James Pearl Thinks Blogging is Dead

UtahJoe

Team Workhorse
Team MTBNJ Halter's
I have said it countless times...There are guys I race against in the the open class who never, ever ride a mountain bike outside of showing up at the race that day....The ride the trainer almost exclusively and do extremely well....So while trainer only training would destroy my results, I dont think they are hurting yours.

Your a great bike racer, however you suck at doing Tough Mudders...Who gives a shit about the latter.
 

stb222

Love Drunk
Jerk Squad
I felt ok to start, so I decided to hit the climb hard and try to beat my previous record of 73:13. Today I cranked out 69:19, an almost 4 minute improvement on the previous time. Ok...so...I've come to the realization that this Zwift training stuff is going to sound like white noise to many/most of you and nothing is going to stick until I actually do something tangible (e.g. not lose a race). That brings me to the question I referenced earlier, and maybe this is specifically for @stb222, since I thought of you today as I was finishing up. And no, I don't often think of you when I am sweaty and in underoos. Just today.
Asking for honesty - was my answer about riding inside not being a tangible detriment to my performance something that sounded reasonable? My take is that weight loss and overall base fitness are going to benefit me far greater than riding in a field at this time in my training. So the question I posit to you, or whoever wants to answer: Is my reasoning unbelievable, half-believable, or mostly/totally-believable? I specifically ask this question because of this dichotomy of reality that faces me as I get off the Zwiffer today:
I don't think it is a tangible detriment, as obviously fitness / weight loss / power are all major components to doing well in races. So from that perspective, it is certainly reasonable. However, over the years, there has been much discussion, specifically for cross, over free watts, cornering technique, powering out of corners and other cross skills and it looks like the only time to have been doing those is during actual races.

I also think there is something to be said for hardening yourself to weather conditions, but plenty of people call bullshit on that one. I think I am off the topic of my originally question as it was related to weather conditions, but you seem to be doing a lot of endurance or longer interval type stuff, which make sense for a weight loss perspective, but if you are trying to do well in a race (secondary goal, i know), maybe some specific cross related intervals would help?
 

stb222

Love Drunk
Jerk Squad
I love this show. Now, I'm descended from New York Jews so that may have some influence, but my shiksa wife loves it also.
It was good, the shock factor from the first few episodes faded towards the end of the season, however looking forward to the next season.
 
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MadisonDan

Well-Known Member
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Mrs. Maisel was a fun, easy watch. New season drops Dec 5th I think. One of my friends from HS's older brother was a producer or something on the show, so they were all out there for the Emmy's or Golden Globes or something. Not that it matters. Still cool though.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
October's gone, with the wind
-Lynyrd Skynyrd

Sleep (6.9) has been pretty good for me again this month. I have retained my phone position where it stays out of arm's reach of where I sleep. The darker mornings have seen me sleeping later, and the colder temps also helps. Average for October is 6.9, overall in 2 months is 6.89. I guess this is where I naturally wake up. I feel pretty refreshed most days. Overall far less sleepy than I used to be. I never stay up staring at the screen anymore. Major plus.

Exercise (41.57) was my lowest of the year and goes to the whole short/hard training approach that cross season affords. Average month is 49.25. Strava says I have biked 444 hours this year and done 496 overall. My own log says 493 on the year. A goal of 500 biking-only would be a fairly reasonable goal I think.

Blog (31) has been hit every day again this month, 31-for-31. Average of 25 posts per month. I know I recently said I was going to dial it back but all I have really done was to not start blogging until 9pm every night. Seems like I can produce a lot of words in an hour. They may not be as well thought out. I am always thinking of how to make it interesting for myself and the reader. Appreciate the feedback people give. Much huggy bear.

Book (27) was not worked on every day, 27/31. This is not going to make sense after I finish this Thing That Has Not Been Named. At some point I need to name it, and finish it, and release it. After that I want to continue writing in some form. Next year I will change this from Book to Write, where Write is different than Blog, which gets its name from Web Log. It's log, it's log, it's big, it's heavy, it's wood. 57 total days working on the book so far. I go from "this is decent" to "this is nominal rubbish" on a daily basis. Such is the life, I suppose. I have a plethora of bad habits that I am trying to work on.

Non-work life (18) was again lower than normal but once again, we had some blank space with the wedding and I have not been travelling. It's easy for that number to rocket up when you're away for 10 days a month. On average we do 23 non-work things per month which frankly is too many. 18 was good, even busy, given no travel.

Some of the things we did:
* Get Married
* Had Family in town
* Rode CR
* Went to several of Zac's soccer games. I count it when we go and watch as fans as opposed to parents just picking him up
* Podcasted 3 times
* Saw Disenchanted at the Chester Theater
* Went to Hilltop to see Jim and get shoes
* Hippo cross
* Mohunk day with Alex & Mark
* Addams Family with the kids at the Little Dover Theater
* Brite Nites with 2 kids and the Utah's
* Jets-Vikings game
* Dinner with Utahs
* HPCX x2

Weight (201.x) is a slightly lower average this month and I am sitting right at the 200+ mark. I am hoping to see 199 in the next 30 days. I will address more of the comments from yesterday's feedback, but my 10,000 foot plan for this year was weight loss, then have a race season, then more weight loss. I think putting a break to flat-line a bit in there when you push yourself is a good thing. I also think it better sets me up for 2019 to do it this way as opposed to focusing on weight loss for a year and not racing at all.

Book (1) was only Cryptonomicon which was really good, just very long. It would have been better had I not decided to write a book in the middle of this, but this is what I ended up doing. I will pick up another of his someday but right now I am probably looking to go SciFi with my next read. I also have the last Murderbot to read yet, as well as another book Mark suggested that I bought but did not read, the name of which escapes me. 25 total books read this year.

Movies (3) was good, with 9 coming in the 4 months I have been tracking. I know this is a weird one for some people but I do actually look at books and movies as a way to learn more about stories and storytelling. I think it would do me good to continue to absorb this stuff and I am sure I will watch more movies this winter as I crank out many base miles in the basement. This month I watched:

* Fahrenheit 451 (do not watch)
* Battle of the Sexes (watch this)
* Galaxy Quest (also watch this)

Social (19) was a tad higher, which goes to the whole not-traveling-for-work thing. Average is 15 so it was a good social month. Many people seen this month:

* Oma/Opa
* Many people at the wedding
* @Glenn Rides After 4 PM CST & Mike & @fidodie in an effort to fix our electricity
* @seanrunnette many times, podcasting & racing
* @jimvreeland at Hilltop
* The crew at Hippo - @graveyardman67 @seanrunnette @Magic @jShort @UtahJoe @fidodie @jmanic
* @2Julianas and @MurderBort at Mohunk
* @Kirt stopped by one day
* @UtahJoe and family at the pumpkin thing, then again at dinner the night before HPCX
* My step-dad at the Jets game
* HPCX crew of @seanrunnette @jShort @Magic @pooriggy

Pretty good month of making sure we see our friends.

Drinking (569) has reached 569 days without a drink.

November is too vague to say for sure. I think we have this planned for sure:

* Go to Duke
* Go to Pittsburgh

Other than that it's hard for me to envision how this month plays out.
 

graveyardman67

Well-Known Member
Team MTBNJ Halter's
So the whole racing thing. Much like you I’ve not raced (really) in years. But I did come out this year just to support the scene in one case and to just be a part of the group. Hell, I’d like to win, but even was good it was a mystery what version what show up.

The above post nails it. It’s not about going out and your best performance. It’s about the balance and doing something you really love that let’s face it, not many people can do.

You know what I remember. Doing the Blueberry crit in the rain. I had no socks so wore white tube socks. It was you, Fred, Ilya and I. We didn’t win. But shit that was the most miserable fun I had that year.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
I remember the Blueberry Road Race, which was a 2-lap race around a sort of triangle-ish loop. I also remember getting major-league boxed in at the end of that race because they were absolutely all over us about the yellow line rule. We were trying to get out front before the last corner and it was just impossible. I finally gave up, but I think the 3 of you chased. I don't remember exactly. I miss those days of waking up at 4:30am and meeting in random places to drive to these races. That was a short flash-in-the-pan piece of our biking history, but it was a fun one. You drank blueberry coffee back then.

I would love to get back to some level of that fun we had. I do realize that losing weight will be part of that process for me. I'm not totally dumb, just partially so. My power is decent, but not what it was. My weight is decent, but not where it needs to be. I know math is math, and the golden ratio, so to speak. I am trying to have as much fun as I can while I get there. For the most part, and the year is not over yet, 2018 has been a pretty fun year. At last count we've ridden over 30 different parks and more than half are out of state. I also know it's a long process. When I lost weight last time, it was rapid-fast. And I look back at that and think to myself, it wasn't maintainable. This current process is about making it a sustainable weight loss approach. I just read a book about a 100 year old guy. I need to think of the long game. I don't want to plump up like a Ball Park Frank when I hit 60 years old.

Speaking of the book, I finished The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared. It was good, well worth it. That's a really long title though. I'm undecided on what to read next.

I also watched Black Mirror: Hang the DJ today while riding. This is probably another 1 of my top 5. The previous two mostly sucked but this one may actually be my favorite from a story perspective.

I did a Zwift race today because I don't want to be tempted to do Bubble tomorrow. In all I rode for 2 hours and a minute, the race being almost an hour of that. The route went up into the skyway so it was a bit of a shit show once the elevation started pounding down on the group. Even with tired legs I made the selection but today's selection was less insane than normal. The lead-in was really long and when it hit the climb up, all hell broke loose. I then sat in a 35-45 pack for a while, and then exploded when we hit the KOM Arch climb, which is just brutal in a race. I think we climbed it 3 times today, which was rough. I came off that first climb in 45th overall then chipped my way back into the top 40, like a pop hit from the 80's. Eventually found myself in a 35-40th place fight with 4 other people. That ended when we hit the last climb. I think I was 7th in the Cs in the end. Not sure where overall.

As I said, I did this race to spike any notion of doing Bubble. I'm going to spend some quality time with the family this weekend, which actually started tonight as I had a daddy-daughter date with Julia. Took her to an Italian place down the road and it was pretty good. As I said yesterday, having a hard time justifying a race tomorrow given my results this year and OH WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT, it just started to rain outside. Isn't that splendid?

This whole 2018 and then the coming winter is going to be a lead-in for 2019. What does that mean? I don't know. I'll go ahead and call bullshit on myself now. What does that mean? Ok, well ideally it means I am halfway to where I want to be on the scale as the cross season ends in 6+ weeks. It also means I have dipped my toes back into the race scene a little bit, which I think I needed. Then I can put a little more focus on putting in big hours this winter in an effort to shed as much of the remaining weight as I can. Ideally I would come out of winter in the 190 range, then the rest of the year I would hope to slowly approach 180, sort of like adding 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 +... infinitely approaches 1.

Then next year when cross is here I can think more about race-specific workouts @stb222. Nationals are in Washington state next year. So I can't say that we'll have that as a target in a year from now.

So back to the weekend, I'll ride inside the next 2 days in an effort to get as close to 4.5 hours as I can. Other than that, tomorrow is soccer-soccer-Chinese school, then we are going to a light show at the RVCC Planetarium late afternoon then I'm going to make them watch Galaxy Quest when we get home. Sunday the boys & D will go to the NICA-try-it ride and then we're going to hit the YMCA and spend some time there. I want Julia to hit the pool and practice some of her swimming strokes/technique as she has recently announced she wants to try out for the BAC swim team. The tryout is 2 weeks from today. She's excited to be part of it again. I really hope this sticks.

We also have some NOT-official dates for the 2019 race calendar. These should be finalized soon enough.

March 3: Short Track #1
March 10: Short Track #2
March 17: Short Track #3
April 28: Mooch Madness
May 11: Stewart PI [insert name here]

Ok. Weekend. GO!
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
The.

The Chinese do not have articles. They Do not say "the Chinese" but instead say Chinese person. Or really China person. Zhong guo ren. Breaking that down, it actually translates like this: Middle country person. Zhong means middle, which is from way-forever back when, at the point they named the country. Of course it makes sense that it was "middle country" because you, the royal YOU, as the subject, are the middle of everything. So China literally translates to Middle Country: Zhong Guo. Ren means person. Chinese person. There is no article. No a/an/the in this language.

I am not exactly sure how you would translate the title of this post into Chinese. The. I title it as such, because the day went as a series of "the" elements. You will see what I mean below. I take notes through the day. I'm a notebook person. So today, the notes started with The this and The that, and it went from there. The The. Not sure how that band name would have translated into Chinese either.

And on to my day. One The at a time.

The rain. Man oh man, it was just miserable last night. I woke up several times in the middle of the night and it was dropping cats & dogs on the roof. I never had any real doubt that skipping today was the right call. But this would have sealed that decision if I had been harboring any reservations.

The scale. I woke up today feeling thinner than normal so I decided that I would wake up and weigh myself. I thought long and hard about this, because the last time I felt this way, I was disappointed in what it showed me. After going to the bathroom I decided to skip it. I feel better, and if it says I was 1 pound more than last time, what good would that do me? This is something that people who do not suffer from this shitty predilection to pack on pounds do not understand. After slaughtering myself for 15 weeks on the bike, I'm just afraid to get on it and have it say something god-awful, like 205.

The ride. I was up at 5:20 and on the bike before 6:00. After yesterday's race, today was just more pounding out of miles. I did 2:06 on the bike and while I was not paying much attention, I looked up and saw a big arrow on the screen that shows it's someone you follow. Sped up and saw @taylor185 in front of me and gave him kudos but wasn't going as fast as he was on the day, so I left him go and got back to my movie. Today's ride was just filling up the silo with corn. My analogy machine is broken.

The movie. Watched Dunkirk. The only reason I know what it Dunkirk is is (is is, I hate this grammatical construct even if it is acceptable by Merriam Webster) because I watched The Darkest Hour. It was a good movie, not great. It's a good trainer movie as you can let it roll as it rolls while you flip your attention back & forth as needed. Would recommend it.

The Kingdom Trail email. The trails are closed for mountain bikes as of sundown yesterday. It's sad when this day rolls around every year. Not that it's something I would do, but I could do it if I wanted to. I could just wake up one day and decide to drive to KT, ride for 4 hours, then drive home. Ok, it's a crazy day, but it's possible. Well, it was. Now it is not until next year. I look forward to the email reopening the trails.

The soccer. I took Simon to soccer which allowed D to go to the gym this morning. He had 2 games, first was a tie, second they won. We saw a really pretty red-orange tree on the way there, and talked about it the whole way from the tree to the field. As a side note, the total drive from our house to the field is about 1.1 miles. Maybe less. But I mean it was still a really pretty tree. On a related topic, I suggested to @pooriggy that he should buy some candles to ward off the imminent winter doldrums. Oh, and enjoy the trees.

The Chinese school. Dropped Julia off for 12:30 and picked her up at 2:30. Being the first Saturday of the month, the good vendor was there. Every week they rotate and today is the scallion pancake, dumpling, soup dumplings, wonton, and pork bun vendor. I spent $54 there today. This is the shit. I will tage @qclabrat just for this paragraph alone. First Saturday of the month, WRHS, 12:30-2:30. Best to go at 2:30. No lines and they bring so much stuff they have never come close to running out.

The editing. Finished up chapter 31 today. This was more well-written then some other ones. This makes me remember how some days were good, and others not so good. I think if (when) I do this again, I need to take more time writing the first pass. This editing process is too arduous. And frankly, it's nerve-wracking because I feel like I am constantly remembering possible contradictions that I need to go revisit to make sure I'm being consistent.

