worlds

a good morning trying to further my telemark talent, i think i can actually make a turn now without too much trouble. soft snow, lots of it. both sides seem to be pretty good, my leg strength imbalance is fading, i hope. good fun learning the new skills. i saw some cool pics on the cref boys site
that looks good, would you rather see a silly panaroma pic from the ski area or a nice big plate of belgian fries? check it out, good link, the future looks pretty bright.

sad

the lack of sleep the last few days has put a fog over my head, i just seem to be in a daze, lack of good sleep isn't a good thing. at least it keeps snowing, the quiet glide over the freshly fallen last inght made me happy. then i heard about the golden retriever on long island that killed a little girl in his family. he was playing with her and she had a scarf on, he playfully went to get it and knocked her over and dragged her around by it, she's dead, he will be too. i wonder if i can adopt him from here? brookhaven animal shelter.

i've got a name and i've got a number and i've got a line on you...

i never really liked genesis when i was growing up. i thought they never were that good, now i hear the stuff i would turn off when i was younger and i actually like what i hear. old age is skewing my ear. i know bateman was a fan, but he did a whole chapter on huey lewis as well, that whole thing i still don't get. not that it's much different with punk, agent orange never sounded so good. same with dag nasty, makes me chuckle at the bubble gum punk they try and push on the kids these days. i wonder what b will say of the stuff 30 years on? i saw a fox on the way in that was nearly the size of number 1, one well-fed fox. negative temps have me ready to throw away my long blown out lobster paws, they sucked today, too cold to not have mitts when it's like this. balaclava and neck gaiter helped, but the hands and feet were unacceptable, too cold. at least i had henson to keep me laughing and warm. what a twisted freak. listen is you have a tolerance for the odd, or over the line humor, like keith, but shorter. feeling that the key is to have it in the ears to prevent zoning out, better focus at 5 am in winter. took the longer way across, made the trip thru the snow scultpure area to see what was up, pretty impressive, i have trouble with the fleeting nature of temporary art. whatever the medium, it's here this week gone next. one of the coolest things about seeing some of the museums in paris and florence was looking at art that was over 2000 years old. fabric kept in darkened rooms to deter fading further, art crafted on a loom when caesar was still around and now it's a placemat in a dark room that nobody will eat from.

goodness

better snow today, felt good to get out to the eternal spring yesterday. not warm but nice enough. fed the head just right. the trick is get the right food at the right time. did that yesterday. the pieces fit, i know.

stuff

a lot to do after work that may prevent me from getting in any ride or ski, java was right, mtbr is the better place to sell the fork and the single. maybe a few hits would come thru ebay but overall the better place is mtbr. that and it's an ongoing deal, not finite like ebay. so look for a bianchi BOSS 17 inch and a 2004 fox f80x on mtbr to tell your friends about. as soon as i get off my lazy ass and post it. today.

goal

variety, yesterday i skinned up the hill and actually made a few tele turns worth a piss, pretty good stuff for me. solo up and down. today maybe skate or ride. i feel better about march and april coming. i know i can hang i just would like to hold some form, base form i suppose before cross. usgp top 5 35+, i think i can get there, it'll just take a lot of focus season long. all for cross. maybe more fixt action too. shrine loop fixt? i like the sound of that.

ebaaaaay

been fooling around ebay the last week or so selling and looking at trends to see what the stuff goes for. i know it's improper to end a sentence with a preposition but i'm not a paid/graded writer. as convenient as it is ebay really isn't much cheaper than retail. especially for new stuff. tomorrow i put the fox fork on that i don't use, why i still have it only speaks of my laziness when it comes to such things. easier to avoid it than photo-post-tend to. there, that was another preposition to end a sentence. so buy my stuff if you need more crap, i am trying to thin out, cull the crap i don't need. session in the pool with b, no puke and no troubles, he is jumping off the sides like a big, well person. slow down kid. too fast with all this growing up. more agent orange and earlimart, old and new, me and b.

-13

mitts wouldn't have been a bad idea today. somehow the squeaky snow offered more traction. the hill wasn't too bad, i'll be sad to say goodbye to the studded tire in a few weeks but it held me up just fine today. i think the niner wheels are going to be almost as good as the sixer with studs. i guess it'll be like cross, be a student of tire pressure, too much and you slip, too little and you flat. made it across without too much hassle, the balaclava did wonders but it still wasn't enough, i needed one of timmy and bacon's new hannibal masks. pretty cool stuff. i don't have half the ride they do, mine is just cold for shorter, not the downhill ice skating they deal with. blue water yesterday made my day. little things are the joy of life. the boy is feeling better, still a gnarly cough that makes me cringe at the sound but to little people with the pain threshold of small creatures in the forest it's nothing.

glide

it just won't stop. i guess about another 2 feet since yesterday, maybe less. i've given up on the driveway, maybe i'll get motivated and buy a new snow shovel, mine broke a month ago. find a plow guy to give it a push, anyone know the number for mr. plow? the bike works well, it cut thru the fresh stuff, minimal slips. if i didn't ski i could ride everyday. the nordic center yesterday was stupid. i should have toured. that much fresh snow was like riding with flat tires. only it was skiing and i couldn't get any glide.

^#()<>

i'm ok to ski after dark, i finished at the last possible moment that i could make the turns around the center. similar to little french but that was a straight line. skiing by braille. another foot or so last night, perhaps not exactly a foot but pretty damn close. my head wants to be on the hill today, no chance of that, although i think i could get away with it. remember that show from 80s, V or something like that? the aliens drank sour milk. my coffee today has cream in it that smells like mayonnaise, i'm not nervous but it does sort of freak me out a touch. mmmmmmm mayonnaise. mayonnaise is under rated as a coffee additive, i wonder if that's b/c of the vegans, do they really have a big enough lobby to overtake the mayonnaise lobby? are vegans even in washington? i would think the puppy-eating, baby seal dissecting culture on capitol hill would out shout the vegan lobby in their weakened state from lack of dairy products.

lazy?

i am enjoying skiing more and more this winter. it seems to better suit me the older i get. i used to see it as me getting less fit and playing catch up all season until cross when i was on equal ground. not so, if done properly with less laziness on my part i'll enter the season fresher and faster than before. i do find it odd that driving a car to work is for those less lazy days as it affords me skiing opportunities without riding the bike after dark or hitching a ride. rough wake up today. it hurts when you get up 15 minutes early and can't get that last chunk of sleep, it means a lot. b is still sick, that cough wakes me up when he heaves it out. poor kid. oatmeal and juice chased by a mocha, making dinner last night i had such a hunger knock i had to eat a good little snack to keep from doubling over. i guess skiing is kicking the metabolism in harder than usual. motivation: earlimart, distorted view, flunk.

sleep or ski?

tuesdays make me sad, i know i go back to work tomorrow and i know i have to get up at the crack of crack. overall it's not that bad but when i get to ski mid-morning like i did today it sucks to think of not getting that little mid workday score. i guess i could push for it, drive to work and leave to get in my fix before the track is, well, tracked out. i might need to try classic, it looks better to me than i thought it did before. i know i'm a mediocre skate skier but the diagonal stride looks pretty peaceful. my big problem is then i would certainly always ski alone. nobody is that slow. the presspot is another thing that bums me out about tuesdays, hell would freeze over before i would bring my press to work, too nice for that, stolen or broken is usually the fate of nice things that shouldn't be brought in. tuesday is the last day until sunday that i'll have my pressed goodness. oh yeah and my nap is shorter on workdays, yesterday i got an hour, at work i sleep on my lunch break, never more than 20 minutes. if you have 30 minutes with which to work, a 20 minute nap is pretty perfect.

dumb

i am dumb. it started with me getting 5 minutes down the road before i realized that i forgot my sunglasses, retrace my steps back home before heading down to eternal spring. then my brilliant idea of parking at the top by the buffalo herd, i thought "cool, less driving and more riding and so what if i climb a bit to get back to the car." dumb. that's two. then after descending lookout in a windstorm i make it to the group race just as they were rolling out, ok, say hi to friends and former teammates and get the ride going, good pace out of golden. then the first hill comes and the ride goes silent. not being a smart enough human to realize what month it is and what i should be doing i pedal along at a good pace. second set of riders from the front. then we hit the sharper stuff. i felt good nothing near red line but where did everybody go? the three or four of us on the front bit of the group seem to bo doing quite a job on the rest. i found out they wanted to thin the group and as i was never ON the front, i wasn't being THAT dumb. the legs were good, the body was warm and the bike was great, what else should have been done? maybe those guys on that one team can offer me a bike and kit next year, but probably not on the merits of a group ride in january, i may need to show them something mid season. the ride was only getting hard at that point as i wasn't aware how long it was going to take me to get back to the car. rolling into morrison and began the climb, it was an hour uphill back to the car. bear creek was the easiest part, then grapevine, then mt. vernon. an hour of climbing. i felt like a hardman when i got done. maybe i shouldn't have done all that i did, but what the hell, it was a good one. oh yeah, i forgot my wallet, i couldn't buy any food, i had eaten all the ride food i had with me. i ate when my weight when i got home.

french

with not a whole lot of daylight left number one and i started up towards french pass already we'd been out around an hour and even if i had a camera with me it couldn't capture just how amazing it was skiing at sunset up little french. we climbed awhile thru perfect snow, thinking of the firecracker and how much smoother this climb is in winter. jackson was thrilled to be out on such a great evening. the best part was i left work, rode home, gathered my ski stuff got out on the skis and was out until after dark. i need a headlamp, but it sure was nice skiing in the dark. a perfect post work wind-down.

#2

rockwell's back. one of the little ones didn't want to go. can i ruin a bowl or what?

full

full moon to match the blue water today. i feel lucky jack's knickers kept me plenty warm as i cut thru the tundra to get in for work. the balaclava was missing, i felt the negative whatever it was. no more claws for a while, i'll go back to the pre cross season ration of one a month or so. i feel better about it. pad thai last night, ring of fire today? not yet. more earlimart, really enjoyable stuff. agent orange is more for the ride not the meal. rolled the long way to look at the mess from last night's concert, the stage and lights were still up.

joel

joel made a really good point, is sunny d justs new tang? maybe if they bring sunny d on the next space shuttle mission we'll know. is it flamable? can't be worse than million dollar tiles that are made of foam and fall off incinarating the crew.

#7

started the first of the bike projects yesterday, threw around some parts and now the bike is almost ready for the auction block; 52cm IF planet cross (55cm top tube)email me with any interest, i'll send pics too. started today with weird noises in the house, maybe it was the lack of sleep but i think we are being haunted by something, not that i believe in ghosts. sort of like remembrance of things past but shorter. i kept waking up even after i gave up on the alarm clock. if i overslept i was ready to deal with whatever came with that. reading more in my sleep, remembering less the closer i was to waking. doing as much as possible to forget the stuff i remembered and remember the stuff i forgot. read some proust, you'll realize that the trick to it is to enjoy what you have not what you want.

piles

i'm lacking revolutionary thoughts this week, i know what i want to do but i don't know exactly how i want to do it. today i'll move around some parts on the bikes to get the cross bikes made into a winter bike. then sell one of them. pics at some point. the next goal is the commando run which should take 3-5 hours, a good day in the backcountry. aside from a six hour day on the bike that's about the only real goal i have for the remainder of winter. i like this:

I got bad coordination Stuck a pencil in my eye I can hardly wait to get back home Why is everybody gettin' paranoid? I's only havin' fun Scum-bags and superstars Tell me your names I'll make a bet, you're both the same I can see my lifetime pilin' up Reaching from my bedroom to the stars I can see the house where I was born When I was growin' up - they say that I could never keep my trousers up I remember days and crazy nights

not enough sleep last night to warrant going out and really doing something today, about 4 hours after it was totaled. the boy was having none of it. 2 am wake up and not a wink from there on. the bike kept the night from melting into the day.

