Recently in blogging Category

truly, your URL guessing skills are beyond compare.

first off, a couple posts ago i introduced a blog character with the name "artemis". that's a lame-ass name and regret it.

henceforth, i'm renaming that guy "miles o'brien", on account of how he argues with keiko. har har har! "artemis" sounds all pompous and faggy.

anyhow, hops and i went down to miles o'brien's place last weekend for some ribs, latakia, and trash talk. we got more than we bargained for as he graciously served us anniversary-style champagne, some awesome, CA-made (CA: fuck yeah!) private label tiny-batch brandy, and a metric ass-load of allergens.

the first thing I noticed when we got into his pad was how much cleaner it looked than last time.

I later found out that miles o'brien had given it a big cleaning because he'd read on my blog the day before that I was cleaning as much as some lady and he didn't want to fall behind in the power-cleaning arms race.

har-de-har!

i think there are more people reading this junk than i thought there were.

if so, i apologize for everything so far, and in advance for everything that is yet to come.

SORRY.

an oldie but goodie found while searching for something altogether different.

it's going to be a long time before i set another deadlift pr. the biking prohibits it.

i thought the other day that since i no longer really have a big read beard, i should change the name of the blog.

but that's really hard and who has the time for it? i think i'll just grow another big red beard.

i used to envision the blog as a place to record my most brilliant and pertinent thoughts, a non-wetware storage for all the brilliant brain droppings that i could save before they got flushed away into the sewer of my ADD.

lately my blogging has been under assault by the twit-like allure of facebook statuses, which compel me to arrive at witty (or not) self-absorbed one-liners instead of page after page of rambling self-absorbed bloviation (which firefox claims is not a word, but is nonetheless). and, were that not enough, lately the very brilliance itself of my random thoughts has come under question, by, ironically, the very same random thoughts. oh, the pain of thinking i'm not as clever as i am, or at least, if i am, the sad suspicion that that cleverness has netted me not much after all. also, this gorram cold i've got won't go away and is really dragging me down. but that's life, so i can't hold it against, uh, it.

but anyhow: i thought a thought today which i figured was both somewhat clever and somewhat reassuring. it goes a little something like this:

remember the future? remember how it was all bright and happy and you were looking forward to it and couldn't wait until it arrived? and then, remember how suddenly the future turned all grim and stuff and now the future more or less sucks and you're really kind of not looking forward to it all so much anymore?

well, depending on your understanding (or perception) of the nature of time, it's still the same old future. unless your idea of the future was the first three months of 2009, the future is still ahead of us, and it hasn't changed any since when you thought it was super duper, the only thing that's changed is your imagining of it.

and of course, by "you" i mean "me" and all that. the cheery part of this fabulous epiphany is that the grimness of the now-future is just as much an illusion as the golden rainbows of the then-future. unless your future horizon is very, very near, your view of the future is likely very wrong.

okay, i can't take it anymore, i must a-blog. so here it goes. forgive me if i've gotten rusty.

the tour de palm springs is less than 6 weeks away. it will be my first century. here's the route from 2007, according to Some Guy. as you can see, despite his moniker of "difficult", it's actually an easy century. the dude what lives across the street from my folks, who's ridden it before, says it's one of the easiest centuries out there. perfect for my first one.

so i got way out of shape over the last 2 months, as expected. three things conspired to make me flabby, out of breath, and slow: barbecue, beer, the gawdawful weather around here, and my ps3. yeah, that's four. deal with it.

i will blog about my beer tour of san diego county, i promise. just not right now.

so i dug up a training plan from a book on long distance cycling, you know the one, it's by a couple editors from a cycling magazine. problem one: all the training plans start 8 or ten weeks from the event. but i managed to find one that assumes i've never ridden a bike before, or something, and i chopped off the first half of it, and then set the weekly mileage increase at 15% instead of the recommended 10%, and figured that as long as i don't injure myself, as long as i make some progress, any progress, and burn off some of this beer and barbecue, i'll be in good enough shape to finish The Easiest Century Out There.

but there's another problem: the training plan calls for long, flat rides with a group. that's a good idea, because the tour itself is a long, flat ride with a group. but here's the rub: i don't have any friends or any flats. assuming i could make some biking buddies, there isn't any place in this county to do a long ride of any substantial distance, unless i want to drive somewhere, or do laps. bleh. so for the purposes of training, i'm designating any grade less than 7% as "flat". that means the 40 mile canada-to-alpine-and-back route is flat, even though it has a good 2600 feet of elevation gain.

2600 feet, that number seems close to something... oh right, it's a measly 400 feet less than the entire elevation gain of the entire century i plan to do. that's good!

the real worrisome part is the start time: 7am for me, mister century guy. that means i have to get up before 5am, since it takes me 2 hours to wake up and "get ready" on a good day. that day i'll have to deal with getting to the ride and all that. i suppose i could ride to it, i think the start is less than 15 miles from the folks' house -- but maybe i shouldn't push it that much. still, i have no training plan for waking up at 5am. i could do it, i guess, but it'd take longer than 6 weeks.

i rode yesterday and today, as per my plan. today was hills, and i did a whopping 13 miles, with one hour on the bike, for a total ele gain of 1600 feet. yay me. i found a route from crystal springs to parrot, via my old pal ascension drive, plus some additional heart pounding climbing. that was great fun, and put me in a good mood. yesterday's ride, not so much: it was colder, and longer, and demonstrated to me that i'm outta shape. i did ride in a couple impromptu groups, and that was swell, but i fell on the bike. yep, i've finally had my first fall, proving that dude right who said that falling wasn't a matter of if, but when.

i'd just finished the climb up the ralston trail, which is effectively the end of the ride, since it's 4 miles straight downhill from there to my digs. if you've been at the stoplight there, you know it's relatively tricky to stop and dismount, if you wish to stop and dismount right by the traffic light, so you can push the crosswalk button. all those ifs and so's apply to me, 'cause that's how i've always done it. the pavement is slopey, uneven, and riddled with shards of glass, hunks of sharp metal, and piles of other tire hazards. anyhow, i unclipped left, as always, but somehow managed to lean right. that's the recipe for a fall, and fall i did, though as hops says, it's more of a "going over" than a fall. i sustained no injuries that i'm presently aware of, which is good, though that makes fall #2 on my right knee, which is really bad. i think the side of my calf/shin and my hand took most of the fall, which is great because those parts of me are beefy and not bony. i finished the ride, cold, starving (took a late start, missed lunch, was miserly with my goo packs), pissed off, and a little grated on the leg. still, i finished the ride.

after some putzing around in the afternoons, hops and i went down to spudnutz's house for some smoked pulled pork. this time, he pretty much nailed it -- it was the best home-cooked pulled pork i've had, including my two failed attempts. it wasn't as smoky as my or his first attempts, though, which i told him and expect to be rectified next time (or else!).

i've got tons of beer in the fridge, the closet, the other closet, the kegerator, and probably elsewhere, as a result of my trip to san diego, and as a result of being me. i went to beltramo's the other day and was untempted by the whiskeys, but bought some beer. i'm in a beer cycle right now but until after the tdps i don't want to drink much -- need to be light on the bike! oh the torment.

anyhow, despite the fall, yesterday, i didn't have to use my AK. we'll see how today goes.

... has changed, i guess.

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