James Pearl Thinks Blogging is Dead

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
I took most of last week off simply because I did not have much time to write. I think last week was a case of the plate being at a point where it was comfortably full, and trying to squeeze in a blog every night would have been a force. I don't think I really did much of anything worth blogging about though. I guess I was still in Chicago last we spoke. The next day we got more of that amazing coffee. Then we had dim sum for lunch,. Then I flew home.

I then rode Zwift for 3 straight days @ 2 hours exactly, every day. I am motivated right now to push towards that 2 hours/day average over the summer. I am behind in June. But I am trying to maximize the time I have. Then Saturday was the race, which I will not really speak too much about here other than to say I think it was our best race yet. I ended up with a bit over 2 hours on the bike. Then Sunday it was another 2+ but at this point I forget.

Now I am in St. Louis

After thinking about this some, I decided to make this trip an all-business affair. I am trying to be on-point with the trip, and not make it an explore-and-adventure trip. So in a sense this will be a sabbatical from doing much of anything really. I am banking up the fun for this coming weekend, whatever that brings. So today:

6:45 - Woke up, showered, made oatmeal & tea for D and I to eat in bed before I take off for the next 2 days.

7:45 - Left the house to go to the airport. I read a book in the Uber because I am going to try to finish this book on this trip. Got to terminal C only to realize it was moved to terminal A. Took the tram over and found a much shorter TSA line. Grabbed a coffee and worked a bit, then read some more while they worked out a "mechanical issue." Turns out there were 2 seats stuck in the reclined position.

11:00 - wheels off the ground, a bit late. Was not able to pair my BT headphones with Zac's iPad so I read for 90 minutes then played a video game for the last 30. Somehow landed ahead of schedule.

12:15 - (now in CST) grabbed a salad at the airport and ate it in the Uber ride there. The salad is part of my being good for this trip. My intention is to eat nothing but oatmeal & salad for 8 straight meals spanning Monday morning through Wednesday lunch.

12:45 - got the the client location early. Started up and worked together for the next 3.5 hours. We literally plowed through today's agenda and 90% of tomorrow's agenda as well. I am not sure what tomorrow will bring really. Hopefully we can get out early.

4:30 - was not able to ditch the happy hour since my name was on the title of the invitation. It was abundantly clear that it wasn't really going to fly. I drank unsweetened iced tea and had a little of the appetizers they bought. By 5:30 everyone left.

5:30 - went back to the hotel to change into my gym clothes.

6:00 - get on recumbent bike, put Zwift on phone, Eureka on iPad, and ride in the hotel gym for 2:12. Like i said, all-business. Not fucking around today.

8:30 - after cleaning up I leave the room to look for food. In the end I go across the road to the mall to get a chicken Caesar salad. On the way back I duck into the CVS for some sucralose water and Haagen Dazs ice cream. I earned at least that much.

9:00 - eat dinner while watching more Eureka. The salad was better than expected. I ate half the pint of PB/Chocolate ice cream then threw the other half away. I wanted ice cream and there's no freezer here. I am not eating the whole pint as that would eradicate my day. Plus I can expense it since I am under budget for the day.

After that did a little work, watched more Eureka, surfed, wrote, etc.

11:00 - Gonna call it a night, read a little, and hit the sack shortly.

* Note 1: I think we decided to ride Jungle Habitat this Saturday. We had Mohunk plans but I think we have decided to stay home this weekend. I am not sure what precipitated D to suggest this, but as soon as she did I was happy she did, because I wasn't really in tune with going up there. Sunday is WFO. Open to suggestions that do not involve Lewis Morris.

* Note 2: D suggested I do the Granogue race in July. I think I am going to pencil that in.
 

Patrick

Overthinking the draft from the basement already
Staff member
find the Ted Drews frozen custard. - just for a city-to-city comparison.

are you actually in the city part of the city?
If you haven't been up in the Arch, it is best when it is 100deg out - like combining a sauna with an amusement ride.
- hopefully they fixed that by now.
 

jmanic

JORBA Board Member/Chapter Leader
Staff member
JORBA.ORG
Team MTBNJ Halter's
How does the Swiffer work on an exercise bike?

