A Wonderful Joyous VICTORY

A couple mere minutes ago some time in the past I typed some fateful words into an internet comment box. I said-

Smith hat would match me
Maybe make THE Joe Holmes proud?
Probably maybe

The reason for this occasion? Simple. A Glider Bison Giveaway. I've entered many of these in the past, simply trying to win things that were once handled by THE Sam Johnson. But this time, something quite magical happened.

I was a winner!

To tell this in a format that might make more sense, let me interpret this message via......

KROGG!

"Krogg hold huge contest. Prize worth three whole turkey leg fresh off fire started from huge clump Mammoth belly hair! Krogg no like this hat, hat makes Kroggs ears look big like Mastodon tusk growing off face of KING MASTODON! Krogg have idea- make people write funny things into comment box and let number generator pick the "random" best one! Krogg know however, Caveman-Ian write good Haiku many times over- more times than Krogg climb mountain to chop tree for fire- AND Krogg know that THE Joe Holmes feel good about sponsor related products! Krogg KNOW that Ian haiku worthy of hat-prize. Krogg number selects WINNER. Celebration of five successful-hunts!"

Ok, I promise to leave that form of writing to the expert from now on. I'm quite happy! Ever since I lost the Haiku Favorites Runner Up Contest I've been scheming. FINALLY!

What's this?!?!

GLORIOUS DAY!

Thanks Sam and Team Exergy for the swag.

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California related title

I'm too sleepy right now to think of any sort of creative lyric or sonnet or anything to post as the title. Titles are usually the hardest part of writing a blog because how can you really categorize the crazy things that run through my head into a simple sentence or phrase? It's difficult. It's also probably pretty difficult to come up with titles when you write about something that happened 6 months ago. Not that anyone I know does that.

Here's a fun game for you to play. Try to think of as many song TITLES that have some sort of California related connection in them. It sounds pretty easy, right? Here are some obvious ones-

• California Love- Tupac
• Beverly Hills- Weezer
• Back to Cali- Notorious BIG
• California Girls- Katy Perry
• Dani California- Red Hot Chili Peppers
• Compton's in the House- NWA
• Say Goodbye to Hollywood- Eminem

ETC. So now try and think of any more. It's actually pretty difficult, huh? The first time that I made the driving trip down with T$ to LA last Nov. we played this game (whoa! blogging about something a year old!), and came up with list roughly 11 things long. We thought that was pretty good, but since the internet knows everything I did some research. Turns out there are a lot more than 11 songs about California and that there is an entire Wikipedia page devoted to these songs.

So now that I've made up for a lack of title with interesting trivia, let me catch us up on our journey, California style.

I flatted again today. But instead of talking about that, let me engulf you into a story about a man and wildlife. A man and nature. A man and his bike.

I was riding my bike alone, just doing some simple through and off on PCH. Unimportant to the story, but relevant to the mood, I was wearing my Summer Whites, aka my white HB jersey. As I was through-ing up a hill (NOT THROWING UP) I happened to glance to my right into the vastness that is the Atlantic KIDDING Pacific Ocean and I saw something. The unmistakeable excitement that is a shark attack about to happen. I'm talking several fins Jaws-theme-songing their way through the shallow water, about to team up on a helpless something, much like in the excellent Sy-Fy original "Malibu Shark Attack".

 

As I was preparing for an epic Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus type battle between this herd of Sharks and whatever they were about to choose to eat for brunch, I was disappointed, or maybe overjoyed, to see that these sharks weren't actually ferocious killers, for they weren't actually sharks! They weren't just flotsam either. I wasn't fooled by something floating at me like the dumb girl from the movie "Deep Blue Sea" but I was just incorrect in naming my species. They were either a pack of Porpi (my way of saying porpoise plural) or a dollop of dolphins. Because once they started jumping in and out of the water like a graph of a function that kept going from negative to positive along the X axis I knew that they weren't sharks. Sharks can't be bothered to jump out of the water like that, unless they're really hungry-

That was a clip from an episode of the excellent television show "Planet Earth". Everyone should check out that series it's quite stunning.

But yes, I saw a dollop of dolphins on my ride today, and since I'm in California, why not?

Ok, the next exciting thing that I am choosing to talk about instead of talking about how I've gotten more flats in three days of riding here than I did all last winter and the beginning of this winter combined is this awesome structure that I saw today. And yesterday.


From a distance, this son-of-a-gun looks like your simple water-tower. Ya know, like a candle on stilts with a roof on it sort of thing. Wait what? A roof? Yes, this "water-tower" is actually a vacation rental home.

Since we all know how much I enjoy living in luxury, I have some respect for this $4000 a week rental. In fact, as I was changing a flat in its shadow I sketched a quick picture!

But srsly, check this place out! Really cool.

http://designhardwoods.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=90/

And plus, you'd be renting from this guy.

