Musikfest Recap

Morning weigh-in: 176#, 15% BF

 

Some of the Bands I Saw:

Start Making Sense (3 times)

Zen For Primates

Trouble City All Stars (2 times)

Brother JT3

Los Straitjackets (2 times)

Insidious Rays

The Red Elvises

Philly Funk Authority

Eric Steckel

The Great White Caps

(These include visits to some peripheral venues...)

 

Food I Ate, Beer I Drank: Surprisingly little, unless you count visits to the Brew Works. Maybe Anne's kitchen skills have spoiled me, or maybe I just couldn't see any of the good vendors, but the food seemed especially nasty this year, like the worst of county fair crap, and I had no appetite for the stuff. I got a good meal at the Wildflower one night, dinner at BW a few times, and beer almost exclusively at the Brew Works, even if I had to walk across the entire Fest to get my refills.

 

Weight I Gained Anyway: About 5 pounds (unofficial).

 

Been going to the gym again, riding here & there (towpath last night, Emmaus on Friday), getting back in the swing of things. Tonight is either Sals, or Jacobsburg with Anne.

 

Mba-Kayere

Forgot to note yesterday the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, which got me drifting along Pynchonesque paths... Hiroshima, spared most war damage, saved for a more terrible fate, mba-kayere, "I am passed over," Enzian's mantra as he wonders if he'd been spared in the Herero genocide, or if he's similarly being held in reserve.


Is This The SS Linux? Not really, but I have been playing with the gadgets again lately. What I did was install an app called ConnectBot on my Droid, which lets me SSH into my Freeshell account. I also recently moved a few of my toy programs from the laptop over to the "Super Dimensional Fortress" too, minor changes and they ran just fine -- at least when I ran them while connected from the laptop.

I connected through my droid, tried running the programs, and got all sorts of error messages, "cannot execute binary file," etc. Tried again at home, they ran just fine. No luck on a google search, I just (randomly) decided to recompile the programs via the droid, and now they work from wherever I connect. Go figure...

Skipped the ride last night, then made it a late one with trips to the Wildflower Cafe and the Funhouse. First Friday on Southside, Musikfest across the river, the old town was crowded, though our return up Main Street, after everything was closed, was like going through a desert.

I'll be hitting Sals in about an hour, yo later.

Culture!

Wow, my little hiatus has stretched to two weeks, better get cracking...

 

I've been riding, but they've mostly been easy rides, some towpath, a little Sals, and one longer road ride over Blue Mountain with Anne last weekend. (Last night I rode to the rope swing at Freemansburg, met Anne, Deb, Donna & Liz there, and jumped into the river for a good long swim.) I really feel like I'm in the middle of a slump, the "crash" part of "peak and crash," and I've been fairly happy with that. (Rode up to Lehigh through campus on Wednesday, and was so whooped I blew off the actual ride when I got to the top.) According to my original training regimen, after the peak I should be useless for hard riding for about four weeks, and that time period is almost over. I don't know what kind of regimen, if any, I'll be following after I get back in the game -- I can't say "back in the saddle," because I actually have been getting out more often, lately, than I was while training -- maybe I will use the "just ride" method, it's always worked well before. By the way, it's been weeks since the gym, and months since I went to yoga. Much act needs to be gotten together.

 

Speaking of "act," we went to the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival this week (at Desales, maybe 15 minutes away), and saw "The Merry Wives of Windsor."

 

This next week, starting tonight, the main part of Bethlehem will be inundated: it's the start of Musikfest. Not sure what I want to see, but there's plenty to choose from. I'll probably ride at Sals tonight; maybe I'll get to hear some of the headliners (in pay-to-see venue, but it's literally across the river from Sals). Tonight's headliner is Counting Crows, a distinct "meh" but even Kenny G sounded pretty decent once, when heard from the Red Trail. Maybe a little Doppler Effect?

 

By the way, the skin thing is a thing of the past. I have a new allergist, and she's really good.

 

Stand Down: Come To A Decision On It

No morning weigh-in: my official weigh-in procedure is to step on the scale before breakfast, just before stepping into the shower, but lately I've been eating breakfast at home, and to save time I do that while the water boils for coffee, ie long before I shower. I'll have to come up with a new procedure...

 

Today marks Day # of the Great Clinton Water Emergency, we can't use the tap water here at work (not for drinking, or washing hands, or cooking) because they found E. coli in the town well. I will keep eating breakfast at home, and limit myself to Diet Coke at work, at least until they give us the all clear.

 

My Decision: The Wilderness 101 is a week from tomorrow, and I've decided that I'm not really ready for it, so I am not going. Last weekend's rides were the final tests, and I felt like death on at least one (the other was too short and easy to really tell me anything); since those results might have been anomalous, I tested the situation again with a Sals ride on Tuesday -- and I felt even worse. I'm kind of disappointed, but I just don't think I'm up for it -- 100 miles is a long ride on a mountain bike, that's a lot further than "tough it out" can carry you and I do not feel like spending $200 or more to suffer for 15 hours -- or worse, drop out before the finish like last year. "Go big or go home," as the saying goes, and I think I'd better stay home.

 

So what about all that training? Some observations:

 

1. I really felt great a few weeks ago. The training guide I followed says up front that you'll crash after week 11 or so, after peaking at around week 8 of the program, because this program will not give you the base necessary to sustain high levels of effort. (The W101 was supposed to be at the end of week 10.) I wonder if I actually peaked a week or so ago, and crashed early too.

 

2. I think I made some real progress on this program, and -- up until a week or so ago -- I was riding much better than I had been when I started. Unfortunately, I think I started too far back, I had too much ground to make up.

 

Anyway, now my time is my own again, that weekend as well as training days. I rode last night with a bunch of friends at Sals, and will do it again tomorrow, and will probably be getting back into yoga and the gym regularly soon.

 

Reading: I am almost done with Pynchon's latest, Inherent Vice. Pretty good read, more like Vineland or The Crying of Lot 49 than anything else he's done, and fairly entertaining if a bit thin by Pynchon standards -- it's practically a beach novel. When I'm done with this I'll probably take up The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest, last in Steig Larssen's "Millennium Trilogy," and another fairly light summer thriller. Anne just finished the second book in the series, so I better hurry if I want to stay ahead...

 

Listening: Recent downloads include the Decemberists' "The Hazards of Love," both albums by Neutral Milk Hotel and Titus Andronicus's "Monitor." For some reason, probably just temporal proximity, they all seem very similar.

 

Tonight we're going to the Velodrome.

 

Update: They just lifted the drinking water restrictions! Party!!!

 

A Portrait In Sunburn and Lakewater

 

Oops! wrote this Monday, forgot to post it...

 

Morning weigh-in (Monday): 174#, 12% BF

 

Terrible accident on the way in this morning. I didn't see it happen, just dealt with the aftermath -- they closed I-78 for a while, and I was stuck for more than an hour -- and saw the wreckage when they finally let us through. Three cars at least, one flipped on its side, scene looked like a yard sale littered across the road... People drove carefully for a few miles afterwards, but within minutes I saw the same old stupidity.

 

Anyway, good weekend, lotsa biking too. The second Heels On Wheels pub crawl (Friday night) was a smashing success, with the ladies (Anne, Donna, Debbie, Amy, and a few others) out riding bicycles in in their skirts and heels, plus a few tag-along guys like myself who were, um, intrigued by the concept... We started at Brew Works, then hit the Bookstore, then Welcome, then Mach's Gut before finishing with nachos back at Brew Works.

 

Saturday was a bit of a rough morning, but Anne and I got out to Drewstock 2010 (ie the Riverside Bar, just north of Easton on 611), where fellow VMB'er Robin was running the charity road ride. Things stayed rough for me until about the 10-mile mark, but after that I felt pretty good, and Anne and I ended up in the breakaway pack in the "fast group" -- the pace wasn't really too bad, but there were a lot of mechanicals, missed turns etc, and the front group really got winnowed down, just us two and three guys, hammering away on the hot tarmac. Luckily, the entire second half felt like it was down hill... It was a beautiful ride, and an awesome route, and then we dipped our derrieres in the Delaware for about an hour after we got back to the Riverside. They were having bands and a pig roast later in the day, but we took off after the swim, we had plans: we spent Saturday night (after a nap) at a friend's house party, listening to impromptu jam sessions and sampling homebrew.

 

Sunday was a ride in Jim Thorpe. I'd originally planned to do a Twin Peaks mini-epic, a fairly substantial group ride, while Anne rode the Switchback Trail with a few friends, but in the end it was just Anne and Liz and me, so rather than riding alone I tagged along with the ladies. This was another great ride, and again it was followed by a nice dip -- we rode out to the end of the dam at Mauch Chunk Lake and treated the rocks like our own private beach. (I managed to get some "nice color," ie lobster-level sunburn, on my chest and shoulders.) It was a breezy day, and while the water was warm anything above the surface was exposed to the chilling breeze. We bobbed along with just our heads above water...

