Author: kennettron

“The rustling breeze through the tree’s green leaves
makes one shudder in delight
for the forest’s quiet slumber
and the earth’s magnificant plight
melts away with each passing moment’s thought
the season is birds, sun, and dew
Spring is coming, winter is dead
it’s a time of nature’s art
there can be only one thing that fills us more full of glee:
which is letting out a large fart
after a long long pee”
-Robert Frost

I’m writing this on a slow, old desktop with one of those old fashioned keyboards that you have to press down on hard to make the keys type. And the letters appear a split second after I type them. And there’s no spell check. Also, in this computer’s format of Wordpess, I cannot make the typing screen any larger than it is, which is way too small. The sole purpose of having a blog is to write in it, but for some stupid reason the WordPress people assume that Window’s users prefer to type in a box that is 1/8th the size of the computer screen. The rest of the screen is filled up with uselss crap like the header for WordPress, the dashboard thing which is useless, and all the publishing buttons to the right. The area that I’m typing in now is literally 15% of the damn screen. I know 1/8th doesn’t equal 15%, or maybe it does. Either way I don’t care. So keep all this in mind as you read this post. Because it’s a pain in the ass for me, I intend on writing in a way that might be a slight pain in the ass for you to read, just so we’re on even terms. Or maybe not, now that I think abuot it. Because that could mean more work for me. And this computer is already really getting on my nerves. I’d like to smash it with a small ball-pin hammer. Not a large one, but a small one that would take a lot of hits before the computer was completely destroyed. Anyways,

I haven’t written about riding for a while, so I’m going to do that. Write about riding. But before I start, I’d like to make a humble appology to the vegetable bok choy. I was wrong about you. You aren’t completely disgusting. Only when made into a soup that contains nothing but bok choy, are you disgusting. I made some really good stir a few days ago, and again yesterday, that had a lot of bok choy in it and you were very tastey. So please except my appology, bok choy. Dang it, my tea is cold now. I just wasted a whole cup of tea just now. The only point in drinking tea is to drink something hot. Because let’s face it, tea has no flavor. So now I’ve forgotten about my tea long enough for it to become luke warm and it’s ruined. I just gullped the whole thing down and you know what? It was like gulping down a mug of warm water with a half a mint leaf thrown in. stupid. Just for that this is all going to be in the present tense, since you have to live in the present or else your tea will get cold before you drink it.

Tuesday:

I wake up at 5:30. I unzip the altitude tent and step out into the cold room, wich is extra cold because the window is open with a fan blowing in cold air. Why? Because it’s hot in the altitude tent. I put on a pair of sweats, socks, and two sweat shirts. I throw down a bowl of steel cut oats and two eggs. Not mixed. Separate. And a couple big glasses of water. I kit up. I stuff my pockets full of food and bottles full of water. I turn my bike lights on. Only 1 of the 3 works, the others are out of batteries. They have been for weeks. I keep forgetting to get new batteries. I make no mental effort to try to remember to get new batteries as I step out the door. It’s cold, since it’s 6am now. Not Oregon cold though. The stars are still out. I ride out of the neighborhood and head down town. 50 minutes later I stop to pee in a church parking lot. It’s my usual pee spot on route to the University, where the group rides leave from. I pull up to the Starbucks, in front of which where we all meet. The group is aound 60 strong, with 20-30 more soon to join. It’s a good group, with plenty of cat 1/2s, aspiring pros, pros, and ex pros. Plus a lot of old guys. We ride out. I go to the front to see if it’s warmer up there. It is not. We ride really slowly out of town for 25 minutes and then we start to race. Up Ajo highway, which has a moderate uphill grade. I stay in the paceline with 8 others. Guys are getting shelled at the back already, after only 3 minutes of racing. We crest the hill, go down fast. Gord Frasier attacks at the bottom of the hill at a stop light, taking a right hand corner fast and wide, almost hitting stopped cars waiting to turn left at the light. We catch him. I sit in for a while as we tear across the desert’s rolling hills. We stop for a school bus on the opposite side of the road with it’s stop sign out. Ralph, the group ride “leader” has yelled at us all for not stopping for it last week, and for later in that ride going for a sprint in a school zone. The bus finally lets its stop sign back and we go again. Some guys who were dropped might have caught back on. Who knows. Who cares. They will be dropped again soon. The pace stays fast for the next couple miles, but it’s easy to sit in. We take a left turn onto “Mcain Loop.” A politician no one in the group has ever voted for. Maybe. I go to the front since the pace slows for a bit. No one wants to pull. I break away. They catch me. I pull with a couple other guys for a while. We hit a steep slope. Guys are dropped. Probably. I can’t see, I’m up near the front. We crest the hill. Another one comes in a few minutes. I attack, look back and have a big gap. I crest the hill. I ride by myself for a few minutes and start soft pedalling to wait for them–because another, longer hill is coming and I don’t want to kill myself before we get to it. They catch me. Less than 30 are left now. The pace up the next hill is fast. Gaps form as we go single file. Only 10 are left now. We work together, but most guys sit in the back. We are caught by a few small groups of guys. We turn onto Gate’s Pass road. Attacks. I follow. As do others. Only 12 left now, give or take. I sit 4th or 5th wheel. The grade turns to false flat, then to 6%. Thom sits on the front. There is a head wind. He kills himself. Only seven left. Michael attacks and gets away. The top of the hill is less than a mile. Michael gets reeled in. Kirk makes a move as the slope goes to 15% for the last 400 meters. I stand up and am gone. I look back at the top of the climb, where some dropped guys have taken a short cut and are looking down the hill and the valley at us finishing. The say “nice job, man.” I have an 80 meter gap to the next guy. I’m breathing hard, but it was barely a competition. My ego soars. I pull into a parking lot for a vista point to wait for everyone else. We all regroup there over the next 10 minutes. It was a short practice race, only 50 minutes plus the half hour riding through town. Similar to the Shootout. Same group of guys. Half go back down the hill we just came up to add on another 2.5 hours. Half go down the other side to town. Michael and I head back to town. We all decend the hill fast, and start racing again. We hammer up the hills. I don’t know we are racing. There is a sprint. I figure out we were racing. There is another sprint. I figure out we are still racing. The pace goes up again (this is all in a distance of less than 3 miles) and I ask where we are racing. A guy replies, “up this hill.” Oh. Duh. Where else would we be racing. I sprint. We come to a school zone, the one we are not supposed to race to. We cross the school zone sign and slam on the brakes. We go slow for 30 seconds and come out the other side and pass the end school zone sign. We sprint again, to the top of the next hill a few hundred meters away. The hills are tiny bumps, but they are, of course, worth dying for as we pass cars, cars try to pass us, we go to the yellow line, we swerve. I flip a car off by accident, remember that it’s rude for me to do that during a group ride, or ever–but it’s ok for a car to hit me. We slow down and coast into town. The Grey Wolf sprints by us at top speed, wearing his Garmin kit. I think it’s Kirk at first and wonder what the hell he’s doing. We ride back to the Starbucks on University. I take a large dump in their toilet. Michael and I sit outside on the patio and chat with the other guys for a few minutes while they sip on their lattes and espressos. And a hot chocolate–not pro. The grey wolf has a coffee with Kirk in his matching kit. Someone decides it’s hillarious and takes a picture. The Grey Wolf is the self-proclaimed name of this old cyclist in town who is CRAZY. He waits for us after the shootout and other group rides and spints by us when we get into town. He often wears a solid pink kit. He howls. Like I said, he is crazy. Michael and I say our goodbyes to the Tuesday morning group ride guys and head to Mt. Lemmon. Or the base of it. I take him on a dirt road with a creek running through part of it. It is Horsehead Road. It leads to Horsehead Hill. THE hill. The hill with an average grade of 20% for over half a mile. With ramps of 30%. It is the steepest hill I have ever seen. We get to the base of it and Michael can’t stop swearing. “Mohter F-r. Son of a B. God damn it, this is F-ing rediculuos. F. F. F. Mother F-r. What the F. We still haven’t quite reached the base yet, and it keeps looking worse and worse as we get closer. I am laughing uncontrolably as Michael drops another 50 F-bombs. We reach the base. It is well above 25%. He shuts up. I shut up. I sit down on the less steap parts, and stand up on the switch backs and ramps. I am never out of my 27 tooth gear. Five minutes later? I am at the top. I am looking down at Michael, barely moving up the steepest section. I yell at him to keep going, and some other adivce. He gets passed it, flips me off. A few minutes later he reaches the top. I am laughing uncontrollably at him. At the hill. At the pain he his in. At the pain I had just endured. He swears a few times and we both agree this hill is amazing. We head down, brakes on full blast. We ride back to the base of Lemmon and climb past 5 miles. we start slow, but ramp it up, both half-wheeling. It flattens out a bit and I decide to drop him. He gets into my draft. We sprint. We turn around and ride home along the river bike path. He is bonking, so I give him a goo and purposefully ride harder as he hangs on. I feel good. He finally cracks and we soft pedal. He turns off the path and says adios. I keep going for another half hour until I am home. A little over 6 hours today. I still feel good though. I eat and watch Star Trek the rest of the day. I eat some chocolate ice cream too.

Wednesday:

