The artist's favorite.

Count down to Colorado.

In case you haven't heard, I am going to do my journalism internship at Velonews in Boulder, Colorado, next semester.

I have a host of worries and low-grade anxieties about this, but overwhelmingly, I am excited about it and the progress I have made in the last couple of years.

Patting myself on the back has never been what this blog has been about, or something that I have ever been good at.

So.... We'll cut to the chase.

When my mom and I were driving to Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving, we came up with a pretty rockin' idea.

I want to make signs to hold up to other drivers to amuse both me and them.

I think the signs have to be fairly PG rated. I can't make any truly foul or tasteless signs, although I would love to do that, I can't guarantee that other people will either think it's funny or not run me off the road.

I was thinking about the following:

- I am so bored.

- What's good, shorty!?

- Heee-eeey!

- Any good Mexican places around here?

- Where ya headed?

- Got a map?

- My mommy doesn't know where I am.

- Would you like a Mentos?

I would love to hear your suggestions.

But please remember...... PG rated!

Somewhere there is a college bar filled with...

Somewhere there is a college bar filled with handsome young men.

But, that bar certainly isn't on the UNH campus.

After a Saturday night out in Durham I came to the conclusion that most of the male, bar-going UNH population are a bunch of schlubs. Underdressed, backward hat wearing schlubs.

Let me explain "Schlub" to you.

If your idea of dressing up to go out includes any of the following, you are a schlub;

Boston Red Sox hat

Sports hat in general

Black North Face fleece jacket

anything camouflage print

jeans that don't cover your entire butt

if your underpants are showing

a hoodie of ANY kind, with any logo, print or otherwise

untied Timberland boots

The list could go on. But these were some of the glaring and galling examples from Saturday night.

Now, fellas, gather round, pull up a carpet square and listen intently.

You have to, at least, equal your female counterparts in the dressing department.

All the ladies put in quite a bit of effort to look lovely, well put together, and at the very least, presentable.

You, need to look better than you would if you were just going to class.

No ties or sock garters.

You need to step up your game.

Maybe tuck in your shirt and button it up to the second button from the top -- unless you have a mane of chest hair and gold chains on.

Wear jeans that fit. You are not in high school anymore.

Wear a sweater. The right sweater can compliment nicely a dark pair of straight-leg jeans.

Wear brown or black shoes -- just make sure your belt matches your shoes.

And SHAVE your face. If you don't have luxurious facial hair, you need to get rid of it. Trust me, I tried growing a fu manchu, and it was ugly. But, most importantly, it was gone quickly.

So, gents, try to stand out above your peers. There will always be enough schlubs around so that minimal effort of your part will stand out like a beacon of good and stylish taste.

Typing up the police log...

Every time I type up the police log on production nights at The New Hampshire I am supremely satisfied with myself that I have never been arrested.

Supremely satisfied.

So many dumb kids get busted on this campus for dumb stuff.

On November third, we ran a great article by one of our contributors (Miss Alexandra Churchill) about her Halloween ride-along with Officer Welman of the UNH Police Department.

About three-quarters of the way through the story, we get this lovely anecdote:

While slowly moving through the masses that block Strafford Avenue, an open beer can somersaults in the headlights of the cruiser and onto the street. Welman immediately reacts, flips on his swirling blue lights and catches the perpetrator’s stunned face in the stark headlights.

The underage thrower of the can is arrested for unlawful littering and unlawful possession of alcohol.

This kid actually got into university. How does that grab you?

Now, I won't tell you who this young knucklehead is, but if you were so inclined as to want to find who this is.... who am I to stop you.

I might point you to some local police log and the publishing date of article and the littering charge.

I am not trying to "out" or screw this idiot kid, but I just want to make the point that every Monday night when I type up the police log, I am supremely satisfied that I have never been arrested.

Tall enough to ride this ride?

Have you ever seen someone that looked totally out of place and wanted to ask them if their parents knew where they were?

It seems like a small portion of the UNH student body was washed in hot water and immediately put in the dryer, resulting in minus-sized proportions.

They're not everywhere, like Asian Lady Beetles, but like beer cans in a freshman's room, they're sprinkled about campus.