 

Last night was just hanging out; I brought my photos up to date on flickr -- I didn't take any photos of the Heels On Wheels event, and none to speak of from Drewstock either, but I did get a few good shots yesterday -- and after dinner we met Donna at Brew Works. Now it's Monday, so sad...

 

Remembering Brian

It was one year ago last Friday that I got the phone call from Joe C: Brian had collapsed while out on a bike ride. (He'd heard that from Mike U, another friend and a neighbor of Brian's, who happened to drive past the accident scene.) Did I know anything? Was he OK? I tried calling the hospital, got nowhere -- privacy rules, yadda yadda -- and finally just called his cell phone. His neighbor answered, crying, crying so hard I could barely understand her but I knew what she was saying. I still couldn't believe it, and I made her say it clearly and out loud: "Brian's dead."

 

The first time we met was probably about 1994 or 1995, at one of our first trail maintenance events at Jacobsburg. (This was before I joined the Chain Gang, so it was probably under the auspices of the Jacobsburg Trail Volunteer Association.) Colette was there, a mutual friend, and I was talking to her about biking or whatever, just hanging in the parking lot waiting for things to start, and Brian came up and said hello. I don't think we hit it off right away or anything, I just sort of knew him as "Colette's really tall friend."

 

Over the next year I saw him at a number of races; I remember bumping into him at Lewis Morris just after he bought Tomias's extra-large Super-V. I had my first, normal-sized Super-Vat the time, and I sort of knew both him and Tomias, so though that would be a good icebreaker, and I asked "Hey, wow isn't that Tomias's bike?"

 

He laughed and said "Not anymore!"

 

I remember when the bad news was going around the old Chain Gang phone tree, there was a lot of uncertainty: Who found him, who called 911? Did it happen near home, how did Mike happen on the scene? And (this is the part that still hurts) did they really resuscitate him at the crash scene, only to lose him? At the time I really didn't care about details -- the key fact wouldn't change by rearranging the timeline or whatever, but over the past year I did sort of piece together a timeline, and I am kind of glad I did. Sometimes I think it's important that I know what happened, other times I go back to my original attitude: he's gone, there's not much point embellishing.

 

As the club's perennial bachelors, Brian and I often ended up rooming together on Chain Gang group vacations, and I can say, without fear of contradiction, that that guy could snore!

 

Brian and I were sharing a room with Eric once, on a weekend trip to race the Vermont 50-Miler.  We had an early start planned, so we went to bed not long after we arrived at the hotel. (The room had twin beds for Eric and me, but Brian, at 6'-7" brought his own extra-large folding cot.) Some time in the middle of the night, Eric and I were both awakened by Brian sawing logs  -- and it was so incredibly, ludicrously loud that we both started giggling. This woke Brian, and he sort of mumbled "Oh, you guys couldn't sleep either, huh?"

 

The heart stuff started maybe five or so years ago, at least as far as his bike friends knew: he'd been having some chest pains, went for a checkup, and the doctors sent him to the hospital to get a stent, to alleviate the "blockage" they thought they'd found. That didn't work, he really didn't have any blockage -- which Brian took as a vindication that he didn't have "couch potato disease." Next diagnosis dealt with possible valve damage, possibly caused by a virus, and they put him on some kind of medication that limited his maximum heart rate, like a governor on a car. (This was probably the start of his  withdrawal from the bike scene.) He seemed OK for a while, then had more problems; this time the doctors diagnosed some kind of neuro-electrical cause, and he had a procedure to cauterize certain locations on his heart that were screwing up the synchronization. He didn't tell anyone about this procedure until a few weeks afterward... At the funeral someone told me that his heart troubles actually started in the eighties, and now I remember how he once told me about some EKG monitoring he had to have done years ago. At the time (long before his final heart trouble), it was just a throw-away part of some humorous story he was telling, and I didn't think anything of it until his funeral.

Doug and Brian and I used to like hanging at Weyerbacher back when it was a brewpub, and we each secretly thought we'd corrupted the other two babes in the woods -- this came out one night, and we were all very surprised when we finally compared notes on our pasts.

 

Allamuchy: 1996, 1997, 1998 (teammates), 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 (teammates), 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008

Canaan: 1998, 1999

Slatyfork: 1998

Staunton: 1999

Crested Butte: 1999

Moab: 2000, 2002, 2004, 2008. The general plan was to go every even-numbered year.

Downieville: 2001

PPRAC: 2003, 2005, 2007

 

The last time I saw him was at his surprise 50th birthday party, just a few weeks before his death.

 

Standing Six Foot One

Morning weigh-in: 175.5#, 10% BF

 

Not bad, considering I had a chicken cheese steak and a couple of Black & Blues for dinner last night...

 

Yes I am back on my cheese game, and also my wheat, milk, egg, and soy games; new, more accurate allergy test results were negative for what seemed (in earlier tests) to be problem foods. I still have to deal with whatever is the root cause of my skin issue, but at least I can eat normal foods again, including my favorite: pizza. Pizza! Ahhhh, life is good, even if the scale doesn't always agree.

 

I found this out last night at the first visit to my new allergist, who was highly recommended by a friend, and I think she's going to live up to the recommendation. I was there for about three hours (the skin tests take a while) and the woman conducted a friendly & personable, but very intense, consultation/interrogation: general health, past history, current problems, things that work and things that don't. She seemed very on top of her game, almost knew ahead of time a lot of the nuances of my case. I was very impressed, and now we'll see how things pan out.

 

 Tonight is a training ride, something shorter and a little different: an hour of "endurance miles" with some intervals of high-cadence pedaling thrown in. I'll probably bust out the singlespeed and do this on the towpath, rain or shine. Gotta work these new calories off somehow.

Counting Down

Morning weigh-in: 174#, 12% BF

 

Pretty good weekend. Friday was a rest day, and an evening out at the Velodrome. Saturday was an impromptu rest day because it was pouring out, so we stayed home and made beer, and in the evening we hit an art opening in Easton. Yesterday Anne and I rode with Donna, and another couple Anne knew from work, up on the Broad Mountain loop. Total fun! Last night was Paul & Mary's Heritage Day party, also very fun.

 

This is week 8 of my training regimen, the final week building week (there another several weeks of workouts, but they are all for maintenance, I am supposed to be at my peak at the end of this week). We shall see -- Anne's heading out of town to visit Ben this weekend, and I may do a road century, or some long offroad ride, just to see how things stand.

 

In Memoriam: Brian passed away a year ago Friday. It's strange, so many of the things we did this weekend (the Velodrome, biking on Broad Mountain, Mary's party) were things I did, many times, with Brian over the years --  I spent a lot of time thinking about him this weekend. Hard to believe he's been gone a year.

More Santa Than Unabomber

Morning weigh-in: 176#, 10% BF (Nice bounceback. Boi-oi-oing!)

 

Well, the hot weather's supposed to be breaking up soon, but we broke first -- we dragged some room air conditioners down from the attic last night, installing one in the bedroom and one (the bigger one) at the bottom of the stairs. The one downstairs is still struggling to cool the entire ground floor, but last night was the best sleep I had all week.

 

Speaking of "Boi-oi-oing" Scientists now know how giant squids copulate. Ewwww! And speaking of cephalopods, meet Paul, Germany's most famous soccer-loving psychic octopus. (And speaking of ScienceBlogs: Pepsi?? WTF were they thinking??)

 

Got a haircut yesterday, another winner from Eskandalo. I've never had a bad haircut there, not even a mediocre one. There seems to be a uniform vision when it comes to men's cuts, nothing radical or crazy -- though they can do that too if you want it -- just a really well done haircut. ("Clean lines" is the phrase that comes to mind.) Dude did a great job, especially on my beard -- and especially considering that my instructions to him were to make it "more like Santa Clause than the Unabomber." I was thinking, like, "Miracle on 34th Street," but he'd never seen it. Sheesh, kids these days...

 

Went home after the cut, and when Anne got home we did the AC thing, then escaped to the already-chilled air at the Brew Works, where we met Ann & Lois, and Lois's daughter Phoebe who's visiting from Missoula. Dinner was some chili, then we went back to a considerably cooler house.

 

Anyway, tonight is another peak-fade interval session on the towpath, and now that the house is cooler we'll probably be staying in tonight.

More Analysis: Stuff From Last Year

I thought I'd look at how I stand compared to last year at this time, at least with two common rides I do: Sals and the towpath. (I didn't start doing the Bloomsbury route until 2010 so I can't include it here.) Unfortunately, many of my rides last year were on the road, or with other people, or generally did not match the criteria I used in my previous analysis, but here are a few rides from last year for comparison.

 

Sals:

There was really only one Sals ride in June or July of 2009 that fit my previous criteria, the first one shown here.

