Aggro World

Morning weigh-in: 181.5#, 13.5% BF

Writing this in Lehigh Valley International Airport...

Went out riding the towpath last night with Anne. A mellow ride, and we were going to keep it relatively short because the weather was so cold -- 40 degrees, maybe a bit less, in a few months we'll be out in shorts if it gets up to 40 but we were freezing at first -- but as we got into the groove and warmed up a little we decided to push our turnaround a little further down the trail. Unfortunately, when we got a little past Freemansburg we started hearing gunshots across the river.  (There's a gun range over there somewhere, but this wasn't that.) We didn't feel like getting popped by the local yahoos, discretion was the better part of valor so we turned around, cut our ride short anyway. Still, about 12 miles in just about an hour, not bad for a Monday night, and the first requiring both lights and riding tights... Lots of critters out and about, besides us and the yahoos: we saw a bunch of deer, one very decrepit-looking fisherman, and a mangy skunk that I almost ran into before we spotted it.

This past weekend was the big Halloween blow-out, though we wimped out on a few events: I got home Friday totally whooped, and we (me, Anne, Deb, Donna) didn't feel like trying to catch up to the CAT Halloween ride (ride starts at 5:00? with a movie about sprawl? WTF?) so we blew it off in favor of feeding the Trick-or-Treaters and our usual Friday night at Brew works. Saw the usual crew there, as well as Doug & Lori who did do the ride and caught up with us afterwards. Lotsa fun with various halloween costume props, including some goofy teeth, and a rather pornographic version of fake nose & glasses, which turned out to be very popular.

Saturday we did some morning running around, then hooked up with the big VMB Halloween/Birthday ride, birthday because Jason's turning 30 in a few days so we had to celebrate. Great ride, there were probably about 30 people on the ride, some in costume, and there were the usual misadventures (mechanical breakdowns, crashes, some peeps getting lost) associated with a big group ride. Totally a fun stupid day in the woods.

That night the VMB festivities continued with a party at Greg's house. More crazy fun: two sixtels tapped, a fire going in the fire pit, and a whole bunch of crazy bikers. Anne and I came as an "Oktoberfest" style German couple, she as "Hansel" and me as a huge big-titted beer maid. (My costume's boobs were actually booze containers,  which we filled with beer and which unfortunately exploded from the carbonation on the drive over, spraying all over the inside of Anne's car.) It was a sight to see, but it was also uncomfortable (in more ways than one) so I took it off after we made our entrance.

We only stuck around for a few hours, eat, drink, dance, schmooze, then home relatively early. Sunday was Bethlehem's Halloween parade, preceded by a the first annual Halloween 5k. Anne went as a chicken, Donna & her friend ditto the  chicken thing (there were a surprising number of chickens running), I ran in my kilt, and Lori went as a cupcake. Great fun, and our time was 28:30, not bad for hungover and in costume...

How the other half lives: It was kind of surprising, to me anyway, the reaction I got with the beer maid costume: I got a lot of attention, which I expected, and a lot of laughs, but some of my friends became very aggressive at the sight of those tits, manhandling them and so on, and getting almost belligerent when I showed up a little later in my usual clothes. Very weird, and it was weirder still when I was walking around in my kilt, which sounds like I'd been feminized this weekend or something, but the kilt's pretty bad-ass -- Doug said "if that was any manlier it would have spikes," -- one old guy in the crowd started yelling to me "hey you're very brave!" He reminded me of like a dog or something, excited and not knowing whether it'll bite you, lick you or chase the stick... Boy named Sue, thought I'd have to get into a fight with an old man --the guy saw something outside his little world, and just had to force his way into it.

Anyway, I'm out of here for a few days, off to Texas (after voting, of course), back by the weekend. This coming weekend will be the first in a while without any running around. Plane's boarding soon, outta here.

Once Burned, Twice Shy

Good time at the gym last night, I did a full body workout including legs. I didn't feel particularly strong or energetic, but still I fairly flew through the workout. The lower reps & higher weights are starting to pay off, and my strength seems to be coming back, though my fitness (despite the running) is still in the middle of its annual Fall meltdown. (Time to set up the trainer in the basement?)

 

I met Anne at Porters after that, grabbed dinner and BS'ed with a few friends we bumped into there. Ribeye steak sandwich, Founder's Breakfast Stout, some good conversation, and we were home by 11:30, not too bad.

