Showing posts with label Biking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Biking. Show all posts
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Being For the Benefit of Mr. Frank
Just wanted to let you and the readers know that due the inflamed knee, I opted for a quick seven mile bike ride today in lieu of an Ultimate tourney. Felt pretty good; it was city / neighborhood riding, complete with stop signs, crosswalks and all, and I finished in a little over half an hour. Anyways, the bike is still in working order; maybe if I get really adventurous I'll ride it to and from campus this summer. It's only 8.5 miles by riding along the canal, and in a few weeks it'll only be 110 degrees. Hmmmm...
Monday, May 19, 2008
Lest I Forget
There's a pretty solid argument that maintains that the primary purpose of blogging is bitching and moaning. In that spirit:
Guess how happy I was on Thursday afternoon at 2:20 pm.
If you picked "Not very," then
Because on Thursday at 2:20 pm, I had the idea that I should bike down to the golf course on Friday morning. But in order to do that, I needed a pump for my bicycle tires - it wouldn't be too bad to have a flat en route to work, which is only ~1.5 miles away by roads, but getting stuck 9 miles from home without a functional cycle would have been bad. But it was 2:20, and I had to work at 3, and the bike store closed at 7, before I would be done with work. So in order to save time, I decided to drive over to the bike place real quick, head home and then bike to work. So I walked out to the parking lot.
The eerily empty parking lot. The one WITHOUT MY CAR!!!
After about 2.3 seconds of brutal panic, I realized that everyone else's cars were gone, too, so unless we had just been victimized by a very shwanky and very targeted crime syndicate, my car was probably not gone. Also, there was the fresh smell of tar in the air - I am, as mentioned here, Smelltard the Magnificent, but that putrid scent does not escape my attention. It turns out that though they cannot afford to pay their water bills, my condo association can afford to repave the parking lot. And apparently can afford to tow people's cars out of the way.
I was, understandably, miffed, as there had been no warning of any of this. But mainly, I just wanted to find my car so I could get to the bike store and then on to work. So i went to the office, land of the Pep-Squad-to-Sorority-to-Real-Estate Career Track Girls. Who are OH-SO-EFFING-HELPFUL, not. Beck has a particular hatred for them since the incident when they refused to let us park our moving truck in front of our apartment (they claimed it would block the sales spaces, and made us park across the complex. It was 115 degrees at the time. And no one parked in the spaces the entire time; Beck checked). So Beck routinely parks in their Sales spaces out of spite. YEAH! I have had several encounters with them where they treat me with something in the contempt to utter disregard range, so I am not a huge fan either.
All of this is meant to indicate that I didn't particularly expect any help when I got to the office. I was not disappointed. I first asked, "Do you know where the cars are?"
Unhelpful lady says, "I don't know; I think they're around back."
"Where around back?" I asked, as "around back" is about a mile long area.
"I don't know. You really should have moved your car ahead of time."
"Um, how was I supposed to know you were repaving today?"
"Uh, yeah, we sent a letter." Trust that this was in the best possible tonally inflected Frank Zappa valley girl type accent.
"I didn't get a letter. To whom did you send them?" (And yes, I busted out an objective pronoun).
"Well we sent them last week to the condo owners."
"But, you see, I am not an owner, I merely LIVE HERE."
"Well, the owner should have told you."
"You didn't think notifying me directly or maybe posting some signs would have been a good idea?"
"That wasn't my decision to make."
Buck passed! Obviously this interaction was going nowhere, so I left, tracked down one of the pavers and asked him where they had moved the cars. *He* was helpful and even apologized for having to move the cars, realizing that the complex's representatives had not exactly done the world's best job of notifying people. So I found my car, drove to the bike store, got a pump, headed home, and rode my bike in, just a couple of minutes late. So all told, no damage done. But in the eternal humankind basically evil / basically good game, chalk another couple up for the BE. Though I don't know if the Pep-Squad-to-Sorority-to-Real-Estate Career Track qualifies you as human. Can those gals use tools? I mean, besides blackberries and dirty looks?
----------------
Now playing: Gang of Four - Natural's Not In It
Guess how happy I was on Thursday afternoon at 2:20 pm.
If you picked "Not very," then
CONGRATULATION
You a winner, HA HA HA.
