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WordPress Wants to Know What My Feelings Are About Eating Meat…
Oh, how I hate the fascists…
This is a screenshot of a post I just started working on:
I hate this bullshit. My feelings about meat are this; I’ll always eat meat. Meat is fantastically healthy for human consumption under any honest scientific metric that is used, and as important, or more so to the human diet, than vegetables. Arguing against this is futile, dishonest, and usually just plain stupid.
Worse, what do people with Celiac disease eat if there is no meat? See what I mean about the ignorance? It’s hard enough to go through life with a gluten sensitivity, going through life where gluten really harms you is twice as hard. Almost impossible if all you’ve got left will kill you.
WordPress, it’s none of your business what I feel about eating meat. It’s necessary and I’ll be plunking off squirrels, rabbits and birds in the backyard before I stop eating meat. And there are many more vastly more adamant than I am.
You don’t want to start a discussion about meat. You’re not thinking this all the way through. You envision a world without cows and farm animals. What you’ll get is far worse. Try a world with no wildlife because it’s being eaten by those who won’t sit still for the pampas bullshit of others who, from their gilded cages, pronounce they want to change the world into what they deem “better”. Do us all a favor; jump off a building. A very tall one. Save us the misery of putting up with you. Or better, before you attempt to change the world, worry about cleaning your part of your parents basement, first. At least then, maybe you’ll realized just cleaning yourself up is close enough.
This is what my feelings are about eating meat; you suck.
Ah, Back on the Tandem Again! Early Fall Shows Up for a Minute… and One of Those Tense Tandem Talks.
I almost thought, for a minute, Jess wouldn’t make it home early enough that we could ride, so I prepped the gravel bike and started to roll a little before 5:00 pm. Rather than risk missing her, I shot her a quick text once I hit dirt (about 0.2 of a mile) that I was going to roll on my gravel bike. She texted back, almost immediately, that she was on her way. I turned around and texted her I’d wait and headed back for home. I pulled into the driveway and headed inside to prep her gravel bike and the tandem… obviously hoping for the tandem.
Jess got home in plenty of time for a short spin so we could warm up our legs after having not ridden since Tuesday.
We rolled out to shorts and short-sleeve weather, on the tandem, and it was glorious. We had less than an hour of light left, so we were quite limited for distance, but Jess had a big topic for discussion… that began with taking my inventory. For those not in the know or who are unfamiliar with Twelve-Step lingo, your wife says there’s something she’d like to talk to you about. She stares lovingly into your eyes and says, “You know what’s wrong with you?”… and proceeds to tell you, a large portion of the narrative is her own false evidence appearing real.
Let’s just say the protective emotional walls shot up instantly and I made a complete mess of a very difficult but necessary conversation. My wife didn’t help with delivery, either (though, in hindsight, she was probably petrified to even bring the topic up, so fear was a factor).
As it turned out, I jumped to a lot of conclusions and tried to shut the onslaught down by correcting the narrative she’d come up with. By the time we were halfway through our ride we were both attacking each other. If I’d held my tongue, rather than lashing out, I’d have gotten to the part where my wife took responsibility for her side. I think she just wanted make sure I knew what my side was so she could safely get to her side.
I literally prayed for help with the conversation while we were riding (and I’m sure Jess did, too).
Then, when the questions came, I started asking them. “What was the goal of this conversation?” “What did you hope to achieve?” “How do you see this conversation benefiting our marriage?”
Jess answered and that’s about when I saw the error of my Olympic-best conclusion jumping. It wasn’t at all what I thought was coming down the pike. She really was just trying to help the marriage, especially with acknowledging her side of things, her delivery simply needed work. When I really looked at my part, she took a really big risk in opening up and I reacted how you’d expect someone to react to an attack, but I filled in a lot of blanks with my own “false evidence (that) appeared real”.
At that point it was time to eat some humble pie… and that’s a dish best served warm. And ate it I did.
We paused just before we were done to have some dinner with our daughter. We were both pretty close to “okay” before we ate and picked up where we left off when our daughter headed for the shower, then to do her homework. It was a short talk and we had things sorted to a point where we were both good.
A long massage for my wife who was still suffering from her dad’s spare bed, and we were ready for an episode of Castle and sleep. I woke up once, but slept straight till the alarm. I meditated on everything this morning, the first two minutes centering on how I could have better jousted with Jess in the beginning of the conversation. This is toxic, and I knew it. I discarded that line of thought and concentrated on the solutions we’d talked about and on my part in the debacle.