 

Date     Avg Speed

7/7/09   6.0

7/8/09   5.6**

7/27/09  6.5**

 

The two starred rides were somewhat shorter, between 8 and 9 miles, while my previous analysis only looked at rides between 9 and 12 miles. Even so, I see that I am faster this year, by a little bit at least, for all of them.

 

Towpath:

There was only one ride that matched my previous criteria in June or July, nothing else even came close to matching.

 

Date      Avg Speed

7/10/09   15.5

 

This was a ride I did the day after Brian passed away, and I did it in his memory, and I may have worked out some emotional issues through the pedals... It's close to yesterday's pace, so maybe I can say that my general aerobic pace is comparable.

 

In terms of general mileage:

 

         Mileage in...

Month    2009   2010 

April    261    260

May      276    230

June     251    296

 

So the low mileage I was worrried about last year has repeated itself this year, but I expected that -- I have the same life this year that I had last year, and it's a different one from my lonely but higher-mileage past... We'll see if this year's more effective use of my time brings better results than last year.

 

 

I've Always Been Obsessed With Eastasia

Morning weigh-in: 171.5#, 9.5% BF

 

Nice! But I know that the missing weight is all suppression weight: dinner, after yesterday's "hot lap" in the 100-degree-plus heat, was just a Greek salad and two beers. Today is a rest day, and even if I watch what I eat I should see those numbers come back up, sigh...

 

This Old Bike #1: I suspect that we'll be doing quite a bit more bike/camp touring soon, so I am now into my next project, which is to get the Iguana up to snuff, or at least a more reliable level of snuff for these kinds of rides. (Old Paint is in good shape for the most part: other than the chain, the only old or substandard components are the wheels. Shifters, derailleurs, brakes, and cables are all relatively new.) I got a new rear wheel and new 7-speed cassette last week, and tonight I'm hitting Cutter's to pick up a new front wheel, chain, and sundry items like rim tape etc. I'll probably be slapping those things on over the next few days.

 

This Old Bike #2: The BB overhaul and general repacking/relubing project failed to eliminate the squeaks and creaks coming from the Turner, so I guess it's time to replace the crank/BB assembly; I think the rear shock is starting to act a bit funny, so that also needs to be looked at, and it's probably past time to replace the pivots. The shock probably needs factory work (I suppose that'll take forever, so I suppose I'll be buying a replacement as well as getting my original overhauled), and I really don't want to do the pivot replacement myself.... Tonight's Cutter's visit might include a long consultation.

 

Meantime, last night's ride... That was a fun and fast ride, and my intervals went great -- I think "peak and fade" sort of emulates how I kick it in a real ride -- but in one sense I'm disappointed in myself: thinking yesterday about pace and speed, I kind of pushed it on the ride back, and looking at my stats I see that my heart rate was pretty high for what I was supposed to be doing. The workout is geared around high intensity intervals alternating with intervals of rest, but all that is embedded in an "endurance miles" workout, where pedal cadence is kept high and heart rate kept relatively low. I can make noises about how pushing the pace is a form of event-specific training, but that's what the intervals are for, and the slow stuff is for endurance, and my fun ride last night was actually somewhat counterproductive in terms of endurance.

 

Anyway, today is a rest day, and tonight I'll be hitting Cutters, and also getting a long-overdue haircut, then maybe doing the lawn. We broke down last night and decided to put an air conditioner in the bedroom, so I'll probably be doing that when I get home too. It's another hot day.

Quick Training Analysis

I was wondering what (if any) measurable benefit I managed to get out of my recent training regimen -- I mean I feel like I'm riding better and faster, but can I see or quantify any benefits? I decided to look at three standard-ish rides I'd done relatively frequently before and during the training period.

 

Bloomsbury:

This is a loop in Hunterdon County starting from my office; it was my go-to road ride especially in the spring, when I could just hop on the bike and make the most of the remaining daylight after work. This is a table of every Bloomsbury ride I recorded.

 

Date     Avg Speed

4/5/10   13.4

4/14/10  13.9

4/20/10  14.6

4/28/10  14.5

5/5/10   14.4

6/29/10  15.0

 

The first two rides were fairly slow, maybe because I was trying to figure out my course or maybe because I was not yet acclimated, then I "got all the slack out of the rope," and had a fairly consistent 14.5 mph average for the next three spring rides, just before I started the training. Fast forward two months, and the last ride shows a 0.5 mph jump in average speed -- nice, but probably not statistically significant, I need more rides.

 

Sals:

I have a bunch of Sals rides of all kinds, so I filtered this to include only those solo, daylight rides, between 9 and 12 miles in length; this would put me on one or two fairly standard routes, and hopefully would reduce the effect of the 1.25 mile road ride over (and back) on my offroad average. I also removed some snow rides from the sample, which left only three rides.

 

Date     Avg Speed

3/20/10  6.1

6/8/10   7.0

6/30/10  7.0

 

There's a pretty good jump, 0.9 mph, between the first ride (pre-training, in fact before the pre-training base workouts), and recent rides.

 

Towpath:

I narrowed these these rides to solo, daylight rides, longer than say 17 miles, that do not include anything but the towpath (and the short road ride to/from the Sand Island trailhead).

 

Date     Avg Speed

4/19/10  12.9

5/24/10  13.3

5/25/10  13.8

6/2/10   13.9

6/18/10  14.1
7/6/10   15.4

 

These rides included my main training routines, so they show what I would have expected: a progressive, gradual improvement -- 1.1 mph over the period shown. (I didn't count tonight's results, awesome though they were, because I'd just overhauled my bottom bracket, and was running a higher tire pressure, and the towpath surface was hard-packed by the heat, and so  felt unusually fast, and also because I was consciously thinking about my speed, making tonight the time trial that the other rides were not.)

 

So there you have it! I'm not sure of the statistical significance but I would say that there has been improvement. Would there have been even more improvement with a different training regimen, or even just randomly riding a lot like most summers? No clue.

Back So Soon?

Morning weigh-in: 173.5#, 10% BF

 

Scorcher today. Yesterday too, and tomorrow will be just as hot, then it looks like some fronts will blow through: chance of thunderstorms and slowly dropping temperatures for the rest of the week. Yee-ouch! Hitting the towpath tonight for intervals, this is going to be difficult.

 

I'm trying to get back into the training groove. Last weekend, and the weekend before, I fell off the wagon with some non-training rides -- no biggie, the rides were longer/endurance, or at least aerobic, "vacation rides," and the training program that I'm on is OK with taking those kinds of opportunities when they come along -- but I'd also been doing a bit of experimenting with my training routine, or at least the routes, trying to do interval-style workouts at places like Sals & Lehigh. Things didn't work out, workouts collapsed to "I'll just ride hard and see what happens," and I am now back to the structured environment known as the towpath for the majority of my riding.

 

In other bike news, this year's 24 Hours of Allamuchy has been canceled, and I have a feeling that there will be no more in the future. The end of an era: I've raced every one since 1996 (except 2007 when I was in Florida, and 2000 when I was on injured reserve, and served as a race volunteer). This has been a long time coming, race attendance has been dropping, steadily at first and then precipitously in the last year or so, and the promoters have never really addressed the biggest racer complaints: camping and parking hassles.

 

Busy, Busy, Busy

Wow, July 4th already... too busy, these last few weeks, to even drop a quick lunchtime post from work.

Some highlights were a trip to Washington DC (met Anne who was there for a conference) last weekend, and our self-supported overnight biking/camping trip to Bull's Island this Friday and Saturday. (We also managed to try that Hashing thing too, a few weeks back.) I've been good with with the photos though, so you can check out the happenings over at Flickr.

Weekends have been packed, and the weeks have been full of all the chores/errands normally done on weekends, and work's been busy as well.
 Training takes up a lot of time too, but I have to say that it's been going really well lately: I'm starting to see some real improvement, both on and off-road. I'll tell you all about it, as soon as I have a spare moment...

Last Chance For Catch-Up

Morning weigh-in: 173.5#, 12% BF

 

A quick recap of last weekend:

 

Friday night was the "Heels On Wheels" pub crawl, and a good time was had by all -- and my photos are now posted on flickr. We started at Brew Works: Anne, Donna, and Heidi in their heels and skirts, plus Ben on the recumbent trike and me on the Iguana, and Mike, and Kevin and a few of his friends; one brew at the Works and off we went. Emmi and Jen joined us at the Bookstore, and Deb and Liz joined us at J.P McGrady's where it all devolved into arm-wrestling matches... We also hit Welcome, and ended the night back at Brew Works; strangely enough, it was a fairly early night.

 

Saturday night was the homecoming party for Ben, and the day was mostly taken up with party preparations. Pretty nice party too: lots of people, friends, relatives, and we managed to kick that keg of homemade "Hoppy Homecoming" ale.

