The Rest of It

I have been up to plenty but have failed to keep track of it all. In the time since I got back from Europe, I have left town a couple times, once to NC to visit friends and family. I spent some time in the backyard getting ready to do something with it. Moving dirt around is amusing for a little while but hopefully I will get to the more exciting phase of putting stuff in the yard soon. I have done some baking, a lot of eating, and surprisingly a lot of riding. This is usually the time of year when I start riding for the fun of it, just trying to control the gradual loss of fitness heading into the winter. I went and rode with Chuck and Brian because I had time in the middle of the day to get to Boulder and Chuck asked what I was up to for the first part of November.

November 2nd - November 7th now looks like this:
I'll be headed to New Zealand with Kevin Nicol, Mike Olheiser, Greg Krause, and Stefan Rothe to ride for Bicycles of Ojai/Jackson Plumbing in the Tour of Southland. From the sounds of it, there will be wind, there will be rain, there might be sun, we'll have summer, we'll have winter and everything in between. I've never raced this late in the season, with the exception being that one cross race last year, but that doesn't really count. I have been getting out and training exactly like I was leading up to the trip to Austria. The competition will be pretty stout in NZ and it will be my first time racing in a full on stage race with a caravan, race radios, support staff, etc. On top of it all, I am officially "elite" now according to the UCI . . .

I mentioned bread before and now I hear the oven beeping. Here's a before and after photo study, before:


And after:


The loaf exploded from the middle out, probably because I did a lot of kneading to get the chili and cheese in there and didn't let the loaf rest enough after. The crust is nice and crisp and the inside is surprisingly light despite the chunks of chili pepper and cheese. It has a nice zip to it since I didn't bother taking the seeds out of the peppers, I just mixed it all in. I see a turkey sandwich on this bread in my future.

Over the past few weeks, I have seen and read things that were truly blog worthy, but have been too lazy to update anything. The cover of this morning's WSJ gave me the nudge I needed to get back to it. A picture is worth a thousand words, but with this one, you could make up as many things as you wanted to.


Our farmers would never protest in such a creative way, shooting milk at riot police, launching hay with tractors, jamming traffic circles with said tractors . . . good stuff. You can read the article here if you want, but at the very least, take a look at the picture gallery.