Good Thing I'm A Cyborg

Morning weigh-in: 183.5#, 11.5% BF

Rode the towpath to the VMB meeting last night, which was at CAT headquarters -- people were a little surprised that I rode there, but as I said last night, I couldn't drive to the Coalition for Appropriate Transportation. The girl there said "that's as it should be!" (They are definitely not shy at CAT; they shamed us last night into joining as a non-profit organization, which I guess is as it should be since we're using their facilities.)

The ride home was a little easier, since a lot of the mushy ground had re-frozen and the trail surface was hard & fast. Still took me an hour though, and I was pushing it so I'd make Which Brew before the kitchen closed. Got home, called and asked them to cook me a burger (now that's what I call service!) then changed & headed on down.

A Nice Surprise: Megan was was at Which Brew, visiting from Seattle after being gone for more than a year -- she hadn't been back since her moving-away party in 2005, and literally went there straight from the airport. It was really good to see her, and good to get a chance to congratulate her on how well she's doing & how happy she seems to be in Seattle. (I get the emails & see the photos, "thriving" & "glowing" really are the best descriptions.) She's good people, I'm glad things are going her way.

Anyway, the cyborg thing: There was a light cover of snow in some areas on the towpath last night, which was good on the way out because it was firmer than the muddy gravel underneath, but near the access points (Sand Island, Riverside Park) it was a little deeper, packed and icy and lumpy with footprints. This was a pain int the butt especially on the return trip, since the trail had refrozen and was the better surface again, but I was just bumping and bouncing ans sliding along anyway, had to get home... I slid out to the left and caught myself with my foot, and only later realized that was the same move that broke my ankle a year ago (today is the surgery anniversary). Didn't feel a thing -- granted I was moving much slower, and the surface where I planted my foot was smooth, but now I also have a much stronger, titanium-reinforced ankle. Better than it was -- better, stronger, faster, I think I'll go kick something...

That Whole Domestic Goddess Thing

Morning weigh-in: 184#, 13% BF

Gym last night, then leftover potatoes & chickpeas in lemon-tahini-curry sauce, plus a salad. Bedtime was not long after. Tonight is the VMB meeting, and I'm riding to that so I don't know what, or when, dinner will be -- I was going to make bean & tomato stew in the crock pot, but discovered last night that I was missing a few crucial ingredients, so I'll probably just make it on the weekend. That doesn't solve tonight's dinner problems though...

Meanwhile, today is International Women's Day and (Blog Against Sexism day), so I'll just maybe touch on that with the words waitress and health insurance.

Meanwhile meanwhile, I see that the "Gonzales Eight" scandal is growing even more legs.

Still Winter

Morning weigh-in: 185.5#, 13.5% BF

Randomly checking Teh Intertubes...

Bowdlerizing "The Vagina Monologues?"
Wow that's some serious stupid -- Pandagon has the scoop.

But What About the Ponies?
Looks like I wasn't the only one to notice yesterday's trifecta.

Anyway, did a bunch of chores/errands yesterday, around & in-between was the Tuesday Svaroopa yoga class. Gas, groceries, laundry, etc etc, but I also put a few photos on flickr, from last Sunday's trailwork. Foot bothered me yesterday; I knew today's snow was coming.

I got to bed pretty late (12:30) but felt pretty rested when the alarm went off (at 6:00). I usually sleep for another half hour before getting up, but this morning rolled over and saw 8:11 -- oh no! No wonder I feel rested! Turns out I hit the adjusting buttons when I turned off the alarm, it was only 6:11 and I had plenty of time but I realized this once I got into the kitchen, at a dead run trying to get ready for work...

In Like A Lion

Morning weigh-in: 186#, 13% BF

Looks like winter is not quite over: it's freezing out, 10 degrees above zero and strong gusty winds when I left the house this morning. Still, you can fee that spring is on its way... Nothing much to report otherwise. I went out last night after yoga, monthly Mug Club dinner at Which Brew. I thought I kept things under control but the tape tells a different tale.

Oh yeah, Scooter Libby is found guilty on four of five charges, the Walter Reed scandal is starting to reap the whirlwind, and yet another investigation is heating up.

Taklamakan: Way Down in Cocomo

Morning weigh-in: 185.5#, 11% BF (b-b-but it was a chicken cheesesteak!!)

Anniversary: it was one year ago today that I broke my ankle. It's also my brother Kevin's birthday.

