BM

3003.4 road bike miles from January 1st to December 30th. Yesterday I got out for a decent ride. It was a little breezy but not too cold. I wasn’t planning on riding today due to a crap forecast but right now it doesn’t look too threatening outside and the radar seems to agree. I might go out for a little for no other reason than I have nothing else to do. My original plan was to bolt myself to the couch all day in front of the 'ol 55'er but that was interrupted by a massive shit cramp. Had to take care of that so now I’m up and looking for something to do.

Last night Erin and I met our friends Zach & Angela at Coakley's for some grub. I love hanging out with them but we don’t see them near as much since they became proud parents to little Jocelyn. So we powered down some wings and had some dinner and caught up on things. Good times.

Tonight we'll ring in the New Year with the Legendary Mr & Mrs. I’m wonder where I’ll be sleeping tonight? My own bed or face-down in the Hebe’s flower bed? Neither me or The Wifey are big drinkers so it won’t take much to get me vociferous and cantankerous. Perhaps garrulous even. I love MS Word. Anyway, should be fun. Stay tuned for more.

364

Done for another year. We had a good time last weekend giving and receiving. Visiting and hosting. Eating and, well, eating. Much fun was had. I think everyone was happy with the gifting. I was. I can’t remember ever getting so many edible gifts but that’s just fine with me. Perhaps my favorite was a couple boxes of Bottle Caps. I guess I made such a big deal on Halloween about how much I love those things and haven’t seen them since I was a kid. I think I lived on those things when I was 10. Anyway, Erin’s dad bought me two boxes of ‘em.


However, The Legend gets the most points for edible gifting. Being an almost daily visitor to the bike shop he has noticed my love of mangos and kiwis AND cashews(eaten separately). And wouldn’t you know The Legendary Mr & Mrs provide me with a fruit/nut/chocolate basket of delight. Yum.

A key to skinnyness

Little Elwood got some kitty toys to monkey around with. Erin wrapped his gift laced with catnip and he was flipping out trying to rip it open. I got him those fake but real looking furry mice toys. He loved it. All his primal kitty hunting skills were in full display. Cats are a riot.

Elwood giving his mouse the business

So Monday it was back to work for an abbreviated work week. Turns out it was more abbreviated than I thought it would be. I was expecting to work all day Monday and Tuesday until 5pm and then hit the road to Jim Thorpe for a couple nights. Turns out I miscalculated how many vacation days I had left considering xmas was Sunday. Allen, the boss man(owner), told me my services were not needed on Tuesday. Sweet! That extra day off allowed me to ride an hour before we cruised up to Thorpe and still get there hours earlier than we would have had I worked.

Tootpick dispenser

Thorpe was cool. We hit all the little antique/junk/crafts(junk)/knickknack type stores. Ate good food. Relaxed a ton. Rested up for the remaining 5 days off I have before I go back to work.

Today I’m going to nail down the remaining 29.3 miles I need to hit 3k for the year. Tomorrow looks like crap so it has to be today. I weighed myself this morning fearing the worst but again being amazed at the findings. 148 and 9.4. I can definitely feel a softening of the belly but for as much garbage that I’ve eaten the past few weeks I can’t believe I’m not fatter. I won’t argue or complain though.

For the puck fan in all of you. Can it get any more entertaining for a Flyers fan than two consecutive overtime wins on back to back nights. There was one point in last nights game where the action was end to end back and forth rushes up the ice when I commented to my hockey loving wife “how can you NOT love this?”

I took a picture of Elwood from about 30 feet away in low light while he was frolicking in the gift wrap hammering away at his mouse. Check out this picture. Don't mess with little El.

Time to ride. 43 and overcast. It is December so I’m thinking sunny would be great but this really ain’t so bad. Happy new year.