Because on Thursday at 2:20 pm, I had the idea that I should bike down to the golf course on Friday morning. But in order to do that, I needed a pump for my bicycle tires - it wouldn't be too bad to have a flat en route to work, which is only ~1.5 miles away by roads, but getting stuck 9 miles from home without a functional cycle would have been bad. But it was 2:20, and I had to work at 3, and the bike store closed at 7, before I would be done with work. So in order to save time, I decided to drive over to the bike place real quick, head home and then bike to work. So I walked out to the parking lot.
The eerily empty parking lot. The one WITHOUT MY CAR!!!
After about 2.3 seconds of brutal panic, I realized that everyone else's cars were gone, too, so unless we had just been victimized by a very shwanky and very targeted crime syndicate, my car was probably not gone. Also, there was the fresh smell of tar in the air - I am, as mentioned here, Smelltard the Magnificent, but that putrid scent does not escape my attention. It turns out that though they cannot afford to pay their water bills, my condo association can afford to repave the parking lot. And apparently can afford to tow people's cars out of the way.
I was, understandably, miffed, as there had been no warning of any of this. But mainly, I just wanted to find my car so I could get to the bike store and then on to work. So i went to the office, land of the Pep-Squad-to-Sorority-to-Real-Estate Career Track Girls. Who are OH-SO-EFFING-HELPFUL, not. Beck has a particular hatred for them since the incident when they refused to let us park our moving truck in front of our apartment (they claimed it would block the sales spaces, and made us park across the complex. It was 115 degrees at the time. And no one parked in the spaces the entire time; Beck checked). So Beck routinely parks in their Sales spaces out of spite. YEAH! I have had several encounters with them where they treat me with something in the contempt to utter disregard range, so I am not a huge fan either.
All of this is meant to indicate that I didn't particularly expect any help when I got to the office. I was not disappointed. I first asked, "Do you know where the cars are?"
Unhelpful lady says, "I don't know; I think they're around back."
"Where around back?" I asked, as "around back" is about a mile long area.
"I don't know. You really should have moved your car ahead of time."
"Um, how was I supposed to know you were repaving today?"
"Uh, yeah, we sent a letter." Trust that this was in the best possible tonally inflected Frank Zappa valley girl type accent.
"I didn't get a letter. To whom did you send them?" (And yes, I busted out an objective pronoun).
"Well we sent them last week to the condo owners."
"But, you see, I am not an owner, I merely LIVE HERE."
"Well, the owner should have told you."
"You didn't think notifying me directly or maybe posting some signs would have been a good idea?"
"That wasn't my decision to make."
Buck passed! Obviously this interaction was going nowhere, so I left, tracked down one of the pavers and asked him where they had moved the cars. *He* was helpful and even apologized for having to move the cars, realizing that the complex's representatives had not exactly done the world's best job of notifying people. So I found my car, drove to the bike store, got a pump, headed home, and rode my bike in, just a couple of minutes late. So all told, no damage done. But in the eternal humankind basically evil / basically good game, chalk another couple up for the BE. Though I don't know if the Pep-Squad-to-Sorority-to-Real-Estate Career Track qualifies you as human. Can those gals use tools? I mean, besides blackberries and dirty looks?
----------------
Now playing: Gang of Four - Natural's Not In It
Friday, May 16, 2008
Frank: Changing the World One Nyet at a Time
Exciting week in the Ballad - I took my bike into the shop on Monday to get tuned up / new tires. Taking the bike in was interesting - it just barely fit in the Honda, kinda diagonal across the back and front seats with the front tire off. Yikes. So on Wednesday when I went back to get it, I though it would be smarter just to run to the store, a scant three miles away. No big deal. Except I got there and despite the fact that the bike was supposed to be done on Tuesday after 5, they were still working on it. So I jogged around the block for another half an hour while they fixed it. Fun! After they finally financially molested me, I got my bike back - brakes sweet, derailers sweet, tires nice and pumped and shiny, good to go. I rode home in just a few minutes; much more fun than the running it took to get there.
So since Wednesday I've been biking into work. And besides the sweat and the interesting hair formations that the helmet (yes, Frank, the HELMET) gives me, I'd say it's working great. SO great, in fact, that this morning I planned a little jaunt:
That's a 9 miles bike trip (18 miles total) down to the disc golf course at Vista Del Camino. Big fun, except of course I picked a gusty windy day to do it - biking there with the wind at my back wasn't too bad, but on the way home with the wind in my face was a little exciting. And the gusty winds made for a terrible round, too - a pretty decent par start got super derailed on the back nine, and I ended up about +7. Ouch! My back has been bugging me since Wednesday - here's hoping that's just coincidental and not caused by the biking - so thanks to that and the gusty wind, my drives were going nowhere and or majorly askew. And predictably, putting was a joke. No fun. But the bike ride was sweet; I was on the Green Belt the whole way, and except for a couple of traffic lights, it was completely easy, traffic-free riding. Huzzah.
