OW!
Why is it as soon as I get myself into shape I get some problem with my foot that might sideline me and send my weight back up? I feel fat already because I'm wondering how long until I ride again. The only think I hate more than being sidelined with an injury is seeing a doctor. I'm limping around the station, watching Judging Amy, wondering how I can keep from jumping off a bridge if I don't ride 5 days a week. My rides are the only thing that keep me sane and I'm afraid some doctor is going to make me... ah hell, maybe I should just pray it's cancer and hope for a quick death.

Soda cans, the hidden killer
I didn't ride today, I don't feel like studying and it's too hot to read (if that's an excuse). So I'm going to blog for the first time in a while, even though I have blogged a few times in the past but thanks to errors they weren't posted.

The big event for the past few days has been a "mystery" pain in my foot. It doesn't hurt when I pedal, but it's enough to make me ease my riding pace this week after a hard week in the saddle. I'm trying to narrow the cause down, and the most logical seems to be stomping on aluminum cans in sandles. I haven't jogged in a week and unless my pedal cleats are mis-aligned and have caused cummulative damage, I don't see how it could be anything else. Yesterday I was ready to go to a doctor about it, but after my ride, my foot actually felt better and today's pain was minimal and short lived, so it seems to be a bruise of some sort that will eventually heal itself. You always read about athletes getting stupid injuries like pulled rib muscles from sneezing or cut fingers from yard work, and now I have my own stupid injury. So kids, make sure you are wearing proper footwear when smashing cans.

Oh damn, Chinese buffet. For Chinese food I need to stop eating at buffets. The problem is that in Twin Falls, there are no decent Chinese restaurants. So I figure, if I'm going to eat mediocre Chinese food, I might as well eat a lot of it. My roomate and I went to New China Buffet tonight and that should take care of us for the next two months. The great thing about New China is that A) there are more than enough plates at the buffet lines and B) when you need a soda, they bring you one. Two things that the Golden Corral could take a lesson from. What are they trying to do over there, control the flow of buffet action by dispersing plates so infrequently and refilling soda once... tops. Hey, it's a frickin all you can eat buffet, why are you being so stingy on the pop when the cost is practically all mark up?

I've been reminded over the last two weeks how beautiful a sport professional cycling is. Since most of you are probably unaware that people even watch this sport, let alone that certain events are carried on on TV, I'll give you a quick note on what I'm talking about. The Outdoor Life Network (not a hugely poplar channel) has become my favorite channel because it does something incomprehensible to most cycling fans, it carries each of the three major European stage races live; The Giro d'Italia, The Tour de France and the Vuelta a Espana. So while I used to make a ritual of listening to Brewer games on the radio, now my sports routine is to get up at 730am and watch the best cyclists in the world. It's easy to think bicycle racing is nothing more than riding as fast as you can, but once OLN started showing live action of the Tour (as opposed to ESPN's pre-packaged hilite reel) I saw how much goes into it, it's actually a team sport with races within races. What makes the sport that much better for me is that I can cheer for a champion, Lance Armstrong. For those of you familiar with the success of my favorites in conventional team sports, you know how big a deal that is for me. To top it off, this July may see one of the most competitve tours in 4 years as Lance faces what may be his biggest challenge, a fellow American, former teammate and winner of two major races already this year, Tyler Hamilton. How much would that piss off the French.

A note about below. I tried cutting and pasting the title of this entry from my Japanese Word Processor and it didn't turn out so well. It ended up being Cyrillic like. My apology.

“ú–{Œê•×‹­‚·‚邱‚Æ
(nihongo benkyo suru koto)

I didn't realize how f#$%ed up a language English was until I started studying Japanese. And that's because Japanese is probably #2 in terms of f&^#ed up language, but at least there seems to be a method to it. When they were inventing English, they were smoking some heavy duty pipeweed me thinks.

I've been preparing for my Japanese Final all weekend and I actually feel prepared for it. I'm not cramming or sweating because I think I actually paced myself well this semester in terms of studying. However, if I had taken this class in college, I would have withdrawn somewhere around the first test. My four years in college were great, wouldn't trade them for anything, BUT, I would go back and perhaps try to retain more of what I was taught IN CLASS. Don't get me wrong, college taught me a damn lot BUT, considering what was being offered there, I could have done more than spend 30 hours per week in the college run TV station as opposed to maybe 8 hours per week studying. I hate to have regrets, but I'm soooo good at it. I've realized now, that learning is the single greatest thing a person can do. I would much rather go to school and study Japanese than go to work, but I didn't realize that then. The irony is, if I had spent more time studying in college and less time at the TV station, I may not have a job now. So go figure that one out.

