bikecentric: January 2007

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Itchin'

Why does everyone ask
if my cast is itchy?
I haven't been itchy...
But I am itchin'
Itchin' to ride.

Friday, January 26, 2007

The Nineteenth Century Life

I just returned from a five day retreat at my girlfriend's parent's house in Charlottesville, Virginia. It is often warmer there than it is in the Washington area, but my girlfriend's father, Britten, who is a child of the Depression era, chooses to keep his home rather cool. The outside temperatures were in the forties during the day and in the twenties at night. The thermostat indicated mid-forties inside before we lit the afternoon fire; I cannot claim to have checked the temperature during the night. Britten attests that he prefers the cold air, especially while falling asleep, and he says the summer heat is far worse--I have lived there with him, and the summers are oppressive, especially without air conditioning, but nowhere near as uncomfortable as the winters.

Last year, the water in the toilet bowls froze one night, and I can't say that I once slept through the night on this trip without waking up and watching my breath condense in the moonlight.
We always lit the fire around dinner time (I ate many dinners and lunches during the day, I assume because I needed the calories; I also drank a lot of alcohol without feeling much), and it swallowed logs as quickly as I could feed it. This alarmed Britten who is old and doesn't like laboring with an axe all day. So, in the interest of keeping warm and not offending my host, I decided to split Britten's winter store of well-aged wood in one shot. I enjoy the simple physical activity in chopping logs, and there were plenty of knotted monsters to struggle against. One bastard took ten blows from the eight pound wedge plus many strikes with the maul working more wedges to finally force it to fall apart.

The next day, Sophia and I went for a ride in which we circumnavigated the city while traversing all of our favorite old roads. The terrain is remarkably hilly in Charlottesville with many steep grades. I was happy to see that I had hit forty-two miles per hour on one extended descent--my fastest yet on the green, curvy-barred commuter.

Grand Loop Race?

Who's in? At 360 miles (with a 20 mile "warm-up" ride), I think I'll have to put this off till next year. Maybe next lifetime.

---

Grand Loop
Friday, June 1, 2007.
Start: 6pm
Tabeguache Trailhead, Grand Junction, Colorado

"The route is @ 360 miles, with 1 tiny store (in Bedrock) for possible resupply."

...

"Starting at 6pm sharp, riders do an untimed (all together, medium pace) 20-mile prologue on pavement out to Kokopelli's Trailhead at Loma, where they regroup briefly before taking off on the 'official' start".

http://greatdividerace.com/_wsn/page4.html

Sunday, January 21, 2007

If it's not Scottish, it's crap!

The website for the Single Speed World Championships 2007 in Scotland is germinating:
http://www.sswc2007.com/

Buds, wife and I are already plotting how to get there this year...

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Get your ride on...

Due to monsoon season, haven't been able to get out as much as I would like but the weekend rides have been absolutely stellar. Hope everyone has been enjoying our global warming winter (except this morning was rather brisk).

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Masticate Properly

Took off of work again today. Not because I wanted to, but because I needed to. Pop's not doing so hot, so ma rushed him off to the hospital last night. Emergency blood transfusion. One medicine to cure his ails affected another part of his body, which was counteracted with another drug, which affected another part...and on and on. Kidney, lung, gout, diabetes, heart, blood pressure problems... you name it, he's got it.

Laying there miserable in the cold hospital room, Pop was a bit surly because Ma wouldn't give him any of the snacks she snuck in for herself and me, even though the docs warned him that he was (at the moment) on a diet of clear liquids. Reminded me of a movie where a throat cancer patient smoked through a hole in his throat. Disgusting. Well, not quite as gross, but it angered me. Why was he so insistent on hurting himself by eating whatever he wants at the cost of his health?

He kicked gambling, drinking, and smoking, but he's an old dog with very particular tastes. Sodium, and lots of it, or else it's bland. I think like that now (but replace sodium with flavor). As I've experienced in the last month with pneumonia, more time sick means less time biking. I swear this'll be the year I get a handle on my diet, lest I'll be in the same spot my dad was in this morning.

Friday, January 05, 2007

Freekin' Pharms

Last week my doc prescribed me "Levpac", aka Levaquin Pack, which is an antibiotic for my pneumonia. She said I may get some generic version instead and to call her after 5 days if I have any more symptoms. I take a neatly written prescription to CVS where they hand me a "Prevpac". I assumed this was the generic version she mentioned.

The Prevpac is 8 pills (2 Prevacid, 2 Biaxin, and 4 Amoxicillin) a day taken for 2 weeks. I called the doc this morning to see if I really have to finish the Prevpac's two weeks of pills. She says "What Prevpac, you're supposed to be taking a Levpac!" She explains the Levpac is 1 or 2 pills a day taken for around a week. She then tells me that Prevpacs are for people with ulcers or stomach operations.

WTF, OVER!?

Good news is I was taking antibiotics and I feel better. Bad news is I was taking 3-6 times as many as I needed. Plus a stomach pill that left my bathroom a mess.

Lesson: check with your doc if the medicine handed to you is different (even by 1 or 2 letters) before a week passes.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Nippon-shu

The taste for sake (Nippon-shu, o-sake) has crept up on me again. I am fond of just about any alcoholic beverage as long as it has a tradition, and sake is no different; in fact, it's my favorite. In January of 2004, I took a trip to Japan, my second, during which I was to visit a fledgling beer brewery in Ibaraki-ken which began selling its beers under the Nest Beer label in Japan and elsewhere; we Americans were just starting to see this product in the States, and I thought it would make for an informative article. So, I contacted Greg Kitsock at Mid-Atlantic Brewing News via my friend and colleague, Jim. Greg was interested, so I went and took notes. The beer brewery was actually a subsidiary of the parent company, Kikusakari-shuzo, which has been brewing sake for centuries, and both operations share the same grounds. I had already had a few of the many sakes from Kikusakari, but that day I had everything, including selections from the owner's personal stash. From then on, sake was King. When Sophia and I returned to Tokyo, we went to the best osake-ya (sake shop) and spent hundreds on the best stuff we could find. Suffice it to say, it was an experience not to be duplicated.

On to the riding. As I said, sake is back for me. I usually can't justify buying sake in the U.S. because it is overpriced and out of date. Super H Mart in Fairfax carries a decent selection, but the stuff is old--sake will keep up to a year if refrigerated; the oldest stuff I have found at Super H is eight years in the sake dumper. My only recourse is to order online, or I could make the trek to Naniwa in McLean, a tiny Japanese-owned grocer, which has a respectable though potentially ancient row of sake on its ground floor. I wanted sake immediately, so I charted my course.
McLean is a small but treacherous area for riders: it's bordered by Tyson's corner to the west, Falls Church to the south, and the Potomac to the north and east; the roads are twisted and heavily trafficked. I stopped by Spokes, Etc. in Vienna and consulted that salty bastard, Floyd, as to whether my route was safe or not. It was not. My revised route took me down Haycock to Westmoreland. It was a remarkably mild day, and kids were walking home from school all around me. Haycock was nerve-wracking, but Westmoreland, despite its tasking hills, was pleasant. As always, J.S. Bach was my companion: his six partitas for keyboard, played by Andreas Staier, are perfect riding music because they are composed completely of Baroque dance movements which are often lively and, depending on the skill of the harpsichordist, have very strong meters on which to base one's cadence. Partita Four is incomparable.
I finally arrived at Naniwa. There was a sign on the door. I will first inform the reader that O-Shougatsu (New Year) is the most important holiday in Japan; the entire country shuts down for about a week. The proprietors of Naniwa, expatriot though they are, had decided to honor the holiday as well. I had ridden eighteen miles. The sake lay milky behind the old basement skylight glass.

This entry is getting too long.
To make short the tale, I rode the W&OD back to Vienna where I decided to get some beer at the always well-stocked Whole Foods. What I found was nothing short of miraculous at that moment. There was sake, good sake. It was fresh, too. I bought three bottles--a 720 and two 300s--and a deuce of barley wine (which I am drinking as I write) from Green Flash in San Diego, plus an old favorite which I can never find: Schlenkerla Rauch Weizen. The pièce de résistance was a bottle of Tignanello with its red spot which I have wanted ever since my trip to Tuscany. I gave the Beer manager a pat on the back for making the department better than I left it, and set off for home.

The entire ride back was rough: I was carrying nearly five liters of liquid while riding into the blinding winter sun in rush hour. I elected to ride on the sidewalk before I got flattened. I usually refuse to ride on the sidewalk for good reason: an ambulance almost drove happily over me as it turned because I reached the intersection sooner. It was really embarrassing.
Before I got home, I rewarded myself for completing my errand by buying a couple rounds at the ridiculous Coastal Flats restaurant near my apartment. Their signature lager (brewed down the street at Sweetwater) was on the menu, so I ordered that; it tasted, unfortunately, of bleach. Oh, well. Final mileage was thirty-seven. At home, I sampled from the cache and ate Peking duck, among other things, that my mother-in-law made while I was gone. The sake flowed freely.

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