Fyi

If you're on Time Warner Cable you're not going to be getting Comedy Central (daily show, colbert) or nickelodeon (plus other channels) as of midnight tonight. Glad I'm on Directv.

http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/12-30-2008/0004947904&EDATE=

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Rat

The avalanch danger here is pretty extreme so that's kept us out of the backcountry. Just cruising with the kids through the trees and terrain park.

In an effort at getting a workout in I headed to Gold's and did 1:15 on a bike with 40' at a HR of 174. That was probably close to my threshold. A little stairmaster and some running made for a nice workout.

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Newsflash

In a desparate attempt to get in touch with his sensitive side, crusty is gonna do some directing with the top womens team, Tibco. 

There will be some other crusty news prior to the ToC.

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F'd up

Seattle to Salt lake flight diverted to Boise...6 hrs later we arrive at 3am. Tonight it's 3 bottles of wine. Tomorrow it's skiing at sundance. Fun.

Time to dope

It's time for my visit to the Dr....That's Dr. Alta for some RBC infusion, hard workouts and daily doses of very dry fluffy white powder.  I'll be iPhone bloggin' while I'm gone.  Be back Jan. 5th.

We'll see off and on snow throughout the day. Temps will be 5-10 degrees F. The next blockbuster arrives tomorrow into Christmas Day. Up to and over 2' of snow is expected, followed by another storm on the 28th.

Mega Ultra Plus Plus

Awesome ride today that was just shy of epic with weather and mechanicals.  We did a "reverse" Wateree route but hugged the coast.  The general route we did is HERE. Great roads with no traffic out there.

When the 5 of us left at 9:30 the weather was clearing but

 the wind was picking up.  We had a massive tailwind all the way down Perceival to 601 and pretty much had cross-tail or tailwind most of the ride...except for the last 15 miles back down Perceival--wow that was brutal.  We got really lucky with the wind today.

Casey snapped her RD cable at mile 50 and after trying to get the limit screws set to get her in a manageable gear I finally just jammed a stick in the RD which kept her in the 15 and gave her two workable gears.  That worked great for the rest of the ride (she may have a different opinion).  Rob later somehow managed to get his RD cable stuck INSIDE of a link in his chain...never seen that one before.  After fixing it he had access to only his 12,13,14 for the rest of the ride.  Crazy.

I spent a lot of the day sitting on the front with new-guy-Cleve who's a Cat. 1 type and races for Myogenesis.  This weekend I racked up 457 TSS...I'm gonna be worthless tomorrow at work!  My CTL now (37) is above where it was last year.

Uh oh

We're 50 miles out on a 90 mile ride and casey snapped a cable. What
you see is the stick trick.

Nice

70˚

3:15

60 miles

1800kj

A good group and the legs were feeling fine, I could have stayed on the front all day but didn't want to be That Guy.  Tomorrow's supposed to rain but the overnight lows will be in the 60's so it should be ok.  I need a big day.

I was looking at that photo of my bike and was like...damn, that nose of the saddle looks high.  I lowered it a bit and it was big time AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH's.

OT

Re:  Data backup

I've got a 500GB drive connected to my Airport Extreme that makes hourly backups of my Mac and Julie's MacBook (via Time Machine).  But this does me no good in the event of a fire or theft or lightening strike (you think that $29 surge protector is really gonna save your stuff?).

I've been researching off site backups and looked at Mozy and Amazon S3 but the best service by far is by a company called CrashPlan.  It's a one time fee of $25.  You make a backup to an external drive over your LAN then plug that drive into a computer off site (I'll use my parents Mac or put one in Julie's office).  

The CrashPlan software makes a nightly backup over the 'net.  It's all encrypted/verified/cross platform etc and in the event that you need to restore your data you can move that drive back to your computer (avoiding the slowness of restoring from the net).  It's all very "mac" cool.

Anyway...with over 10k photo's (mostly RAW), gigs and gigs of video, 12k mp3's, years of personal stuff, julie's work crap....it would really suck to lose it all.

round n' round

Another 60'

Did the first 30' a little harder...around 93% or so.  It felt harder.

My friggin Niterider HID died after last weeks rain ride...Grrrrrr.  That pretty much eliminates my longer rides during the week but I'm probably better off with what I've been doing intensity wise.

warm-ness

The weather's gonna kick ass this week...70˚ every day.  It was just shorts and jersey tonight...I can't believe how cold I was 2 days ago.  

I just got back from the crit course and my 60' of SST.  I mixed it up tonight by doing every other lap at FTP.  A lot harder riding but the legs were pretty good.  I'm slowly getting ready to start my 2x20's.  Probably next week.  Bring da pain.

5000' in December

Damn cold

This morning when I left the cabin it was 28 degrees. That would have been ok but I was planning on climbing upto over 5000'. The climb to newfound gap was over 14 miles, all up.

I've never been on a ride where I was damn cold in the sun on a climb. On the shaded slopes it was ridiculous. The descent was brutal. I had to stop at the visitors center to get to a point where I could feel my feet and hands.

But I gotta say...it was a great ride. Epic for sure. Lots of snow and icy roads and morbidly obese people having snowball fights.

Weekend

I'm off to Gatlinburg, TN this weekend for a family meet up.  If the weather is OK I plan to do some riding in and around the smokies.  It looks like some real good climbing real near where we're staying.

Twas a dark and rainy night...

The nut and I went out tonight and did 2.5 hours in the fort, basically 2 full loops.  Even with it being very dark and raining we still had a blast and rode hard.  Usually kindof epic conditions warrant hard riding.  It was 70˚ so that helped a lot.  The legs were good.

shorts & bare arms

Monday I was worthless after Sunday's ride and was pretty brain dead at work, I rested.  

Tonight was crazy warm...shorts and jersey and I did my usual crit course workout and the legs were really good.  I did 90% for 55' but threw in some laps at FTP.  I had a pretty wicked tailwind coming out of turn 3 and was hitting turn 4 at 30mph and holding that momentum up the finish, so that was fun.

Tomorrow if it's not raining I'm gonna try to get in a longer ride in the fort, if it's raining I'll repeat tonights workout.

Dean ride

Really nice mellow ride today out in the boonies.  I really had no idea were we were 90% of the time but the roads were nice and there was no traffic at all.  

It was bit chilly at the start but once it warmed up and the outer layers were shed it was perfect.  We had a good group for 5+ hrs of riding.  Pretty easy cruising but that's probably a good thing at this point with my sub-30 CTL and I think I'll be able to hit the crit course tomorrow for MOTS.

Saturday

Jules is in NYC giving a lecture so I thought I had some things lined up today to ride but it fell through.  Oh Well, I got some good kid time with the new kritters.  Tomorrow I'm gonna stay out as long as possible and we'll see how that goes.

My new favorite weather page:

NWS

ok

it's time for a big-TSS weekend...

SST

Did the same workout as yesterday...felt a bit better, maybe it was my iPod mix. 

Planning ahead:  I'm gonna take off every thursday afternoon starting on Jan. 15th for a 4-5 hour ride.  Will do this for 5-6 weeks.  Anyone else?

bu-bump

Did 55' at 90% at the crit course.  It was cold but I felt good.  A nice workout.

My CTL is very low right now....I'm gonna do the Jay C. method: 6 weeks of "base" and get my TSS/d up in Jan/Feb by taking some half days off during the week and getting those 4-5 hr rides in.

blah

This weekend was nasty....no riding.  Tomorrow it's back to the crit course for the usual.