Salad Days

Morning weigh-in: 176#, 11% BF

 

I haven't actually been eating any salads lately (see weight above), it's just for the last few days, that the world outside my work window has looked like a huge cauldron of steamed greens...

 

Wedding Cake: Erika's wedding was last Saturday. Awesome party, and I took 114 pictures (and a few videos) -- I'll post the keepers within a few days. Judy made the food (and she's a known good cook but even so it was all shockingly good), Kelly Jo and Arvids catered, and Eamon bartended, and Ben DJ'ed, and the rest of us partied... Anne and I got there hours early so she could put the finishing touches on the cake, and it was beautiful, but in the end some kid bumped into the table, knocked some layers over and it was only fit for eating after that. Nom nom nom... Anne took it in stride, but it was a shame that Toby & Erika couldn't see it in its glory, luckily I have pictures.

 

One neat surprise was a cameo by West Coast Megan, who flew out to be at her best friend's wedding.

 

Let Them Eat SS Video Linux: I took some video at the wedding, but held my camera sideways for a more upright shot. Now I have sideways video, that I need to rotate -- what to do? What I did do was download MEncoder, and use that to rotate the videos. I have no other video editing tools, and really know nothing about video. Hmmmm, new project?

 

The rest of the (four day!) holiday weekend was taken up with riding, BBQ's, and sleeping. I got my Turner back from the shop, ready (I hope) for Big Bear, so tonight I'll be riding -- for the first time this week-- eating/drinking, and then sleeping. Tomorrow is yoga, and a visit to Anne's brother Joe.

How's That Function?

Morning weigh-in (Thursday): 173.5#, 6% BF (WTF?)
Morning weigh-in (Friday): 175.5#, 12% BF

 

Blog Watch: I truly love Doghouse Riley, but I think he's been working his way up to an aneurysm lately. Too many fools for someone who doesn't suffer them gladly... "Kumbaya" indeed, and I love that first comment!

 

Conjunction Junction: That little musical Wednesday night was pretty cute, even if it wasn't quite Broadway. I have a photo or two that I'll eventually post, but the basic setup was: about a half dozen kids did the acting (and sang and danced) onstage while a chorus, split into two groups, sang on either side. There was a framing device,  "new teacher working through her lesson plans and first-day jitters," but most of what went on was the song-and-dance. They did most of the songs I remember, and a few I'd forgotten. Cute, fun, and I thought Anne was going to die laughing when Deb and I started singing along. Donna did a good job with her kids.

 

To Understand Recursion, You Must First... That little MTO program I wrote was interesting in terms of real-world uses, yadda yadda, but my real reason to write it was because I wanted to play around with linked lists and recursive functions. Well, mission accomplished, I must say. Back in the day (before you could buy such things, like way back when I was in college) I wrote a bunch of math functions for heat transfer problems; some of them, like Bessel functions, were based on recursion, but I rewrote them to be iterative since they were sooooo slowwww -- it was an overhead thing, I was overloading the limited resources of my little Mac Plus. Funny how things come full circle after 20 years, but though I used a mishmash of iteration and recursion in this new thing, I think the recursion seemed to work much better than I remembered it.

Hey Nineteen: I forget now if it was my BS (1988) or MS (1990), but my graduation for at least one of them was May 19th, which I have always heard sung to the tune  of "Hey Nineteen." Well here it is, either nineteen, or 21 years later -- someone who was born on my graduation is now officially old enough to drink.

Do The Hump

Morning weigh-in (Tuesday): 173.5#, 12.5% BF

Morning weigh-in (Wednesday): 174.5#, 6% BF

 

Damn you, stupid three-dollar taco night...

 

Beautiful ride last night: I went out via Market Street into Freemansburg, then out via Buttermilk Road and back on Wassergas, then crossed over the hill and came back to Freemansburg on Applebutter Road. I left around 6:30 and got back a little after 8:00, home just before dark.

 

Anne was at knitting while I rode, so we met at Brew Works after our respective things. It was a bit subdued at first, but Scott came in, then James, and things livened up; we got home around 11:30

 

 

Tonight we're going to see Donna's elementary students put on a musical, one based on Schoolhouse Rock.