This is where marital good happens and I’ll stay on that. The rest has a place in the garbage pail in my head.
I’ll have more to write about this later in the week because it was a very interesting topic…
Today’s Lesson in Journalism: The Headline! How Not To Write One in 1,005 Words (Ish).
Don’t do it this way.
Whatever Happened to Those God-awful Compression Socks, Anyway? Wait, on Second Thought…
I was reading a post a friend wrote yesterday that got me laughing, remembering the horrible, terrible, all bad, no good look of someone in black, or worse, multi-colored compression socks.
Oh, you remember the look.
I’ve got to be straight, here. I hated that look and am actually a little giddy at the fact that fad has faded like a nasty SBD fart in the wind.
The fad started with runners but popularity escalated and quickly jumped to cycling by way of the faddiest of faddies, triathletes. Folks, I might have the order mixed up, here. It very well could have started with triathletes because if ever there was a group of people prone to completely immersing themselves in a fad, it’s a triathlete.
And so I started seeing them at rides, on their $15,000 Quintana Roo with 80 mm carbon wheels and their $300 tri kit, in their compression socks… as I blew by on my ‘99 Trek 5200 road bike.
To tell the truth, I always put a little extra into passing someone like that.
And just like that, they were, thank merciful Jesus, gone. Come to think of it, we don’t even see them in the evenings on the long tours, anymore…
And the universe thankfully takes away, restoring righteousness to sport by sucking compression socks down the black memory hole to hell.
Where they belong.
Praise be to Jesus.
Michigan’s Gov. Says “Let’s Go Brandon” Calling on the Republican Legislature to Fund a Wall to Keep “Invasive” Carp Out of the Great Lakes
Trigger (heh) warning: This post is of a political nature. If you can’t take a joke (or if you think it was okay to say “F*** Trump” but “Let’s Go Brandon” is beyond the pale, you need help), you won’t want to go any further in this post. Hit the little “x” in the upper right and call it good. You have been trigger (heh) warned.
That’s right, folks! Michigan’s Governor, Gretchen Whitmer joined the chorus with her very own way to say “Let’s Go Brandon”!
This is from the Gov’s office:
In a stunningly ironic rebuke of President Biden’s southern border policy, the Democrat Governor’s December 10th announcement calls for full funding of the Brandon Road Lock and Dam to keep invasive carp out of the Great Lakes with a wall. Dam folks, you simply can’t make this stuff up. Apparently, someone on her staff wasn’t paying attention during their diversity and sensitivity training.
Somebody pass the popcorn.
UPDATE: Folks, this is all too ironic to take serious. It’s just meant to showcase how “willy-nilly” Democrats can be with policy. I’m all for keeping carp out of the Great Lakes. It’s one of those perfect government jobs – one of those you’re talking about when you say, “Hey, good enough for government work!” The Great Lakes are so vast, you can’t possibly hope to keep a fish that’s in too many inland lakes to count, out… is invasive, and just wants to get to a “better life” in a bigger, better lake. In all truth, I don’t want to see the things in the Great Lakes, either. In this case, though, the irony is just too good.
What Happens When A Road or Mountain Bike Saddle is Too Wide: Complications in Bike Setup… and One Major Pain In One’s Heinie.
I’ve written about this topic in the past, butt it keeps rearing its ugly head – and this time I’d gone radical in the name of… being a weight weenie! Of all things. Now, after enough double entendres in one sentence to choke a chicken, it’s time to get serious because this really is no laughing matter. The truth is, I’ve got a much better understanding of how saddles work – and more important, how the width of a saddle can have an affect on the sitting area. Because I’m still riding on one.
My true saddle width is somewhere between 128 and 138. A 138 is plenty comfortable but I’ve ridden quite a few centuries on a 128 with nothing but glowing reviews. My Bontrager Montrose Pro Carbon saddles aren’t all that special, either. They’re contoured rather than flat with minimal but fantastic padded support, and they’re light. 140-ish grams if I remember. Just shy of a third of a pound for a saddle. There are lighter saddles out there, down to 80 grams, but I tried a minimalist 110 gram saddle with virutually no padding and I just couldn’t make it work (and it wasn’t for a lack of effort). I have thousands of miles on those saddles and I learned something I didn’t know over the last few weeks.
