Following Life of Pi

Just last week I said I was going to try and blog once or twice a week, in a more serious fashion, where “more serious” is defined as longer, maybe more involved. Well there goes the second week (last week) and I didn’t get a blog on. Bloggon sounds like a planet from science fiction. So here I am on Bloggon last week, not getting my blog on. I was home all week because I was on-call. I guess it slipped through the cracks. I did warn you that it wouldn’t last, though I didn’t think it would be one and done. Anyway, it’s Monday and here we are with a blog entry that isn’t exactly pointed but encompasses many different independent thoughts I’ve had this morning, none of which appear as bright shiny objects in my world right now.

I didn’t watch the Super Bowl. Am I un-American for that? The reality is that football interests me little, at best. Football, and all sports, have fallen off the map for me unless you include biking in that. But biking is hardly sport in the sense that the NFL is, especially the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is gambling, eating, drinking, funny commercials, a social gathering, and oh yeah a game in there too. Biking is exercise. Football is chicken wings. Biking is not. I enjoy a good gathering. But watching a game I’m not interested in just isn’t, by definition, interesting to me.

It just so happened that it was a good game, much to my surprise. While I find it hard to pull for the Steelers there would be something cosmically wrong with the Cardinals winning the Super Bowl. It could stand as a metaphor for our country if Obama doesn't get the job done, right? His first feat of office was to see the Cardinals win the Super Bowl! But in the end, the Old Guard stands strong and wins the day. Does that mean another year of war debt, bad economy, and Everybody Loves Raymond reruns?

I voted for Obama so this is no sly political commentary. I just thought of it so went with my current SOC diatribe.

I did watch the last 26 seconds of the game. Kinda. Nat will probably check out the commercials on youtube today and tell me which ones I should watch. But really, this social event wasn’t a social event for us. Terren invited us over but my parents were at the house and how can you stay up until 10:00 with an almost 3-year-old? While she does stay up that late, being out that late would be major meltdown territory. We went to the neighbor’s in the past, which is convenient because you can come and go pretty easily and you don’t have to deal with the drama of the car ride at 10:00 at night. Aside from that, it’s just a late football game. Competition! Raw power! Large men in spandex! I get all the “men in tights” action I need in my biking life. No need to add enormous tracts of muscle.

As a side note here, can you really become good friends with someone after college? I used to believe this, then I thought I changed my mind on it. But now I’m starting to go back to the idea that after college, you never really make a friend that you really consider a “great” or even “good” friend. I’m speaking vaguely, because I’m not sure I believe this assertion. I guess if I wanted to really assess that I would need to make a list of people we would invite to a wedding if we got married again. I wonder, how many people that we invited then would be invited now? How many more? Would my wedding party be the same? Best man? I think the answers to the questions would be: most of them but not all, I don’t know, probably an extra person or 2 on each side, and yes.

After a long Saturday of being on-call I had 2 Stone Oaked Arrogant Bastard Ales and an Anchor Steam. The Stone beers were good, are good. Not past tense, but present tense. Or past, present, and future tenses. I’m not a huge fan of Stone beers but I really like this offering quite a bit. Ok that’s besides the point, there are plenty of good beers out there. After those 2 beers I went to the well of mediocrity and grabbed an Anchor Steam. I don’t know how long I’ve had it so it may be old, but boy I really didn’t care for it all that much. I know a lot of people like it but it was pretty mediocre for me. It may be that on the heels of the Stone offering this one can’t possibly compete. But it was a tough one to get down Saturday night. It also may be a better first beer as you don’t get tuned into the taste of something else.

I'm off to Chicago this week so I may try a video capture from somewhere out there if time permits. But more than likely it won’t, unless I break out the camera in the airport or on the plane. Maybe I will, just because it’s something new. Once I hit the ground though I’ll be neck deep in work and post work activities. The time out there will likely be really fast and then back to Jersey 2 days later.

