Well, I've been able to ride in real, honest-to-goodness sunshine the last two days, and by the way things look right now, I should be able to get in two more rides during the day this Saturday and Sunday.

While this may seem lame to some, as a person who works from 8am-5pm, five days a week, I rarely see sunshine, unless it's through a window or perambulating the ten seconds from my car to the back door of the office. And days like this, despite the 35 degree weather, are pretty nice. I can go out, ride my bike for 2-3hrs, and get away from the hustle and bustle of life, to one degree or another. Especially on a mountain bike.

And, somehow, I got sunburned today. Perhaps it was the sun reflecting off the snow on the path, or the fact that my skin has reverted to its normal winter shade of "deathly ill white" and has little to no ability to resist burning at this point in the year. Whatever it is, I don't mind.

Anyways, I'm off to bed. Going MTBing with Jay and Ed tomorrow, and perhaps Tim if he can drag his lazy ass out of bed.

Oh, and the new word of the week is "roostin'"; it's an MTB term that I think relates to railing a hard turn on the very edge of your tire's traction/grip. Stolen from Adam Craig, US MTB champ. Funny dude.

Motivation: Falling

Maybe it's the weather, maybe it's the lack of any (positive or negative) news, bicycle racing related or otherwise.

Right now, every time I look at my bike, I just want to go back inside, climb the stairs, hop into bed and pull the blankets to my chin, and go to sleep. Hell, every time I leave the house, I just want to get back in bed.

Maybe putting my non-disc PT wheel on the Paragon will help motivate me. Seeing feedback, aka how terrible I am right now, is the best source of "you best start ridin', boy" mojo I can think of right now*. Well, no. Getting your ass handed to you at SuperWeek is pretty damn motivating, but there aren't any 100km/62mi crits right now in this neck of the woods.

Or maybe some new 29er wheels?

Or a new 700c carbon rim? (Mother, are you reading this?)

Don't get me wrong. While I'm fond of new toys, bike parts don't "motivate" me. I don't race my bike to get free bikes or chains or inner tube caps. A nice perk, but not the reason for my prolonged interest in the sport. Bicycles and their components DO, however, give me something to look forward to, to help pass the time. I suppose any hobby would do that; I just happen to be sufficiently boring that cycling is both my only hobby, and athletic pursuit of choice. Cars and women might be a bit more normal, but if I day dream about either one of those in any detail whilst out on the bike, I might get hit by the former and run over the latter. So, I keep it nice and boring with bikes.

*=To any "socially networking" L'Eberts (that's French for "The Ebert") out there, I've been riding quite consistently. I've gained 2lbs, not 30lbs as I commented earlier.

Politics

I very rarely comment on any of my political beliefs, in person or through my blog.

That said, today is an exception, and one that I hope, in this highly contentious voting year, will be forgiven.

At lunch today, I heard two statements that I found to be, well, wrong.

1) "Liberals aren't religious." This was in the context of church attendance rates between liberals and conservatives, and how the way to fix what is wrong with the country, most notably the poverty level, is through the churches, and the communities they serve.

2) "That's not what this country was founded on." Relating to the founding fathers' ideals and principles that they had when wrote the Constitution and established the early form of government that came to be the democratic form of governance we have today.

I didn't want to say this directly to anyone, but their comments struck me as particularly humorous. Given the fact that several of the founding fathers were atheists, or had little to no real religious leanings, I think it's strange to combine statement #1 and #2 in one argument. That, and the founding fathers were the liberals at the time; the conservative colonists were regarded as Royalists and had little to no involvement in the formation of the constitution.

So, I guess I'm either too liberal to understand, or many republicans are mistaken about the values they hold so dear, and prevent them from seeing and understanding another viewpoint.

**I should point out that the only issue that I really care about is the environmental policy that the two candidates are bringing to the table. Obama has me there. Neither of them are going to win my heart, but he seems to have something bearing a passing concern for the world climate, and the future of the planet.

If I had my way, every SUV sold would include an additional gas guzzler tax, with the proceeds going directly to "fuel" clean energy research, development, and production. At this point, it might just be pissing into the ocean (as I firmly believe that most coastal European cities will be underwater in the next 20 years regardless of any efforts likely to occur within the next presidential term) but I think clean energy could and should be the way of the future. Sure, there have been many periods in the planet's history warmer than this; that is very evident when you look at the fossil record and rock composition of the central US. But, aside from a catastrophic event such as an asteroid collision creating a world-wide dust cloud, there has never been, to the knowledge of academics, a period of such rapid global temperature change as the planet is currently experiencing. It is very real, and very scary.

-End rant.

Winter Training Mantra.

Mother! There's a mad man riding in the streets,

And he's humming a tune,

And he's snarling at dogs,

And he still has twenty more miles to go!

"We will never be here again."

A lot of people don't know who Svein Tuft is; and plenty more didn't know who he was until Worlds a short while ago.

Dude got 2nd in the Worlds TT behind one of the Bert Grabsch*. He also has a pretty sweet tattoo on his forearm which is oddly inspirational/haunting/whatever.

It says "We will never be here again." Not sure where he got it, but I like it.











*I hope and pray that they are both clean, for their sake, and for the sport.