 

Sunday was trailwork at Trexler. I met Kenny, Jeremy, Scott, Doug & Lori, and Mike over there, as well as Rob T, and we bench cut about a half mile of trail. Brutally hot day for that kind of work. Anne joined us about noon, and we (me, Anne, Doug & Lori on the tandem, and Mike) did a ride on the emerging trail system. Verdict: the place has a lot of potential, but I thought things were a lot further along than they turned out to be, and there really isn't much more than, say, 4 miles of finished trail in place. I went in thinking the place was ready to ride, but had to downgrade it back to "has potential." We got home and totally crashed, while some serious rain fell.

 

Next up: this weekend. Stay tuned...

 

 

A Sudden Silence

Morning weigh-in: 175#, 11% BF

Happy Bloomsday! Unless, of course, you're an Apple customer... (Update: they blinked.)

Anne's taking Ben back to school today (an overnight trip), and, in an unrelated show-the-flag gesture, half my department went to some prospective customer's meeting somewhere down near Houston. Suddenly it's very quiet at home and at work...

I did a "steady state power intervals" workout tonight, or at least I tried to: the first two intervals were fine and I felt pretty strong, but the third (out of a total of six) was a dud -- I had nothing, heart rate wouldn't go up, nada, zip, zilch. So, I bagged it, and cruised on home. I suspect that it's because of yesterday's ride, which was an easy spin but I pushed the schedule (ie I rode instead of rested today) so tomorrow could be a bike rest day and I could hit the gym. Oh well...

Yesterday was Brian Hahl's birthday, by the way; he would have been 51 years old. Hard to believe that surprise party was only a year ago, hard to believe it's already been a year too.

Full House

Morning weigh-in (Thursday): 172#, 11% BF

Morning weigh-in (Friday): 172.5#, 10% BF

 

Did another "Steady Effort Power Intervals" workout last night, this time on the towpath -- things went way better in the "controlled environment" department than they did at Sals the other day. Bonus: on the way back I ran into Doug , and we got to ride and chat.

 

Dinner at home, chicken stir-fry, with Anne, and Ben, and Emmi and her college friend Jen. Jen and Emmi (and Emmi's dog) are staying at Emmi's dad's place, but that's close by, and we have Ben until he goes back to school next week. Things are very hectic right now, but it's a good, fun kind of hectic. Speaking of hectic: we went out last night to Brew Works, and ran into Doug & Lori, Donna with Erin & Rick, Deb & Kevin, Rob, etc etc... I was totally exhausted when we got home.

 

Meantime, I see that they're still mapping the Mountains of Madness. Tread lightly, fellas!

 

Tonight is the Heels on Wheels pub crawl.

Homecoming

Morning weigh-in (Tuesday): 176#, 11% BF (uh oh)

Morning weigh-in (Wednesday): 173#, 11.5% BF

 

Happy Birthday, Dad!

 

Gym Monday night, then I came home and downloaded a few new albums & ripped a few old CD's. Dinner at home: bacon-potato-spinach fritatas and some ginger beer, while playing with the computer and the other gizmos, and hanging with Anne.

 

Media Time: One CD I ripped was my old favorite, Fu Manchu's King of the Road. I got it in 2000 or thereabouts -- I remember listening to it at the 2000 24 Hours of Snowshoe --  so it must have come out some time before that, like back in the stone age, before DVD's/videos and MP3's -- or at least that's I always assumed. I knew that there were a few "bonus" MP3 tracks, which magically appeared when I first played the CD in my new car, but last night was the first time I ever put the disk into a computer, and I found a bunch of videos to go along with the music. How cool is that?

 

So I'm checking out the one particular music video, and it reminded me of one of my favorite teen movies, Over the Edge (which isn't too surprising: there's a song "Over the Edge" on the album), and the video, which was actually for a different song, looked like a 3-minute homage to the movie, plus concert footage. That gets me thinking: a little googling, and I find out that the movie was based on actual events that happened in 1974, to the kids at this middle school, in Foster City, CA (which reminds me quite a bit of Fangoso Lagoons). I'm not surprised that it's reality-based, I liked the movie for its realistic take on early teen life in the still-developing suburbs.

 

A bunch of us were talking the other day about "Blue Velvet," probably because of Dennis Hopper, and I was the only one who said I didn't really like the movie all that much. I guess I'm belatedly defending my position here, but what really bothered me was that whole "our hero discovers the seamy underside of his wholesome apple-pie town" thing -- there were plenty of creepy psychos like Frank back in my own "Over the Edge" years, they were the ones who sold drugs (wholesale, ie in bulk) to schoolkids; the only difference between Frank, and David the ex-football player in "Dazed and Confused," my other favorite teen movie, is about 5 years, and the least believable character in the movie was Jeffrey, back from college, or maybe from living under a rock.

 

Reading: Speaking of Pynchon, I just started on Inherent Vice, the next on my to-do list of Christmas/birthday books; it seems to be in the Crying of Lot 49 or Vineland mold, maybe even a cross between the two, a 60's-era California detective story. Pretty good so far.

 

Last night was "steady effort power intervals" at Sals, followed by Two Brew Tuesday. The ride was OK, but as I expected, actual trails are much less suitable to heart rate-based interval training than, say, the controlled environment of the towpath. But, I was heartened to see I that rode better and faster there than previous efforts: typically the "warmup" ride from home to the bottom lot on Constitution takes 31 minutes, and even though I dialed it back a few times, I did it yesterday in 28. I've suspected for a while that most of my recent problems in the technical stuff were actually fitness rather than skill issues, but even so, I was more than a bit worried that since so much of my training was on either the road or the towpath, I was afraid I might have been busting my ass only to be going backward. (I also went up the short climb on Public Rd at 9.5 mph rather than 7.5 mph, with the same level of perceived effort, so I can see that things are starting to work. But that's road.) Things took a wrong turn when I got a flat tire, knocking me off my schedule (running late already, since I started late), and I ended up racing the last of the sunlight to get out of the woods.

 

Home, shower... I caught up with the crew (Anne with Emmi, Donna with Erin & Rick, Rob, Larry, Debbie & Kevin, and Mike) over at Brew Works. Good times, but it was a later night than I planned.

 

 And Ben's coming home today -- I got the dates wrong. Anne and I swapped cars for the day; she's going to pick him up at JFK. He's been gone a year, hard to believe.

 

 

Swan Singer Blues: Should I Wear My Trousers Rolled?

Morning weigh-in: 174.5#, 11% BF

 

Good weekend, third three-day weekend in a row...

 

Friday was beautiful, if warm, and I got in a decent training ride on the towpath before at-home chores and road-trip errands overtook us (we hit the dry cleaner, and Dan's Camera City, and Bike Line, and the Allentown Farmer's Market, all in one fell swoop); later in the evening we went over to Greg & Judy's for a nice BBQ. Us, Eric & Kris, Mike K, and Eric & Janna, a crowd I sort of lost touch with this summer so it was really nice to see them all. Early night though.

 

Saturday was Bobby's fourth annual, and final, McSorley's bus trip, though since it was a much smaller crowd we were in a big rented van instead of a bus. (Bob's about to give up beer, and in fact all carbonated beverages, for medical reasons; this trip was his swan song and last hurrah.) Me and Anne, plus the usual gang: Bob, Ryan & Janelle, Lee, Perry, Lou, Bob's son Brian and a friend of his, and Luke who I met for the first time on the trip, and another of Bob's friends as the designated driver. We got into the city around noon, hit McSorley's for a few hours, then escaped to the Hop Devil Grille for a while. Dinner was at a sort of Scottish pub (the St Andrew?), and we stopped at a place in Little Italy (Ferarra's?) for espresso and cannolis on the way home. Technically, I guess that this was an early night too, we were home before midnight, but we'd been going strong since morning... Awesome time. (Photos posted, knock yourselves out!)

 

Sunday was a mellow day, but it had its moments. We went to Meeting in the morning, something I'd never done before, though I had been to a Christmas pageant once. (Quaker meetings are pretty unique: mostly, everyone just sits in silent meditation, though people are occasionally inspired to say something.) Pretty cool, and though I don't think I'll be calling myself a Quaker anytime soon, if Anne wants to go again I'd be up for it. Blue Sky breakfast with Donna, then we hung out at home, watching the rain come pouring down -- it got really nice after that, so I snuck in a decent 2-hour road ride before sunset. Got home, found out that Emmi was on her way home, and "about an hour from Bethlehem." Well! That was a really nice surprise, she was able to get away a little early. Dinner with her, then she went over to her dad's and we hit Brew Works with Donna.

 

(By the way, Ben comes home tomorrow.)

 

I have to call the optician, I have two pairs of glasses on order and I expected to hear something this weekend. Bifocals. I grow old.

 

Not Seen Nothing Like The Mighty

Morning weigh-in: 172.5#, 11% BF

Friday off, sunny day -- I'll be hitting the trails as soon as breakfast is settled in (and some chores get done). I have a few errands for later in the day, but I want to take advantage of the nice weather.