Friday: did a road ride, short & sweet & hilly, another Morvale Road extravaganza, and then walked down to Which Brew. Early night, but I wanted to be there to say goodbye to that dude Ryan, who took a job as brewmaster down in North Carolina. Also, they had a special cask-conditioned Weyerbacher Black Hole Stout brewed with arabica beans. Good stuff.

Saturday was a good hard yoga workout, followed by a very intense gym workout (with a trip to the coffee shop and a mile run in between); I followed all that with a nap. I was going to do another road ride, but it was raining -- and when I woke up it was sunny and beautiful of course. Got a call from Doug, he & Lori were down at WB, and soon enough so was I.

Sunday was trailwork at Sals, then the Banff Mountain Film Festival road show. I went with a group of friends; we were a crowd of about 16 people, and saw a whole bunch more familiar faces. The films: I had several favorites, but two that stood out were "Kids Who Rip," a documentary about children (youngest was maybe 6, oldest was 13) who skate/snowboard/surf/ski, either competitively or for fun, but at a very high level of X-games proficiency and craziness, and the other was a documentary of a young Canadian couple who bicycled from Ulan Bator to Calcutta, through some beautiful but godawful-remote and rugged scenery.

Which brings us to the Taklamakan Desert. It's not really as remote as I'd originally heard -- the Silk Road bifurcates to go around it (a Northern route and a Southern route), there are cities along the edges, and of course the couple was riding along a road as they crossed it -- but it is still pretty damn remote, and one of the biggest sand deserts in the world. I became infatuated with the place after reading A Good Old-Fashioned Future, a book of interconnected science-fiction stories by Bruce Sterling. The last story was about some extreme adventurers, recruited as spies to investigate some abandoned top-secret facility deep in the desert, where of course they make the usual shocking discoveries.

There was also quite a bit about the Taklamakan (among many other Siberian and Central Asian wonders) in Against the Day (yep, still reading), so it was very cool to actually see the place. Sand, sandstorms, broiling heat, no water. You know: desert.

Triple Point

Morning weigh-in: 183.5# 9% BF

It's getting close to spring: I almost hit a deer on the way home last night. This time though, it was in the city of Easton, or rather Wilson Boro. Residential area, some woods nearby but if it wasn't quite downtown it definitely wasn't near the river either. On the way in to work today, I had to deal with all three phases of water: ice and snow, rain and flooding, and fog. The rivers are losing their "cold water" look, though I don't think I'd want to swim in them right now.

Last night was the gym. Dropped legs from the workout & added a cardio warmup -- I'd already reduced the weight and increased the number of reps a few weeks ago. This workout, with a little tweaking, will probably be my spring/summer "endurance" routine; it seemed to work out well last night. Tonight, if the weather persists in clearing, I'll do a road ride. I'm feeling kinda Hellertown right now.

Let's Talk About Flesh

Mia and Cici
Originally uploaded by Julie Cotton.

Morning weigh-in: 183#, 13% BF

Well, I signed up for the Perimeter Ride again, and it's getting closer so I better start toughening myself up... The ride's around 500-600 miles over a week, pretty tough but the physical aspects are really the least grueling: many of the riders are there because they lost someone and are seeking closure. There are the cathartic conversations at lunchtime, and the dinners where local survivors (or the parents of very sick children) thank you for what you're doing; "heartbreaking" doesn't even begin to cover it, but what always strikes me is the fierceness of the love these people have, you can feel it baking off them like a heat sometimes. (By the way, I found this particular photo in this flickr photo pool.)

For more heartwrenching, check out this post by Majikthise.

Perl Diving: I was supposed to do a ride last night when I got home, but I sat down at the computer and didn't get up until I realized it was after midnight. I restarted my web server, then started messing around with CGI and dynamic content, and then drifted into messing with perl's CGI module. Oh well, another training day shot, and it looks like rain for the weekend...

"How can flesh tumble and flow so, and never be any less beautiful?" -- Thomas Pynchon

By The Numbers

Morning weigh-in: 185.5#, 13% BF

Why yes, I did go out last night, and I had a good time based on the weigh-in, figures don't lie...

Met Doug & Lori for dinner at Which Brew after yoga (and some errands/shopping), had the pizza special (chicken, spinach) plus a cup of that African chickpea soup; jambalaya for Lori, chicken sandwich for Doug. Good conversation, nothing too intense or memorable... I guess the place cleared out between the time they arrived -- they got stuck at a tiny table -- and my own arrival, because it looked pretty quiet in there.

Reading: Still on Against the Day, getting close to finishing, and I started The Dharma Bums.

