No use in complaining

So yeah its freakin hot here in the cities. It’s been in the 100’s the last few days with lows barely making the upper 70’s. Weathers been kinda tough on the training, though I managed to get a 12 mile run in yesterday. If you would have seen me I bet I looked like Floyd. Not suffering from ‘roid rage, rather dumping bottle after bottle over my head. When I got home my shoes were soaked from all of the water. WHne I walked into work this morning it was already 85, but hey it beats having to wear a facemask to avoid frostbite.

This weekend I was alone as G was doing her monthly tour at Walmart. I tried to stay inside as much as possible. Louie and I went to the dog park, but besides that I was in the basement watching movies. I saw A Thin Red Line for the first time. It’s been out since like forever, but I just managed to catch it on HBO. Pretty good flick, even if you aren’t into war movies. There is an interesting introspective, philosophical story about war that happens to be supported by the actual theatrics of warfare. I definitely recommend it, though not in a group as it requires all of your attention. I was living in Charleston, SC when the movie first came out on tape. I went over to a friend’s house, friends know as some of the bigger partiers in Charleston (which is quite a feat if you are not familiar with the scene there. It was Greg and Courtney for those of you in the know). Anyway I walked in one afternoon and a big group was watching the movie. I sat there for about 10 minutes and no one even noticed I was there, let alone say hey to me. I assumed they were all really stoned, turns out they were just really into the movie. It takes a lot to grab their attention for prolonged periods of time, so that’s saying something. So my promotion of the movie, “Hey even sober stoners are into it!”

We are going to see the Eels tonight at the MN Zoo. It’s an outside deal so not sure how comfortable it’s gonna be. I’ll try to get some pics and post them tomorrow along with a story wrapping up my take on the Eels live. I’ve seen them twice before and they couldn’t have been any different than one another. We’ll see what we get tonight.

Great Article

Beer and cycling, what a great combination. Here's great quote I ripped from an article on velownews:

Then, at a press conference on Thursday, after Landis chased down an 11-man breakaway, killed them and ate them, built a new bicycle out of their bones, and roared away in a pillar of fire to win the stage to Morzine and jump back to within 30 seconds of the yellow jersey, he mentioned beer once again

Light me up

Last night I rode over to The Nook to have some beers and some laughs with friends while watching the tour. It was a good time. That place is always packed and the company was great. As I was getting ready to leave I realized I left my headlight at home. I had the light on my bag so I was covered there, but was a little nervous about oncoming hazards. The majority of my ride was on trails so I thought it would be no problem. The ride on the roads ended up being way better than the trails (the streetlights helped). It was pretty cloudy so I had no moonlight, and whatever light there was, quickly dissipated once I got under the trees. I just made a point to ride in the middle of the path cut through the trees and made it home without incident. It was a great ride. The weather had cooled, humidity was low, and it was super quiet. I stopped on the Ford Parkway Bridge to look at the skyline over the Mississippi, and kinda take it all in. This city is really great. I’m not saying that we’ll spend the rest of our lives here, but I won’t rule it out either. I’ve moved lots of times, so I know that no matter how cool a place may be, if you don’t have good people to hang out with, you might as well be living in Canton OH. I have to give a big thanks to Joseph for hooking me up with Girl Carl, who in turn hooked me up with Cat6, which is sponsored by Town Hall Brewery, which brings me back to beers and laughs. I thought about trying to bring that al back around to Kevin Bacon, but I like beer more than him.

G’s sister is coming up to Mpls. tonight via the MegaBus. It’ll be great to hear first hand how it goes, how long it takes, and if the $60 round trip from Chicago is as good of a deal as it sounds. It should be a pretty relaxing weekend between my 10 mile run, a 3 hour brick (2.75 hours on the bike, 15 minute run at race pace), swim workout, watching the tour, mowing the lawn, and the redecorating/home improvements G and Christina are planning. Really, another one of our relaxing weekends.

Idiots!

So I just had an excellent reading experience on the general populations attitude on cycling. I was over on super-rookies website and I read this

It is a shame that we can’t go back into time and replace Lance Armstrong with
individuals like Dave Zabriske and Floyd Landis. If we were able to do that
then we would have a lot less idiotic people following cycling. For instance
at the shop everyone still continues to talk about Lance Armstrong as if he
is the greatest ever and blah blah blah. Well idiots have you heard of Eddy
Merckx?