I used to ride a Specialized Romin 143 that I thought was the cat’s pajamas. I had one on my race road bike and one on my rain road bike, and put tens of thousands of miles on them. At first, the local shop set me up with Specialized’s Body Geometry fitting. I’d done my best and was excited to see how I stacked up against all of the glorious video equipment and high-class software analytics that could be thrown at bike fitting.
The shop lowered my saddle two millimeters after the three hour fitting process.
Over the years and six to ten thousand mile years, I developed a sore spot on my left inner-thigh bone, just forward of the sit bone (my left leg is a little shorter than my right). I simply lived with it for years as it wasn’t a full-time pain. It was fleeting. A few years ago it stuck around for a while and I decided to lower my saddle a couple of millimeters to see if that would fix it. That worked for the most part.
Until I found a Bontrager Montrose Pro Carbon on sale for around $120. The Romin I had on the Trek at the time was heavy – 276 grams or a little less than two-thirds of a pound. The Montrose had a 138 mm width, though, and I was supposed to be a 143. I threw caution to the wind, figuring it was worth the risk to drop that much weight with so little money (they normally ran around $300). When my saddle came in, I fitted it on the Trek and rode it for the first time, it was glorious.
After giving it two months with nothing but good to say about the saddle, I went back to buy a second for my Venge. You find a saddle that feels that good, it doesn’t matter the brand mismatch. Sadly, they were out of the 138 but they had 128s in stock. I gave it a go. I dropped even more weight off the Specialized and the feel wasn’t all that different from the 138. I expected the 128 to hurt a little because it wasn’t wide enough, but that worry turned out to be unnecessary.
And once I had both Montrose saddles on my road bikes, I found I could raise the saddles, comfortably, back to the old shop setting. 36-5/8″ (93 cm or 930.2750 mm) and I don’t have that pain on my left inner thigh bone just forward of my sit bone anymore.
That is, I didn’t have that pain anymore until I started riding my gravel bike that has a 143 mm Specialized Romin 143 mm saddle on it and I hit a bump… and that’s when it all started to make sense.
The pain I’ve been experiencing gets worse the wider the saddle gets, too. My Trek originally came with a 155 mm saddle that had me so sore I thought it was a running injury. As it turned out, after a few days off the bike, the pain subsided – then flared right back up after riding again.
The point is, saddle width is a little tricky to diagnose and it can present as other things, such as a saddle being too high. There’s also a difference between finding something that’s livable and something perfect, as was my case with the small difference between a 143 and a 138 mm saddle. The more I ride, the more that little bit mattered.
Air Kiss CO2 Inflator for Gravel and Road Bikes – A Much Needed Review
I should have posted this review years ago but I never thought to. Here’s what I have to say about the Air Kiss CO2 Inflator: My mother always told me, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything.”
Well…
Anyway, let’s just say, if it wasn’t for my buddy, Chuck saving the day with his most spectacular Lezyne inflator, I’d have been walking home last night. A few of my friends had the Air Kiss inflator and I think I was the last of us to still have one in their saddle bag. I have a Specialized inflator in my tool pack for the Venge that’s worked quite well.
Specialized S-Works Shoes: The One Simple Way to Take Them Off and Put Them On… Without Needing A Hammer, Vice, or Shoehorn.
If you’ve worn a pair of S-Works shoes since the model six, you know they’re not easy to put on and take off. In fact, they’re really hard to put on without bunching up your socks in the back and you almost need a spare mule to hook the heel to in order to get one off.
Of course, when you do get one of those buggers on your foot and commence to pedaling, you’ll know all of that wrestling was worth it. They’re like riding with your feet cradled on a slab of butter.
So necessity is the birthing person of invention, so invent I did. Pardon the cheap “birthing person” shot. I don’t know as I’ll ever stop having fun with that stupid government-inspired term. Anyway, invent I did.
Are you ready to have your mind blown? I mean completely blown?
Here goes…
Undo the top Boa loop from it’s securing hoop. The shoe will slide on and off like any other. That’s it:
Now, you’ll want to make sure to loosen that top Boa closure all the way so that the loop doesn’t pull through the tongue slit when you take your shoe off, but other than that one little trick, it works like a charm.
When you’re ready to put it back on, do so without the Boa secured, then wrap the loop around its hook and tighten the Boa. It’ll go on just as easy as it came off and you don’t need a shoehorn. Or a hammer. Or a vice. Or magic unicorn dust.