I wake up after a little under 11 hours of sleep. I am tired. My legs are tired. I eat a large breakfast of oats and eggs and mushrooms. I lay around the house all morning. I do trivial things and email USA Cycling that they sent me the wrong racing license again. I am not a cat 2 you idiots. I leave the house late, past 2pm, because there is a crit starting at 7:05pm that night that I am doing. First comes Mt. Lemmon though. I do three repeats to 5 miles on it. Not hard. Just tempo. It is kind of cold out, and windy. I didn’t bring quite enough clothes. I did bring enough food though. I always do. I have ten pounds of rice cakes, bars, gels, and powders in my pockets. I call Michael to make sure he is racing the crit too, since he will be my ride home. His hamstrings are tight and tired. He rode 5 hours earlier that morning. I convince him to race the crit. I begin riding to the crit course. It is 20 miles from where I am now. I stop at Circle K for a High Rev Mocha. I drink some of it. Fill it back up and dump it in my water bottle. I continue riding. It’s getting dark out now so I turn on my lights. I remembered to get new batteries for one of them. It is completely dark now. I am afraid I will miss the start. I have been hammering the pedals for an hour now and I still haven’t reached the course yet. It is on the far outskirts of town to the South. On a go-kart course. I get lost in what appears to be a dairy parking lot or country fair type place. I am pissed off now. I ask a couple people where the go kart course is. They do not speak english. I get a call from Michael as my phone is about to die. He is asking where I am. The race starts in 15 minutes. I get pissed off at him because he is mubling in the phone. I curse him for his mumbling. I hang up. I am tired and cranky. I call him back again. He says he will meet me out on “somethhing something” road. I cannot hear him. I hang up and ride in the direction of a bunch of big lights, where I am guessing the go kart course is. I guess correctly. The desert is pitch black except for my two lights and the go kart course, which is still off in the distance. There are no cars out here. It is cold, and windy. Michael calls me to see where I am, I see his car as he passes me. We hang up. He pulls a U turn in the road and comes in front of me to give me a draft. I try to hammer the pedals and stay up with his tiny little beat up old white car. I cannot. He is going too fast. I hammer until I catch him again, he accelerates too much. We do this for a few minutes as I burn off the remaining glycogen in my body. He later say he was only gong 25mph. Crap. He misses the turn to the course. We circle around. I ride in front, going hard over the gravel road. We come to the parking lot. I sing in and pay the $10 entry fee. I am cold and tired. I have been riding for over 5 hours. I am snappy at the guy who is trying to sign me in. The wind keeps blowing things off the table that I’m trying to sign. I grow angrier and angrier. Michael pins my number on. I empty my pockets of all the food rapers and uneaten food. They are starting the crit late, lucky for me since I got there past 7:05. I turn off my bike lights and get on the go kart course. It is rediculous. 13 corners during 1KM. It’s all sprinting. Before the race starts, we all line up into two lines and do match sprints for $20. I destroy my first guy. I go up against Michael the second time and he nips me at the line. He beats his third guy as I yell at him to win and he gets the $20. Post-race pizza money. The race starts, half the guys in the match sprint go home, they had just finished the B race. Everyone is afraid of racing against me since they recognize me from Shootouts and other rides. Little did they know…The race started and there were only 5 of us. Five. I am already messing up all these corners. Remember, it’s a go kart course. Every cornere is seems to be 180 degrees. I am at the back for the first lap. Then the front for the next. Then me and one other guy trade pulls for the next 15 minutes. Two guys get dropped. Michael sits on. We are going to try to win the $5 prime for extra pizza money, and the overall win too in case that also includes money for pizza, which it does not. The other guy wins the prime. I cannot go above 1,000 watts anymore. Pretty soon I am getting dropped. I catch back on. I pull. I get dropped. I catch back on. I pull. I get dropped. I cannot go above 600 watts anymore. My vision is very blurry. I cannot go hard enough to make myself breath hard. I get dropped for good and sit 100 meters behind Michael and the other guy. They are both taking even turns pulling. I am no longer able to go over 400 watts. I have not bonked. It is something different. I just simply cannot go fast at all anymore. The race is finally over. Michael got beat. But we still have that $20 for pizza. I pound 600 calories of recovery mix I have been toting around in my pocket all day. My vision is bad. My eyes are blood shot from not wearing sunglasses for the race, since it is nightime. We all chat with the the guys who put on the race and the other racers. We say goodbye and load up Michael’s car. We are not fit to drive. Both of our blood/alcohol levels are .00 but our blood/fatigue levels are .99s. We drive back to the city with the heater blasting hot air. The car lights and street lights twinkle as my vision remains blurry. I have no idea where we are. We are on University street, in front of the Starbucks. I have been here maybe 100 times before. We park the car and walk across the street to the pizza by the slize place. It is packed with college students. The whole street is packed with them, dressed up and getting ready to hit the night out at the bars or wherever they’re going. It’s a Wednesday night. It’s a good night to not do homework and to go get drunk. It’s college. I am in a stuper. We each order two massive slices of pizza with the match sprint money and take our hoard outside to the front patio and sit under the outdoor heater and watch people go by. There is a one-man band playing a guittar and singing next door at the other restaurant. His music is conflicting with the music of our Restaurant. I wonder if there’s an understanding between the two restaurants that their music volume cannot exceed a certain limit. I devour my pizza. My vision is still blurry. Michael and I watch girls walk by on the sidewalk. We cannot tell exactly what they look like. Our eyes are blurry. I am still wearing all my spandex and bike shoes. After a while of sitting there in our stuppors, we walk to the car. “She’s hot,” I say as we make our way to the car, nodding in the direction of a blond. “That’s a guy,” Michael says. “Oh,” I say. “He has nice hair. He must use conditioner.” We continue walking towards him/her and to our car and discover he’s actually a parked Moped, slightly rusty. Our eyes are blurry and I’m forgetting where we are again. I’m wearing Michael’s ski coat. Michael is five foot six, questionalbly. The sleeves reach my elbows. I think I have remembered to take my helmet off. We get in the car and blast the heater again. He drives me almost all the way home and drops me off at a circle K. I ride 15 more minutes and get home a little past 10pm. I get in the bathtub with a bowl of quinoa and some Jack Johnson’s Inaudable Melodies. I lay there for half an hour with the lights off. I get out and finish off the chcolate ice cream. I lay in bed and rub some magic chinese healing oil on my legs. It burns like icyhot. I get some on my groin by accident. Damnit it burns. The altitude tent puts me to sleep, which for some reason takes longer than it should. My ten dollar Good Will mattress feels like a thousand geese feathers hovering in warm air, being kept there soley by the melody of harps being plucked by life-size bottles of NyQuill. Shut up legs, and do what I tell you.

