Self-Inflicted Wound

It's one of those days where I need to tell complete strangers about how badly my butt hurts. Because it does, along with my back and my legs and my eyeballs and my soul. Yesterday I staggered out the door of my office with one hand fully grabbing the right side of my butt and made it twenty feet down the hallway before it even registered that, hey, awesome, a coworker was walking behind me. There's no subtle way to play that off. There is a story behind this level of woe. Once upon a time, last Friday was a field test to determine my new power zones for training. I'm supposed to do this test annually, but missed it last year after injuring my knee while literally skipping around on Valentine's Day in a moronic haze of post-adorable-rom-com bliss. Since I hadn't done the test in two years, I ...continue reading.

In which I commit my first murder

Something terrible happened last night. I am going to tell you this story and, although it is tragic, there will be humor involved. Because while it was terrible and sad, it was also kind of insane. Once I stopped crying and came to grips with everything, I had to acknowledge that the situation was batshit crazy. When I went out to do intervals on the W&OD Trail last night, it was cold, dark, and raining. I started the intervals and, halfway through the second one, a rabbit darted out of nowhere into the middle of the trail. He appeared so suddenly that I never had a chance to brake. There was just enough time to think HOLYSHITRABBIT! and then he thumped hard under my wheels. I have never killed an animal. Not with my car, not with my bike, not ever. I've had close calls, but never any fatalities. I love animals and ...continue reading.

A Musing

I am eating a bowl of melted cheese held together by pasta. This is two days after I decided to focus on getting more lean and one day after I decided to eliminate starch from my diet. Clearly, both are going well. My phone just alerted me that I am due in another meeting in 15 minutes, the third one of the day. Two meetings ago, I left abruptly at the beginning to get a cup of coffee from the kitchen. I don't drink straight coffee (devout latte addict here), but I needed something to cut through the fog in my head. This coffee was so strong I think somebody forgot to use a filter. I could have used it to burn through sheet metal. That was less than two hours ago and now I'm thinking of going back for more. Today in a nutshell. Things are strange right now. ...continue reading.

Reunited!

Remember that time I talked about my crazy idea to get another M Coupe? I spent all of December obsessing about the car. If you were around me for more than five minutes and seemed unlikely to openly laugh in my face, I almost certainly mentioned this car. How the M Coupes are rare (only 1800 in the US!) and beautiful and fast and superbly engineered and blah blah blah. How I regretted selling mine even if it was probably the wise choice. How I could rationalize buying another one. Long story short (although probably still not short enough for the people around me), I spent the past six weeks working with the same dealership where I got my last one about buying the one they had in stock. They wanted more than I was willing to pay, their initial counteroffer was still way too high, but their second counteroffer ...continue reading.

All Smiles!

Reasons I Am Delighted By Life: 1. Colavita. For the win! Like a boss! 2. M Coupe. This car is the shit. I've never really understood that expression, but that doesn't stop me from using it. I recently learned a new term: contronym. This term is used to refer to "words that, by some freak of language evolution, are their own antonyms." I think 'the shit' qualifies and thus that elevates it from common slang to linguistic art. 3. Sausage. One of my new team sponsors happens to be the maker of the chicken apple sausage I have eaten every day for the past eight months. I don't know about fate, but I do know about sausage. Reasons I Just Poured A Very Reasonable Serving Of 12-Year Old Irish Whiskey: 1. Work. I love my job and my company, but I have a lot of concurrent projects at the moment and ...continue reading.

Silver Lining

I've sat down to write this update post several times over the last two weeks. At first, it started as a positive, Christmas-themed piece. That didn't work out so well, because even Santa Claus would have barfed at my overly enthusiastic attempt to find good in this situation. Then I tried to own the fact that I'm constantly sour, short-tempered, and wincing in pain, and that piece should have been titled "STFU and HTFU." I am all over the place here. It has been almost three weeks since this injury, and I have spent that time vacillating wildly between optimistic! and IHATEEVERYTHING. When I got home from the hospital, I got on the trainer that night and spun at 35 watts for an hour. It was feeble and awkward, but I did it and was happy to have only missed one day of riding. It didn't seem to make my ...continue reading.