And good choice on the ice cream,
you know that's jmanic approved.
But did you go down to the lobby to throw the second half out?
Because yeah, if I did that in a trash can in the room,
within 15 minutes I'd be like a feral dog eating out of a dumpster.
Maybe that's just me though.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
5:30 - I just wake up feeling ready to get up. As busy as yesterday sounds there was enough down time & sitting that it wasn't a huge drain on me. And the gym, while long, was low-effort. Tiring for sure, but not too bad overall. I woke up a bunch of times to pee in the middle of the night, at which point I kind of cursed the double-purchase of the sucralose water. But I sweat so much I need to make sure I drink enough. I tossed around a bit and tried to go back to sleep. But I gave up and read another chapter of the book. I tried before bed last night and I was too tired.

@fidodie - I looked up Ted Drews and there's not one close enough to check out. I walked past the Arch last time I was here and decided not to go into it. Adding more degrees makes me less inclined to go up now. If I were to list 10 things I dislike the most I think heights and high temperatures would make the list, along with raw onions. But I am not in the city anyway. I'm actually in Clayton, which may or may not be in St. Louis. The last time I was here, they described the setup and there is apparently St. Louis county and St. Louis city. Not enough people live in the city and most of the money is outside, in the county. So the city gets less tax dollars from residents, fewer police, more crime, etc. Actually...whatever. I'm not in the city-city which is what you asked.

6:30 - hotel breakfast of watery oatmeal, a banana, some raisins, almond slivers, and a container of PB. It was passable.

IMG_6446.JPG

7:00 - last night we passed a coffee shop when we walked from happy hour back to the hotel. It looked decent so I decided to try it this morning. Well much to my surprise this is a roaster. I had said this was not going to be an explore-trip but here we are. Now that I am in here I remember the name (Coma Coffee, Clayton, St. Louis) from last time as one of the places I never got to. This is a great find and worth the stop this morning. Espresso is excellent and the pour-over coffee is good. I surf, read the board, and respond to comments while here.

IMG_6447.JPG

@jmanic - sometimes I think you don't even know me. I am a pro at consumption, and seeing my own future. So here is the proper way to dispose of said ice cream:

1. Run hot water in sink
2. Drop blob of ice cream in sink
3. Cry a little bit inside
4. Wash all ice cream down drain
5. Take remaining hunk of peanut butter and flush down toilet

Also - Swiffer on exercise bike via PowerTap PowerCal. This is BT-enabled which I feed into the phone and run Zwift on. So that's the bike-to-me-to-HRM-to-phone-to-Zwift link. Then I have Zac's iPad with Netflix & Amazon Prime on it. So I stack the iPhone on the iPad. The iPhone was linked to a battery because it was losing charge and the iPad was linked to my ears via bike-dedicated headphones I had packed in my suitcase for this reason. I bought these cheap headphones a long time ago for bike-only use and I am still on pair #1. Oddly they have survived just fine.

8:30 - Went to work. Whatever happens at work stays at work? Or better stated by the famous Ren Hoek, THIS IS BORING GAME. Does anyone remember that? @JimN probably does.

11:30 - Panera salad for lunch. So far we are 5-for-5 sticking with the plan. This is the highlight of the work day I guess. The day went fine. But see the Ren Hoek quote from above.

3:45 - We are done. I hightail it out of there and make it to the coffee roaster before it closes at 4:00. Grab another double espresso and a cold brew coffee and take it back to the room. I get dressed for the gym.

4:!5 - Another 2 hours and maybe 2 minutes. It was ok but the last 20 minutes is a total drag. When I get off, I am pretty shot. That makes 4 hours and 15 minutes in 2 days here, all on this Zwift-by-gym-bike process.

6:45 - All cleaned up and the laundry is in the washer. I have given in and started just washing my stuff at the end of the run instead of trying to wash & dry in the room for the leg home. I do all my laundry today so I'll come back from the trip with a clean suitcase. It is also pissing rain outside so I opt to go to the hotel "happy hour" where they serve snacks & free drinks. I pass on the drinks but am able to cobble together 2 plates of salad to pass as dinner.

IMG_6448.JPG

7:30 - talk to D for a half hour until my phone dies. When I get off the phone the rain has subsided so I run to the CVS for one sucralose water and a pint of Halo Top. We had the discussion today and I was told the PB Cup is worth the try. I have had Halo Top once before and it was not enjoyable at all. Maybe I need to keep chipping away until I find a flavor that I like. But at almost $7 a pint, this stuff will be limited to trips where work is paying for it.

