after the weather this past week i have been thinking a lot about he weather when we were on kauai last month. this is from the kalalau trail, we hiked the eight mile section to the waterfall. an amazing view the whole time. it was like a world cup downhill mountain bike course for 8 miles! super steep and very rooty. afterall it is better to be where i belong! stay warm

i have been experimenting with image upload, here is a try. this is a cool photo of me and b around xmastime. he really is the coolest person i have ever met.

unreal selection of sushi last night. blue lou took me and tim out for dinner for setting up his road bike with new dura-ace and ksyriums. we had things that were a bit out of the ordinary for most sushi afficionados. some of things agreed with me and others didn't. lots of fish bellies, not quite sure why they are different but pretty good. the best thing i had was the octopus with sesame oil and seeds. another cold am commute. minus 10 today, i feel better riding than driving. the bike is pretty good i may try to ride a cross bike one day. maybe the traction will be just as good, but the handling i know will be worse. i wish i was sven nijs! good soup for lunch today, san fran seafood chowder, super tasty! the bread was a bit stale but the oatmeal cookie rocked! i am pretty tired so the commute home will do it for today. not much riding but sleep is needed badly. i can't afford to get sick, my volume overall is up but i need to do those long days to get my shit together for roubaix, carter and gila. gila may happen this year, it's been almost 8 years i have wanted to go but it just hasn't happened for variuos reasons, maybe this year. a good 5 day stage race to give me form for the early summer racing right into the firecracker 50 july fourth. sub 4 hour is an attainable goal, i just need a good spring of training and it will be there.

i know it's a bit late in the winter to start cross-training but yesterday i did a new kind of fitness class called body pump. as i have never done any other classes beside a few spin classes years ago this was an awakening. i'm just not the group fitness type. maybe it's the cycling thing, "plowing a lonely furrow" as ligget would say, but even in the realm of road cycling there isn't that canned enthusiasm that comes with indoor group fitness. and usually mtb is a solo effort most times. it was a great workout, it's been years since i lifted so later today i will be a bit stiff but overall the class did what it was supposed to do. that, and the extra 90 minutes i put in on the bike. hopefully this weekend we can get back to the right business of long days and coffee stops. this morning was a totally different story, i have heard various reports but the average is about twenty below zero, fahrenheit. i think that's the coldest weather i have ever ridden a bike. i took off my lobster paw to get out my keys and i got a bit of a burn on my fingers from the brake lever. it reminds me of the story dan or timmy linked a few weeks back about the guys riding in alaska, where if they stopped and slept they might not wake up. i didn't have to worry about that, my 30 minute commute didn't offer life-threatening consequences but it was frosty-foggy for the glasses and my eyes sort of froze shut briefly. the trails were great, little bit of fresh snow on the well traveled paths made for a soft flowing ride. tim brought us back thai food last night from denver, some new dishes that rocked, cellophane noodles in a pad thai and some other stuff that kicked ass. very good eats. i think i want to try korean, vietnamese and ethiopian cuisine. for whatever reason these are at the top of my list, the trick is finding a good place to have them and not get sick from whatever out of the ordinary is in there. thanks for reading

a great doctor visit yesterday for little b. she was happy with what she saw and happy to not see some other things. then i got to catch up with old friends. it was the first time i drove to denver to see the doctor with just b in the car. i was a little freaked out, the drive was clean thankfully, dry roads and clear sunshine out and back. i'm starting to feel less stressed about my form, i know a few big days will change the way my body responds to the workload. i just need a block of big days and all will be good. the racing starts very early but as i will be able to race a lot more this summer i'm putting less weight in the march events and using them for a springboard for the april/may road races and then get into crit form after that. nats are in salt lake this august, maybe... we splurged last night and got a pizza, salad and bread, it was soooo good! now that i try to eat until i am pleasantly full, i couldn't gorge myself the way i used to. not that i'm dieting, i just eat until i feel good, better for digestion, that's what eddy merckx says.