There is no hope for humanity. And here’s my examples. Exhibit A: I look over to my left at a stop light and see two people, a mom and a dad, both smoking cigarettes with one window cracked about half an inch to let in “fresh” air–air from the crammed intersection that is one part diesel fumes and one part McDonalds fumes. The interior of their car was so smokey, that I could barely see through the window on the other side of the vehicle. In the back seat was their little girl, maybe six or seven years old. I shook my head in disgust. A moment passed as the situation sunk in, and then the light turned green. We both went, and pretty soon they were a couple hundred meters down the road. Now I was wishing I had said something to them. I watched as they turned into a gas station. I passed them and continued on my way home, only another 2 miles or so. But my concise took over and I looped back around and pulled in beside them at the gas station. Both the mom and dad were still sitting in the car, smoking. I stopped right next to the passenger side window and told them they shouldn’t be smoking with a little kid in the car. It told them they were disgusting and should be ashamed. The dad got out and went into the gas station convenient store, probably to buy more cigarettes, without acknowledging I had said anything. I stood there not saying anything. The mom hung her head down and said “OK,” trying to cover her guilt in her voice with sarcasm. I said I couldn’t believe what she was doing to her kid, and rode away. I left feeling pretty good, and that maybe I even made a difference. Who knows, if enough people guilt trip them about killing their child with second hand smoke, maybe they’ll stop doing it. I’ve come to dislike the thought of most people as I spend most of the time pissed off at them, in their cars, honking, not giving me room, or revving their engines when the pass. I don’t dislike people as individuals because I usually get along with most people, but as a whole I don’t like what we are. Humanity is disgusting. There’s no arguing with that. And the good doesn’t overwhelm the bad. And people do not change. And if that’s true, the only hope of humanity not continuing to be a disease of the planet lies with the idea that children won’t be as messed up as their parents. I was thinking about this as I pulled into our col-de-sac when a tiny little boy, about the same age as the little girl with dark spots on her lungs, pointed a toy rifle at me and pretended to fire. Good parenting. Give him a life-like gun so at a young age he can begin training for a promising career as an inmate, or possibly a marine fighting for “freedom” in some third world country. So there went my idea of children being untainted. I believe people are born evil and become even worse as they mature, with the guidance of their evil parents and peers. I’m on my sixth or seventh Kurt Vonnegut book of the last month or two.

Exhibit B: I bought what I thought was swiss chard at Safeway today (ps I hate Safeway for a lot of reasons but didn’t want to ride 8 miles to and from the better store I usually go to). It turned out to be bok choy. The Safeway employee told me it was bok choy. I thought he was mistaken but didn’t say anything, fearing that if he found out it was swiss chard, the price would be much higher. Anyways, I bought a bunch of it, like six pounds or more since it was so cheap, and took it home an cooked up a big batch of swiss chard soup, which is really tasty and high in vitamins. But it turned out to be bok choy after all. The two vegetables look very similar. Anyways, the soup tastes terrible. Why didn’t the Safeway people tell me bok choy was so nasty??!! They should have warned me. Another reason why humanity is doomed: bok choy is sold at most stores and it is extremely bad tasting, while swiss chard is not sold at most stores and it tastes great. Plus you know we’re doomed if no one even warns you about how bad the stupid vegetable is.

Exhibit C: I only had two opportunities to watch the Olympics and both times the majority of the programming was figure skating. So it is.

It’s raining and I only have one more day of training this week. Today. If I ride the planned 6 hours I’ll have a nice 27 hour week and over 500 miles. If I don’t ride because of the rain, the entire week will have been for nothing. The hours and miles will plummet to those of a mere weekend warrior. Any fitness gains will vanish into thin air. My legs will wither up and turn into dry, brittle twigs on a dying bush that’s being fed to a weed eater. My lungs will collapse into black holes and my heart will supernova. I once knew what a supernova was, but have since forgotten everything I’ve ever learned that occurred more than 4 days ago. On the other hand, if I do ride and get sick from riding in the rain, it could be much worse than taking an extra day off. Now, all you Northwest riders are probably shaking with furry that I would possibly not ride because it’s simply raining. But it’s pouring, and it’s cold out too. Ok, never mind. I just looked out the window and it’s letting up. Time to go ride. So much for writing a new post today. I was going somewhere with this. I’m not sure where, but I didn’t plan on just writing a few sentences and ending it like this.

The first race of the year is over with. It started out on Friday up near Phoenix (which is an extremely ugly city filled with nothing but freeways and large barren patches of brown dirt). Michael and I drove up the night before and stayed at my aunt and uncle’s house where there was chocolate cake waiting for us, an immediate good start to the weekend.

