James Pearl Thinks Blogging is Dead

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Sunday night. While the world eagerly hangs on the fate of the free world via the NFL, we are enjoying some down time watching season 4 of Endeavor and catching up on some stuff we didn't get done this weekend. It was a good, almost entirely work-free weekend. I just got done moving some code into prod for the St Louis project. Other than that I haven't worked. But this is where we are today. Let's rewind and recap the weekend.

I woke up Friday tired. The day at work did not go exceptionally well, and my being tired exacerbated the feeling of just being constantly overwhelmed with shit. Some days are just like that, and Friday was one of them. At this stage of life I know enough to just unplug at 4:00, kick back on the couch, and read a book. So that's what I did. Earlier in the afternoon I had jumped on the trainer for an hour & 10 minutes and watched the first episode of Dark, at the suggestion of @gtluke. It was good, and I'll watch again next time I have to squeeze out a workout at home. Had a very Twin Peaks feel to it, and even had it's version of the Log Lady - just that it was a dude, without a log.

The bike I have on the trainer, my 2nd cross bike, has developed some creaks that I think are tied to the bottom bracket. I need to disassemble and repack it with 2-3 tons of grease soon. I also need to put the trainer-specific skewer in, since that could be part of the creaking. These little things add up when you are stuck inside. Also, the Ecoxgear speaker ran out of battery so I couldn't hear the laptop over the bike noise. Thus, I stopped at 1:10. Otherwise I may have jumped into another episode right there.

That night, we went to Lombardo Pizza Company with @Kirt & his wife. We've been talking about going here for a while and we finally got there. Would highly recommend it - both dinner with Kirt & his wife, and the actual food. After the lackluster work day this was a great start to the weekend. As is often the case when you have a good time, nobody thought to break out the phone and take a picture.

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Saturday morning was the MTBNJ group ride up at Stephens. If you are reading this and you didn't go, I think you missed out on something particularly good. If you are reading this, I think you should make it a point to come out to these in the future. Think about this. We did a group ride in January and ended up with 40 people. January. 40 people. That's impressive. Among the many things that were discussed, I talked about the Guo article with @jmanic and explained that I think he may be a Chinese plant to discredit other Chinese nationals who make noise about the country's politics, as wellas @Glenn Rides After 4 PM CST about the HBO special where Kermit goes OTB.

We then hit up the Hibernia Diner with some of the team before going home and laying down for 2 hours. Saturday evening we hit up the MAFW (Morris Area FreeWheelers) yearly winter party. @Dominique's boss is the president so we decided to support. It was at the Basking Ridge Country Club and it was pretty much exactly like a wedding, even to the point they had a cake cutting (ish) ceremony for one of the founding members who turned 90 last night. It was a decent time, though D was probably the youngest of the 150 people there and I was probably 1 of the 5 youngest, which is saying something. I think @Mitch would have felt young here.

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This morning we hit up a MAFW ride out of Colonial Park and got in 38 miles. It was a solid ride and I am hoping to get into a pattern of doing more longer road rides this coming year. I'm feeling more motivated currently, and I have a bit more than 24 hours in the saddle in 2018. Contrast that with about 3.5 this time last year. So I'm getting off on the right foot. Just this week alone I got in more than 10 hours. Been a pretty good start.

I felt good out there today. By the end I know a lot of the people on the ride were getting tired but I was feeling as good at the end as I did at the start.

Rest of the day was D doing some NICA stuff while I tried (and failed) to find a place to drink coffee and comfortably read my paper in Mendham. Then we came home, showered up, and put on the TV. And thus, a weekend was had.
 

jShort

2018 Fantasy Football Toilet Bowl Lead Technician
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Have you had an impossible burger? They serve them pretty close to your at Turf' N Surf Burger Grill. All vegetarian burger that's supposed to be great.

i realize this has nothing to do with your post.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
The Impossible Burger

I had never heard of an Impossible Burger before yesterday, but now I am motivated to earn myself an Impossible Burger. Today I thought to myself...what would I need to do in order to earn the eating of a burger, either possible or impossible, from Turf & Surf? We've eaten there before, and while the food there is super good, it is also super not healthy. In general I think you need to really earn something like this. See now Jeremy, you gave me a goal. The question follows - what do I need to do to earn that? Ride 50 miles on the road? Ride 3 hours at CR? Pull a 19 mph average for a 2+ hour ride?