He looks like a mix of John Waters and Johnny Bravo!!!

TTYL

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Learning the Truth About Myself

Last week, I tweeted something along the lines of "hashtag I'm so weak I had to lift the xmas holidayz tree my arms are so little". This was a fun experience because when I lift a 8 lb medicine ball it does not equal a AT LEAST 15 pound Christmas tree. Yikes! That fun continued yesterday on my bike pedal.

I rode with two track riders, and I attacked them on 12 occasions. However, that is not the story.
It starts roughly 47 minutes into the ride, when I flatted my rear tire. Simple, I removed the tire, checked for debris, and put in a new tube. I noticed that my rim-tape was sort of crooked. So I straightened it out, and then I used a hand pump to put roughly 3 hours worth of riding PSI into my tire. My right arm felt slightly tired.

One hour and four attacks later, I felt the rear starting to get soft again. Pulled over, removed the tube, found some glass, noticed a off centered rim strip. Changed the tube. Pumped it up to slightly less PSI than before due to horrible, horrible pains in my arms. Removed the hand pump. PSJHSDKJHKSHFGJHFHJSKL:LKJHGFDFGHJKL. With the removal of the hand pump came the removal of the valve stem. NOT HAPPY. Now I am no longer on top of things- since I only brought two tubes. So I borrowed a tube. Down to one tube for 3 of us. This time I used a C02 canister because my arms felt as if I had just competed in a handstand-handwalking marathon with a midget doing a tango on my feet.

PS, my tires are ~680 cc so they don't come on and off easily. At this point my hands are now throbbing and my knuckles are bleeding from smacking them into my spokes. Repeatedly.

So we start riding. Collin and I drop Ian up a climb. Four minutes later I flat the rear, AGAIN. This time, I'm assuming that my rim-tape is F'ed out the Ying Yang (twins).

So instead of changing this flat, I was conned into believing that there was "a bike shop like, 2 miles from here!". So I decided to ride the flat to the bike shop. Since I had no air in my tire, I was riding out of the saddle. Which is doing a reverse pull up on the front of my bike as I held my girth away from the rear wheel. About 7 minutes of that later and 400 arm twitches it was decided that this bike shop was still maybe 3 miles away. So we pulled over, and I hand pumped the tire back up to riding PSI so that I could do 12 seconds of really fast riding before the tire went flat again. This is 3 times with the hand pump now. 

A couple minutes later it became time to pump it up again, so I pulled over right after a construction sight, and got to pumping. For those of you that have never seen a cyclist on the side of the road using a hand pump to put air into a tire, it may be the reason that the average American citizen tries to run cyclists over. Imagine that video of the guy at the Texas Tech football game ringing the bell. It may look like something else.

I get around 50 psi in the tires and hear some laughing. Look up and the construction site is LOL'ing at me pumping up my tires. Ok, continue.

And we made it to the bike shop! But it was a BMX bike shop, and when I asked if they had road tubes, the employee said "uhhh... maybe". He did! So then I took the tire and found a staple that had worked its way into my tire. I had to dig the sucker out with a razor blade! And then for kicks and giggles I bought a new rim-strip. And made it ALL the way home without flatting again!

3 flats, 4 tire changes, 1 million mini-pump pumps, bloody knuckles, and sore arms.

Then Tela made me carry a milk jug home from the grocery store! OUCH!

OK, bye kids. More bike pedaling!

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California, Knows How to Party

I left you in a state of despair. In fact yesterday I ALMOST did something ridiculous. I just about, was planning, was on the verge, around the corner, pick and choose, or non-debatable going to ride the...rollers.... yesterday. I was originally going to try and ride on the track, but since my bike is in the attic in Bham and my road bike tires don't accept the proper PSI (proper strength indicator) for the steep banking, I couldn't.

So I took all my stuff to the track and by the time I had gotten there I had made up my mind that I wasn't a soft-pansy-child and I came to California to ride the bicycles outdoors in the sunshine, and I'll be G'D if I don't end up doing that. So I chose to ride outdoors. As I was preparing for rain riding, here are some of the statements that these other bike racers said to me-

• Did you know it's raining out? (yes I did) Here in California a rain day means a rest day!
• THIS IS YOUR FAULT FOR BRINGING THIS
• Why did you bring this from Seattle?
• It's probably not going to be very much fun out there?
• Eat a Burger!
• This wasn't very kind of you to bring this weather from Seattle

LOL

So far, 7 people have blamed me for the weather. Which c'mon, after a quick Google search it's pretty clear that it is physically impossible for me to carry a rain cloud with me from Seattle. So I ain't no hollerback gurrrrrl.

