Bigger Than Life

Morning weigh-in: 175#, 9% BF

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

How Sweet It Is

Morning weigh-in: 176.5#, 9% BF

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Tonic In D Minus

Morning weigh-in: 176.5#, 12% BF

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

Morning weigh-in: 177.5#, 10.5% BF

 

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

 

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

Beano, Comes The Hunger

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Some Days You Can't BUY A Break

Morning weigh-in: 177.5#, 10% BF

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Tuesday Morning After

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

No Buzz, Babylon

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Crush Bunny

Morning weigh-in: 178.5#, 10.5% BF

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Chamois Time

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Spring Has Sprung.

Blueberries Bananas And Millet Oh My

Morning weigh-in: 179.5#, 8.5% BF

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Hodgepodge

Morning weigh-in: 180.5#, 10% BF

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Dreaming Fishes To Young Ram, Watersleep To Firewaking

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

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

Leithian

Morning weigh-in: 180#, 12.5% BF

 

Back home. Got in yesterday afternoon, and went out on a road ride almost immediately after arriving home, 25 miles or so with Anne on a perfect day. Ahhh, home at last! (The trip, by the way, was very fruitful.)

 

Reading: I'm working on The Girl Who Played With Fire, the second (of three) from Steig Larsson. I got that for Christmas; I got the first (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) for Christmas in 208 and hadn't read it, so I was a little under the gun, and just and finished the first one on the last trip before this week -- just in time, because it's about to come out as a movie. Very stiff writing (which is probably an artifact of translation) and the guy really likes to name-drop consumer electronics, but the stories are fascinating: detective/whodunit/suspense stories with a dash of Europolitics. I can't tell if they're actually good, or only good in that "detective novel bought in the airport bookstore" way, but they are hard to put down. (The guy next to me saw me reading TGWTDT on the plane, and said that the second one was just as good, but only after the first 50 pages or so. He was right.) We'll probably see the movie this weekend, and I wonder how it will fit into the  "good book -> bad movie, bad book -> good movie" spectrum.

 

Voyager: I had to do some software updates, but I now have R working from within GRASS, so I can do statistical analysis of my spatial data. I'm not yet sure what that gets me, but at least it works.

 

Went out last night to the Brew Works & saw a bunch of friends, and tonight we'll probably go to that movie, after a ride at Sals. Crocuses are up, and there are already ediles in the garden, and Anne just got her seed order in the mail -- that Green Cusp is just over the horizon...

 

Irish Neon

Morning weigh-in: 179#, 11.5% BF

Went to the doctor today, got a steroid blister pack and some new antihistamines. My skin has erupted the past few weeks, especially on my feet and calves, all bright pink and raw-looking, and she (the doctor) said it's not eczema or whatever, but some kind of hyper-reaction to something in my environment. The first step is to calm the current skin inflammation down, then go with longer term strategy of finding out what -- diet, soap, laundry detergent, or whatever -- is causing this.

Meantime, Anne's back from visiting Emmi, who was herself up in Washington visiting a friend. Tag team: I was out of town last week, she was gone this week, and I am off again next week.

Rain.

The Groove Proves Elusive

Morning weigh-in: 180#, 11.5% BF

 

Two weeks or so since my last post, probably the longest I've ever kept my "mouth" shut... It feels like I haven't stopped moving since Christmas or so: Florida, Russia, moving out of the apartment, and last week I was in Indiana for work... Work has been particularly busy lately, every day is another Crazy Party here, constant whitewater and emergencies leaving no time to breathe, or even do my real work which is now of course behind...

 

However, I was home by Friday night, and that night we we met up  with the usual gang of friends at Brew Works. Saturday we went for a short ride, then an afternoon wedding in Philly, then out to the Funhouse  (a great night: packed, smoky and loud; sort of a punctuation mark, a closed door on the previous week), and Sunday was a Blue Sky breakfast with the gang, followed by a trail-care crew hike at Sals to take inventory. All in all, I think this weekend put a lot of things behind me.