 

More crows on the way in this morning, and like yesterday, another major backup on the highway -- this time I saw all the brake lights in the distance and got off at the next exit. Even if it took longer I didn't care,  I didn't feel like sitting in traffic again, and when I got to my usual exit I got a glimpse of the interstate looking like a parking lot, so I think my gamble paid off.

 

Tonight is the CAT Halloween ride.

Return Of The Son Of Corvus Redux

Today marks -- for me -- the official return of the crows to Bethlehem. They flock by the millions along the Lehigh, from about now through maybe January. I've been expecting them, and I'd heard from Deb and Anne that they were already back, and I even saw a few crows flying around yesterday, but it was on my drive in this morning that I saw (and heard) them in full force for the first time this year, in the trees along the riverbank. Just in time for Halloween!

 

Eldritch: It was foggy this morning, fairly creepy with the now-mostly-bare trees dripping in the dark, and the crows calling (almost) invisibly in the misty early morning, and there I was listening to The Hazards Of Love on the way in, with an image in my mind of waking in the night, and seeing your dead children, the ones you murdered, standing around your bed, singing.

 

What else: Got my kilt last night. Utilikilts "Workman" model, chocolate (ie brown) colorway. I put it on, it looked good and felt really comfortable, and I was tired so I blew off yoga and worked on the laptop in my new kilt. Did a little playing with my new winter project, some old work-related program involving FORTRAN, which is kind of painful but fun in a sort of archaeological way, and upgraded the system (again).

 

Doug and Lori came over later, and we adjusted the brakes on his new cyclocross bike. Cantilever brakes, they needed to be set toe-in, but the job wasn't nearly as difficult/frustrating as we were expecting, and we got to hang out for a while afterward with beer and popcorn.

 

I ran in the kilt this morning -- it's the base for what I'll be wearing in Sunday's Halloween 5k, so it had better be comfortable running gear (and it was). Tonight I'll be hitting the gym, and will follow that with a stop at Porter's.

 

D'Oh!

Morning weigh-in: 181.5#, 13.5% BF

 

Well, I was going to go to yoga last night, but the weather looked like it would hold out and I decided to do a towpath ride, and so that rain the blew in around 6:00 last  night was basically my fault. No ride, oh well, instead I did a little more reading (Gibson's new Zero History -- verdict so far: meh), downloaded a bunch of old J. Geils Band, and uploaded my pictures from Take A Kid Mountain Biking Day. Dinner was more chili.

 

Takes One To Know One: Nice takedown of Richard "You Don't Need Math -- I'm An Idiot And I Have A Great Job!" Cohen. Schmuck.

 

Ran this morning, going to the gym tonight. I may skip Two Brew Tuesday, gotta watch my figure.

 

Overused And Subdued

It was another good, but another hectic, weekend...

 

I had off on Friday, so Anne and I hit the Allentown Farmer's Market (which is sort of like a PA Dutch version of the original Englishtown auction building, the one that burned down years ago, and the place is always good for people watching), then we used the rest of the day to brew beer -- that is to say, she brewed beer and I occasionally washed something or helped with the heavy lifting. There's a lot of downtime involved, waiting for water to heat up or cool down, so I got in a trip to the hardware store, picked up one more missing piece for our infrastructure  -- our new heat exchanger coil hooks up to an outdoor hose connection, so I got an adapter from the kitchen tap to the coil, and now we can cool the boiled wort in minutes without lifting it off the stove -- and I also got a haircut. (Hair and beard are much shorter than usual, but I've been informed by a reliable source -- the one that counts -- that it looks good.)

 

Friday night was the monthly Heels on Wheels ride and pub crawl. Smaller crowd than usual, maybe the smallest since the beginning, and I was the only guy. We started at the Brew Works, rode over to The Bookstore but couldn't get in, hit Your Welcome and JP McGrady's (a beer in each and a little Led Zeppelin on the jukebox), then we finished the night with a late dinner back at Brew Works.

 

Saturday was Philly with the Porter's Pub bus trip. I got a crock pot of chili going, and we got in a couple of other errands in the morning, then we were out the door around noon, and made the bus in time this time. There were a few people on the trip that I knew at least partly (Larry, his brother and sister-in-law), but it was mostly strangers. We had no set itinerary, just a map with some suggestions near Rittenhouse Square, and we were all basically on our own, but when we arrived we basically all poured off the bus and into the nearest/first place on the list -- The Black Sheep. Awesome place, very much like a traditional Irish pub, or at least my idea of one, and they had Chimay on tap...

