Thought Sausage

Spent the weekend in Wisconsin cyclin' about around the LaCrosse area. The area is extremely beautiful and absolutely perfect for riding. The roads are fantastic, people are nice, the scenery is great and there's plenty of cool little bars and stuff to stop in. It is occuring to me that my phone has a pretty decent camera, and the following is its output

Last one is a little fuzzy...but yes..they have a pull tab game in this bar where the prize is in fact a rifle with a scope. Only in rural wisconsin do bars that give away real guns as prizes exist. Yeah a guy living on the 18th floor of a building in downtown Chicago winning a scoped rifle (and yes, Ian did buy two pulls) would bode poorly. The following exchange did in fact take place with me and the barmaid:

Me: "So what happens if you don't have a license for a gun?"
Her: "Oh they don't really care about that sort of thing in this town"

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight

Other than that, we hung out in downtown LaCrosse which is just as fantastic as I remember it. Even stopped by a bar I used to play at in the IK days (was 324 Live then, appears to be called The Joint now). They have a lot nicer PA in there now and it's very motorcycle centric now (it was then too, but now its painfully obvious, what with the giant engine block in the front window). You can still smoke in bars in Wisconsin, which reminded me how much I hate smoke and how noticeable it is to me.

Can't wait to get back up that way and do some more rides.

I never wrote a song using your beat, but always intended to. Awesome contributions sir...fair thee well

Liberty City Under Siege!

Since the surge in crime, which began on April 28 at midnight, more than 830,000 civilians have been murdered—nearly one-tenth of Liberty City's total population. In addition, 35,000 vehicles have been reported stolen, many of which were then driven illegally over sidewalks and pedestrian walkways before plunging into the nearby Humboldt River.

Well the past week flew by.

Went out for a brick session (run/cycle) up in Antioch on Saturday. That went alright...right up until I blew 2 (two!) tires. Jesus fuck this year is not being kind to my tires. The good to come of this I suppose is the fact I'm getting pretty good at changing tubes. It did cut short my cycle though. I also lost the pads for my aero bars (I'm guessing I left them on my trunk after attaching my bike). If the weather holds I plan on attempting this on lake path tomorrow. We'll see how that goes.

Was GOING to head to Palos and mountain bike today, however the Earth didn't agree with me and decided to blast Chicago with a hefty massive downfall of rain mid-afternoon. Normally I wouldn't let that slow me down but Cambr has been bitching up a storm lately about people riding the single track when it is muddy and they show up and bother people on the trails whenever possible. So instead of that, I watched There Will Be Blood and ate too much food. Wheeee....

All in all, for a guy who didn't really go out Friday, I managed to spend a ridiculous amount of money. Couple that with the fact I am going to be getting a hefty bill from james to replace the motherboard in my main computer (which has to happen sooner than later, I've had it with this thing). That is really thrilling...

I'm two weeks away from my first Triathlon of the season. Hy Vee in Des Moines. I'm quite confident on my biking and my ability to clock that in at right around an hour. Running has been a bitch in these bricks lately. To be fair, my diet the day before isn't exactly ideal, but I was hoping to be around 7:30 miles and around 7:50 is about what seems realistic. Some of that is dependant on how hilly the course is. Since I had the tube problems on Saturday I'm goiing to try to get more multi-sport workouts in between now and the 22nd.

Found out this week that work is very likely going to have me spending a lot of time in Seattle in the month of July and August. I'm a little nervous about that as it will fuck with the bike time I have (I'll run anywhere I don't give a fuck about that). Shit...speaking of work, I owed a blog post on Friday and didn't git 'r done. The search industry just isn't engendering anything interesting, and I doubt people are interested in listening to me wax poetic about my workout regimes.

(cheesy use of name I know).

They are shooting that Johnny Depp movie here in town about John Dillinger. I was walking between our offices earlier this afternoon and snapped the following pics of some old cars (note the 1934 year on the license plates).

5 cents a mile!!!

Went for my first swim in the lake for the 08 season (and wow that was much needed, totally forgot about that business with the chop). It was a great water temp, especially if you enjoy having your balls race up into your body at breakneck speed. Holy christ that was cold. I have a full sleeve wetsuit and I was still feeling it. The air temp was hot and muggy so the balance was nice (unlike some of those fall days where it is also in the 50's). Still, we knocked out two miles on Ohio Street Beach today and it felt pretty good. I'm really hoping the Hy Vee Tri isn't wetsuit weather (although with all this flooding, I'm not sure what the fate of the race will be). The whole bouyancy factor is nice, but shedding that thing after the run is a bitch. I'd like to avoid that.

Nothing major to report otherwise. Tomorrow Microsoft is hosting a karaoke party at the Double Door (with a REAL LIVE BAND! GEE GAW!). That band better know the Love Boat theme song because I'm singing it whether they can keep up or not.

