Deutschland über alles!

More skillz!

Guitar Strangler Deluxe

Joe Bonnamassa was headlining the River Roots Festival last night. Alas, I didn't make it down there... too tired. The daughter reports he was killing it.

More Skillz?

Grape Soda??? I'm down wit it.

YogaSkillz Workshop Part II

Did the second of the workshops at the Shala yesterday. The temperatures were near arctic in comparison to last week. We had pretty much the same crew as last week. We worked on headstand, feather of peacock, and handstand. I still need to get the hips up over the shoulders. I'm going to have to find some time to work on this. All of this is "variations on a basic theme". That theme being: hips over shoulders over hands or in physics terms, the center of mass / gravity perpendicular to the floor. We do this all of the time... walking and standing are two examples. The tricksy bit here is that ones hands are on the floor instead of your feet. Back bending is up next.

Today's Ride

Went riding with Jen today instead of doing the Sunday class at the Shala. She's back from Colorado and positively flying. We rolled this morning about twenty minutes later than planned since the skies looked a bit threatening. Turns out, we didn't get rained on until we were about a third of the way into the ride. I haven't gone this hard in awhile. It was way harder than the Wednesday group rides have been since I was working and there wasn't really anyplace for me to hide. The ride clocked in at 60 miles in 3:15. Not too bad.

The only odd thing was I must of had my Harry Potter Invisibility Cloak on for the last two miles. In that last two miles, I had two cars try and turn through me. You'd think that they could see me. Jen also had some weirdness too. She had turned to get a few more miles in and had someone shooting a shotgun out his front door. I can't wait to read the report in the local paper.

Cutting Edge Research

Wow... Here's an interesting little paper. It's well worth the read if you have an interest in modeling infectious disease. The infectious disease in this study is Zombie-ism. Given my stumbling across this on the InterTubes today and the V3 class, I'm reprising a video I posted last year. Enjoy!



Note: One of my mathematician friends thinks that this will be a great way to introduce a standard model to his students.

It's Workshop Time

Did the Jump Up / Jump back workshop at the Shala this evening. It was well attended, I think we had twelve in the house. T'was interesting, as these things always are. I need to work on getting the hips up over the hands, then it's all easy. *lol* Anyway, in honor of the workshop...

Thoughts On Her Bike

Shamelessly appropriated from Copenhagenize

The Perfect Temperature

Wow... It was a hot one at the Shala today. I think a number of us were sweating before we even walked in the door. The daughter said she knew it was going to be rough on the second Surya Namaskara A. I have some photographic evidence of things there today.


Before


After




I think it was close to a world's record there. A hot yoga class in the afternoon might be a good cool down.

The Group Ride

Click For Detail

Did the group ride tonight. I managed to finish in the group. That was one of my goals for the year. I was following wheels and hanging on for dear life. I almost got sawed off a couple of times, but managed to stay on. I think that was largely an act of will. That said, I got lucky. There was close to zero wind, it was relatively cool (80F or so), and we went the flat way. The above image is the download from my heart rate monitor. Fortunately, we only climbed 500 feet in the 48 miles. My average heart rate for the 2 hours was 136 with a peak of 159. Can you say ouch?

Oh Yeah.... I Have This Blog Thing

Wow... another blog hiatus. That must mean, I've had way to much other stuff going on. Let's see... I managed to survive RAGBRAI. It was a good one. I had lots of fun, as always.

The most fun occurred on the day out of Indianola. I rolled over to where the ShortBus was ensconced around 0730. Hung out and helped them break camp and get on the road about 0830. That consisted of a roll over to some local breakfast emporium that had a most lovely breakfast and several large screen tellys so we could watch Le Tour as we digested and sipped coffee. Then around 1045, it was a leisurely 20 mile roll to Milo, Iowa.

In Milo, there was a kick ass band playing, Crooked Mile. We got there with a little bit left in their first set and then hung out through their second. Lots of fun. This was the best band on RAGBRAI. We apparently didn't get there early enough to watch my dear friend Ms. Bets from the Whiners have them take the "Whiner Goddess Bitch" oath. I did see that on video over on Facebook.

Not much else of note to report. The best news is that my legs seem to have shown up. I haven't been going this well in ages. I'm hoping to be able to ride this peak through Cycle Oregon in mid September.

In the yoga world, Tapas had Sara Strother back for another workshop. That was good. I wasn't anywhere close to as wrung out as the last one (probably because this one was only an hour and a half long). Learned an interesting way to enter into Standing Hand to Big Toe (Utthita Hasta Padangustasana). Today's led Primary series class had me in full rain mode. Wow... was I sweating... check that... raining.

My friend and next door neighbor in the blog-o-sphere in McSmithlyville posted a link on Facebook to the most frighten yoga video ever. Not sure I should post it, but hey... it's the InterTubes