 

One and done, then we went with Larry over to Nodding Head Brew Pub. Another awesome place, in a very different way: it was almost like a scene from one of my dreams of Easton or whatever, or maybe something from the Matrix like when they were climbing around "inside the wet wall," and their beer was excellent. Everyone else was at a place next door, and that's where K-Jo caught up with everyone, so we stopped in and said hi -- but we were hungry, so Anne and I went and got some serious comfort food at The Good Dog, and then we went a little further afield, a little sightseeing  on South Street. We caught up with the crew at the famous Monk's Cafe, and then it was time to head home. Back at Porters at a pretty decent hour, maybe 10:30 and the place was jumping, but we just went home.

 

(Every place we went, was great, especially Nodding Head and the Black Sheep, and they're all high on my list for a return trip.)

 

Sunday was more puttering around the house, working on the bikes, occasionally checking on the chili and listening to the plop-plop of the beer brewing as the CO2 escaped through the little water seals; Anne also made sauerkraut, so we now have one more thing bubbling away in the kitchen. We took off around 2:00 and rode Jacobsburg, which was really nice, despite the presence of a whole lot of horses, and their droppings. The place was packed, we actually got the last parking space in the main lot, but other than the equestrians, and maybe one or two other bikers, we had the trails pretty much to ourselves. Ten miles, mellow pace, and it really was beautiful out there.

 

We had some people over to help us eat chili, the usual crew (Debbie, Donna, Liz). Everyone seemed a little tired, and we just sort of hung out and BS'ed. Next weekend is another hectic blowout, then I think everyone is going to want to lay low until the holidays.

Recording The Cramdown

Morning weigh-in: 180.5#, 14.5% BF

 

A month or so ago I'd have been shocked by those numbers, but now (even though I really don't have anything else to say) I'm happy enough that I had to get them on record, before the coming weekend weight gain...

 

What's up? Blessed are the people whose annals are tiresome... Earlier in the week I decided to get a kilt (a friend was helping to sell them at Celtic Fest, but that had long since come and gone before I made up my mind), and on Tuesday I ordered one; it should be here in a week or so, definitely in time for the Halloween 5k. In other news, I upgraded my computer last night, Ubuntu 9.whatever, so now I'm only like a year behind. Things seemed to go pretty smoothly, what little I got to see of the new stuff this morning.

 

Meltdown I guess I was tired from Sunday's ride, and then Monday morning's run, because I thought I was going to keel over in Monday night's yoga class. My legs started trembling in one standing pose, and they never stopped until we were almost finished. It was kind of freaky -- for a while I didn't think I'd be able to walk out of there, let alone drive home... I took Tuesday as a rest day, then rode an easy towpath ride last night (even so, I was tired), went to bed early, and this morning was another run. Tonight is the gym, and we'll see if I feel better than last week.

Two Weekends

Morning weigh-in: 182#, 14.5% BF

OK, a little catch-up...

We went up to Northampton the weekend before last to visit Ben. We watched him run the Hartford Marathon on Saturday morning, and hung out Friday and (especially) Saturday nights with him and his friends, and Sunday morning -- after a nice run, our only real exercise for the weekend -- was coffee shop and bookstore time, split between Northampton and Amherst. It was a lot of fun seen Ben and his friends (including one we met in St Petersburg, small world), and the weekend was a really nice mini-vacation.

Last week was mostly rainy, like the week before, and we mostly continued to catch up with unfinished business left over from our Moab trip; mostly this meant getting the bikes back up and running. (Until our ride yesterday, I hadn't been on a mountain bike since we came home from Moab, and I think the weigh-in kind of reflects that...)

My parents visited us on Saturday. So... Friday night was kind of quiet, maybe a little housework before we went out, then on Saturday morning Anne got up early and ran some shopping errands (basically, we'd bought a quarter of a cow, and she had to go pick up the meat) while I did some final straightening in the house and yard. My parents arrived about noon, and then we all went up to Mauch Chunk Lake Park (picking up Anne's mom along the way) to walk around and check out the fall foliage. Things seem to be running a little late, colors have not quite peaked yet but it still was beautiful there, with a cloudless blue sky and enough breeze to keep the temperature brisk. We walked down along the lake towards the gun club, then came back and went to dinner outside of town.