That's about it. Trying to get in contact with the Danimal to see about going to DBacks - Tigers games this weekend. We'll see. Otherwise it's a light day of tutoring today and all day tutoring tomorrow. Bleh. Will see you on the flip side, hopefully with more enthralling things to post.
So since Wednesday I've been biking into work. And besides the sweat and the interesting hair formations that the helmet (yes, Frank, the HELMET) gives me, I'd say it's working great. SO great, in fact, that this morning I planned a little jaunt:
That's about it. Trying to get in contact with the Danimal to see about going to DBacks - Tigers games this weekend. We'll see. Otherwise it's a light day of tutoring today and all day tutoring tomorrow. Bleh. Will see you on the flip side, hopefully with more enthralling things to post.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Chief Shock Gobble
Aka, the turkey's primary death call. It's tragic, really, a reverberating emanation of soul-terror. But it's also pretty juicy. So we shtuff it accordingly. It also appears that we're commemorating the 44th anniversary of the JFK assassination with a football game in Dallas. Eh???
Welcome to Turkey Day from San Antonio. The Jones Extended Family Etc. (i.e., El Jefe, including beck, mom, dad, aaron, grandpa, deb, pat, ron, jordan, paige, and frank) are headed over to the casa at 5 for the ubertrad Turkey dinner. Which means that we just performed the annual "Turkey Dance," which, in the interest of preserving my cool-guy mystique, will remain unpictured here. Ha. It went off without a hitch, though, and some 14+ pounds of turkeybreast will be making its way down our collective gullet shortly.
(A brief break - tuftsman Andy may have made the joke of the year earlier this week. Here it is, ctrl-c ctrl-v'd direct from the fantasy basketball board:
"Due to the brother's firefighter work schedule, we will be having thanksgiving on saturday, which means I will be having thanksgiving with Kathy's family and then she will be having thanksgiving with my family. Sweet, Jimmy's having Stove Top at 8."
Genius.)
(Another big break: big fat congrats to Jamie and the rest of GPGDS. They are getting some great press here and there and *word on the street* is that they may have been booked to play Bonaroo in '08. If you don't know what that means, trust that is an awesome development and will surely be reflected upon favorably in the forthcoming Behind the Music special).
Good times thus far - Beck and I flew in on Tuesday, and I promptly ran 4 miles around the neighborhood. We hit up Alamo Cafe along with mom-dad-pat-ron-grandpa-deb, and put a dent in our margarita/nacho quota for the month. Nice. Wednesday, Aaron rolled in town just in time for our golf lesson from a nice dude named Magnus. We are now terrible plus one. Highlights included a Happy Gilmore style blast from me and Aaron smashing a driver into the ground and sending the broken head of the club farther than the ball. EXCELLENT! Magnus recorded our swings on DVD, too, so our art installment is coming along nicely.
Aaron's (gasp, shock, let it settle in, synthesis, comfort, go on) girlfriend LJ drove into town on Wednesday afternoon, and we had a nice afternoon of grocery shopping and lardy lardy food preparation (pictures forthcoming). She was sweet and more or less passed the audition. Fun night of burgers and bacon-potato-ness, capped off by a big Spurs victory v. the Magic.
Aaron, Beck and I went disc-golfing in the now 40 degree weather this morning. Nice little course over at McClain Park, pretty woody and challenging. The cold and Aaron's sore arm sent us home after 10 holes to watch the Packers eek it out and then go a-turkey-dancin'. Which brings us to the ever-fleeting here and now.
The menu for tonight: turkey, stuffing, rolls, green beans, creamed onions, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry salad, beer bread, pies, crab rangun (???!?!?!?!) and I'm sure forgetting a whole lotta stuff. This is our first t-day in Texas in quite some time, so a special hello to the iPFam up in Rochacha. It's also Mike NTPB's birthday today; he's 30 and reminds us all of our mortality.