The laser show. Went to see a laser show at the RVCC planetarium. It's basically a light show on the round screen to music. We discussed taking them to see the Beatles or Pink Floyd show. But went with this general one instead. I think the kids liked it enough.

The movie. Second movie of the day. Watched Galaxy Quest with the family. Everyone really enjoyed it. This has been a double win thanks to @seanrunnette.

The writing. Here we are!

The plan for tomorrow. Ride in the morning, where I am hoping to get 2:25 to hit 14 hours on the week. After that D & Zac are going to the NICA ride and I will stay here with Simon and Julia and probably edit 32, maybe even 33? The chapters get a little shorter from here on out which may be easier or it may make them harder as they ended up thinner and may need a little bolstering. I think 1 of the last 8 in particular is ripe for a possible total rewrite. Also plan on going to the YMCA to swim, as noted yesterday. I may start my work week tomorrow night so I can pre-load as much as possible. I'm not looking forward to the next 7 work days.

The end. Porky Pig goes here.
 

Santapez

Well-Known Member
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Every week they rotate and today is the scallion pancake, dumpling, soup dumplings, wonton, and pork bun vendor. I spent $54 there today. This is the shit. I will tage @qclabrat just for this paragraph alone. First Saturday of the month, WRHS, 12:30-2:30. Best to go at 2:30. No lines and they bring so much stuff they have never come close to running out.

Is there a schedule? Soup Dumpings are hard to find... I'd hit this up.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Change the Clocks, Goldilocks.

Even though I woke up at 5:30 (new time) I managed to get 8 hours of sleep last night. It's a nice bonus when it happens, and to get that much sleep yet wake up so early is a nice little quirk in the time-space continuum. As a side note, after I wrote the last phrase of that previous sentence, I went down a Wikipedia wormhole of quantum entanglement (QE). As much as I want to tweak this idea into a future story idea about using QE for FTL communication, I don't think I can pass it off well enough. I mean, maybe I will anyway, in time. I was thinking along the lines of measuring particle A which then determines particle B's state. It doesn't matter what the state of particle A or B is, just that it was measured at all - essentially that having *any* state counts as a binary 1, and not having a state counts as 0. But I think this essentially fails because when you measure particle A, it's not as if particle B says "they measured A and it was +1!"

Sorry, totally off the rails there. I may use it anyway.

I did not consider QE even once while I was on the bike today, which was an early-morning jaunt into Zwiffertopia. Once again, I ran into @taylor185 but this time we rode together for a bit. I noticed you had a sheet in front of you, so I guess you were doing a specific workout. I did a u-turn when I saw another arrow of someone I knew and it turned out to be some rando from Germany I followed at some point. No idea who he was, so I u-boated again but JT was gone. I then saw 2 more arrows in the next 30 minutes but by then I wasn't motivated enough to chase anyone down. In all, I rode 2:25 and hit my weekly goal of 14 hours, plus 2 minutes as it turns out.

Volume week in the books. Now we rest. After that we really need to get our shit lined up for the end of the year.

I finished up the last 2 Black Mirror episodes and now I am done with it, and will look for a new fallback series to watch. @Dominique called me out a little when she went downstairs to get ready for her NICA ride with Zac, that I complain the show is bad & depressing yet I watch it. I do, I admit, she's right. Yet when the next season comes out, I'll watch those episodes for sure. I do think it got better towards the end but I also enjoy the future-fiction ideas, as they make me think. I do not think the future is as morbidly bleak as the creators of the show would have you believe. But I do enjoy the technology thought-experiments that the show attempts, sometimes poorly, to drag you along for. This is essentially why I watch, for the unique ideas and the thinking it makes me do.

