich, with some amazingly huge and sometimes ostentatious houses.

anyhow, i'm back to running distance it seems. man i sure do love it. i love the uphill, too. sure do hate the downhill.

more later ;)

although i'm a biker and not a runner, tonight i ran with dean karnazes. well, for a couple of miles. look him up if you don't know who he is.

i don't have a lot of sports heroes, I never did. didn't care much for sports as a kid, or most of adulthood. but dean's my fitness idol. he's an inspiration and a motivation, and i told him so. he's got friends in rancho mirage who will probably be riding with me in the TDPS.

as i rolled up to the running store, my thermometer read 98F. it'd had 20 minutes to adjust so it was probably accurate. felt like it was. i asked if i could change into my running clothes in the running store's dressing room, and they let me. i had brought a recovery drink, for recovery, but decided that i should take it with me since even a short run would be pretty hard in 98F weather. this was at 5:30!

i was at the running shop for a "fun run". i figured that meant little kids and naked people hauling wagons of beer. i was definitely thinking too SF. when dean arrived he said, "how about a 10k?" everyone said that sounded great, while i winced and hoped i could pull it off. 10k = 6.2 miles. i haven't done more than 5 miles in more than a year, and all the running i've done lately has been at a very slow pace.

we set out and i kept up well with the group of 10-15 runners. dean held back, of course. at one point he said i had come better prepared than the girl running in a cotton shirt. true, i was wearing my technical-ish t-shirt, but since i was expecting easy, i didn't wear my magic underpants. chafe-o-rama!

Spu was supposed to meet me there to fun run, but he didn't show up in time to set out with us. after i drag-assed myself to the turnaround point, the group really started putting some distance on me. once i'd lost sight of them, there was Spu running up the trail. he hasn't done even 5 miles lately, and decided to turn around once he'd met me.

as i ran, having biked this morning, i realized: i'm not ready for a triathlon.

anyhow, i eventually made it. not last, but all sweaty and out of water, hoping i hadn't missed Dean's talk. I hadn't, and there was pizza, and still a little electrolyte drink and water. the running shop is really cool, and they have regular "fun runs".

Dean's talk was very short. He's really a regular guy, or a very good actor. I don't think he likes talking to groups, and prefers one-on-one, or, even better, talking while running. He asked how many of us had run a marathon. Spu, I, and the 2 people who finished after me were the only ones not raising our hands. Ha!

Anyhow, he told us that he finished his 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days tour by running the New York marathon. He finished that race in better shape than Lance Armstrong, but his real goal, he said, was to beat P. Diddy, which he did. Ha again!

After, Spu and I grabbed some chipootle and joked about going climbing. we were bushed, tho i feel rather nice at the moment. we'll see about tomorrow (huge day at work tomorrow, and, sadly, saturday, too).

all in all, a great experience, better than i'd expected. might go see him again next week at rei, even though there won't be a run beforehand. should be a bigger group, more talking, less fun, more jokes.

... has changed, i guess.

this is italics, right? and this is a link?

whelp, i've noticed some problems with the archives here, so i'm taking this opportunity to upgrade the blogging software to the latest and greatest.

probably this means some downtime, but i haven't had much to say this week anyhow, although i'm by myself again which often leads to writing. fortunately, I Have My Ways to cache such things should I need to.

nicely done, gentlemen:

http://www.infowars.com/?p=4280

comments are nice too. yay, 1st amendment!

having spent 4 hours in the saddle on sunday, having totaled 120 miles for the week, i decided i needed to spend less time in the saddle this week, and put fewer miles on the bike -- to put some waves in my training.

so today i really learned how to pedal out of the saddle. well, maybe i learned hte wrong way, but i learned one way to do it. i've spent a lot of time learning smooth pedaling in the saddle, and blowing past folks out of their saddles. now, tho, i can see the potential! if i can sustain the gear/speed i use out of the saddle for entire hills... wow. i can gain 5mph on hills. even without sustaining, i find that when i re-seat and drop gears, i end up 2 gears higher than i otherwise would use for the hill.

anyhow, this counted as interval training, for sure. 13 miles never felt so hard. whew!