I don't know the answer to that question.

After I sat down to write this, I looked it up and it seems interesting. Now, the course is set. I have an Impossible Burger in my future. I just need to earn it. Which of course means defining what is meant by "earning it". I'll ruminate on it and get back to you.

The Possibly Impossible Bike Ride

After the weekend I was feeling pretty good today and decided to try and pull a double spin class today. Last week I also pulled a double but it was more like 2 individual spin classes broken up by a 45 minute rest between. I also dialed them both back a tad because I wanted to make sure I got to the end of them, as opposed to burning out and not wanting to keep on. Today, the classes were 15 minutes apart so I just stayed on the bike and D grabbed me a number, which is how the YMCA meters out the bikes. I just took a break to pee and change my shirt, which was drenched after the first class.

I did the first class and gave it a solid showing. Now I know some of you, well one of you in particular, will rage that I went to spin class at all on a warm day like today. But those of you who have done these know they are no joke if you actually give it an honest effort. So the first class was all-in, solid interval workout. Took a few minutes between then just kept going until the 2nd one started. I miscalculated a bit and didn't bring anything to eat. In addition, I double miscalculated and thought they were both 45 minutes when in fact, the second class was an hour.

Foreshadowing of course. I popped a bit more than halfway through the second class. My right knee had started to hurt so I stopped standing when Kerry (the teacher) stood. Like last time my knee started to hurt, I just dialed up the resistance and tried to grind it out. This was all well and good until things just started to get impossibly hard about 30 minutes before the end. I took off most of the resistance and just spun out the rest of the class. 2 hours, 10 minutes, and 39 miles.

If I had made it all-in for both, would I have earned an Impossible Burger?

The Possibly Impossible Creak

Google translates the common Chinese expression of JIA YOU, as "COME ON!" When you are watching a sporting event, the crowd will yell "Jia You!" Or if you were trying to encourage someone on, you would yell the same. I have seen another translation as claiming it means "add more gasoline to the car" which is about as accurate as saying you can translate "blue" as "not green". That's not really what it means.

I had a 3 hour conference call again today and while I was on it I took the backup cross bike apart and regreased the bottom bracket. I think I need a new BB but it's not so bad that it cannot survive the rest of the trainer season. I should probably get some new bearings and swap them out. Utah thinks this looks like a typical bike of mine. I think this looks more on the clean side than usual.

Anyway, I cleaned it up a bit and as the Chinese say when they are watching a sporting event, JIA YOU! The literal translation of "jia you" is "add oil". When I eat Chinese food, I often JIA LA YOU, where LA means "spicy".

I also swapped out the skewer to the proper one.

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Das Dishwasher Was More Busy

Signs of a warm weekend this morning on the drying mat:

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The Impossible Dessert

By impossible, I mean it would be impossible to finish all this in one sitting and not feel like you wasted the entirety of that 2 hours and 10 minutes on the bike tonight.

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Patrick

Overthinking the draft from the basement already
Staff member
one can only try to earn an impossible burger.....

should fire up that meme generator, but it is late, and i'm wiped, but figured i'd hit new posts one more time...
now i'm going to bed, cause will&grace just came on the tube. it is funny, but predictable.

Cheers - from the totally unmotivated.
 

jmanic

JORBA Board Member/Chapter Leader
Staff member
JORBA.ORG
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Liked for pinning on a number at spin class.

