Super Sunday

.....Alarm went off at 4:45am and I managed to make it to the Snowbowl parking lot at 5:40. Up...Up...Up into the dark and into a headwind that was blowing the board on my back silly. Quick change into the board boots and back down with a tailwind....yes! I must have put in 120 turns on groomed corn with just enough packed powder to justify the hike. That'll be my last time up unless we get some significant snowfall. It's just not worth an hour and a half hike up to plunge down on corn.

Off to the Aquaplex for some indoor pool action with Lyza and her buddy Nate-Dog. I never get tired of waterslides. Then over to Chateau Ells to watch the first three quarters of the Super Bowl. Back home to do book reports and then I find out the game became a game worth watching. Whoops. That's two years in a row. We drove back from Sedona in a snowstorm last year while the Giants drove down to beat the Patriots.

I still despise Rush Limbaugh.

Radio Rules

I always thought Rush Limbaugh was a tool, but now he officially reached low-life status last week. His four little words regarding Obama - "I hope he fails". Nice, Rush. I could go into your pill-poppin' past but let's disregard that. You're one of the more influential radio shock-show hosts in the US, and you openly state that you hope the leader of your free world fails? Of course, the result of your comment is that more people are tuning into your show to listen to your next spooge of misguided rhetoric, which translates to more advertising which means more money in your pocket. And so it goes.

Bumperstickers of the week:
I'm a PBS mind in a Fox News World (of course...on a Prius)
Online degree worked for me (on a POS Ford truck)

I just saw that Coldplay's Viva La Vida made Rolling Stone's top 10 albums of the year list (#8 I believe). Rush Limbaugh and Coldplay on the radio all the time....And so it goes.

No wonder everyone is so negative.....

CNN Headlines:
Ohio family of 4 found dead
Blagojevich: How can you throw me out?
Brush with death helps couple get money-smart
'Perfect storm' led to current economic crisis
Fortune: Get your dream job
CNNMoney: Uncle Sam wants to sell you a car
Alaska volcano may erupt soon
Frozen body found in elevator shaft
Puppy abandoned in freezing cold
iReport.com: Ice causes car fire in Kentucky
Sepsis can strike, kill shockingly fast
KXAN: Road sign hacked to warn of zombies
Handcuffed crooks flee into pole
Time: Teleportation is real -- don't try it at home
Vegetable ad deemed too hot for TV
CNN Wire: 3 Iraqi election candidates slain

What the hell is a Sepsis anyway?

"Gainer's Fuel"

I slip on one of my team jerseys last Sunday and g-damn.  It's tight.  I think the Rocky workouts in my 33 degree garage are starting to show some results after 60 days of work.  Hmmmm.  Competitive cyclists aren't in the business of gaining weight, but since I'm not really all that competitive lately, who cares.  I feel good.

18 years ago, my last semester at NAU was nearly a complete joke.  I only needed 9 credit hours to graduate which consisted of two easy electives and one class for my business major.  Being a stereotypical fraternity (don't say frat....you wouldn't call your country a c*nt, would you?) guy, I was all about socializing, lifting weights, and screwin' off.  Damn....I miss those days.  Anyway, one of my all-time best friends Kenny B - got me into "Gainer's Fuel".  64 ounce jugs of this calorie-laden "muscle powder" could be had at any GNC.  Mix it up with whole milk and you had a 32 ounce glass of 2,000 calories just waiting to be turned into lean muscle mass. 

A typical day started by lifting weights, hitting class if it were important, then slamming a shake around 11am.  A calorie coma would then kick in and I wouldn't wake up until 2pm.....hit another class around 3pm, down another shake and then go out for beer and chicken wings with the boys because wings were 10 cents and beer was free thanks to my younger sister working the bar.  As the semester went on, I still drank the shakes, but it was making me so tired I started skipping the workouts.  So 5,000 to 6,000 calories a day for 60 days.......you know what I got from it?  Bloated.  Lactose intolerant.  Sick.  I got so sick for two weeks I was forced to stop drinking the shakes, had to skip class, and I lost every pound I gained in the weight room and plenty more as both ends of me were like dueling faucets of discharge.  I had to scramble before finals to make sure I would graduate - and one of my classes was the "History of Skiing".  No shit, you get credit for that at NAU.  All of this was stressful to the point where 3-4 times per year even today - 18 years later - I have a dream about NAU revoking my degree because I was short credit hours.

I'll keep at it in the Rocky Gym .......and stick to soymilk this time around.