Oh, And Speaking Of Porn: I was shown two cameraphone pictures this past week, one explicit gay porn and the other bestiality. I also received received an email -- twice, from two different people -- with photos, apparently from a tattoo contest, of "Tattooed Granny," graphically proving that she was tattooed everywhere below the neck. The common thread? They all came from women. And they call us pigs...

UPDATED: For clarity.

Spooky Ookey Ookey

Morning weigh-in: 184#, 10.5% BF

So anyway, Boltzmann Brains... I guess the idea of sentient beings, arising out of minor random fluctuations in the disorder of the universe, reminded me of the "noncorpora" in David Mitchell's Ghostwritten, one of which is a being able to inhabit human minds like a parasite, moving from one host to another as it tries to figure out the mystery of what it is and where it came from, the other being a product of military "quantum cognition" computer research, which took its job of protecting the Earth a little too seriously, escaped its bonds and now calls a late-night New York City DJ to explain its actions. A total tour de force (like Mitchell's later Cloud Atlas), this book was spooky; reading it gave me goosebumps. Mucho recommendo, and that's all I have to say about that...

Yoga last night, yoga tonight, tuna & wilted greens for dinner each time.

Pattern Recognition

At the end of every yoga class is a part called "Savasana," which means "corpse pose." It's basically like a cool-down: you lie very still on your back, relaxing and just breathing; mentally you're supposed to stay alert (I've a heard a few people start snoring) but not think about anything, just letting go of any thoughts that come. Sometimes the instructor will lead the class in a "guided awareness" thing, where you focus your awareness on different parts of your body, or do imaging exercises (ie "think of yourself walking down a beach").

Anyway, in Saturday's morning class the instructor did a guided awareness in Savasana, and had us imagine being on a beach (among other things), but all that would come for me was the beach in William Gibson's Neuromancer, the virtual-reality construct of an artificial intelligence. For some reason this again reminded me of KIDDofSpeed, this time her stuff about the diggings near Kiev, probably because of parallels with Gibson's more recent Pattern Recognition.

Anyway, that's what's on my mind as I eat lunch today. Maybe tomorrow I'll talk about Boltzmann Brains, "quantum cognition" and David Mitchell's Ghostwritten.

Satyagraha

No weigh-ins, it's the weekend!

This is a photo of my brother Kevin and his children (Kevin Jr, Olivia and newborn Caroline Eileen), taken at the hospital when Caroline was born, probably by my mom. I think that's the first time they saw their baby sister.

Nothing much to say, just hanging out waiting for the snow and rain to start falling. I may go up for a hike at Lehigh before the storm, or before it gets too bad. Meantime, I got up late (had a late night), have been lallygagging all morning -- Doug called around 11:00 and induced me to turn on the computer, where I've been procrastinating ever since... I was thinking of doing a road ride this morning -- if I'd gotten up early enough to be confident about beating the snow-- but I did a brick workout again yesterday (yoga, gym, road ride) and think an easy day is warranted for today.

The Roar Of A Predator So Absolute

Morning weigh-in: 183.5#, 11.5% BF (Woo Hoo!)
(I'll take the win, but I suspect that this was really just the work of a really big poo.)

Chain Gang meeting last night, at Joey T's place. Talked to his wife for a bit beforehand & met his kids: a different context, and he actually makes more sense when seen as a family man. The more I know him, the more I like the guy. The meeting itself: very productive, a little bit long-winded but we got a lot of things done, or at least scheduled to be done. Then it was back to the bike-porn, eating and gabbing...

Busted! Driving home from work Tuesday, someone honked their horn and I saw Megan waving as she drove by -- she caught me in the middle of "car dancing" to some cool tune. How embarrassing -- caught being dorky, by a hottie! Life is so unfair...

Still Reading: Yep, Against the Day, which is reminding me not so much of Vineland anymore, but Gravity's Rainbow. Still dealing with the aftermath of the Tunguska Event.

Tonight is a late night here at work, then the gym, followed by leftovers: I have tuna & wilted greens, and two more days of chili to get through.

UPDATE: A little something to honor Sophie Scholl, guillotined on this date in 1943:

Nothing is so unworthy of a civilised nation as allowing itself to be
governed without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base
instinct. It is certain that today every honest German is ashamed of his
government. Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will
befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and
the most horrible of crimes — crimes that infinitely outdistance every human
measure — reach the light of day? -- White Rose Pamphlet #1

Tunguska

Morning weigh-in (Tuesday): 184.5#, 11% BF
Morning weigh-in (Wednesday): 185.5#, 11% BF

Fat Tuesday: One more "last hurrah," went out last night after yoga, while the laundry dried. Had a Troegs Nugget Nectar, which is made from Simcoe hops (among others), a hot topic lately among the bike crowd. I'd gone out to see if I could find some Weyerbacher Simcoe IPA, was unsuccessful but this was a good substitute. Dinner itself was a potato and chickpea soup, with nachos.