Queenie: Lotta stuff about Sally Quinn out there lately, but this one's my favorite.

Monster: Looks like Selene is kicking butt in the Trans-Sylvania Epic MTB stage race. I knew she would...

Off to do my thing.

Sweat Loaf Die Die Die

Morning weigh-in: 173#, 10.5% BF

 

Did an "over/under" interval ride last night, again on the towpath. These were more difficult than last week's routines, requiring greater effort but also a greater amount of fine-tuning, tighter control of that effort. Still, it was a fast and fun night on the bike. Good soundtrack too, some uptempo Jonathan Richman and Avett Brothers on the way out, and I caught some real barn-burners on the way back -- until I was flying along, jamming to some WT lizard-brain anthem from the Butthole Surfers, and almost almost rode into some family types riding along. After that I just felt dirty...

 

Burnt Chrome: Speaking of music, on the way in this morning I saw a bumper sticker for The Slamhounds, a band I'd never heard of but they sure had a cool name -- or would have, maybe 20 years ago when Count Zero was still fairly fresh. Now, even if it's cooler than, say, Straylight Run, the name does smell just a little bookwormy. (Of course, the term does have another meaning -- and now I feel dirty all over again...) I hear that Neuromancer may finally be made into a movie, and the producers promise "no Keanu," but it may already be too late. Life goes on.

 

By the way, I posted some more photos on Flickr the other day, stuff on my phone from my parents' visit. I am almost caught up with my droid photos; the last ones (from Dirt Fest) will go up sometime this weekend, hopefully. I am also almost -- almost! -- reconciled now to the fact that I lost my camera, and will probably replace it tomorrow. Tonight is the gym.

 

That Summer Feeling

Morning weigh-in: 172.5#, 10.5% BF

 

Week two of the training, and I am feeling like fiery death -- at least, I've been really, really tired and sore when I get up, but that's how I usually (used to) feel on summer weekends... It's actually going well though, I seem to be transitioning well enough into training mode, and though it's too soon to see results, I have seen some payoff from my focus on higher pedal cadence, especially on hills. My biggest problem so far has been scheduling: other commitments, even other rides have come along and forced changes to the routine, which luckily is meant to be at least somewhat flexible. The intensity is ramping up this week, we'll see how it all shakes out.

 

Great weekend, the summer season really started off with a bang. We hit the Bookstore Friday night after a towpath ride (and dinner at home -- they have no food for me there), with Donna, and Erin, and also Doug & Lori. Lots of fun but it was a late night -- Saturday was supposed to be morning yoga, but instead we slept in... A Blue Sky breakfast (with the previous evening's partners in crime), then a BBQ outside Tamaqua later in the day, and we finished the evening at Brew Works, where we said our goodbyes to bartender Amy, who is getting married. Big crew: Donna & both her kids, Liz, Debbie, plus Spanky & his daughter later on.

 

Sunday was a charity ride in Jim Thorpe, organized by my friend (and former neighbor, cancer survivor) Mike B. Beautiful day, awesome scenery -- we were on Broad Mountain, and the mountain laurel is now finally starting to bloom. We stopped in at Anne's mom's house for another BBQ, then went home and napped. Yesterday we watched Anne's nephew race at the Tour of Somerville, then did a road ride of our own, out near Hellertown with our friend Paul, followed by one last BBQ at Paul & Ann's. No nap, but we were in bed by 9:30.

 

By the way, I ripped a bunch of old Jonathan Richman CD's and put them on my droid this weekend, probably saved the songs just days before the CD's self-destructed.

 

So Far So Good

Morning weigh-in: 174.5#, 10% BF

 

Rolling Just To Keep On Rolling: I started that "Time Crunched Cyclist" training program this week. Monday was an hour of "endurance miles" on the towpath, and last night was the first interval night, three 10-minute sessions just below my anaerobic threshold in a 90-minute ride. (That was also on the towpath, where, since the surface and grade are fairly constant, I find it easier to control my level of effort; eventually I will have to step up to workouts on "real" rides, but not yet.) If anything, the endurance miles workout was the harder one, on my legs if not my cardio, as I tried to maintain the high cadence (high for me) recommended by this program. Today is a scheduled rest day, so I'm taking a much-neglected yoga class tonight, and tomorrow's workout is getting rescheduled to Friday so I can hit the gym.

 

This American Death: This story is so sad, the poor guy was lost in his own crazy and swirling the bowl, until he finally took out two traffic cops, his son, and himself. I have to agree with Josh Marshall though, this whole story is very Americana -- the final shootout in a Wal-Mart parking lot was a nice touch too.

 

Speaking Of Pennsyltucky Gothic: The weekend at Raystown was pretty nice. I'd post pictures, but I think I may have lost my camera somewhere... Anne and I stayed in a "cabin," which was really a big shed with bunk beds and a kitchenette, with Doug & Lori, Eric, and Donna. (The connecting cabin housed Rich, Heckler Mike, Jay, and Warren; Chris and his family were in a neighboring cabin; Bill & Courtney had their daughter, new dog and an RV nearby; ditto Kris and his family and also Bob & Karen -- we had a pretty big contingent at our campground, especially when you added in the crowd of little kids.) I got in a couple of rides, with Anne and with Donna, who both found the Allegrippis trails very suited to their taste. Things were not so tasteful when the bachelor tent became a hotbed of booze-arrested development, and the rain was a bit of a bummer, but all in all, the first Dirt Fest was a success.

 

(Click here for a more harrowing account of the weekend.)

 

Reading: I am working my way through my Christmas/birthday gifts. I just finished William Gibson's All Tomorrow's Parties, and have been digging into those training and nutrition books I got; next up is the latest Pynchon -- or maybe not, I got a package in the mail yesterday: The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest, the final novel in that Swedish thriller/mystery series. Thanks Mom & Dad! Those books are pure cheese, like a Tom Clancy novel you'd buy at the airport, and they are just as impossible to put down.

 

This Just In: Catholics celebrate 50 years of The Pill.

 

And now I am all caught up! Back to sleep...

 

Pure Enjoyment

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

Morning weigh-in (Wednesday): 173.5#, 10% BF

 

I had a great ride Monday night, riding at Sals with Anne and Liz; we went in at Reeb (made the difficult initial climb, in front of a bunch of other riders -- sweet!) and cruised the St Luke's trail down to the middle lot, returning on the Quarry. We were out for only about an hour, but we beat the rain and we saw some really beautiful evening light in the woods, and then Anne and I went out for dinner at Brew Works (we got a bit wet on the way home).

 

Last night was the primary election -- buh-bye, Arlen! -- and I had a few chores to do so there was no exercise; ditto tonight (except a short bike ride), we have to get our act together for the weekend, pack, go food shopping, etc.

 

Two more days, then Raystown here we come!

 

The Best Of All Disinfectants

Morning weigh-in: 175#, 10.5% BF

 

Beautiful weekend, which started with a quiet Friday night at home, continued with a long, gruelling, and very fun "adventure ride" in Jim Thorpe, followed by a fun night on the town, and ended yesterday with a very pleasant visit by from parents. I posted the ride photos on Flickr, as well as saved photos from my old cell phone, and I'll be working on yesterday's photos tonight, so enjoy what I put up, and stay tuned for more!

 

Strangely enough, one of my cell phone pics -- a lo-fi shot of some Iron Pigs home game -- is now a runaway hit, with 41 views since I posted it late last night.

 

Skin Situation: Almost normal. I think the sunlight does it more good than any other therapy except a steroid pack. My legs cleared up dramatically (not counting scratches from brambles and other mishaps) after Saturday's "Seven Hours In The Sun" ride, and the feet, after spending yesterday in sandals, have improved as well.

 

Get Back In The Boat! I had to do some MTO stuff for work last week, so I decided to dust off that MTO program I wrote last year, and compare how its results stacked up against the official take-off. Unfotunately, it turned out that I'd lost interest in the program last year, after deciding to modify it. I'd changed a bunch of things partway, rendering it unusable, but never finished the change; the program basically spouted gibberish. I was able to fix it, or at least undo the unfinished upgrade. My results: pretty much in line with expected results, and I saved the latest working in case I ever need it again.

 

Tonight if it's nice enough, I'll be doing a towpath ride with Anne; otherwise it's yoga: tomorrow will be a rainy day, perfect for the gym.

 

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...

 

 

Slacker 2: Electric Boogaloo

Wow, one week later and here I am, back in Wired with the laptop... No official weigh-in right now, but my weight's been all over the map this past week, from a low of 172# on Sunday afternoon to a high of 179# on Tuesday; last I checked was Thursday when it was 174#.

