on saturday after an early workout, eric and i drove (i drove, stupid rock/paper/scissors) to pasadena to see the end of stage 7 of the amgen tour of california. last year the same race was in shorline village and the year before that in redondo beach. the main attraction this year of course was that lance armstrong now racing for team astana is out of retirement and was racing the event.

the last part of stage 7 was a 5 lap, 10 mile loop around the rosebowl, so we watched from the 500m to the finish mark, and got to see them pass a total of 5 times. that was actually the first time that i had ever seen lance armstrong in person, and even though it was 5 times it was less than 5 seconds each time.

i brought my sony cm1 hd video camera, which the more i use, the more i fall out of love with. it’s actually pretty good for what it’s marketed as, capturing quick, short hd video that looks pretty decent. it really isn’t a replacement for a video camera though. my new main gripe with it is that it seems that instead of taking photo-photo-photo and making it a movie, that the sensor “scans” the picture. When things are moving really fast, the “scan” is different from start to finish. So my R/C helicopter’s blades look like they’re bending in flight, and these cyclists look like they’re bikes are shorter than they are. i’ll probably hang on to it because like i said, it’s great for some things… but i’ll probably end up buying another hd camcorder for higher quality stuff down the line.

Man, I love it when two things i like come together. Like I was watching this youtube video of a high powered sniper rifle shooting down radio controlled helicopters, and then it recommended me a video of a radio controlled helicopter with a gun on it… so i’m pretty psyched about this xbox achievement-like program that 24 hour fitness has where you can earn medals for meeting goals, like hitting the gym 100 times in 6 months *achievement unlocked*!

After 6 months, you can exchange your medals for rewards and i got my eyes set on a pair of binoculars since we’ve always needed a set of those for the boat. i usually have enough motivation for the gym as it is, but nothing like a $30 pair of binoculars to push me over the top.

for as long as i’ve been building bikes, i’ve usually forgone thrift and comfort for lightweight and a “race-like” look. i’ve gotten older (lately it seems exponentially so) and wiser and i finally bought a bicycle seat that doesn’t hurt when i sit on it. i’ve always rode the selle italia flite saddle on all of my mountain bikes, but today i swapped it for a WTB Speed V Comp saddle. It’s 400 grams (almost twice the weight of the Flite) and $29 (a quarter the price of the Flite) but it’s comfortable as hell and short of me becoming a mountain bike racer, I doubt i’ll ever look back.

I was barely able to walk from my car to my office this morning my legs were so damn sore. I don’t know why they hurt so much worse than they have from previous snowboarding trips, but yeh, they’re pretty ruined. On Saturday we boarded from 8am until about 4pm, so we were out there for quite a while. Even though I hadn’t been up there in 2 years, most of the skills were still there and I was feeling pretty comfortable by mid-day.

Anyway, it was a fun weekend with friends that I don’t see often enough. We stayed at a huge cabin and did lots of drinking and eating at good and weird places. It was nice to be away from the city for a couple of days, even if I did have my laptop and the internet with me the whole time.

And Happy Birthday Sanam!

like a king without a crown, today i am without a gym. i’m sure most of you know the circumstances that i had been going to my last gym, and today that long run ended. it wasn’t nearly as fantastic of an ending as i always feared/fantasized it would be which was a bit of a let down for all of the thinking i had done about it. if you have no idea what i’m talking about, i’m sorry.

so i need to figure out what to do next. i can’t exactly sign up at the last gym, because everyone there knows *me,* so i’m thinking about stepping up the class and joining the spectrum. that fancy guy eric has a spectrum membership so that would work out well. the problem is it’s facking expensive but if i can get a discount through my work, i might give it a shot. i’ve kinda grown weary of all the ghetto gyms i’ve been going to (no doubt reflective of the ghetto areas i’ve lived in).

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.

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.

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.

i wasn’t planning on riding this weekend, but both eric and al hit me up so we decided to do the pv ride that i did last weekend. we kept a much faster pace than the last ride, and on the downhill coming over the backside of pv, i hit a top speed of 44 mph, which is pretty damn fast on a bike. i’m sure i’ll cruise through the event, and i’m planning on riding relatively easy anyway and enjoying the experience.

the ride we do is 25 miles and most of it is climbing with a very fast descent from the top. i’m gonna do my best to do the ride at least once a month even after the rosarito event, ’cause i really need to keep the gut in check.