I sat next to a woman who was there with Judy, and whose son was working his first day in the kitchen, and struck up a conversation. Turns out she bikes, commutes, and is active in the Coalition for Appropriate Transportation; she also knows CAT people Joey T, Damion and Rob, and Scott S from work -- small world, or small Lehigh Valley cycling activist world... Interesting woman, she also brews her own beer, and makes mead as well.

A Screaming Comes Across The Sky: I'm up to the part in Against the Day where one of the (hundreds of) main characters is in Siberia, and arrives at the right place just in time for the Tunguska Event. There are a couple of references to Tchernobyl, "the star called Wormwood in the Book of Revelations," which reminded me of the girl who motorcycles through the Chernobyl disaster area. I was so disappointed to find out that that site was a fake.

How's That Workin' For Ya?

Morning weigh-in: 185#, 12% BF -- D'oh!

Not much to say, just popped in to record the weight.

Reading: Against the Day is in the kitchen, while that history of Medieval civilization is in the bathroom. On the way in to work this morning, I was thinking about possible similarities between the relationship of the Emperor to the Germanic kingdoms on the one hand, and Buddhism and shamanistic Asian tribes on the other. Maybe I'll experiment with different bathroom reading, see what the Rorschach test brings up next.

Thick As A Brick

The theme for this weekend was probably exercise...

Friday night I did a towpath ride. The paved "bike path" parts were actually plowed, and the snow was hard enough that, except for maybe a half inch of powder, you rode on top of it. The going was slow though, and I did a shortened ride but still took almost two hours. Called my friend Joe with a trail conditions update, made plans to meet him for a ride Saturday, then went to bed.

Saturday I got up early and went to yoga. Big breakthrough for me, I did a sort of armstand/headstand. Seems stupid, but I was pretty proud of myself, even if the instructor helped me (a lot). After that was breakfast at the coffee shop, where I got out just in time, gulping down the last of my coffee and skedaddling when that "Trans-Mongolian Vacation" dude came in.

Next stop was the gym, good workout and fun times with Dawn -- our workouts are really gab-fests with some weightlifting thrown in. This officially made it a multi-workout day, what the triathlon people call a "brick workout," but just to make sure I seized the day I had another workout coming...

Home, a lunch of chili, and then I went up to Jacobsburg where I rode with my friend Joe G for two or three hours. The conditions there were awesome, except a few heavy-use areas, and one section where an ATV got on the trail. Pretty fast and hard ride, and I was parched and starving so I stopped at Which Brew for dinner on the way home. Very different crowd in there that early (say 6:00-6:30), very odd to be a stranger among a bunch of people who all know each other, in a place where you consider yourself a regular. Nice people though, at least the ones I got to talk to, but I got out of Dodge as quickly as I could and was in bed by 10:00, slept the sleep of the dead.

"And your wise men don't know how it feels,
To be thick, as a brick."

Sunday, today, I went with Doug and Lori up to Jim Thorpe. We brought snowshoes and XC skis, but conditions were best for skiing so that's what we did, over three hours worth: we were bushed when we were done. Funny thing, we ran into a friend on the trail, Kathy from the PPRAC ride. She invited us back to their weekend house (next to the trail) but by the time we finished and stopped in, they'd already gone home. Not so funny were the chafing issues Lori had with her socks -- yeeouch, her feet looked scary painful when we got back, needed bandages on some pretty good blisters. Bandages, then sandwiches in town, and it was time to head home. You can find the photos on my flickr page.

Soylent Spring, Roborotica

Morning weigh-in: 184.5#, 13% BF

Doop de doo, just wandering around the internets... Uh-oh, I wonder what the implications of something like this might be? Meantime, Mimi Smartypants won't link to the trainwreck she found, but I think she's talking about this guy. Freaky maybe, but to another dude not quite as deer-in-the-headlights fascinating as she finds him, I've heard it all and even lived some of it, though it does seem that his world view -- and libido -- were programmed by Maxim or something...

