Thursday, December 29, 2005

great 24 hours

Here's me in front of Karen's brother's King Ranch F150 Pick-up. Pardon the picture quality, but i wanted to commemorate the moment more than the actual event. :) Among those people who like to haul things, or at least look like they do, this is the Porsche 911.

Yes, it's been 24 great hours. Last night, Jeff and Charlene stopped by and we came up with the idea of hitting Roberto's on River Road which we've never made it too and still haven't because, as we soon found out, they closed up shop for Christmas week. In need of grub, we decided to hit India's which is always good and it maintained it's rep with us. We also had a lasse tasting competition. I started with a salted one, amy countered with the sweetened one, then Kumar suggested a sweet and salted one. A good idea at the time, maybe now overkill.

Today Karen came in from Colorado Springs via Houma and we had a great time with her, by immediately going back to India's, then chilling at Varsity Sports and finally Perks. Good laughter was had by all. Karen works at the OTC and she's soon heading to Italy for the Winter Games. Get that blog in place Karen!

HARK! a blog from the West Coast.

Eric has gotten off the bench and is in the game!

This could be as big as Tivo, ok no, not that big.

what the tivo is for

I love tivo, tivo tivo tivo
It is perhaps the most important invention in recent history.
We have been liberated from the chains of tv boredom that have enslaved us.

No more bland piece-mealed E eye-candy documentaries featuring commentary by people you've never heard of but who are being treated as celebrities.

No more mindless dwelling on what exactly is being blurred out on the Howard Stern show.

No more Real World/Road Rules Part 17 - Cancun the Final Inferno to Hell.

No, now untethered i can spend my time on what's really important. Tonight it was nearly 90 minutes of uninterrupted commercial freeSouth Park. Oh sweet gluttony.

I'd never seen the episode on Scientology, where Stan is identified as the second coming of L. Ron Hubbard. Too funny and scary, especially when they went over what Scientology is actually about. Yow. Then Tom Cruise, John Travolta and eventually R. Kelly all hid in Stan's closet and refused to come out. You can see where this is going.

While on the subject of Mr. Cruise, Esquire magazine recently published a column which drew into question Mr. Cruise's sexuality as well as the authenticity of his relationship with Katie Holmes. This alone is about as interesting as a pair of dingo's kidneys, who really cares? one way or the other. What is much more intriguing is that in the next issue, Mr. Cruise's lawyer wrote a letter to the Editor pointing out how "false and defamatory" these assertions were and basically demanding a retraction. Highly entertaining, but come on is this guy overcompensating or what?

team swag


Here's our thank you to Cane's for their sponsorship. Pretty sweet.

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Make the wind your friend and you'll never ride alone.

This is one of many cheese-ball sayings i've come up with over time. I always envision it being engraved into the marble floor at the entrance to the David Alexander Memorial Cycling Museum. But i digress, this saying was made for today, it was a windy mofo kind of day. The wind was so bad, you sort of assumed the "rainy crit" posture with your handlebars so that they wouldn't be whipped out of your hands. It was a swervy-ditch-pointing day of grunting and grinding your teeth.

Did two laps of iFartlek again, this is turning into my new addiction. Sometimes it's perfect, slow song for recovery, fast song for interval, but other times it happens in reverse which is strange. Like today, i recovered to Jesus built my Hot Rod, which ain't slow then jammed to Karma Police, let's call it introspective. During my last loop in the tail-wind section i saw Tom coming the other way, but i wasn't about to turn around into it. Sorry, Tom.

Saturday, December 24, 2005

merry christmas to all

Ah yes, Amy and i must have been nice this year because Santa brought us TIVO and early reports concur, it is a good thing.

This morning we caught the Dash and Dine Christmas Party at Jennifer and Carl's which was great, maybe a 6 or 7 mile run followed by a white elephant. Good times, great people.

Yesterday i rolled the loop twice doing iFartlek. This is my new favorite workout, i shuffle my hits playlist and you go hard for song 1, recover for song 2, hard for song 3, recover for song 4, rinse, repeat. You get the deal.

No word yet on the grand G-town ride this morning which i couldn't make, hope all stayed dry, but the downpour that i saw makes that hard to believe.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Thursday, December 22, 2005

fantastic read

Hal Cohen's piece on walking in Baton Rouge is superb, check it out.

this kind of morning

oh yeah, it really is this kind of morning.

doing more before 7 am than most people blah blah blah

So Chuck convinced me to try Pat's Supper Studio 6 AM Spin Class and i gave it a whirl this morning. It was great, i think this whole parenthood gig is working on me, i was up at 5 AM bright-eyed and bushy tailed and joined Mitch, Pat, Chuck and Trip for a good hour of spin followed by a mad-cap run down Stuart and back, the highlight of which was playing real-time frogger as we perilously crossed Perkins Road in early morning traffic.