Michaux was a lot of fun, but I was totally exhausted at the start: I almost bagged the race after a short warm-up, and it wasn't until the second half -- after mile 10, and also the part that was on the old familiar trails -- when really felt alive. My final time was around 3:20 or so, and my ride time was more like 3:07. (My race data can be found here, and the official race results are here.) They don't show DNF's, and I think there were a lot of them, but I was 19th out of 21 finishers (among the old men). Not bad, considering, and at least now I know where I stand.

I went to a dietitian this week, she looked over my situation and gave me some food advice (mostly about going out, eating at home is working fine for now), and she also told me I might be anemic... I'm not sure about that, but I think she gave me a good case of hypochondria.

Slacker

Morning weigh-in: 173#, 12% BF (wow)

I'm at Wired Cafe. I'd made a bowl of quinua flakes for breakfast but I was out of coffee at home, so I cleaned up and headed downtown, where I saw Joe G and his dogs outside the cafe, hung with him for a bit. (The summer scene on Main Street is definitely rebuilding itself, Army Jay just walked in.) It's a beautiful day, sunny and hot, and the walk up was really nice with the warm sun on my feet -- busted out the Tevas; now I'm sitting inside like a mushroom, but I'll be done here soon: got a morning mug or three, and bought half a pound of beans for home. (By the way, it looks like they're almost ready to open that Kenyan restaurant in the back, and the menu looks awesome. I can't wait!)

Rode last night at Sals, but it was a terrible night: I rode like shit, hooked up with some friends (Eric & Jaime) but I was way off the back, and I was truly hurting on anything in the least bit difficult. I don't mind being behind, I am usually nowhere near the front in the first 10 miles anyway, but last night, if there were more than 10 miles to ride I don't think I would have even made it to mile eleven...

Possible causes? Well, my lungs were full of butter from all the springtime plant activity, and that radical drop in weight might indicate nutritional issues, but I think the real problem is that I have been doing too much lately, with too many workout days in a row even if it's not all biking. So, today I am taking off completely, no yoga or trailwork or anything like that. With any luck I'll be at least somewhat recovered before tomorrow's race at Michaux -- I only hope yesterday was not some foreshadowing for tomorrow's wake-up call.

Anyway, we hit Tulum for dinner, then Doug & I went later to the Bookstore where we saw a neat old-timey kind of band (Midnight Society?) playing a sort of ragtime-like "hot jazz." We seemed to have bumped into a new subculture there too, lots of folks were wearing vintage clothes: suits with bow ties, and dresses from the thirties and forties. The band was dressed that way, but most bands there go heavy on speakeasy-era clothes/music; maybe these people were fans, or maybe it's the new thing over there, I don't know. Maybe we'll see tonight when we go back -- Doug's leading a VMB ride at Fell Mountain today, then there's a movie at Cutters Bike Shop tonight, and I think people are heading over to the Bookstore afterward. Sweet! I just have to make sure it's an early night.

Whelp, I'm almost out of here. My next task is laundry, then I am off to buy a birdbath before starting to prep for tomorrow.

I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself

Morning weigh-in (Wednesday): 177.5#, 9% BF

Morning weigh-in (Thursday): 177#, 12% BF

Morning weigh-in (Friday): 175#, 10% BF

 

Anne's out of town, visiting Emmi in Knoxville, heading down with her buddies Lois & Ann in true road-trip style. In the meantime, I am on my own: I hit the gym last night, came home and ate random crap from the fridge, spent the evening in the ol' basement bike shop, and then plopped myself in front of the computer and stayed up too late.

 

Tonight I'll be riding Sals, then probably grabbing dinner on Southside before coming back across the river for some Brew Works / Starfish nightlife, or maybe Rippers (or Joe's or whatever). Many of the other ladies are away this weekend, and I was hoping to instigate some "Boys' Night Out" kind of pub crawl, but I think The Boys all came down with lumbago or something.

 

Tomorrow I may hit an early morning yoga class, then come back to help out at the Sals tree planting. Riverfusion is tomorrow too, and somewhere in there I also want to buy a birdbath -- it'll be a busy day, a "selfish day," because Sunday is Michaux. Maybe I should take it easy tonight too. Nah...

 

Bigger Than Life

Morning weigh-in: 175#, 9% BF

 

RIP Floyd Dominy, 1909-2010. I only know him from from Cadillac Desert, but he sure loomed large there. It's funny, if I had been born maybe 20 years earlier, with only slightly differing sets of circumstances he could have been my nemesis, or my employer.

 

Meantime, Boobquake. Seriously, Boobquake? How the $#%& did I miss this? (Especially ironic since Sunday night I heard a tirade about the inconvenient bounciness of overlarge boobs, from their owner -- she's not much more than an acquaintance either. I was sitting with the ladies, and sometimes I think the ladies forget I'm not really one of them...) Anyway, results: Taiwan, 6.9, not bad.

 

Hit the gym last night, and tonight will be yoga, once again a class/teacher I've never taken before, followed by Two Brew & Tacos Tuesday. Tomorrow should be nice, so I'll probably be riding from work. I am now about on schedule for my revised weight loss plan.

 

 

How Sweet It Is

Morning weigh-in: 176.5#, 9% BF

 

Good weather makes for great weekends... I had off Friday, and we slept in (sometimes that's the best luxury I know), then ran some errands: Allentown Farmer's Market, Cutters bike store, laundry, etc, and then I went up to Camelback and rode with Rich and Joe and the crew. (What an awesome set of trails!) We rode literally until it was too dark to see, then I raced back to the valley, and Anne & I caught a couple of good bands in Easton.

 

Saturday was more outdoor fun, sort of: we did the CAT ride from their office over to Southside for the festival and chili contest -- it was a costume ride, and the ladies made their theme "Heels on Wheels," finding the biggest heels, and hottest skirts (!) they could for the ride -- then parked the bikes at the Wildflower and hit all the local chili being served in the street, as well as the cold beers inside the pubs, $2 dollar margaritas, burritos at Tulum... When things started winding down, a bunch of us crossed the river and did a towpath ride, finishing just in time to beat the rain. Anne and I went home and took a quick nap before the evening's festivities, from which we did not awake until Sunday, so we missed a good party at the Funhouse but I was pretty happy. Yesterday we visited Anne's mom for her birthday and went out to dinner, but otherwise it was just a lazy, rainy Sunday.

 

It's raining, so tonight I'm hitting the gym.

 

 

Tonic In D Minus

Morning weigh-in: 176.5#, 12% BF

 

Well, that was definitely what the doctor ordered! I hit that yoga class last night and it felt great, though I was surprised at how strenuous it seemed, especially for what I thought was a beginner-oriented class. I didn't remember that part, I think I must be way out of shape... New teacher, new to me at least, since she's actually been there quite a while, I just never happened to take any of her classes, and it was fun to see a new (to me!) perspective on things.

 

Speaking of "what the doctor ordered:" I talked to my doctor's office the other day, and got the final and long-awaited blood test results: my Vitamin D3 levels are low (normal test value is 60-80 in whatever units, and I'm at 28), so I need to take vitamin drops for a while. I picked some up at the health food store, took a few drops, and -- I felt 100% better within hours! I wonder if that was the mystery missing nutrient I was thinking about the other day.

 

Happy Earth Day! I am not doing much about it today, but there is a Bethlehem cleanup on Saturday, followed by a CAT group ride, followed by the Southside Chili Contest (with musical guests Trouble City All-Stars), followed by the Great White Caps at the Funhouse -- I better walk the bike home...

 

Tonight is the gym, and we were tentatively planning an evening at Porters but I think that's been pushed back until tomorrow night, when we can also catch the Trouble City All-Stars at Pearly Bakers.

 

 

But If You Try Sometimes, You Might Find...

Morning weigh-in: 177.5#, 10.5% BF

 

Great ride last night, beautiful weather, and I think I discovered my new "standard route," at least the one I ride after work. As I watch the passing thunderstorms outside my window right now, I'm thinking that getting out yesterday was definitely the right move. Tomorrow is the gym, so I'll be going to yoga tonight, first time in a while and we'll find out how stiff I've become...

 

Didn't Realize I Was So Cutting Edge! Looks like the Droid just got a ringing endorsement: Steve Jobs said that the iPhone store will not sell porn apps, and if you want porn, or if you want your kids to get porn, you should get an Android phone. (I saw this on Slashdot, where the general consensus seems to be that that porn is easily available on the iPhone, including some things specifically marketed for it, it's just that the the Apple store itself won't sell adult-oriented applications -- unless you count the Playboy app -- and meantime, you can't get actually get "porn apps" from Google's Android Market either, although, unlike in the Apple/iPhone universe, Google is not the only source for Android applications.) Well, clutch my pearls and think of the children! For some reason that reminded me of this...

