After getting pretty retardedly drunk last night, all the plans fell through for tonight which sort of pissed me off at first but it's kind of nice to have the place to myself for a bit. Why drink last night you ask? No particular reason really, just that I had a coke-a-cola craving, with rum, I do love the Captain with coke... mmmm! Also, since I'm pretty much super human, no hangover today!

I was supposed to work at Echo from 3 till 930 tonight, but turns out they closed at 5 today, so since I bailed on my last shift I felt bad and went up for a couple hours this morning. PJ, his buddy and like 4 other patrollers were up there so we all went out straight lining. Ah the art of the Echo straight line. It's an exercise in balance, balls, stupidity and luck all centered around your ability to dodge obstacles like rocks, trees, stumps, wires, various mysterious metallic objects and so forth. Good times.

On our ride today, Nathan and I headed out on the bike path from Denver to Chattfield where I used to train everyday a couple years ago when I lived in Littleton. We almost got into a fight with this douche bag who rode by us going the other way when he yelled out "ride single file!" Mind you, this bike path is like 8 feet wide, with a clear center line which I, being on the outside of Nathan, was a good foot from so there's no way any part of me was anywhere NEAR that line. The ironic part was that this guy was riding with his lady friend ahead of her, but still next to her! So I promptly yelled back "same to you!" He yelled something back and it took all the restraint I could not to turn around and give chase to point out the finer details of Colorado cycling laws to him - that and maybe teach him how to ride in a straight line so he doesn't have to worry about close passes... F-ing Bike Path Barrons.

People like that give us (cyclists) all a bad name. It's bad enough that we have contend with motorists who don't know the law, then when you throw a-hole cyclists who think the transit world revolves around them, and them alone, it makes it impossible to compromise.

Ah well, Happy New Year I suppose.

Nathan and I went skiing with Jenny, Erin and some of their friends today at Winter Park. It was actually pretty nice in that it was a crystal clear day, warm (upper 20's) and no wind - NO WIND!! I think it might be the best weather I've had for skiing in a long time, over a year maybe. Sadly, other than the company, that was about all that was good.

Nathan and I had to go up to Echo Mountain to get passes to use at WP so we didn't have to pay $50-92 to ski, so that took about 2 hours of driving. Can you believe it costs more than $90 to ski?! Then since it was a holiday, everyone from out of town was out in force clogging up the roadways which had been relatively empty all weekend, so it took us another 45 min longer than it would have otherwise for us to actually get to WP, find parking, acquire our tickets from the window (which were free, the only way I ski these days) wait in the lift line... From the time we actually arrived at the base on the bus, it was close to an hour before we were actually on the lift. Then the skiing on the WP side consisted mostly of dodging near death experiences caused by other out of control gapers and very small children.

Once we finally met up with our group, it became a little more tolerable and fun - did I mention we didn't start skiing until noon - NOON! Winter Park is what I call a "play mountain" in that it's fun to to go every once in a while, maybe once a year, and play around. The terrain is mostly that of a mini-Vail; a couple turns on relatively good snow/terrain, then a mile of flats and people dodging to get back to the lift. It was fun overall I suppose, and it was free, save for gas, so I can't complain too much.

It certainly reaffirmed my no skiing on weekends or holidays rule though - I probably won't do that again anytime soon unless the circumstances are extremely extenuating.

Rest week is now over and it looks like the winds will die down enough for me to get in a few quality hours on the bike tomorrow and the rest of the week - fingers crossed for the wind gods!

Just got off the trainer, it's too cold an windy today to ride outside, even easy - it's like 30 with 40mph winds... It was a tough call to ride inside, but I do hate the wind, don't mind the cold much, but I also hate the trainer. I guess the trainer won, this time.

Just heard from Eric that January will be a ramp up sort of month with much of what I've been doing for the last few weeks being done again in the next few weeks, but then the real fun begins. Feb is supposed to be my biggest month of the year which should hopefully put me on target for Gila at the end of April. I'm sort of concerned that I may do what I did last year, and peak too early (when I won a pretty tough "prep race" 10 days before the big show) but Eric has assured me this won't be the case.

I love working hard. I also enjoy the long, steady, relatively mellow riding that happens this time of year, but it can get old tooling around on the same old flat roads. I think this month when i go fro 3-5 hours that I'll get in some more climbing, that is if mother nature cooperates and keeps things snow free on the pavement.

Just have to stay healthy and rested this month, then the real work begins.

Just sitting here on the crackberry waiting for Christmas dinner to be ready... I have failed miserably at keeping this thing updated, for that I apologize, but really, you're not missing out on much.