I've been making some connections and plotting some lines on Mapmyride, Ridewithgps, and Strava to try and find some good rides for me to go on in the next couple of days. I planned a really awesome ride with tons of climbing all within a pretty close distance to Cypress, which was sort of odd. So I google map zoooooooooomed in on it, and turned out that both of my climbs were dirt hiking trails. Problem? No, not really. Then I found this. I'm still all set to give it a go, but I'm pretty sure that I should wait a couple days so that the dirt roads have a chance to dry a little bit before I begin the madness.

In other related news (not actually related to anything I've talked about) (but related to this trip), my sister is weird. True story. Somehow she got in a conversation with someone about something. And this something is a taller, crazier tale than the time that someone else did something taller and crazier. Tela and her associate discussed sleep patterns. What happens when one sleeps? What really goes on in the depths of dormir? What occurs in dream-land? Inception.

So Tela downloaded a "Sleep Talk" app for her phone. This app is designed to turn on at any indication of noise. So turns out T$ is a crazy mo-fo and potentially is possessed. Most of the things that the phone recorded were along the lines of an agressive roll over, or perhaps a deep breath. But then there was that one recording where Tela started talking about nonsense like a demonic satanic cray cray loco person. The key words were "rabbits" and "that's it". So take what you like from that.

So naturally, since I needed to know that I am not a crazy person and demonic-sleeptalk doesn't run in the family, I downloaded this same app last night.

Some may hope for a happy tale, one ripe with song.
Or even a night filled with wonderful stories, some right, some wrong.
But in fact I'll tell you, that on this very night,
I said nothing, nay, my mouth, yes it stayed shut tight.
So if you think that perhaps, this night chatting runs in the Fam, PLEASE
For since when you listen to my recording, yes, all you'll hear is Zzzzz's.

Ok I'm going to go to bike practice now.

Bye!

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California Vacation

Let me share some gospel from some of the most intelligent thinkers of our time-

Cry me a river- Justin Timberlake

Tearin' up my heart- Nsync

You got it you got it bad- Usher

It's GON RAIN- The weatherman

In fact, I just walked outside and I got very wet, much like someone who walked into a very wet place. The tragic part of this situation is that I am not in Bellingham or Sammamish, but I took a jet plane to Californiaaaa to do a good week of bike pedaling all while hanging out with my sister. The good news behind this weather travesty is that since I am not a soft child I will still be doing some good bike pedaling, but as my coffee consumption is going up my cortisol levels rise along with that as the residents of Tela's house blame me for bringing the weather from Seattle to LA, since it "hasn't rained like this in FOREVER". Srsly though, come on how can I possibly bring a weather cycle 1000 miles South on a 48 passenger airplane? NOT MY FAULT. But this airplane, I now know how it feels to be a Giant in a humans world, or potentially Steve in a kindergarten class: HUGE. This plane was tiny, but it seemed like I was the only person with any problems. My head scraped on the ceiling while walking, and no one elses did. Then I had to use the bathroom, which was the equivalent of 30 people trying to get into a smart car, or Kennett trying to get into an SUV. It was a tight fit.

ANYWAYS

Oh look at the scenery, beautiful palm trees!

Tela and I were going to go on a ride this morning and then I was going to ride again for 4x that length. Tela ended up riding the rollers on the deck wearing LS Jersey, Leg Warmers, and a beanie.

What I just overheard- "Only drug and crack dealers don't have drivers licenses!"


To continue.

Tela picked me up from the airport with the joyous news of "Let's go do laundry!!!!!". Celebrateeee goood times c'mon

Choose what to think about this Cafe name

So today I will scratch my nose and twiddle my thumbs and listen to rap music until Inti comes to play. Or perhaps I will challenge the track sprinters to a 12 lap race.

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How Could I Forget?

I am seriously ridiculous. I forgot to talk about three great moments in the history of Hagens Berman 2011 and since I know that all of y'all are missing the adventures of my teammates (the actual interesting people on this blog) I decided I would share three more bite size morsels of excellence. I've already introduced you to the characters here. This mini-novella will feature Cody, Dan-Land, and Kennett. Awwww I'm so sad I miss my friends :( :(.

So we begin.

Morsel 1 ------------------->

Daniel ____ Bechtold: hero, innovator, and legend. Dan-land knows how to travel. Like when none of us knew if he was racing Univest and I stumbledupon (not the website, Spencer) him in an airport bathroom. In Pennsylvania. I guess he was racing! But that is not the bite size tidbit that will keep you occupied until we begin our madness again in March.

Flash back in time, yet flash forward this story to the ending. Where we convene in some airport that we all had different connecting flights to and Dan is joyfully explaining to us how he JUST about missed his connecting flight out of Denver. They had to re-open the doors of the gate for him and everything! How did this happen? In the Denver Airport, Dan-Land discovered a special area. This area was a separate level, one that was quieter, calmer, and more serene than the first floor. Dan knew what had to be done. A nap was in order. It's ok though, don't fret readers- he remembered to set his alarm. Phew! In fact, how do you get the most out of layover nap time? You sleep for as long as possible. For Dan, that meant you set your alarm for 5 minutes before the plane... departs. Snoozin! Cheers to the innovation!