Beano, Comes The Hunger

Morning weigh-in (Thursday): 177#, 11% BF

Morning weigh-in (Friday): 178#, 10.5% BF

Morning weigh-in (Monday): 178.5#, 10.5% BF

Morning weigh-in (Thursday): 178#, 10% BF

 

A little slip, a little slide... Actually, that wasn't so bad, considering that last week was a bit of a washout: cold, sometimes rainy, and I just blew off riding for the weekend. We hit The Bookstore on Thursday night (but the only food there I could/would eat was a $2.00 pickle) hanging with Donna & Andrew and also Lori P, and Friday was a mini-pubcrawl through Southside, but dinner was Indian food at home. Saturday was a visit to Porters (with pot roast at home first), where we saw an old friend who'd moved to Florida (and also an awesome band), Sunday morning was oatmeal & bacon, and I forget what dinner was...

 

Last night was chili, and today is chili for lunch. Never thought I'd say it, but I'm staring to get sick of chili. Oatmeal too. I am building up a craving for something salty-crunchy-gloppy-cheesy -- I would kill for a cheese steak right about now -- and I suspect that the craving has less to do with "forbidden food nostalgia" than with some actual nutritional lack in my diet. I am going to see a dietitian pretty soon; I have a name and number, and a referral. Meantime, I am becoming a big fan of potato chips, the only thing I can eat in the office snack machine.

 

More Droid: What I did with my non-bike time this weekend was park myself in front of the laptop. I went through my contact lists, merged duplicate entries (phone and email lists are no longer separate things), weeded out incorrect or unused numbers/addresses, and so on; I'm now down to about 180 actual contacts from the 400 or so I had when I started.

 

I also put a lot of my CD's into RhythmBox on the laptop -- a bit of a hassle since there seems to be an ongoing RhythmBox vs CD player issue: plenty of questions/complaints found on The Google, but no answers -- and then dumped them onto the phone. I don't have as much music as some, but now I can hold my head high because at least my play time can now be measured in days. Ear phones and I listen while riding, aux jack and I have my tunes in the car.

 

Last night was the towpath, and tonight is a road ride from work. It's beautiful outside today, and the next few days might not be as nice so I thought I'd front-load this week's miles a bit.

 

 

Some Days You Can't BUY A Break

Morning weigh-in: 177.5#, 10% BF

 

I've been slowly shifting back the time I leave for work in the morning, and now I find myself habitually on the edge of being late, so yesterday I set my new phone's alarm clock to ring at 6:00 AM (absolute, final, no-more-snooze-button wake up time) and at 7:00, when I have to leave the house. The wake-up call comes in as planned, sounding like the crack of doom, and I get up. Doop de doo, do what I have to, which includes grabbing bike & gear for a ride after work, and I am out the door just as the second alarm sounds. So far so good, and once I cross the bridge I take a right instead of a left -- onto a smaller road, less traveled and fewer lights, I figure it'll cut a few minutes off my time except I come around the bend and... ROAD CLOSED. Gaaaa!! A quick right and left, and I am back on my original route, only a few cars behind my old place.

 

So we're all driving along, working our way through the traffic lights on Southside, and the parade gets caught at one of the last ones; when the car in the cross street gets the green it peels out and tears around in a big circle, smashing into the side of a car several lengths ahead of me -- a total POW! CRUNCH! kind of hit, crumpling both cars at the impact point, though luckily no one got hurt. I and everyone else call 911, and the cops are there in about a minute, and it's really only a few minutes more before things start moving again... my "shortcut" put me far enough back in the parade that I wasn't the one who got hit, but once again (and after the usual slowpoke shenanegans on 78) I was just a minute late to work.

 

Phone Update: I love my Droid. I've been getting all sorts of apps for it, including a bar code scanner, music recognition, a sky map, etc, all of it old hat to Blackberry/iPhone users I'm sure, but I'm having a blast with all my new-to-me gizmos. Music has been especially satisfying, since it turned out to be ridiculously easy to sync my laptop music with the phone.

 

Beautiful day today, and I'll be doing a road ride from work. The gym lands on rainy days this week (yesterday and tomorrow), and hopefully Friday will be nice enough to do a Round Valley ride after work.

 

Tuesday Morning After

Morning weigh-in (Monday): 177.5#, 10% BF

Morning weigh-in (Tuesday): 177.5#, 10.5% BF

 

Things are trending downward, but I did a lot of eating this weekend as well as a lot of riding, so when I stepped on the scale I was worried about which one was winning the race... Awesome weekend, best birthday weekend ever.

 

We stayed in Thursday night, even though I had Friday off -- I had a lot of new books to read, but I fell asleep within the first few pages of All Tomorrow's Parties, which only meant that we could get a good start to Friday morning's errands. (OK, we slept in, but still.) Ran around for a good part of Friday: banking, shopping, then Anne took me over to the Verizon store and got me a Droid -- sweet!

 

Later in the afternoon -- strange how the day just flew -- we got in a towpath ride with Debbie on her new bike. This was my old Super-V, which had sat in a shed for years (unused, disassembled and partly cannibalized), until I had to deal with it as part of the move; what I did was refurbish it and give it to Deb, and Friday was the maiden voyage. It's funny: I used to love that bike, but I hadn't even thought about it in years, and now giving it to Deb and seeing her enjoy it was as good as getting a present of my own.

 

I had to go over to the tax place (Broad street, a short walk) in the evening, and on the way home I stopped in at Brew Works;  Anne met me there and we then went to the Starfish -- which we closed -- and then the Apollo -- which we also closed. Granted, they both close before midnight, but I was impressed. A great day!

 

Saturday was another late start, and another shopping trip, this time to the Farmer's Market, then home, got some things cooking, and then it was time for a road ride: Anne and I went down to Reigelsville and did a loop on the river roads, maybe 33 miles total and a beautiful if somewhat chilly day. Home again, some more cooking and cleaning and then we had a few peeps over for dinner. Ribs & beans, and salads of various sorts, and plenty of beers -- we had some already but I bought more, and everyone else brought some as well, plus vodka -- we are now swimming in booze -- and some really cool friends.

 

Sunday was another slow morning (I had no complaints), but it was another beautiful day outside. Anne went on a road ride with Deb and Kevin, and Donna and Andrew, and I started with them but I pulled off after a bit and went over to Sals, maiden voyage with my music on the Droid, where I ran into Doug and Eric and rode with them for a while. I felt sluggish and slow again; probably fatigue, and eventually bagged Sals in favor of some long slow towpath distance. Needless to say, that did nothing for my energy levels...

 

Yesterday was a rest day (also leftovers), tonight is the gym followed by Two Brew Tuesday, and tomorrow I'm probably bringing the road bike to work, likely followed by more leftovers. 

 

 

No Buzz, Babylon

Morning weigh-in (Tuesday): 177.5#, 8.5% BF

Morning weigh-in (Wednesday): 178.5#, 10% BF

 

I'm not sure why the body fat is reading so low; it looks like dehydration but I really  think I'm OK in that respect. Finally managed to break 178#, if only for a day -- that was the first milestone on my admittedly optimistic/aggressive weight-loss plan; as of now I am only 4 weeks, or 8 pounds, behind schedule...

 

Rode Monday night, did a 25 mile loop from work; I still felt a bit sluggish from the weekend but it was a good ride, and once again a perfect day for it. Last night was the gym (all upper body, no legs or cardio), followed by Two Brew Tuesday with the whole crew (Debbie & Donna are now both dating), plus Doug & Lori. It was a really nice evening out, like the first night of the summer season. Tonight I'm hitting Sals, hopefully with some others but we'll see, and then I'll either try and meet up with Anne -- she'll be out at her EAC meeting -- or go home to either the laptop, or a good book.

 

Geekout #1: I've been using GRASS to play with a Sals mapping project, mainly using a bunch of GPS data from various rides. For various reasons I've had to really jump through hoops to get that data into the right format and into my map, converting files, transforming between coordinate systems etc, but yesterday at work I realized that GRASS has a built-in feature that interfaces with GPSBabel, so though it's not really documented, GRASS can handle any data format GPSBabel can handle (such as the one my Garmin uses), and will convert between coordinate systems automatically as well. As soon as I got home last night I tried it, and sure enough it worked! I only wish I'd realized that sooner, it's fairly obvious now that I see it.

 

Geekout #2: In my rush to play with the computer I had to bypass a little UPS package, but just before I went out I opened it -- Happy Birthday To Me from a faithful reader! I got the latest Pynchon novel, plus some sci-fi paperbacks and an endurance training guidebook. Thanks Mom & Dad!

 

Crush Bunny

Morning weigh-in: 178.5#, 10.5% BF

 

I've been trending downward for a while, but 178# is the number I've been trying break... soon, soon...