On a side note, Pat let me try out his power cranks. Talk about feeling like a kid again on a bike. These things are trippy, they completely isolate each leg's motion through the pedal stroke. 15 seconds of spinning and i was whimpering like a badly beaten step-child. Pretty wild, they're supposed to help your pedal stroke and your running at the same time. I'm intrigued. Pat says they've forced him to push a larger gear. Going to have to do more reading on this one...

Monday, December 19, 2005

Got $14.99 to spare?

Last summer i decided that i would write the great cycling video game, the likes of which had never been seen before. Not only would you be able to control pro cyclists individually, but there would also be a team element that would allow you to call on teammates to chase down breaks or jump across to them or go for individual glory in stage races, etc. All the drama of bicycle racing in a nice neat package. I figured i'd implement it as either a 2-dimensional racer with Flash or maybe a 3-dimensional game using some 3rd party 3-d tools. That part i hadn't figured out yet, but i began working on how the interfaces would work and what the most basic functionality would be needed to implement it. I thought of using the pro calendar to implement a "season", which would allow you to have different athletes training and peaking at different times and eventually introducing the idea of "farm teams" that could develop new talent and eventually incorporate them into the game. This i figured would take years to produce, but hey it would be fun right?

Then 2 weeks ago i came across this website. There it is, the whole shebang all written, produced and perfected. Well, maybe not perfected, but let's say i've stopped any development efforts on my part. For $14.99 you can buy Cycling Manager 4 which is last year's version, but it's plenty awesome.

I tried the demo of the new version, called Pro Cycling Manager, but it seemed to have issues with my video card. CM4, as it is called in the forum, features a very full euro calendar with most major teams and riders represented. Each rider's individual talents are rated and simulated in race scenarios. Some teams must have bawked at being represented so they have "stage names" such as U.S. Pystol which is led by Lance Niilstrong and George Hancapie. Others feature their complete roster plus actual photographs of riders.

The game has a cool 3d engine a few steps better than my Computrainer. The simulation of racing is where the game really shines. In Paris Roubaix you can watch the pack thin dramatically with each crossing of the pave'. I did a hilly circuit race in Austria and the pack got smaller and smaller with each lap. I even tried to win Ghent Wevelgem with Cipo but he got creamed on the last cobbled climbs, the race went to Van Petegem who beat out Museeuw for the win which is a testament to the AI and rider ratings. They even have a timetrial mode which i used on the Alpe d'Huez, can't say i understand it yet, but it was cool to watch. My apologies go out to David Zabriskie who i forced to finish last.

That's another reason why i want other people to buy this game. It doesn't come with instructions so i'm developing my own strategies on what works. So far my best finish was Boonen's 3rd at Paris-Roubaix.

Plus in Europe, supposedly people load their own rider databases to simulate their favorite year of racing. Rating their favorite riders and even designing their jerseys so the whole game changes. I haven't gotten that far yet, but you can see how addictive this could become.

Anyway, if you are a cyclist with the slightest interest in strategy-based video games then this game is probably for you. Check it out and let me know if you do, i'd love to hear your take on it.

monday monday monday monday

It was a fun weekend, Saturday night Amy and i left the boy with Steph and Dave and went out for the first tme in 8 weeks. We hit the French Market Bistro which is always super nice, i had the Tiki Tuna and Amy had the Redfish on the Cedar Plank. I always wonder what they do with all these cedar planks. After that we headed out to G-town for the Robert Open House which was a blast. Great food, what can i say, it was a blast.

Sunday i rode my bike! I know it's something i hardly do these days. I met up with Charles, Lawson and Mike and we rolled about 50 at an honest pace. A little more honest than i've been riding, so it felt good. The winds were surprisingly strong, much more than it seemed when we started, but that's the way River Road works right?

That's it, i need to start Christmas shopping.

Friday, December 16, 2005

In case you're still shopping for me...

this would make a great gift, because i've been really good this year.

:D

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

learning something every day

Back in the Gopher hey-day, most things internet were knowable. There was only so much you could do with a bunch of menus and nobody had bandwidth to speak of. Now a days, there are more acronyms than you can shake an Amazon.com-sized warehouse of sticks at, and so it is with today's entry which comes from Michael, the YTMND or You're The Man Now Dog's which can be found here. According to the wikipedia, these are odd little graphics paired with a sound file that tile to fill your screen and loop endlessly. Some of these are racey or just plain trashy but my favorites include Chewbacca Sings and the funnniest Tom Cruise kills Oprah. Check them out if you have time to kill...

Monday, December 12, 2005

word of the day

this from Steve, he called me one today and i had to look it up. I love the origin.

luddite:

[n. LUH-dite] The noun Luddite specifically refers to one of a group of early 19th century English workmen who were campaigning against the automation of the power loom. Under cover of night and generally masked, the workers often destroyed the equipment that had displaced them. Today the word broadly refers to anyone who is opposed to technological change or new working methods. The name Luddite is presumed to come from the leader of these angry workmen: Ned Ludd

everybody's probably seen these

but i just came across these Lance interviews on velonews, here and here. Some of it is dull, but check out Lance's account of the Fillipo Simeoni story, that made me laugh. Also, he admits that he hates Velonews and he only did the interview for Wilcockson.