 

 

Morsel Deux ~~~~~~~~~~>

Let us continue on the journey that is traveling.  Cody J Campbell is the protagonist. I am not a gambling man, but if I haddddd to be, I'd say we were in the Chicago Airport. If I remember correctly, this is the airport where we saw the man with the tail. Lion King! Cody was sooooo hungry, that boy needed some SNACKS. We are lined up, as per SWA boarding procedures, and notice that our lone Canadian has gone missing. Big trouble in little paradise! We board and giggle about how Cody is missing that precious B17 boarding spot. All of us end up sitting in a similar location, and as the minutes tick by and the seconds climb higher than everytime Kennett gets on the scale, we start to get worried. Where is our Canadian friend? Had he snuck on the plane without us seeing? Was he deported? Did he lose his passport that he always keeps around his neck? The flight attendant gets on the speakers "Is passenger Cody Campbell here? Hello, does anyone know Cody Campbell?" We cheer from the back of the plane. She comes back to us, and asks if we've seen him. "Yes, just recently!!" "Well can you call him?" And then we simultaneously laugh about the his Canadian cell phone. With just minutes to take off Cody rushes on board with a gleeful smile on his face that could only mean one thing.

He got some snacks.

Morsel III >>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Traveling has happened, now we are at some bike race. Kennett Tabernackle Peterson is your vicious beast on this one. It's funny, because Blogger thought I meant to write that Kennett is viscous. Which is giggle worthy. Get yer giggles in. We were doing this bike stage race tournament in Bend, Oregon. It hurt a lot, and we all were racing for the elusive 150th GC spot, which would be the last person allowed to enter the crit the following day. Logan ended up being Lantern Rouge, because he's only 16. The tricky situation about this is we literally had no idea what was going to happen with time gaps, people in front of us, etc. So the stage before the crit was very important. The final climb of the day is a really uncomfortable drag up to Mt Bachelor, and after 3+ hours of racing the 20 minute climb is a P.O.S. We all knew we had to go as hard as we could on this climb because just like when you're sleeping in an airport, every second counts. Everyone knows that the most important part of bike racing is beating your teammates, and when Kennett hit the base of the climb and powered away from me there was nothing I could do. His huge muscles are quite beneficial for those climbs of 7 minutes in duration, but around the 8th minute my group caught up to his and went right by. Booyah! Basically that meant I could coast in because I was going to beat Kennett. As our group rounded a bend (in Bend) I heard the sound of a dying pickup truck being attacked by a catfish with pneumonia. The unmistakeable Kennett Peterson suffer sound. I had to attack. I kicked once, and I heard from a couple pedal strokes behind me a slightly louder noise, this time sprinkled with a small noisy taste of Cat-Fight. The gasping and heaving got closer, louder, and more vibrant as the mountain continued. The beauty and serenity of the wildflowers, mountain goats, and the Illegal Feed Zone were shadowed by the sound that a frog would make if you forced it to play saxophone when it was drunk. I didn't dare look around. I attacked again. The noise followed me. It haunted my future dreams. It finished with me.

Some say if you attack a man hard enough, you can hear his true soul. For this reason I am thankful that Kennett Tabernackle Peterson is my teammate, because I am scared to death of his true soul.

Thank you very much for your time and have a fantastic day.

Love,

Ian

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Ways of Expression- Hot Sauce Edition

I really like words. I don't really know too many words, other then to describe myself as a Xanthochroi. But no biggy. Actually though, words are pretty cool- You can use them in whatever way you so choose, and you can't really be wrong. I don't mean wrong in a grammar sense, their our the haters (that was on purpose FYI for you're information) (that one was also), but I mean wrong in the sense that a person can combine any set of words to get an idea across. That made no sense, but it's not important! With words I can pretend like I know how to properly get an idea across, and it doesn't matter. These words are mine! Words are like clay, they can be molded however you choose.

Truth be told, this word-madness came about because a post I did from April got a lotttttt of unexplainable views this past week. I'm not really sure why- It's a GREAT representation of me, but not really relevant to much. This post leaped back into the hit-counter and I was somewhat inspired. Only somewhat. Then something amazing happened!

Inspiration is a crazy beast-

Give a Gorilla a beer and he's going to be inspired.

Inspiration hit me this weekend when I got a incredible bottle of... hot sauce (not beer). I really like spicy foods. The small problem is that most spicy foods don't really seem 5-star spicy to me. I order that at Thai restaurants, they cry, resist, say my Xanthochroi genes can't handle the 5-star. I demand, threaten, and plead my case. Finally they bring me the 5-star, wish me luck, and leave. Then I gobble up my Pad Thai as if I was eating a bowl of oatmeal. No problems.