 

Carpe Weekendum Procrastinatus

Morning weigh-in: 175#, 10.5% BF

 

A quick recap...

 

Friday night was awesome, and it all started with a singlespeed ride on the towpath: I left a little after 5:00, and maintained a 15 mph average (legs spinning like hamsters) to Easton where I hooked up with Larry and Kirk, and took a more leisurely return ride -- we still hammered, but also cruised for a bit and talked, made a few pit stops, and towards the end we ran into Joe G out with his wolf-dogs, which necessitated more stopping and schmoozing etc.

 

When I got home I pulled straight into the backyard, which is looking really good right now I might add, and knew Ben was home when I heard him and Anne talking on the porch -- cool! His other ride plans fell through I guess, and he came home a day early with his dad.

 

Anne was on her way to meet the Main Street Gang at Mama Nina's, and was actually leaving when I got there, but she stuck around while I hopped in the shower. We were up there in about 20 minutes, and our table was not yet ready so we waited outside on the street. Scott and Deb both live on Main Street, and we're only a few blocks away, and Donna's a regular part of the crowd, so it was like we were hanging out on the front porch or at a block party or something. Deb said she loves it there, but also said living on Main is like living in a fishbowl -- then she went and greeted Nina, all the wait staff, and half the clientele... we saw, and said hello to (and gossiped about) what seemed like hundreds of people during dinner. After that we went to the Steelgaarden; we sort of lost Scott, Donna and Deb in the crowd but met up with Doug and Lori. I have to say, that was probably my most pleasant "Bethlehem evening out" probably since the Funhouse days. Maybe it's just that summer is finally showing up, but it sure was nice.

 

Saturday started with an awesome yoga class in Easton, then Ben and I were put to work digging sod back home. This was the first step; Anne plans to replace much of her front lawn with terraced gardens. Hot, dirty work but we got a lot done before running off to Wired, to do nothing for the rest of the afternoon. We continued the nothing at Brew Works, but dinner was at home, followed by Pineapple Express. Yikes!

 

(By the way, I got the final part my little project to compile, but it was crashing out -- some tweaking over the weekend, and this rough first draft seems to work fine.)

 

Yesterday started with a short bike ride with Ben and Anne, over to Blue Sky for breakfast, which was followed by some backing and filling, chores, etc before we went down to see my folks. That was really nice: we hung out for a couple of hours, they grilled up a bunch of steaks, and my sister in law came over with my nephew towards the end of the day. Back home and tired, but I had the insight that allowed me to fix the program -- as soon as it was working, we sat down and watched Matrix Reloaded. I'm beginning to suspect that my original opinion was correct: the first Matrix would be the best. We shall see, we have the final movie waiting at home.

Looking Back

I happened to notice that I've been doing this for six years (almost exactly, my first post was on May 12, 2003), so here's a retrospective:

Here's what I wrote on this date in 2003.

Here's what I wrote on this date in 2004.

Here's what I wrote on this date (or close to it) in 2005.

Here's what I wrote on this date in 2006.

Here's what I wrote on this date (approximately) in 2007.

And here's what I wrote on this date in 2008.

My life like a pornography of motion, shutter speed set at once a year.

Pollinator

Morning weigh-in: 176#, 10% BF

 

Got a bunch of stuff done yesterday, which included mowing the backyard and paying some bills, but the main thing was bringing the Turner in for some service. Saucon Valley Bikes, I just made it there before closing and ran through a huge wish list: new chain, cassette, and crank/BB/chainrings, new pivot kit installed, and the front fork overhauled. Probably take around a week for stuff to arrive, and another several days for the work to be done; I'll be doing a lot of road rides, as well as finally busting out the singlespeed -- I found the missing GPS mount, and so can set up the SS like the others.

 

I was planning on staying in, but I got the call that the Naughty Knitters were going to Brew Works so I met Anne & Company over there. (Two of the company have not been getting along, and the evening was a bit subdued, but it looks at least like things are on the way to being patched up -- I fully expected the traditional Tuesday evening to not happen.) Two Loco Limes and four tacos, and we were out of there.

 

Tonight will probably be the last of the really nice days this week, so I'm doing a road ride, once again exploring the area east of Hellertown. Anne got more meetings, so I'm on my own for food though there's plenty of leftovers, and the garden is now in overdrive.