a day with b, we did our am errands and then it was a full day at home, couldn't have been nicer, a nice block on the rollers, a great walk in the woods. the boys really liked the latter, it warmed up a bit, maybe to the 20s. the birds were out, we got a great up close look at a woodpecker doing his thing. he was really beautiful, white with black and maybe a spot of red. we walked around looking for other creatures but they were all hiding from the cold. the snow had that crunchy cold squeak to it, we stayed warm enough, number one was thrilled and b and i managed to avoid frostbite. i was on the rollers watching the middle part of 2000 tour, i want to like lance but outside of his athletic skills i just can't. as a human being he seems to be portrayed in the media as quite difficult. the books aren't any great road map as they are biased first-person deals that border on self-congratulatory tripe. i have so far avoided the second one but the first got to be a bit much, and it seems that the second one is more of the same. he does make the tour exciting, we'll see what jan has to give him this year! curry for dinner tonight, i know we have really embraced lately but it is just so good, especially now that we can make it at home. so good with stout brown rice! foreign cuisine that you go out of your way to make makes the meal seem even more exotic, i never thought of my italian meals to be anything other than regular meals but curry is just a cool change.

the weather in the valley today isn't looking nearly as good as yesterday. yesterday was a cold start to a good sunny day. not that it really affected me that much, i was inside all day working. the weather is keeping me from getting the long days i got last year at this time. my longest day this year 3.5 hours. i can't avoid the stress that comes with lack of good preparation. like the day you had a big presentation due at school and you didn't get it finished. one month from today is the first race, the first race! my legs are good but not that good. it means that i'll be doing five hour days with the race in the middle of it. not the relaxed atmosphere we had last year at the first races, hanging out watching your buddies race before your own effort is due. can i do three hours on the rollers? is that equal to four hours on the roads? what would belgians do? wwbd? i hate feeling this way.

walking around whole foods this morning made me want to binge without throwing up. the variety made brian very hungry too, i love that guy, my own little parasite, are tapeworms parasites? we walked around and sampled wonderful fruit and cheese and all of it organic, mmmmmmmmm whole paycheck rocks! aisle after aisle filled with wonderful ideas made me hungry for different foods i have never had and all the while sampling ingredients for the new dishes we plan on making. after our shopping was through we had alegro organic coffee but i almost chose the yerba mate tea instead. organic stuff does taste better, cleaner or maybe it's a state of mind but eating better is good for the head too! i don't buy the line that "if the furnace is hot enough it will burn anything" bullshit! cleaner burning fuels make for a cleaner furnace! oh well, that's my piece for the day. eat well

a full moon through the clouds, i took the long way in today, i had the time, 4.30 out of bed, quick breakfast of scones and i was out by 5. the ride was made more interesting by the new snow and the clouds, colder than normal, probably a bit below zero. riding in on trails and roads makes me appreciate why i get up extra early and walk to the shed to get the bike out passing on the car. not that it's any great sacrifice, it's just what i do, my little place in this world. riding makes me happier than just about anything, seeing the peaks backlit by the moon through the clouds warms me beyond the minus whatever temperature. almost in this morning and i saw him, couldn't hear him though he was only ten feet away and there he was running but not with too much hurry, cruising over the snow and sidewalk to a safe place, fleeing the creature moving as fast as he was now running nearly as quiet too. i veered to the opposite side of the road to give him room and he went the other direction, away from me, to safety. i hope i didn't ruin his breakfast! it reminded me of the beaver i see in the pond out front on the way in the summertime. quietly doing their thing before dawn when i would quietly roll past and scare them into hiding underwater or perhaps in the lodge hidden in the bank of the pond.

the one day hospital visit became a long weekend of doctors and anesthesia and stress. the kid blows my mind, happy all the time if he isn't having crippling pain. i got in a great little ride thursday night and that was by far the highlight of the weekend. the legs are pretty sour right now after all of the stress of the weekend. the way he smiles all the time makes me realize that he still can surprise me, i hope that never changes. more later