Me vs. Me

I ain't no smarter now than I was last year. See? That was horrible grammar suign a questionable contraction and a double negative.

But I'm riding better. Two days ago, I took Debby Diamondback out for a spin. She and I were feeling really good. Her, with her sexy new brake calipers. Oh yeah! All I gotta do is think the word "stop" and I practially fly over the handlebars. For December, my legs were feeling great. I extended my ride so I could catch myself and spank me on the heiney.

Please, allow me to explain.

In 2006, I rode 8,684.5 miles which was the most I have ever ridden. This does not count time on the trainer when the weather is poopy. I log all my miles diligently. I calculate this to be about 511 hours spent on the bike in 2006. That's 3 weeks continuously. Yep. I'm not an OCD case am I?

One of my goals for 2007 was to beat my 2006 miles. The weather poopified a bit in early December and I was worried that I might not make it. But alas, it warmed up and dried up. I've been putting in some good saddle time this week and this allowed me to finally beat myself. So, at the end of my ride on the rail trail, I saw my old self up ahead and I passed me. Don't worry, I was courteous and said "on your left, 2006 Mike!". I was feeling sorta sassy and as I passed me, I reached over spanked myself on the heiney like the little bitch that I am.

This blog is taking on quite the "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" motif, isn't it?

Tomorrow, I'm bringing Tracy Trek with me to ride the beautiful scenic roads of upstate New York. The weather seems like it's gonna cooperate for the rest of 2007.

I would like to do 10,000 in 2008.

This leads me to the inescapable conclusion that I have no life.

Bye.

Santa Skivvies

We're lying through our teeth with the whole Santa story. So, I thought I'd have some fun with it this year.

Who knows, maybe when they're teenagers and they hate my guts, I can tell them the truth and we'll have a good laugh.

Mustard and melted chocolate, to answer your question.

Deborah is O.K.

Hi guys,

In case you don't know, one of my significant others has not been doing well. Deborah Diamondback is suffering from multiple ailments. Her bottom bracket bearings are shot, and require frequent application of anti-seize compound. She underwent a headset overhaul this summer and most recently, her brake calipers succumbed to a pretty nasty case of acute rustiosis.

She is in critical condition, but resting comfortably in my basement.

*sigh*

To think she was between my legs on my way to work just a few days ago. For awhile, I thought I was going to lose her.

But, there is hope: I secured a donor for a brand new shiny pair of Shimano Deore calipers from the Nashbar Institute for Aging All Terrian Bikes. They are being shipped with high priority and should arrive by Monday. She will undergo a relatively routine caliper replacement procedure immediately afterward.

I thank you all for your cards and words of kindess.

I hope this reminds us all of what the holiday season is about. It's not about presents and shopping malls, but our relationships...with pieces of metal plastic and rubber that we can sit on and allow us to go fast.

Happy Holidays.

Snow-alyzer

In my inbox today:

This is ***** **** at Channel 2 News.. hoping for help from a ******* Teacher and/or class on a story I am working on..

I have collected and am collecting more snow.. and I want to test what's in it.... chemicals, etc....I think it would be interesting to know this..

Would like to have an expert at ******** do the testing at a lab..... They would get credit and could be the on camera sound for our story.......

Can you pitch this and see if there is any interest ?

Thanks.. *****

P-S: I have snow on ice and am collecting more.. this is a story for February..

Well, how lucky is he? Our lab happens to be equipped with a FQJ-47 Snow-alyzer 2001!

It's about 4 foot by 2 foot by 6 foot, blue, has a siren, a large plastic funnel on top and a LED readout on the front panel. Just funnel in some snow into the icey intake modulator. Then, it chugs away, making a "Willy Wonka" type sound for 6.2 seconds and "whammo!", the LED screen reads "chemicals" or "no chemicals". It's that simple.

We were thinking about getting a FQJ-45 Snowalyzer 2000, but we spent the extra cash and sprung for the 2001. It also makes snowcones. It's just been sittin' in the corner of the lab for months, right next to the Alexander The Great-alyzer. Uh-huh...

I think I'll call back and tell him to make sure he keeps the snow on ice. Otherwise it will melt and that would be catastrophic. Better yet, I should tell him if he takes it off the ice, it will spoil!

This is our media, folks...

The Mitchell Report: What a Bunch of Dopes!

Wow. Cycling isn't the only sport where people dope? Have you guys read the Mitchell Report, the investigation of steroid use in baseball?

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/1213071mitchell1.html

It's big. Like, hundreds of pages long. I think it's on Report Growth Hormone.

The thing I am most struck with is the clumsiness of the players. Either these guys are extremely brazen or just flat-out not too bright. I'm gonna go with the latter of the two.

I'm not the sleaziest of guys. But, I understand the need to protect what butters your bread. Many of the players named in the report didn't do the league minimum in that department.