But things didn’t go well the next day at the time trial on Friday. It was a 14.2 mile out and back flat course, something that I’ve been pretty terrible at ever since I started racing. I finished mid pack, going at about 50 watts under my threshold–a pace I could probably hold for about 2 hours. I don’t know what it is about time trialing, but it’s got to change. I’m going to start doing 20 minute TT intervals twice a week to get better at it. I think it’s almost solely mental.

My poor time trial put me at 35th GC. The next day, Saturday, I decided I would sit in on the first of 5.5 laps of the 89 mile road race. The course was very flat with one small hill, some wind, and a lot of downhill. If there’s a place in the universe where it’s possible to go around in a circe on the same plane and lose more elevation than you gain, this course was it. I would normally be aggressive in the beginning of the race, but I told myself I wanted to be smart and conserve for when it really mattered. There was no way a lasting breakaway was going to get away on a flat course like this in the first lap. Of course it did. 12 guys got away within 8 miles and the race was over. They built up 10 minutes by the end of the race. I sat in the entire time, only going to the front once to help pull back another break attempt on the second to last lap. I decided I was going to at least get 13th and win the field sprint. And even if that didn’t happen, I wanted to have a good chance at the crit on Sunday, so killing myself on the front would have been useless. I can do that on my own without paying 90 bucks to do it at a race.

In the last 6km, something like 6 or 7 guys got away, not all together, but in a couple small groups. I waited near the back for the pack to eat them up. The pack didn’t care. We went up the final climb really slowly, and only started going fast for the last kilometer, which is flat. And the last 200 meters are a tiny bit down hill. I planned poorly for the sprint and was too far back with 200 meters to go and got 6th or something in what was left of the field sprint. 25th overall. It was the most boring race I have ever done. I had to pee half way through the first lap, and after the break got away, I spent most of my time wishing we would just stop and take a pee break. It was also the easiest race I have done in a long time since I was sitting in and there was less than 3,000 ft of climbing in the entire race. I rode back to the start line 10 miles away and felt like I had just completed a fairly easy endurance ride.

I needed revenge for the crit. I was aggressive early in the race, going with a few attempts, but nothing was sticking. I retreated back to the middle of the pack, where sitting in was very easy. The course was a mile long with seven corners and it was pretty easy to move around. The speed was fast the whole way, which meant getting away was difficult. The only lasting move that worked was a solo attack when the pack had momentarily eased up. A Jamis/colavita guy got away for 5 laps or so, but was reeled in. I got away with 8 other guys with five laps to go. With three to go we were caught. I held an ok position for the next couple laps near the front, but not too close to the front because I was waiting for a chance to follow a line up to the front and didn’t want to be one of the guys who was going to get swarmed. With under a lap to go, a guy crashed ahead of me and to the side as we went around a corner. His bike bounced up and missed me by about a meter. I regained my position about 15 guys back.

I should have moved closer to the front and gone with half a lap to go since I know I don’t have a good sprint, but I didn’t, the guy who won did. I came around the final corner in about 15th with 300 meters to go and someone in front of me lost control. His rear wheel hopped up about a foot and it looked like he was going down. I put the breaks on and swerved to the gutter on the outside of the corner. He stayed up somehow. I had lost all my speed by now and thirty guys passed in a few seconds and I finished 38th. It’s not likely that I would have gotten in the top 10 anyways since I was a bit too far back. My final GC placing was 29th. It was a strong cat 1 field, but not that strong. A lot of the guys I’ve been beating in the shootout placed top 10 GC. Although, the shootout doesn’t take much race tactics, it’s just going as hard as you can for an hour. It’s February, so I’m not too disappointed.

Overall winner was John Chodroff of Jelly Belly.

I was feeling a bit tired the other day, so I decided to have a little pick-me-up before the ride.

Two cups of coffee with ice cream. It did the trick.

Here I am pre coffee&ice cream.

Here I am one minute after drinking the first cup.

2 minutes after the first cup.

Immediately after the second cup.

The post-ride taco feast. That day was a big’n. 20 miles for every taco.

Last night I ate an entire Papa Murphys large combo pizza. The only food I have left is rice, maltodextrin, olive oil, and quinoa. And a can of sardines in tomato sauce. So basically the four food groups. It’s time to go shopping. I think the cashiers at our grocery store know us by name.

I have some good story ideas for either a blog or something longer, like a book which my mom suggested I start working on, but instead, I’ll just tell you what my average days are like here. Because that’s much easier.

I wake up before 8:30, because I would lose Warrior points otherwise, and eat about a cup of steel cut oats. Sometimes a little more or a little less. I soak them the night before so I don’t have to boil them on the stove. If you soak them overnight in water, you can just pop em in the microwave for 2 minutes and they’re done. While those are in the microwave, I cut up about four or five big mushrooms and start cooking them in a pan, and later add 2 eggs. By now the oats are finished cooking, so I take them out and cut up a banana in them. If we’re out of bananas, which has happened a couple times now, I use brown sugar–but I prefer a banana. While all this has been happening, I’ve drunk a few big glasses of water. Are you still with me? Now’s when it gets complicated. Everything has been cooked and put in bowls. I take the ketchup out of the refrigerator and douse the eggs/mushrooms. I don’t use hot sauce in the morning just in case it might upset my stomach while riding. After I’ve applied the ketchup, I take the eggs, oats, and a glass of water (I prefer the big mason jar). We only have one big one, and it’s always in my room but I can never remember where it is so I usually have to spend a good while searching for it. Anyways, I take all those three things over to the lazy boy in the living room, open up the shades because our stupid landlord guy always closes them, and eat breakfast in the chair. I know, this morning routine seems long and strenuous, but it has to be done.