A simple request

"Hey Dave, would you mind letting our dogs into our house Saturday night?" asked my sister, who was out of town. Hey no problem i thought, i'm practically a dog whisperer, this will be a piece of cake. O no, no it wasn't.

Steph's pups had spent the day outside, and since it was approaching freezing, it was probably a good idea to get them inside. I figured i'd open the door and they'd jump in, nope it wasn't that easy. Upon seeing me, these guys began growling and snarling and in no uncertain terms expressed that they weren't coming in. Jerky Treats and sliced turkey be damned, they weren't having it.

Beauty tames the beast, so Amy gave it a shot and managed to get JoJo the brown one in, but Jacques would have no part of it. I decided i'd have to play cowboy and try to corral him, however when i approached him, he took one look at me and dove under the fence triggering his electronic shock collar. I fell to my knees laughing as i watched his white curly haired butt spasm as it ran away from me under the fence.

About this time i figured we were going to have to patrol the neighborhood to find him but i guess the pain of the shock collar was enough to turn him around, and we found him on the front porch. When i opened the door, he shot in like a lightning bolt.

This was when i began laughing hysterically, i couldn't stop myself as we tried to corner him inside. Corral, chase, corral, chase and corral again, finally i got to him and tried to feed some sliced turkey but he wouldn't even look at it. So i gave up, picked him up and he tried to bite me! Into the cage they finally went, and my face hurt from laughing...little demon dogs.

Look out... she's back.

Pekoe bows to Cat Mecca

Not sure when our cat converted to Islam, but it's his favorite pose lately.

Saturday, December 10, 2005

it isn't hard to sleep in ...

after yesterday morning's commute. Waking temp in the 30's and I heard the windchill was in the 20's. I even wore my Jacques Cousteau Old School Neoprene Booties and still had a quarter-sized white spot on the end of each big toe when i took my shoes off. This after only 10-11 miles! If there is such a thing as good roller/trainer weather this is it.

In much more interesting news, Jeff has started his blog, Me, My Moots and I which features some impressive video footage of his no-hands roller work. I'm still impressed and i'm thinking that is now my goal for the off-season. Welcome to blogdom Mr. Robert.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

djw you are to blame

By the beard of Zeus!!!

Ron Burgundy is a god

HBO's movie of the month, or so it seems, is Anchorman. This means it comes on probably 5 times a day, and that isn't enough.

more rasterbation


In response to my post on the rasterbator, Jeff sent me this image of his awesome creation done with legal size paper and a color printer. That is very cool, Lance in the 2003 Dauphine. I dig it.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

illin

For the last week, i've been sick, Amy's been sick, Ryan was sick a little, then two of my bikes got sick.

The commuter bit the dust on my excellent levee-top adventure. It's in the shop getting it's front-derailleur bent back.

Today, Josh informed me that my rear training wheel is trashed, kaput, disintegrating, etc. I asked for more details and he handed me about a dozen eyelets from the inside of my rim that fell out when he took the rimstrip off! He says the rim is cracked, falling apart and just generally trashed.

Three years of abuse on all sorts of roads and other various surfaces and voila blammo gone. So he's rebuilding it for me, but what's that i hear? off in the distance? could it be the sweet seductive sirens of Vicenza calling? Probably not for a while, gotta keep the boy in huggies.

I'm not making this stuff up...

Be thankful for your company's name

Today i saw a guy getting out of a truck for the Coastal Erection Company.

These guys probably never hear the end of it in softball leagues, etc.

Monday, December 05, 2005

tis the season

Christmas is the greatest time of the year, after July, August and May, but what i really love is the dialog that can be overheard while Christmas shopping. Granted, i hate Christmas shopping more than just regular shopping, so i probably miss out on a lot of this but last week i encountered a real gem while buying our new fancy shmancy artificial Christmas tree at Hobby Lobby. I'm pretty sure they were two co-workers a youngish guy and an oldish lady shopping together.

Youngish Guy: Oh wow, look there are the new mini-sharpies
Oldish lady: REALLY!!! Gee thanks so much for telling me that, I can't read English.

NICE and well-played
I love Christmas

Sunday, December 04, 2005

back to the blog

haven't blogged in a few, me and the fam got sick last week, figured i would have plenty of time to write, but instead i retreated to a steady diet of alka seltzer cold medicine martinis and sleeping. Ryan got better Friday, i felt better yesterday and amy today.

I have a thing for undersestimating distances, today i thought it would be cool to ride out to Jeff and Charlene's in G-town then ride with them for 25 and come back. I fiigured it would be 65 tops so i started beating myself up on the way home for feeling flat. Since i'm generally cyclocomputer-less, when i got home i did the math on the Gmap Pedometer, and turns out i did 88 on a granola bar and a banana. Flat was ok.

In other news, i've learned an important lesson about fatherhood. It means watching a LOT of football with your son. I've never been one to watch any football really, but both Saturday and Sunday, Ryan and i caught the better part of 3 different games. It's all making sense now.