got out again today and kicked my own ass. these days all that means is 2:45 on the bike in the hot part of the day.

i did break a spoke and get a flat descending where there was nary a spot o shade to be found. that certainly didn't help as the "up shannon, down priest rock" ride would have pretty much kicked my ass anyway.

it was still a good ride. when i finally got off the mountain and back into town i stopped at seven eleven for more drinks and a snack. went to the ice box for a snickers ice cream bar and found a snickers ice cream fudge sandwich (the "bread" was a fabulous fudge cake). damn that hit the spot after melting in the sun and dirt...

fwiw the spoke broke on my front wheel - which is an 18 spoke white industriles LTA hub laced to a velocity fusion rim with sapim CXRay spokes. hardly a trail riding wheel for a nearly 200 lb rider. and i've done mountain bike races on it where, at the finish line, they'd ask if i was in the clydesdale class.

obviously i've abused that wheel for well over a year - probably two or more. wasn't meant to take such abuse but it did. honestly it's a testament to the wheel and the builder: Dave Thomas.

interesting thing is it broke at the nipple. i think i'll just throw on one of the spares he sent with the wheel and true it right up.

going to take a break tomorrow and try to ride in on monday...

yay for me, met this week's (modest) goal of riding to work two days. baby steps my friends, baby steps...

granted, i was able to meet it by riding thursday and friday (today) but hell, it's still two days.

today i figured i'd take a route other than foothill just to mix things up. heard a guy on the train in the bike car talking about how far south middlefield went so i looked it up on this fancy vta/google map mashup and decided i'd take san tomas to central which turns into alma - then bop over to middlefield and right into downtown redwood city.

should have stayed with foothill my friends...

on san tomas expressway i caught up with an older french guy on a carbon look with dura ace. he was motoring right along so i sat on for a bit. didn't even know i was there. eventually he notices so i take a turn on the front. we come to a stop light so i stop and he's hanging way back going slow. all of a sudden he flies by me charging through the red light as there are still two more cars in the protected left turn lane coming the opposite direction. lucky for him the first one was making a u turn so he did not get splattered like a grape all over the expressway...

when i get on central there's some guy that came out of who knows where behind me, trying to catch up. feeling a bit edgy i do my best to get rid of him before he can sit on. i'm riding pretty hard and just hammering myself up the occasional rollers - just to discourage him.

it was working too until i got stopped by a fucking light... he rolled up and mentioned i was setting a blistering pace. told him i'm just trying to get rid of my beer belly (so i can drink more beer). nice guy - been working at tellme.com for a couple of years - right next to where i used to work at friendster...

he suggested i get off central soon and get over to either foothill or middlefield so, of course, i go to middlefield.

what a piece of shit lame excuse for a road with a "bike lane." sure, the latter parts through menlo park were pretty nice but it was capped on both ends by crap ass crap of a road... foothill it is for me friends.

one last thing: as i neared redwood city i was just too hungry with no reasonable food at work so i stopped at burger king, ordered three items from the value menu and rolled off, eating them on the road. as my coworker said it was like a "feed zone" in a race - except the food was super crappy and it didn't come in a cute little bag. it sure hit the spot: rodeo cheeseburger, coke and a slice of "dutch" apple pie. dutch my ass - throwing some crumbly stuff on top of a slice of microwaved apple pie doesn't make it dutch in my mind...

well, didn't ride until today but hell, there's one more day left in the week so it's technically possible that i still get two ride to work days in this week.

my belly is grown much faster than my muscles.... have to remind myself that the whole "ride to eat" thing requires riding first and eating second. doesn't work if you just eat, eat, eat regardless of your riding smart guy ;-)

on my ride in to work today i was thinking that really, it's probably 3 hours of hard riding for every single day of indulgent eating. i'm nowhere near that ratio now but it's good to at least think of the numbers - even if i have no plan to try to limit myself based on that ratio...

today some older guy rolled up on me at a stoplight on foothill. he was nice enough - chatty. not uncommon really but generally people shut the fuck up and ride once the light turns green. not this guy, no. he wanted to chit-chat about all kinds of random crap while going 8 fucking miles an hour. hurts my ass to ride that slow for crying out loud... eventually i was like "i'm going to get back on it" and motioned forward - then just started to put the hammer down a bit.

funny thing was he could hang fairly well for an older guy. i'm in no great shape but i still know i can hammer reasonably well for a short period on the flats or rollers (one of the few advantages of being a bigger guy). well, after every stop he just tended back toward his "sunday jaunt" pace - but would stay on the back if i sped up.

oh, one more thing. i was in my occasional white trash drinking mode last night. for me that means i yearn for a forty to drink on the couch. preferably a magnum 40 if i can get my hands on one. i topped it off with a corona later in the night (helped two neighbors work on their bikes and that was my pay) and woke up with a bit of a noggin ache.

still felt pretty good really. my legs burned a bit under pressure but nothing too bad. i think i'm currently all about getting back in shape AND not taking stereotypically good care of my body. fuck convention i say :-D

finally got back on the bike today.

