Simple Pleasures

Simple Pleasures from this weekend:

- Gorgeous weather made for an amazing ride with good friends on Saturday.

- Go Navy ! The game was fun and watching the 4th quarter on field on the 20-yard line was awesome !

- Intelligent, relevant interaction with intelligent, relevant people. Sharing good food, wine and experiences with a couple friends and a few people I just met reminded me that while bikes and training and racing are pretty cool, there are other interesting subjects and experiences in life. To supplement bikes, training and racing, of course.

- Integrated bluetooth in my car. It will change my life.

- Living in a place that doesn't roll up the sidewalks on Sundays ... I found someone to fix the flat tire on my car. Despite the fact that I missed my scheduled ride, I'm happy I didn't have to worry about starting my Monday morning with a flat.

- The Harry Potter movie was worth the price of admission.

- Re-discovering intelligent humor: Bill Maher is hysterical. I watched an episode re-run where he interviewed Bill O'Reily, who made for some interesting conversation (and was pretty funny himself). DC Mayor Fenty also made an appearance and made some good remarks about education and his administration's accomplishments.

- Running around on my Vespa for probably the last weekend of the year. Now I need to figure out how to get it into storage sometime this week.

- Knowing I have a short week of work - not a fan of the holidays but am looking forward to spending some time with Mitch and her equally fantastic family.

- Glimmers of hope. After a couple rough years and more than a couple traumatic events, I'm starting to see signs of good things to come. Sometimes that makes all the difference.

- Funny signs.

Finding My Way

It is a well-known fact that sense of direction is not one of my many talents. I truly get lost in shopping malls - no, not just in the parking lots, in the mall itself. My very first post on this blog mentioned my gps (Jack - he's British and sounds like he knows where he's going) and how my friends and family lobbied me to please get a gps as they were tired of getting calls from me asking them to "google me here".

I remind my dear readers and friends of this fact to brag - more than a little. I did a ride this weekend with an un-named companion that had never been on this ride. I planned on checking the route in the morning online (map my ride and map it pronto are awesome as long as you can deal with the advertisements). Of course, my internet was down in the morning ... thank you yet again, Comcast.

We set out on the ride with my caveat that it could get a little interesting as it's been at least a year since I navigated these roads. Thankfully it was a gorgeous day so we figured that worse comes to worst, we could always do an out and back.

My bragging starts here: I remembered the route - all 65 miles of it. I'll admit to one minor detour that we corrected in less than a half-mile ... but otherwise, the route was golden. The ride itself is pretty challenging and believe me, I knew I did a hard ride. But the whole way home I was smiling through the suffering - because I was so damn proud of myself for actually finding my way.

Ah, it's the little things, isn't it ?

TGIF - 11/12/2010

I honestly have no idea how we're in the middle of November already. Didn't it seem like we were all wearing shorts and complaining about the oppressive Mid-Atlantic humidity just a couple weeks ago ? Now we're less than two weeks from Thanksgiving.

Promptly on Nov 1, I saw my first Christmas TV ad of the year. I know it's all downhill from there. I have a coworker that is pretty much finished with her holiday shopping. I can't even comprehend that concept right now. First, I am not a fan of buying gifts for people simply because there's a certain date on the calendar. I am a fan of random gifts - you know, just because you thought of someone, just because you saw something they'd like. Second, the thought of fighting traffic and crowds at the mall makes me throw up a little. People forget that whole "spirit of the season" thing and will run your ass over with a cart or their stroller or whatever else they're wielding to get through the task at hand. I liken it to riding my bike on Sunday mornings ... people are so intent on getting to church on-time that they're willing to run over any obstacle (like, say, someone riding a bike) in their way. All's fair in Christmas shopping and getting to church on time.

On a more positive note, I recently discovered Netflix. If you haven't discovered Netflix yet, go forth and do so. It will change your life. I am almost (almost) looking forward to those indoor training sessions this winter. Between the e-motion rollers (that I heart) and the option to stream any kind of distraction I please, I may survive another winter. Due to my work schedule and dwindling daylight, I've already caught up on Grey's Anatomy and finished the final season of The Tudors. I'm telling you, it will change your life.

As for questions I've had about the bike: Yes, I plan to race next year. Yes, I'm back on the bike, though I'm still running a couple times a week until I finish the Rehoboth half in mid-December. Yes, I am masochistic and hope to have the guidance of the Slavedriver for my winter of 2010 super-secret-training plan. Oh, fine, it probably won't be super-secret. It just sounds better that way.

Friday couldn't come soon enough this week - this weekend I'll put my Vespa in storage for the winter. Sad day, though necessary. I'm thankful that I was afforded the option to store it in the Meidhof garage last year - the poor thing would have been buried in all that snow.

Yeah, I said it. The "S" word. In November, no less. Take that.