The sriracha was a good opponent. For roughly two meals. Then I had to keep adding more and more until my nightly meal of rice, chicken, and vegetables was died red with the rooster spice. The green tastes good, but it's basically a dessert hot sauce because I notice no spice.

But then something happened.

I believe it or not got this from my mom, not from some seedy potion dealer in the alleys of downtown Seattle. I was instantly attracted to this because of the size. If it's sold in such a small flask, the suggested serving must be one to two dropper-fuls. So my serving should be about 1/2 a bottle. I tried some. A tiny drop. On my tongue. Burning. Flavors. Stinging. Tearing eyes. Sobbing. Guzzling jugs of milk. Sucking on ice cubes. Celebration. Another drop. Love.

I just can't express my happiness with only one way of writing. So I give you WORDS <3

Haiku-

Always Resistant

This is the simple sauce fact

Hot sauce glory here

This kind of poem-

Basically

All

Ian

Loves

Excludes

Yesterdays

Funny

Aromatic

Raisin

Muffins

(I really like this type of poem because it never really involves what you actually are trying to talk about. It's like rap music. Speaking of....)

Rap- (DMC style)

Nowwww let me tell you bout that time 

when I tried something special yup it blew my mind

Came in a bottle all small and spicy

Thank goodness momma bought it would've been to pricy

Grade School Poetry-

Roses are red, violets are blue

I'ma eat this whole bottle tonight

And you're not invited

Country Song (read to yourself with a twang. You absolutely better or else it will sound like everything else)-

I was ridin' my horse, every day, when a poor man came up and asked the way

He said he was lookin' for a place, a place in town, where he could fix his god-awful wayward frown

I gave him a smile, flashed my charm,  and sent him towards Bailey's Farm

Now he's happy, and thats the truth, so I got off my horse and put on my boots

Chorus- Hot sauce is the greatest, it goes well with my food, I put it on everythang yup it puts me in the mood, I said the peppers start my engines yup they lasso my desire, so I rope up my horses, call it Chariots of Fire, Cuz I'm a rebel of the days, I don't leave nothing for the news, I'm a one man army without my pal Jesus (hey-soos).

Simple.

It continues.

Poem that makes H.S English teachers analyze for days-

The weather is bland, like a leafless tree in the winter,

Spirits are low as the tide

When will there be some excitement?

The wind whistles, to and fro

Food is consumed, lifeless, loveless,

When will there be some excitement?

A special bottle appears, magical to touch

Spirits lifted like balloon into the sky

Here, I have found the excitement.

Right, and that's all that I've got for you. If there are any poets out there, feel free to comment with some additions! Cool!

And since I haven't talked about bike-pedaling once. I did that with David and Lang this weekend. It was a monsoon, and David didn't wear a rain jacket, so that means the weather wasn't that bad. Also, I attacked the neighbor kid in a race. And I won.

Ttyl bros

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I Did Something Hilarious This Weekend!

Let me tell you all about it. I did something quite strange on Sunday, November 20th, 2011. At one point participating in this sort of... event... was something quite normal for me to do. Now at these events I'm more out of place than Spencer at an Under-Eaters anonymous meeting.

BUT FIRST! Let me tell you about the Ian^2 Adventure that took place at roughly 9:08 on this Wintery Sunday morning. I woke up to approximately 3mm of ice on all my windows. An EXPERT removed this for me, and I took off on the driving mission to pick up Ian Terry for our initial journey to pick up Lang, to go to the event. Excellent. While driving, I noticed that my mirrors were still icy, so the adventure began when I pushed the window-down button on my beautiful car. Whirrrrrr-grinddddd (sound of gears spinning inside of my car door trying to make my window drop down). Whirrrrrrr. Nothing. No movement of window. So here I go and decide that my window must be frozen shut, so I place four fingertips onto my window and gently try and provoke it to start working. Nothing. I whisper into its ear. Nothing. I apply slight pressure to the window in the general go down direction and suddenly it just DROPS. Now my window is half way open, it is 0 degrees outside (hello my non-American readers!) and my nose is starting to get cold. No worries, I push the up button hoping that my window now works, and whirrrrrrrrr. Nada. Excellent! I arrive at Ian's beautiful home and he has duct tape! With me using the four-finger technique to slide my window into place, Ian (confused? I don't talk in third person) put suture-esq duct tape strips onto my window. Swag!

Do not come to my house and remove the tape and slide the window down and let your self into my car and steal my chewing gum and my quarters.

Ok, so then we picked up Lang. Who was all dressed up in bike clothes (hint! We're going to a bike race) 3 hours before the race.

Then we went to a cyclocross race! What? Yes, I tried to do a cross race this weekend.