 

Halcyon Daze

Morning weigh-in: 173.5#, 12.5% BF

Nice ride last night, out through Freemansburg to my Williams Township roads (took Valley View for a change of pace), and back via Hellertown: 19 miles, 1:16 ride time, very pleasant. I wanted to ride out to the start of Wassergas Road and take that all the way back, but got a late start, and when I hit Raubsville Road I just made that the turnaround point. Got home just before dark, then met Anne at Brew Works, where she was catching up with some friends. Dinner was pasta pomodoro, washed down with a CH-47. It's a little cool out, but summer is here.

Tonight is a bit of a rest, since I'm bringing the Turner in for some work, then maybe doing the lawn or such like after that. Stupid summer...

Meantime: I can't eat them so I'm not really sure what all the fuss is about, but the big buzz lately has been the wild morel crop. Anne got a bunch yesterday, and everyone seems to be going out mushroom hunting. Me? I'm just gonna rock down to Electric Avenue...

Monday Lunchtime Quarterbacking

Morning weigh-in: 174.5#, 12% BF

 

Back In The Game: The weekend turned out to be pretty nice, and of course that meant I'd be making up for lost time... I had off on Friday so I went out for a nice medium-sized road ride, basically a mashup of my old Hellertown/Williams Twp and Mud Run "benchmark" rides. Almost exactly 45 miles, and almost exactly 3 hours, not great but not bad considering the hills, headwinds, and traffic I had to deal with at various times. After the ride I met Anne at Wired; I left there to go on a towpath ride with some friends, but just as I was about to start it it started to rain, and I was tired, and radar blah blah... I made a few phone calls, killed the towpath plans, hopped in the shower and -- the sun was shining again when I got out. Oh well, no biggie except I canceled a group ride over the nonexistent rain.

 

Saturday was Raystown Lake. I was up at 5:30 AM, and driving by 6:30, met the VMB contingent at their campsite and I'd guess we (me, Doug, Bob, Rich and "wolverine" Mike) were riding by 10:00 or so. Awesome place, and the trails were very different from the type I'm used to: somewhat wider & smoother, but twisty and with a lot of up-and-down; the climbs were big but they had plenty of built-in breaks, and the downhills had plenty of opportunities to become airborne. Deceptively simple-looking stuff, aerobic and tiring at speed.

 

Mike's bike suffered a mechanical and he had to turn around, then we ran into Kevin and Mark from NJ. Mark turned out to be lightning fast, and he and Rich -- and how did he get so fast all of a sudden? -- managed to wear out the rest of us chasing them. When we got to the trail junction which was sort of our point of no return, some of us (Rich and Mark, plus Doug and Kevin a little further back) continued on, but Bob and I took the return trail. I needed lunch!

 

We got back to camp, relaxed and had something to eat, hanging out with the rest of the VMB crew (Heidi and Dawn, and Mike who was stuck with a broken bike), and then I decided I had to get in a few more miles, it was now or never so I hit the smaller (and less complete) Eastern section of trails. It was nice over there, not as nice or as finished as the first trails I saw, but I was tired so I might not have given them my all... Five more miles or so, at a very slow pace -- did I mention I was tired? -- and I was done for the day. Pack and go, and I was home by 8:00 or so, just in time for the evening's drama.

 

Back On The Boat: My plan all along was to try and get my full 120 miles in, despite only having three days (in a row) to do it this week, but when I woke up on Sunday I was all about kicking back. While Anne went to get her mom, I sat down at the computer and put in two solid hours on that MTO program. I have no idea yet if it will pay off, but I am now about down to about an hour's worth of coding before I'm finished. In terms of my map obsessions, I also made a few wrapper scripts for gpsbabel.

 

After that came Mother's Day. Anne drove her mom down for a visit, and her sister also came down, and after breakfast at Blue Sky (highly recommended) we checked out the downtown Art Fair. Some coffee at Wired, some tea and conversation at home, a pretty nice end to the weekend. Dinner was salad from the garden.

 

Tonight I'll be hitting the road.