So, here's a list of "dopey moves" made by the dopers and how a person with minimal common sense could have acted a little differently and possibly kept their name off this document.

Dopey Move #1: Don't pay for illegal stuff with a check.

The Mitchell report shows photocopies of the checks some players wrote for steroids. Can you say bus-ted! I think they'll have a hard time explaining why they wrote a check for thousands of dollars to a person charged with distribution of steroids. It sure as hell wasn't for girl scout cookies. Sheesh! I'm surprised they didn't write "steroids" on the memo line.

Pay cash, dummies!

Dopey Move #2: Don't let people you don't trust inject your heiney with steroids.

Other damning info arose from cooperative witnesses who actually injected the steroids in the buttocks of the players.

Have a friend stick you in the ass. Isn't that what friends are for? If I were a pro athlete on illegal substances, I'd sneak them home and let my wife stick me. Hell, she'd probably even like it.

and finally...

Dopey Move #3: Don't brag about your steroid use to everyone.

I think this is self explanatory. Well, maybe I should explain further in case any pro ball players are reading this: No talky 'bout roidys!

It's going to be interesting to see all the defenses flying in the face of what seems to be a "caught red-handed" situation.

What excuses will they use? Maybe we'll see the high school one: "Ummm...I bought it for a friend and I was holding it for him!"

People pay a lot of money to see these guys perform with their bodies. So, enhancing their performance with muscle-building, nut-shrinking juice is flat-out fraud.

I think they should let these guys come back and play. But, they should have to hit or throw a ball that is four times the weight of a regular baseball.

That would rock.

Holiday Failure 101

I'm getting a slow start on the holidays this year. So slow that I haven't started. I haven't shopped and I haven't decorated.

I'm so far behind, I feel liberated. A lot of folks I know are very stressed out right now because they have shopped, wrapped, trimmed, party-planned and baked their way into a cardiac infarction.

It's so much easier to give up. Come on, I'll show you how!

Screw Light Bulbs

It used to be my job to put up lights outside. I resigned. Holy cannoli, my neighbors go crazy on this stuff. They put up so many lights I don't feel it's worthwhile to even compete. You can see my neighbors houses from the space shuttle. Dayton Power and Light just completed construction on a brand new coal-fired generation plant just to power my street. As we speak, the employees there are staring at dials all pegged to the right and high-fiving each other.

I have a string of lights. They are the old fashioned green, blue and red kind. Nobody uses them anymore, including me. These lights stand up to a lot of harsh conditions including sleet, rain and snow. However, their real weak point is their ability conduct electricity from one bulb to the other. If it wasn't for that, they would be grand. My string of lights is about 50 feet long and there's maybe a 2 foot section in the middle that actually light up. So, instead of doing something festive, like decorating the door on the mailbox, I gave up.


Shop at a Mall That Is Next Door To Your Favorite Bar

I tried to shop at the mall the other day. After encountering many parking spaces that were already pre-parked-in for my holiday convenience, I finally infiltrated the mall through one of the ritzy department stores. At this point I was surrounded and attacked by women in wearing lab coats and makeup 3 inches deep. They were carrying bottles of fragrances in holsters under the lab coats. These new and exciting fragrances have creepy names like "Restraining Order" by Calvin Klein and "Aneurysm" by Christian Dior. The lab coat ladies were macing people with them. These blasts produce a toxic atmosphere consisting of 21 parts oxygen and 79 parts perfume. So, I turned tail and fled. The ladies in the lab coats chased me, but I lost them by hiding under a clothing rack and standing still until they went away.

I went outside for a whiff of fresh air and saw my favorite bar. So, the rest of my evening was decided. Hell if I'm going to pollute myself, I'd rather it be with pints of beer than volatile organic coumpounds.

I will try again another day.

Ho ho ho.

Horoscope

My horoscope for today:

Mars will make itself felt today now that the negative aspect from Uranus has gone. You’ll be full of beans and bouncing with enthusiasm, but you’d do well to channel some of that surplus into something definite, otherwise you could find that you’ll squander those energies!

So, I guess I'm wondering how one can be full of beans and yet not feel the negative aspect from Uranus.

You knew that was coming, right?

Trainer Time

Today, the roads have ice on them and the temperature is like absolute zero. That's nerdspeak for "really cold".

So, I am relegated to ride my trainer in my garage.

I need to tell my all friends about "trainer time". That way, both of you will understand what a horrible transition this is for the cycleaholic.

Immense Boredom Makes It's Yearly Visit

Monday, I rode my bike in to work. I have the cool air in my face. I saw an albino squirrel. I saw two female deer so close up I had to yell at them to get out of my way. Then, close to the air force base I saw two fighter jets take off escorting a large, white passenger jet. Ostensibly, this was Air Force 1 or Air Force 2. Maybe it was Air Force Pi. I dunno, but it looked important and exciting.

Now I'm stuck looking at a garage door.

