Stability Quest

Morning weigh-in: 175.5#, 9% BF

 

No exercise last night: I had a meeting with a financial planner from my bank after work. Nice enough guy, but I'm not sure I really agreed with his advice, especially regarding the chunk of money he wants me to play with -- TIPS, hedging against inflation with the stock market, blah blah -- I couldn't help but note that this block of cash, parked in the bank and doing nothing, easily "outperformed" many of my other investments over the past few years. I don't know what I'll do yet, maybe I will park some of it in CD's or something, and some in those TIPS, we'll see. I don't need to go through this guy though, and I'm not sure how I feel about helping my bank feed its gambling addiction with my money. God I feel so bourgeois.

 

Wash Them With Your Tears, Dry Them With Your... Looks like they're collecting local haircut clippings to send to the Gulf, to help sop up oil. I've heard it said that the dimensions of this disaster won't really sink in until the oil hits land, but my heart is already sick, it's obvious that this is the end of a lot of things.

 

Anyway, I met Anne at Wired where she was hanging with the knitting crowd. We left there with Donna and her daughter, and had dinner at Brew Works. Tonight is the towpath with Anne.

 

 

 

Big Breezy Weekend

Morning weigh-in (Monday): 175.5#, 10% BF

Morning weigh-in (Tuesday): 175.5#, 9% BF

 

Nice ride last night, me and Anne at Sals. I tried to use the old doubletrack by the RR tracks, but there was too much deadfall & overgrowth, and so we hiked up the power line to the lower red (St Luke's) trail. Kinda spooky, we had to pass the old hobo camp, which seemed deserted but there was definitely the feeling of a presence, raise the hairs on the back of your neck kind of thing going on.

 

I think I'll be going along the old doubletrack in the next week or so with loppers, and making sure it's open -- we backtracked, and were able to ride from Constitution to the YCC shelter without a problem; it's probably just one 50-yard section that's blocked. That would make a nice intermediate trail. It's an eye-opener sometimes, riding there with Anne, who may be an offroad neophyte but she's a pretty strong and experienced rider otherwise -- obstacles that give her pause, that I would discount (after 20 years of MTB) when rating a trail's difficulty, remind me that we might be a bit too parochial in our approach to the trail system there. Groupthink and all that, and if we don't provide opportunities for beginner-friendly riding there, eventually some outside authority will provide them by dumbing down the trails we have built.

 

Not much riding otherwise lately: it was an extremely windy weekend, with a lot of tree pollen in the air, and I/we blew off just about all heavy-duty outdoor activity. (We were supposed to go riding with my uncle on Saturday, but the morning thunderstorms dissuaded him from the drive out. Good call, since the wind made riding inadvisable even if it looked like a nice and sunny day.) Anne got beer kegging equipment, and we spent Saturday night (and Sunday morning) learning how to use it, and Sunday afternoon we did our only riding -- out to Coca Cola Park, maybe 3-4 miles away. Me and Anne, Donna & her family, Debbie & Kevin, we sat on the grass and watched the game. I napped in the sun, then went home and napped until bedtime.

 

New Toy Alert: The new fridge is coming today, not sure if that counts as a "new toy" (black finish and I would have said yes, but it's stainless steel), but we did also get the keg stuff, including a CO2 tank with pressure regulator, on Saturday, and I also got new computer speakers that I can use with the Droid in the basement. I seem to be in spend mode with the bike too: I got a new rear derailleur for the Turner, and a new rear tire for the singlespeed, and I'll be picking up some new bike shorts tonight, not a moment too soon...