If I can get through all the food without having to poop, I do so. But that usually is not the case. So after a brief intermission while I sit on the toilet and read “What’s your poop telling you”–a book my brother got me for Christmas–, I return to the chair and finish eating. I don’t like to rush things, so I usually sit there for another 20-60 minutes doing just about nothing. Staring at a wall is a good way to pass the time, and sometimes I use my computer to search Velonews and Facebook. Neither are very entertaining as there are no cool races to read about right now and everyone on Facebook is super lame, except me.

After my sit period, I cook dinner. This is almost always a combo of quinoa, rice, chicken or some other meat, and some vegetables. Once that’s done, I do some maintenance on my bike and get ready for my ride. I ride five days a week, each ride between 4 and 6.5 hours. My favorite ride is Mt. Lemmon, doing two tempo climbs up to 9 miles and back. Lemmon is great because there aren’t a ton of cars (technically there are), it’s beautiful, and I see a lot of people I know up there. Once a week I do some short intervals on Lemmon combined with some tempo, another two times during the week I ride the TT bike somewhere flatter (just started doing this, though, so it really isn’t a routine yet). And of course, there’s Saturday. The day my important routine has to take a break, because the Shootout starts at 7:30. You wouldn’t think that I would need to look forward to the weekend, but I do–because of the Shootout on Saturday and usually another group ride or at least a ride with other people on Sunday.

Saturdays–Wake up at 6:00 and eat the same breakfast, minus the mushrooms, as other days. Plus I only eat 2/3 cups of oats on saturdays because of time and appetite. I guess I could get up five minutes earlier and have plenty of time to eat another 1/3 cup of oats, but that isn’t going to happen. I leave the house at 6:30 while it’s still dark (something you guys probably have to do every day since it’s dark up there in the north until noon). And then I ride to campus to meet up for the shootout, which I did today.

When I get home from the shootout, I have pretty much all day to sit around since I get home at 11:30. I’ll make some food and watch two episodes of Star Trek The Next Generation on VHS. On saturdays, for my post-ride meal I make more eggs and mushrooms, and if I have any tortillas left I make it into breakfast burritos. Exciting, I know. After the first episode of star trek, I take my compression tights off and do the foam roller and stretch for about an hour. Then I have some more to eat. If it’s sunny outside, I’ll go lie in the sun and read. If not, I’ll read inside or maybe watch some movies all day long. Damn, I sound lazy. If Chris has time, we’ll play a game of chess, which can take hours since he spends 20 minutes moving each piece. I think it’s a distraction method he uses on me, because I start daydreaming and eventually go and eat something from the kitchen while he’s planning his move. By the time it’s my turn, I’ve completely forgotten what’s going on in the game.

Once a week, we’ll have some other cyclists over for some Poker or dinner or something. Earlier, when I had a friend in town, I’d go hang out with her once in a while, but she’s gone. Another cool thing we do here is go shopping. It’s also become a routine. John, our weird landlord, drives us to Costco and then across the street to Sunflower–a cheap version of Whole Foods. He has four cars (something Chris and I openly despise) and he takes us in the Cadillac or his limo. Yes he owns a limo for some reason. When we go to Costco, we usually get some pizza and a frozen yogurt. Then at Sunflower, I sample the bulk food section to keep the hunger at bay. Between the two stores, I’ve eaten enough to get me home.

Once I’ve gotten back from a non-saturday ride, I watch two episodes of Start Trek while I eat my quinoa and do the foam roller/stretching. By then, it’s time to eat some more and maybe go shopping for food.

On my rest days, I do the exact same thing as other days, except I only ride 30 minutes–usually in the ”washes.” Washes are the concrete creek things for water to drain into. They’re everywhere down here, and are great for recovery rides.

Hmm, what more? Like I wrote about earlier, we’ve gone hunting across the street a number of times. That’s about it. I’d like to say I’m keeping my mind fresh by reading and playing chess, but all I can think about is cycling. That’s probably a good thing. I’m still enjoying all my time on the bike and am very grateful for being able to live this monkish lifestyle. It may sound boring, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Except maybe the exact same life but only I had lazer vision. And could fly. And I could control what my farts smelled like. Can you imagine being able to fart the smell of almonds? Or even the strong stench of clean gravel????? Now that would be insane!

Breakfast burritos. Round #1

Poker. I went out first. Both games by going ”all in” too many times. I HATE this stupid game.

Chris drove a mile to give me a new tire. I had gotten too stingy with the amount of tread I had left and it wore through. Classic mistake that you have to make at least twice a year.