I have ridden a cross bike 2 times since last December. Once on Thursday, and once at the race on Sunday. And Thursday was on a gravel trail, and Steve still dropped me on the "technical" sections. So I went to this bike race with simple goals: Bump Ian Terry in a corner, get heckled, not crash, ride hard in the sections that I could ride hard in, and beat Lang.

SUCCESS!

After almost missing the start because I was talking to my mom and enjoying the company of my puppy, I was in the zone. I decided that it really wasn't worth it to kill myself to make absurd passes in the first couple of difficult corners (at least to me) so I was content to just wait. Exciting moment one! I bumped Ian in the about 4th corner, and than Morgan Schmitt closed the door so Ian had to get off his bike and yeah! Great fun success. It's ok though, because he returned the favor about 13 seconds later. I really didn't like this section of course right here though-

Oops, that's not me.

There was one section of sustained pedaling that wasn't hampered by silly corners that made me use my brakes. So on the first lap I went ballllllistic on this section and went from roughly 18th place to making connection with the lead group by the end of the first lap. Great!

But this is not a Fairy Tale. Unlike when this guy races something outside his forte-

This does not happen for me-

It's ok though. I made my way to that front group and stayed there for about 2 minutes and 13 seconds. I don't think that those guys realized that the corners didn't have optimal traction or surface material, because they went through them much faster then I could.

After much hilarity

It became time to do something that I'm more comfortable with! Sprinting on pavement! Except for the 40 psi in the tires and the 187degree corner 30 meters from the line part. But an opportunity to sprint a 45t chainring is something I don't say no to.

Steve told me that cyclocross racers must sprint in the hoods, so I tried my hardest.

I had good fun, but definitely don't have any absurd thoughts of needing to do any more races. Because I might need to clean my bike if I do another race. Maybe I can con Steve into cleaning my bike.

I bumped Ian, I didn't crash, I beat Lang, and I was heckled! My favorite was "THE JUNIORS ARE BEATING YOU!!!" C'mon guys, Steve is 21. Give him a break.

OH! My helmet cover is so awesome! My head was the warmest part of my body- Check the steamin'

The hilarity did not stop at the end of the bike race though. Steve and I are slowly killing the world by each driving our cars into Seattle. Having no idea of the others schedule, we ended up leaving roughly 4 minutes apart to head back North. Since Steve drives like a maniac on crack (luckily his vanagon restricts his psychosis), he was putting some time into me. Until he ran out of gas! Sucka! He made it roughly .5 miles from the exit, and then was crawling with the flashers going. I was prepared to rear end him to push his car to the gas station, but instead all I had to do was clear an intersection so he could safely roll a stop sign and coast to the gas station. So I won the race home!

Frostbite report- Turns out my hands still hurt! And it also turns out that my parents don't find my frostbit hands as hilarious as I do, so my dad surprised me with a new pair of winter riding gloves! Thanks Dad! And my mom brought me three different pairs of gloves to try for many different weather conditions. Now nothing can stop me.

What's cooler than being cool? Ice cold! I can't hear you. I said what's cooler, than being cool? ICE COLD! Allright allright allright allright allright allright OK now ladies! Yeah? I'ma break it down for you in just a few seconds. I wanna see y'all on your baddest behavior. Lend me some sugar, I am your neighbor!

-Andre 3000

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The Day After Tomorrow

I want to ease everyone's worries. I did NOT die on my ride on Saturday, but I came pretty close. I like to consider myself a pretty decently tough human being, sometimes I try food that I don't like and other times I do things I don't want to when I am tired. Super tough! Other things that make me tough: I occasionally tread water for 4 days in a row, I can cook Minute Rice in 30 seconds, I'm wanted in Nicaragua, I've won 3 Oscars, I know all the lyrics to the song "LDN" by Lily Allen, I once wrestled a Wild Boar (and lost), I've cooked with chili peppers, air-dried instead of tumble dried my clothes, ate 15 raw eggs, and drove Bellingham-Seattle with the windows down. Oh, also I switched my email account from Yahoo to Gmail.

So now you know the background of my toughness, let me explain how I was broken on a bike ride this weekend. I had a pretty excellent route planned, one that was different from my normal long ride route. I wore clothes for 45 and dry, but unfortunately less than an hour into my ride it turned into 40 and raining. Hard. And windy. At about the hour and 10 minute mark I was yelling at the world as I sunk deeper and deeper into the dark place that is the America-Canada border.

I normally have no problem with rain. In fact, my new Lazer Helmet rain cover was working magnificently! But unfortunately this helmet cover didn't cover my entire body, and my hands were becoming quite uncomfortably cold.