Sweat Becomes Me

Then, there's the sweat factor. Holy cannoli, I sweat on the trainer. I do not sweat a tenth the amount when I ride outside. It must be a combination of the cooling factor of the air moving past you and the ginzo factor of being italian. I drip all over the place and it's disgusting. Even when it's 10 degrees in the garage, I sweat like Ryan Seacrest watching Brokeback Mountain.

A Man's Obsessive Compulsion Is In Peril

I set a personal goal to ride, 9,000 miles in 2008. On December 1st, I was at 8,188. I don't count trainer miles. Largely, because you log no miles when you are going zero miles per hour. It's going to be a close call for me to make my goal. I rode like 8,700 last year. So, maybe a secondary goal will be to try and beat myself. I will have to wait until the snow melts first. Then I thing the last year me will have passed the this year me. So, I will have to work hard to try and catch myself.

On The Brighter Side

I probably won't fall and I heat the garage up a couple of degrees. I was hoping to list some more positive things here but I'm drawing a big blank.

Time to hit the sweatshop.

Tailwinds to you all. Or, maybe not today.

Tales From The Potty

I just went potty.

But wait, there's more!

When other people are in there are going doo-doo, why is everyone else so much slower than me? Like, what are they doing in there? Am I missing any steps? After my bike ride to work and my daily Starbucks, my colon tells me it's "showtime" and there is no arguing that point. I can get my business done in like, 3 minutes. So, why is the dude in the stall next to me taking so long? What's going on in there? I should peek my head over and ask. On the other hand, maybe peeking my head under would be more private. It's the same say with ATM's. I always get behind someone who is setting up an IRA account or somethin'.

Actually, it's not like ATM's that much because ATM's are much cleaner and you don't have to pull your pants down, most of the time.

So, back to bathroom stuff. Why do some dudes not use the urinals and then go in the stalls and stand and spray pee all over the seat? I understand the "shy bladder" thing. Then hey, lift the damn seat, huh? I'm gonna go out on a limb and say there's a reason for shyness and it has something to do with the "sprayer" not being very close to the target, if you now what I mean. How about just close the door and sit down? Nobody's gonna know. They'll just think you're a quick doo-doo-er like me.

You know what's embarassing? When you come in to use the urinal in a public bathroom and there's some other dudes there. So, you pick a urinal far away from them because you always have to have the "buffer urinal" so no one things you're gay. Then more dudes with full bladders arrive and all the urinals fill up. But everyone else gets done first and then the only two left are you and the guy next to you. That's sorta uncomfortable for me. Sometimes I feel like I should ease the tension by introducing myself and shaking the guy's hand or something. But, there's no way to wash my hand first, so I don't.

I'm almost done. I hope none of you were eating lunch. This is too much information, isn't it. Damn the torpedoes! I ain't quittin' now.

My favorite bathroom memory: There was a year when I attended the same elementary school as my brothers. My brother's class had a "potty break" at the same time I did. At home my brother always pulled his pants down to his knees to go pee. I guess he didn't know you aren't supposed to do that in public. So, when I walked by to exit the bathroom, I saw all these young boys lined up at the urinal and my brother along with them. But my brother stood out from the rest because his pants were pulled down to his knees and his bare ass was showing. How cute is that? I won't say which brother it was in case they read this. And, they are bigger than me.

Okay, I think I'm empty now. I mean on thoughts. Well actually in many ways.

Take care of each other in there.

Bye.

So You Want To Climb Mt. St. Helens?

I'm doin' it with my best buddy Feb 2nd. I mean climbing Mt. St. Helens you perverts! We were supposed to climb Mt. Hood. But, I have no mountaineering experience and I don't want to be the newbie dill-hole that gets us all killed. So, we downgraded to St. Helens this year. Next year, maybe Hood.

Since all truth is found on the Internet, I tried to inform myself on this matter. I found a web site that has enlightened me. Maybe, too much.

So You Want To Climb Mount St. Helens?

Hell yeah!

Ummmm...are those people higher than clouds? I'm afraid of heights. I have a hard time cleaning my gutters. Would this be a problem?

Mount St. Helens is an active volcano in southwest Washington State and the central feature of the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument.

A-a-active volcano? What if it erupts? Nah, it would never erupt. And if it does, it's just "duck and cover", right?

Most climbers use the Monitor Ridge Route from Climbers Bivouac. This route gains 4,500 feet in five miles to the crater rim at 8,365 feet elevation. Most climbers complete the round trip in seven to twelve hours.

4,500 feet elevation over 5 miles, which is 5,280 feet times five is 26,400 linear feet, or 17 % grade = me a total idiot for saying yes to this and buying plane tickets.

While climbing to the crater rim is permitted, entry into the crater is strictly prohibited.

If I make it up there alive, I'm going to bring a beer and drink it up there. I need way more than one beer before I enter any thing's crater.

Pray for me.