Me

Mt. Lemmon was closed due to snow so we road back into town and ate a humungous pizza instead. Stupid auto spelling doesn’t know that I’m trying to spell humungous, so I’m going to just leave it spelled as it is.

After each eating six pounds of pizza, we road to the base of “A Mountain” in town and raced up for some dumb reason. That’s Spencer on the left, Swiss Chris from Switzerland in the middle, and me on the right.

There’s always something going wrong with my body. Sometimes my ears itch like crazy and build up lots of wax. Earlier this fall my right wrist was really sore for about two months. Then it got better, only to leave me with a sore left wrist and then an even sorer back. I’ll go for weeks with a slight cough, a bad cough, a runny nose, an aching toe, or just a bad set of chapped lips. Right now it’s my right eye. The skin on my upper eyelid swelled up one night. I don’t know why, and of course it’s still here, coming and going day by day. It’s not bad. It’s just a tiny but swollen, nothing you’d even notice if you didn’t look at me up close. Who knows what it is, and like everything else, as mysteriously as it appeared, it will vanish in another week. My guess for all of these nagging break downs is that the more you use something, the more it falls apart. Take my computer, powertap, and bike for example–the main three things I use. My computer just broke down a few days ago. But before that the number ”3” key was being troublesome for a few months, but then got better on its own. Likewise, about a month ago the keyboard was being crazy and typing letters I hadn’t pressed. My powertap: in the last month or two the hub was being weird, the CPU had to be replaced, it wouldn’t turn on for a few days for some reason, and just recently all the batteries died, were replaced, then they all died again a week and a half later. I won’t even get into all the minor problems my bike has had.

My point? Well I didn’t have one when I first started typing, but I do now. When you’re training hard/working hard/doing anything hard or in excess, everything breaks down, even with proper maintenance. You just better be prepared to take rest days, since they’re the only thing that’s keeping my slightly swollen eye from completely falling out in a rotting pile of decayed flesh.

I saw the movie Avatar in 3D a few days ago. I was very impressed for a number of different reasons. Visually, it was the best movie I’ve seen in a long time. The plot was great. I enjoyed the story. But it was the moral that I thought was really interesting. It’s basically an extremely simple moral too. It’s been recreated thousands of times in movies , TV shows, and books over the last 15 years of my consciousness: Pollution is bad, greed is bad, nature should be cherished.

As I was watching the movie, I wondered if the story was making anyone else feel guilty and out of place. Nope. Like the main character, everyone else in the theatre was living their Avatar life, disconnected from the real world by a pair of plastic 3D glasses that would be thrown in the trash on the way to the parking lot. The woman behind me was so involved in the movie that every time something scary or exciting happened on screen, she would nervously kick the back of my seat. It was the only thing that was keeping me from forgetting my place, keeping me in reality. But she was so into the movie, I don’t think she heard or saw me each of the three times I politely turned around to tell her to stop kicking my seat. She was in the fantasy, living with the characters, climbing trees with them, flying, running through the forest. She was at least sixty years old, obese, with a large Coke and a bag of popcorn in her lap. Her husband was identical. This movie was about escapism and it was apparent the audience was too far gone to even control their own limbs. I have to admit it worked on me too. Throughout the entire two and a half hours, I only thought about food once or twice in the first half hour. After that, I was pretty much gone.

When the movie ended, I came out of my daze as I walked through the parking lot to our car. We passed a Walmart as we drove out of the lot and I told John, the guy Chris and I are living with down here, that I did NOT want to get into an argument about cars right now. A moment earlier, I had made a few comments as we got in the car, pointing out the irony of what we were doing after just watching the movie, and he made some stupid comment about people simply needing to do better upkeep on their cars to maintain good fuel efficiency. Apparently the irony that was so obvious to me was lost on him. And I’m guessing it was lost on everyone else too.

What bothers me is that it doesn’t bother anyone that we come into contact with plastic more than grass or dirt. I’m no different. Here I am typing away on a plastic keyboard while it’s a sunny day outside. What the hell am I doing in here? Taking a rest day. But why am I taking a rest day? I only need to do something that unnatural because of the way I choose to spend my life: doing something so alien to what I was designed to do that it causes my body to decay, muscles to deteriorate, thousands of unnecessary calories to be consumed, and ”rest” days to be spent being a recluse. It isn’t natural to spend five hours a day sitting on a moving piece of plastic and rubber on a 24-foot wide oil slick. I don’t spend time with nature, I spend time on something that cuts through it, sending up ugly power lines on either side–a place of engine fumes, dead animals, blown out truck tires, glass, and trash. I spend my days on the intersection where humans destroy nature. Clear cut forests, new housing developments tearing into the earth, and miles upon miles of pesticide-infested farm land. And what do I do about it?

Even if everyone in that theatre came away with the same thing I did, it won’t matter. Because not even I will go out and throw stones at Walmart, chain myself to old-growth trees, or eat a diet that doesn’t include animal products or produce exclusively from my region.

The earth is being overtrained. Like a cyclist doing too many miles, it has too many humans. Warning signs aren’t scaring us. We stubbornly ignore the facts. I mean, come on, there’s no reason to stop riding this week. It’s just a minor cold. I can do intervals today, my knee doesn’t hurt that bad. Yeah right. Without a break, it will collapse.