This:
Like last time my knee started to hurt, I just dialed up the resistance and tried to grind it out.
Ummm no?
Are you certain the creak is that raggedy ass BB and not your knee telling you to not do things like this?
I admittedly may be biased here.

That ice cream looks good,
but for me, the ice cream has to be straight up chocolate.
Haagen Dazs chocolate peanut butter still owns the title in my book.
 

UtahJoe

Team Workhorse
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Double spin class...wow, you are a crazy fucker, ill give you that. I mean its not Mandel doing back to back 3hr roller rides on a weekend, but impressive for sure.

I find its usually not the BB that's making the noise.

And im convinced your store your bikes in a salt spray chamber
 

Mitch

Well-Known Member
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Double Spins do suck and that 15 min break is a killer. Also spin bikes will mess you up for fit. Nothing fits like your bike with your seat.
 

jackx

Well-Known Member
The 39 miles soundz like a lot for spin classes, and its cool that they the spin bikes have odometers, so you know how far you went when you didn't go anywhere. (That soundz like something Confucious would say). I didn't check Google translator for the common Chinese expression It is the wise man who keep chews and a bar in gym bag for double sessions.

If the BB cleaning didn't fix the creaking sound, hopefullyusing the correct skewer foe the trainer, tightened properly will stop the creaking. If not, perhaps see if it still creaks when standing, not sitting on the seat, in case it is related to the seatpost or seat.

I don't see how 50 miles on the road, or a 3 hour ride at CR wouldn't earn a burger, unless it comes with cheese, french fries and a milkshake. Even then you probably earned it. Dunno if the impossible burger tastes like the Beast or Beyond burger, but you can make those at home for a reasonable number of calories. Although, having your burger JIA LA YOU will up the calorie count. Perhaps pan fry the burger in hot oil for added spice.

I guess the idea with these plant-based burgers is that the plants (i.e. peas, not grass/hay) are processed in a factory instead of ruminated in cattle, and then somehow the plant-based protein-not-from-cattle is butchered into beyond meat burgers.

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Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
@Mitch brings up the point that I would stress. Going from no spin bike to ALL-IN winter training is going to do this. Add to this the fact that the class is constant standing & sitting and high cadence when standing and so on, and it puts pressures on my knees that I am not used to. You also need to take into account that some of these bikes are old, and you get some erratic behavior at times with the pedal resistance clunking and the bike just not working as well as some other bikes. We've been told that these bikes are all at the end-of-lifecycle and they have ordered more. They're supposed to be here in January, which begs the question: Which January?

@jmanic I understand your concern, but I think @Mitch nails it with the spin bike fit. In general I think if I ride the spin bike like I am grinding out a hard road ride, everything is fine. But when I stand too much and act like Olivia Newton John on uppers, it starts to stress things that are not used to it - up to and possibly including my dignity.

I will admit that the ice cream was not as good as the potential sounded. Also on food, I am going to keep the Impossible Burger a real possible future blog topic. So while I see what you wrote there @jackx, I am going to defer that post until I consume some. As anyone here well knows, I do like a good meal. Ah who am I kidding? I like a bad meal too. Today's meal was not bad. It was both good AND healthy:

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After talking to @UtahJoe yesterday about the double spin class he ventured into the realm of goals. He asked me if I had any. I think at this stage of life, it's hard for me to have any goals other than not dropping dead of heart disease and trying to save for the kid's inevitable $4.5 million dollar college education. I joke, but it's hard for me to be working in a high-pressure work environment while staying attentive to home life, trying to do anything on a personal level, and then adding bike goals. My answer to him was officially that every time I state a goal in the past year, I generally eat or drink my way out of it within a week. Now that I am not drinking, 1 of my excuses has dried up.

