An Early Friday

Morning weigh-in: 164#, 10% BF

 

Went to yoga last night, really good workout, and we even had a theme for the class: truthfulness. After yoga I went to Bethlehem, had dinner at Brew Works with Anne, and got to practice some of what I learned in class:

 

ANNE: OK, where do we stand? This is what I want, what do you want?

ME: Hemmina, hemmina, hemmina...

 

Or words to that effect. Long story short, she broke the ice, I had to come clean and I guess we're dating for real now, instead of meeting for dinner here and there, and stringing things along in my usual passive-aggressive style. Anyway, we'll see where it goes from here, hope I don't screw this one up.

 

Last day of the week here, before the July 4th festivities. Run/gym tonight, then most likely over to Christian Springs for the usual Thursday supper club, where I will be having dinner once again with a certain someone.

 

Wisdom

Morning weigh-in: 163#, 8.5% BF

 

"Dance on, ye foolish ones; ye sought not wisdom, neither have ye found it." -- Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution

 

I Fly Towards Grace: Another A++ ride, as Joe put it: 48 miles in 2:36, for an 18.5 mph average. (Our ride the week before was 6 miles shorter in about the same time, but had slightly more climbing -- 2960 feet vs last night's 2900 feet. There's a lesson in there somewhere.) Me, Joe, Greg, Scott and Eric B, we basically did the old Mountain Road route: through Wind Gap and over the mountain, then down Mountain Road to the bottom of Blue and over via Little Gap -- we actually climbed to the ski resort upper parking lot this time -- plus a little backing and filling on the way home. I was a little tired and said so, and a few other guys were talking about "riding smart" and not killing ourselves on the hills etc, but that kind of wisdom only lasts for a little while on Follies Night...

 

A Screaming Comes Across The Sky and it ain't pretty. You'd scream too, like it was the DT's crawling all over you, but Gaia's got a real infestation.

 

Needless to say, after last night's ride I did not feel like biking in this morning. I'll hit yoga tonight and the gym tomorrow; I don't know what's going on for the 4th yet. Dinner last night was a chicken sandwich at Christian Springs (sigh, but I controlled myself, for the most part), and tonight I'll be going down to Bethlehem Brew Works.

Reconfigurator

Morning weigh-in: 164.5#, 8.5% BF (back to the old pig-and-python game)

 

Happy Darwin Day! Well it's not really Darwin Day, but it was 150 years ago today that Darwin's and Wallace's papers, outlining natural selection, were first presented. (This was pretty much the precursor to The Origin of Species.) In honor of all that, here's a little bit about evolution going on right now out West. I think I may celebrate tonight by taking up smoking in gas stations, or biking -- maybe I'll win an award! Meantime, here's my favorite quote (again), the last paragraph of The Origin of Species:

 

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

 

And So It... Continues: Got my rear shock bushings replaced last night (we're talking bicycles), and dropped off my rear wheel to be rebuilt, then while I was there, impulse buy, I ordered a new drivetrain... I need to get my bike and equipment ready for the Wild 100, now less than four weeks away. (I also have to get myself ready.) I hit Sals after the bike store, got there around 7:00, and rode with Dave L and a young guy named Jeremy out with his dog. We did a fast but abbreviated loop, returning to Dodson via the road just before dark.

 

Hail Hail, Some Of The Old Gang's Here: Dinner was a quick salad, then I went to do laundry, and I stopped in at Porters while it dried. A nice surprise, I ran into Stu and Cathy walking out as I walked in. They turned around, came back in and had one last beer while we caught up: Stu has been living, working and house-hunting in Florida for the past two months, while Cathy has been getting their old house ready to be put on the market. Kind of funny, we never biked together up here except one time, just before he disappeared, but apparently he's become a fairly avid biker down in Florida, and even joined a cycling club. Good for him!

 

Also saw Kateryna there, which was also nice but less of a surprise, because she now works at Porters -- last night was in fact her first night, she said. She also said there may be a Which Brew picnic coming up soon.

 

Tonight is the Tuesday night "hard ride," and tomorrow is yoga; I may also try to bike in to work tomorrow.

 

Parting shot: Well, yeah.

 

Gaaaa! Cow Itch! AAAAAAAH!

Morning weigh-in: 168.5#, 8% BF (uh oh)

 

Happy 100th Birthday, Tunguska Event! (Also noted, on the hometown front: the 230th anniversary of the Battle of Monmouth was this weekend.) Yeah, good weekend by the way -- maybe too good, according to the scale.

 

Friday night I skipped the towpath and went to the Velodrome with some peeps, basically the same crowd as the Iron Pigs game, Anne and her pinochle friends, though I also saw Brian and a few other people there. Way cool, lotsa very dramatic racing. I got a text that Kelly-Jo was going to Porters, so I stopped in on the way home. Kind of like a homecoming for the old Which Brew crowd.

 

I had maybe a little too much fun the night before: I overslept on Saturday and blew off early morning yoga, then all the rest of of my "selfish day" in favor of a Sals/towpath ride. I'm a bit under the gun in terms of Wilderness 101 preparation, so that was very much what the doctor ordered, but I cut the ride short (skipping about half of Sals) and absconded when rain started to fall -- felt stupid on the way home when the sun came back out, but was finally vindicated by the deluge that hit just after I got home. (Also rode through a bunch of nettles growing along the river, maybe a mile-long gauntlet, thought I was going to die.) Home, shower, oil change, haircut, chores, errands etc etc, then I hit a friend's graduation party.

 

Lucas, about 22 I'd say, is someone I know from cycling, and he just graduated from college. His older brother's a local musician, and the party was also for his (and some other guy's) 30th birthday, so there was basically an all-star jam going on when I got there (apparently it was a pool party earlier in the day). Pretty good times, and there were a number of people there I half recognized, but except for a few parents/relatives, the next oldest people there were like fifteen years younger than me. I'm glad I got a chance to congratulate Lucas & help him drink his beer, but I felt like the onion in the petunia patch, and when the band took a break I headed home.

 

Sunday was trail maintenance and a ride at Allamuchy.

 

Riding Sals tonight after some bike maintenance, and tomorrow is the Follies. Dinner better be light for a few days...