I read in the economist this weekend that it has become common for people to break up with their girlfriend/boyfriend on facebook by changing their status from “in a relationship” to “single”. I laughed out loud when I read this. A true sign of the times.
I guess it’s time for me to get a facebook profile.
JB started an amusing thread on MTBR “Post Something Worthwhile”. So it became something of a quest in New Orleans to tell my story, in pictures, about bikes and other MTBR content, and other things I loved and missed.
A more detailed post about the trip to follow…
Chicks on Bikes
Trail Dog
Turbo Dog
Black Dog
Canal Ride
Jambalaya
Commuting
Computing
Beer
Giant Boobs
Ozomatli
i get it, she gets it. if only G got it.
we need 2 more hours in each day. or maybe a move.
Over the years, mostly at tournaments but sometimes biking, people have come up to me, or more appropriately Kila (or Tsaina) and asked if they might get their dog fix. Upon which they engage in vigorous loving and scratching and slobbering with the dog for a few minutes until the monkey is fed, and then they thank me and Kila (or Tsaina) and move on.
Its like banging a hooker, except sweeter.
I understand completely.
But walking in The Quarter i find myself looking at all the little children and expecting one of them to go “HI DADDY!” and I want to hug them. which is odd, and creepy, cause I hate most children that are not my own. And asking if I might hug them all over for a moment is a good way to get arrested.
This is junkie talk.
I need my G fix. I need it now. I need it all the time. Sometimes I wake up and she is across the bed and has been for most of the night and i know I will not have a well day unless immediate spooning takes place. Sometimes I need to hug her and have her smile. Sometimes I need her to run rampant around the kitchen and me to grab her by her pants and force her into shoes to force the reality of the day and my connection to her upon me.
I plan to get a tatoo in her honor. Eventually.
I miss my tinyHuman
Once there was a dream known as The Wedding Website.
It began in the waning days of aught four. When i returned from our honeymoon full of emotion and the idle time of the annual xmas slowdown at work. I wanted to post all our magnificent memories, but neither my slapdash current Wedding Website, nor any of my humble or profound attempts at web design thus far seemed worthy of such weighty and precious content. So began The Cruel Tutelage of CSS.
Its first test was here in the Big Crack.
and here again, programatically better and with bugs killed, in Moab.
Until finally a year later the code was perfect, the style honed, and V. 1.0: Bryce & Zion looked quite nice if i may say so. All that was left was to upload some photos.
ahem…
…about those photos.
See, our photographer was a really good guy. And this was when digital was just blowing up. And somewhere between us saying “we want digital copies” and him hearing “we want some digital cam pics” the really sweet photos he took on his film camera with all his artistry and training were developed to print. It is way way way way way easier and cheaper to develop film to digital files off the roll. Alas, we do have the negatives. So we borrowed a scanner from my buddy Eric, and we scanned, and filtered, and filtered in other programs, and resized, and re-filtered, and removed chip’n’scratch, and refiltered, and manually touched up. Beckie did this for weeks and I am to this day not sure if she quite had a sound methodology since I never could follow it, then I was left with finishing it. Nice! And about 400 hours and one tinyHuman later, we had some not-so-bad pics.
What would this post be without a few.
The Wedding Website will not be. i must finally accept the inevitable and most of all my fundamental loss-of-interst in the project. Photo albums and the like have always been a means for me to keep my skills sharp and learn new things, not produce anything commerical. Cripes the logo on this blog is my 80×80 mtbr avatar, and has not changed in a year since I learned how to achieve the photo effect (feathering) I wanted; the actual production of it became a tedious chore i have yet to complete. The wedding photos i have on the computer, and I have a dvd burner – the web is not needed here, or more appropriately, it would be lots of work with no payoff. There are some stories to tell, there will be another post, my epic toast will be logged, other memories will be captured. Think of this post as The Story of the Wedding Website: a story of a story yet to come.
and somehow because it was a business reservation, i got free drink tix too. Or maybe that just comes gratis with a flight to New Orleans.
i worked with this for 1 post and found like 10 bugs. I don’t feel like posting this shit anywhere, cause i’m weeks after the release and i don’t feel like dealing with accounts and email and forums. Perhaps sometime I will see about the beta tester process, but only if they let me communicate with the key developers. I’m not farting around on a forum I am too advanced for that.