What a beautiful day. We got started this morning with some seriously good breakfast. I won’t even get into the details but trust me friends, major grease. Then we picked up a couple pizzas and dropped ‘em off at the bike shop. I felt bad that those guys were working and I wasn’t. They dug it. Sounds like they sold a bunch of stuff yesterday. We’ve been selling a shit load of bikes this month. More than usual.

This afternoon I got out for another 2hrs on my road bike. Third day in a row. I didn’t feel to bad. I dicked around Lewisberry then over around Ski Roundtop. Never too far from home but zig-zagging just in case I lost interest but it was sooo frickin nice I couldn’t justify cutting a ride short. I went with the shorts again. I think today was warmer than yesterday. Definitely the sun was out more. Hebe yelled at me for not wearing tights and I know he’s right but as I stated previously my mood is lifted tremendously when I can ride in shorts in the winter. 2952 as it stands right now. Looks like I’ll get my 3k but it won’t be ‘til later next week. Tomorrow is busy. Work Monday and Tuesday. Thorpe Wednesday and Thursday. Sheesh.

Tonight we went over to Erin’s cousins place for a little xmas eve gathering. Calvin & Amy and little Riley and Maggie. Calvin is brother of Mrs Legend. More goodies to cram down my cake hole. I’m overloading on high calorie mega-fattening grub. I love it. Tis the season, eh? Now, as I sit here and bang away, Erin and Emily are half asleep still planning on going to church at 11pm. Not me. I’ll probably bust out the PS2 when they leave.

NYE with Mr and Mrs Legend. Dinner at Zia’s then who knows what afterward. Fun and frolicking for sure. Should be a great time.

Late.

Yum

The Wifey just crafted some cookies. Cake batter w/choc chips and coconut. Heavenly. Best cookie I ate all day. Another 90 minutes today on the roadie. I rode out to Pheasant Field B&B where Erin was visiting the owners. We had our wedding ceremony there 2 1/2yrs ago. Nice place. Anyway, it was 53 in my neck of the woods so, I know it's December 23rd but I busted out the shorts and balmed up the legs. Perfect. To me it's theraputic to look down and see some bare skin on my legs. Being all bundled up all winter demoralizes my fickle mind. Tomorrow looks like more of the same weather. I believe all that's going on for me is breakfast at the in-laws and a party at the cousin-in-laws tomorrow night. All afternoon to ride, maybe. The LeMond is getting grimey. I need to give it it's winter overhaul.

Until next time. Cheers.

Crash schmash

Wow! Another 2hr ride today. Tomorrow is meant to be high 40’s. Saturday too. And I’m off both days. If I don’t be careful I’m going to get fit again. At least it gives me a reason to eat my ass off without much consequence. Hebe and I got out. Flat stuff this time. Good times. No crashes. BTW, are we sick of bickering about this alleged crash? A quick innocent innocuous little spill and all the sudden Mrs Legend says “pay me”. Phooey. Stick to drive-by hobo harassing.

The family-in-law stopped over tonight to catch some Flyers HD hockey. Flyers v Ottawa. Great game. Emily was at the game in Philly and called us right as a goal was scored. It was pretty cool to hear over the phone the mega-airhorn blast when Philly lit the lamp. I asked for an airhorn for my basement as a gift but no one has stepped up to the plate yet.

I just played PS2 for a couple hours. College Football(Bama). Now it’s 2AM and I have a serious case of playstation thumb. And I’m kinda wired. I probably should go to bed but if I’m not sleepy I might annoy The Wifey by fidgeting for an hour. That’s why you’re getting a half-assed blog entry in the middle of the night.

I feel like eating some wings. I also had an urge to power down some funnel cake earlier tonight. I better put in 3hrs on the road sled tomorrow with my appetite what it is right now. Have any of you ever noticed that there is no food that can’t be improved by adding bacon. Go ahead, try to come up with anything. “Bacon tastes good. Pork chops tastes good“. Name that movie quote. Ponder that, until next time. GOODNIGHTNOW!