A note about Idaho
I love living in Idaho. I dare say that it is the best thing I could have done for my life, however, there are some things I seriously miss about Jersey. Now for the record, I lived in Jersey summer of '96, summer of '97 and May '98 through February '99, which I know doesn't seem like much, but when you are 20 years old, go to school in upstate NY and DON'T go back to Wisconsin for summer break, you have a tendency to call the east coast home. The fact was, Jersey was a dangerous place for me at 20 years old... hell, Kansas could have been a dangerous at 20 years old for me. I was far from ready to grow up and being that close to NYC was too much for me to take. I loved every minute I spent out east, and if I was still living there, I would probably be in worse shape than I am now. I don't necessarily think Idaho is the reason I've grown up a little, in fact, I have picked up some even worse habbits since moving here (hell, Nevada is only 50 miles away) but, my brain is too much in hyperdrive to handle a place like NY. There was too much to do, see, taste, hear and smell. Because Idaho is so painfully slow and, well let's face it, stupid, I feel less stress to "perform" here. The only competition is my own. The pace is whatever I want. And the good habbits I have, like skiing and mountain biking are supported much more out here than in Jersey. I have lived here over 4 years now. Amazing when I think about it; I am an Idahoan. How disgusting is that?

F@#K! and Miles Davis
I've been in a funk lately because of some late inning choking I did last weekend. What actually happened doesn't matter, and if you don't know already, then I'm probably saving you from personal tales of failure that you have heard so many times before. What does matter is that I just can't let go, nothing slides off of me, instead, I absorb it. I may seem to brush it off, but it will eat away inside of me and manifest itself in random fits of tourette like outbursts. I'm serious here, I'll be driving down the street, jamming to music, see something that reminds me of past folley and just shout "FUCK!". This is probably a bi-product of my passive-aggressive personality and I'd seek help for it if I didn't have a list of more 15 more inadequicies that are more deserving of intense analysis.

To try and leave things with a lighter note, I'm going to brainstorm my "deserted island" albums. This excercise is futile, especially when you own 500 CDs, but it's good for taking the mind off taking a third strike for the last out of the game. The place this thought usually begins and ends with Miles Davis. If I could say, "Miles Davis and John Coltrane- The Complete Columbia Recordings", a 6 disk set, I would be set, but that's not exactly the spirit of the argument. So I'm going to say that no matter how few albums I'm allowed, at least two will be Miles Davis. The final albums up for the final cut are Kind of Blue, Miles Ahead, Round' Midnight, Sketches of Spain, Seven Steps to Heaven and Miles Smiles. The problem here is Kind of Blue and Round' Midnight are such short albums, that picking one seems a waste. But Kind of Blue was the most important album in Jazz PERIOD but 'Round About Midnight has more songs on it I like. However, neither of these have my favorite song, On Green Dolphin Street, yet the album that song on isn't close to these albums. Then I square Miles Ahead against Sketches of Spain. Both have rich full sound that complement Miles at his best, and My Ship is about the best song I can think of to play for a lady, but THE WHOLE ALBUM of Sketches of Spain is great for the ladies and is the first album I can remember actually listeningto. So Sketches makes the island and we are still undecided on 'Round and Kind. Finally I have Seven Steps and Smiles. This one is easy, Steps. Smiles is a better album in terms of "where Miles and his Shorter, Hancock, Williams, Carter" quintet was going, but I like Seven Steps better even though the lineup on Smiles is better. Now, Seven Steps is a good, solid, long album, meaning you can get some value from it, BUT I'm going with my selection from 'Round and Kind of Blue which is -- Kind of Blue. Wasn't sure on this, but when I realized Ah-leu-cha and Tadd's Delight are two songs I can live without, I chose Kind of Blue, an album I technically don't own becasue I have the songs on the afore mentioned box set. So there you go, Sketches of Spain and Kind of Blue are on the island. Now, which Rush albums make it?

Who Needs a Small Chain Ring
Saturday, April 12th was a day that I'll remember as having my ass handed to me and being told to wear it as a hat. Not so much from physical exertion or agony of defeat, but in terms of being reminded that life ain't going to happen as you think it should. That was the day my friend Rod and I drove to Hemingway Butte south of Boise and took part in the Barking Spider Mountain Bike Race. This type of race should not be confused with anything like NORBA or World Cup that you see on OLN, however, when Rod and I saw the pro class racers leave on their race, we realized there were hard core people at this thing.

Rod and I were racing in the beginner class (there were 4 classes: pro, expert, sport and beginner) which was one 9 mile circuit around the various trails on the butte. It was mostly hard packed single track with occasional pits of loose sand that would send your rear tire fishtailing like a Pinto in the Southwest parking lot in January and lots of motorbike created dips that if you weren't careful would send you shuttling over the handlebars. The climbing was nothing vicious and we probably gained no more than 250 vertical feet (although there was one short pitch that was so steep Rod and I wondered how anyone could ride over it, we bailed as soon as we reached the base of it and hiked it) and the course really wasn't that technical. But, as I soon learned, racing is different than going out on a Saturday afternoon and trying to test yourself, racing is testing yourself WHILE dealing with 40 or 50 others trying to test themselves.