Some friends had a party, and we stopped in later in the evening, but they have five cats and a dog -- I only knew about the dog -- and we had to cut our visit short.

Early to bed, late to rise, and then we went back up to Jim Thorpe, this time to ride the American Standard. That's one of my favorite rides in JT, and Anne loves it too, so we had a good old time riding in the autumn-bright woods, at least until we ran out of steam and took the jeep road back. We ran into an old friend (Liz), in the parking lot with her husband and the local ride crew, and we talked with them for a little while before heading home. Taco dinner, nightcap at Brew Works, and the weekend was complete.

Ran this morning, hitting yoga tonight.

Another Week Down

Morning weigh-in (Wednesday): 179.5#, 13.5% BF

Morning weigh-in (Thursday): 180.5#, 13.5% BF

 

Good yoga class yesterday, and a bit tougher than I've become used to -- I did a "mixed level" class at The Yoga Loft, which had an emphasis, last night at least, on standing poses and preparation for headstands, and I was sweating and breathing hard before it was over. I think that for now, and despite the distance, I'll be sticking with Easton Yoga where things feel more familiar (and I have an already-paid-for unlimited class pass), but it was nice to expand my horizons a bit. I should try to hit the more vigorous classes more often; last night felt good.

 

Speaking of expanding my horizons, I'm looking at going back to school. Nothing major, I just want to take an online course or two in Geographic Information Systems, plus a refresher course in math, maybe some statistics, and eventually maybe a little biology or whatever -- I don't have a field of study, and I probably will not be working towards any degree or certificate or anything like that, I just want to bone up on areas that interest me, and see where that leads. Penn State has an interesting online program for GIS; that's where I'll probably end up.

 

Listening: I downloaded some Van Morrison (Astral Weeks, Moondance) last night, and listened to Astral Weeks on the way in to work this morning. I normally run the Droid on "shuffle" but I've been on an album kick lately: I listened to Titus Andronicus's The Monitor the other day while retrieving the bikes (in other news, our bikes are back from Moab, but not yet built), and listened to Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane, Over The Sea on the ride in yesterday.

 

Tonight is the gym, then we're heading up to visit Ben for the weekend. Tomorrow night is a symposium on Russian poet Joseph Brodsky, then on Saturday Ben's running in the Hartford Marathon. I think Sunday is Book Store and Coffee Shop Time...

 

The Rundown

Morning weigh-in: 180.5#, 15% BF

 

Rough night at yoga last night: I was tired and a little headachey, but I went anyway, and the headache just got worse and worse. Meanwhile, I started getting leg cramps in a lot of the positions... Shavasana couldn't come soon enough, and I think I might have fallen asleep -- complete with snoring -- before the end.

 

The whole ride home I was debating whether to eat something or just go straight to bed (I was not hungry at all). Luckily Anne made a pumpkin-potato soup, and I had a bowl of it, and that -- plus a little restorative web-browsing -- seemed to revive me: I still went to bed early, but I felt a lot better after eating than I had before. I was supposed to go for a run this morning, and I woke up this morning feeling great, but we hit the snooze button anyway and blew off our scheduled morning run, "because of the rain."

 

(Hmmmm... leg cramps, headaches, fatigue, symptoms that go away after eating right -- dehydrated? -- low electrolytes? -- vitamin D issues, again? I've definitely been letting the nutrition slide lately, but I didn't realize it had become that bad.)

 

Got more pics and some video on Sunday, from the VMB's Take A Kid Mountain Biking Day, that I'll be posting in the next few days, stay tuned.

 

Tonight is the gym, followed by Taco Night.

Reality Bites

Morning weigh-in (Monday): 181#, 14.5% BF

Morning weigh-in (Tuesday): 180#, 14.5% BF

 

Oh well, back at work, second day back since the vacation. It was an awesome time though: a little more than a week away, five rides and a hike, plus the usual sightseeing, nightlife etc. I took a boatload of photos, and all the keepers (133 pictures by my count) are now uploaded, so go check them out!

 

(I also took some video, but it needs a little massaging and may run too long for flickr, so -- after I learn how -- I'll edit the video & then probably put it on YouTube or something. Stay tuned.)

 

Things here are fairly busy: I pumped out a lot of stuff, drawings and calculations, things for internal review etc, in the days before I left, and it's all coming back. I was only gone for four work days, but right now I'm running around answering questions, catching up with design changes, reviewing comments and making revisions. Busy is good...

