by the sea by the sea

Morning weigh in (Friday): 180#, 13% body fat
Morning weigh-in (Saturday): 179.5#, 14% body fat

Comments are back up!

Interesting day at work yesterday, things moved pretty quickly; also, a number of retirees visited because the department had a belated holiday luncheon -- I blew it off of course, & Dan and I were pretty much the only two Grinches who didn't go... good to see some old faces though, hear they're doing OK.

Rode the towpath last night, but only to the boat launch outside Freemansburg (still took me two hours because of the snow), then had dinner & a few beers at Which Brew, where it was literally standing room only because Duende was playing. Again, they were good but only really shined later in the evening. They ended with my two favorite songs: "The Unauthorized Biography of Django Reinhardt" and "West Virginia." The last one reminds me of Easton (especially the Easton I dream about, partially in ruins and full of alleys and secret passages), though being about WV is pretty cool too. Lotsa pub people there that I knew (Stu & Kathy, Ed, the Kneller brothers, Carole & Steve who now live near me), as well as Brian and Joe G and Creepy Dave. Anyway, a good night.

The usual selfish day today: Coffee Works, then gym, then shopping/chores. Ran into Violetta at Nature's Way (she works there, after all), and she started talking about an Alaskan adventure this summer, then that girl Sarah started saying how she was also going to Alaska and I said "Two words: Alexander Supertramp." They had no idea what I was talking about so I told them about Into the Wild, the book by Jim Krakauer about the life and death of Chris "Alexander Supertramp" McCandless. They both said they'd be careful...

That got me thinking about the Salton Sea, which I now can't stop thinking about, or get "By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea" out of my head, though from all accounts the Salton Sea is anything but beautiful. For a while, the McCandless/Salton connections kept coming up, all sorts of coincidences, six degrees of separation etc: skateboard movies, Outside articles, the movie of the same name, etc. Really, just another part of my dream-Easton.

Anyway, meeting friends at the 19th Street Theater in Allentown to see "The Triplets of Belleville," & will probably make plans there to ride either Jordan or South Mountain tomorrow. Outta here...

by the sea by the
see bye beautiful

First Milestone

Morning weigh-in: 179.5#, 15.5% body fat Under 180 lbs! woo-hoo!!

I sort of worry about that number though; I've been losing about a pound a day since the weekend and I expected to be running about a pound a week. I figure two pounds a week is about the absolute maximum safe loss rate, so I may be in trouble of some kind. On the other hand, it may just be water loss, or "pulling the slack out of the rope," the first few easy pounds... I guess I'd better keep an eye on it, but in the meantime I'll take the win.

It snowed last nite, maybe six inches but because of the cold it was very light stuff. Traffic was bad in the morning but not too bad, especially considering that PennDOT said it was too cold to salt the roads. Snow day, light traffic made for a pleasant drive home (only I didn't go straight home) since the roads were in good shape by then.

Exercise: I took Kim H's spin class today after work -- less fun and much tougher than Colette's. She's not big on long recoveries, and really likes standing, and with less resistance than I'd normally prefer. I got my money's worth today.

And that's what's happening. Good night and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Light blogging ahead

Morning weigh-in: 180.5#, 13.5% body fat

Ten degrees and snowing tonight, so instead of riding (I planned to do a road ride) I put new fluid in the MTB's brakes. Hopefully, the seals just had temporary trouble with the cold weather, but I'll be calling Hope Technologies tomorrow, see what they say and maybe order new levers & whatnot. (Judging by my weight, maybe a rest day was called for anyway.) Tomorrow is a spinning class, Friday is a towpath ride, Saturday is the gym plus running, and Sunday may be another ride hopefully, then back to spinning on Monday. Funny, I haven't seen either of them in the longest time, but Colette teaches the Monday spin class, and Kim Hess teaches the Thursday class. Old Chain Gangsters don't even fade away, they keep popping out of the woodwork to kick my butt...

Haven't made this in a while, but I had tuna "aglio ed olio" for dinner tonight. Another stinky but very filling meal. It's basically the same as the Wilted Greens recipe, except you use a can of tuna in olive oil instead of the mixed greens.

I'm running out of things to talk about, really reaching so I think the daily spew may once again become less frequent, at least until I have more to say. I think I'll go for a walk in the snow, then hit the sack.