UPDATE: Thanks to Mike's insight...I am now signed up and ready to run the Bigfoot Triathlon in Lake Geneva Wisconsin going on the same day as Hy Vee. Sure that's basically 80 bucks down the drain for entry fees, but I didn't just go swim in balls-freezing water to go run 5 fucking kilometers. Sorry to folks in Des Moines I won't see next weekend. We'll definitely have to meet up during RAGBRAI.

Been a couple days...

I've been pretty busy the last few days...attempting to recall everything is somewhat daunting...

-Saturday I volunteered and painted a school (well we got 24 of the 27 classrooms). Good times. It is crazy how funding works in this city. Obviously with the Chicago Cares group, we're going into areas that don't get gobs of local area money or have booster clubs with parents that have squillions of dollars laying about. But on the plus side, one room I painted must have been like a 1st grade map room and I damned near memorized the "multiplication rap" which basically consists of a rapper belting out various multiplication factors random stock rap lines in between (aka: "when I have a problem, I don't lose my cool, I use multiplication as my rule!" WORD!!). May god help the patrons of the bar that happens to have that in the karaoke book when I'm in the room.

Headed back to Iowa (Quad Cities) Saturday afternoon/evening. My bro is on leave at the moment so he was there and my folks are just getting back from Europe (Holland/Germany is where they were). Good times. I got in a pretty solid bike/run and feel pretty good abotu things Saturday. The bike was windy as all fuck coming back, but holding a pace of 30mph for 13.5 miles out was pretty fucking cool!

Came back to Chicago and had drinks/dinner with a girl at Carnivale (where I'd never been). Nice place and from my initial impression, great/friendly staff. Funny how that place is right by where I live, yet I've never been. We headed over to Jeff Tap for a bit after that, and proceeded to do things that kept me from getting up and working out in the AM (aka drink).

Been practicing transitions and doing some light running ever since. Transitions will be fucking fast this weekend...no excuses. As it turns out, Youtube is a great source of instruction for how to speed up transitions. I've discovered that putting lots of vaseline on the outer edges of your shoes can greatly enhance ones ability to slide in and out of them. I also discovered that I look like a huge fucking tool wandering around Walgreens checking out the various petroleum jellies.

Another open water swim in the testicle ascending cold waters of Lake Michigan tomorrow. I haven't been in the water for a week so this is needed.

I have Friday off...and am planning on riding in some capacity that day, then its off to Lake Geneva. GOOD TIMES GOOD TIMES

Got this email from the folks at the Hy Vee Triathlon:

2008 Hy-Vee Triathlon Update—The Swim Is Back On! For days, Hy-Vee and West Des Moines city officials have been monitoring water conditions at Blue Heron Lake in West Des Moines’ Raccoon River Park in the hopes of hosting a true triathlon. Today, they got the news they had been waiting to hear: the water level is lower and the bacteria readings well within the safety range. This means that age-group, junior and youth elites, and ITU World Cup athletes will all have the swim returned to their events during this weekend’s Hy-Vee Triathlon. So bring along your wet suit! Water temperatures have not yet been determined so please be ready for a wet suit or regular swim event. When we find more information out about the temperatures we’ll pass that along via the e-newsletter. Please note: the Hy-Vee Kids Triathlon for children will remain a duathlon, which is a run-bike-run. It will be hosted entirely on the campus of Valley Southwoods. The finish line will remain on the campus of Southwoods School, where officials moved the event last week after flood waters threatened Des Moines.

Well gee fucking gaw. Unfortunately, I'm still going to be doing Bigfoot. It's closer and now my brother is doing it with me. So forward we go (I wonder if they'll send me the shirt from Hy Vee)

Died of heart failure today. Sir, we've all hated people in their 50's named Skip along with you. Fair travels sir....

Awesome day today with the Lake Geneva Triathlon. Will post details and photos as soon as I get them.

As mentioned ran the Bigfoot Tri in Lake Geneva on Sunday. It was an alright course. I'm not sure where the hell they were taking the water temp because that high 50's estimation could not have been close to accurate. I didn't bother wearing a wetsuit since it was so warm (I base that by how much faster a wetsuit will enable me to go against how long it'll take to peel the fucker off in transition). The swim went okay, was a few seconds slower than what I pulled in last year but I attribute some of that to the confusing course (the turnaround wasn't entirely defined so I stopped and looked around a couple times). The water was marina-esque gross...plenty of weird looking little fish swimming around me. I've seen everything from squid to dead dogs float by me in my various open water swims so I'm used to that sort of thing.

The bike was sort of a slow route, but still pretty good. It had some rolling hills that zapped me, but it also had some great straightaways and I was moving at a lot faster clip than normal.

The run was off-road. That is, we ran through a forest (as the finish line pic implies). That slowed me down a bit just because I wasn't used to it. Nevertheless, my runtime was a lot faster than last year.

