My new bike?

It's tough deciding what kind of bike to buy. It's very important to get a bike that matches your personal style of riding. I never understood why people wanted to train on lightweight bikes. The heavier your bike, the more of a workout you get, right? And I like to be well-prepared when I ride, so I carry a lot.

My friend Jeff from high school ("Stracc") is living in China and recently started a blog celebrating a unique style of bicycle they have over there. Behold the glory of The Flying Pigeon Project:



These bikes look like something Batman would ride if he didn't have a budget. They can carry anything and everything. And I bet they're a lot cheaper than the latest offerings from Cervelo.

Fired Up, part 2

It is common local knowledge that "God loves the Rose Parade." The Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade is held every year on January 1st, unless it's a Sunday in which case the parade is held on Monday. The deal is that if Pasadena lets God keep His day, then God will give them good weather for the parade. It has been a happy truce for nearly 120 years.

On Friday, I asked a friend of mine: "If God loves has a deal with Pasadena for the Rose Parade, how will He feel about them having a marathon on a Sunday?" Now we know.

We're Fired Up (not in a good way)

Today's inaugural Pasadena Marathon is postponed because of poor air quality from the L.A. fires this weekend. The news came through at 4:00 this morning. I can confirm, yeah, it's pretty bad out there. Just walking around town you could feel it in your lungs yesterday. I keep on rereading the email, and checking the TV, to make sure "yes, the event is really cancelled, I'm not dreaming this." I'm afraid to go to back to bed, because if this IS a dream then I should be driving out to Pasadena.

This makes my heart sink. I have friend who was running her very first marathon today. I was going to do the half-marathon with her husband, his first. It's what we've been talking about for months and months and I know who nervous and excited they were about it. And there must be hundreds of other people in the same boat.

The event will be rescheduled, but for now it's just a horrible feeling.

Versus vs. Wedgie

The Versus Network aired their coverage of the 2008 Ironman Coeur d'Alene this weekend. And would you believe they didn't have any footage of Wedgie?! What's up with that?!! I thought at bare minimum they should have shown the giant inflatable whale, right? That's the last time I'm watching any of their stupid triathlon shows. (I'm bluffing - I love watching this stuff. So much easier to watch it on TV than to go out and actually do it.)

I did enjoy looking at the scenery and remembering "yup, I was there... yup, that kind of sucked.... yup, I was hurting at that point". The biggest difference between the race I ran and what they showed on TV was the Transition Tent. Kind of funny how empty it is when the pros are going through, because it was more like a circus tent when I was there. Which, by the way, makes my 2:31 T2 time while fighting the crowds all the more impressive, no?

I think I want to go back to Coeur d'Alene. Not to race, maybe to volunteer or just cheer some other people and reminisce of the good 'ole days...

What the hell did I do last night?!

I woke up Sunday morning to go on a hike and felt a pain in my leg. I thought I might have pulled yet another tendon or something, but then when I looked down I saw this:



I have no idea where I got the scratch from. Either I scraped myself the night before without realizing it, or something snuck into my bed in the middle of the night and slashed me. I'm gonna sleep with one eye opened from now on, just to be safe.

We did a 10-mile round-trip hike to the "Bridge to Nowhere". The trailhead starts just off of East Fork Road in the San Gabriel Mountains, which is where we go riding when we want to climb hills. It was interesting driving up the mountains in a car for a change. And let me tell you, had I driven the course first I NEVER would have attempted to ride my bike there! These hills felt long and steep in the car, I can't believe we're dumb enough to climb them on bikes.

Halloween workout

I won the Disney Castmember Halloween Costume Contest two years in a row, back in '99-2000. It is something I'm quite proud of, considering that Disney has a very creative employee base. But after a scandalous decision in 2001, I stopped making costumes for Halloween. This year however, I came out of retirement and dressed up as Rock Band: The Game. Watch this clip to the hear the complete story of the Judging Scandal and to see my latest costume. Be sure to stick around to the end to see the costume in its full animated glory. The video was created by the oh-so-talented Stupid Dutch.



A few comments about the costume: it is big. And very hot. And very uncomfortable. In order to get the notes to scroll, I had to manually roll two large cardboard tubes by grabbing one in each hand and basically twisting them to get the plastic to roll from one to the other. It's not hard to do once, but it was just an awkward motion that became very tiring after doing it on and off for an hour or more. A woman I work with saw me at the contest, and I told her how tiring it was wearing the costume but at least my arms were getting a workout. She said "yeah, I guess you're forced to use all those little muscles you never used before".

LITTLE??!! Gee thanks.