Vinny has asked me what else to read after Life of Pi. This is a tough question which has sort of helped me on my path of identifying the 51 authors that should be on your bookshelf. See, I have this grand plan to name 51 authors you should own. Or maybe 51 “entities” or “items” is a better way to name it. The idea of an entity stems from the thought that you don’t want to list 5 Kurt Vonnegut books, even though any good bookshelf will have at least 5 from him. So maybe I put Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey as one entity. Then maybe a dictionary and thesaurus, even though the web makes those items a bit out-of-date. Or a travel book (or set of books) to your favorite destination. The Foundation books, if you’re into Sci-Fi, are required but that’s like 5-6 Asimov books plus the Caliban trilogy that followed. Then there are the Robot books. So your entity here is “Asimov’s Foundation and Robot books”, which amounts to something like 10-15 total books. Hey, any solid bookshelf is going to have hundreds of books.

So to answer the question, Salman Rushdie is awesome but over most people’s heads, my own included. The Namesake was a good book, but not like Life of Pi. Bel Canto was good, but again, not as good and maybe too slow for most people. I can’t come up with a book to recommend in that ballpark. It’s a tough park to play in, really. Some will suggest Cormac McCarthy but I can’t say I agree with that. Not bad, just different. It’s like Vonnegut or Robbins or Christopher Moore. All solid authors but different than Yann Martel.

Amazon tells me that the Kite Runner and Water for Elephants are most commonly bought with Life of Pi. I have read neither of these books. It also suggests the Curious Incident of the Dog etc (which I strongly disliked and isn't remotely like Pi), Secret Life of Bees (I own, have not read yet), Time Traveller's Wife (wtf?), the Alchemist (heard of it, more intrigued now), Poisonwood Bible (I do like Kingsolver), and Middlesex (another huh?).

So really, I’ll have to get back to you on that one. It may take a long time.

Media

Nat picked up the movie Babel from the library for me, which I watched on the train today. Well some of it. Going in it was ok, but coming home I was getting pretty into it and was afraid I was going to miss my stop. That has to be some level of positive endorsement.

Some old guy was watching today. I guess people can't keep their eyes off a TV screen, even if they can't hear the words.

I also started the 5th book in the Evanovich series on Stephanie Plum the bounty hunter. Good stuff, very entertaining. I got the tip from a girl I sat next to on the train last year who was reading Tom Robbins.

I watched ESPN while I was on the trainer this morning. Watching pro sports is really useless. Today the lead story was exhibition NBA. Why not fork bending? It's about as pertinent.

I listened to My Morning Jacket and Sufjan Stephens today.

I've been forced to find new Chinese Podcasts as chinesepod.com no longer allows free downloads and I'm not paying them.

Last week I gave up on Creation by Gore Vidal and Another Roadside Attraction by Robbins. The former just wasn't my cup of tea and the later doesn't stand the test of time. I also watched Python's Grail last week.

That concludes the media report for today.

Egg Yolks

Today's blog title brought to you by the People Who Don't Know What to Title Their Blog Posts.

Back "on" again today. Once again last night Julia was coughing and puking until past 11:00. Funny thing, she's fine 23 hours a day now, but at 10 her congestion tries to drain and she coughs and sometimes vomits, sometimes not. Anyway that limits me to 5.5 hours of sleep and this morning I don't feel any worse for it, surprisingly. Yesterday's brief scratchy throat didn't turn into anything, thankfully.

I think I'm about ready for nothing but high-end work on the trainer now. Today was the following:

8 x 1 minute on, 30 seconds off
Rest 5 minutes
Repeat
Rest 5 minutes
Repeat

Total work time was 24 minutes. Resistance was 5
Gearing 52x20 (ish)
Cadence about 80

This is a workout from the Ross book. My timing is screwy here because, well, you know, I'm leaving the country in 9 days and this is usually a 4-6 week ramp of HIT training. You basically work at Critical Power, which is found through a test but equates to a level you can maintain for roughly 2 minutes or so. I didn't formally test myself to get to this stage on the new bike. I don't see the point with the new bike on a trainer that's going to get exchanged. Then I'll be on whatever in Taiwan. Then I'll come back to a new trainer. Basically I'm going at a level I know to be roughly accurate from experience. Is my experience enough? GIGO?