Here are the four Black Mirror Episodes I think you should spend your time watching, in alphabetical order:

Hang the DJ
Hated in the Nation
San Junipero
USS Callister

On that note, I started reading The Punch Escrow based on a recommendation from @MurderBort, who told me about it when he first started reading it. When he mentioned the book, he explained the premise which is basically a thought experiment right out of my university philosophy class. Basically, it asks, what makes you, you? The thought is this. Imagine teleportation was real. If you were to be teleported by having your physical form disassembled, the exact particles sent at the speed of light to your destination, then reassembled, are you still you? No need to answer, just move to the next step in this. What if the way that teleportation was done was as such. You are basically disassembled, then the blueprints were sent across the wire, and reassembled based on the blueprints? Next step to that: what if there's an error and you get reassembled at both the origin and destination. Which you is you? The book essentially explores this conundrum. My guess is that the author had the same thought experiment in university that I did.

Took Julia to the YMCA today. She was on board with the idea and swam laps for 40 minutes before she asked to call it a day. I was pleasantly surprised she did so well and I'm stoked she seems to be taking a serious interest in this. I'm really hoping it sticks and she enjoys it. I know this will make home life even more difficult to fit together. But it's a really great endeavor for her start again. Her tryout is 2 weeks from tomorrow. I think it's more of a placement than a tryout, but they call it a tryout, so there you go.

The new Counter Culture box arrived today. Much excite!

Northampton for Sunday is on. We discussed it internally, and made the commitment to drive up Saturday then race Sunday morning. Booked the hotel which we will share with @seanrunnette. Currently my class is 50, predicted finish: 41 of 50. I look forward to beating that prediction.
 

Patrick

Overthinking the draft from the basement already
Staff member
i remember the set-up in my philosophy class - think the person was duplicated and "extended" via computer
link to act autonomously, but the link somehow became unsyncronized (is that a word?) - thus having different experiences.
Good stuff.

I'll drop those wheels sometime this week, hopefully @taylor185 can zwift over, and get them. :D
 
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Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
@seanrunnette and I did a podcast today. We are now firmly established in the Skype realm, which means it's safe to say that we'll be able to* get this put together on a weekly basis. The content may or may not be weekly-worthy, as you might have heard last week. This week, I believe we fill the box we failed to load last week. As much as I said with that episode you were warned, this week was a good conversation. I find it helps to go in with some topics. Today we covered them all, and then some. I'll leave it to Sean to post the notes with the show link.

* note: there is a difference between "will be able to" and "will".

He suggested we bring @pooriggy on as a guest and I think that may be a decent idea, though Iggy has this weird "I sort of dislike alternate elements of technological progress" thing going on. I have no idea if he would be open to that idea, or if he'll be too engrossed with his candles that he won't want to come on. The premise of having The Iggster on was in a prep-for-winter-sports podcast, which I think is a great idea. Since he/you sent me a podcast link before, I have to assume you're not against this medium of entertainment entirely. I would think we could meet as my place as a reasonable middle ground. I think a live podcast would be best.

I went with Dark as my next trainer fallback series but then decided to ask @Dominique if she wanted to watch with me, and she said yes. Those of you who memorize everything I write, which is nobody including myself, will remember that I watched a good portion of this series a while ago, but never got to the end of it. I think I even started to watch the 10th/final episode but I hadn't paid enough attention to the series as a whole, so things didn't come together properly. The ending became a total train wreck of concepts merging, and I didn't have enough context because I hadn't paid enough attention. I decided to put it in the hopper to watch again someday. Today becomes that someday. We watched the first 3 (of 10) episodes tonight. Actually I watched #1 on the trainer then we watched #2/#3 when she got home from the gym.

And so. That leaves me without a fallback trainer show again. I guess I can go tie up Eureka but frankly that probably isn't worth the effort and it doesn't fill my current need to be thinking about the story or the concept. It's a fun show but it won't even be confused with one that can make you think. Suggestions, fire away. Something SciFi would be good but I can't do Expanse yet because I have not read the books. Westworld is a potential but I'm also giving D right-of-first-refusal to watch that with me.

It's a rest week so the most exciting part of the ride was the naming of the ride and letting @pearl know what time it is. Next 2 days will be more of the same.
 
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