Classes start tomorrow. I’m taking two of them. Hopefully, I can schedule things correctly so that I can workout, ride my bike and study with some free time to do house work and stuff. Why again am I going to school?
UPDATED WITH A PIC
These are my impressions of participating in the 30 mile ride at the inaugural Save-A-Limb Bike Ride and 5k Run.
It starts of Saturday night getting to bed early. And it was early because I passed out about 11:00 pm. It continues to Sunday morming getting up early at 5:30. I shower because I want to wake up. I eat a breakfast which consists of a bagel with cream cheese (not good), a bowl of oat meal, and a glass of OJ. I am full and ready with fuel. As is my want, I will get a cup of coffee on the way to the event, and top off the fuel tank with a banana before the ride.
I get my bike on the rack and my stuff into the trunk, and jet off to Oregon Ridge, the start of the ride. When I get there, the parking lot has many cyclists in it already. We were psyched for the ride. I get ready: dressed, put on arm warmers because the weather’s cool, inflate the tires, spin around the parking lot to get warm. I hear the 60 mile group go out.
I get into the 30 mile group. It will be a bunch start. I have not done such a start, so I hang back in the group as we all line up. Is this a good decision or bad? For one, I could drop out and go at my own pace, but then I don’t get the benefits of riding in a back who’ll suck me along at a quicker rate, breaking the wind for me. I decide to stick to the final third of the bunch.
And we are off.
We go about a 12 mile pace. It’s not fast enough for me. We are all over the rode. I’ve never ridden on the line before. It sucks and is worrisome, but because we are riding 2 abreast, you have to ride the line in order to pass people. I am part of the bunch that misses the light at Shawan and Cuba. The first, faster group looks to be about 300 meters in front. We go across and begin an ascent and immediately the group starts stringing out. I climb with a pack of twenty riders.
This route feels hilly, and not in the good way. A ride with rolling hills is fun. You go up a hill and come down it all in a gentle manner. This ride feels like its going to go up abruplty and down quickly. 30 mile? Shit.
We make it to the top of a hill and start coming down. I like to pedal downhill, because going fast is fun. Other people do not, and I ride the breaks so as not to bump wheels. It had rained the day before, so the roads are filled with debris and are damp so we’re only going a cautious 30 mph. We go over a wooden bridge. This group I stick with for another hill. Then on the third on Falls Rd. I am dropped. I yo-yo back on the downhill, but on the next hill I am dropped for good. My little group goes away and I am left turning the cranks over. It is not fun to be 5 miles into the ride and pedalling squares. Of course on the downhill, I pedal to catch up. Yes.
I like to yo-yo while riding. Struggle up the hill, then fast down it. I pass riders going down as fast as they passed me going up. I wonder if this ticks them off. What ticks me off is riding up hill at a faster pace as a couple who take the entire road.
The views are nice, but I hardly notice them, because of struggling up and down. I lose my chainring twice both inner and outer(!) both going uphill and coming down(!). I wonder if my chain is clean enough and lubricated.
Every hill spied in the distance brings a muttered curse. Sometimes the road looks to lead up a steep pitch, but luckily the route turns at the base. I make it up most of the hills cranking on the granny gear. Hurray for the triple!
A fellow rider speaks to me. I say hello. He’s from Jersey where it’s flat and the hills are brutal to him. Tell me about it. I leave him rather rudely on a downhill. I can’t talk to you if you’re not pedalling downhill.
The first waterstop is 19 miles in. Although I am not thirsty I was looking for a rest from pedalling. I stay for about 10 minutes then make my way out on my own. I climb more hills, but faced with a steep one I dismount a few feet from the top. Look! Another water stop. This one 4 mile from the other. I grab another drink and some GU. The powerbar stuff in vanilla is much better. I like it.
I set off for the final leg. We make it to the inbound road, Cuba, that was fun to go up. Twenty-eight miles ago there was no hills. It turns out there were two climbs on this rode. I make it up both! On the triple! Huffing and puffing but not getting off! They were each probably a quarter mile in length. I was challenged and I met it. Yes!
I make it down the hill towards Shawan Rd. Cars start coming out of neighborhoods, but I am doing a steady 34 mph pace to the stoplight. At the stoplight I wait with another couple. We cross over to Beaver Dam Rd. Don’t cruise now, where there. Finish it off with a flurry. In the parking lot a ride volunteer has us take a final lap for the kids. I made it. And I received a cool poster from one of the many children whom this charity ride is for. I feel saddened that I didn’t get more donations for them. Damn, I am a selfish bastard.
I made it back with gas in the tank. My legs were not tired like the last time. Hopefully this bodes well for next week. I liked the challenge of this ride and perhaps next year I may be able to ride the 60 miler.