 

Last night I rode the towpath, which was fairly OK (if a bit soft) for most of its length, except the usual super-muddy section near Freemansburg. (I only went to the Chain Dam, maybe 19 miles total, but the extra effort of the soft ground really wore me out -- I guess the month off the bike might also have had something to do with it!) Got up this morning and did a run with Anne, and tonight I hit the gym; I expect that I'll be able to get back to yoga in a week or so.

 

Since I will have to travel again next week, and there's rumors of more of the same kind of work coming, I think I'm going to have to become more protective of my ride/gym/yoga time. That weight's got to come down.

 

Down To The Wire

I am moving out of my apartment this weekend, so of course:

 

1. There is a big snowstorm coming.

2. There was an emergency at work, starting last week, requiring me to work late so I couldn't do as much pre-move moving/cleaning as I'd hoped.

 

I think I'm in good shape though: most of my smaller stuff has been moved into storage, and most of my trash has been thrown out. As long as I can rent a U-Haul for Saturday (and manage to not crash it) I'm golden.

 

Meantime, I got in a decent road ride last weekend, 51 miles on a springlike Saturday. I did another tempo workout last night on the trainer, but other than that there has been no exercise this whole week -- too busy.

 

Not Too Busy: I've been playing with the maps again. I downloaded the latest demo version of TopoFusion and got it to run under Wine on the laptop (there are a few issues with the interface, but overall I think that it works well enough to warrant buying the full version), and I downloaded the latest stable version of GRASS. That also seems pretty good, but the new functionality I want seems to hang up when I use it on my Sals trail database -- I think the problem is with the database itself, though.

When I Was Your Age

Morning weigh-in: 179.5#, 12% BF

 

Did an after-work chore day yesterday, stopping to get computer supplies at Staples, then finishing the Great Laundry Cull at the apartment (got two more huge bags for Goodwill, plus one of garbage and some old stereo speakers thrown out). Once I got home I started dicking around with the computer, which cut into my ride time but I did manage to get some time on the trainer workout. (Thirty minutes: ten warmup, ten at LT and ten cooldown, all at a 90-95 RPM cadence.) It was a good workout, but not really much of one, and since I hit Taco Hell -- hard -- for dinner, I don't know where the good weigh-in came from. But I'll take it...

 

Funny, a lot of the clothes I've tossed have been shirts from old races, like back when your $25 entry fee also got you a tee shirt and a water bottle -- let's call it The Nineties. I wore a lot of those shirts until they were rags, sort of a tribal identity thing, and kept them for sentimental reasons ever since. Anne got a kick out of my waxing reminiscent over them on Saturday. I started thinking about it though -- there was a lot of racing going on back then, it was a big deal. Just in New Jersey, in a season that went from March through early December, there was:

 

The Lewis Morris Challenge (6-race series),

RVCC at Ringwood (6-race series),

Mahlon Madness (2 races),

Fat Tire trilogy at Mahlon (3 races)

The Round Valley Rumbler,

Allamuchy (several races, plus the 24-hour race),

Montague Day,

and the series championship at Allaire.

 

In eastern Pennsylvania:

 

Big Timber,

Mt Gretna,

Michaux (3 races),

Blue Marsh (5 or 6 races plus a few biathlons),

and God's Country.

 

In nearby Maryland& Delaware:

 

Gambrill Ramble,

Greenbriar Challenge,

The Watershed Washout,

The Iron Hill Challenge,

and The Eastern Shore Challenge.

 

(New York, New England, and VA/WV/NC were just as busy, but to me, except for a few "name" races, they were their own separate world.)

 

That's 40 races right there, easily more than one a weekend for the busier parts of the season (there was always a lull in around July), and they were all packed, hundreds of racers at even the smallest of them. I might not have been a very good racer, but I sure had fun -- I got to know a lot of different places to ride by racing them, and got to hang out with a lot of great people, a community with its own news, and folklore and gossip.

 

I saw someone from racing days a few years back, and mentioned that I missed the old scene -- he said that it never went away, that I was the one who dropped out. But there aren't nearly as many races nowadays, and they aren't nearly as well attended; something might continue in attenuated form, but what I remember is gone.