Then I re-freshed my velonews updates on today stage and read this

3:47 PM Rasmussen
passes a Texas flag... sorry folks no one from Texas in this bike race this year.


Brilliant! You can’t make shit like that up, seriously

Joy and Pain....Sunshine and Rain

Come on all you Rob Base Fans....

So today started out great, I stayed home to watch the tour and relax a bit. When it was over I got things ready and rode into work. It’s great to be the guy that people see in the late morning and are like, doesn’t that guy have a job, or who are these people that can ride their bike during the day on a Tuesday. The ride was great, sunny skies, warming temps, low humidity. I wanted to keep going for like another 2 hours, but alas the cube was calling. The shortened work day will be followed by the ride home which will be nice, but then the day will begin to suck. We have an appointment with the roofing company tonight at six. They are bringing over the warranty and the BILL. So I think it will go something like this “I’ll give you this super cool piece of paper with a bunch of small type that you will never read, and you give me $6,500” I‘ll, shout what an effing deal, throw my hands in the air with utter delight, and then spend the next 3 years working to pay it off. Seriously owning a house is awesome.

This past weekend I worked on fixing the bathroom. The biggest problem was that all of the paint that we put on the walls before we moved in was peeling off. So a few weekends back I spent 2 solid days peeling and scraping paint off the walls. I went back to the paint place and they said I needed to sand the walls, apply a primer and then put the paint on. So this past weekend I did just that (in addition to snaking the bathtub drain and changing out the light fixtures and exhaust fan). Last night I figured the paint had cured enough and I could safely remove the painters tape. It started out OK, but then the same thing started to happen. The paint on the tape was pulling the paint off the walls. Effing Sweet…..(If you could be here in person you would have heard me sing effing sweet, so it was like a “cool there’s nothing I can do about this might as well laugh”, rather than a “I am so pissed right now”). It didn’t peel as bad as the last time, but still the problem isn’t really fixed. Oh well, we have a 30 year mortgage so I guess I have plenty of time to figure it out. Seriously owning a house is super sweet.

On your left…

Seriously folks it’s not that hard. Whether you are walking, running, riding your bike, or driving your freakin car on the highway, stay on the right except to pass. I had a really bad drive into work today. People in Minnesota don’t understand that the left lane is for passing and you can’t drive below the speed limit in it. Eff Man. I got up way too lat to be able to ride in today so I was stuck with all of the granny grits out on the freeway.

Last night I rode on the Minnehaha trail to hook up with some other Cat6ers for a ride. This dude catches on to my wheel and starts a conversation. He seemed like a nice enough guy at first so I kept talking to him. After the initial conversation died I brought up the Tour. I asked if he had been watching and he says. No, there’s really no reason to now that Lance isn’t riding. There are so many things to say here: yeah the entire international scene has nothing to offer, the US riders might as well hang it up, the list stretches on forever. It just goes to show the uphill battle cycling has with everyday American public.

The 2006 race season…

Here’s a picture of me exiting the water of a past race, proof that I actually do race and don’t make all of this crap up.

Well this year’s race season may or may not be over. Over the Fourth of July weekend in Chicago I made the age old mistake of mixing large amounts of alcohol with fireworks. A family friend of G brought some of the high class fireworks that go in the tubes for launching. Well he asked for some help and I gladly volunteered. He told me that as soon as I light the wick run, so I did. Well given the state that I was in and the fact that it was dark I stepped short on the curb, yes we were lighting them in the middle of the street, and bent my big toe WAY back. Oh yeah I was wearing sandals.
So I was in pain all last week and couldn’t train, except for commuting on the bike to work. I had a race yesterday and figured I’d give it a go and if the pain was too much I would just stop. The swim was decent, though the length ended up being longer than advertised, the bike felt great, but the run was pretty painful. I could tell the fitness wasn’t there not to mention the pain in the toe. I though about pulling out but didn’t want to record a DNF, so I pushed on. Today my toe hates me. I’m heading to the doctor later this afternoon. Whatever the results are I doubt I’ll be able to get ready for the ½ IM in early September.