This is me after the end of the ride. No wonder the racers zip up at the finish line: the picture looks so much better. That dazed look I need to work on.
Last night I went out and had a drink, listening to a band. My ears are still ringing. Is that a bad thing?
Anywho, there were pretty young girls there. Pretty girls make me smile.
NewsRadio quote month is here! Hurray! Now I get to publish each post with a title that pulls a quote from NewsRadio. Isn’t September lovely?
Are you Doobie Keebler? It’s the start of the day that will be the eve of the greatest month of the year. The Third Annual BrowserMetric’s News Radio quote month
Those News Radio disks should be coming in handy just about now!!!!
Even watching movies this past weekend, no mention of wanting to watch this film.
Thank god, motherfucker.
Last night, instead of working out, I caught The Descent with The Seed. It’s supposedly, according to the blurb on the movie poster, a return to horror just like Alien. That’s the first one notice the singular.
Anyway, it wasn’t a return to Alien frights. It had some good scares, but nothing special. I jumped at times. There was a feeling of claustrophobia in being in the cave, but it was soon vanquished once the monsters showed up. I think it would’ve been good for the director to have used the dark better to make the film more scarier.
Unfortunately for this movie, it follows last summer’s The Cave. They have some things in common. I kept waiting for bat creatures, but they
weren’t. Come to think of it, the creatures are descendents of humans similar to the bat creatures in The Cave being mutated humans.
I check the tomato meter at rottentomatoes and it’s doing very well at 83%.
Surprising since most of the review snippets I read there give it a splat. What’s most interesting is that I learned that there was an original ending that differs very much from the one shown in the US. Watch it if you’ve only seen the original. It changes the ending completely. And it makes it more interesting.
BTW, I had trouble sleeping. Waking up around 3 in the AM. Waiting for gollums to crawl around my room. I was in a hazy, twilight state. Awake just enough to know I was, but not conscious to be able to move around. I tried willing my limbs to move, but they reacted in slow motion. I would’ve been cooked, if I believe in monsters of the supernatural kind.
I think I’ll not go spelunking at all.
3 of 5 stars.
Little Miss Sunshine is one of the better movies so far this summer. That’s not saying much. While it was solid storytelling and somewhat challenging, it felt as if I had been there before. The thing brought out the ennui in me. Perhaps I was tired from riding my bike in the morning.
The twist at the end I did not see coming. It was ghastly when it happened.
3 of 5 stars.
I would like to think that he is, although I like to call him a fucktard. Yet, that question posed seems to conjure up a classic line from The Jerk, “Don’t call that dog ‘Lifesaver.’ Call him ‘Shithead.'”
Therefore, don’t call the President an idiot. Call him shithead.
Can’t we wake up from this nightmare?
A few months ago there was a meme going through the blogosphere. If you had to explain America to a foreigner or aliens but only through its movies, which ten films would you choose to show them. The list is not to serve as a history lesson, but as an informed commentary on the American milieu.
Here’s mine:
1) The Godfather II. We are a nation of immigrants and this film shows the struggles and choices they made to bring prosperity to their family in their new home. Of course, not all immigrants end up as mafia dons, but at its core the story of the Corleones is one that repeated and repeats itself countless times as this country matures.
2) Office Space. Working sucks. Blue collar, white collar, or no collar. We all hate our jobs and wish for something better.
3) Porky’s. The male American view of sex is sophomoric. We can’t get past the surprising titallation that we had when we were teenagers. We still think its nothing but tits and ass.
4) Full Metal Jacket. The killing machine that we can become is something ugly to behold.
5) Apollo 13. American ingenuity at its finest. This is the best moment of geekdom in American history. We can’t fail, because we think things through. Of course, we don’t do this now because of the fucktard president and his fucktard GOP fucks who believe in nothing less than education is for shmoes. Watch this film and know that sometime in her past America produced great minds.
6) Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The original, 1950s version is an allegory about America’s obsession with commies. We hate the others and must fear it. Nothing like hysteria to signify American ideology in the time of the cold war.
7) Saving Private Ryan. I hate the greatest generation moniker that was assigned to the generation that fought in world war II. Fuck them. Yet, this movie, which I thought was meant to do glorify their struggles, has a place on this list to demonstrate that they did rise to the occasion.
8) Boyz N the Hood. It’s tough to make it in America if the deck is stacked against you.
9) Woodstock and Gimme Shelter double bill. The previous to describe the sixties and the latter to kill it. Kill it with a Hell’s Angel’s shiv to your gut.
10) Raiders of the Lost Ark. American adventure at its greatest.
I’m not satisfied with these films. I probably missed some, but I think these can tell an alien what America is about.
What’s your list look like?
