25 (or 27) miles is more fun with friends

I've previously cycled the Clarksville to Trenton KY 25 mile route by myself. I never realize how lonely the back roads of Kentucky could be until I rode with my team of three tonight. It was a beautiful, casual, no stress, sunset ride across rolling Kentucky farmland. It was the first time in quite a very long time where nothing else mattered, not work, nor chores, nor email, or cell phones, or TV. Nothing else mattered except sharing something truly beautiful with friends. I'm glad you were there!

50 Miles. 4 Hours.

I'm only now recovering from a 50 mile bicycle ride on Monday.

I discovered something about a 4 hour bike ride. No matter how flat you think the route is, after 2 hours every minor bump is another mountain.

Yet, very little feels as great as the countdown from mile 49.

EDIT: WOW! I just discovered that 4 hours of riding is capable of shredding the boxers right off of your legs.

..Edit: Edit: I discovered this while doing the week's laundry. But thanks for thinking the worst. ;P

Exotic Locales

I had to travel today. I love having a job that sends me to exotic locales.

From Drop Box

I hate having to put on clothes to leave the office...

Evening Bicycling Checklist

Riding Attire, Check
Bicycle, Check.
Tire Pump, Check.
Riding Satchel, Check.
Flirt-with-cute-cashier-while-picking-up-water-and-gatorade, Check.
Meet at Steve's house for 20 mile ride, Check.
Riding shoes necessary for riding due to locking pedals, DOH!

Working for my lunch

I really appreciated lunch today and I hope to repeat this route to earn my meal each day. Food is guiltless when you work for it.



It was a "There and back again" route, but I didn't include the "back again".

Productivity

It's been a productive day. I cut back my monsta-hedges. I no longer trim them, I have to now cut them back to keep them in control. I mowed my lawn and took the trash to the dump. Then I took a 26 mile bicycle ride from Clarksville to Trenton. Dammit Steve! Where are the ride stats?!? Oh..right.



Now to close out the day with two PBS documentaries and one NatGeo one.

EDIT: Did I mention it took a ladder to cut back my monstredges?

3-One-Thousand.

Please people. When you follow a bike, give them 3 seconds of lead time. There wasn't an incident today, but people follow so close on today's ride that if there was an incident, a biker would end up under your car. Then you are facing manslaughter charges.


Other than that, the day was excellent! With blue skies above and cool breezes behind, the bike had no problems straightenin' the curves and flattenin' the hills! I thought my joints would give me problems, but only my ears and shoulder blades are sore. My mileage is now 650 and I'm scheduled for service tomorrow!

Land Between the Lakes by V-Strom

Pic #1 - Whoa, did you know there is a dude ranch/camp at LBL?

From 2009-05-15 LBLbyVStrom

Pic #2 - Lighthouse Harbor

From 2009-05-15 LBLbyVStrom

Pic #3 - God Damn!

From 2009-05-15 LBLbyVStrom

A 200 Mile Day!!

If anyone needs me today, I'll be somewhere along here:

Flats do not just happen to other people

I thought carrying an extra bicycle tube was for the amatuers. I thought SAG was there to help other cyclists. I thought I was invincible on the bike. I was wrong.

As my finger joints are aching, I was waiting for Steve to post about it. And he did.

I am not a recycler...

But you know what? That's ok. I said to Jenn last night, "I'm waiting for my inspiration, my reason to finish what I start." and it led to an immediate epiphany and overnight re-evaluation. I am not a recycler and no amount of waiting for someone to inspire me to be so is going to change that. So I asked myself, why are you making life more complex than it should be? Why are you, one, PUTTING UP and then stressing over artificial roadblocks to your growth?

I give myself leave of failing to recycle and I give myself leave of waiting for someone to mould me into a a person who would. Who can make me a better man. I can.

Life is good, now keep it simple.

Shared Experiences

Steve, Jenn (not that Jen, the other Jenn) and I took a 216 mile train ride today! Although sitting for the 108 mile out/108 mile back trips was excruciating, the company was very nice. The three of us talked for the 4.5 hour trip out, walked around downtown Monterey TN for an hour before taking the 4.5 hour trip back. On the trip back, we took turns naping and talking. It was a very good day that ended with a great Mexican restaurant dinner.

Words for the day: Look out for the domino's!

On the train:


Steve and "Not-That-Jen" Jenn:


"The Great Disappearing Stevie Act":

Thursday Funnies

As seen on Jen's blog...



Which reminds me of Sony's new free MMO, "Free Realms". I tried it out last night. To create a safe environment for children, Sony provides a type of vegas slot machine name generator. You rotate through the dials until you come up with a first name, last name prefix and last name suffix. You know, to be safe for the kids.. I was able to create a "Takeo Ashclown". Awesome.

Lastly, On the 100th aniversary of the maiden Titantic journey, a British company is going to recreate it complete with 1,309 passengers.. NPR's take, "Let's hope no one packs their IRONY.". They are booking a band if anyone is interested.