Thursday Afternoon Quarterbacking

So the rain, coming down all week, may have just stopped, too bad for the ducks but I'll take it... I was going to race Michaux on Sunday, but since I didn't know of anyone going, among those I'd normally hang out with -- and also because of the rain -- I just blew it off. I didn't ride Saturday though it was nice enough (pre-race rest, just in case I went) and I haven't done any riding since either.

 

What have I been up to? Well, Saturday was a domestic interlude, as Anne and I got around to fixing her fence; Sunday we got up late and walked over to Blue Sky for breakfast, and then spent most of the day just goofing around, like on the computer and such. Monday night was yoga, Tuesday was the gym followed by dinner at Brew Works, and last night was yoga again, followed again by Brew Works as we had an impromptu birthday celebration for a friend. Despite the activity, I have been avoiding the scale...

 

Back On The Boat: Some more Linux voyaging this week, as I played with the computer itself, rather than using the computer to play with other things...

 

Ubuntu inherited a neat "package manager" from debian called apt, and it really makes installing or upgrading software a breeze. Software that's available through the package manager is presented as packages, which I think are just lists of what needs to be installed to get the software to work -- this includes other software (also represented as packages) that the original software depends on. The package manager then does all the heavy lifting, including resolving all these dependencies and finding the software where it's stored on the internet, and installs the software. This can be done from the command line, but there's also a graphical user interface, which has the advantage of showing all available packages. (It also checks daily for software updates.)

 

But a lot of the software isn't really associated with Ubuntu/Debian, and apt-style packaging might be an afterthought for the developer, who may just be a hobbyist like myself. Usually, someone eventually makes a package for the software, but the inevitable result is that the latest version available through the package manager lags the actual latest version. OK fine, usually the latest packaged version is good enough, but what if it isn't?

 

That's the boat I found myself in the other day: my GPS unit uses a relatively new file format for its output, and while there are websites that let me convert the files from that format to others (like Google Earth's format, which I use a lot), the main GPS conversion program was only recently updated to handle the new format. This latest version came out in maybe October, and there is as yet no updated package available for my system.

 

The solution was to just do it the old-fashioned way, downloading a compressed file containing the program source code, then running ./configure and make to install it. This always was the most satisfying way to install stuff, it always felt like I was really getting my hands dirty under the hood and I poo-poohed the package managers even as I used them. Until... partway through the install process, the compiler barfed a bunch of error messages and the process ground to a halt. I Googled the errors, found I had unresolved dependencies (which I then resolved using apt-get), and on the second try everything went fine. Thus I was hoist on the petard of why apt beat make...

 

Rough Week: Tuesday was a bad day at work, we had a major round of layoffs. It was a deep cut too, about 14% (say 50 of 350) at my office was let go. I'm still here and I think I'm safe for now, but if there are other rounds I'd probably be vulnerable. (Cutting any deeper wouldn't leave a viable company, but that's not any insurance.) Lot of my friends are gone, it's been lonely and depressing all week.

 

A Voyage Of My Own: I first got the laptop so I could play with programming, specifically that material packaging program I was fooling with, but with all the other things going on in the real world (yoga, biking, date nights), as well as competing computer projects, and diversions -- Facebook, anyone? -- this was pushed to the back burner, which is a pity because it's not a big task: what I've dragged out for six months (and counting) could have been finished with just a few hours of concentrated effort.

 

I have not given it those hours of concentration, but watching gpsbabel compile the other day sort of gave me the bug again. I rewrote a big chunk of the program into more modular form, getting the new version of the test program to work just like the original, and the other day I finally wrote the meat of the packing algorithm. I'll probably finish it over the next week or so, but now it's probably a moot point: I don't think I'll need it at work, and I sure don't feel like giving to them as a parting gift. Pity, but I'm having my fun.

 

Tonight is the gym, then it's an early night at home despite having off tomorrow. I'll probably get in a good road ride (rain or shine, dammit!) plus a bit of towpath tomorrow, and Saturday is the big Raystown Lake Grand Opening. Sunday is probably more riding, plus Mother's Day festivities.

Today In History

Morning weigh-in: 174#, 10.5% BF

 

Whelp, today is the first anniversary of the last day of Which Brew. (Synchronicitously enough, I saw Carrie, one of the original WB waitresses, out on the town the other night at Brew Works.) So much water under the bridge, it seems like more than just a year has gone by...

