Cancer sucks, no bones about it. It has affected good friends of mine along with people I’ve never meet. 

Fighting cancer is cool. 

One of those people who it has affected is Susan Nelson, her husband, Elden is uniting hundreds millions of people nationwide to help in ways that we can to help fight cancer. You might remember Fatty and how he gave me an amazing dream bike that I love for almost nothing last summer. Same bike in the above picture.

Well, that was last year, this year we’re doing something different. First Team Fatty is registered in every single city that the LIVEstrong Challenge is going this year. Im riding in Seattle. Team Fatty training rides are trouble, people are spread out all over the country, but we’re getting together to ride in May. On trainers. 

Trainers are the bane of all riders. It is where you ride where fitness is the goal, theyre not a whole bunch of fun. For me the fun I get out of biking is riding my bike, I love riding my bike, I get fitness out of it. Riding gives different terrain, wind in your hair, pushing up mountains, going fast down big downhills, finding your limits and surprising yourself when you have more in the tank than you thought. Riding a bike is a great way to spend a spring day, riding rollers isn’t

So I signed up for the 100 Miles of Nowhere

If you’d care to donate some money to help me fight cancer I think it would be great. I know things are tougher now than they have been in the last few years, so giving might be tougher than normal, but every dollar you give helps someone who needs it.

Oh hey, look I found a donate button. Look at that. How convenient. 

To the person who donates the most I will give you the DZ nuts bottle or the shot blocks, your call.

rode in shorts and a tshirt around the neighborhood, yeah i got looks from decked out bikers.

i just sat and watched the sailboats, there seriously were 5 but when i thought to take a picture they didnt cooperate 

High Bridge Road is decent riding, its part of a nice 50 mile loop from keith’s to snohomish (pie) monroe, and back. This sign is ~17 miles into the ride, it always pisses me off. Im tempted to put a give three feet sticker on it. time for some civil disobedience . (thanks to keith for the lifting of the bike. see, this is what ridiculously light bikes are for)

Oddly this sign is on the route for the Flying Wheels Summer Century, the largest century ride in the state. It is also on the route for the 7 Hills of Kirkland and it might be on the route for another ride. 

and not so civil

I got in, 2 for 2 baby. RAMROD is Washington’s big epic bike ride. Not a race, but a RIDE around Mt. Rainier (in) one day. 154 miles, 10,000 feet of climbing, limited to 800 riders

No one else I know got in, most people are in the 500’s+ for the waitlist. The ride is during Mom’s vacation, shes planning to come on over and we’ll spend a few days around the mountain, I hope she knows that the start line is 50 miles away from where we’ll probably stay and opens at 5 am.

update usually I pass on jerseys for rides, the only one that has ever appealed to me was a 5 pass jersey from the death ride 

so imagine my surprise when i logged into active.com (i still think your site sucks) to complete my registration for the 2009. oh by the way my password had the number 865 in it, does that mean I was one of the last riders chosen? 

so last years jersey -

not a bad jersey, better than some, but not overly eye catching.

 

BOOM, take us to this years

thats a great looking jersey. ordered one on a whim. nothing like a 160 dollar bike ride.

 

EDIT

yeah, i thought i completed registration,,,,seems i didnt and i lost my birth in the ride as i didnt register in time…GRRR

Redmond cycle club is trying to help me out with that, i should be riding.

So the old relationship I had was destructive, so I ended it and am starting a new one. Yes,haha, funny, it is a saddle. But the new one showed up today from switzerland via Ebay. 

I went from a Selle Italia SLR to a Selle Italia Flite Kit Carbonio. a negligible weight addition, on paper 5 grams, in reality 15 (142 for the slr and 157 for the flite). but I’m hoping the new shape (Same as the old flite shape?) will be comfortable on long days – Death Ride, RAMROD, C2K, Crater Lake weekend.

Here the new girl is-

everyone wants a bedroom shot!

carbon rails kinda scare me a little, I don’t own a torque wrench and have always relied on ‘tight enough + 1/2 turn’

BAM, no this isn’t where the bike normal sits

So I’m wrenching on my bike, because I enjoy riding it, and ride it even in the rain, This means it gets a little dirty. It is something I accept, know my way around, and i enjoy wrenching on my bike. I figure it is time to give the chainrings a scrub, so I take them off. DA 7900 the rings are help on via torx screws (really? torx?) after I get the rings off  I see this. 

 

 

 

proto…like prototype? wow, now I AM special

this may be the coolest thing ive seen on the internet in some time

yes, its a lion sitting shotgun on a wall of death

Thoughts from my first quarter back in school

• you can get b’s by showing up, sitting in the middle and paying attention
• I still procrastinate, it hasn’t had adverse effects yet. Still haven’t gotten that term paper back though
• I can engage in discussions, but I still get nervous doing presentations
• I can take a nap from 5-7 and still go to sleep at 1.
• This was the first time I went to 90/90 class meetings. 
• Isaac Asimov knows alot about the Bible, and was my secret for ‘Women of the Jewish Bible’ 

First there are butterflys. You you have this connection, you think ‘oh this could be really good’  first glimpses are great, your eyes play over each other, the shallow infatuation leads to introductions, concrete things. The first time you meet you’re nervous. The first time you have butterflys, you’re nervous but it is good, really good. You start seeing each other more regularly, getting better, becoming comfortable around each. You get better together, the early time is some of the best time.

Time passes, the two of you become something you can rely on, count on, it is great. This time goes on for a while. Then there is the first time you have a bad day. You get through it, the bad day cements the two of you together, together against the world, on this day its usually rainy, go figure.

In this case, there was a time where I changed everything, one thing stayed the same. It felt to have an achor to everything else, it helped to have one thing remain constant when everything changed. 

But then there is the first time you get hurt, you do nothing new, nothing different. But you get hurt, so you take a few days off. You balance the one bad day with the dozens of great times you’ve shared together. The memory of the pain fades, everyone has bad days. Yet, it happens again, and again You have pictures of the two of you on the wall, you’ve conquered the world together, but now you look across the room and while you see what you love, you also see the pain, it is physical.

Eventually you make the decision to end it, to change. You start looking around, seeing there are options. your friends all wonder how you stayed with that torture device for so long, you saw it wasn’t that bad, there is still love. You’re in the twilight of your relationship. It goes on, but you both know it is coming to an end. Being unable to be around each other for over a couple of hours is a bad thing, neither of you should have to deal with it, you should be happy. You owe it to yourself to do what you need to in order to be happy. 

I am getting a new saddle