So I am left to ask myself, do I really have any goals? The answer is both "of course" and "seriously, are you serious?" I think it is wise for me to step back at this point in the narrative and look at the broader picture. I have made a lot of jokes recently about age, and yes they are really just jokes laced with some hint of reality. At the same time, when you see a 105 year old guy announce his retirement from trying to break the centenarian speed record, you quickly realize that 46 simply isn't that old. So yes, I am not that old. But I am also no longer in my late 30s and I think this past year was my reality check in that regard. Things hurt a little more, it takes longer to recover, excuses come far more easily - these are all normal signs of aging. Add in my reluctance to wear any reading glasses properly as well as the constant allergies that seem to always be present, and I think the last year or so has been my coming to terms with getting older.

Having said that, I have come to terms with it. And yeah, I now take reading glasses everywhere and take a claritin every morning, and those light nagging headaches I used to get are pretty much a thing of the past. And I am not drinking. And while I post pictures of a lot of good food, I do try to eat oatmeal and salad as often as I can, just not at the same time. So in some respects I can consider this year as a clean slate. No more excuses other than my own motivation.

That was a long-winded way to say that no, I don't have any goals. But I want to get back to the point where a 100 mile bike ride is just a road ride where I didn't feel like stopping. I of course need to get back under 200 - duh. For anything to happen in terms of "goals" I need to lose some weight. But that drum is carried & beaten by almost everyone here. So I am not saying anything that almost all of you don't say as well. I have put forth the idea of Monkey Knife Fight at home, and it was met with curiosity. I have the ability to play the endurance race card for March Mayhem, or whatever it is called. These are things I would like to think about doing.

Does that amount to a set of goals? No, not really. I think I need to be iterative in what I set out to do. Right now, I guess I want to hit maybe 40 total hours in January? Right now I'm sitting over 31 already. I think 40 is reasonable. After that, we'll see what February brings. I would love to soft commit to the H2H endurance series, being that it would entail me only committing to 4 of them. But I am sort of excluded from doing 2 of them which makes it all far more difficult to pull off. So that's not a goal that makes any sense.

So where does that leave me in terms of "goals", one of those words we love to throw around every January? I don't know. I wish I could sit here and say that I am devoting this writing space to doing The Longest Day, or riding 3 centuries in a long weekend, or riding 100 miles on the mountain bike, or some such nonsense. But as anyone knows who has read this blog over the course of the last 10 years, I am not much of a single goal kind of writer.

What the hell - I am literally open to suggestions. What should my goals be?

While I may be getting old, I am not quite yet ready to ride off into the sunset. Well, unless I end up riding overnight one of these days.

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jShort

2018 Fantasy Football Toilet Bowl Lead Technician
Team MTBNJ Halter's
I encourage everyone to read just the first line of each paragraph. (after reading the entire post, obviously).


After talking to @UtahJoe yesterday about the double spin class he ventured into the realm of goals.

So I am left to ask myself, do I really have any goals?

Having said that, I have come to terms with it.

That was a long-winded way to say that no, I don't have any goals.

Does that amount to a set of goals?

So where does that leave me in terms of "goals"

What the hell - I am literally open to suggestions.

While I may be getting old, I am not quite yet ready to ride off into the sunset
 

The Kalmyk

Well-Known Member
I would start with reading “On The Shortness of Life”. It’s a very small essay by Seneca.

Seems like it’s a paradigm swing in focus, imo. Instead of focusing on age (despite the reality), focus on what you can control.

I really enjoyed your prime racing years. You put a lot of good content on the board (my fave was the cliff bar tournament bracket). Maybe it’s time for the second of two halves.

You were in your late thirties when this came out but doubt it meant anything personal at the time...

 
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Patrick

Overthinking the draft from the basement already
Staff member
This the second post in about a year that intimates that goals are an "issue" -
since you mentioned iterative, when things are working, this seems to be my mode. just get it directionally correct, and try to keep going.
7 weeks to hoh.

i spiralized a rutabaga today. so you spiralize?
There is some golden beet and turnips in there too.
quick sautée in sesame and lemon oil - splash of rice vinegar. figured i'd post it here instead of the cooking/eating threads.

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