 

Last night was a fairly good road ride, the shorter version of my Freemansburg-Williams-Wassergas loop. Twenty three miles, approximately 1:30 ride time, 1500 calories, sweated like a pig but it wasn't as bad as Monday night. Dinner was "pasta pomodoro with chicken" at Brew Works, where I caught up with Anne and a few friends.

 

Tonight my plan was to go to yoga, but if it stays nice enough I may blow that off to do another road ride. Dinner? Not sure yet.

 

Sproing-oing-oing!

Wow, you go away for a weekend, and spring has surely sprung, like an unwatched pot boiling over. Greenup was just starting around here when we left, and there was a noticeable lag in the season as we went north, and on the way home it was likewise noticeably greener heading south, but I was over at Sals today after work, and it's practically midsummer over there. Hot like midsummer too, low nineties.

Northampton, Mass

So here I am in Northampton, just back from a nice road ride (44 miles round trip plus a brewpub lunch) to Greenfield, the next town north of here... Yesterday was 25 miles on a nearby bike path, basically to Amherst & back, followed by dinner at a local brewpub, and breakfast was at a coffee shop. A guy could learn to like this...

We're up here visiting Anne's son Ben at college, saw him last night at the pub with a bunch of his friends. (In other words,this is just a quick min- vacation, checking to see whether or not he's been eating right.) We'll hook up with him again tonight or tomorrow, and head home in the afternoon.

These rides were a godsend, since otherwise this whole week was a wash: time commitments after work, bad weather, if it weren't for yesterday and today the week would have been a disaster mileage-wise, rather than middling-OK. (Granted, the weather's great at home as well as here, and even if we stayed home I probably would have been riding anyway, but still...)

Also this weekend: today is the big outdoor chili cook-off on Southside. I got home Thursday night and found the house in complete chaos, as Anne & Debbie made a huge vat of chili from a bunch of invasive plants they'd foraged that afternoon. Josh & Kim also came over and a good time was had by all as we made a huge mess. Good times! Debbie and Josh served it at his store today, and I hear it was a big hit, there are no leftovers. I hope they saved us some!

We're going out in a bit to do some people watching. Northampton -- home of Smith College (Emmi's alma mater) and with a bunch of other schools nearby -- is a neat town with a very crunchy Northeast vibe.

Et Tu, Aubade?

Morning weigh-in: 173#, 10.5% BF

 

Wow, it's really like Groundhog Day now: here I am again, and the weight and the weather are still the same.

 

Not much to say. I got in a good ride yesterday, 19 miles, though my average speed (approx 14 mph) was a little below par because it was a fairly hilly ride. (Dinner was leftovers at home, and bedtime was on the early side -- I've been trying to get my ass up a little earlier in the morning.) Tonight I'm riding offroad at South Mountain, then we're going to Porters -- I thought that BC Bluezin' was playing tonight and we made plans accordingly, which included telling a lot of other people about it. (Singer Bev is part of the old Hack's Diner crowd, a good friend of Anne, Judy & Deb from way back.) Oh well, I'm sure we'll still go, and whoever's playing will be great, but I may have some 'splainin' to do...

 

By the way, Pynchon has a new novel coming out in August. I already have it on back order.

Groundhog Day, Get Off My Lawn!

Morning weigh-in: 173#, 10.5% BF

Hi it's me. Just popping my head in for a moment... I don't think I've ever gone more than a week without posting, except maybe when I was on vacation or something, but I've just been very busy lately.

 

So, what have I been up to? Well, for a few weeks I was riding like it was going out of style, then it did sort of go out of style: I was supposed to be getting in about 120 miles per week over the two weeks prior to this one, and probably got in only half that. Bad timing, rain/snow (snow!), and sunny days when I had other commitments, etc. Oh well. This week's a rest week, but I'll be getting out today and tomorrow, and probably Saturday, and Sunday too.

 

Meantime, I've been well (despite, or maybe because of, the anti-Lyme antibiotics), though I can't say the same for Anne -- she's fine now, but she was hit hard by a nasty bug several weeks ago. Fever, chills, muscle aches, multiple doctor visits and prescriptions, but now she's much better. And now there are two jars of antibiotics on the kitchen counter...

