James Pearl Thinks Blogging is Dead

StayHydrated

Swedish Chef
It was free and from Rutgers Student Life. I'm not sure if this helps or hurts. @stb222 does it help if I change "Rutgers" to "Rapha" and call it a musette? Then everyone will think I'm rich and eccentric and paid $500 for it.

Last time I carried donuts up the stairs, I spilled the coffee in my other hand all over my lunchbox (which I was holding by the strap with the same hand as coffee to avoid murse-ing it). However, prior to renovation (and shortly thereafter, until they got the controller straightened out) those elevators were notorious for getting stuck between floors. @rottin' there was some SERIOUS risk-reward analysis here. At least if I got trapped, I'd have provisions. However, it's a little further to the elevators and prime paparazzi territory. The stairs are actually the most convenient and fastest way to where I sit, but coffee and donuts are precious.

I should also note for the record that I offered Utah a donut. Repeatedly. He declined.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Today is 128. 128 = 126+2. We dropped to 1 as of yesterday, due to being sick before vacation then 8 days being away in Seattle. Got back on the road bike today and now we're back up to 2. Ideally I'd like to get to +39 by the end of the year on the hours, which would match 2016 at 404 hours. I also want to keep the total number rising until I hit 200 total. But we'll get to that later this week or some other time.

Seattle

So we went to Seattle last Saturday and came back yesterday. I will rapid fire this stuff below...

Saturday

* Fly to Seattle, via Midway in Chicago

-no pics

Sunday

* Pike's Place Market
* The Gumwall
* Jack's Fish Spot for Chowder
* Olympic Sculpture Park
* Back to the house for salmon

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Monday

* MoPOP (this was awesome)
* A park next to the museum
* The Space Needle
* The Chihuli Glass Museum (also awesome)
* International Fountain
* Homemade pizzas for dinner

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Tuesday

* Cruise around the sound
* The Fremont Troll
* Theo Chocolate Factory
* The Boeing Factory Tour (truly excellent experience)
* Take out Indian food

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Wednesday

* Aquarium
* Gas works park
* Ashari Ramen (maybe the best meal I had)
* Cupcake place for dessert

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Thursday

* Snoqualmie Falls (very cool)
* Tour of University of Washington from D's old friend from Montreal
* Take out Vietnamese for dinner

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Friday

* Try & miss at the Seattle Art Museum
* Hike in Discovery Park
* Ice cream!
* Ballard locks
* Momiji sushi

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Saturday

* Fly home, via Phoenix

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Patrick

Overthinking the draft from the basement already
Staff member
Ha - within a couple miles of each other on the other side of the country.

what was the best kid thing? adult thing?
 
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stb222

Love Drunk
Jerk Squad
It was free and from Rutgers Student Life. I'm not sure if this helps or hurts. @stb222 does it help if I change "Rutgers" to "Rapha" and call it a musette? Then everyone will think I'm rich and eccentric and paid $500 for it.
FWIW, Rapha used to give those for free with any order, but regardless of what it says on it, doesn't change ;)

Norm, pretty awesome Calder in the one pic.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Ha - within a couple miles of each other on the other side of the country.

what was the best kid thing? adult thing?

Where were you? Jeff D was going to the Boeing factory 2 days after us.

I think the 2 older kids said Chihuli as did D.

Simon liked MoPOP best.

I'm torn between Boeing & Chuhuli & MoPOP. I'd need to think about that some more. I would do all 3 again without question. Seeing the prop of Luke's hand + light saber was pretty damn high on the Nerd Awesome scale. Also, the typewriter that Asimov used to write his Robot/Foundation novels was also pretty cool. Add in the Bowie exhibit and I think maybe MoPOP gets the nod from me.

Space Needle was worst for me. I was still lightly with fever that day and being afraid of heights plus that sent me a little too close to a vertigo situation.

Few days later and Ramen was still my favorite meal.
 

Patrick

Overthinking the draft from the basement already
Staff member
@Norm - i was in phoenix on saturday.

I did not try the churro dog.

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i should go back and read the foundation series again. read it when i was 25ish. might mean something different now.

Are you familiar with Childhood's End ?
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Are you familiar with Childhood's End ?

Indeed I am. But it's been so long I don't remember it. I just read the Wikipedia entry for it and it doesn't seem familiar at all.

Agreed about Foundation. I think I'm waiting on the kids to be a few years older to introduce that. But soon I will and I'll read it at the same time.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Looks like a jam-packed trip. Nice pics! The Boeing factory tour sounds like something I'd be interested. Did the kids / D like it as much as you did?