1 hour, i found:
What a piece of shit!
i leave for New Orleans at o’dark’thirty on Thursday, which means a busy day Wednesday and 1.5 hour workout at best. thurs-sat i will be lucky to do some yoga in my room, though i will fret conscientiously about the hotel gym, and Sunday i have G all day – 2 hours tops in the trailer. Today had to be productive. it was looking very unlikely dealing with the maids 
, the hard-sell A/C guys 
, and the subtleties of perl equality operators on strings in JSON format 
. None left me feeling good, but i finally got out at 5 to ride the roadie with brand-spankin’ new bar tape and a nice new back tire with color co-ordinated blue walls.
I’ve done Usery Loop like 5 times in the past 2ish weeks, so my roadie legs are starting to come back but i needed a big ride which really meant the whole Saguaro Lake\Usery 42ish miles and 2.5 hrs of hills. Oh well, i could take some bailouts and make it a 1:50ish if needed. So i set out with no intentions of hammering, and didn’t, even so far as to stop on the climb up Recker to double check my wheel. it felt weird, but i stopped thinking about it after 30 minutes or so. I didn’t all-out bomb down Power for fear of the new-tire weirdness and only reached about 38mph, last time i was at 43mph. It seemed like the tone of 90% effort was set.
Anywho, arriving at the Butcher Jones turnoff i was only at 47 min which is several minutes below my usual split of about 50 there. weird cause i had no tailwind. the bar tape and tire made me feel pretty, but hardly worth 3 minutes.
Anywho, to the B-line and back and dropping another smidge off the split. I gave a bunch of it back on the last part of the climb out of the beach, then just focused on good solid spinning arriving back at the stop sign in 1:42. My normal split from here on the Usery Loop of 41-43 minutes would get me just about at my best time on this route, that is, if my normal time from here would not be affected by the previous 1:42.
i tried not to think too much beyond 41-43 more minutes of finishing-the-hell up and ending my stressful day, the wind on this route can make or break a ride pretty easily depending on how it is blowing. But I was right on pace at the Hawes turnoff 25 minutes later. I shot my wad up that hill. y’know…why the hell not i was in position for a PR…i’d be pissed at myself if i didn’t try. And i did, in 2:20. go figure? 
doing it again next time should be my next goal, but the 3 days in New Orleans make me afraid to nut-up to it for at least a week after i get back so i can work off the gumbo and Turbo Dogs.
Any man who’s relationship can be measured in increments greater than a lap dance or 1s and 5s watches chick flicks. Its an investment in your long-term sexual well-being. We don’t use them to pick up babes, for that, comedies work best closely followed by movies with Matt Damon. Though personally, i prefer my yoga class.
Don’t deny it, don’t resent it, take charge!
Do’s:
Load the queue. Juno sits at the top of my Q, and currently has a short wait. Right below it at #2 is 3:10 to Yuma. Guess what we’re watching this weekend, though i get credit for trying to get her choice?! hooray for gunplay!
“Accidentally” get the wrong movie. You can justify Million Dollar Baby instead of Bridges of Madison County, since they were both late Clint Eastwood movies and sound sorta feminine. Don’t get too greedy, this ploy won’t work with The Outlaw Josey Wales.
Conveniently forget a crucial component to dinner, or if you don’t forget it, feed it to the dog! So we were eating shrimp and ooops ran out of melted butter. Never mind that the dog puked up 2 whole sticks in the garage – the dog might eat that again, and you get to be the hero and run out to the grocery store. “its ok honey, i know how much you wanted to watch Moonlight Mile” Reward yourself with a 6-pack at the store for being so sensitive of her viewing preferences.