you know, the simple truth these days is i'm having a really hard time being consistent riding. it's not like i don't get the opportunity to ride more, i just choose to do other things (and sometimes feel a bit lazy).

today was a pretty nice ride really. started out like last weekend's ride but finished differently. took almaden, blossom hill, camden, hicks, kennedy, shannon and up the shannon fire road. last weekend i turned around near the top at the first super steep section.

today i rode up that first section and, when i made it to the second (much, much longer) steep section, got off. when i'm in this bad of shape (the mid-day summer heat probably didn't help) getting to my limit and pushing through it just feels like total crap. when i'm in good shape i can push through at my limit for quite a while.

but instead of turning back i just walked that last super steep section. i'm not sure i could ever ride it on my cross bike, even with a 34-29. i remember having a hard time most times on my mountain bike even in great shape...

anyway, walked to the top and rode on the ridge a bit. saw the priest rock trail and said fuck it, i'll ride down to lexington and back home down bascom/curtner. it was much, much nicer than riding back down shannon fire road. seems they graded that trail in the last year. not nearly as rocky and loose as it used to be - so descending on the cross bike was just fine.

my hands and forearms were a bit stronger after last weekend's descent of shannon fire road - where they burned like the devil and almost caused me to stop for a rest before i bailed from a lack of brakes or an inability to hold the damn bars :-D

the whole time i was scheming how to get some ice cold water for free in los gatos. decided i'd just walk right in the burger place by the park and add some ice and water from the soda machine. added some ice to my second bottle with cytocrack too.

that water was ice-fucking cold in a minute and tasted so damn good. drank a bit too much too quickly actually.

anyway, pretty good ride considering the size of my belly and the lack of form. my goal this week is to ride to work two days. every other day was my ultimate goal but i'm scaling that goal back a bit :-)

Planned on riding in to work today and actually made it happen! (Pats himself on the back)

Baby steps...

First week at the new job at Renkoo so now my ride to work is a bit shorter (used to go to San Mateo now it's Redwood City). Still, it's about 1:45 at a good pace which, in my current condition, is a decent little ride.

Felt pretty good and was able to push fairly hard. It helps that I really didn't want to be late for the weekly 10 a.m. company meeting.

Considering I'm taking the kid to school tomorrow AND will be watching him in the afternoon I don't think there's a chance in hell I'll ride tomorrow. Probably going to try to ride to work again on Thursday.

Rode yesterday and the day before (sat 7/29 and sun 7/30).

Saturday was a short (1.25 hr) ride with my cousin at Forest Park. Absolutely fucking gorgeous... At the height of summer it was largely a covered ride in a lush green forest. There were areas that opened up a bit to get some sun. Rolling fire roads mostly with single track connecting a lot of the fire roads. Took my cross bike with some new Hutchinson cross tires. Worked great except was a bit sketchy on the steep, deeply rutted section at the end of the ride. I made it without taking a spill but went pretty slowly...

Yesterday I rode from home up Kennedy trail to where the super steep sections started right near the top. Was pretty tired by that time and didn't want to push my legs (joints actually) too hard until I'm back in decent shape.

It was fucking hot up there... Passed a few ladies on the trail on their mountain bikes. It's always great to see women out on the trails. There are more than enough guys on mountain bikes...

Going to try to ride in to the new job tomorrow. Have a 10 a.m. meeting so I'll have to be disciplined about getting out of the house.

Oh yeah, need to pick up my HH Racing Group frame from the shop. Had them chase and face and check the alignment after buying it on eBay. Bought it for a single speed but will probably put my road bike parts on there until I build the single speed rear wheel...

flew to Portland with my wife and three year old son for OSCON 2006 last Sunday. brought my bike with me and poked around on Monday morning. rode up burnside to skyline. ran out of time but still got out on the bike for a bit over an hour in the hottest part of the day.

felt like crap of course but it was cool to ride around portland and up into the hills...

got up today and made it a bit further. went up through the residentail area east of burnside below pittock (sp) mansion up to the top part of burnside. damn there are some gorgeous house up there... wonder how much over 1 million they are... :-)

took skyline north of burnside, found an old dude with a colnago getting set up to ride. he suggested i just go down cornelius pass road, turn around and come back. sounded reasonable but when i got to cornelius pass, i looked at my handy dandy portland bike map (coolest bike map i've ever seen btw) and decided i'd head east, look for st. helens and take the bike lane back to portland proper.

well, there was a bike lane but it was on a fucking freeway (very slight exaggeration). speeds up to 55, two lanes each way and about 50% big rigs in the right lane right next to me... the good part of all that is the tailwind those huge trucks create :-D

pretty nice. saw a lot of folks on bikes and pretty much all of them would wave back to me. that doesn't happen everywhere i ride...

got back to the room before my tutorial at OSCON and the wife had said she's ready to move to Portland! it is pretty nice...

nope, didn't ride to work today. but hell, i did stay up till all hours of the morning watching yesterday's tour de france stage where floyd landis had one of the most heroic comebacks in all the sprts i've ever seen.