Other random notes:

-Bigfoot is very well put together. Overnight security, intuitive course route, plenty of marshalls on the course. Other than the swim being sort of weird to follow, the rest was as good as any I've done. Plus they gave you an actual cycling jersey and a real runners hat in the "free shit bag" (which was a really nice re-usable nylon job).

-Lake Geneva is fucking beautiful. I must get back soon with my road/party bike in tow.

-My transitions were super fast (even with a bit of fumbling out of T1). That practice definitely paid off.

-I'm not wearing that shirt again for this race. It was cause for much problem in T1 and I damned near dropped my bike as a result. Should have gone shirtless (thus improving my severely problematic tan-line situation)

So that's that. Unfortunately that's my only Olympic distance for the year so I'll have to wait until next year to improve times. I'd definitely do Lake Geneva again though. Next up is the century in Alaska....

In other news...my new computer is finally supposed to arrive today. It was held up in Hodgkins IL because of flood problems (supposedly). God I can't wait to get on a machine that isn't the size of a children's toy.

Finally back on my own (new) computer. It's a new hard drive and the old one is sitting there doing nothing. But damn it feels good to be the lord of my own domain again....

UPDATE: Looks like the old drive is my new paperweight. In the time it would have taken to figure it out, I got all pertinent files back on this drive (including music). Thank god for the big server sitting in the corner of the room.

UPDATE 2: Fuck Gatorade and their marketing. Have you seen this Tiger (Woods) formula Gatorade? I don't know what it tastes like, what its appeal is and I don't care. Gatorade is designed to provide sodium/electrolytes and calories required to replace fluids lost when expending energy for lengthy periods of time. I'm sorry but golf is not a fucking endurance sport and does not require a golfer to replace vital fluids. If Luc Van Lierde or Lance Armstrong had their own Gatorade at least that would make sense. I've never even golfed without being drunk before. It's as much of a physically challenging sport as throwing bags. Sorry to the golfers who read this that take their sport seriously, but if you wave the flag for your girly little old-man sport and expect to come here and get flowers blown up your ass, you've come to the wrong blog.

Just to show I'm not the sort who hides behind his own blog, I posted this on Craigslist too. I'm also thinking some flyers around the lakeshore beach houses are in order.

Fellow Chicagoans,

Summer is upon us. That time when you and your kin congregate around the lake for bbq's, stroll on the path, rollerblade, and pick up chicks. Lovely isn't it? It's also that time when we, the road cyclists, must juggle our work schedules with our 'seat time' (that's time spent riding for those not 'in the biz'). Unfortunately, the mashup of these two groups has made me feel a little bad. You see, in my attempts to keep my heart rate above 150bpm for the majority of my interval rides, I am forced to ride through your parties and sometimes I'm not a nice guy. I don't mean to be rude, but sometimes, well to be honest, you people piss us, the collective road cyclists off. You don't follow the rules of the path, you do not watch your children and all around, you put you and us in harms way by not respecting others on the path. Now, we realize we've got our problems too. The following are points we would like addressed with what you, the fair citizens of this city can expect from us.

-Do not stand in the middle of the path and congregate with your friends. Regardless of the 'bling' or 'ice' or whatever you may be donning, or how hot the girl or guy is, the simple fact of the matter is that we're dealing with physics here. F=MA people (that's force= mass x acceleration for those of you who forgot). That means, when an adult cyclist is unable to steer clear of you because you and your 'posse' are in the middle of the path, we're all going to get hurt. I'm talking in a wheelchair for life hurt. We don't want that. You don't want that. Let's avoid the whole situation and leave the path to folks in motion okay? If you do this for us, we, in turn will make sure to announce loudly when we are coming so you know we are "on your left" (as that is the designated passing side). Feel free to harass/moleste those cyclists who do not comply with this, as they are morons and we realize we've got a few of them in our flock.

-We think your children are adorable. In fact we commend you for spending time with your children in the wonderful parks Chicago has rather than letting them veg out with video games and waste the summer away. You should feel good about that. However, we don't feel so good about it when we come around a bend and your child of less than 2 feet in height is standing in the middle of the path with a popsicle in their mouth while you stand idly by. This is not a "child safe" environment. In fact, children just like your own are killed by standing in those very places every year. I personally don't have children so I can't speak to the virtues of this "parental instinct" that's all the rage with you birthing folks. However, I can only assume it's sensor should be triggered in this situation. What I'm trying to say is please keep your small children off the path at all times. There's nothing for them there. I submit with the vast fields and playground areas, there's many places little Timothy can enjoy that popsicle. Might I suggest making a game out of it? The trail could be hot lava. Avoid the hot lava kids! It's hot! You'll get burned! If you do this for us, we promise not to allow any fat cyclists in spandex on the path. Yeah I realize I'm asking for an inch and giving you a mile here, but I swear to you I'll get it done. We don't appreciate those thunder thighs anymore than you do.