EDIT: Found a better more disturbing name:

Bikers are a funny lot

After cycling on the bike, I decided to do some biking on the cycle. I was craving a bbq sandwich, so I headed to Mrs. Winners Chicken Restaurant. I park my bike where I can see it out the window and sit down to eat. This Hardly Davidson rider pulls up outside the window and gives me a sideways glance. He gets off the bike, looks at my bike and then looks back at me. I think, crap, he's going to give me crap. So I continue to eat while he's still pacing by his bike outside of my window. I think to myself, I'm glad I'm wearing my biking/stomping boots now. As I started to fiddle with my helmet, he taps on the window and motions for me to come outside. Alright, time for a fight. So I go out and he looks at me, looks at my bike. He extends a hand and says, "I don't know how to say this,". I extend my hand but prepare to duck and counter/throat punch. He continues, "But, biker to biker, I'm fleeing from a domestic.".

The story can end there. All in all, he was just looking for gas money to flee the cops.

HELLA-FUN!!!

THAT.
WAS.
AWESOME!!

Blue skies and the wind was at my back on the motorcycle as I shopped for a small back-pack and picked up my new multi-day, disposable contacts and new styled glass frames. I think I hate the glass' frame. The really cute girl behind the counter seemed genuinely enthusiastic when she said she liked them. I think Lenscrafter's employees are very well trained. The contacts are very nice though. They are crystal clear and I don't feel them any longer. I've never had contacts you wear for several days and then dispose of.

Dee-DeeDee!

No wait..that's not the right phrase..

Hidden, Integrated, Actuating Sunglasses

That's how awesome the helmet is. Flip a switch on the helmet and a hidden sunshield slides down into place between the visor and my glasses.





Oh, right! The bike is cool too! It's getting serviced today for pickup tomorroooow!

Roller Coaster Life

Congrats to Steve on his Roller Coaster results! I liked the title and, once again, am not above thievery.

Made some changes this weekend. LOTRO patched in some EZ-Mode changes and then made them defaulted to on just this week. I hadn't played since December 2008, but this was the last straw. Turbine is chasing the paper dragon of higher subscription numbers by making the game more mass appeal. This means instead of doing right by their current subscription base, they are taking a chance and experimenting with game design to gather some of WoW's players. Don't get me wrong. WoW is a GREAT game. Solid game, huge world, lots of variety and infinitely scalable on hardware. But there is ALREADY a WoW. LOTRO players are looking for a niche game covering Tolkien's Middle Earth. Although it was a very fun game, I guess they have had it wrong since the beginning. For example, magic stat weapons dropped more often than sea gull poop at a sardine festival. Magic stat weapons should be very rare in Middle Earth. Another example is how small the world was designed. At about mid-level, it only took about an hour to run from one side of the world to the other. Tolkien's Middle Earth took weeks/months to traverse.

Not content to stop there, I also canceled my recently subscribed Sony Station account. EQII was just depressing. I started in the Greater Faydark newbie zone. Daytime in GFay is about as dark as nighttime. I spent day night after night soloing as I couldn't quite sync my hours played with that of my friends playing.

To be honest with myself, if i'm to level anything, it needs to be my Honda del Sol and my home.

For a couple of weekends, I've browsed a few car dealerships to test drive convertibles, hoping it would get me excited about my own. I hadn't driven the spiritual successor of my del Sol yet, the Honday S2000. The Clarksville dealership didn't have one, so on Saturday, I grabbed Steve and we headed to Hopkinsville. They didn't have one either, but while searching, I heard from the passenger seat, "Hey, there's a Honda Motorcycle dealership.". "Sure, let's stop, it won't hurt to look.", I responded.

And then it was love. I fell for a Suzuki V-Strom dual-sport. I'm shocked that this is a dual-sport. The wheel fender and fairing share characteristics with a touring or road bike. I LIKE IT! Tomorrow, I'm headed to my local dealership to test drive and work the numbers.

On Sunday, I had an eye exam, got contacts, sunglasses and ordered a new style of frames. The contacts and sunglasses are for cycling while the frames are for the professional metrosexual at work. They also have Transitions lenses. With insurance, I think it was an excellent deal overall.

Healthcare Funnies

I've been looking through the benefits provided by Cardinal Health. One that I've paid for, but haven't used yet is the eye care benefits. So today I browsed to their website and found a funny/gross word-verification:



Now, as if that wasn't funny enough, I check out the prices for Lasik and this gets good. They offer a 1 year satisfaction guarantee as an option! WHOA! What happens at the end of the year?!? Do I go blind?!? Not only that, but notice that the "free" lifetime guarantee option will cost you an additional $700! ... For the "free" lifetime guarantee! I guess the budget conscious person (the one with little health consciousness) could buy one eye at 1 year satisfaction and the other eye at lifetime. That way you hedge your bet and spread out the risk.



Now wait, funny aside, this is one of those cases where we should protect consumers from themselves. A 1 year guarantee shouldn't even be a consideration lol. Of course, consumers should also be protected from the cheap (and I don't mean in-expensive) flea-market crap that WalMart sells.

Tenthousandaire

At the end of this month, I will have put away $10,000 in cash savings. Thank you, Thank you. I attribute my success to the teachings of Jacob H. And my job. And the job-related expenses.

I have the money split into two savings accounts, one online and the other brick-and-mortar. Which lets me see how badly brick-and-mortar banks treat their customers. I have twice as much money in my brick-and-mortar savings as my online, but the brick-and-mortar savings earned less than six times what the online savings earned. Let's read that again. If I multiplied the interested paid in the brick-and-mortar by 6, it would still be less than that earned by 1/2 of that money in an online savings account. Bye-bye brick-and-mortar.

Oooo, pretty..

If you ever rebuild an engine, buy (or steal) the dealership's service manual. Here are a couple sample pages: