Today (according to my little bike computer [and some quick, shaky math considering I only remember to turn it on about 40% of the time]) I crossed the 2,000 mile threshold. Since I started training for this in late October, I've now biked 2000 miles. Another way to think of this it's taken me over 4 months to cover roughly half the distance I'm supposedly supposed to ride in just under 2 months.
@!$%.*
*** See how I'm censoring myself now? Funny story behind that. The Humane Society somehow heard about this whole operation, wrote me a nice letter thanking me and asking if I needed anything, and when I replied with "Hey thanks! Have you checked out my blog yet?" they immediately ceased all communication with me. SAD FACE.
** What's that? Stop with the asterisks? Blogs aren't supposed to have footnotes? Yeah well your FACE isn't supposed to have footnotes. Think about it.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Being homeless would probably make it easier
When I gave up my car a few months ago, I didn't expect to run into any serious challenges. Yes, bringing chicks home from the bars was going to be more difficult, because I'm willing to bet 1,000 dollars right now this conversation* has never happened in the history of humanity.
Guy: Wanna come over to my place?
Girl: Sure! Where's your car?
Guy: That's a complicated question. The good news is I think you'll fit on my handlebars.
Girl: It's like I won the Hot Stud lottery!
But other than that, I live right next to the grocery store, have no social life to speak of, and if I'm going out with other people the chances are good THEY'LL have vehicles at least. I figured this car-free lifestyle would be pretty easy.
And really for the most part, it has been. During the week I'm at work and so is everyone I know, so the lack of a car hasn't impinged upon my social life too badly. On the weekends, I can usually sucker someone else into carting my sorry ass around if we're going out to the bars or bowling or whatever.
Sure there's been the occasional hiccup. This last week after work some coworkers spontaneously suggested I go with them to feed and put out their horse. Although horses terrify me (When I was really, really little I saw a horse skull at a farm or something. It had these HUGE teeth and not really knowing what horses looked like, I thought it was a monster. Then when I went to go see the actual horses at the farm one bared its teeth at me and scared me shitless. Ever since then I haven't been a huge fan.) I figured it'd be fun, and without thinking about it too much I agreed to go.
The first problem was they weren't going until two hours after my shift ended. If I'd been driving, I could've driven home, chilled out for an hour and a half, then driven back. Since my commute is more like 45-50 minutes now though, I ended up staying at work. Then we didn't get done until like 1 AM, and by then I was really tired and NOT looking forward to the eventual bike ride home. What we ended up doing is popping off the front tire and throwing the bike in the back, and my coworker gave me a ride home (20 minutes out of her way as well). I felt like a giant tool and a huge hassle for everyone involved. If I'd known beforehand, I could've figured something else out. But with a bike, it's admittedly more difficult to just make spontaneous plans like that.
The hassle is still worth it though, I feel. If I still had my car, instead of having several months of training under my belt, I'd probably STILL be putting it off. Or maybe biking once a week and thinking that'd be sufficient "for now". And when the weather starts heating up, I'd CERTAINLY give it up then, instead of preparing myself for what promises to be a pretty scorching path from San Diego-Tempe in August. Getting rid of the car took my own propensity for laziness out of the picture, which, trust me, is only a good thing.
In closing, check it out, I decided I'm not done posting awkward Sesame Street shit.
Am I the only who finds this to be earth-shatteringly weird? Isn't Sesame Street supposed to be about counting and spelling and how peanut butter is made or something? Honest to God if I'd watched that when I was 3 or 4 I would've thought the mom was trying to smother that kid to death.
*Alternate discussion I considered for this joke:
Me: Hey baby, want to go back to my place and annoy the neighbors?
Girl: Sure! Where's your car?
Me: Funny you should mention that. Are you sober enough to keep your balance on my handlebars?
Girl: Well I'm offering to go home with YOU, aren't I?
Me: Dammit. I'll call a cab.
Guy: Wanna come over to my place?
Girl: Sure! Where's your car?
Guy: That's a complicated question. The good news is I think you'll fit on my handlebars.
Girl: It's like I won the Hot Stud lottery!
But other than that, I live right next to the grocery store, have no social life to speak of, and if I'm going out with other people the chances are good THEY'LL have vehicles at least. I figured this car-free lifestyle would be pretty easy.
And really for the most part, it has been. During the week I'm at work and so is everyone I know, so the lack of a car hasn't impinged upon my social life too badly. On the weekends, I can usually sucker someone else into carting my sorry ass around if we're going out to the bars or bowling or whatever.
Sure there's been the occasional hiccup. This last week after work some coworkers spontaneously suggested I go with them to feed and put out their horse. Although horses terrify me (When I was really, really little I saw a horse skull at a farm or something. It had these HUGE teeth and not really knowing what horses looked like, I thought it was a monster. Then when I went to go see the actual horses at the farm one bared its teeth at me and scared me shitless. Ever since then I haven't been a huge fan.) I figured it'd be fun, and without thinking about it too much I agreed to go.
The first problem was they weren't going until two hours after my shift ended. If I'd been driving, I could've driven home, chilled out for an hour and a half, then driven back. Since my commute is more like 45-50 minutes now though, I ended up staying at work. Then we didn't get done until like 1 AM, and by then I was really tired and NOT looking forward to the eventual bike ride home. What we ended up doing is popping off the front tire and throwing the bike in the back, and my coworker gave me a ride home (20 minutes out of her way as well). I felt like a giant tool and a huge hassle for everyone involved. If I'd known beforehand, I could've figured something else out. But with a bike, it's admittedly more difficult to just make spontaneous plans like that.
The hassle is still worth it though, I feel. If I still had my car, instead of having several months of training under my belt, I'd probably STILL be putting it off. Or maybe biking once a week and thinking that'd be sufficient "for now". And when the weather starts heating up, I'd CERTAINLY give it up then, instead of preparing myself for what promises to be a pretty scorching path from San Diego-Tempe in August. Getting rid of the car took my own propensity for laziness out of the picture, which, trust me, is only a good thing.
In closing, check it out, I decided I'm not done posting awkward Sesame Street shit.
Am I the only who finds this to be earth-shatteringly weird? Isn't Sesame Street supposed to be about counting and spelling and how peanut butter is made or something? Honest to God if I'd watched that when I was 3 or 4 I would've thought the mom was trying to smother that kid to death.
*Alternate discussion I considered for this joke:
Me: Hey baby, want to go back to my place and annoy the neighbors?
Girl: Sure! Where's your car?
Me: Funny you should mention that. Are you sober enough to keep your balance on my handlebars?
Girl: Well I'm offering to go home with YOU, aren't I?
Me: Dammit. I'll call a cab.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Awesome!
So due to a combination of a weird-ass work schedule (Hey, come in at 6 AM, Tucson's going to get hit with like 10 feet of snow and we're not sure everyone will be able to make it) and being too lazy to go to the grocery store, I haven't eaten much over the past week or so. Maybe 1000 calories over the past 4 days or so. Now, anyone who knows me knows quite well that I could stand to miss a meal or five, so I certainly didn't worry about it much.
Today on the way home from work, I was feeling pretty good. About 6 miles in, nice steady pace, I was certainly not prepared for what came next. I felt sluggish, like WICKED suddenly. My feet felt like they weighed a million pounds, and the bike was pedaling through Strawberry Jell-O. I don't know why it was strawberry, feel free to substitute grape or lime if that makes this work for you. My eyes got heavy, it was hard to keep them open, like when your girlfriend drags you to see Wimbledon on her birthday and you don't want to but you go anyways because deep down in those dark places you don't talk about you think Kirsten Dunst can be kinda-sorta attractive when she dyes her hair red in the Spider-Man movies.
Anyways, so I pulled over real quick, grabbed a quick drink, and then tried to move on again. Still nothin'. Now knowing how one of my cars feels, I wandered into the nearest Wal-Greens and grabbed some Gatorade, thinking maybe that'd help. I gulped it down and 5 minutes later, I felt fine again and went home.
Curious about what happened, I checked WebMD, then Wikipedia, and found it. I apparently had a "bonk". Or "bonked", it can apparently be used as a noun or verb.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonk_(condition)
Awesome, right? Firstly, "bonk" is a pretty awesome word. Plus my biker vocabulary is going to be all impressive now.
Guy #1. Man, I need to work on my cadence, I was spinning like 50 RPM going up that last hill.
Guy #2. Yeah dude I was totally going to say, you should maybe practice on some 5-3's and do a quick dropout run on the way home.
Me: I know, right? I totally bonked on the way home today!
Guy #1. What? Who the hell are you?
Me: I'm Kyle!
Guy #2: Well go fuck yourself Kyle, get outta here.
Me: Cool, good talk guys! Wheeeee, I'm an athlete!!
Anyways, apparently the trick to avoid Bonkitis while on a tour is to simply
A) Eat often
B) Eat a lot
I know it's going to take some serious dedication and perseverance, but I think... I think I might be able to do that. Seriously probably 85% of the reason I'm doing this is knowing I can eat Baconators for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner for 2 months and still end up healthier than when I started.
Today on the way home from work, I was feeling pretty good. About 6 miles in, nice steady pace, I was certainly not prepared for what came next. I felt sluggish, like WICKED suddenly. My feet felt like they weighed a million pounds, and the bike was pedaling through Strawberry Jell-O. I don't know why it was strawberry, feel free to substitute grape or lime if that makes this work for you. My eyes got heavy, it was hard to keep them open, like when your girlfriend drags you to see Wimbledon on her birthday and you don't want to but you go anyways because deep down in those dark places you don't talk about you think Kirsten Dunst can be kinda-sorta attractive when she dyes her hair red in the Spider-Man movies.
Anyways, so I pulled over real quick, grabbed a quick drink, and then tried to move on again. Still nothin'. Now knowing how one of my cars feels, I wandered into the nearest Wal-Greens and grabbed some Gatorade, thinking maybe that'd help. I gulped it down and 5 minutes later, I felt fine again and went home.
Curious about what happened, I checked WebMD, then Wikipedia, and found it. I apparently had a "bonk". Or "bonked", it can apparently be used as a noun or verb.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonk_(condition)
Awesome, right? Firstly, "bonk" is a pretty awesome word. Plus my biker vocabulary is going to be all impressive now.
Guy #1. Man, I need to work on my cadence, I was spinning like 50 RPM going up that last hill.
Guy #2. Yeah dude I was totally going to say, you should maybe practice on some 5-3's and do a quick dropout run on the way home.
Me: I know, right? I totally bonked on the way home today!
Guy #1. What? Who the hell are you?
Me: I'm Kyle!
Guy #2: Well go fuck yourself Kyle, get outta here.
Me: Cool, good talk guys! Wheeeee, I'm an athlete!!
Anyways, apparently the trick to avoid Bonkitis while on a tour is to simply
A) Eat often
B) Eat a lot
I know it's going to take some serious dedication and perseverance, but I think... I think I might be able to do that. Seriously probably 85% of the reason I'm doing this is knowing I can eat Baconators for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner for 2 months and still end up healthier than when I started.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Training progress report
Today marks the end of my 16th week of training for this tour. That's roughly 4 months of hardcore, smashmouth, in-your-face exercise designed to push your body to the limit.
No, not really. I'm sure freaks like this guy train like that, and in a few more months I may have to start as well, but for the past 4 months or so my training has mostly been comprised of biking back and forth to work. Unless you don't count December, during most of which I ate 30-40 years worth of Chinese Food, reduced my life expectancy 6 years, and I'm pretty sure at one point in there my heart stopped. I also was taking days off work fairly regularly so instead of "biking 20 miles" my exercise mostly consisted of "waving my laser pointer at my cat".
Since I'm always running late (my roommate has a bad habit of constantly making me delicious tea in the mornings so I'm loathe to leave) biking has actually been pretty effective training. It's 9.5 miles each way, so 5 days a week I bike about 19 miles, so over a typical workweek I probably bike about 100 miles.
When I first started back in October, man, it was brutal. It took me about 60-65 minutes to make the trip and I would show up badly winded and out of breath. One day there was a bad headwind and I was 12 minutes late for a shift starting at 12:30 PM. I'd left at 10:45. Goddamn headwinds, man. You could have Elmo fight Mr. Mr. Snuffleupagus in a cage match and the fight would be less one-sided. Cripes.
Incidentally, did you know Mr. Snuffleupagus's first name is Aloysius? And was there a more confusing character on that show? The other muppets were at least fairly identifiable. Oscar was a particularly ugly homeless person, Elmo was a brain damaged infant, Big Bird was a... big bird. Hell even Bert had a unibrow. I could identify with those things, they were vaguely recognizable. What in the HELL is this?
It looks like a cross dressing Wooly Mammoth with a severe spinal injury. Oh and let's not forget the fact that he's imaginary. I bet you don't remember that part, do you? Big Bird would always be like "Hey look there's that giant creepy elephant I always hang out with" and then when the adult turns around Snuffy's using magic/ninjitsu to hide behind a telephone pole or something. There wasn't a single non-terrifying aspect to that monstrosity. *
Wait, where was I? Oh right, biking. So now the same route takes me maybe 35-40 minutes. I'm not tired at all when I show up, and when it's cold out (both days of the year!) I'm not even sweaty. I've gone from averaging maybe 9 miles per hour to right around 15. And this is with 6 months left to train. I mean, don't get me wrong, I realize there's likely going to be a noticeable difference between "biking 10 miles, taking an 8 hour break, then biking another 10" and "Biking 80 miles in 6 hours" but at least I'm making forward progress. The only other thing I've trained for 4 months to do was get a date, and if my biking stuff was going as well as THAT little mission I'd be trying to go to work and end up biking backwards on a unicycle and falling into the Grand Canyon **.