Rest Day

We rode (most of the way) up to Hurrah Pass on Monday, then yesterday Anne and I rode up from town and did the Slickrock Trail, and in the afternoon hiked out to Delicate Arch in the national park. Today was supposed to be an on-and-off rainy day, so while the rest of the crew decided to take their chances, we took the day off. Reading, going into town for breakfast and some shopping/sightseeing, now we're hanging out at the condo. (I am watching the heavy clouds pass by over the cliffs as I write this.) Some rain blew through, I'm sure those guys are OK but I think we made the right choice.

The vacation is starting to wind down. We have tomorrow (Porcupine Rim), then maybe a ride on Friday before it all comes to an end.

I've been posting photos every day, don't forget to check them out. I now have over 5000 photos on Flickr, 92 of them (so far) from this trip.

One Day Down

Whew! Tough day, between the sun, and heat, and sand, and climbing, and the altitude (only 4600 feet, but still something us sea-level types could really feel).

We rode the Sovereign Trail, a new section to the west of the main part of the trail system. I'm not sure if recent (hot and dry) conditions made things sandy, or if this area is normally like that but it was definitely sandy. Tough going, like trying to ride at the beach or in snow. Beautiful day though, cloudless and blue sky, the usual amazing desert scenery...

Tomorrow I think Anne and I will do an "us" day. It was fun riding with the crew today, but I think we might want to keep it mellower than they do, so we'll probably do Hurrah Pass -- skipping the (likely sandy) bottom section.

Almost Ready To Start

Well, here we are in beautiful Moab, Utah, sitting around the upstairs porch and drinking coffee, waiting for the day to start.

The trip here was fairly uneventful, even if it made for a long day: up at 3:00 AM, we flew out of Newark and arrived in Salt Lake City around 10:00 local time, and followed that with a nice looooong drive -- maybe 4 hours but it felt like forever. Settled in at the condo, retrieved the bikes, got some dinner and we totally crashed by 9:00.

Now comes breakfast. Anne is making pancakes, which I hope doesn't become a trend but she says she likes to cook so... We should be done and ready to ride by 9:00 -- we're hitting the Sovereign Trail.

Lost Weekend

Morning weigh-in: 179#, 14% BF (not so good...)

 

Here's something I can't say every day: I did a nice run this morning with Anne. Not far, maybe 2.5 miles but it felt really good, especially since the last time I did a real run (ie not counting that Hash thing) was back in April.

 

One friend, on the local bike club forum, has a signature file that reads "every day you don't ride is another day you will never ride." Which usually just sounds like another version of "meh, trite but true," but to me it's the epitaph for last weekend: except for Friday night's "Heels on Wheels" ride, I was pretty much immobile the entire weekend, and it came back to bite me...

 

Friday was my computer-obsession day, then came Friday night's ride. The Heels on Wheels crew was the biggest group yet, maybe 10 girls in skirts & heels, plus a few auxiliary dudes, and we hit a bunch of places, on the north and south sides of the river, before making it home.

 

Saturday was another wasted day, or rather a recovery day, all headachey and spent (again) in front of the laptop, while Anne baked a cake -- she was making it for Judy's surprise birthday party that night, which made things very awkward when Judy called, saying she was in the neighborhood and would be stopping by. We scrambled, hid the partially-assembled cake (and icing, and sundry other incriminating cake-baking-type things) in the bedroom, and I don't think she ever knew, though we were practically choking on our laughter. That night was her party, and though I was a bit subdued -- and did not partake of any alcoholic cheer -- it was another fun night.

 

Maybe I could have gone riding on Sunday, but when I woke up it was pouring, and Anne was doing one leg (of the relay race) in the local marathon -- I met her at the end of her leg, then we went to the finish line in Easton to cheer her team on, and then we (me, Anne, and her teammates Liz, Kris & Tony) grabbed brunch at Porters. Some shopping, some reading, some napping, and the day was over. So much couch-potato living, and in the end I felt like warmed-over shit, all lethargic and sleepy.

 

I went to yoga last night, first time in like forever, and it felt great. Tonight is the gym, tomorrow night will probably be a towpath ride on the singlespeed. I feel like I have to get back in the game.

 

Geekout On A Sunny Day

I've been using GRASS for about two years now, mostly playing around with maps of Sals.  I have the trail network mapped out pretty well at this point, and recently figured out how to use GPX files of trail networks in my Garmin, having them them show up on the map like any other road, so naturally I wanted to do that with my Sals map on GRASS...

