Would you just look at that beautiful day!

Happy Sabbath y'all. Today is gorgeous day #2 for the weekend and I plan on getting my self outside for the remainder of the day.

I met up with a couple of folks from the CRG early this morning for a run up into Pittsfield State Forest. Of course, it's that strange time of year when you it's wicked cold in the morning and it warms up as soon as the sun comes up. So I was way overdressed, and it became a real problem about 20 minutes in when I was dying. Had I just left the vest in the car, I would have been much better off, but I had on tights, a thick longsleeve shirt and a windbreaker vest. Man, oh man was that too much.

Yesterday, also known as Day #1 of a Gorgeous Weekend, I headed out and bought some of that lazy-man's grass seed. You know the stuff with the mulch and the fertilizer and all that included in the bag, and it looks blue until the grass grows through it. I wanted to do the dirt wall next to my driveway and I knew there was no way it would grow with just seed, so I sprung for the good shit. It covered about half what the bag said it would cover, but it did the whole wall. Now I just have to keep it watered and hopefully a nice patch of grass will fill that nasty dirt wall I've been looking at for 4 years.

I also bought myself some plants. I got a pair of hostas, some blueish-purply things and some white things. I got the hostas in yesterday, right next to the side door and my goal for today is to plant the other ones in the garden out front. My hope is that a little bit of life will inspire me to add more plants and have a real garden. We'll see.

I also got the call yesterday to bring my bike that I so handily fine-tuned over to have someone fix it. I tuned it so well that you could no longer shift into all the gears. Not a useful setup on a mountain bike. That lead to an awkward ride on Friday, where I had to ride someone else's bike who, by the way is a good deal taller than I am. Needless to say, the seat wasn't in the "sweet spot" and 30 miles later I was a hurting unit. But, literally one click of this little adjuster and my bike was back in shape. D'oh.

Boy did I feel stupid.

I figured while I was there, I'd have the guy take a look at the rear wheel. It was making this grinding, grit-in-the-bearing noise that I could only assume was some grit in the bearings. His suggestion was to take the whole hub apart, clean out the bearings, repack it with fresh grease and I'd be in business. It took some trial and error, but we got it all hooked up. Of course, now the freewheel (the thing that lets you stop pedalling while the bike is rolling) has some grit in it and he didn't have the tools for that. Meh, that's not as big of a deal. I'm gonna look into getting a bike stand and some basic tools so maybe I can fix my bike the right way next time. I'm also looking into a new bike for riding on the road. A mountain bike isn't quite the right setup for long rides on pavement. Perhaps some new tires would make a difference?

Hmm.

Over and out,
Old Coot

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Pimping the B-Ride

Good afternoon y'all. I have a few exciting things to talk about today, some of which may only be exciting to me. One of which is a feature you may find annoying, but I will find very useful.

You have just encountered the feature I added to my blog. I wanted to be able to do a thing or two behind the scenes, and those things require readers to click on something on my site. If I give you the whole story from the get-go and you don't have to click anything, I can't do what I wanted. Sorry, you have to work to get the whole posting.

Yesterday after work, I stopped at Dave's Bike Shop (or whatever the correct name is) over on Elm St. I liked the way the guy treated me there. I was up front with the fact that I didn't know anything about anything, and he walked me through the process of selecting a chain oil to suit my riding needs. After some more bullshitting and the purchase of my oil (and some gloves), I went home and got to work on the B-ride.

I sprayed the whole thing down with Simple Green, which is an awesome degreaser. It's biodegradeable, environmentally friendly, relatively cheap and does a pretty good job. I often use it to clean the engine compartment in my car. Anyway, I cleaned up the bike REAL GOOD, lubed up the brake and shifter cables (who knew you had to do that?), lubed up the chain, made a few adjustments here and there, and it's smoother than ever.

Plus I had my shirt off to catch some rays, and that walker girl (the girl who's always walking by) smiled at me. It's almost embarassing how badly she wants me. Next time I'll just stand there and flex to put her out of her misery.

Anyway, last night around 11:30 I was riding home from the 'COW residence when I pulled up onto my lawn (a hill) and the bike stopped dead. I tried to walk it up the hill and it was slow going. What happened is the rear wheel must have been loose and it started to fall off when it wedged on the frame. What are the odds of that happening the last 10 feet of my ride? And on my own lawn no less? I didn't think of thanking Jebus then, but I might tonight.

The last topic of conversation I have is more out a conspiracy theory. I'd keep it to myself if I did standup comedy (I even have the whole delivery figured out), but I don't so it's not quite a waste of standup material. My theory is this, what if there was a specific combination of Earth's minerals and compounds that, if consumed, would make people more easily controlled by television? And what if the government knew the recipe and had a simple way to get most Americans to willfully ingest said combination everyday. And not only would we all do this voluntarily, we would pay for it out of our own pockets and think we're doing something good for ourselves. If only Uncle Sam could disguise these compounds with names that wouldn't arouse suspicion. I know...

Vitamin A
Vitamin B
Vitamin C
Vitamin D
Vitamin E
and so on.

There, those won't arouse suspicion. Just put them in pill form and make some into fruity cartoon character shapes to get kids taking them. There. Now people will be more receptive to the crap we put out on the airwaves and the country will be ever so malleable.

Okay, not too valid of a conspiracy but it got me thinking. It won't stop me from taking my Centrum everyday, but I also don't watch a lot of TV so I'm somehow beating the system anyway.

Lastly, I'm not sure what the main reason for this is, but I'm going to attribute it to giving up red meat. You see, ever since JD moved to AZ, I haven't had a bite of red meat. I had been considering this for a while, but when cooking for other people you have to be considerate of their needs. A carnivore like JD wouldn't be able to live on chicken and tofu, nope he needs beef (or pork, the other red meat, ha ha). Anyway, in the last four weeks I've broken a weight barrier that's been laughing at me for the past two years and lost around 8 pounds. Not that I can see or feel the difference, it's just what the freight scale at work tells me. I'm not going to give you the final count at the moment, but if all goes well I should finally be able to hit my penultimate goal.

Then on to my ultimate goal! Muwahahahahaaaaa!

Of course, my goal is not really a number anyways, it's just to be a healthy person which I am. Other people need numbers to quantify healthiness, so when they ask I can give them a number to satisfy those needs. So there.

Well, I might toss another post up here tonight after my bike ride. I'm supposed to be going for about a 30-miler, we'll see how I feel afterwards. Keep your fingers crossed that I don't have any major problems.

Over and out,
Old Coot

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Test Post

Hey y'all, this is a test post. I'm trying something new with my blog and now that you've clicked the link, you should see what I've done. This will help me with some of the features I've installed.

Over and out,
Old Coot

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Got my ride tweaked

Morning y'all. I hope you haven't all gotten accustomed to multiple entries a day, because I tend to go through phases. That's my excuse for why you didn't get anything yesterday. Plus I was busy most of the day AND then busy again later on. Then, I was too tired.

Work was another one of those SSDD (we love us some acronyms here) - Same Shit Different Day - kind of days. Nothing special happened, but at least it wasn't a bad day. I rode my bike in to work, knowing that it was going to be nice and warm in the afternoon. Apparently, we're still in that part of the year where the temperature swings by 30+ degrees every day. So when I got to work, numbhanded and eyes full of tears, I checked the weather and it was 32 degrees. Oops, my bad.

After work, I ate dinner (mmm, more of that delicious leftover chicken) and played some Solitaire. I was somewhat prepared to do nothing for the rest of the day, but it was so nice out I had to do something. I suited up in my biking shorts (no, not lycra) and went out for about and hour and fifteen minutes. I kind of cruised around my part of town for a bit, then headed out to another section, did some hills (hoo-wee those were some sumbitches of hills).

My speedometer read 5 mph for about a mile straight, which was crazy on two counts. The first is that I finally figured out how to get it to display speeds and distances in American. Until last week it would only display metric, which required me to convert it to American urrtime I wanted to know how fast I was going or how far I had gone. The second is that 5 mph is slow. I run faster than that, even uphill. But I just kept my little legs spinning and slowly made my way up the hills. At the top of the last one, I thought my heart was going to explode. I slugged about half of my water (mmm, grape Fruit-2-O) in one chug just to make sure I was extra winded and headed on downhill.

On the downhill, as I was topping 30mph, I made a keen observation - "Mmmmm, it tastes like the mosquitoes are out".

After my ride, I decided to tweak my bike a little, since it had never before been adjusted. It was in the same position they left it in when they assembled it at the store, wrong. I rotated the handlebars so that I didn't have to bust my hands anymore (a straight bar isn't really straight, more of an arc), rotated the brake and shift levers, slid the seat back a little and adjusted the brakes. Don't get me wrong, I don't know much about bikes, I just guessed well and made some real headway.

Which brings me to my next accomplishment - my tools formerly known as "The Tools Soaked in Cat Urine" have been upgraded to just "Tools". At some point, my cat whizzed in my toolbox and I've been avoiding those tools for as long as possible. Last night I needed my allen wrenches and had to open the box. WHEW, damn that reeks! So I took out the suspect tray, sprayed it down with Ammonia, rinsed everything under HOT water and set it all out to dry. Hopefully that'll remedy the situation. I might have to clean the whole thing, but that's more than I really want to undertake, so I'm gonna go with just the tray for now and hope for the best.

After that, I had just enough time to clean up my kitchen and get situated for Lost. Ahh, got some more Fruit-2-O, a couple of lap cats, a belly full of cereal, let's get to vegging. Nope, it was a rerun. BALLS! I ended up watching some investigator/CSI-style/prison/computer-graphic-heavy/take-a-long-time-to-get-to-the-end-result-you-know-is-coming show, but I mostly used it as background noise while I did some stretching. Then, shower and bed.

And there you have it,
Old Coot

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I'm Even-Stevens!

Evening Update

Karmic redemption is mine. I knew if I just maintained a positive attitude, good things would come my way. And oh how good those things were.

First, I used this afternoon's rain as an excuse to load up my iPod with some good ole tunes. Granted, I screwed one album up, but next time I sync up that'll be corrected.

After the rain, I headed out to take part in 10-Miler Day. I can't say for certain if I actually ran 10 miles or not, but my estimate is 10 miles and it took me 80 minutes. I run about an 8-min mile so that would be just about right.

As I first started out, some punk highschool soon-to-be-dropout stoner longhair leaned out of his rusted out Jeep Cherokee to offer the following words of encouragement: "You're fat!" Now, had I not been listening to Wu Tang Clan, I probably would have let it slide off my back, but I returned the compliment with the basic "Fuck You" complete with middle finger extension. Asshole!

Minutes later, I was encouraged by the honking from a car containing two broads. They might have been honking at some squirrels, but since the squirrels don't care, I'll take the credit. Heeeeyyy!

After my run, I prepared what was to be the most delicious chicken I've had in a long time. So delicious was it, that I took a picture of it before eating. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the three breasts I had defrosted (ha ha, breasts) but I turned on my creativity and came up with the following. You should grab a napkin to catch the drool.

First I butterflied (butterflyed, butterflew?) the breasts and layed down a few slices of sundried tomatoes (ha ha, breasts). Then, I covered that with a slight drizzle of olive oil and some fresh ground pepper. On top of this went thinly sliced portobello mushrooms, crushed garlic and parmesan cheese. I closed up the chicken and drizzled a little more olive oil (I love me some olive oil) and sprinkled the tops with rosemary garlic seasoning. This went into the oven for 25 minutes (just enough time to shower, shave and throw on some jams).

I accompanied stuffed chicken with some mixed vegetables and a slice of whole wheat bread (appropriately shredded by the pat of butter). This was all washed down by some vanilla soy milk.

mmm MMM bitches! This is MY chicken, made painstakingly by ME! Old L. COOT! It'll fill you UP! You'll be licking fingertips in NO time.

Okay, enough of the Chapelle Show parody. I'm gonna make a damn fine wife for some lucky lady one day. Hmmm, I wonder what those squirrel-honkers are doing?

Alright, I'm funna chill out for a bit and get my delf to bed. Later players.

Over and out,
Old Coot

P.S. I found a $5 bill in an old coat today. PlacaTAN! That's going right into my dollar glass, to be spent one day on something kickass.

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