They did. We were all fascinated by it. I think kids of any age can appreciate a big ass plane being built. Plus the factory is insanely large, which is itself a pretty impressive piece of everything there.
 

Patrick

Overthinking the draft from the basement already
Staff member
Indeed I am. But it's been so long I don't remember it. I just read the Wikipedia entry for it and it doesn't seem familiar at all.

Agreed about Foundation. I think I'm waiting on the kids to be a few years older to introduce that. But soon I will and I'll read it at the same time.

Just checked the wiki. I swear that when i read it, the ending was when the aliens revealed themselves, and the reason they waited becomes clear.
Don't remember anything about the Borg part. that would have been around 1984 or so..... wonder if he added to the story?
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
I've been busy, cut me some slack.

If I don't drink tonight, the number will be 176 - 161 days without a drink plus 15 over my pace for hours on the year. I don't know what this number means but it's a number. In the last week I have fit into 2 shirts I have not fit into for quite some time. I am not at sub-180 race weight but I am going in the right direction. Slowly but this is not impossible to maintain.

Work is busy. Thanks for asking.

A few weeks ago we did a Stephens ride for @muddybike and @seanrunnette who were both having birthdays. We then went to lunch and then we went back home and @woody hung out at the house for the rest of the day. We did some bike work then he made us dinner. It was good to have him over, good to just hang out and do whatever. Woody and I have known each other more than half my life at this point, so it's just kinda normal to have him around and we just do whatever we do. So while he made us dinner I caught up on some work. Then we ate his food. It was good.

The next day we hung out with @mattybfat and he gave us a tour of Deer Park. I have been knocking off parks on my "yearly ride" list and we had not done DP yet this year. We did it last year but this ride was better because Matty led it. I'm really happy to see Matty getting out there again. Really excellent to see.

Then life & work & school and so on, and we catch up to this weekend.

Friday I blew off work at 1:00 and met @UtahJoe at MD and we rode for over 2.5 hours. By the end my allergies + the heat had slammed me and I was exhausted. Drove home, took some work calls on the drive, then showered up and went back out to dinner with Utah & his wife.

Saturday morning we did the Schilling ride and saw 78 of our closest friends. Grabbed lunch with @seanrunnette and @MissJR and @1sh0t1b33r and @Santapez. Then at night we went to D's ex-coworkers BBQ.

Today D woke up and went to do the Girls Gone Gwild race up at LewMo where she rocked it and took second place. I rode my bike there and then stopped to watch them go by on the first lap of the bike part. Met up with a new-ish rider up there who was asking where to ride so I took her around the park and showed her the good stuff before getting back to the S/F to see D come in second on the day. Big job by Serena wife of @Matt_ crushing the field.

Then we went to Macho Nacho with @sarcaro and @MissJR and @Santapez. Then we went home.

And here I am. 3 new parks (on the year) in the last 3 days. Saw tons of friends this weekend. Got almost 7 hours in. Some good food. All sorts of good stuff lately.

I am going to Duke on the 2nd week of October. Paging @Dominos and @Delish for recommendations and @pearl to see if you want to ride, or spoon, or both.
 

Santapez

Well-Known Member
Team MTBNJ Halter's
If the weather is shitty, or you have the time, I liked the art museum at Duke, mostly the Ed Ruscha exhibit (laugh all you want). Free entry except for the paid parking.

Probably can be in and out in 30 minutes. If trying to get a run in on the trip it's right by Duke Gardens.
 

StayHydrated

Swedish Chef
This post is good.

It was cool to finally meet/ride with you at Fun Monday last week!

According to the 1st Law of Brewskidynamics, beer consumption is a conserved quantity - I may or may not be helping to balance the equation. I'd be faster if I wasn't. Milestones like shirts really help remind you what a difference it's making. Keep it rolling!
 

UtahJoe

Team Workhorse
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Good deal about Duke, remember to tell the clients how big of a Laettner fan you were. You should burn the Kentucky flag in the conference room as a show of loyalty.

Good ride and great dinner friday...ill pick the technical parks to ride at, you pick the resturants. :)
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
James Pearl thinks blogging is dead. He may be right.

It's hard to click into this thread and think that it has been almost 2 months since I posted anything here. I was talking to @Kirt last night. I'm not under any delusion that my training is anything worth blogging about. But I do wish that I could keep up with my various movements around the country as life & work run me around. I knew it was going to be a crazy fall but it has been a little more like crazy-squared. It'll kinda be this way until Thanksgiving yet. After that we should get a little more toned down. A little.

