Warren Sez It Best

I wonder if Big Tex is humming this...

Why I Watch Cycling

I Need To Make A Stencil

I think I need to make a stencil and buy some paint...

But Where Are The Cars?

The Post of The Month Club

Maybe I should delete this thing. I certainly don't seem to be doing well with respect to posts. Oh well... Let's see...

1) The group rides have started up. Got shelled out of the first one as expected. Spent too much of my meager energy closing gaps. The good part is that I was there long after a number of folks that are actively racing were. So... I might even be able to manage a finish with the group this season.

2) The hamstring issue seems to be clearing up. Not sure why, but I'll take it.

3) More new music... I've heard a cover of Pink Floyd's Breathe, a couple of times on Under Currents. It's done by a band named Poor Man's Whiskey. In fact, they've got a whole album out covering Dark Side of the Moon (Darkside of the Moonshine). Here's a clip of them doing it. I'm not sure what the deal is with the Wizard of Oz costumes.

Yet Another Post

Wow.... this is going to be one of those, "Man... It's been awhile" post. Let's see...

1. Been riding less than I'd like (stupid snow).
2. Been on the mat a fair amount. Fighting some weirdness in the right hamstring/inner thigh. It's not been getting better, so I'm starting to think about taking some time off the mat.
3. Looks like I've got my long rides figured out for this year.

Not much else happening/ I've stumbled back into the music of Jim's Big Ego. Here's a sample.

Patriot

Given all of the snow and the cold, I was thinking this little blast from the past was worthwhile. My vote for the best ad ever.



Now if this guy was carry New Belgium's product it would be perfect.

Mud Studs & Studettes

Went over to watch Jingle Cross under the lights on Friday. Had a good time hanging with various members of ShortBus. It was good to see some of the Colorado contingent back in Iowa. The usual beer drinking and heckling ensued. It was fun for all, even the folks on the bikes. We even managed to get a smile out of Mer on the Mt. Krumpet descent. It was mud city owing to the rains the preceding three days in the week. Wheels were ceasing to turn and rear derailleurs were departing frames with great regularity. Fun Fun.

Meredith Miller, the "800 Pound Gorilla" (sorry Mer *lol*), slew all in the elite women. That was great since she's been on the podium several times this year, but never on the top step in this year's cross season. As expected, it was someone named Wells winning the men's race. A link to Cyclocross Magazine here provides more detail.

The above clip is something I found when looking for results for Saturday. It's from last year, but it provides a taste of the insanity. A very nice film.

Le Tour

Well... I'm now starting to wonder about the 2010 edition of The Tour de France. The route has been out for awhile, but I've not really looked until now. Velonews has a nice little "review" of it here. So that got me to thinking about Kraftwerk and their song Tour de France. There are a couple of Youtube videos of it up. One old school and one new school. They both have their own charm. That said, the old school one has much cooler cycling footage. These were the hard men of the tour.

A Bill Board I'd Like To See

Found this over at Copenhagenizer.

I'm getting a bit tired of seeing all of the onus for safety being placed on the cyclist. It's the folks in the cars that really need to change behaviors.

Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!

About time someone spends some quality time in the Gray Bar Hotel.

http://www.velonews.com/article/99800/

Salute The Cars?

Here's an image from a piece that ran in the NY Times. The story was about odd ball odd rules and laws in China. Here's a link to the story.

It seems that some nameless offical thinks that having kids salute cars will reduce traffic accidents and teach children courtesy.


I have a much better salute for cars.

Race Across The Sky

Be there or be square! As it turns out, I have 7 tickets for this to give away, Thursday evening at 1900. If you're interested and are in the QC's, drop me an email or message me on FaceBook. The deadline is noon on Wednesday. These are courtesy of the Kim West Radio Cycling Show. Listen in on Sunday nights! (Use IE for best results)

I'm Not Dead

Too much stuff going on and not enough time. Quick update.

• Did Cycle Oregon. The ride wasn't epic although suffering was involved. The beer and coffee was epic.
  
• Ramping the yoga practice up.
• Less than 1100 miles to go to make 10000 again this year.
• Riding spin classes is no substitute for riding outside.
  

I'll have a more detailed post, with images (and there are some good ones) from Cycle Oregon at some point... Now, I think I'll go for a walk.

Go West Young Man

Well... I'll be hopping on the airplane for Cycle Oregon next Thursday. I'm thinking that I'm good to go. I've packed everything with the exception of things that I can't until it's time to head for the airport. I think I'm there fitness wise, but it's always an unknown for me when I start doing real™ climbs. Not the faux ones we have here.

You know, like 10 mile long ones. Like on Day Three, Happy Camp to Lake Selmac. A nice little 54 mile ride with 5200 feet of climbing.


The only wild card in the whole deal is the weather. They've had an odd summer out there. More like the summer that Iowa normally gets, but didn't this year. That bit of weirdness makes trying to pack interesting™.

For example, there was the "epic" day on Cycle Oregon 10 when they went up Mc Kenzie pass. It managed to snow that day. They were busing people off the mountain. I wasn't there for that bit of "fun". The image to the left is of me when we went over it on CO20 in 2007. So, it boils down to bring lots of stuff that you hope you don't need to use.

My biggest challenge is going to be trying to ride well within my limits. It's going to be hard to dial everything back several notches. But if I can manage that, it should be fun and not a bunch of extreme suffering. I'll be riding with my friend Steve who lives out there. There is also a friend of a friend that I'm hoping to get a chance to talk to. This year, we are also going to be hanging with Camp Aloha. It's an informal bike club, but it should help to simplify the daily camp logistics. So... I should have a good little group of people to hang with.

Note From Steve: Oregon sucks... don't move here.

Yoga Notes: My practice won't go into complete hiatus with this trip. CO does daily yoga classes that are tailored to cycling. I've done these on my past trips there and it helps. Here's a link to the newsletter story about it. I figure on bending the instructors ear some given his cycling background.

In other yoga news, a few of us did a "semi-private" lesson to review jumping up/back last Friday. I have a few new things to try. I did try to work a number of them in during the class at the Shala. It's going to be a very long journey to get to the land of "magically float". I'm hoping that I'm not too sore tomorrow. But, if I am, I'm probably doing it right.

Deutschland über alles!

More skillz!

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.

Thoughts On Her Bike

Shamelessly appropriated from Copenhagenize

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