There's still 4, um, let's call them checkpoints to cross. I've set up some completely arbitrary goals for myself and they look a little something like this.
#1. Bike 60 miles in 6 hours without being exhausted
#2. Bike 80 miles in 6 hours without being exhausted
#3. Bike 100 miles in 8 hours without being exhausted
#4. Bike up Mt. Lemmon
If I can do those 4 things before I head out, I'll be sitting pretty. Or sitting, at least*** Goal #1 is coming up within the next month or so, and probably the Mt. Lemmon one too.
Don't worry next post I'll review a tent or my new GPS or something, it'll be funny I promise.
* I'm assuming the Children's Television Workshop is too cash-strapped to be able to afford decent lawyers, but just in case: The writer of the referenced sentence above does not actually feel the copyrighted character Mr. Snuffleupagus is an unstoppable, mystical killing machine.
** "But the Grand Canyon is really far away and riding a unicycle is hard that's a terrible comparison-" Shut up and just go with it!
*** BA-ZING!!!
No, not really. I'm sure freaks like this guy train like that, and in a few more months I may have to start as well, but for the past 4 months or so my training has mostly been comprised of biking back and forth to work. Unless you don't count December, during most of which I ate 30-40 years worth of Chinese Food, reduced my life expectancy 6 years, and I'm pretty sure at one point in there my heart stopped. I also was taking days off work fairly regularly so instead of "biking 20 miles" my exercise mostly consisted of "waving my laser pointer at my cat".
Since I'm always running late (my roommate has a bad habit of constantly making me delicious tea in the mornings so I'm loathe to leave) biking has actually been pretty effective training. It's 9.5 miles each way, so 5 days a week I bike about 19 miles, so over a typical workweek I probably bike about 100 miles.
When I first started back in October, man, it was brutal. It took me about 60-65 minutes to make the trip and I would show up badly winded and out of breath. One day there was a bad headwind and I was 12 minutes late for a shift starting at 12:30 PM. I'd left at 10:45. Goddamn headwinds, man. You could have Elmo fight Mr. Mr. Snuffleupagus in a cage match and the fight would be less one-sided. Cripes.
Incidentally, did you know Mr. Snuffleupagus's first name is Aloysius? And was there a more confusing character on that show? The other muppets were at least fairly identifiable. Oscar was a particularly ugly homeless person, Elmo was a brain damaged infant, Big Bird was a... big bird. Hell even Bert had a unibrow. I could identify with those things, they were vaguely recognizable. What in the HELL is this?
It looks like a cross dressing Wooly Mammoth with a severe spinal injury. Oh and let's not forget the fact that he's imaginary. I bet you don't remember that part, do you? Big Bird would always be like "Hey look there's that giant creepy elephant I always hang out with" and then when the adult turns around Snuffy's using magic/ninjitsu to hide behind a telephone pole or something. There wasn't a single non-terrifying aspect to that monstrosity. *
Wait, where was I? Oh right, biking. So now the same route takes me maybe 35-40 minutes. I'm not tired at all when I show up, and when it's cold out (both days of the year!) I'm not even sweaty. I've gone from averaging maybe 9 miles per hour to right around 15. And this is with 6 months left to train. I mean, don't get me wrong, I realize there's likely going to be a noticeable difference between "biking 10 miles, taking an 8 hour break, then biking another 10" and "Biking 80 miles in 6 hours" but at least I'm making forward progress. The only other thing I've trained for 4 months to do was get a date, and if my biking stuff was going as well as THAT little mission I'd be trying to go to work and end up biking backwards on a unicycle and falling into the Grand Canyon **.
There's still 4, um, let's call them checkpoints to cross. I've set up some completely arbitrary goals for myself and they look a little something like this.
#1. Bike 60 miles in 6 hours without being exhausted
#2. Bike 80 miles in 6 hours without being exhausted
#3. Bike 100 miles in 8 hours without being exhausted
#4. Bike up Mt. Lemmon
If I can do those 4 things before I head out, I'll be sitting pretty. Or sitting, at least*** Goal #1 is coming up within the next month or so, and probably the Mt. Lemmon one too.
Don't worry next post I'll review a tent or my new GPS or something, it'll be funny I promise.
* I'm assuming the Children's Television Workshop is too cash-strapped to be able to afford decent lawyers, but just in case: The writer of the referenced sentence above does not actually feel the copyrighted character Mr. Snuffleupagus is an unstoppable, mystical killing machine.
** "But the Grand Canyon is really far away and riding a unicycle is hard that's a terrible comparison-" Shut up and just go with it!
*** BA-ZING!!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