So I went to Duke. It was kinda like this:

Take Uber to airport. Get through TSA, start working. Spend 3 days working about 16 hours a day. Fly home. Stop working. I am pretty sure I got on a trainer 3 times at 40 minutes a pop. But it's so long ago, I can't pretend to remember exactly. I have found in the past few weeks that 40 minutes is about a good number for these gym bikes. They are all recumbent now, which sucks. But it is what it is.

Highlight of the Duke trip was a Korean meal I got.

Then I was home for a week.

Then I went to St. Louis last Sunday and came back Friday night. This trip was much better but way longer. 6 days/5 nights is the long side of what I can deal with. I do like to travel. And this trip saw lots of good food and coffee shops. But after this many days on the road you start to lose touch with reality a bit. By Thursday night you start to ask yourself what "normal" is. You get into a routine of waking up at 5, going to the gym, showering, eating shitty breakfast, then going to work for like 12 hours. These days were long.

One mistake I am realizing: don't eat the free hotel breakfast. It's terrible. I am going to start eating outside the hotel because the quality of the trip suffers from eating shit 5 straight days.

I had some time Thursday so I took the afternoon off and went downtown to see the Arch. It's big. It's a big friggin arch. I was too chicken shit to go up in it so instead I went to Citygarden and found a coffee shop. It was good. Then I found a monster cookie which made my afternoon.

St. Louis is a weird place. So much segregation still there. When I got on the plane to go, it was almost all white people. It seemed odd to me. The racial tension in this city is high apparently. It's oddly got a "Baltimore-feel" in some ways. The city of St. Louis is actually just 360k people. But the surrounding area is a lot bigger so you have a lot more actual people, but with a smaller population you have less money, and less police, and crime is then an issue. Sounds like Baltimore to me. But Baltimore is maybe a bit more of a dump hole.

I could not live in St. Louis.

Kind of foods I ate:

* new American at a place called Taste, best meal of the trip
* Scottish food - I ate haggis. It's not bad at all just tastes like heart attack
* Afghan food - a little disspointing
* Ramen place - almost totally nailed it but they cheaped out on the noodles
* another new American - excellent

I am home this week again, but D is going to Washington DC for 2 days. Normally I would go just to get out of the house but we have not ONE but TWO go-lives tomorrow. This is idiotic in a sense but F it, we are desperate the get these clients past the go-live date. We then have 2 more the next 2 Mondays.

I also just booked my trip to Oklahoma City. I'll be there next Sunday through Wednesday, or technically Thursday as I get in after midnight. I could stay another night and fly Thursday but I am not exactly stoked to stay there any longer than I need to.

Maybe Chicago in December but Chicago is considerably more appealing than these other midwest dumpster fire cities.

I'll try to be better. But James Pearl may be right.

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Patrick

Overthinking the draft from the basement already
Staff member
there are a few windows up top of the arch. can "lay" on the wall as it is at a 30deg angle, and look out. the wind creates a bit of sway. very cool,
if you like to taste the stuff in your stomach. :eek:

my nephew lives in a mixed neighborhood near the airport - it is totally different. everyone says hello, and makes a bit of small talk. Making an effort to
find a bit of common ground. It was nice. Not the same in the "all" areas. which at 6'5" 300+ he avoids, cause he feels uncomfortable - and the other "all" areas, the word "they/them" is used -
so yeah, it is in there air.

u didn't go for bbq? afghan food in stl? #erwhat

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what are the advantages of being on-site? other than the obvious direct convo to solve problems?
what project phase were you in on these?

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Chicago! nice.

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do you have any weight targets? or others? i've lost track, was it 365 hours of saddle time? or was that last year?
 

Santapez

Well-Known Member
Team MTBNJ Halter's
-Hotel Breakfast. This is such a big deal with me and hotels lately. At similar pricepoints hotels can be so varying in food quaility & offerings and there's no way to know what it'll be like until you actually stay in a hotel. I'll look through the Expedia pictures of a hotel of the breakfast bar to look and see if there's hot food so that there's a 1/4 chance that there's actual eggs and not-gross meat options. 99% of the time hotels offer pastries for desert. Nicer hotels like to have a mediocre breakfast but then charge $20 as they expect you to be a business traveler expensing it. Mostly I want something small that doesn't gross me out to hold me over until lunch. The hotel gym is similar...

Is this your first time having Afghan food, or did you just not like this particular restaurant?
 

jShort

2018 Fantasy Football Toilet Bowl Lead Technician
Team MTBNJ Halter's
When I travel I try to eat what I eat at home fir breakfast. Oatmeal, a little fruit, and granola. Most hotels can do that.
The buffet is just like a subconscious message to stuff yourself. I have a hard time controlling my portions.
 
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