 

What have I been up to? My birthday was last week, and we went out for a bit Friday night, and Sunday was Easter with Anne's family, and in between was yoga and the gym and Porter's And Brew Works, and a lot of time on the weekends at Wired (a coffee shop on Main Street, and just as much a Peyton Place as any of our other hangouts), chatting over coffee and playing with the computer.

 

I finally got the hang of that GRASS software, imported my Sals GPS data as well as topo maps, property boundary maps, and some aerial photos, and had the program "georectify" them into one big database. I've been trying to make sure our trails don't cross the park boundaries, but between the uncertainties in the maps and the GPS data, and the tendency of our trails to encroach on the property line-- a design flaw IMHO, and for more than just trespassing reasons -- I really can't say for certain that we haven't crossed that line.

 

Well, tonight is a road ride, and tomorrow I'm riding the other Bethlehem trail system. It's supposed to be beautiful through Sunday night.

Uh Sih, Sih, Sih, Sih, A-Sisyphus, Hey!

Morning weigh-in (Monday): 174#, 10.5% BF

Morning weigh-in (Tuesday): 174.5#, 8.5% BF

Morning weigh-in (Wednesday): 172.5#, 11% BF

Morning weigh-in (Thursday): 174.5#, 11% BF

Morning weigh-in (Friday): 176.5#, 10.5% BF

 

So I was going to hit the gym on Monday, and I even brought my bike for a road-ride warmup; instead I took off work early and went to the doctor for that tick bite -- I am now on amoxicillin "just in case," and got an ointment for the bite area's rash. That sort of took the wind out of my sails, so when I got home I just blew off everything physical.

 

Tuesday night was going a Sals ride, but the world conspired to prevent me (worked late, hit traffic, bike routes were under construction, etc) and it almost worked -- almost! I took the lights but I cut the ride short, only riding about 10 miles and needing the light mostly for  the ride home. Trails were in great shape and I had a blast, even saw a few friends out there, but I didn't want to provoke the bike gods any more than they already were. (Strangely enough, that's the same neck of woods where I hiked and got the ticks the other day; Tuesday on the bike was back to my usual experience: nada. Note to self, never stop riding...)

 

Wednesday was yoga (and rainy so I couldn't ride there), yesterday was beautiful but it was a gym day. It's rainy today, and I already canceled the group towpath ride but I will try to sneak something in tonight.

 

I need a leg up -- last week is gone, this week has been a wash, I start over soon with another week's 120 mile quota, and I'm already behind on my miles... Effort equals results, if I'm lucky, and July is getting closer by the day. The weekend is supposed to be nice, maybe I'll do a bit of catch-up.

Repent, Harlequin!

Tick Tock Man: So I took Langston for a walk at Sals yesterday, and though I never really worried about ticks before (like, it's been a non-issue while riding), we've been finding ticks on him fairly regularly lately, so we gave him the once-over with the brush when I got back. (It didn't help that he'd been in every sticker bush and mud puddle up there: he was a mess of mud, burrs; I wouldn't have been surprised to find he had leeches.) We found a few deer ticks on him brushing him off, then we found two on my clothes. I went up to shower and found three more on my body, including one somewhat attached and one really attached -- that's the spot where I have a mosquito-bite-like welt today. If my summer really sucks, with PICC line and swollen joints, yesterday is the day I'll be thinking most about.

We went out to Donna's spring party after that, great time but I had to leave early because of her cats. When we got home we checked Langston again, and found twenty four more of the little buggers -- and one more today.

Anyway, Donna's party... Like I said, great time. I was surprised at how many peeps I knew there, even one or two of her work friends I already knew. Lots of good food, Dogfish Head beers... and speaking of peeps, that's what we brought, along with some cheese and bread that we picked up at the Allentown Farmer's Market. My first trip there, and the place really is a trip -- many many diverse types of characters, at one point I said to Anne that if you went there to actually people watch, your head would explode.

The Man With The Plan: This week was the first of the "build weeks" in my training plan. I was supposed to ride 120 miles and burn 7000 calories, those were my goals, and -- well, I made it. Eighty eight hundred calories, and 121miles, and as of tomorrow it's gone, I have to do it again next week. Wilderness 101 is coming, I am way ahead of where I was last year but the clock is ticking.