The reps hurt, to be sure. My heart rate zooms up to the 180 realm by the end of the minute. And the 30 seconds of rest go quite fast. But I don't have a problem completing the sets and after I'm done I don't feel that spent. There are a few different things to take away from that.

First is to note that I have done some high-end work in the past few weeks, but not too much. Second is what Coggan says, that these high-end sessions aren't really all that much overall stress on your body. Yes they're very hard, pointed workouts on a very specific power output level. But even seasoned riders are only "supposed" to do 30 minutes of these. Point being you can't physically do much more than that and can't tally up a boat load of stress in 1 session. Third is that these are 50% of your max duration by design, not full duration. This is what Ross suggests to help you build most efficiently. Fourth, the higher end stuff is highly trainable, so gains and adaption will happen very fast. Thus what might have been brutally painful 4 weeks ago might not be nearly so tough now.

Anyway that's my take. The long and slow 20 minute sessions seem to take their toll on my legs more than these. But then, I'm also more careful about eating and drinking enough when I do the higher-end work. When I'm in the 3x20 sessions I only drink water and that may be a mistake. That may help explain why I'm crazy hungry every day this week. Today I went a bit heavier on the calories and feel better. Maybe it's as simple as that.

Steve aka Cupcake

"still reading, bitch. my run-on sentences are as bad as glenn's from BS-US. no other nickname - cupcake stuck... BTW - the cyclops is a great trainer."

I'm torn on the trainer. I like the adjustable resistance but I also know the quality of the CycleOps is better. Plus the word CycleOps is cool because it's almost Cyclops. It would be more pertinent to the title of this if it were EggYolks but you know. Also, the TravelTrac/Performance brand isn't consistent. It seems to get easier and harder in spots. Some days it gets harder after 20 minutes. Some days it gets easier after 45. For the sake of consistency that's certainly not good.

Oh by the way the dude who sent me the email was a little vague and it turns out he's from the International Affairs Department, which means little to nothing to me. I Googled his email and came up with 2 matches, both on the Taiwan Cyclist Federation web page. So as opposed to being reported to the government it appears I was reported to Taiwanese bikers. Still trying to work out something though. His English name is Million. Really it is.

My reading has stalled. The Taiwan book is a guide book so it's not riveting. Every time I ask Nat what she wants to do she says, "I don't know." When I asked if we were going to be able to do anything she said the same. This explains some of my desperation to find a bike, lest I be stuck in a house full of crazy Asians for 12 days straight. Anyway, the book is of minimal excitement because every time I find something I might want to do I have to temper that with the fact this may be an expensive foray into another person's living room, accented with a LOT of eating. I'm also reading Pyramids by Pratchett which is interesting and entertaining but Pratchett is not an author you can sink your teeth into, so to speak. It's pretty thin in its depth, even if it is enjoyable to read.

I'm also at a loss on the jerseys. Nothing could possibly make this any more painful than it is right now. Seriously, I don't think a single thing has gone right. I'm very frustrated and on the brink of giving up entirely.

After all this blathering, my legs do hurt a fair amount going up and down the subway steps after all. And when I had to run up the last 12 steps 2 at a time to catch the E before the doors closed, my heart rate skyrocketed and legs burned like a bitch. So much for instant assessment of today's workout.

Don't Mess with Texas

Today's useless factoid:

The phrases "Don't mess with Texas" and the Southwest Airlines catch-phrase "You are now free to move about the country" were both created by Roy Spence, who has now joined the Clinton Machine. So what quirky phrases can we expect to hear from the Clinton campaign in the coming months? If this were a political blog I would rant on and on about what silly expressions might now emanate from that side. But it's not, so I won't.

