this morning eric and i were supposed to do a bike ride, but when i left my house at around 9a, it was freezing cold. i put on my arm warmers and rode the 4 miles to his place and by the time i got there, my nipples were so hard, it was obvious it was too cold to ride.

so we went and had breakfast at the local coffee shop and ended up playing 9 holes at the dominguez golf course. it’s actually not half bad, considering the $13 green fees and the fact that we were pretty much the only people out on the course. for not having played golf in quite a while we both played pretty well and we’ll hopefully start playing golf there more often. towards the end of the game, costin showed up, played the last few holes with us and then he and i headed to the hustler casino.

i’ve only played poker at hustler a couple of times and i’ve never gone alone, for fear that i would make a habit of it. i bought in with $100, and played pretty tight. after about the fifth hand, the announcer said that there would be a drawing for a table to spin the wheel. my table won and the 9 players split $500, so that $55.50 put me ahead. over 2 hours, i won about 10 pots and in the end came up $41.50 ahead, although if you don’t figure in the bonus money i got, i actually lost $14 playing poker. but a win’s a win and it’s always nice to walk out of a casino ahead.

anyway, time for nap!

two things i hated most about that last rosarito ride (aside from almost dying of dehydration after a night of terrible diarrhea) was that my feet and butt were killing me by the time i finished the ride. i think in past rides, i had done it in a shorter amount of time, so these things hadn’t bothered me as much, but lately, even on short rides this has become a problem.

so i replaced my worn out, 10 year old pair of cycling shorts with the new pearl izumi 3d race classic short, which has 3x the padding of my old shorts. i also got new road shoes. the diadora road shoes that i’d worn for the last couple of years had always fit ok, but after while, my small toe always got cramped up by the poor front design of the shoe. i picked up a pair of sidi zetas, and while i haven’t done a ride in them yet, they feel amazing compared to my old shoe.

eric and i are planning to put bike rides into our regular work out routine. hopefully this weekend i’ll get a chance to try this new stuff out.

i used to have a terrible drive to work, spending almost an hour each way on the 405 in stop-and-go traffic. i finally moved much closer to work and now my drive is less than 15 minutes on surface streets and quality of life aside, it’s saved me some money.

i found this site: www.costtodrive.com that calculates the distance of your drive, the average cost of fuel in your area, and the fuel economy of the car you drive. according to its calculations, driving my s2000, my original drive cost $2.75 one way, and my new drive costs $0.76.

doing some simple math, that means it was costing me $110/month from my old place and now i’m spending $30/month for my work commute. anyway, it’s a fun site to figure out what you’re spending for your commute.

(don’t worry, i’m not getting paid to say this =p)

With all of the blogging I do on this site and others, I occasionally fancy myself a writer. I then read an article like this one from the New Yorker and get put the F back in my place.

It was no big surprise that the New Yorker endorsed Obama for President, being a publication that usually leans to the left, but the writeup of why they are endorsing Obama over McCain is an excellent analysis of the important issues of this election. It’s a pretty long read, but very well written and I recommend it to everyone who plans on voting for the next US President, 29 days from today.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/10/13/081013taco_talk_editors

brightroom.com posted the pics from the rosarito to ensenada bike ride from last month. every year they try to add more security to make it more difficult to download the photos, but nothing can stop the all-powerful print screen button :)

al rode with us too, but he can’t remember what his number was, so no pic of him.

when the 2.0 firmware was released for the iphone, it included support for lots of different languages. while she could navigate the phone in english just fine, the japanese setting allows her to type and receive texts and emails in japanese. she can also send japanese text messages to my phone (which is of course in english) and i can read them just fine.

(pay no attention to my wifi network name :p)

i finally finished the god of war for the psp game that i’d been playing for the last month or so. i would put in a few minutes at lunch every day and play until i reached the next save point. this was the best game that i’ve played on the psp, although that’s not saying much seeing that the majority of psp games are terrible. it is however, the most well rated psp game on ign with a 9.4.

the game is a typical 3d scroller and you earn and learn new abilities throughout the game to prepare you for the next battle. the whole point is that this mortal kratos loses his daughter (i guess she’s killed, but this is greek mythology so anything goes) and he’s looking to get her back. there’s lots of boobs and simulated sex with lesbians and other good wholesome fun. and assuming that the storyline wasn’t making it up, i learned a few things about greek mythology to boot.

i was talking about this with ben or eric the other day though that it seems that video games are just getting easier and easier. i mean they’re definitely more in depth and complex, but with so many save points and “restart from last checkpoint” type features it just requires a lot of time more than skill. i remember in the original super mario brothers if i died it was a big deal… now, half the time i’ll do stupid stuff just ’cause i know i can start again from practically the same place an unlimited number of times. but i guess that’s just me being an old man, complaining how kids these days have it easier than we did.

this weekend was the final rosarito to ensenada ride. i think this was the 6th time i rode the event and unlike past rides, i took this one pretty slowly. i hadn’t done much training for it and i rode my knobby-tired, retro mountain bike so it was harder than it had been in the past. spending that much time on my bike though, riding through a familiar course had me reflecting a lot on past rides. my first ride was the fastest and most hardcore, and the tandem ride with taka was definitely the most fun. at times, this one almost seemed like work, but being the last event made it special anyway.

most of this trip was just a carbon copy of the other rides: getting lost on the way down, eating tacos, fighting about politics, drinking beer, waiting in long ass lines at the border. for the first time in all my trips to mexico though, i got the montezuma’s revenge :( i’m not even sure what it was from (maybe this popsicle, or maybe when i rinsed my toothbrush). the whole trip i was making fun of eric for being so cautious about the water so i kinda deserved it i guess. saturday after i went to sleep it hit me pretty hard and kept me up all night. by sunday morning i was so dehydrated that i felt like i had a major hangover and the ride back home was pretty miserable. today my system is cleared up, but i still feel like i got beat to shit. not only is my whole digestive system fucked, but my bicycle seat wasn’t properly adjusted so my ass hurts, the mountain bike puts me in a different riding position so my back/neck is sore, and for this 4+ hour ride i wasn’t wearing any sunscreen, so my arms are burnt to all hell.

anyway, at least this was the last ride. probably the worst of all rides and defintely the worst experience in mexico but at least i was there for the final event. in a way i’m glad that there’s not going to be one next year, ’cause otherwise i’d have to come up with an excuse not to go. other than a cancun trip that taka wants to go on, i’d be happy if i never cross that border again. hasta la vista mexico!

here’s me and eric right before the start of the event. i filled my shorts with boxes of nerds to throw at the kids.

Thank goodness I only live a mile from the ups store.

check out all my s2000 articles on my honda s2000 blog.