Wazzap?

Morning weigh-in (Monday): 174.5#, 11% BF

Morning weigh-in (Monday): 174.5#, 10% BF

Morning weigh-in (Monday): 174.5#, 11% BF

 

Wow that's quite a variation, Steady Eddie... I'd like to be below 170# by the end of next week, but I don't think it's going to happen.

 

Ride/Eat: I've started Build Week 1 on the bike, riding Sals on Monday night and the towpath last night. I would have been better off reversing that order; I was still a little tired on Monday from my "rest week" rides (several hot laps at Sals, and a leisurely, medium-longish road ride with Anne on Sunday). Tonight is yoga followed by a trip to Porters, since we can't swing the Thursday night trip this week.

 

Computer: I've been playing with the computer a lot lately, but I'm not doing much other than browsing. One exception: I've been saving GPS data from my rides, and using it with Google Maps to map the at Sals. (You can find a preliminary version here.) I am missing a few trails (including some unofficial ones required for the sake of completeness), and I need to get a better handle on official trail names, but we're getting there.

 

Listen: Continuing my old-timey retrospective, I downloaded a bunch of songs by The Fall, and also a Heather Nova album (don't ask).

 

Anyway, that's what's up.

On This First Day Of Spring

I have a bunch of half-written, diary style blog posts that I think I'll abandon, as they're losing relevance by the day. Just a quick note, I'm out of here in a few minutes...

 

Rest In Peace, Deanna. My friend Vito's wife passed away the other day, after a long illness -- she had lung cancer, which she beat but it got into her brain, she fought that (chemo, radiation, surgery), she had a stroke, and finally the game was up. She moved back home a week or so ago and was getting hospice care, and went into a coma just before last weekend. (Her obituary is here.) She was one of the nicest people I've ever had the privilege and pleasure to know, and while there's an Italian a saying, "so good he's good for nothing," she was good in a way that was very effective, she literally was a force for good in this world.

 

I'm leaving work early today to go to the wake, and tomorrow is the funeral. I especially feel bad for Vito -- he's a strong person, but that was at least partly because she was there to cover his back all those years. This isn't going to be easy.

 

Suitable

Morning weigh-in: 173.5#, 13% BF

 

So much for a hard ride: I went out last night but didn't feel like hammering, and since it had to be short I really didn't know what to do so I just rode around West Bethlehem. I hit Doug's house but no one was home, then I went over to Spanky's, where he and Tony D were ripping apart his kitchen -- worried that they might give me something to do, I got out of there as quickly as I could... Tooled around a little more, 8 miles, 45 minutes, done by 7:00 and out the door for the Men's Warehouse.

 

Anne was at a writer's group meeting (listening to and discussing one guy's story of being in the Ukrainian underground as a boy -- wow!), which was nearby, and she met me there. Long story short: the salesgirl and the tailor eyed me up and quickly produced what I wanted, and soon I was the proud possessor of two suits, two pairs of slacks, some ties, socks, and two dress shirts -- it was "buy one get one free night" or something -- paid for just minutes before the store closed. (I pick up the suits next week.) Now that's how shopping is supposed to work!

 

Dinner was leftover Indian food, plus a chicken cheddar & apple sandwich, and one of the Brown Ales we made a few weeks ago.

 

And Another Thing: As a followup to yesterday's post, I thought I'd note this in passing. I remember plenty of guys like this when I first moved to the Lehigh Valley, talk of sovereignty and the Constitution as code for white supremism... A lot of  things going to be crawling out of the woodwork, now that treason is the new patriotism again.

 

Beware Of the Ham Bushes!

Morning weigh-in: 174.5#, 10% BF

 

Oy: This was funny, especially in light of where I found it.

 

Fellow Traveler: In mostly-unrelated news, here's an article about a Windows user who tried Ubuntu, and here's a follow-up. While I would agree that "things are different in Linux" (if someone actually said that), different design philosophies, emphases & priorities etc, I use Ubuntu on the laptop and I think usability is down at a no-brainer level of easy, even -- especially -- when it comes to installing software.

 

Tonight will be a short, hard road ride, maybe hill repeats.