8:30 - The Halo Top experiment. Ok at 320 calories a pint you can't expect much. But I was given the tip to let it warm up a little bit. I tried that and my first taste was...curious. But I'll say that by the end, this was passable, maybe even almost good. I would not put this in the @Dominos edict of "eat nothing but good ice cream in 2018" but given my mandate this week, I think it'll work. Of course, I could have eaten 3 pints so in the end, this could turn into a $21 food orgy whereas the Haagen Dazs would just be $4 for the same number of calories. Anyway, the experiment was good but this isn't something I'll eat at home given the absurd price tag.

IMG_6449.JPG

10:00 - just chipping away at work, writing, watching Eureka, finished laundry, packed up, ready to go home

The trip.

* I've bounced around between useful and useless trips this year. This one was very useful, even if I didn't want to go. I said last week or the week before that I really had no desire to be here. In the end that assessment was on-point, but that doesn't make the work here useful or useless, per se. It just means I didn't feel like going. At the end of today I think it is safe to say that the trip was 100% a success...for now. This is another one of those orgs that wants to have rights to my time exclusively and they are struggling with the fact that since they went live, they really don't get my time like they want. So for them, I was able to come in and address almost the full 1.5 day agenda in the 3.5 hours yesterday, which made them super happy. Today we covered the remainder of the items as well as an additional 30 or so things they have on their "wish list". I got the word tonight that they are very happy about how it went, which is all well and good until a month from now when they have gotten like 2 minutes of my time since then. I don't say who gets how many of my hours. So this isn't on me.

* In terms of exercise I did exactly what I set out to do, even if it is borderline batshit crazy.

* Eating has been 6-for-6 with meals thus far. 2 more tomorrow.

* Bonus that I got to hit up a good roaster twice so far, with the intention of a quick stop there tomorrow at 7am.

* On the media consumption front, I have watched at least 10 episodes of Eureka. I had downloaded both Kill Bills but did not watch

* On the reading side, I have a bunch of reading done but I am not sure I will finish this book by tomorrow. We shall see. It's possible.

Ok I am out. Tomorrow I wake up & return to NJ.
 

JimN

Captain Wildcat
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Or better stated by the famous Ren Hoek, THIS IS BORING GAME. Does anyone remember that? @JimN probably does.

No, but I'm familiar with Ren Hoek at least. Don't really remember much about the show, but did you see the awful remake they tried to do a few years ago? Melinda was a big fan back in the day, and was super excited for it, but it was a huge letdown.
 

jmanic

JORBA Board Member/Chapter Leader
Staff member
JORBA.ORG
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Also - Swiffer on exercise bike via PowerTap PowerCal. This is BT-enabled which I feed into the phone and run Zwift on. So that's the bike-to-me-to-HRM-to-phone-to-Zwift link. Then I have Zac's iPad with Netflix & Amazon Prime on it. So I stack the iPhone on the iPad. The iPhone was linked to a battery because it was losing charge and the iPad was linked to my ears via bike-dedicated headphones I had packed in my suitcase for this reason. I bought these cheap headphones a long time ago for bike-only use and I am still on pair #1. Oddly they have survived just fine.
What I pictured reading that
Brainscan.jpg


1. Run hot water in sink
2. Drop blob of ice cream in sink
3. Cry a little bit inside
4. Wash all ice cream down drain
5. Take remaining hunk of peanut butter and flush down toilet
What I pictured when I read that
FirmDirtyFly-max-1mb.gif

NPRO.gif
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Ok time to go home. The quick version:

4:00 - Wake up, unable to sleep in hotel rooms anymore
5:00 - Get out of bed, shower, final pack
5:30 - Go to lobby, work, wait for breakfast
6:00 - Oatmeal then eggs. 7-for-7. Starving this morning
7:00 - Coma Coffee stop - 1x Double Espresso and 1x Road Coffee
7:15 - Uber drives picks me up. This is worth a special shout out:
  1. She informs me her son died 8 months ago
  2. She informs me that she has been on TV, the show Divorce Court
  3. She stayed with her husband based on the TV judge's ruling
  4. She gets wildly lost. Somehow she misses the AIRPORT
  5. Conversation was good and I was early, so no big deal
8:00 - Through TSA. I got triple pulled today. Another list:
  • Coffee beans, as always
  • HRM stuffed in shoe
  • Energy bar (organic material) stuffed in shoe
8:30 - For Pat, and no I did not:

IMG_6450.JPG


9:45 - The time when the flight was supposed to start
9:46 - The time the plane rolled back from the gate
10:00 - We in the air, and here is the Mississippi River:

IMG_6452.JPG


The weather then cleared up:

IMG_6454.JPG


And I nailed lunch to go 8-for-8:

IMG_6455.JPG


And in we come:

IMG_6458.JPG


1:00 - (back to EST). After a semi-quirky landing with the wings flapping back & forth a bit and the feeling we were about to go back up, we hit the ground. I guess they were speaking some form of foreign language because they said we "arrived early" which is something I do not comprehend.
1:01 - Literally less than 20 seconds after I walk off the plane I am on a phone call with someone
1:15 - In the Uber
1:45 - I go right to the garage to get my car
2:00 - home
2:30 - back out to get the kids
3:00 - conference call
3:30 - another call
4:00 - Zwift
5:45 - I quit after 1:45. I am worn out. I have done exactly 6 hours over the course of this trip
6:30 - We have dinner, nachos and salad
8:00 - I am on another work call for almost an hour
9:00 - Hang out and interact with the kids...or something

IMG_6460.JPG


10:00- upstairs, reading a bit, finished off the 2nd book of this series (Spy Hook/Line/Sinker)
11:00 - started new book, 3rd one. Trying to knock this out in June. Why? No idea
11:30 - That's all folks.
 

2Julianas

Well-Known Member
Team MTBNJ Halter's
* Note 1: I think we decided to ride Jungle Habitat this Saturday. We had Mohunk plans but I think we have decided to stay home this weekend. I am not sure what precipitated D to suggest this, but as soon as she did I was happy she did

Just the two of you? Or would you want company? I’ve been wanting to ride Jungle for a long time and nobody else ever wants to.
 

shrpshtr325

Infinite Source of Sarcasm
Team MTBNJ Halter's
we have been to jungle a couple times with the friday ride group, good times you should join sometime!
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
(zero) Ok everything is changing again. I'll get to that in a sec.

(one) Granogue. The first race I ever did was a 4 hour endurance race at Granogue. It holds a special place in my heart for this reason. Looking back, even now, I can vividly remember how miserable I was towards the end of that race. It was brutally hot and I was in far over my head. Posting on the Internet had assured me I would be fine. In the end, I didn't die so I guess that was a fair assessment. So, what better way to relive that than doing another 4 hour lap race in July? @seanrunnette, I send the ball to your court:
https://www.bikereg.com/Confirmed/37804

1354d1b3-fc7e-46cf-ad54-f24d51d4c723.png

(two) Work is changing again because I'm becoming more and more of a person who other people rely on. I now have something like 5 people directly looking to me for direction on how to understand & make changes in our tool, plus 2 PMs who need me to tell them WTF to do every day (note: if you are a PM and are reading this, I'm kind of sorry to bash PMs all the time. Having said that, I'm pretty sure most PMs don't know how to read). So this means I can't disappear quite as much as I used to be able to. I still have some wiggle room but just blowing off the morning is almost impossible anymore. This limits my ride windows and recently I find myself downstairs a lot these last 2 weeks as I am often left with a riding window as well as 2-3 kids in the house.

464c737455fd56aaa635a53a22dacec4ccd4e5610f4794ced3bd62ecca264250.jpg

(three) On that note, hit the Zwift again today for just over 2 hours. I will say that if not for this tool it would be damn near impossible for me to be getting even half as much pedaling in. With school ending I should have a bit more leeway. I just needed to get through this week. Tomorrow afternoon I'll only have Julia so I may try to get out on the road bike while she sits on her phone. OTOH, I will not see her again until next Wednesday after 4pm tomorrow so maybe I won't. There are a lot of variables in play here. I went for 1 hill today and set the PR on it by almost 2 minutes. Went from 18 to 16. I guess I never hit this one fresh before.

