Brain dump

OK, this may end up being a bit of a rambling Gewilli-esque entry, but I'm trying to catch up from a pretty long week. Last Thursday or Friday (can't even remember), my boss asked me to help him prepare a presentation for the president of the company. He wanted my piece by Wednesday. Friday was busy and nobody was around to get input from. Monday was a holiday. A summer student started Tuesday. A never-ending string of chaos ate up a good chunk of Wednesday. I got an extension to late today and finally got it done, but my white-board list which doubled on Tuesday hasn't been touched. Isn't work grand?

On to more fun stuff: biking. This was my first full unrestricted week back. I didn't really hold back:

Sunday - 2.5 hours
Monday - Cyclonauts crit
Tuesday - ran for the first time in 5 weeks, still managed 3.5 in somewhere under 8's
Wednesday - bike commute, 3 hours total, big-ring power hills the whole way home
Thursday - bike commute, 3 hours total, ambitious ride in and then survival ride home

Tomorrow the most I'm going to exercise is going to get more food and water. Saturday will be an easy MTB spin and then the Channel 3 MTB race on Sunday. First MTB race ever so that will be an adventure. My off-road skills suck, but the legs are firing right now so pray for non-technical uphills... long ones.

While enjoying my rides to work the last couple days, I thought of fun things I like about riding to work. So in no particular order... Fun things about biking to work:

- You can't execute a perfect bunny hop over a pothole in your car
- Your heart rate is above 140 for the right reasons
- Getting clocked on one of those roadside radar setups. Bonus points if you get caught speeding.
- Attacking nobody and then bridging solo up to the guy with the baby seat on the back of his bike (nobody ever said your target had to be fast... just start further away)
- Punching it and blowing someone away off the line in your car on the way to work makes you look like a dick. Doing it on your bike makes you feel like a badass.
- You don't smell the lilacs from inside your car
- The looks you must be getting from everyone you pass in the line at the redlight when they don't see you again until 5 miles up the road.

I had a couple run-ins with annoying drivers, but they were the types of things that would have pissed me off if I was driving or biking so they weren't really close calls. By the way, hooray for tail winds. I might still be riding home tonight if it weren't for that.

Oh and I'm thrilled for my buddy Jeff (no linkage goodness... even though he's the biggest computer/gadget guy I know, he's never set up his own site). He's always been sort of a moderately active guy and usually not afraid to at least try something. We did gym climbing for a while, he played some soccer, but never really latched onto a sport. Recently he got the inclination that running would be good for him. He bought a treadmill, hauled it to the second floor of his house himself (that alone is dedication), and got to it. He's up to 4 miles 5 or 6 times a week, just took his bike to get it tuned so he can ride that, and is thinking of joining a running club. I'm partially excited because he's into something that I love and he's starting to get it. It's also a bit of being impressed by his motivation. Lastly it's one more person up and doing something. Best of all, he did it because he wanted to. I've seen enough cases of all kinds of things to know that that's the only time something works... when it's for you.

OK, that's enough. Publish Post.