 

Awesome weekend. I worked Friday, but brought the Turner, and hit Round Valley after work. I get out early on Fridays: I was at the Cushetunk lot by 4:30, hooked up with Jason and Warren, and we were riding by 5:00. Jason & Warren rode well, but my first Round Valley ride of the season is always a wake-up call -- I got stomped! It was perfect riding weather though, and trail conditions were about as good as they get. It was kind of fun, showing them around too, I sometimes forget how scenic it is over there. We did a loop, and returned via Old Mountain Road; as my fitness returns (and the sun sets later), we can stop cheating and do the out-and-back, but if we tried that Friday we would have been racing the last of the daylight.

 

Friday evening was an Easton evening. I cruised over to Porters and met Anne, and we were joined by Donna and Andrew and had dinner. Caught  caught part of the Trouble City All Stars show (they just keep getting better and better, and now have a horn section -- Donna knew the sax player's mom)  before heading over to Pearly Bakers. The Great White Caps (Nick P's band) was playing there, playing some kind of rockabilly/surfadelic (at one point they played "Teenage Werewolf," which I think they dedicated to all the "bearded old guys in the corner") and putting on a wild fun show. When we left the band was still going strong, ditto Donna & Andrew who were cutting it up on the dance floor, but I was tired...

 

Anne and I got up early (considering the night before), and went up to Jim Thorpe, where we met Pete H and did the Broad Mountain Loop. Again, another perfect day for riding, sunny and warm but not too warm. They still had a lot of standing water up there, especially on the man-made stuff like the jeep roads (the singletrack was fine), the jeep-road gravel was incredibly soft and muddy in places, and the two streams we had to cross were real spring torrents -- they came in handy for getting that mud off though. After the ride we visited in town with Anne's mom, and her brother, visiting from Pittsburgh, and her sister & family, down from Connecticut. I slept on the drive home, and it was an early bedtime for both of us.

 

Sunday was a rest day -- we went for a run. A very short one though, and an extremely mellow pace: down to the towpath for a bit, then up Main Street where we stopped for a cup of coffee and the paper. Home, breakfast, some chores etc, then we went back up to Jim Thorpe for Easter dinner. Good time with Anne's extended family and a whole lot of food, and another beautiful day.

 

RIP Alex Chilton I totally missed this. Anne's nephew-in-law Chris told me he'd passed away about two weeks ago, died of a heart attack not long before Big Star was supposed to play SXSW. I only know him from reputation and the hit "Bangkok," but that was still pretty sad. He was only in his late fifties, which doesn't seem that old anymore.

 

I brought the bike in to work today, and tonight I'm riding the road.

Chamois Time

Morning weigh-in: 179#, 7.5% BF (WTF?)

 

It was tough but I did it: I hit the gym last night, an indoor workout on a beautiful day, very demotivating. Good workout though -- I did the full body one including legs, I felt strong (for a change), and I cruised right through. What I missed: Anne and the gang took those "invisible dog" leashes over to the dog park after work today, and "walked their dogs" for an April Fool's Day goof, and I was sorry to miss those hijinks (and also the MTB ride they did earlier at Jordan), but I caught up with them all later.

 

Best April Fool's Prank 2010: Debbie's boyfriend Kevin has a friend Rob, who's a bit younger then most of us, and unattached. (The girls have made a semi-project out of changing his relationship status.) He has a good female friend at work, and with the help of their boss they had everyone convinced that he'd gotten her pregnant and now they were engaged. Several frantic phone calls over the past few days as the story developed, then cell phone photos of her with her ring, and of the baby/wedding shower at work, etc, had the team totally believing, until... April Fool's!

 

Tonight I'm hitting Round Valley, then grabbing dinner at Porters before catching The Great White Caps at Pearly Bakers -- kinda-sorta like the good old days -- and tomorrow we're riding the Broad Mountain Loop in Jim Thorpe.

 

Spring Has Sprung.

Blueberries Bananas And Millet Oh My

Morning weigh-in: 179.5#, 8.5% BF

 

Back In The Game: Once upon a time I had what I called "The Rule Of Four:" when I went out, my unconscious target was four drinks, not really enough to become schnoockered, but definitely enough to feel that I'd had my party. After Which Brew closed my resistance slowly decreased, and I was governed first by the Rule of Three, then lately the Rule of Two... Last night I went out and drank three beers, plus a Jameson & ginger ale, and it didn't even slow me down. Not sure what that means, other than as an explanation for the dehydration-induced low body fat.

 

(Dinner was at home, the last of the leftover pot roast, and breakfast this morning was rice-millet flakes with bananas & blueberries.)

 

Hit the gym last night, got in a fairly good workout before I ran out of steam. I'm still disconcerted by how weak my upper body has become --  the skin issues have kept me from exercising in general, with the gym & yoga taking the hardest hits (probably a self-consciousness thing), and so I am now playing serious catch-up. The skin's not totally better, by the way, I just wear long sweatpants to the gym (and still skip yoga), but I do think that the past few days of restrictive diet, plus my switch back to benadryl -- that "non-drowsy" antihistamine still made me drowsy, so I figured if I have to pay that price anyway I'd just use the more effective medication -- has given me a great deal of relief, which now means that things have a chance to calm down and heal.

 

Tonight is supposed to be nice, so I'll probably do a road ride.

 

Hodgepodge

Morning weigh-in: 180.5#, 10% BF

 

Seeing: We saw "The Vagina Monologues" at the Banana Factory last week, and there's a joke in there somewhere... It wasn't quite as good as the time at Muhlenburg, there was more emphasis on crimes against women -- which makes sense, given that the show was a fundraiser for something along those lines, but that did make it a bit of a downer -- than on the celebratory taboo-busting side of things. Pretty good night out with the crew though: Anne, me, Debbie and Kevin, Donna, and their friend Lisa from knitting.

 

Anne and I went out Saturday night and saw Crazy Heart, which just won Jeff Bridges an Oscar. Really good movie, way better than I expected -- we watched Leaving Las Vegas the other day, which had a somewhat similar plot, and a similarly awesome acting job by Nicholas Cage, and it was cringe-inducing to the point where I left the room, but this one was a solid story, with a satisfyingly un-mawkish ending. Two thumbs up, and as Anne noted, it had great scenery and some really good camera work.

 

Reading: I am almost done with The Girl Who Played With Fire, book two of Stieg Larsson's "Millennium trilogy." I'm now pretty convinced that these are fairly cheesy books, but they are engaging and fun, full of action and suspense. (By the way, a certain faithful reader should know that I've updated my Amazon wishlist, per recent request.)

 

Listening: Not much going on here, just listening to the radio mostly.

 

Biking: We had a pretty good weekend two weeks ago, but this past one was a bit of a cold rainy washout -- Anne and I got in a towpath ride on Friday, but that was about it. My main bike project lately has been what I call Project Debbie: I've been refurbishing my old Super-V over the past month or so, to give to a friend. The frame's in good shape, and I took a very minimalist approach to componentry, mostly spares from the parts bin; the only major purchases were a pair of tires (bought second-hand) and brake/shifter cables and housings. I haven't put any finishing touches on it yet, but last night I got it up to full functionality, after maybe 7 years in mothballs. We should be able to take it out for a shakedown cruise this weekend.

 

Eating: My skin responded rather spectacularly to that steroid blister pack, but as soon as it was over the rashes came back. The doctor had blood work done, and it confirmed that I am in the middle of a serious allergic reaction to something, and also that, since the last time I was tested, I have become allergic to wheat, eggs and dairy products. (Also corn and sesame seeds, though they're not as bad as the others. The doctor joked that could eat all the cod I wanted...) I've been trying to modify my diet, and have been successful so far -- we went on a major shopping spree last night for cereals/snacks that are safe, with mixed but generally OK results. I've been eating a lot of meat and potatoes lately, and quite a bit of rice and fruit too. We'll see.

 

My biggest problem right now though, is apparently dust. That's not much of a surprise, but what was surprising was how severe a sensitivity the test results indicated. Anne has really taken this to heart, and is now thinking of ripping carpets out and changing furniture, curtains etc -- something I'm not sure is really going to be the answer. I've been through this before, dealing with allergies were, for better or worse, the defining backstory of my childhood, and though I'd be the first to say that avoidance (rather than shots or antihistamines) is the best way to deal with allergens, I've always thought that the "scorched earth and spartan interior" approach to dust was overkill. I've never had to go that route before (as an adult), and I don't want to see us change her home and world now (relegating her to a bit part in The Don Show drama), if that's not absolutely necessary.

 

Anyway, tonight is the gym, then Two Brew Tuesday at the Brew Works.

Dreaming Fishes To Young Ram, Watersleep To Firewaking

Great day today, the sun is finally in my house...

Did a really nice piece of trailwork at Sals, putting in a log ride, and followed that with an abbreviated "holy cow I'm tired" ride, then dinner and a movie ("101 Reykjavik") at home. Yesterday was Sals, Friday was Jordan, and Thursday was a road ride; it's supposed to be rainy through to Wednesday, so I'm pretty happy to have seized the past few nice days. The weather will no doubt become seasonal again, but this weekend was a nice foretaste of summer.