 

By the way, this post's title? I caught myself using the phrase more than once recently. Aargh!

 

Playing Catch-Up

Morning weigh-in: 180.5#, 12% BF

Whelp, I am now pretty much caught up with my photos. The last of the Russia pics are posted on Flickr -- I had just under 200 keepers -- as are the Superbowl of Chili photos, plus a few others. (Technically, I guess I'm falling behind again, since I took a few more yesterday, but still.)

 

In other catch-up news, I'm finally making the big push to vacate that apartment. Anne and I stopped by after yoga Saturday, and culled out a big chunk of my Goodwill-bound (and also trash-bound) clothes, five big bags of stuff. I'm going back tonight to finish the job, and also do a few more tasks; I will be doing similar things several days this week, and should be just about done (except for the U-Haul stuff) by the weekend. Friggin finally!

 

This weekend: I tried going skiing on Friday, but I think everyone else must have thought the same thing -- I couldn't even find a parking space at Blue Mountain, just me and maybe 30 other cars constantly prowling for openings in the lot until I wised up -- if the lots are full, how will the slopes be? -- and regrouped by snowshoeing at Sals. Good old Sals! I was definitely not the first one there either, plenty of others had already broken track. We hit the Allentown Farmer's Market (always a trip) later in the day.

 

Anne and I went to yoga on Saturday morning, then hit the Quadrant for brunch before the big clothing drive, then we got home and bottled that Baltic Porter that's been brewing in the basement since like Christmas (we took a few samples, it's already really good), and finally the crew (Anne, me, Debbie and Donna) went to Andy's wine-tasting party. Long day!

 

Sunday was Valentine's day, but we took it low key, except we did have a vodka-and-pickles party, eating Russian foods like borscht and Salade Olivier, and vodka chased with the traditional pickled veggies (pickled garlic, plain old pickles, and sauerkraut). We went for a nice long walk after everyone left, pretty much our only time outside for either of us yesterday.

 

Tonight is more work at the apartment, then I'll be (gack) riding the trainer -- gotta do it, I've fallen way behind in my fitness.

 

Like I Never Left

Morning weigh-in: 180#, 12% BF

 

Surprisingly, not that bad weight, especially considering the Chili Contest yesterday -- and of course all that Russian food -- but we'd been doing a lot of walking on vacation, nothing that worked up a sweat or cranked the heart rate, but I guess we maintained a steady caloric equilibrium.

 

We got back Saturday evening. Up all night, 6:00 AM flight to Munich followed by an 8 hour layover (sleeping like bums on a park bench), and a 9 hour hop across the pond to Newark, where Debbie and Donna picked us up -- it was good to see some familiar faces! We actually went out, had dinner at Brew Works and saw some more familiar faces (Debbie's Kevin caught up with us there, and we also saw Scott & Jen, and Doug & Lori, and of course the crew behind the bar); by this time it was about 4:00 AM St Petersburg time, but we were trying to get back on schedule, so we hung out until about midnight. I was asleep before I hit the pillow.

 

We bounced awake fairly early yesterday morning, like 6:00 AM, still partly on Russian time, and dove back into our much-deferred addictions: Anne made a great breakfast, and did some baking, and generally went wild in the kitchen, while I plopped down with the laptop and a cup of coffee, and caught up with all the blogs and webcomics that I follow. At 8:00 we went down to Sand Island, and joined Doug and Eric for a couple of hours XC skiing, then we all decamped, cleaned up, and regrouped in Easton around 11:30 for the Superbowl of Chili. Me and Anne, Donna, Eric, and Doug & Lori, an hour wait to get in and standing room only inside, 18 contest entries -- a good time was had by all -- and rumor has it that I ended up on TV. Porters after that, bumped into a lot of other peeps, and finally got home again around 7:00. We had to deal with a few pressing issues on the home front, but basically we were zonked and horizontal by 10:00. I woke up this morning and I was back on Eastern Standard.

 

I have about 270 photos from the trip, not all of them keepers of course but it's still a big pile to get through; I've already started posting them and hope to stay on top of it, so stay tuned. In terms of exercise, I'll probably just go for a run tonight.