Another couple days of snow and single digit temps had me seriously on the verge again this weekend. So Saturday I decided to see how much coffee I could drink, and I started the day off, with a visit to Seth's for the first coffee... and fried chicken, fried egg on a ranch biscuit; It was fricken delicious as is, but next time I need to dig deeper, and add bacon and hot sauce to that bad boy.
For the day I ended up with something like 3 espresso shots, a cup of drip, a cup of chai, a medium drip from Krispy Kreme and a large crappy something from Starsluts.
To round out the day, a big ol' group of us gathered up at Cru Wine Bar in Denver for our belated "Baby Jeebus birthday dinner" and to celebrate the first night of Restaurant Week. Food was pretty awesome - had the calamari appetizer, herb chicken entree and apple crostini for dessert. The wine though, was pretty "meh". It made for a late night on Saturday, but it didn't matter much, since Sunday was just more of this shit all day; Too cold, pretty much useless, snow.
I have a good 250 days or so of waiting, but the only thing on my mind right now is the eventual swimming pool I'll be sitting in, enjoying the view over the bay and nearby islands. ...if I survive that long! In the meantime, I came across this view, a webcam overlooking Boulder Creek and part of the bike path. It's a shame it only updates every 30 seconds, since that is going to make the bum-fights look really "notchy".
Don't forget Lent started yesterday. So like most years, I've given up religion for 40 days and 40 nights as my penance. I just hope that's good enough to get me into heaven, where I can meet plenty of people that I definitely don't know already. In other words - you're all going to hell.
Speaking of giving shit up, VeloSnooze really, really, really wants me to stop reading their website (do they still even have a magazine?). If the recent horrific update to their site, which averages 16 advertisements per page, seemingly giving me an unique combination of touretts and seizures wasn't enough, they might have done it with this article.
To paraphrase the article, they're saying this (most likely overpaid) dude Darcy Norman came up with the idea of using ice baths and core-strength training to help cyclists. How long have people been using ice batchs after hard efforts? Two? Three? Freaking centuries!? And that Cavendish is likely a great sprinter since he is so inflexible. Unfortunately, Cavendish can't get over the mountains since he rides his bike less than he should, when his back is sore from being the platform for his tight sprinting muscles.
I have to agree with Jesse who pointed out that he blames Chris Carmichael for crap like this. After he convinced everyone that he is the reason Lance is fast, and is the one behind all of his training and performance gains.
Friday Jessica and I ran home early, since some professional carpet installers were coming to (obviously), install carpet. There were two guys, and nine teeth, that came to install carpet. But you don't need dental hygiene in order to install carpet, and the room came out pretty sweet! Saturday, I went down to Golden to meet up with Craig and do a bike ride. We were going to be moving furniture later, so definitely had to get the ride out of the way early. I had hoped for the best, but the weather definitely didn't work for us. It was cold, but manageable... but it was the wind that convinced us to head to lunch early. Especially after getting sand-blasted a few times, and riding through drifts on the bike path. Ugh. Sunday the weather was worse, but I ended up getting in a great ride at the Velodrome. We had a great, high-powered, small group, and I got to ride nice and hard for a good hour. The track seems to somehow be a great place to go hard enough, that you start to wonder what would happen if you blacked out from the effort!
I finally got to check out Archer, the new show from Adam Reed and Matt Thompson, the same pair that created my favorite show, Frisky Dingo. And man, it's definitely funny. A lot of similar humor to Frisky Dingo, so I'm going to have to get caught up with the episodes. Still bummed that Frisky Dingo didn't go beyond Season 2.
8 freakin' degrees yesterday morning, and 6 freakin' degrees this morning when I left the house. That's just ridiculous. I'm definitely done with winter... Though the coyotes didn't mind, as they were out and about this morning, patrolling their usual area. I wasn't fast enough for a good picture of the first pair, but I sorta caught this guy; Only Tuesday and the weekend feels so far away...
