Festivus 2009

It's complete bullshit that I have to work on Festivus. I suppose it's my own fault though, it is snowing, and I totally could have pulled the work-from-home card today. I actually have no idea why I didn't... oh well, I did need to come down to civilization in order to get some espresso bean for the long weekend!

Last weekend it warmed up enough for some outside riding. Just barely though... it was around 40 degrees on Saturday when I met up with Craig for a ride in Golden. Always hard to motivate this early in the off-season, for an outdoor ride, in pretty cold conditions. But still, it was really nice to be outside riding. Even better when the recovery meal was some cheesesteaks at South Philly Cheesesteaks. Not the best cheesesteaks, but even better, I had some Tasty Kakes and they even sell Amoroso's rolls for home consumption.

So after I was tired from riding, and way too fat from eating more than I had burned off on my ride, I had a new toy to build up! I've been itching forever (since before we actually had a local velodrome) to build up a track bike. And now with the promise of doing some more riding at the track this off-season, I had a reason to build one up. I had most of the parts, and picked up a Motobecane for a song.

It came out pretty sexy and I can't wait to test it out. Unfortunately with snow and ice making up the roads at my house, it wasn't really even possible to take a tiny spin.

Sunday Seth had a small test-opening of Rise and Shine Biscuit Kitchen, that we got up early and went down for. It was great to finally see the shop, and to get to test out some menu options. Bonnie says that even Canadians like biscuits;

A test-run, hot and fresh out of the oven;

Looking like an opening day of January 1st... so go get a biscuit to cure that New Year's hangover!

And as an added treat this week... after years of searching, I came across the brake I've been searching for, and managed to snag it at a "reasonable" price. So very awesome, the infamous MRC McMahon delta brake.

I knew I should have bought that pair the shop had back in 1996, but I just didn't quite need the pair back then... just a front one. Well, now I'm back to the same, needing a front one, and there it is. I should be 2 full seconds faster in a 40k TT now, or if Zipp would have made it, it would likely be worth 2 minutes in the same race.

...I wonder if that brake will save anytime on my trainer rides. That's the only riding that's going to happen the next several days, and I'd love to get off the trainer sooner, if it's possible for the brake to save me some time.

A Festivus for the Rest of Us!

Happy Festivus to each and every one!

The Corpse of a Tree

The dark clouds dropping lower and lower can only mean cold weather and snow are on the way. The only thing to do in such a situation is to open up my bottle of Weissenohe Monks Fest and sit around the baby-Jeebus tree, waiting for his birthday celebrations to begin!

...The Weissenohe was "okay". Nothing spectacular. Great color and head, but a mediocre nose, and not nearly enough spice for a beer of this type. Very drinkable though!

Baby Jeebus Carols

You have to love sitting back, and singing some lovely Baby Jeebus carols to get into the beautiful spirit of the season...

Christmas Week

It's Baby Jeebus' Birthday week, so hopefully you got your letters in to the "big guy".

It's that time of year again, so last Friday Jessica and I invited Alex over to set up the baby-jeebus tree, drink spiked cider, and of course, watch Elf.

The tree came out great;

And I even had enough time to fabricate a menorah for Alex;

Yes... that actually is my bloody machete from Halloween as the base, but it was the first thing I came across, that was flat, and appropriately shaped.

Saturday we snuck out of the house for some dinner and then to see "A Tuna Christmas" at the Denver Victorian. And then Sunday morning I took off for a hike with D-Rock and Randy. We did some fast paced Boulder front range hiking around Bear Peak. The weather was pretty nice most of the day, except of course for the highest 30 minutes of the hike - we had perfect timing.

It was a solid, hard workout, especially for the first hike of the year.


Only in Boulder though, would you see a no trespassing sign that includes warnings not just against hiking, but specifically jogging as well!

It's a Wrap... or a Pierogi...

The weekend before I wrapped up the racing for the season. As it often is, it gave mixed emotions as part of me was very well done with mustering the motivation for forcing the body to go race-pace, while at the same time, I know it will only take a couple weeks before I'm going crazy because there aren't any races to soothe that competitive spirit. This new course, that we raced a few weeks before (with some changes to keep things fresh this time), was pretty cool, pretty flowy and definitely hard, without a lot of room to rest.

The race was pretty competitive for a single speed race, after 3 laps, there was still 6 of us riding away as a group. As usual, I had a monster of a time motivating myself to ride fast in the cold conditions, but kept on, knowing the season was almost done. I let someone pass, at what turned out to be horrible timing, as he leap-frogged me, as the dude we were passing "stopped" and blocked up the flow of traffic. Then while trying to chase back, I pushed a bit too hard in one corner that was getting faster and faster, and I went down. At least it was on grass, and made for one of those cool, mostly painless, high-speed slides. But lost more time there, and finished up in 3rd. Not horrible, all things considered, and like I said, time to relax.

State Champs were this past weekend, but the weather was looking miserable, and the conditions were going to be far from good for me... and the same goes for my own condition. Sounds like the course and conditions were far from ideal for a state champ race. Of course, I totally believe you race what the course conditions give on any given day, but also think that any possible conditions should go into the consideration of course and course design, particularly for States. But whatever, I wasn't there, so I'm just babbling.

Besides, I had more important things to do... like trying my hand (finally) at making homemade pierogis for German-Night!

If I may say so myself, they were fucking delicious. It was a group affair, as I did a good bit of the prep ahead of time, but then enlisted help in the actual assembly, so that I could also cook them, while they were being made. And it wasn't just my pierogis, everything made for the night was freakin' delicious!

I was more than stuffed after dinner, and with temps near zero, the only thing to do was to work off some food playing Rock Band. Next time I'll have to bring along my own guitar, so we can have the full band playing!

As for now... 5 days of constant 10 degrees or colder has completely cracked me. This morning, with 70mph wind gusts and 1 degree temps, while forcing the car through snow drifts to get to work in the dark, totally did me in. I'm done. Can't handle it anymore. There might still be time to get to Hawaii and check out the current 30+ foot waves at the North Shore!