About 1 hour later, I was past the shivering point and I pretty much was about to curl up into a ditch, bury myself with leaves, and hopefully wake up in Nicaragua (even though I'm wanted there! Exactly, that's how cold I was). For about 45 minutes of that long straight road I imagined myself in a coffee shop coming back to life. I pictured in my mind a Starbucks in a shopping center. This image was in my mind so much that when I entered Blaine I rode right past a coffee shop. But it wasn't a Starbucks in a shopping center, so I continued on. About 2 minutes later as I rode around in circles trying to find this Starbucks I realized that a coffee shop is a coffee shop. I made my way back to that wondrous place that I passed in my first minutes in town, and was so cold that after I walked up the stairs to the shop I didn't really put together the pieces that the next step was to go in the door. So I stood outside the shop and cursed the world until I remembered that I should go inside. I had to peel my wool Defeet gloves off with my teeth, since the wool shrinks when it gets wet. I then used my sunglasses to get my headphones out of my ears, since my fingers were useless. I ordered tea, and then took roughly 4 minutes to get my money out of the ziplock bag in my jersey pocket. Problem, my hands hurt too much to actually hold the tea, so I just kind of sat there confused at the concept of potential warmth. Then I realized I was sitting by a fireplace! Who knew. I finally drank some tea and got all giddy inside as my hands started to get past the unbelievable pain point and towards the tingling numbing point. Then I remembered that my poor soaking wet gloves were sitting outside in the rain. So I ventured back outside, cursed the weather some more, and grabbed my gloves. I put these on top of the fire, and sat some more. About 10 minutes later, it occurred to me that I probably should have squeezed some of the water out of the gloves, so I did that. As I wrung water out, the next thing that occurred to me is that I probably shouldn't be doing that onto the nice wood floor of this establishment, so I stiffly put a pile of napkins onto the floor and continued squeezing. Sorry!

HOW ADORABLE

Huge puddle on the floor aside, I started to gain some motivation to make my way home. I went and got another pot of tea. Put the teabag and poured all the water inside my water bottle. Which after the fact I realized that I'm pretty sure that's how you can get cancer, but I think that having your inside temperature be 50 degrees stops water-bottle cancer from happening. So then I (ps- Tela, I have no idea which then or than to use there. Sorry. I tried both and they both looked the same and it made sense anyways. I thought it'd be funny to say and made since anyways) had a BRILLIANT IDEA!! I hazingly-stumbled my way to the register and asked the question that would determine my fate for the ride home----

"This is going to seem like a really weird question to you. Uhh do you have any, like, uh, rubber cleaning gloves or something?"
Barista aka Life Saver, no hesitation "Yes, would you like some?"

I spent like 3 hours trying to determine if you could read my credit card number or not. I deemed it safe for internet posting

Jackpot! Then came the difficult decision on whether these gloves should go inside or outside of my other gloves. If I had dry gloves, the answer would definitely be on the outside. But since my gloves were still wet, I decided on using these as a baselayer glove to hopefully create a hand-sauna. Problem- size Small latex cleaning gloves are extremely difficult to put onto slightly wet hands. After a lot of wrestling, I succeeded, and set off on my journey home.

For 5 minutes I was great! And then it was freezing again. So I rode as hard as I possibly could for the next hour and a half to get home. The fun part is that my heart rate never got out of endurance heart rate while I was going as fast as possible to get home! So does that count as training? AKA extremely good training!

If you were super concerned, I made it, and it took 3-4 tries to correctly type in the garage code for me to get in the house. Here I am!

After showering, "warming up", eating, drinking tea, etc, my legs didn't hurt. I went on this big ride and went pretty hard and it felt like I hadn't ridden at all! New training plan- ice bath pre-ride. By doing all your training with numb legs, you will be able to go deeper, hit your intervals more effectively, and theoretically increase your training load. Try it!


PS, my hands still hurt today (2 days after).

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Get Rich Edition I think 7

Got a handful of stacks
better grab an umbrella
I make it rain (I make it rain)

So many future plans lately, it's been thrilling. Breaking news for all the people concerned of my well-being, we have turned the heat on. Exciting news! Now it's socially acceptable for me to walk around wearing... use your imagination.

BUT although the heat is on- making my movements slower, more comfortable, and less labored- My mind still races with ideas on financial stability. This is real folks. How can I roll around in piles of money?

1- Children's Story
Word! I'm going to pen a FANTASTIC children's book. It will likely be a 16-book series so that parents are forced to buy their kids every single book. And the resulting merchandise from the book!! That will be nice for my profits. The plan is to make this book really exciting with adorable yet relate-able characters. I will absolutely definitely not pay someone to illustrate this book, why would I want ~30 percent of my profits going to some Kook artist that doesn't fully understand my vision? I'll do the drawings myself. Ok, so I figure each book is going to bring in roughly $45,000. So if each of the 16 books makes that much, I'll bring in $720,000. I'm going to give 25% to my agent, because what sort of hooligan wouldn't. So that leaves me with just a hair over 1/2 a million dollars. SMACK. Then add in the profits from stuffed animals, action figures, posters, and maybe movie deals? We're looking at somewhere in the region of 1.3 million dollars just from the children's novel alone.