It’s on my mind, but it’s not the first thing on my mind. I have a goal, which takes precedence over everything else. Just like most people, I think about my own needs and desires first. This circle of selfishness can extend to family members and friends, but how often do we think about strangers, people in other countries, or even our unamed neighbor living next door? Answer: #1 I hope that A-hole gets what he deserves and ends up dead in a ditch on the side of the road. #2 We aught to nuke those evil terrotists (and take their oil). #3 I wish that lazy bastard would trim his damn over-hangnig tree limb. If we don’t care about each other, of course we’re not going to care about that strange idea of ”nature.” Maybe it’s what nature deserves. After all, it’s what made us like this. Competition between and among species is the basis for evolution. When life sprung up on this planet, it would have been much wiser for it to work as a unit, instead of against itself. If life can only happen at the expense of another’s death, eventually we’re all screwed.

Well, that’s all for now. I’ve got to go apply some ointment to my swollen eye. Hopefully that will kill anything that’s messing with it.

…unless it’s self-inflicted.

They’re pretty awesome down here. Check out for yourself. Don’t worry I’m not Rick Rolling you, it’s a video I just made.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy0IReRtP1k

And feast your eyes on:

Pure Maltodextrin

I looked up to the sky, scanning for vultures or any signs overhead that could lead me to my prey.  Nothing but the blistering sun.  A typical day in the Arizona desert.  Sand, cactus, and sharp bushes on the ground, blue sky above.  A few lizards scattered from their warming rock as I crept forward, ever so slowly and ever so quietly.  I heard something to my left.  I squinted my eyes against the bright sun, trying to make something out off in the distance.  Yep, there they were.  I whole pack of them.

“Mark.  Chris,” I excitedly whispered.

My two hunting partners saw where I was pointing and we all changed direction, fanning out–three across.  Hunched down, hands gripping our weapons, licking our lips at the bounty not 80 meters in front of us.  The Raven Spirit had guided us well.  Thanks would be given after the kill.  Our people were starving back at camp, but the massive amount of meat we were stalking could change all that.  Game had been scarce this fall and winter.  Months of famine had weakened me.  My legs were weary from countless miles spent treading across the endless saguaro desert.  But I thought of the elders back in camp, growing weaker every day as they approached their slow starvation into death. I thought of the young ones forced to go without their mother’s milk, their cheeks gaunt and their ribs poking through thin skin.  A strength suddenly spread throughout my body and an electric energy awakened all of my senses.  My thoughts focused. I took a deep breath in through my nostrils and released the dry air through my mouth. I was one with the earth, one with the game, and one with myself.

As we formed a half circle around the prey, I knew this was do or die.  Our people, as well as us, wouldn’t last another week without meat.  This was a matter of necessity, and there was no room for error.  We had to be successful.  I signaled for Mark to take the first shot.  He gave a sullen nod and took aim.  I saw a glimmer of fear in his eye as he focused on his target.  He knew the necessity the situation called for.  A single bead of sweat ran down his forehead and landed in the dust by his feet.  He was crouched low, peering through some branches between him and his prey. Him and…his destiny.  He took aim.  Silence.  POP.  POP. POP!!

“Damn it!” he yelled.

He missed.  He kept on firing as the quails scurried off.  I ran after them and chucked a few rocks in front of them in some bushes to make them turn around and come back to us.  It didn’t really work.  Mark kept firing until the pistol ran out of BBs.  Chris walked somewhat quickly over to him, but not really, with the zip-lock bag full of BBs and re-loaded the gun.

“My turn,” he said as he took the plastic gun from Mark (our next door neighbor).

Chris walked towards the quails, which had kind of scattered in different directions, but were making a pretty bad get-away effort.  Maybe they knew we weren’t prepared to break a slow jog in our pursuit.  Or maybe they knew that the BB gun we were shooting shot crooked.  And that we also shot crooked.  Chris missed all 8 shots the BB gun held, then it was my turn.  But Chris was being a d bag and took an extra turn.  By now the co2 cartridge was getting low and the BBs were practically falling out of the gun’s barrel onto the ground.  We all swore as the birds got away once again. We were a couple blocks away from our culdesac, out in the bushes behind a golf course.

“You guys wanna go home and eat? I’m getting hungry.”

Mark called our landlord/roommate, John, and he came and picked us up in his limousine and drove us home.

It’s a rest week for Chris and I.  I’m only riding about 15 hours, which leaves a lot of time for eating, resting and lying in the sun.  And also a lot of time for earning Warrior Points and raising our Chi.  And let me tell ‘yall, there’s not many things that can raise your Chi more than a couple bacon-wrapped, bird jalepeno poppers.

Preparing the feast. Over the course of about five hours, we caught two doves and a quail. Mark is on the left. Anthony, a friend of his came over to help make the bird meat jalapeno poppers. Ingredients: jalapenos, cream cheese, dove or quail breast, bacon.

Chris, vegetarian for five years of his life, earned 5 Warrior Points since he shot two of the birds. I earned zero since Mark got the other bird, which now puts the Warrior Competition between Chris and I at -2 to 33. He better start killing birds by the ton if he thinks he has any chance at all.