Antarctica Starts Here

Morning weigh-in: 180.5#, 13.5% body fat (looks like a hydration issue, better drink more water)

Some snow squalls came through today and the temperature plunged, should be like this for the rest of the week. On the exercise front, I took a rest day: forgot my gym bag again this AM, and it's hard to come home, get my stuff and drag myself back out. Rest was probably a good idea anyway, I was feeling a little tired -- a-and maybe I only thought I forgot the bag, eh?

Instead of the gym, I did a whole lot of nothing: mostly played with the computer, surfed; dinner was chick peas & potatoes in lemon-tahini curry, with rice because I'm out of barley. (This is one of those simple, tasty meals that leaves you bloated, smelly and satisfied for hours...)

In Memory of Mike

Morning weigh-in: 181.5#, 15% body fat (not bad, considering it was a "bad behavior" weekend)

Work, spinning (tougher tonight than last week, but I was tired), bike brakes may need new parts, yadda yadda, here's what I've really been up to: this is a photo album I'm putting together for my friend Mike's fiancee, shots I had of various bike/outdoorsy things from the early nineties plus some photos my brother sent me. (That's a photo of him before a ride in Jim Thorpe, September of 1993. Mike passed away in December, here's a recent post about him.)

This just started out as me putting some photos on a disk, but one of my (more minor) pet peeves is finding old photos that no one can answer questions about, so I thought I'd include comments to make them understandable 20 years from now, and so I thought web pages would be a good way to go even if it ends up on a disk, then I thought I'd make an index/thumbnail page, then I decided write a script to automate the process, a little finger exercise...

In other words, the project snowballed, and the thing I was really doing (put pictures on a disk) got pushed to the background, but I now have most of it in rudimentary form, ready to be polished and finished. Take a look, let me know what you think (whoever you may be) and try my comments link at the bottom of the post... Personally, I'm a little disappointed. I wish I had more photos, and wish I could say more about each.

UPDATE: I get my comment capability via BlogSpeak, and they're in some dispute with their own host, so comments are down for now, oh well... by the way, I won't be keeping the photo album online for too too long, so if you got here via permalink don't be surprised if it's broken.

UPDATE #2: Comments are back up, thanks to HaloScan.

Busy Busy Busy

Well, I got my new eyeglasses: two pairs, very different styles from what I'm used to and and also different from each other. Props to Doug, Lori & Kris for the invaluable assistance. We went for dinner at Lobaido's in Allentown while they filled my prescription, and that's where Eric met us -- he worked late until Kris called and told him we were done shopping. The food was excellent as always. I got something called Pollo Sorrentino, which was breaded chicken and eggplant parmigiana with some pasta; couldn't tell you now what anyone else had, I was a little preoccupied... I think almost all the best restaurants in the Lehigh Valley are in Allentown, and they're like Lobiado's: little holes-in-the-wall scattered through Allentown's neighborhoods, and almost without exception they're BYO -- the big exception being Cannons, the "best dive bar in America."

Anyway, Lobaidos has fantastic food, especially their salad, but they also have homemade ice cream and I was looking forward to some cherry vanilla, but time was pressing -- I had to pick up the glasses before they closed. I was planning to pay for dinner as a thank-you gesture but they refused, in fact made me leave before the bill or I'd miss the mall closing. I'll get even with them I swear....

I went out again after I got home, basically the same drill as Friday but without the Mad Elf. I stopped in at Which Brew and caught the last set of the Skulldiggers and hung out with Heath and Hans Kneller, two brothers I know mainly from Which Brew, but I know they're VMB members and they ride and someday (hopefully it'll be warmer) we'll get in a ride or two together. They know the mandolin player in the band, which was laying down some really good Dead-style bluegrass. Which Brew closes at midnight, so when the party ended we all trooped over to Porters to catch the last set of Duende, an awesome duo that leans towards "traditional music." (The girl bartends occasionaly at -- you guessed it -- Which Brew.) I've seen them before and they're good, but last night they just blew me away. I think they need a long time to come to a focus, and seeing them early in the evening (like before midnight at Which Brew) doesn't show them in their best light... They also had a young and crunchier crowd, real rowdy and appreciative, which helped fire things up.

One beer fewer than Friday, but a much later night and I felt like sleeping in but Joe and I had plans to ride Kittatinny Valley State Park in NJ. Joe must have run into Dave "Creepy Guy" somewhere last night & told him about the ride, and brought him along. Good ride though, until my rear brake lever crapped out, but even then it was still pretty good.

Think I'll go fix my brake lever. Goodnight.