I took it easy out of the gate and when I approached the first climb, a pitch that would be important for "thining the heard", I felt good. I had gears to spare and the legs were ready to bite. Some people bailed right at the foot, choosing instead to hike it, and while I knew the climb wouldn't be easy, it was deffinitely doable. However, a third of the way up, surrounded on all sides, the guy in front of me had to bail. With nowhere to go, I had to bail myself, and full of adrenaline from a climb unconquered, I started running with my bike up to a spot on the climb where I could remount and hopefully get infront of the walkers. I did get it going again, 20 feet from the top, the pitch really steepened and with others breathing down my bike, I knew I didn't have the room on the trail I need to push it, so I bailed again. The next section was 2 or 3 drop and rises that required good gear management. Somewhere in there, I had to bail again, I think because I was coming up hard to a summit and someone had to bail right up in front of me. I may have tried to shift late to make it around, but everything still seemed fine with my bike.

This was all in the first 2.5 miles, after that we descended from the butte and started up a long gradual climb. Seeing that things were going to be less "roller coaster" I must have gotten excited and shifted up to middle ring, maybe, once again, with the drive train under too much stress and I felt my chain go slack and the crank jam as it bunched up in the chainring. I'm not even a third of the way through the race and I have a mechanical... DAMN! I back-peddaled, got the chain re-wrapped around the gears and tried shifting on the rear sproket again. By now I could hear my chain rhythmically grinding against my front derailuer and after a few cranks, it slacked and jammed again. Thankfully, the trail had mellowed out and I could baby the bike along as I tried to get my bike settled into gear. I finally got it into my middle ring and although it sounded terrible, I could at least keep it going. However, my small chainring (the smallest gear in the front that comes in handy for climbing) was unreachable as the derailer mount was twisted so much that the bike "thought" I was in the lowest gear.

So, I see the trail starts climbing up again and for a brief moment I consider turning around and calling it a day. I don't know the trail and I'm not sure if I want to do it without my 8 easiest gears. Then, I though about Ernest Shackelton, the Antarctic explorer, and his credo, "Endurance". For him, endurance was not a successful journey to the south pole (something he never did) it was surviving over a year stranded in Antarcitca without a ship and navigating an open boat over 600 miles of open sea for help. I thought of the Japanese word for endurance: shinbo. The Chinese characters for shinbo are "difficulty" and "embrace". Originally my goal was to stay with the pack for most of the race, have reserves but not be passed by everyone and their grandma. I was going to come into the last mile full of charge, pushing myself to edge out some rivals and finish below an hour. Instead, I would finish it in pain from having to grind it out in a higher gear and I would finish it last in my age group, 4:00 behind the penultimate 20 to 29 year old male and I would finish with an official time of 59:50.

While legs were churning and burning up that climb, gobbling up a gear ratio bigger than I preferred, I kept thinking how similar this was too life. You aren't always going to have your "granny gear" but that doesn't mean you have to stop riding. And it doesn't mean you can't enjoy the pain.

Perspective

To quote one of my favorite columnists, Jim Anchower, "Hola amigos. It's been a while since I rapped at ya."

I had to make a quick note about the war and what I feel is a point about "perspective", something this country sorely lacks.

I heard Dick Cheney comment today on how amazing and impressive our impending victory will. As if this will be a military benchmark that will live in infamy forever. Rolling a billion dollar military out into a third world country is not exactly "Storming the Beaches of Normandy" or Germany's defeat of the Roman Empire. Granted, we did get our asses handed to us by Vietnam, but please, is this really that impressive? OK, maybe I thought it would be more of a struggle, but what will be impressive, is if we can truly foster a democracy in in Iraq and change some of the impressions the rest of the world has of us.

I doubt we see the end of the road
I don't know at what point you all made your choices in life, but think of how difficult it is to know at the time you are making the choice, what you want. When I chose my course in my life, I didn't imagine that what I really wanted was to be a writer with a porn star for a girlfriend. Where was my guidance counselor on that one!