Beautiful

I just knocked out all my shopping in less than 3hrs today. The Wifey. Check. D.J. Check. My sis. Check. Greg, soon to be brother-in-law. Check. My father-in-law. Check. Glen & Lupe. Yep. Everyone got gift cards except for The Wifey. I love gift cards because they are easy to purchase. No thought needed. Walk to the register. Bang, your done. And, I for one, rather enjoy receiving a gift card instead of a strange stab at something I may or may not like. Some will say it’s the thought that counts when it you open up a shaving kit or a pair of new shoelaces. I say, humbug. Gift card me.

Joining me today and making a stressful event like shopping much more enjoyable was The Wifey’s sis, Emily. She’s cool. We had a good time. As long as I’ve know Erin’s family, I never really had much chance to get to know Em. She saved me a big headache today simply by putting the idea in my head to cross the river over to the East Shore where practically every store I wanted to hit was in the same complex. Otherwise I’d have been yanking my hair out on this side driving to 19 different stores fighting traffic all the way. The last place we stopped was the Bass Pro Shop. It was my first visit to that mega-store. Holy shit that place is huge. Giant stuffed wildlife everywhere. Pretty amazing place. Anyway, it was cool to get to know Em a little. She LOVES hockey too, BTW. Are there any single dudes out there looking for a beach/surf/hockey lovin’ chick?

Now, despite my best wishes to get on my bike, I realize I need to chisel the inch of ice off our driveway before someone dies. Freaking winter. Grin and bear it.

Good day.

Sleep, eat, ride, eat, couch, eat, eat

Today I went out for a road ride with The Legend. I wasn’t expecting to ride as long or as hard as I did nor did Mike but in the end it wasn’t so bad. He was on a Surly Steamroller(1sp-fixed) while I had 20 gears at my disposal. I’ve pondered the acquisition of a fixie but just riding one around the block at Holmes makes me hesitate. It’s not an easy thing to pilot. A perpetual forward spin. As I found out today it’s not easy to ride with someone who is on a fixie. I guess if we had found some flat stuff it would have been no big deal. Where we live, however, is far from flat unless you head out towards Mechanicsburg which is approx 10miles out. Anyway, the plan was for 90minutes or so but ended up 2hrs+ for me. 38 miles. It was a good ride, really. The hardest I’ve ridden in a month. Problem was, with me geared and Mike not, and a fairly rolling parcours, we weren’t very well matched. When I was cruising downhill(53-15), Mike was pedaling his ass off. When I was spinning uphill(38-21), Mike was crushing a 40-17. Needless to say, what was a hard ride for me must have been doubly so for The Legend. If the nickname fits, eh?

One of the beauties of such a long hard ride on a Sunday is the relative guilt free existence I can experience the rest of the day. Food. Football. In no particular order. Lots of it too. I think I ate around 17 Hershey Kiss sugar cookies today. Maybe a half a pound of brownies. Pretzels. Chips. A slice of pizza. The Wifey made some shrimp scampi tonight. Ice cream. Am I missing anything?

How many of these can you cram in 1 day?

I have off tomorrow so I get to do it all again. Weather looks decent. I only need a little over 100 miles to wrap up 3k miles on my road sled. A full 1k more than last year. Between my LeMond and my TCX(‘cross/commuter) I will have ridden over 7500 miles since Jan 1st 2004. I know it’s chump change for some but it’s easily more than all I’ve ridden in the 5 or 6 years prior combined. Nice.

The Wifey wants to take a trip over to Europe one of these days. I mentioned something about a trip to catch a ‘cross race in Belgium or somewhere nearby would be cool and she’s totally into it. At this point it may have to wait until after our ‘06 season but I’m glad she’s cool about it. Where are ’cross worlds in ’07?

I’m watching football on espn(HD!) right now. The game is in Chicago. It’s 9 degrees with a -7 windchill. All that’s missing is snow. What I love is all the dudes playing in short sleeves. Great stuff.

No mas.

The Art of Cold

The weather is crap again. Or, it never really stopped being crappy from my last post. It’s only midway through December but I feel like its February. It has been down right arctic the past week. As some of you know I hate being cold down to my last fiber. I try to confront my hatred head-on though. I choose to ignore being cold. The Wifey has been trying to purchase me a winter coat for years to no avail. I have a thin little 50degree Bontrager rain jacket that I call the winter coat. Works beautifully…….for 50degrees. My fickle brain says if I wear a giant puffy fagish winter coat, I admit defeat. I’m pretty sure the temperature hasn’t been above 30 since the Sat/Sun. This hasn’t stopped me from ridding to/from work this week. I like doing this for a couple reasons. One, as I’ve stated, driving to work is admitting defeat. Second, is knowing that if I KNOW I can ride when mercury reads 10, I KNOW I can fly when it reads 25 or 30 or 35. 40 is balmy. VisitPA Ray also rode in this week as well. Even Kenny rode in yesterday. Mucho macho men.

All this leads me to something I wonder about. The human spirit. ‘Cross Nationals were held last weekend up in RI. Without me. I’ve read the reports and seen the pics & videos. Nutty weather. Friday was the worst in terms of bad weather. Temps in the low 30’s, 3-4 inches of snow followed by sleet/freezing rain/rain/heavy rain accompanied by 25-35+mph winds. Mike’s race, 35-39, is when the it all hit at once. Video from parts of that race can be seen via a link on Hebe’s blog. 150+ racers started the race. Approx 50 or so finished. Without being there, and I will be next year, I wonder what goes through an individuals mind as he races in crap like that. What makes 100 guys drop out when 50 DID finish. They’re all racing in the same conditions. Is it physical? Mental? Both? What makes a dude who finishes regularly a minute or two or three behind another but on this one day in these conditions finish when the other doesn’t. I know quite a few of the people that did the race, finish or not, were driven to an emotional depth that they never thought they could or would ever want to reach. A level of cold that only an Eskimo would have a handle on. I'm sure i'd have DNF'd that race. Or not, I guess it's almost as easy to say I wouldn't have than it is to say I would have. Without being there it's silly for me to say. One thing is for certain, my hat is off to everyone who raced at Nationals especially those who raced Friday. It’s unfortunate that the weather was what it was last weekend. It sounds as though the course would have been awesome otherwise. Regardless, some had great weekends. I was happy to see Ryan Leech(The MAC’s fastest) had a great race Saturday. 14th in the Men’s Elite. If you read his thoughts, I think he was pretty stoked as well. Nice ride. Fort James did a nice ride in the B race. So, the season is done. No more ‘cross until next fall. When will Dieter begin counting down the days?

It’s official. The Wifey and I now live in a WirelessDSL home. Pretty sweet. Faster than I ever imagined. It took a while for the Verizon techies to remotely figure out why their software was not connecting but once it did I can’t say enough how great it is. Wireless Toshiba lapper downstairs. Dell PC in the office. Smooth.

Damn, this year is rapidly coming to a close. I have a lot of days off between now and Jan 1st. I only work 6 more days this year. We’re headed back up to Jim Thorpe for a couple nights after Xmas. I like it up there. Neat little town.

Stay warm.

F!

The sky is shitting again. F-ing snow. I hope you're happy JB.

Someone is adding a year

Mrs. Legend is having a B-Day tomorrow Dec 5th. I won’t say what number this is but make sure you jump over to her freshly done up blog and wish her a great day.