In the past I have been able to get the GRASS trails saved as GPX files, but the process involved jumping through a lot of hoops - I had to convert my data from the coordinate system I'm using on my personal map, to the standard one used by GPS units, then output that to a GPX file as output, converting from GRASS's internal format along the way. (There is actually a command in GRASS that would do all of this in a single step, but it never worked. Doh!)

Two nights ago I was messing with my map yet again, and wanted to generate a newer GPX file, and I got so totally frustrated by all the hoop-jumping and broken commands I couldn't think of anything else. Today's my Friday off, so as soon as I got up this morning I opened up the file for the offending command (a shell script called "v.out.gpsbabel"), took it apart and found the problem.

Turns out that the script massages the data by piping it through some sed commands, and this script, like so many scripts before it, had foundered on the rock of regular expressions. Two minutes figuring out what was supposed to happen, a schnipsel here and there, and now the thing works like a charm! I played with it for a while, but I only really had a half-minute task for it to do, and it was a bit anticlimactic after all that work.

I tapped the keyboard listlessly for a while, trying to recapture my fading high, then went out for a haircut. Now I'm hanging with Anne in a new (to me) coffee shop on New Street. (Anne wouldn't care, she's "blogging" old-school with pen and paper, but our regular coffee-shop hangout has had a lot of wireless problems lately, so we've been branching out.)

Another geeky discovery: I was clicking idly through phone's settings, and found that the Droid supports tethering, so I can access the Internet with the laptop, without needing a wi-fi connection. Sweet! -- but it's another anticlimax, because the wi-fi here at The Wise Bean is pretty decent. And so's the coffee...

Back To Work

Well, Labor Day is behind us, though due to the vagaries of our "every other Friday off" system this is actually a three-day week for me, it's not quite the end of vacation season... The weekend was spent with the usual biking hijinks (Big Pocono on Friday, Jacobsburg on Saturday, and a circumnavigation of South Mountain on the road bikes on Sunday), plus a few picnics and other end-of-summer activities.

 

Fun With Maps #1: For its monthly meetings, the VMB rotates through small list of venues, and the question always arises: which one is the most convenient -- in other words, which is closest, or easiest to get to -- for the majority of our membership? (We have members in  Raubsville and Bucks County, Emmaus and Macungie, Tamaqua, Stroudsburg, and the Slate Belt, and even a few in western New Jersey, as well as the Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton areas.) I don't have information on member addresses, but I do know where the different venues are, and I thought that, as a good first approximation, I could find the most centrally located of the venues by comparing driving times (as given by Google Maps driving directions) from each one to the others: the one with least total driving time to all the others would be the most centrally located.

 

I have about 10 venues in my dry run, which -- counting "point A to point B" and "point B to point A" as separate cases (drive times can differ in each direction), but ignoring "point A to point A" -- that gives 90 different sets of directions to work through. This looks like a job for automation, and luckily I found a way to do it. I wrote a pretty simplistic script the other day, to get the data from Google and look for drive times, but I don't have all the bugs worked out: there is no error checking, so if the mapping request hits a snag it just bombs. I should have the thing finalized in a few days though. From what preliminary results I did get, I suspect that the Bethlehem venues are going to remain the most viable meeting places.

 

Noted In Passing #1: Happy 110th Birthday, Galveston Hurricane!

 

Fun With Maps #2: Anne and I did a short Jacobsburg ride a week ago Thursday, hitting mostly the boring parts, doubletrack through grassy fields and the like, and were talking about the other parts of the park. Anne said that she and Donna had been exploring, but hadn't found their way over to the good parts, and she had found the official park trail map a bit inadequate...

 

That night I went onto Garmin Connect and grabbed a bunch of GPX tracks from Jacobsburg rides, mine and others, and then fired up TopoFusion. I fed in all the tracks, then ran TopoFusion's "make network" analysis -- this is the feature that made TF worth getting for me -- which analyzed them and reduced them to a single trail network. Plopped the new network into Google Earth, superimposed the official Jacobsburg trail (found online), and hit "Print," and we now have our own trail map!

 

So, this Friday we rode Jacobsburg again, with a little more time available to explore, though we forgot the new (printed) map -- Anne wanted to see what she could navigate from memory, so it was OK. I'd loaded a GPX of the trail network onto my Garmin, and I'd also uploaded a version of it onto Google Maps, and I wanted to experiment, compare and contrast, navigating with both Droid and Garmin...