-Walking side by side like gunslingers is the incorrect way to 'walk' down the path. The correct way (as stated on numerous rules of the path billboards) is single file far to the right. This isn't because the city of Chicago wants to crimp your style. It's because a carbon bike wheel moving at 25mph that suddenly finds itself lodged in your rectum because you and your friends didn't read the sign is REALLY going to hurt. Very painful. Not to mention said rectal jamming won't be pleasant for us either (and what will all those pretty girls or hot guys think when the paramedics have to try to pull the tire out of your ass? They'll do it right there on the path. That milkshake ain't bringin all the boys to the yard ladies...fyi). We can't always come to a grinding halt, and you and your friends blocking every which way around you ensures one of you will get hit. So once again, let's go ahead and obey that single file rule and avoid the whole mess (I hope the visual I created was compelling enough). This is all too common right around that beach on 31st street. In return for this, we, the cyclists, promise to slow down in front of beach houses to minimize the chances of an incident as described. Those rims aren't cheap man!

-Rollerbladers...well let me just get this out there right away - I plain don't like you people. There's only one or two (at most) that can manage to "blade" (or "in-line" or whatever the correct verbage is) without kicking a foot out either way. Most of you have little to no control over your speed and handling. And for god sakes, that whole "bend down with your hands tucked behind your back" thing isn't working (although it does look funnier when you hit a crack and go tumbling). Let me go ahead and make this very clear -- you are not the fastest people on the trail by a LONG SHOT. This isn't meant to be snide...but all too often, rollerbladers ride right down the middle of the path (with said kicking side to side motion fully employed). We, the race/road cyclists WILL NEED TO PASS YOU. Accept it. Attempting to "go faster" and (I assume) blow us away with your finesse and mastery of the inlines is not going to make you look like the badass in one of those cheesy 80's movies. Instead, it will force you to have less control over your body and ultimately get you and most likely a bystander hurt. Now wouldn't it be easier if we just go ahead and accept the fact cyclists move faster than rollerblades? Let's go ahead and keep those blades on the right side of the path champ. Be sure to stay as far to the right as possible because of said kicking to the sides. If you do this for us, we, the cyclists, promise to stop assuming you are gay for rollerblading. That's a stereotype and it's wrong.

Okay, let's give this a try. We all need to do our part. I've already seen two viscious accidents this summer and I really don't want to see another (let alone be in one myself). We've got a really awesome trail system on the lake front. One of the best in the country for a city this size (believe me, I've looked).

Thank You

Dave McAnally

PS - Whatever that family that shows up at 63rd and grills every Monday smells fantastic. Whoever you are, you are my heroes. Not to mention you comply with everything I asked above everytime I see you out there. Muchos Gracias!

Chuck Hoffman has a great post today on experimental music (namely, the most recent Fuck Buttons album) that has one the single greatest/poignant quotes regarding experimental music I've ever come across:

I think I realized somewhere along the line that part of what a typical "experimental" artist does is to bullshit (how big a part is up to artist, I suppose). Make something that people think is totally genius simply because it defies conventions and is different from what folks are used to, but that, apart from being weird, doesn't really have to be very well thought-out or even particularly good. I find that surprisingly easy to do, and I'm frequently surprised at the enthusiasm with which such product is received. And so what often seems to happen in "experimental" music is, you figure out how to get maximum reaction with minimum work.

Finally somebody came out and said it! Sometimes the emperors have no clothes.

He's an internet marketing genius. No really he is. Check out the super amazing made-for-adsense website machine. Life does get better when you move out of your parents house too doesn't it?

UPDATE: Oh dear fucking god this is like a tragic tragic accident. I just checked out the book he's plugging on his Earn 6 Figures website (I'm not going to bother giving him the link pop). I wouldnt' begrudge somebody for plugging themselves by fudging a bit, but this is out and out bullshit (not to mention that he couldn't possibly look like any more of a douchebag than in that pic on the site). Of course as Adam pointed out, this guy probably sells a ton of these books since 95% of the population doesn't know SEO from a 2x4 upside the head. Although I guess if you want to avoid a "Google slap" (really?) you gotta get your SEO Mindset swerve on (seriously?).

As it turns out, I won't be paying freight on my bike next week. Delta rocks this shit for free

Per the website:

Non-motorized touring or racing bicycles with single seats are accepted as checked baggage, with certain limits.

Handlebars fixed sideways and pedals removed
Handlebars and pedals encased in plastic, Styrofoam, or other similar material
Some connection carriers and aircraft may not accept bicycles as checked baggage, and may have different limits.

I thought Jet Blue's 50 dollar per trip policy was pretty generous, but this rocks. My crate comes in at 45" at the longest point. HOOWAH!