Frosty The Shitman

I woke up this morning and looked outside to find a bunch of white shit all over the place. Man, nothing puts me in a rotten mood more. It always sucks when it snows but especially on a Sunday. That’s my day to ride. Well, I stewed for a while but while The Wifey was off to the grocery store (more on that later) I decided I wasn’t going to let a bunch of icy shit ruin my fun. I put the ‘cross wheelset back on my TCX and headed out into the great unknown. Immediately I realized riding in the snow is actually sorta fun. Not my ideal scenario but I rode over to the Fairview Township park approx ½ mile from my humble abode. I’m lucky when it comes to community parks. I have Fairview and Lower Allen both within 2½ miles from my front door. Fairview is cool. It would definitely make a great ‘cross venue. Lots of off camber, short steep hilly, long flat, paved bike path type stuff. I tinkered around and carved a ‘cross course throughout the park and did a few laps. Before I knew it an hour had gone by, I was smiling, and my feet were a little cold. So I went home. It was all I needed. Other than my feet being a bit chilly I was properly dressed considering it was 33 while I was out. I’ve been wearing my new Nike thermal bib tights lately. These things are nice. No worries so far in temps as low as 25. I got ‘em through Trek for $5. Yep, $5.

Having the right gear, both clothes and bike, make such a huge difference. Working at Holmes helps when it comes to having the right gear. I’d never be able to support my habit if not for the employee purchase or pro deal and the occasional blowout list. The EP is a wonderful thing. Usually figure that I pay approx half of retail on any given EP. The beauty is, given that I buy at such a great price, I can ride/use said goodie until my attention span tells me it’s time for something new. At which point I can sell and most often get back what I paid in order to pay for the new goodie. Almost as though once you make your initial investment you’re in the club.

Thursday I switched my light road bike stuff back from my TCX to the LeMond Tete. A Syntace stem, FSA carbon cranks, and Bonty Race X-Lites were the biggies. While I was at it I also installed a new Ritchey WCS carbon fork and stem on the TCX. The fork is lighter than the Alpha Q I took off and placed on my other TCX(The Wifey’s bike). I didn’t get a chance to weigh it but my main ‘cross sled in full race mode should be somewhere in the 17.5lb range. Pretty sweet. My Tete weighs 16lbs. Erin’s new bike, a Giant TCR carbon, weighs 17.5lbs. Nice ride for her. She likes to ride on the road. She put in 1000 miles this year on the spare TCX.

Back to Erin’s visit to the grocery store. First let me preface by saying this is in no way a complaint against my wonderful wife. She runs a tight ship and puts up with more than enough crap from her neurotic husband, your humble narrator. Today she nailed the grocery visit. 100% effort on her behalf. Every stupid little food neurosis I possess was satisfied. Diet Iced Tea, not the regular stuff-got it. Lite Cookies & Cream Ice cream, not the super fattening premium stuff-got it. Breyer’s Lite Raspberry Yogurt, not the full on high fat stuff-got it. Mangos, kiwis, green bananas-got it. Zero fat chips, the kind that’s supposed to make some people, not me, shit their brains out-got it. Wow, as I write this I realize two things. First, I AM neurotic. Two, all the pounds of fat I’ve shed over the past couple years from eating lowfat/no fat food probably isn’t any healthier than all the freakin’ chemicals I’ve digested from such lowfat/no fat food. Oh well, I like being skinny instead of fat so until I grow a second head or a sixth toe or something like that aspartame wins out over lard. Anyway, props to The Wifey. I love you E.

Last night we went to Herby’s for some Mexican grub. Best place in Harrisburg for mex, hands down. Not the easiest place to get to, but worth the drive. Not distance wide but it’s in a weird area of Steelton. Lots of rights and lefts. VisitPA Ray and his better half, Nancy, joined us for the chow down. Good stuff.

I finally bought a lapper. I got it from Best Buy. Toshiba. It’s a nice little rig. Now, as I type away this very instant, I’m in front of the 55’er watching some HD football, surfin, and bloggin. Is this what they call multi-tasking? Wednesday we’re getting set up with DSL so we can go wireless ‘net. I was paying $10 for dial-up. Verizon DSL is only $5 more. A no brainer. Nice. Out.