Create an immediate man-crisis that requires your attention. Sabotaging a toilet to run over is almost too easy. See above about your selfless heroism while you are not seeing The Pianist.
Sometimes you gotta give in, so pick a good chick flick like The Devil Wears Prada – its not actually a chick flick, but a good movie with women characters. Here’s how to tell the difference – if you see a trailer for it during a football game, you will be ok. the ride might get bumpy — don’t panic, the NFL would not let you down! If you see a trailer for it during Desperate Housewives, start drinking early if it arrives in your mailbox. If that fails, i think about all the free porn I get cause my wife works for the cable company.
Suppose the unthinkable happens, and she comes home with a copy of Whale Rider, turn this disaster into an opportunity! . Be nice, be supportive, volunteer to to dishes. I missed the entire second half of Elizabethtown cleaning up stir-fry and taking out the recycling. Chicks love men who do dishes.
Don’ts
rent any movie with a heretofore hot or entertaining actress that is described as “mesmerizing”, “effervescent” or “[heretofore hot or entertaining actress] plays against type”. The Good Girl single-handedly ruined my Friends spankbank. even the guest stars.
Suggest your girl goes to a movie with her gay friend. Now at first this seems like a great idea for all involved, but the good company and complete lack of sexual tension will keep them sipping wine spritzers at Applebee’s all night talking and they’ll never even make the movie. She will, however, come home with a head full of viewing suggestions and before you can say “damn you Will & Grace” you will have a mailbox full of Something’s Gotta Give and Six Feet Under series discs.
Gamble. Hilary Swank might be hot, Boys Don’t Cry wasn’t.
I watched Into the Wild tonight. It was ok, but fundamentally the film could not capture the beauty of the book, imo. I just got tired after 2.5 hours, I don’t know why as the scenery and Emile Hirsch were excellent, but something about the book and the way is swirled you round into the predicament like peeling an onion resonated deeply. It sucked you in. When the author Krakauer talks about climbing an ice column, and his own fears, it connects you to the 3rd-party character of Chris as if a narrative. The movie tried, and its attempt to delicately portray the protagonist was well done, and maybe without the book, I would have loved it. I certainly would suggest watching it in any case, you could do a lot worse. The story is utterly compelling, for when Chris walks into the wild he feels and we believe that the moment is a logical extension of the moments before, this decision is follows holistically from past decisions and actions, that he is ready…sorta.
And such is a perfect summary of my current situation, in both work and play.
The other day in my cube, I had 4 very very brilliant developers each of whom I respect and enjoy working with arguing passionately about a coding algorithm. I believe the average IQ in the conversation was 160 at least, and the group was arguably responsible for at least 25% of the programs in our company. I just tried to hang on and not run my mouth so people wouldn’t realize how dumb I am.
The other day, I rode all of 24th St. It was not without dabs and repeats, but it was all rolled and without a crash. I launched into it at 6:45 with the setting sun after a stressful day at work – just a fun little downhill to relax me at the end of the day.
I find myself working closely with people who have 50 reports, who are The Alpha-Geeks upon which a major company is built, who add value to our world as only very special and creative and skilled people can. I am contributing to products that millions of people may touch and millions of dollars will pass through. People listen to what I suggest, and come to me for answers.
I wear pads almost every ride on the Heckler. And the things I am riding have become notable. My last crash was in March at Milagrosa, and relatively speaking was not that bad. But I am playing at much higher stakes now, and the consequences of a major mistake are significant.
I feel oddly cool and secure, strangely soothed and comfortable. I did not arrive here by bounds, but by 10 years of hard work and aggressiveness and hunger and joy and curiosity. I believe in myself and my experience, my conservative approach and reliance on best practices. I gather confidence from my track record, i have faith in my methodology, i trust my decision-making. Yet when i look down i get dizzy, and feel exposed and naked and standing on vapor. How did I get up here? Why are you following me? I am faking my way through this out of desperation not to crash!!!
If no one sees you panic, are you afraid? If no one sees you fuck up, did you succeed?
Who wants to just punch a clock and ride an easy trail everyday anyway?