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

I didn’t write this, I emailed it at one point.

I bicycle along the East River bike path every morning before dawn. I often see the same homeless people just north of East River Park between the F.D.R. Drive and the river. Since it is usually dark, I never make any contact with them and I assume they are sleeping. They never say a word.

Between some vacation time and needing a break, I recently did not ride for a two-week period. On my first predawn ride after returning, I rode past a man wrapped on a blanket, slumped on a bench.

Just as I was about to pass him, a loud voice boomed out, “Hey man, where you been? I was worried about you.”

I said I had been on vacation, and he simply said, “O.K., glad you didn’t get hurt.”

The next morning I rode past the same person; he said nothing and has said nothing since.

Forest Markowitz

I headed out today around 1. Tuesday is a good day, no school, no work. I slept in, had a leisurely morning.

It looked like a spring day, 40s, some rain and some wind. I am not saying everyone would be out riding, it did look shitty. But it was definately spring shitty and not winter shitty. A small difference but still, a difference.

I wore shorts with knee warmers, a new purchase, my veloloco jersey under my woolie mammoth, my fatcyclist cap, over it all my showers pass protech super jacket. I know you might not care, but whatever.

Today was only the 3 or 4th day I have been on the bike all year. School is cutting drastically into my riding time, my sitting around time too.

Man I felt great, headed down along Lake Washington Blvd working into a wind that was making white caps on the lake wasnt that much fun. Often I forget why I ride, I think about miles, percentages, pounds and grams. Today was a day I remembered why I ride, about leaning into turns like these cuties.

I went out to Seward and did the little crit loop. On the way back I got the benefit of the wind I’d been bucking into. 23 happened without too much work, 26 if I pushed as hard as I had on the way out.

20 miles is no big ride. But it can still be a great ride.

A book I read had a character talking about finding the beauty in everyday life, and how unusual it was, Aristotle said something similar.

I found it today