 

The Garmin was a disappointment -- you couldn't see the trail network, just each separate trail in the network (like, one at a time), and it was more "navigate this trail" than "show the trail on the map." The Google Maps trail was beautiful -- much better looking than on the regular computer, where the network is spread among multiple pages instead of showing up all on one page -- and came in handy several times for illustrating where we were. We did everything in the park, except the grassy doubletrack...

 

Noted In Passing #2: Happy 36th Anniversary, Nixon Pardon!

 

Fun With Maps #3: In terms of the Garmin, it was back to the drawing board, which in this case meant back to Garmin to upgrade my firmware, and since they don't support Linux, that meant downloading their special software (with proprietary drivers) onto Anne's Mac, and going through the upgrade process from there. Things worked out just fine, despite the extra hoops I had to jump through; now I have the latest system on my 705, and that does support showing tracks on the map (you still have to work with them one at a time if there are a bunch on the GPX file). I experimented with this tonight -- I generated a GPX of the Sals trails from my GRASS database, and will added that as well as the Jacobsburg map. It's all I ever really wanted, that I didn't already have, from the 705, at least for now...

 

Passed, Not Noticed: It was just about 10 years ago that I had my worst bike crash ever. The actual date was August 11, 2000, when I crashed avoiding someone making a sudden left turn in front of me. Concussion, lacerations, coma, I spent the next 3 days in the hospital, and back in July I thought for sure that I would definitely remember the anniversary. Nope.

 

By blog doesn't go back that far, but here's what I wrote five years ago.

 

 

Back To School

The local kids, not me... seems weird, they're all going back a lot earlier these days, not just locally and not just college kids. "Better them than me," I say, as I sit in my office...

 

It was a great weekend for biking: Thursday night at Jacobsburg, Friday on the American Standard in Jim Thorpe, Saturday at Jordan, and Sunday, which was supposed to be a long-ish road ride, but we got to Emmaus, had some iced coffee, thought better about it -- tired, hot, we had guests coming over later --  and headed home.

 

The Jim Thorpe ride was especially good. Just me and Anne; we did a big chunk of the American Standard including the "roller coaster" stuff, then (my mistake) we made a wrong turn, which brought us to a shortcut out, so we bailed. Still, pretty impressive ride, about 11 miles or so, ride stats can be found here. (I don't know why, but I keep going back to this ride in my mind; it's like: here was one of my life's high points that I didn't quite realize at the time.) Got some pictures, mostly of unusual mushrooms, but also one or two of me at the eponymous urinal -- don't worry, not those kinds of pictures, I didn't use the thing -- so stay tuned...

 

Tonight is going to be Sals, also with Anne.

 

Reading: Anne's been on a real Margaret Atwood kick lately, and just finished (among others) The Year of the Flood, which she loved and highly recommends. Rather than starting with that one though, I took on Oryx and Crake, a sort of prequel to The Year of the Flood. I can't put it down.

 

Listening: Back in 1983 or so I was working at the local drugstore as a stock clerk and delivery boy, and on my drug runs I would listen to the same Yes cassette over and over, and over, driving around in my AMC Pacer. The other day I downloaded that very album, and drove home yesterday jamming to "Yours Is No Disgrace" like it was 1983 all over again. (Other recent downloads include Oasis and the White Stripes, so there's at least a little temporal bandwidth in my nostalgia kick.)

 

 Not much else going on. Yesterday was a rest day; I did some some drycleaning/laundry/lawnmower catch-up, and we had an awesome steak dinner at home. I'd been messing with the Turner's suspension settings lately (on coach Jon's advice), and last night I did some playing around, practicing my corners out in the street for a while.

Love Me Now That I Can

Woo, what a ride!

Jon is an old friend, the younger brother of my riding buddy Joe. He's been a professional racer for years, just an awesome rider, and now that he's a mountain bike coach I decided to get some lessons. (I want to get out of the "comfort zone" I built for myself over the last few years, and was especially looking for help with cornering, which has always been a problem -- maybe a mystery? -- to me...) Last night was our evaluation ride: he followed me down the usual Yellow/Orange/Red route at Sals, from Dodson to the bottom of Constitution, stopping a few times to give pointers and to practice at good "teachable moment" locations, then in the bottom lot he had me practicing the new cornering method he wants me to master -- I think it'll be a while before it really clicks. Time and daylight were running out by that point, so we took the road back up the hill, practicing the relaxed standing climb he also wants me to use.