I like Christmas. I miss being little though and counting down the months before this day. This year I barely realized it was coming until it was already here and I found myself driving to my mom's house to see all the fam in town and open presents. Damn the time flies and damn I feel old. Speaking of old, my grandparents are getting up there and slowly declining in health. It's the kind of thing where you wonder If this could be their last Christmas, terrible I know but I've developed quite a "realistic" outlook on life. Just last night I took down a guy who will barely be alive today to see his last Christmas - heart attack while driving cross country to see family. Nice guy too.

Anyway, I'm just bitter because dinner is taking so long, and it looks to be a good one; pork loin, fresh veggies, potatos, and of course pumpkin pie waiting in the wings for the second act. Mmmmmm good!

Sorry all, I suck at updating this. The problem is, unless you want to hear about cycling or work, I really don’t have much to say – I’m boring.

So weather people on TV in this town are bad. I know the weather is hard, but when you have thousands of dollars in computers that create these elaborate data sets used to predict the weather, I would think you can do a little better than this… This is a weather timeline of the last 12 hours:

-6pm: It’s become cloudy and colder

-615pm: Weather man says there is a “chance of flurries tonight with no accumulation expected.”

-630pm: Feels like it’s going to snow, no snow actually falling.

-845pm: Snow has fallen; SIX INCHES OF SNOW HAS FALLEN.

How can you blunder it that bad? I went out and drove to Denver last night, which, to their credit, it was not accumulating more than a half inch or so in Denver, but there was 6 inches on the roads at my house and driving was EXTREME. The road surface went from pavement, to water, to slush, to several inches of snow – yea, sketch.

Thanksgiving was ok. I worked which I don’t mind much and we actually stayed pretty busy all day which makes time fly. Throw that in with free Starbucks (at a different location no less) and free dinner it was a pretty good day.

I want to get a job on the orange helicopter, but I don’t have time right now, it’s a conundrum I’m dealing with.

I think I will join the team for a social bike ride tomorrow morning.

Lindsay comes home today, but I’m working, so I’ll see her tomorrow, that’s good – said with a czeck accent for those of you who know…

Yep, that’s pretty much what’s going on, exciting stuff I know. Maybe I’ll have more in the next couple days…

Man, yesterday was great huh! I mean, Obama cleaning house, democrats taking huge majority in house and senate… Hopefully this will be the beginning of a new, New Deal sort of era where we can all work together and bring this country back to where it should be. I must admit, Obama really, REALLY knows how to inspire, but inspire not just in an idealist sense but in a very real and tangible one. Watching him speak, you really get drawn in to his passion for this country and getting it right. I’m not at all one to swoon over newly elected leaders (or leaders at all for that matter) but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t tear up at least a couple times watching him speak and acknowledge the crowd of a quarter million in that park last night. Anyone who questions his patriotism after that is a fool. You have to be a black hearted cynic to not have felt even the slightest bit of hope watching him up there. http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2008/11/05/sot.obama.entire.cnn

Unfortunately my night of hope and good feelings ended shortly after that speech. It snowed a bit last night which turned I-70 into a sheet of ice which is never good when you’re trying to get a good night’s sleep. I totally jinxed it the other day when I was talking up how good it’s been to get paid to sleep like 10 hours every night for the last month or more for we were up all night. Shit. And of course, I actually had stuff to do today.

On a lighter note, scope the sweet bike rack I made, all by myself!! Best of all, It's been like 2 months now and it's still standing, woohoo!

Here we are again on what is shaping up to be the eve of history. Cliché, yes. As I said 4 years ago, we chose a president who lead us into times unprecedented in the last two generations. You don’t need to read here that we are in the worst of times since 1930 in terms of economic prosperity, national defense/safety and world respect. We are finding out what an imperialistic attitude towards life in this global world is like, and what most of the world is doing, is laughing. We have lost our ways as a true superpower, be that for better or worse.

That can all change here in a mere 24 hours.

If the people of this country have truly been educated enough to understand what is at stake here, we will most certainly see a change for the better. Make no mistake that it may take decades to undo the last 8 years of damage, but with a new direction in leadership, that repair is on the way. If not, you will see this country continue to darken as morale lowers even more, along with our economy and standing in the world. I sure hope we get it right for the first time in 8 years…

Another boring day at work here, which hopefully continues to be the trend though the night. Not to put a jinx on it, but I’ve run only one single call after 10pm all month, which means I’ve been getting some damn good sleepy time it. I almost sleep better here at work then I do at home – but here I’m getting paid for it! Soon enough my luck will change and it will all even out, but for now it’s a pretty sweet gig.

