Archive | Random

I’m NOT homesick!

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I woke up today around 8 a.m. when Wifey came in the bedroom to fetch her eye glasses. I assumed she had been by my side all night, but it turns out she fled the room at some point, claiming that it got “too hot” in the bedroom. Since it was roughly -15˚ outside, I doubt that was true and this was most likely her way of telling me that the baked ziti I made for our Valentine’s Day celebration had taken the form of a vile, warm, humid gaseous cloud of digested red wine, garlic and sausage and had exited my flabby rears way too much though the night and had caused her to seek refuge elsewhere. Much apologies to my ginger haired, bosomy Valentine of what is now 20 years. You deserve better…much, much better. But I’m sure you know that already.

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Winter Shutdown

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I am forty-three years old. That means that I’m getting older, as well as saggier, fatter and harrier in all the wrong places. It also means that I have endured forty-three winters. I’m not sure how many wet, slush filled shoes, slips on ice, scraped car windows, shoveled driveways and bouts of uncontrollable cuss-filled shivering that adds up to, but I’m sure it’s a lot.

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My Voice

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After I write a blog post, in a crap attempt at proof reading to make sure it sounds even a little bit correct, I find myself reading it out loud. I hate doing that because I really hate my voice. If you’ve ever heard any of the XXC Magazine podcasts, you know exactly what I’m talking about. My voice sort of sounds like a pubescent teenage boy (or girl) with a twist of Quentin Tarantino and not one tiny ounce of the talent.

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Icy Roads & Lengthy Side Notes

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While much of the north-east is digging out from winter storm Scunthorpe or whatever this one’s called, we here in central Michiganderburgh have been snowless for roughly a week. It’s been cold, there’s no doubt about that, but it’s not been horrible and the sun has been out and that almost always makes moods better. While that makes for tolerable living, it also makes for a daily freeze thaw cycle that leaves the less traveled dirt roads glistening with ice, rutted snow and a few hoof prints.

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A Freeze/Thaw Crapfest

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The photo above in an overexposed, misfired shot taken a couple of weeks ago while riding at Hanson. I ended up liking the pic for some reason and posted it on my Instagram page, then sort of forgot about it until today when I decided to use it to help sum up my past four days. Sort of the whole best intentions, crap results, take the lemons life gave you, trade them for limes and (literally) make several gin and tonics.

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Excuses

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Over the past twenty-plus years or so I’ve made my way from being an obese 300 pound tub-o’-goo, to a pretty fit 170 pound, unsuccessful amature endurance mountain bike racer, to a 200+ pound, craft beer drinking, white-trash Mexican food eating, not so skinny cyclist just trying to stay in shape. During that time I’ve missed my share of workouts and rides. No big deal, we all miss workouts or rides for one reason or another: work, school, family commitments, illness, or the occasional bout of “fuck it.”

However, given my increasing paunch and ever slowing speed on the bike, along with life’s normal interferences, it’s pretty obvious that I miss more than my fair share of rides due to a lengthening list of crap excuses: it’s raining, it’s too muddy, cold, windy, foggy or hot. I have indigestion, severe manscape irritation, hot Mexican salsa bung, I just did a long ride (last week), I sort of have a headache, etc., etc.,

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Geeking Out About Food Pics

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I had planned to head up north bit and roll some fat bike trails today, but the 0˚ temperature and windchill warnings made me think otherwise, as did and the work I had remaining on my kitchen ceiling, I’m, finally fixing a hole and some cracks after an upstairs leak last year. So I rolled an hour on the trainer, and made my third trip to Home Depot in as many days before setting about on getting my DIY on.

While I was there I finally picked up the supplies I needed to set about making a small ghetto light rig for taking photos of things like eBayable items, products and/or food photos. Mostly for the food photos I use in the crap nonsense posts I call Cat 5 Cooking (not to be confused with all the other crap posts, including this one).

Keep the following in mind: I KNOW this has little to nothing to do with cycling and this is a cycling blog. I do NOT consider myself a photographer (just someone who likes to take photos) and all the photos were taken with my new Nikon D3200 camera, which I am still learning (especially finding f-stop joy with the newly acquired Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 lens used here). This post is mainly about lighting, not the quality of the photos, subject, etc., etc., Thanks.

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A Few of My Favorite Things

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It’s year’s end time, so rather than blather on about resolutions I won’t keep and plans that won’t happen, I thought I would put together a small list of my favorite Soiled Chamois blog posts from the past year. I’m not saying the posts were “technically” good or that they were the most read, they are just some of the ones that I enjoyed writing. I’m also not saying that you should like what I like, be your own person Goddamn it!

BTW, I regretted the title of this post as soon as I typed it, for it shares its name with the song A Few of My Favorite Things, which if it weren’t for the existence of the Paul McCartney & Wings holiday song Wonderful Christmastime it would possibly be my most hated song in the world. OR the song that I will most likely lose my mental shit to one day.

So here we are in no particular order, rhyme, reason or rank…

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Easing Back Into It

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The past week was its normal whirlwind of December holiday madness: travel, no riding, family visits, eating, weight gain, gift giving, gift receiving, more eating, occasional vomitorium visits (followed by quick weight loss), Boxing Day footy watching, a dash of stress, mild boredom, more weight gain, and lastly more travel (to which I set a personal record, making it from Pittsburgh to Mt. Peezy in 6:01, crushing my old record by 14 minutes!).

I always bitch about the holidays (mostly because I loathe them like an annual bout of gonorrhea), but every year they turn out pretty darn OK. Every year I look up at the faces I grew up with and those who helped create me, as well as the family I married into and realize that like it, love it, or not, these are the people in my world. Like they say, you can pick your friends but you can’t pick your family. Despite all the differences that we choose not to really get into and are content to leave hovering on the surface of our mental skins like infected spider bites, they are good people. There are lots of folks out there with worse problems, that’s for good-Goddamn sure.

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