I decided to take today, Friday, off the bike. This morning I feel good, so I would have gotten a good workout in this morning. I think. But until I try a solid 4 day, blow-it-out block, I won't really know if I can keep that up on the 4th day. So let's see what we can do this week. I hope this rain clears up though because this is all dependent on my getting 2 good road rides in this weekend. Sunday is also up in the air because Verizon is coming to install FIOS, which basically means we're under house arrest until they decide to stroll in and do the work they quoted us.

I'm well into The Skeptical Environmentalist and while it's an interesting book I'm ready to move on. Problem with that is that I'm still about 160 pages from the end which is a lot when all you can reasonably read is 10-15 a day. I'm blazing through the smaller books, having finished Life After God, Wyrd Sisters, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, Three to Get Deadly, and one before that I don't remember. Also just picked up Sirens of Titan by Vonnegut, which was the next one on the stack. I've read it before but not in a long time. A brilliant book if memory serves.

Also really getting into blogs again which takes some time to collect. There are hundreds of gems out there. The problem is finding them among the millions of junkers. I've pared down my list of bike blogs because frankly the bike blogosphere is pretty inane. My current blog mix ranges across bikes, sports, science, history, environment, the general blogosphere, and what I would call general interest. Damn Interesting would fit that last category. The general blogosphere is also what I would call the current 20-40 year old generation's musings on life in general, which currently has a lot to do with politics, for better or worse.

Not much else to talk about today. It's dark out and the cold is rolling in. Next week looks like a chilly one.

The Day the Music Died

When I got to work today I found the Blogger site blocked by "corporate". Not a good thing, as it means that this blog as we know it becomes a shell of its former self. And in some ways it probably marks yet another nail in the coffin of my working here. As it is this job is a bit on the brutal side in terms of the commute. And sitting on the train writing to an imaginary audience is one of the things I do to keep myself occupied. With this latest development it likely means my commute gets less interesting, more of a drone. These things happen. Life goes on.

It's possible I can still cobble together some blog posts but going home and posting them is less interesting to me than being able to do it from work. Is it only a matter of time before Big Brother blocks all the sites that keep me entertained here? Walk around the office and you see people reading books (seriously), or news sites, ESPN, checking their stocks. It's inaccurate to think that you can stop people from taking a break by being more Draconian.

Oh well. Perhaps this just means I read more, something I've been really grooving on these days anyway. I finished off Fierce Invalids this morning which was totally new to me. I don't remember having ever read that before. I also started Wyrd Sisters which is book 6 in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchet. It's a good series of silliness that serves as perfect "tweener" reading material, such as when you're standing on the subway platform or on the subway itself, or even after a long day at work. I always have 2 books, one which requires attention and one mindless read.

The Blogger block failed anyway. I was irritated so I took the Blackberry into the John with me and wrote this. So I would have merely done my business but now I'm sitting here on the can finishing this off. OK so I can't publish from work but I can write and publish later. So for now, that's my plan. Long live The Blogging Can!!!

Gluttony

Some days you have a hard time getting out of bed. Today was one of those days but my reason is different than normal. My alarm rang and my little girl was cuddled up with me. So I hit snooze and got back in bed, where she climbed up on me and laid on my arm. As much as I wanted to stay there I had to wiggle free and get up. I covered her up and got ready for work. A lot of people scoff at sleeping with your kid, especially when they're almost 20 months. But to me, this is one of life's best moments. I don't know what other people think and frankly I don't care. But if she stays in bed with us until she's 5 I won't complain about it. These moments, they don't last forever.

Had a scratchy throat overnight and woke up in the middle of the night with a brutal sore throat. Considerably better this morning but also congested. This is a bone fide old-fashion cold. Nothing earth-shattering but just a step behind today. Feeling a little loopy is all, a tad light in the head for sure. All of my germ-phobia actions can't keep me 100% cold free.

Jake

"did walt really eat 22 pizza bites? good lord."

I suppose it's true though only Walter can say for sure. Tis the season without a doubt, and I'm finding myself happy to go back to work these days lest I eat myself to cardiac submission at home. Not sure how I'm going to handle the 11 days off to end the year. I may force myself to adhere to a minimum of water, fruits, and veggies through those 11 days as well as a maximum of beer. I've yet to drop the last 3 pounds of my vacation weight so I could go into it behind the 8 ball. We already have 4 types of cookies in the house, thanks to Beth for the last 2 not to mention the sugar coated walnuts. I think Woody is planting these nefarious food items in an attempt to slow me down.

As I was afraid it might, my Buddhist Eating has gone to shit over the last month. It seemed so easy at first but now it's hard to maintain. I'm not sweating it too much but it was an effective method which I'll need to revisit after the new year, or before the new year if I know what's good for me, which I don't.

2 pizza bites short of 2 dozen require a lot of thorough chewing. I'm guessing they didn't last terribly long otherwise you'd never be able to get through that many. How many calories is each? 25? 50?

Steve

"2 thumbs up on 100 years of solitude. I hear the Fred's sister is looking for a car. Maybe you could do 2 or 3 blog entries about that."

I chose The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg because of a conversation I had with Matt FatCat. He's reading State of Fear by Crichton right now which sounds like the mainstream version of that book. I looked at the Chrichton book at Penn Station and it lists Lomborg's book in the bibliography. Off the bat it makes me wonder, have all these years of thinking that the liberals were a little more "right" about the state of the world been a big fucking lie? Have I fallen victim to their ability to manipulate media better than the conservatives? I've only read 10 pages or so and I have to finish Fierce Invalids before I pick it up in earnest but it's a bothersome bunch of claims that Lomborg asserts in his introduction. Further, the calm and "objective" manner he uses in the foreword suggests that his arguments will be hard to ignore and certainly unable to shrug off as a kook. I'm very excited to read that book, as well as State of Fear.

It's Wednesday and the weather bites it, though I think this must be good for the trails. All the leaves are down and now the wetness must be making them all a messy slop at this point, which is good for the trails I would think. But that may translate to my not getting any off-road time in this weekend, which will be a big plus for those of you rooting for the road bike to win the Odometer Challenge.

My Car Hates Me

Every morning I sit in my car and wait for the train. I keep the engine going a few minutes after I get there because it's frigid cold out right now and I don't want to dress up like Ralphie's brother in A Christmas Story. So I sit, maybe stare out the window or listen to the radio until the train comes. Well today, it was really cold out so I waited as long as I could to open the door. At the magic moment I pulled the car door handle and nothing happened.

I pulled again, the train about at a stop 30 feet away. Nothing. I pulled the other door handle and it opened without issue then pulled it closed. Tried my door again. Nothing. Fuck, I figure it must be frozen shut. I check the lock, not locked. I pull again and push on the door really, really hard. No I don't think it's stuck. Fuck it, escape through the passenger side door. Open, grab my bag, jump over the passenger seat, grab my cup of tea, lock the car, and I'm the last one on the train.

I shouldn't bother locking it anymore. If someone steals it that's like a blessing to me at this point. The thing hates starting on these cold mornings and it's only a matter of time before it dies for good. Now it doesn't want to let me out. Piece of crap. It will be interesting to see what happens when I get back to it this evening.

Since Walter brought coffee and hot chocolate to the time trial last week I have a stack of Dunkin Doughnuts cups which I can use to bring a cup of tea. This is wasteful of me but it just doesn't taste as good out of a travel mug. It never does. When this stack is done I may stop brining tea, or maybe I'll try a travel mug to prove it to myself, or maybe I'll try coffee in a travel mug, or maybe I'll buy a stack of disposable cups from Costco. That's highly wasteful I know. I have no response for that, other than this:

USA!
USA!
USA!

At some point I should tell the Cruise Burrito story to make more sense of that. Hi Terren.

Despite my wife getting Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream yesterday as well as my raiding her real vat of chocolate chip cookie dough while she was making cookies for her playgroup today, I dropped back into the 180s again today. I skipped right over 189 and went for 188. I'm getting back into the groove after a week and a half. It's not easy, but yesterday I had a really good eating day until I got home.

Finished Berlin Conspiracy last night which is a mere 2 days for that book. It was cheap on Amazon but still $7 for 2 days of reading is a bit steep. I think there were some connections left out with some implications that kinda turn the whole thing on its ear. And as the story went on it got a little goofy but not too bad. As I said yesterday it was predictable. And in the end (the presumable period "after the book") the bad guys win anyway, since it's a fiction about assassinating JFK in Berlin. So you know the "good guys" will win temporarily. Still I found it entertaining if not a little sketchy in consistency at times. I will likely read the author again as that was his first book I believe.

Moved on to Fierce Invalids again this morning and I picked up the 6th book in the Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe series even though they basically suck. I'm only 2 more books from being done and they're really small so I'll hammer them out in like 2 days each. I'm in a reading groove right now so I may pick up something heavy after this, maybe Bowling Alone or give One Hundred Years of Solitude another chance.

Nothing exciting going on with the bike this weekend. Chimney Rock Saturday where I'm going to meet a guy from the board who's selling me an old fork for $25. Says it's only been used maybe 20 times so it's a solid deal. Sunday and Monday I hope to get on the road bike for my race to 2000 miles. I should really compare time spent on the roadie versus the trainer but that would be a slam dunk for the roadie since my average speed on the trainer crushes the road bike. Yes, I know, exciting.

Excitement

Things are slow. Are things slow? No, things are never slow it's just that sometimes I have other things to occupy my brain on the train in the morning. For instance, these days I'm into reading again, which is nice as it makes the commute absolutely fly by. My mom got me a fantasy series for my birthday, the Belgariad series. I read the first of that and liked it. Yes I know I should be filling my brain with useful words but when you get to read 3+ hours a day you tend to occasionally pick up some fluff. And when the fluff is good you just keep eating it up. Like cheese.

As much as I wanted to just jump right into the second book I didn't want to break my rule of not reading the same author back-to-back. Actually the old rule is that I don't read the same author until I read 4 other books, but that's gone to the birds a bit lately. I've broken that with some of the Foundation books as well as the Hitchhiker Guide books. But this time I picked up something else, the Berlin Conspiracy which is a pretty good read so far. I started it yesterday and am up to page 220 or so. I should finish tomorrow. It's not breathtaking, but it's solid and it has my attention for some reason. It's fairly predictable, though a few things jump out here and there which keep you on your toes. It's not trash fiction as it does seem to be somewhat resonant with a real spy story though there are some outrageous James Bond-like moments where the main character gets more lucky seems fitting.

Anyway, my commute has been taken up by reading these days which is why I'm not blogging so much anymore, at least not right now. I'm also getting my way through Fierce Invalids which is a great read, but which is a hardcover book that's tougher to pull out of the bag when you're packed into a train seat or subway car. I also ride my bike occasionally. Or one of them. Old Trek on the trainer gets a lot of run these days. The road bike is like 60 miles short of 2000 for the year so I'd like to hit that soon. But then trainer is also about 60 short of 2000 so it's like a race. The trainer is going to win overall. But for some reason I'd like to see the road bike get to 2000 first. I also have the mountain bikes, all 3 of them, to ride. I'll get another 20 or so on the trainer Friday but then I have Sunday and Monday to try and catch up with the roadie. I'm off Monday and next Friday because I have spare vacation days. I hope to only be on the trainer this Friday and next Tuesday until the following week. That gives me 6 potential days to get road rides in. I think I would probably need 3 rides of 20-ish miles to get the 2000 over those days.

But you know, I'm off the last 10 days of the year so it's possible that I end up with more road miles after all. It could be a photo finish. Stay tuned!

Life. Is. Exciting.