This has been a public cycling announcement from Fit Recovery. Ride hard, my friends.
The technical proficiency of blowing a snot rocket whilst, and at the same time, riding a bike; it is an art.
I’d like to thank Sheree for the inspiration for this post.
Clearing your nose whilst cycling, without getting snot on you, or the people following behind, is an art every cyclist should master. It’s a necessity for the fast crew especially. And when cycling in muggy weather. And cold weather. And cool, dry weather. Well, pretty much everything except warm, dry weather. So Arizona for six months out of the year except when it’s hot enough to melt your tires and stuff.
Anyway, it’s an important skill because if you can’t, you’ll spend half an hour cleaning snot drippings off your top tube after a ride! Nobody wants to do that.
Before we get into the art of hurling said snot rocket, let’s get a couple of important items out of the way.
1. Wind direction matters. Don’t snot on the side into the wind or with the wind quartering in the direction you will be snotting.
2. If you’re snotting absolutely, positively cannot wait till you get to the back of the group, signal and pull off to the side so you don’t cover others in snot, thus tempting them to push you into a ditch.
3. With a tailwind, launch away. Either side.
4. With a headwind, either side works but there has to be some down to the projection of said snot rocket otherwise, it’ll get messy (shoulder or side of the face).
Now, what you’ve been waiting for, technique!
Those people who claim they can’t blow a snot rocket simply mess their snot rocket technique up. The trick is which finger to block which nostril with. If you’re snotting right, you block the right nostril with your right pointer finger. Snotting left, block the left nostril with the left pointer finger and blow. Do not try to reverse this or you’ll wear that snot rocket!
Now, you don’t sit upright to blow a snot rocket. Simply roll your head right or left so the blow nostril is a little below the block finger – and make sure to get your elbow up out of the way! And make sure to take the wind into account, as mentioned earlier.
If you typically wear your snot rockets, here’s what you’re doing wrong: you’re snotting into the wind, blocking the wrong nostril with the wrong finger of the opposite hand. And you’re sitting up, making the wearing of the dreaded snot rocket a certainty!
On blocking the wrong nostril with the wrong hand (blow right, block left or vice versa); what this does is cause a cavitation in the wind which blows snot up into your face and on your glasses. This is, as we say, no bueno. Or non buono in Italian. Or… erm… not good in Irish (or possibly aon mhaith, but let’s not get lost in the woods!)
The final piece to this puzzle is the blow. It should be quick and forceful. If you hold back with a weak blow, your snot ball won’t reach escape velocity before slowing down which will allow it to be affected by the wind and air movement. Trust the steps above and blow that snot out. Smite it to the ground!
You are now trained, grasshopper. Snot forth. Whilst happily pedaling.
While I’m on that feel-good gibberish kick… I Proclaim We Shall No Longer Call Them “Bike Rides”!
Look, I get dressed in my road cyclist “stuff”, slap on a helmet, cycling shoes, slide on my sunglasses and some cycling gloves, and head out to roam the land in speed and comfort on my exorbitantly expensive, and exceptionally rewarding carbon fiber and aluminum alloy bicycle. Technically, you could say I go for a bike ride every evening.
You could, but you would be missing out on a bunch of corporate/millennial feel-good gibberish that takes going for a simple bike ride and turns it into some epic necessity of grandeur and awesomeness. I therefore humbly declare we no longer call them “bike rides”.
Forever more, because America’s corporate/millennial woke culture is so utterly phenomenal, a simple bike ride shall instead be referred to as “Quality me time seized and employed advantageously for the peaceful, sustainable surveyance of the vast beauty that is the United States of America [or insert your country of origin, because this shit is so fantastic we want to export it] via a carbon fiber, epoxy & aluminum alloy and titanium human-powered bipedal, bi-wheeled fun-machine.”
On second thought, maybe we should just stick with “bike ride”.
Oh, hey! While I’m thinking about it, Happy Impregnating Person’s Day. You think I’m kidding.
That’s the establishment donning their full-faced helmet, elbow, arm, shoulder, shin, knee, quad, chest pads and protective gloves, as they clench down on their bite guard and grip the throttle of their eBike , making a horrible, yet hilarious vroom! sound as they lock in their glare at the two-foot high ramp that sits before the kiddie pool containing two week-old small-spotted cat sharks and declare… “I got this!”
Fit Recovery 