Yesterday I rode with the team and we had a huge turnout, pretty much our whole race team showed up because the weather was so nice – almost 80 degrees the first of November?! It was because of that weather that had most other bicycle owning people in Boulder County to do the same thing, and depart from essentially the same place in town which made for some seriously sketch moments on the highway out of town. We passed a big group of triathletes, the weekend warrior types, then a smaller women’s team along the way. Not to be a hater, but triathletes don’t generally race bikes in a group, so their handling skills when others are around (like when being passed on a busy street) aren’t the best, and the women were clearly beginners because they would make these random gestures as if there was road hazards hen there weren’t any, and they would NOT ride faster then about 19mph even on the straight downhills, they’d just ride the brakes and refused to ride single file giving us enough room to pass. Throw in a 2x4 in the middle of the road that about 50 people behind us hit, a loose water bottle, and dumb ass hicks driving pick-ups who would rather pass you at 70 leaving 6 inches between you and certain death than move over an extra couple feet and you have a damn interesting morning. It was by far the closest I’ve come to crashing into someone in a long time.

I’ve been slowly ramping up the training the last weeks or so and it’s been great. We rode up in Vail because it was so warm everywhere this week. I ended up going a tad too hard that day but it was a solid 4 hours in the mountains. I did the same thing the next day but in the hills and canyons outside of Golden. Turns out I’ve been getting a little too excited with all the nice weather and I’ve been going TOO hard… Eric told me to “have fun but get some work in” while riding in the mountains and turns out my definition of “fun work” is really hard work. It’s too early in the season to go hard, at least not with any regularity. There will be plenty of time for that in a few more weeks but I should be saving my motivation for when it’s 15 and snowing and I have to either endure the cold, or suffer on the trainer inside.

Speaking of motivation, I have not at all been motivated for winter. A-Basin and Loveland have bother been open for a few weeks now, all manmade snow of course, and I’ve considered going, but when it comes down to it, I can’t make myself go. I have tuned up a couple of my skis so I guess I’m ready anytime, just have to get up and go…

Ah, thank god for that extra hour of sleep last night.

I’m turning into an old man, I’m ready for bed and it’s not even 8 yet… Super lame. Lindsay’s in Paris all this week, even more lame. I’ve never been, but will go when I win Le Tour in 2013. Yep.

I want to go camping.

I'm having a dilemma.... Which of these looks better? How's this?

Or how am I down here, all smaller like? I just cannot decide. Help!

Not a lot has been up with the Chris man as of late, some working, some bike riding… even a hike! Haha.

I’ve had a little bit more structure the last couple weeks in terms of going out and riding, but it’s been pretty loose, no real requirement to get anything done. I did do a few short power tests last week that came out pretty well for the most part. My sprinting power as it turns out by the numbers, in terms of sheer power to weight ratio, I’m pretty damn close to being in the “world class” category, which is cool. My 5 minute power still needs some work as expected, but it wasn’t terrible all things considered. I think in the next week I’ll re-test that one, I was pretty tired going into it.

Sunday I’m doing a 40 min lactate threshold test, which means I have to go out and go as hard as I can for 40 min. I’ve never really done a “test” that long, so I’m a little nervous. Going that long is going to be hard since I’ve done essentially no training in that zone for the last 2 months. Should be interesting. The season begins with “real” training starting up in a couple weeks, I can’t wait.

I really want to go ice climbing sometime this winter, at least a few times. I miss it a lot. I certainly prefer the conditions in the winter mountains to the summer. I enjoy the cold, the snow… Winter climbing of any kind is generally harder, more gear intensive than it is in the summer. I really like that more “extreme” aspect of things. I like the weather extremes, the snow, the ice, that fewer people are out – hence the problem; there’s no one to go with. For the same reasons I love it, it’s rather exclusive because it’s harder to get into, more expensive, and not many people are up to that sort of thing, mentally. Freezing your ass off at 13,000 in a blizzard isn’t as appealing to most as it is to me. I need to find people with things, or help people get things, and go. Yep.

Only 18 more days until we elect Barack. Then we can get this country rolling again, slowly, but surely.

Just sitting here trying to budget my time at work, and by budget, I mean kill. That is to say I’m trying to kill time here because there is pretty much nothing to do. This time of year tends to be slower, but right now I’m averaging 1 call every other shift – 1 call every 48 hours. Sure I have other things I do, I do a lot actually, but not nearly enough to occupy all that time (fortunately).

We need an HDTV at our station here. There goes our mouse friend… He’s like our station mascot. We should kill him, but he’s pretty cute.

Last weekend was crazy busy. That’s how my life seems to go; a couple weeks of inactivity followed by four or five days of craziness. It’s surprising how stressful things can be here sometimes, especially when there are no calls to run, you tend to focus all of your energy to the negative things. Every workplace has it’s bad side. Nothing is ever perfect anywhere and it’s easy for me to loose sight of that. In all reality, being in the situation that I’m in, the position I have here, this is as close to a dream job that I can have right now. No I won’t get rich, no I won’t be here forever, but all things considered, I’m doing pretty well here – just have to keep telling myself that.