Anyway, last night was the VMB meeting at the Windsor House. Very businesslike, got a lotta stuff done, so in other words it was kind of tedious (interesting, just long), but all that business stuff is now out of the way. (Rich B is now Prez & Doug is VP.) Dinner was a couple pierogi and a few beers at the meeting, washed down with a bowl of cereal when I got home. Tonight will be a crock pot of chili, which I prepped last night; I think it'll be a bit hotter than other batches I've made, we'll see. (I washed my hands after making it, but rubbed my eye in my sleep, thought I was gonna die.)

I don't know how I'll get there, since all the roads in PA are clusterfscked right now, but I was thinking of going XC skiing this weekend, maybe up near Williamsport.

UPDATE: This is what I wrote on this date last year, and this is what I wrote two years ago, and this is what I wrote three years ago.

Snow Clause

Morning weigh-in: 184#, 13% BF

We got out early yesterday, so I rode in the daylight. I was only out for about an hour (maybe 5 miles tops), since the roads were still pretty bad. Got home, did some yoga -- I bought a handy book to help with the learning curve -- and had some tortellini & salad for dinner.

After that I went out for a bit, walked down to Porters. The place was pretty much empty because of the storm, or maybe because I got there so early: the (non-existent) dinner crowd would have been thinning out by then, but the evening crowd, which did show up just as I was leaving, had not yet arrived.

Tonight is the Valley Mountain Bikers meeting.

Generic, Day 2

Morning weigh-in: 183.5#, 13# BF

The storm is not so bad (the roads, especially I-78, were maybe a little worse than I expected), but there is hardly anyone at work today. Sheesh...

Svaroopa Yoga last night, only three of us in the class plus the teacher, and I think all the other classes there (Kundalini, belly dancing) might have been canceled because the place was empty. I was going to do a ride, but the temperature dropped below 10 degrees so I bagged it. Finished the Bavarian Pork Chops.

Tonight will be a ride of some kind, and dinner beforehand may be either tempeh stir-fry, or tortellini and a salad, or maybe tuna & wilted greens. Choices, choices... Once the crock pot's cleaned I will be mixing up some chili for the weekend, but that will probably be tomorrow night's task.

Generic Day

Morning weigh-in: 184.5#, 13.5% BF

Just checking in, recording my weight. Did yoga last night, feeling good again about the Monday night (beginner) class since it hit on a lot of stuff I didn't know. After yoga was dinner, leftover Bavarian pork chops and a salad, then I read & played on the computer until bedtime. Tonight will be similar: yoga, then dinner, but then I'll do a singlespeed "standing sprints" workout; hopefully it'll be snowy and fun out, rather than rainy and crappy. That is all.

The Lantern Bearers

Morning weigh-in: 185#, 13% BF

Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin! I think it's time once again for one of my all-time favorite quotes, from the birthday boy himself:

It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants
of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting
about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these
elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon
each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around
us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction;
Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the
indirect and direct action of the conditions of life and from use and disuse: a
Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a
consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the
Extinction of less-improved forms.

Anyway: Stayed in Friday night, ate healthy -- and was 186# on Saturday morning. But I went to yoga and had a good time, had breakfast at Coffee Exchange, then went to the gym and had more fun, ran some errands and had lunch at the Quadrant, more chores (prepped Bavarian Pork chops in the crock pot for Sunday), and finally went out to WB. Reasonably early night, but even that left me feeling guilty.

Enough with the wake-up calls: Rode Sunday at Sals, pretty fast crew and soon enough I was blowing up. Lungs were torched & chest ached, head felt like it was ready to explode; on every uphill I was composing my last words in case I didn't make it... Cardio is pretty much gone, but that's next on the training agenda anyway. It was good to see I was able to ride technical stuff OK, which I think had something to do with the recent strength workouts for the legs. Amazing though, how programmed in it is: I ride at my own pace and I'm fine, then I see someone going fast and I chase, like a dog after a stick (or maybe like a salivating dog hearing a bell), and I go too fast and end up toasted.

Dinner was the porkchops w/ sauerkraut; it turned out perfect this time and the house smelled awesome when I got home. More of that tonight and maybe tomorrow, then I'll probably make chili for the weekend.

Reading: Still into Against the Day, which seems to be changing its focus. It's funny how he seems to be summing up so many of his other novels, tying up loose ends... At the Quadrant the other day I happened to see an old book, "Adventure Boys and the Lake of Pearls" or whatever, the genre that was the basis for much of the first part of AtD. For some reason it reminded me of the old essay "The Lantern Bearers."

"And anyone who's ever played a part,

They wouldn't turn around and hate it."

-- Lou Reed