what a heart! everyone knew he had the potential. not quite sure why the peleton let him go so far knowing he'd been so strong in the rest of the tour (with one obvious exception). the other teams should have ended the Caisse d'Epargne pace-making much, much earlier. it was clear from where i sat that they just didn't have the firepower to close, or at the very least minimize the gap to mad-man floyd landis.

only another catastrophe like stage 16 could keep floyd from taking the GC in the individual time trial.

so no, didn't ride. we'll give it a whirl tomorrow when my only excuses should be family stuff to get ready for our trip to OSCON in portland next week :-)

should have ridden today... trying to ride every other day if at all humanly possible. went out last night with the wife and another couple to a concert at the mountain winery. got to sleep around 12:30 and the boy woke up around about 7 and i just didn't have it in me to get up and get out of the house in time to get to work for an interview...

bad, bad jeff... ;-)

resisted the strong urge to gorge myself on sweet and sour chicken at lunch today. work brings in the food and this stuff is actually quite tasty.

gonna try to ride in to work tomorrow moring. we'll see how that goes.

two days after my first ride back on the bike and i managed to get my ass out on my bike to ride to work. not much of a ride really but given my utter lack of form, even a 1:45 ride with a few rollers is worth something.

felt okay really... have no idea if i was riding well or not. was glad it was a morning ride on a day that wasn't TOO hot.

rode up on a woman riding with a team jersey with world champion stripes on her sleeves. asked if the stripes were real and she sort of chuckled and said no. it was a team jersey she got from Karren Kurreck who was a world champ in the time trial and a 2000 olympic rider. apparently this woman lisa had a house back in the day that was known as a place where riders could stay.

we chatted about cycling, parenthood, the wonder of children, injuries... cool woman. sounds like a good mom too.

good to be back on the bike.

may not be in any sort of shape but i was able to make a grey haired guy on his way to stanford suffer just trying to sit on. wasn't passed by anyone so it can't be that bad ;-)

short history first.

i started cycling at the end of high school. bought a cannondale road bike and upgraded it to pretty much full dura ace through my job at REI's bike shop in Cupertino. loved riding but pretty much stopped when i went to college. started riding mountain bikes probably 5 years later (around 1997) and it didn't take me more than 2-3 years to get back into road riding with a recent dabbling in cyclocross.

what has always been common in my riding is my tendency to get fully involved with the riding and wrenching. when it comes to physical activities, i don't really do anything a little bit.

what has also been common is my tendency to not be hyper rigorous about a training schedule. hell, i never really "trained" at all until a few years ago - even when i was riding 5+ days a week. this also means i would ride less or even take a couple week break on occasion.

three years ago i got married and had a kid and i'll tell you what - my tenedency to take breaks and ride less has only increased. there's some medical drama in the family that can contribute to but even without that, my life as a dad and husband simply pushes riding to a lower priority level.

ever since my very late 20s i realised i can't just eat whatever i want without putting on the pounds here and there. two or three years after this realization came the priority shift associated with family life - hence the title of this blog and one decidedly non-trivial aspect of my cycling: when i ride enough, i can eat what i want and not get fat.

fat is, of course, a relative term. in high school i was 165 and 6'2" forever. that went up to maybe 175-180 sometime after college and now, in the darkest times ;-) it goes to 195 and even 200.

present day: 195, no real rides in about 2 months and hairy legs. sorry mother fucking scene i tell ya...

well, the stars have aligned and i believe i'm back on the bike if today was any indication. just flew back from 9 days of traveling and though i was really assed out and the kid was going down for a nap, i decided to get my fat ass out on the bike mid-day on one of San Jose's hotter days.

hauled my sorry ass over to saratoga, up highway 9 (where i slammed a dr. pepper to try to steady my shaky legs) then dragged the breaks all the way back down because of the overly busy, sunday afternoon, grandma behind the wheel drivers that were robbing me of the ONE THING i could still do reasonably well with no fitness: descend down 9 where you really don't need to use your breaks. in fact that extra 20 pounds would have made me faster descending were it not for the damn cars...

how was the ride? fucking miserable - that's how. not only was i slow as the pavement melted around me, but apparently i hadn't eaten well enough (maybe it was the week long liquid-as-in-beer diet i was on during vacation) as my muscles were really shaky for the second half of the ascent.

the cliff bar on the climb and the dr. pepper at the top helped eventually - but not before i texto'ed the wife to come pick my sorry ass up. yes, it's true. i was worried about bonking on a 2+ hour ride on one of the mellower climbs in the valley. well, they did pick me up about 4 miles before i made it home, just after i got my second wind.

it was miserable, but once again, i'm back in the saddle and i can feel the fire in my belly to ride again - can feel it so much that i said to myself: "fuck the ill-defined legs, i'm shaving!". may the cycling gods (and critic riders i run into) be damned: i'm shaving BEFORE i have any fitness :-P

one thing i haven't figured out though: how will i make time to ride when i'm changing jobs and i'm still a dad and husband? only one way really: shift my priorities. we'll see how that goes..