more polyester pants brigade

the polyester pants didn't have such a good week, i don't know if i saw one of them and the other was exceptionally unfit, i think it was colic or maybe a stone of some sort, can you get that from nicotine and diet dr. pepper? i find it really impressive to miss that much work from your own gluttony and sloth. enough of that, it really is best i didn't get to nats. no, i haven't gone beyond that whole bullshit situation.

number one and me

great few days, four hours on the road friday. escaped the tundra to be on the bike for the right amount of time, still feel good, not unfit, plenty of time to get roadfit, willamette is back on the calendar for late april. i should go. good mini group fast legs will come right now early base work. sunday was really cool, not being the core-ski tourist a lot of my peers are what i did felt pretty cool to me, skiied the peaks trail to frisco from breck. it was snowing and the trail was only lightly tracked. what a perfect ski, me and the dog, not too many other trail users. tomorrow ski with one of the big guns to frisco same as sunday. should be about 30 minutes faster than i did it with number 1. strong effort to get the winter work done in more than one way.

ski

great ski yesterday with shaubie and number 1 up on sally barber trail. since the temps haven't warmed up, at all, the snow is great. something about touring that i like, i think of the jack london stories and the scandinavians skiing around the tundra eating lutefisk makes me appreciate it more than if i did it without knowledge of the history behind what is a sport to us now. pictures tonight.

out

the polyester pants brigade is in full effect today, that permanent thousand yard scowl. maybe we cure cancer today. new challenges soon, i hope! short one to temper the ennui, 1 pm out, ski a while and then maybe ski some more. i keep looking for the solution in the bottom of whatever it is i'm looking thru. counterproductive. all i want these days is silent sports, keeping pace with the voices in my head.

our surfeit will be our demise.

my own guide is getting savvy. the pices fit together, the less you have to put out the better it all goes.

feast or famine

trying to fall asleep last night after two rest days was more of a challenge than i wanted. the retarded cat purrs like a popcorn machine, too distracting. i finally fell asleep and dreamt of circus clowns riding manatees.

next is this

with the holidays safely in the past i can look at the months leading to the first few tests. the wins in cross season really helped the motivation for this winter. ski well, train smart and maybe win a road race this year as well as a few good fat tire results.

oddin

too nasty to get motivated to go outside yesterday for any kind of work. went to the pool with b, he puked. pretty substantial amount too. now i have a few days to fill with nordic skiing until i can get back out on the road. been reading a lot lately, went from einstein to chounaird's business practices. both guys mention that they came up with ideas pertaining to physics or business while riding bikes. i guess the bike can clear the head and fill it at the same time.

cross

i hope if anyone (all 3 of you) who reads this blog and likes cross that you have followed the race journals of the guys in belgium right now hitting the big events with the belgian mafia. the scene is surreal in the way they explain it. frites, beer, cigarette smoke that you not only smell in the parking lot but ride right thru on the course. maybe i'll get to ride there someday, regardless it's cool to read about the guys i race with throwing elbows in belgium. follow brandon's chocolate waffles and cross & (beer) on velonews and tonkin's cyclocross blog on cyclocrossworld. velonews
cyclocrossworld
eurocrossers

two days

two days off in the warmth of an easy winter for riding in the fort. some of the worst wind i have ever ridden thru, blown off the road twice. walking for a bit to warm up the feet and get past that stretch of wind the bike was horizontal, 40-50 mph wind. stiff. to the guy in the flat bed black dualie who gunned it as he passed me in hygiene, may you enjoy the cancer you'll certainly get from inhaling the fumes of your piece of shit truck. it didn't get much better when i tried to go into safeway this old bag almost runs me over with her lark scooter, i guess old people in the front range are acting up, that's what a mild winter does to the old bitties. the elk i saw this morning walking up the hill after an early swim looked pretty happy, morning swim in horsetooth, great way to wake up.