 

Harden the Fuck Up

My own version of a Senate Confirmation Hearing was on Saturday and fortunately I came out with little more than a few raspberries – scuffs if you will. Our homeowner Board was cordial, inquisitive, and surprisingly gracious. So the bottom line here…..I still have a job. Profits were down in 2008, but, we still did a hella’ lot better than the rest of the economic market segments.

So I needed to blow off some steam on Sunday, and a 50 mile road ride through the lava fields of Sunset Crater would surely do the trick. AA and myself started at the top of the loop ‘round 8:30am. 39 degrees and windy – not bad. We had a tailwind for most of the 3000 foot drop into high desert country north of Flagstaff…..oh, we definitely had a tailwind as our average speed for the first hour was 31mph. It was in the high 40’s at the bottom. Then – we turn South….hmmm a little headwind there, then we turn Southwest and head up the climb back to the car. Holy…. Freakin…. Headwind Batman. We realized we had to paceline or it would become a side by side deathmarch up the mountain. 2 minutes each, rotating so we could catch a breather by drafting behind each other – and recover at least a little. Time to harden the fuck up. With one push left to the summit at a little over eight thousand feet, I blew…I blew like a broken VW Bug engine. It took me about five minutes to recover and I finally caught AA on the downhill after the crest. We hightailed it across the flats until we hit a wall of wind dropping us from 13mph to 5mph in seconds and it was that kind of hell ride back to the car over the next five miles. Then AA blew a gasket and fell off the back with noodle legs. He found me huddled at the car on the leeward side waiting for the fucking keys. FREEZING. It was still a great ride – call it a character builder if you will.

Home, hot tub, chores, a fire in the wood stove, 24oz of Tecate, an hour in my “old man” chair, nice conversation with the D, a colossal bowl of granola….in bed at 9. It was a good weekend.

Can U Hook a Brother Up?

OK, so I throw down a bunch of trash talk about getting serious about riding again and…….then I get hit with a cold because that last race at the White Tanks took my immune system down to empty. So what have I done all week? Worked, and hit the Rocky gym in the garage. None of that will make me any faster come February 7th in Phoenix for series race #2. Major white-guy problems came up too, because it’s snowing out and I feel compelled to snowboard in the powder instead of riding in the rain.

The reality is that I’m choosing to dwell on those “problems” above rather than think about the real stuff: cutbacks in the tourism industry – hitting me and my crew, and a bank account that seems to get closer and closer to the definition of living “paycheck to paycheck”. So, I’m going to capitalize on the one thing I have left besides a full pound of fresh coffee beans in my grinder – good credit. Refinancing soon could reap a 4.35% or 4.5% 30-year fixed interest rate if your credit score is 750+. Hopefully, Obama will throw me a solid and help bring those rates down a full percent or more from where I’m at now. A full % over 30 years is the difference between THIS, THIS, and THIS versus a handful of mortgage and nothing to show for it when you die at 62. Then again, I better die at 62 or I'll be outta cash.

I know, I’m a one-track-minded Bike Loving Tool, but as any Arizona Cardinals fan would say “He is who we thought he is!” – Tribute to Dennis Green.

So you have a facebook account because....

1.) You love to get scads of e-mails each day that say “Tommy is reading Freakonomics with his twin cats Aldo and Biko at his feet”
2.) You enjoy telling people your current ‘status’: “I’m walking hand in hand on a naked only beach with a chocolate covered midget named Louie and we’re eating strawberries and drinking champagne as the sun goes down”
3.) You love to get “friend requests” from random acts of societal dysfunction like the assclown that sat behind you in American Government in 8th grade?

You might have a Facebook account if:
-You don’t have any kids to raise*
-*notable exception – You’re a stay at home mom who needs a social network of other miserable stay at home moms
-you’re a Club owner who markets wisely on the cheap
-you’ve got more issues than an airport newsstand

Call me old, call me crazy, call me anti-social media networking non-Blackberry, non-I Phone having……whatever……but I missed the point of MySpace, and now I simply cannot get on this runaway train called Facebook. My great pal Sheck finally caved last week and said something to the tune of “Dude, I’ve had it…..I can no longer keep up with the demands of my own webpage, a Flickr account, a MySpace page, and a Facebook page”. “It’s taking 2 hours a day, and I’m DONE”. Consider another friend who lamented about “turning down a friend request from someone I barely know and feeling guilty about it”. Wow. We all have enough peer/societal pressures already – and ya think we need more from self-inflicted punishment websites like Facebook?

Are you with me? If you’re not…..and you still like your little Facebook account, then why don’t you sign up for this. You can dress your pets up, share pictures, tell others what your pets are doing right now, and maybe even pee on each others walls. Good times!