That's about it for this gluttonous holiday report. While Frank writes inspiringly about riding bikes more, eating smarter and generally trying to save the planet, I eat chocolate mint ice-cream for lunch, gain weight by merely looking at Aaron's evil bacon-concoction, and prepare to stretch my pylorus to unreasonable widths. I have the usual background mumble of anti-consumerist holiday time sentiments running through, but the inevitable crush of this faux-trad minded culture is killing my will to complain. So I'll just hang back and pretend that this is all as sacred as the tv ads imply. And regardless, El Jefe will have a swimming time. In the meantime, Sparkle was a little jealous of the Wrigley-centric post the other day, so in order to ensure that her 3 days away from her owners go smoothly, I'll throw a S-dog centric shot up here now. Because you KNOW that when we're away, Sparkle is all over teh internets.
Welcome to Turkey Day from San Antonio. The Jones Extended Family Etc. (i.e., El Jefe, including beck, mom, dad, aaron, grandpa, deb, pat, ron, jordan, paige, and frank) are headed over to the casa at 5 for the ubertrad Turkey dinner. Which means that we just performed the annual "Turkey Dance," which, in the interest of preserving my cool-guy mystique, will remain unpictured here. Ha. It went off without a hitch, though, and some 14+ pounds of turkeybreast will be making its way down our collective gullet shortly.
(A brief break - tuftsman Andy may have made the joke of the year earlier this week. Here it is, ctrl-c ctrl-v'd direct from the fantasy basketball board:
"Due to the brother's firefighter work schedule, we will be having thanksgiving on saturday, which means I will be having thanksgiving with Kathy's family and then she will be having thanksgiving with my family. Sweet, Jimmy's having Stove Top at 8."
Genius.)
(Another big break: big fat congrats to Jamie and the rest of GPGDS. They are getting some great press here and there and *word on the street* is that they may have been booked to play Bonaroo in '08. If you don't know what that means, trust that is an awesome development and will surely be reflected upon favorably in the forthcoming Behind the Music special).
Good times thus far - Beck and I flew in on Tuesday, and I promptly ran 4 miles around the neighborhood. We hit up Alamo Cafe along with mom-dad-pat-ron-grandpa-deb, and put a dent in our margarita/nacho quota for the month. Nice. Wednesday, Aaron rolled in town just in time for our golf lesson from a nice dude named Magnus. We are now terrible plus one. Highlights included a Happy Gilmore style blast from me and Aaron smashing a driver into the ground and sending the broken head of the club farther than the ball. EXCELLENT! Magnus recorded our swings on DVD, too, so our art installment is coming along nicely.
Aaron's (gasp, shock, let it settle in, synthesis, comfort, go on) girlfriend LJ drove into town on Wednesday afternoon, and we had a nice afternoon of grocery shopping and lardy lardy food preparation (pictures forthcoming). She was sweet and more or less passed the audition. Fun night of burgers and bacon-potato-ness, capped off by a big Spurs victory v. the Magic.
Aaron, Beck and I went disc-golfing in the now 40 degree weather this morning. Nice little course over at McClain Park, pretty woody and challenging. The cold and Aaron's sore arm sent us home after 10 holes to watch the Packers eek it out and then go a-turkey-dancin'. Which brings us to the ever-fleeting here and now.
The menu for tonight: turkey, stuffing, rolls, green beans, creamed onions, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry salad, beer bread, pies, crab rangun (???!?!?!?!) and I'm sure forgetting a whole lotta stuff. This is our first t-day in Texas in quite some time, so a special hello to the iPFam up in Rochacha. It's also Mike NTPB's birthday today; he's 30 and reminds us all of our mortality.
That's about it for this gluttonous holiday report. While Frank writes inspiringly about riding bikes more, eating smarter and generally trying to save the planet, I eat chocolate mint ice-cream for lunch, gain weight by merely looking at Aaron's evil bacon-concoction, and prepare to stretch my pylorus to unreasonable widths. I have the usual background mumble of anti-consumerist holiday time sentiments running through, but the inevitable crush of this faux-trad minded culture is killing my will to complain. So I'll just hang back and pretend that this is all as sacred as the tv ads imply. And regardless, El Jefe will have a swimming time. In the meantime, Sparkle was a little jealous of the Wrigley-centric post the other day, so in order to ensure that her 3 days away from her owners go smoothly, I'll throw a S-dog centric shot up here now. Because you KNOW that when we're away, Sparkle is all over teh internets.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)