From what the media tells us, (and we know THEY are always right) this war is not going as easily as anticipated. Anyone expecting this action to be guilt free and honorable should pull their head out of the candy coated SUV that haul around their 2.3 kids and see the world we live in for what it is, a downward spiral. Some people claim that we may have underestimated the power of the of our opponent. Others thought we would have taken Bagdhad by now. I'm not a General, nor a President but does this analysis change the fact that we are engaged in an act of barbarism that most nations with far less power than ourselves are able to avoid? Slow or fast, war an evil that no matter WHAT the reason, every member of a nation, hell of the world, has to live with the consequences. The people in power have decided to send this nation down that road, but are trying to cover the horror of this action with patriotic rhetoric and talk of democracy. They use the word "freedom" as if it was a commodity (like oil) to be traded and bought. People of America are being tricked into thinking that we were forced into this. One thing my parents taught me was that you always have a choice to resist, if you are strong enough, the urge to fight. But democracy is the voice of the majority, (no matter what our last election said) and I feel a majority of our population cares more about what they are paying for gas than what is right or wrong. Hell, we make a big show of "boycotting the French" when in reality, we should be boycotting oil. TV tells us that buying drugs supports terrorism. If that connection can be made, how can you NOT make the connection to oil. But that is too hard to admit for most in this country. If you are born in the US, even if you protest the war, you are guilty in the eyes of the world of being an American. Some people are ashamed, others flaunt it, but the fact remains, we all have a hand in what is going on over there.

I read in a media discussion group I frequent that "allegedly" some media consulting firms are advising TV and radio stations to avoid news about "anti-war protests" because it will decrease ratings whereas patriotic analysis and detached, nintendo-style action will keep your station afloat through these tough economic times. Forget the issue of "fair" journalism for a moment (it doesn't exist anyway) and consider what this says about our society. Our citizenry (at least the ones that watch TV, and let's admit it, that's almost everyone) don't want to be reminded of the turmoil in this country, but would rather see turmoil in another country. We have an image that we cling to that says, we are coming together, when that will never happen. We are too diverse, priveledged and free to ever come together... and I think we should be proud of that. Thank you for that US Constitution. Like it or not, that is who we are, war protestors, flag burners... hipocrits. Because, like I said, we are all guilty of something in this life.

I like tasty burgers... I avoid meat whenever possible.

I drive my SUV 100's of miles to just to mountain bike... I ride my bike to work.

I work in the TV industry... I think this country is way too dependent on TV.

I am 20 lbs overwieght... I think we eat too much.

I think the myth American farmer is outdated... I live in an agricultural area.

We can't be innocent. None of us are innocent.

Maybe we wouldn't have to worry about saving the planet so much if we just stopped having kids.

Take that Spring Out O Shapeness
When I speak about being in shape, it's a relative term. My body was apparently created with beer in mind, (Fat Tire Ale to be more specific), but I was able to get my ass through the first off road ride of the year without stopping for oxygen, muscle relief or red blood cell boosting. Granted my time was slower than normal (partially due to some treacherous mud at the top of the descent which made my tires look about 3" wider) but considering it's not even April I feel like my semi-regular jogging regimen has paid off. This ride was small in terms of what I'll be doing in a few weeks when I'm going to try the "Barking Spider" (a race near Boise) with some friends, but we're not exactly racing for first place. I'm guessing we will race at the "sport" level, but I'd probably be happy with just chilling in the beginner race, we'll see.

The other good thing about today's ride was that it was done after a surprisingly good bender last night. Press Box (sports bar) dinner, Fat Tire and performing artists were once again the culprit. It was supposed to be just my roomate Jeff and I watching basketball, drinking some beers and eating food that "tears you up", but that changed about halfway through pitcher two when we mutually decided that 5 weeks away from the local adult performing arts center was long enough. Poison, my performer of choice was unfortunately still on the DL rehabbing a pulled rib muscle (come on Poison, let's get back into game shape for my birthday in two weeks) but she gave us a smile at the door and of course, like most people, pointed out Jeff's dangling gorilla earring.

My plan was to have one more pint of Fat Tire and switch to water since I knew I wanted to ride the next day. So much for that idea, I'm sure I drank at least another three pints at Hot Rocks. Now, I haven't had, what I call, a HANGOVER, since Russia, but the next morning I had a mild hangovers, or what I call a "Hangover Experience". A Hangover Experience is basically like waking up next to some girl who you wished would have left before you got up. She good enough and all that, but you know she's going to ruin your morning. And since I still wanted to ride, having another drink was out of the question. So my solution to these episodes is to get up as early as I can, (in this case 730am), watching MST3K and drinking giant Packer cup after giant Packer cup of water until your body says to the beer, "Yes Fat Tire, I had a great time too, but I need to get going here. Don't worry, I'll call you soon."

After recounting stories like this in my life, it's hard to believe I'm almost 27. But for all you 27-year olds who are happy with the "kid on the way", the mortgage and "planning for the future", I ask you, how often are you hauling your ass up a 2 mile incline and doing something you really enjoy that has no responsibility attached to it other than your own happiness and goals? It's not just mountain biking, it's my kid, mortgage and future right here and right now.