John’s Ramblings

I missed posting yesterday, in my quest to complete National Blog Posting Month.  I lose.

Check this out. I was doing a little post-NaBloPoMo surfing this morning, and found this cool emblem generator. The NaBloPoMo organizer(s) have apparently been using this to generate the official seals of our writing exercise. So I clicked in and created this little gem. Click the picture, and you can create your own, for whatever subject you wish.

Do they have a bicycle emblem, you may ask? Hell, yes!

I think I’ll go for a ride today.

Your author, by virtue of typing these very words, has proven himself capable of posting to his blog for 30 days. Yawn.

You heard me pissin’ and moanin’ a lot about the weather. A quick scan of my posts looks like almost half the month was me complaining that it was raining, or snowing, or flooded, or some other calamity that was going to prevent me from riding my bicycle, or riding where I thought I should be riding. To some extent this is understandable since they have declared this to be the wettest single month in Seattle history, but get over it. There was that whole snow thing. But in looking back I feel like I’ve been standing around at a cocktail party with a bunch of strangers, and all I can think to talk about is the weather. Someone please get me another martini.

I asked you to vote. That was quite patriotic. . Thanks.

We brined our turkey, and we roasted it without stuffing because stuffing is evil.

My dogs like snow.

I didn’t reach my milestone of 4,000 miles for the year yet. It will happen in the next few days, to be sure, it just didn’t happen in November. You’ll have to continue to hold your breath on that one.

I did attend CPR/First Aid training today, which I thought would be a nice skillset to have in my role as Ride Leader. They spent quite a bit of the time training us on how to avoid getting sued for putting a band-aid on someone’s boo-boo. Not that the training wasn’t worth it, because it was. I was just a bit disappointed that America is so litigious that I can open a bottle of aspirin and hold it in your general direction, but if I shake one out into the palm of your hand I could be in deep shit. What’s up with that?

I did learn a couple of other things this month.

• I can probably apply myself and write some mildly clever stuff.
• Some people enjoy reading what I’ve written.

That is rewarding. Thank you. I tried not to shortcut the process too bad, even when I didn’t feel like posting. I never posted a cartoon and called it a day. I didn’t post a couple of sentences and call it “good”.

I received a call last night from my father in Los Angeles. He had discovered my blog, and had read through several of the most recent entries. “It’s like a soap opera”, and “that certainly was a colorful description of your flu” were among the comments he made. Dad’s made a living with words, in the advertising industry, so I greatly appreciate the feedback.

Thanks Dad, and Mom, for everything (including that green Schwinn Varsity that “Santa” put under the tree in the mid-60’s).

0 miles today, 3,979 ytd, 30 blog posts for the month.

Good night, and stay tuned.

Barring any unforeseen weirdness, it appears that I will make it through NaBloPoMo intact and unscathed. I’ve been able to remain productive on a daily basis, and to occasionally be witty in the process. w00t!

Apparently some of my NaBloPoMoBro’s are having a much harder time of it. Someone has put up a randomizer for all the participants of this little exercise, and I spent a little time yesterday doing research on the competition. I found a surprisingly high amount of sites that have given up on the daily posting goals. There are some (such as your humble author) that are chugging along at a rate of a few paragraphs and complete thoughts per day. Then there are those that are posting 3 lines, telling us what they had for dinner, or posting a cartoon they saw somewhere. While those are technically posts, I don’t think I could do that myself without guilt. Perhaps I’m confusing “posting” with “writing” but in my mind they should be closely aligned, at least for the purposes of this exercise. While I have no aspirations of receiving a Pulitzer, national recognition, or even a NaBloPoMo virtual paperweight, I do expect to make it though the month with my integrity.

I ended up at the gym last night, as the rain began just about quitting time here at the Calnan Coding Ranch. I did two sets of weights, a little bit of ab work, then spinning for 90 minutes. Spin was a good aerobic session to techno-dance type music. This music seems to work well for my concentration, and thus the quality of my workout. Some of the music was that repetitious-trance-kinda stuff, that gave me flashbacks to that party that the Chemistry majors threw back in ‘76.

Tonight, we ride! The rain chance is supposed to taper to about 50% by ride-time, so I should only be 50% cold and wet by ride’s end.

3,928 miles year-to-date, and I need 72 more to reach 4,000. 20 tonight, 30 on Saturday, so I should be there by next Tuesday, Thursday the 30th at the latest.

Oh, and we had Chicken Caesar Salad.  It was delicious.

I was doing a little surfing through some other bike related blogs (easily accessible through yonder links, oh web-ish one) when I happened upon this curious logo. A little click in that direction led me to a page describing NaBloPoMo. The principle of this exercise is to post to my blog every day for the month of November.

Now, understand that the best friend I’ve almost never met, Jim Carson, is embarking upon NaNoWriMo on this very day. Way, way more ambitious, he and many other souls will attempt to write a complete novel during November. He’s checked out books on writing books, and made a regular science project out of this (who would’a thought it?). No doubt he’ll be magnificent.

I, on the other hand, can walk past the computer for days on end, and only cast the keyboard a furtive glance. I can sit here for 3 hours a day, surfing for cycling googaws and anatomy lessons, and never feel inspired to be creative. Writing an entire novel in a month would be a bit of a stretch for your hero, dear reader (both of you). In the immortal words of Dr. Leo Marvin, what we need here are “Baby Steps”.

After a couple of Cabernet’s (purely for health reasons, mind you. French paradox and all that.) it sounded like it was quite do-able, so I signed my sorry ass up. All through the day today I’ve been mulling this little venture. It was close to that kind of feeling when you have an optional hill to climb on the bike, you are alone, no time constraints, and you stand at the bottom and look at the hill as you consider your options. Will it be “You know, I really need to get home and run the dishwasher”, or “What the hell, climb the damn hill”.

At 3:30 I quit walking past the computer, loaded the bike, and went for a ride. I needed to get out of the house, and I felt like I needed to get in the 15-20 miles that I didn’t get last night because no one showed up for the night ride. So I rode a variant of the valley route, from Kent to the north toward Tukwila. I went up Frager Road instead of my usual Russell, found a short steep little hill that ended at a little turn-of-the-century cemetery on Orillia Road, then doubled back down to Russell Road and the Green River Trail (I know, boring, TMI, but I’m going somewhere with this). I reached the construction site at 228th and Russell Road, and the work crews were finishing up their concrete pours for the day. The road is not open yet, but with a few sidewalks and some landscaping this project to put a truck route from the valley up to I-5 will almost be complete. One of the workers waved me through and said “Go ahead, try it out”. The sun is setting, I’ve got my mileage in that I needed, and I’m 2 miles away from the car… almost done. “Go on, see where it takes you, man”, and he gives me another gesture that I should proceed.

So I did. Once I weaved my way through the barricades and cars at the bottom, I had the whole hill to myself. It must be about .7 or .8 of a mile long, and the usual for around here of about 350′ feet of climbing. Nice new concrete road with no potholes and no traffic. So I got my hill work, got my mileage, and I got something of an inspiration to start typing entry one for NaBloPoMo.

It ain’t War and Peace, but tomorrow is another day.

15.4 miles today, 3,798 ytd.