I began my 2009 cycling season this week, a few days ago and I’m psyched. I’ve had the last 6 weeks off which, when you’ve been training for 20 hours a week for the last 10 months, can be incredibly stressful. Your body and mind just don’t really know how to cope with the relative inactivity. It’s very much a form of depression in that; you don’t have any outlets for any problems… It’s also really hard to find stuff to do when you don’t have to work everything around a 5 hour training ride…

This season I’ll be working with a personal coach, which will hopefully take a lot of the stress of planning out of my hands. Last season was a constant struggle mentally because I was never 100% sure on what kind of prep I needed to do for what races. When you coach yourself you have to be so acutely aware of yourself, your weaknesses and strengths… It’s often hard to be that honest with yourself. Technology can only give you so much information. Also this will be my first full season competing at the elite level where most everyone in the races I will do are going to be either just as good or better than me, so all the more reason for upping my program.
In other, much more exciting news, it is now T-minus 5 hours or so until Lindsay comes back from her summer job in Idaho!! Score! I traded shifts around so instead of working all night, I worked last night so tonight I get off at 7 which should be perfect timing to meet her at my house, it’s going to be sweet!

It’s about time I sit down and update this thing. For some reason I keep coming up with excuses why not to “blog”. Yesterday I sat down at the computer a few different times with every intention of writing, even logged in, stared at the blank entry page, put my fingers on they keys……. And then nothing but mindless web surfing followed. But now here I am! Back again to the blogosphere! You probably can’t hear it but there are trumpets playing… or something.

The past few days have been busy unfortunately. I have over 100 hours of work this week which isn’t all that terrible when you figure that about a third of that I will hopefully be sleeping, but because of my 2 weeks off last week after my bike crash (and subsequent injuries) I’m working 40 hours of that 100 for free. But the last 2 weeks I was paid as if I worked, but the way we traded shifts around this is how it worked out. It’s for the better because I still get to keep my 2 weeks paid time off that I can save for a “real” vacation. Work has been insanely stressful the last couple shifts for lots of reasons, but I won’t get into it all, I don’t want this to be all winey and full of self pity. I will say that I was so pissed off and worked up last night that I couldn’t go to sleep until like 3am (got up at 6) because I would sit up in bed and be like “that fucker!” Good thing we have private rooms in that station… haha.

So this whole month I’ve pretty much taken off from any kind of “training” using it as an opportunity to do a lot of the things I’ve been neglecting the last year really… Things like hiking and climbing, camping and the like. I tried my hand at mountain biking and found that I should stick to the road… I’ve never been to the ER as a patient until this year, and that total is now 2 after a couple weeks ago… oops. Turns out that’s quite an expensive habit. Percocet is the dankens though. It also turns out that I didn’t do much of what I wanted to do. There were a couple good hikes (picts up from one, some more on the way form the other) but that was about it. I raced every Thursday night in a Time Trial series that was at Bear Creek Lake Park right down the road. I had good results considering I’ve been off training since mid August I suppose.

Only 1 more week until Lindsay comes back from Boise and to say I’m psyched would be an understatement obviously. I went up to visit a couple weeks ago and had a blast even though I had limited functioning because of my messed up old man back. Can’t wait. 1 week to the day.

Turns out my life is exceedingly boring without bike racing or training going on. Nathan and I went on a hike on Longs the other day only to be snowed/iced off at tree line… We were going to try this super classic alpine route on the North face with mostly hand and foot scrambling with a couple hundred feet of easy but technical rock in the middle, until it snowed. We had summer gear with us outfitted in relatively light clothing and essentially tennis shoes which was fine until we hit tree line, about half the way up, where we were greeted by winter in the form of snow and ice. The route is completely doable and within our skill level, but we lacked the equipment we needed that day (winter boots, crampons and ice tools) to make it a doable/safe feat. We knew this would be the case once we saw a conditions report at the trailhead but we were there, it was 3am, and not wanting to waste the day and whatever mental prep we had done, we continued up into Chasm View, which is perhaps the most scenic mountain environments in the state. We waited there for a couple hours huddled around the warm but small glow of Nathan’s stove for the sun to come up and treat us to a breath taking view.

Although we didn't make it close to what we had set out for that day, all was not lost... At all.

New Beginning

So I've decided to pick this blogging thing up again, you know, to keep you abreast of the goings on in my life. So yea, I got nothing now other than it's late and I didn't want to just create this thing and leave it blank.

I promise I'll be more pro-active about keeping this relatively current, but I'll try not to make stuff up and waste your time. ...Although, you are reading a blog about me, which tells me you probably have at least some time to spare.