(four) I have the travel thing almost nailed now, but 1 thing I cannot get right is sleeping. I never sleep well on the road and this past week was even worse than usual. Would love to hear what any frequent travelers do to address this. Feel free to not suggest drugs and/or alcohol. Oddly, I slept great when I was at my boss's house. I don't know if it's the feeling that I always need to wake up, or the light, or the strange environment, or what. But it's never a good night of sleep when I travel like this.

(five) Briefly considered the July Challenge but with the SF trip this year I know that will never happen. I know, I need to start thinking about this trip and I have to go back to what @rlb and @fidodie suggested. I'll start ball-parking what we should do while out there but that trip is a few weeks away yet.

(six) Yes, I now wish I had gotten the custard in the airport. I have a sneaking suspicion I will be back to St. Louis one day. If so, I will hit it up.

strawberry_concrete.jpg

(seven) I was talking to Julia today about work travel and I honestly cannot say where I would possibly go next. I think the 2 most likely trips would be either Austin or Chicago again. There is some non-zero chance a Minnesota trip happens but I have to be honest that if they bring that one up I will likely fight hard against it. They have turned into total assholes that I would prefer not to have anything to do with. My boss will back me so unless I get combat pay, I almost surely won't need to go.

Minn_-_Wisc_White_Text_Uncensored_large.jpg

(eight) In 2 weeks from yesterday we'll be starting the KT trip and I am pretty stoked about that. Still bummed that 2 of our DH park buddies will not be able to make it.

(nine) Speaking of which, looks like we have plans with them again this weekend. Saturday Jungle then Sunday we are thinking Blue or Jervis or Striling. Maybe a decision to be made while we ride Saturday. Is a day trip to Thunder Mountain absurd?

20160805_001220-jpg.38880

(ten) Back to Zwift, or rather, the TV aspect of it. I am losing a little steam on Eureka but I think I may have overdone it. It may be best to do 1 or maybe 2 episodes a ride. Anything beyond that is probably pushing it. I need to tie-off Dark, as I kinda ended that before I got to the actual end. I also want to figure out a way to get Northern Exposure fed into my stream for next winter. Anyway, I went back to music today and found I was much more motivated with music. See the PR note above.

Northern_Exposure-Intertitle.jpg

(eleven) What my amplifier goes to. Oh and it's summer now. I'm pretty happy about that.
 

BCurry

Well-Known Member
Halo ice cream- the fat content is way too low for it to ever taste right. If your going to have ice cream, you should get the real thing. None of the light ice creams taste right to me, although turkey hill moose tracks comes close.You should be seeking out the best local ice cream on your travels.
 

2Julianas

Well-Known Member
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Hmmmm...
So for sleeping while traveling I bring a little spraybottle of water with lavender / eucalyptus essential oil to shpritz on the bed linens. I obsess about the pillows and always ask for better ones if they feel wrong. I make sure the room is cool and dark and I set three (!) alarms so that I know I won’t oversleep. I unplug, cover or hide anything with weird glowing electronic lights or that makes an unfamiliar noise. I request a room away from the elevators. And I bring my favorite pajamas. Aaaand I’m pretty sure my name is “flagged” at most major hotel chains :)
 

stb222

Love Drunk
Jerk Squad
I’m a PM. One of my overriding goals at work is to not have people tell me what to do, hence why I am the PM. Obviously you are assigned something by superiors at some point but definitely not a daily basis.

Maybe if you were a PM, you could manage your sleep better ;)

I rarely sleep well in hotels, usually the dryness of a hotel gets to me and I never have the right pillow. The only advice I would have is spank it til you drop.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: rlb

jShort

2018 Fantasy Football Toilet Bowl Lead Technician
Team MTBNJ Halter's
I never slept well in hotels. I went with melatonin and that worked but not all the time and I woke up groggy. I was only taking a 1 ml drop too. So I went the prescription route with Clonazepam. Worked well for me. No groggy feeling and 7+ hours is a win.
But I can respect and understand not wanting to go that way.

I remember being in Helsinki in June where they have daylight for like 21 hours of the day. I was at a nice hotel, but the curtains weren't cutting it. I slept really bad and it made trip that could have been fun, suck. After that I said I would never let it happen again.
When I was in Dubai, I slept for the whole flight, landed, got to hotel, and was bedtime. I took 2 Advil PM and got another 6 hours of sleep. That was pretty awesome.
 
Top Bottom