How long could you live off of 1.3 million dollars? An excellent long time.

2- Cran-ye West
That's it! I'm going to be a Kanye West impersonator. Not many reasons why him over someone else, other than the fact that I know the words to lots of his songs and the My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy album was SICK. Let's be honest, the real 'Ye can't be bothered to make appearances at kids birthday parties.

The financial statistics, here is what you really care about. My estimates are based off of this chart-

I don't want to overestimate, so let's just assume that each gig as Cran-ye I'll pull in $3,500. I don't want to wear myself down too much, so I'll only do 3 events per week. That's $10,500 a week. Also known as $182,000 a year. Kanye is a busy guy, so I'm willing to bet that pretty soon he'd be asking me to step in for him at various events such as award shows, Super Bowl performances, and interviews on The Montel Jordan show. I'd charge him a flat rate of $100,000 per appearance. Assuming 10 of those appearances a year, that's a pile of cash about the size of $1,000,000.

I've been practicing.

With just these two, I'll be bringing in about on the positive side of 2 million dollars a year. I'd definitely buy name brand cereal with that change. This a fast life, we are on a crash course. What do you think I rap for? To push a f***in Rav 4?

Word to Martha Stewart, if I could park a buick

Then I could flip a Brinks truck- I got the heart to do it

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Living in Luxury

I've been thinking lots about what it would be like to live if money wasn't a problem. IE, for those people who buying a new Audi is the equivalent of me buying a drip coffee. I'm not really sure why I've been thinking about cool houses so much recently. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that we haven't turned our heat on yet and when I wake up our house is in the low 50s and when I get home from school it's 54 and when Matt cooks for 4 hours it gets up to 56 but drops again when I walk in the room because I'm such a cool character.

I'm also sure that house-lust hasn't had anything to do with me watching Entourage on Netflix. But it actually might be because of that. When I was younger (yesterday) (actually lots younger than yesterday) I would draw up elaborate dream house sketches. Very detailed blueprints including where I wanted hallways to be, what would be in each room, how many garages I'd have, and where my basketball hoop would live. And I know all of these because I remember really weird things, not important things like subjunctive conjugations for spanish tests, but weird unimportant things like layouts of houses I designed when I was 11.

I think this could be an acceptable job for me to have. Sort of like interior design, except more like interior excellence or something? I could only work with quad-billionaires and fulfill their living-dreams. I actually have had one client so far, here is my portfolio.

Whatevaaa. Here's some features I remember specifically from some of my house blueprints. Speaking of Blueprint, I've been listening to so much Jay-Z lately. THAT could be the factor why I'm talking about houses.

I'm in the hall already, on the wall already
I'm a work of art, I'm a Warhol already
On another level, on another plane already
H-O-V I got my own lane already

BUT the features. Right. These are from like 10 years deep of memories so roll with me.

-24,000 sq ft on the beach in Hawaii. I didn't know much about how big that actually was. I thought it was a modest size based off of what I thought the house I lived in was. That was an incorrect estimate, so the 24,000 sq ft in Hawaii will be bigger than I'm used to.

-Most hallways will have movie screens as walls. There will constantly be video happening so as you walk down the hallway you will be a part of that scene. Some of the hallways: Underwater extravaganza (fish swimming, etc! Sharks!), a medieval battle scene, a dinner feast, and a food fight (I was 11ish, ok?!?!).

-Hammocks everywhere. 

-Indoor swimming pool. Why did I need this if I lived on the beach in Hawaii?

-Me, being intelligent, blueprinted a heated shower outside.

-Spiral staircases (plural, that means more than one)

-Mini Nerf basketball hoops in several locations around the house. I would definitely have the trick shots mastered so that I could impress my guests with my debonair no-look shots.

-Movie theater

-Bowling alley

-Rope swing from second to first floor

-Slamball court.

Right! So get building. But as I've aged realism has set in a bit, and I've come to accept the fact that I will never have a bowling alley in my house. Too bad!

I think this place is SICK! I'd like to live here. And it's in Australia! Great. This awesome (remember, without ME it's just aweso, and that's not liveable) house is able to rent on a nightly basis for only ~2700 a night.

I think that with unlimited funds I would have a guest house that was a tree house. Come visit!

And something like this.

I would like this, and I would like to jump out of the window every morning when I wake up. Then have cappuccinos while reading the daily-post.

Ok, face it. I'll probably live in a castle at some point also. Shoes optional.

How am I possible going to fund all this? Oh, right. I'm really far into the novel right now.

In other news, happy November.  Lots of people are contributing to no-shave hooliganism. Here is me after 1 day.

Why??

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