It was a real eye-opener. My main take-away (other than the new cornering tips) was that I'm too stiff on the bike, mainly because I spend way more time than I should seated rather than standing. Jon also wants me to lower my cadence in a lot of stuff, especially hills -- a bullet through the heart of my previous training regimen -- powering up with standing sprints and recovering at the top; he had me ride through technical sections in a higher gear than I normally would, at higher speeds, and whenever I "got it" (not always), it would really work. You learn something new every day...

There Are Many Rooms In The Super Dimensional Fortress: I was playing with my toy program again the other day, and it finally dawned on me why I was getting that intermittent "cannot execute binary file" error: when you log onto SDF, there are a number of different machines you can connect to. Normally I don't make any distinction between them, letting the system choose the most convenient connection at each logon, and I never really noted which machine I was running on. It turns out though, that there are differences between the different servers, and when you compile on one server it produces a program that runs on that server, which may or may not work on the other machines. Log in on one server, compile and run, log out and back in (onto another server), and -- fail.

The explanation is simple enough, but -- other than always logging in to the same server (or always running make before using the program) -- I don't know what the solution might be.

Looking Back

Pretty good weekend, though a little on the low-energy side...

 

I took off Friday, and we went to Barnegat Light to visit my brother at the beach house he rented -- photos on Flickr -- then Saturday was a sort of "slacker day" for me -- no doubt a necessity after all the sunburn and playing in the ocean -- while Anne tackled some heavy-duty gardening. (We were supposed do the Hash Run, but neither of us felt really motivated.) Saturday evening was a tour of Southside: we hit the Bookstore (OK) and the Funhouse (boring band), then stopped in at Brew Works on the way home and met up with some of the bike crowd.

 

Sunday was another mellow day, a rainy day... We had a late breakfast at Jumbar's with Donna and her beau, who told us of all the Hashing shenanigans they got into (and it did sound like fun, but I'm glad we skipped it), then we all went over to the Brew Works for their Mug Club Auction.

 

Yes that's right, we finally got our Brew Works mugs, but not without a fight... Instead of a straight mug purchase, like at Weyerbacher and Which Brew, or the "drink all the different beers on this list and you're in the club" approach of Porter's Pub, Brew Works does things a little differently: mug club size is kept limited, then every year they auction off the non-renewing memberships. We spent over $200 apiece in very competitive bidding for the limited places, but we now have our place among the Star Bellied Sneeches. We drank our complimentary mug (most expensive Free Beer I've ever had) then headed home.

 

Anne and I crashed for a while, watched "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" (Swedish, subtitles, pretty good & it didn't stray too far from the book), then rode over to Lehigh Pizza for a late dinner.

 

Last night was the gym, followed by our first paying use of our new mugs.

 

That's How It's Done

Morning weigh-in: 174.5#, 13% BF

 

Got home last night and hopped on the singlespeed -- the Turner had a surprise flat -- and rode like a madman down the towpath. Anne was about an hour ahead of me, riding with Deb and Donna and Amy, and when I got to the boat launch I got a message that they were just a little ahead, and heading to Porter's for dinner... I caught up with them at Porter's, where we had a killer dinner and got to hang out with Larry & Kelly-Jo (among others), then we tooled back to Bethlehem together, in the dark on the towpath. Fell into bed around 10:30. What fun!

 

 

Pafko At The Wall

Morning weigh-in: 175#, 13% BF

 

Rode last night over at Sals, a solid ride broken up by the VMB meeting at the lower lot, and followed by a visit to Brew Works to meet the post-knitting ladies. Good news on the heart rate front too: my max HR is back in the mid 170's, a sign that I am no longer fatigued. Now, if only I were not slow...

 

A Sad Synchronicity: I remember reading "Pafko at the Wall" in Harper's when it first came out, and it's still my favorite part of Underworld. I just happened to pick up and start re-reading it the other night, and yesterday I saw that Bobby Thomson, the guy who'd hit "The Shot Heard Round The World," had passed away.

 

 If I don't ride tonight, it'll be a rest day (except maybe some at-home yoga), but there's the lawn, and laundry, and bills, etc so I think it'll be a night at home. Tomorrow is the gym with Dawn, first time since June.

 

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...