Ha ha ha ha ha... I hate shopping at "Whole Paycheck", and not just beacuse I don't dress well enough and can't stand patchuli or hate spending a minimum of $20 there... but here is some great info on how Whole Foods is just another bullshit big-ass company charging way too much money for shitty product;
Though, shopping can be a pretty dangerous activity, no matter which store you are shopping at. At least that's the impression I got from this guy in Home Depot, shopping while wearing his snowboard helmet, and (still on) flashing tail light;
A very busy, but good weekend. Friday afternoon Jessica and I hopped into the car, to head west to go visit H&D in Glenwood Springs. Perfect day for driving, with good weather, and way ahead of the evening ski traffic, so we made it in great time. After helping set-up for Danielle's baby shower, we left the girls to party and went out for some "man-time" on the town. We had some manly errands to run, and ended up at Lowe's Hardware, where I came across the latest case of ridiculousness; the single-use, disposable plunger. Because... as Harry so nicely put... "I don't want my toilet water, touching my other toilet water". And in case you were wondering, a single disposable plunger costs the same as an "old fashioned" reusable plunger which lasts what? 35 years? And going by the flimsy design of the disposable, you aren't going to get any truly stubborn pipe-clogging turds dislodged from your plumbing.
And to think that I thought antibacterial binder, file folders, or pens were bad enough...
Anyway... back to the trip. Our second stop was at the toy store, because Harry put me onto the new AirHog Sharpshooter helicopter. I've been meaning to get a mini-copter, and couldn't resist this one, with good reviews, and of course, most importantly, real missles that fire at your command!
Oh yeah, and it looks like Airwolf just make things that much better. Yes... I'm already starting to look at ways to customize it, to shave some weight and add maneuverability to it. I did find one guy that modified the rockets, adding needles to the tips of course.
After shopping, we hit the Glenwood Canyon Brewing Company, always a pretty good stop. I had the special draft, which was a barleywine, but I have to say, it was pretty bland, and tame for barleywine. Not a ton of flavor, but given that, it was more drinkable than a typical barleywine. Beer, beer and more beer, made for an early morning, since we had to get up at 6am and bolt back to Denver for Jessica's first day of play rehearsal. But on the exit for "Federalis Blvd" from I70, we were greeted with this awesome display of airbrushing on the back of a mini-van. That's right, an air-brushed baby-portrait. Saturday evening and all day Sunday we worked on our remodel of the entertainment room. I pretty much hate painting, and I'm always ready to just have things finished up. Didn't much matter though, since the weather was crap all day on Sunday, and Monday too, with freezing temps and snow.
At least it made for a winter wonderland of snowy whiteness this morning; I don't think summer is coming anytime soon, with nothing but cold in the forecast. It's getting harder and harder to ride the trainer...
Another week drawing to a close. It hasn't been snowy, but it definitely hasn't been warm either. Jessica and I have been busy working on redecorating our entertainment room, so that's been taking a fair amount of energy... with way more to come, I'm sure! But we'll get a short break today as we head out to the Western side to visit Harry and Danielle since it's time for Danielle's baby shower. Should be a fun little trip, though I wish we could stay longer.
The majority of the riding has been indoors lately, and the Thursday afternoon track days have been a lot of fun. Gotta love getting in a killer workout, in the middle of the work day, regardless of the weather! This past Saturday evening we got some track time for the team too. First a little meeting about next year, and then an open track where I squeezed in a bit over 2 hours. Including an hour where I had the track all to myself! Dejan even showed up to take some pictures and play around with flashes on the nighttime track. With the track to only 5 of us, we had a lot of room to play with, and Chuck ran us through some practice on hand-slings. They were pretty fun, and definitely exciting on a crazy-short 142m track! Round and round I went... Speaking of next year... things are coming together for the Subaru Groove Auto team. That's right, a slight change of name, a couple changes in sponsorship, and we've added a couple real power-houses to the line-up. It should be an awesome year. A sneak peak at the sled for next season; We'll be sporting the Blue AC1SL frameset, with Shimano components and wheels, TRP brakes, Selle San Marco saddles and Continental tires. Should be an awesome bike, and I can't wait to get it in my sweaty little hands for the build-up! More team info sure to be leaking out soon...
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