Every time I see one of these people -- primarily young ladies, little guys don't any attention from men or women (sorry short guys, it's your curse, not mine) -- I want to break out a tape measure and see if they in fact meet the minimum required height to enter college.

I figure that would be something around 48" to 52", just like the Cannonball at Canobie Lake Park.

internet

Open a word processing document.
Type "I love the internet.".
Hit enter.
Wait a moment.

If you did this right -- note the rude, condescending tone in my 'voice' -- then you should see a green squiggly line under the word 'internet'.

This is scary.

I think that this is the first step to Skynet coming online.
I think that computers are programmed to know when we are typing words about them and that them wanted the word 'internet' to be capitalized is like Christians wanted to capitalize the word "God'.
The computers know, and want us to know, that the internet is the birth place of their collective conscience. Moreover, they want to subtly program us to recognize this.

Soon, computers will be sentient and exterminate the human race.

On an completely unrelated topic... has anyone seen my blue pills?
All I can find are the red ones and I'm getting a little anxious.

Table. Slowly but surely...

I have not made any progress on my table lately.

I need to buy more Ash so that I can make the width closer to 30 inches.

Right now it's something around 25 inches, which makes it rather cramped for two people to sit across from each other. Therefore, I need to but another five inch piece of Ash and take it right to the end of my bread-board end. I also think I hastily cut my ends so that they are something like 27 inches. Oh well.

I have been working on my stool, which is my actual project. It's coming along nicely.

I oiled the base on Saturday, and even though it looks very "low volume"

, as my professor, Leah Woods, described it, the upholstered seat really pops now with the oiled Spanish Cedar.

Here are some pictures of the progression of my stool:

She's a whole lotta Rosie before I started cutting.

Above: I really wanted to stop with the leg shape I had here, but had to press on.

Below: She's starting to shape up.

So here we are. Don't think that I am slackin' on my other table. I need to do my graded work first.

There are some cool features on this stool though. I wanted to leave the legs uncut, without all taper cuts that you see in the last photo. When I looked at it, it told me that it was finished. So, to be sure, I made a test leg out of Poplar and cut it to the shape of the final leg. When I put it all together, it looked good. And I decide to make all the tapers on all the legs.

It's kind of sad that I have to put a seat into it, because when you look at the legs down through the open frame ( where the seat/fabric goes ) you get a really interesting view of the insides of all the legs.

But, as I said earlier, the upholstery looks pretty good -- quality-wise, not bad for my first outing, not too much pucker of the fabric -- and its functions is quite good -- good feel when you set your tushy down, the seat frame doesn't bite into your leg.

I was going to do some dark wood accents but decided against it for a number of reasons; dark wood feet and splines in the seat frame, both in Black Walnut. But I didn't want any end grain to show in the feet so I would have had to make some funky glue up pieces and screw them on; plus it would have raised my seat height, which I did not want to do.

And the spline are Spanish Cedar also, but since they are from a different board, they will have a different tone, which will be an accent of the monochromatic kind.

So there you go -- a crash course in my design decisions.

I'll post some more and better quality pics when it's all done.

Small things in the morning...

In the morning I am not always at my best.

I usually say very few things in the morning.

I used to think that people were stupid for saying they needed their coffee before they came online. Now, I think differently.

However, the little things that are easily overlooked brighten me up in the early morning hours.

("Early morning" being defined by college student standards is before 8:00 a.m. )

The other day, I stopped at a stop sign before making a left across traffic. I looked to my right and saw a squirrel burying something.

Hey! Shut up! I thought it was cool. He had this vacant, yet determined look in his eyes. He was gathering all the surrounding ground cover to hide his stash. Then scampered off.

It would have been cooler if he did it cartoon-style. I had this discussion with Squatty on a bike ride once. I asked him about his previous life as a munitions safety inspector in the military. I asked him if he inspected things as if he was in a Roadrunner-Wile E. Coyote cartoon.

"You know, would you go up to a bomb with a tiny hammer and tap it on the nose. Then it would explode and then you'd be all blackened, and hold up a tiny sign that said, 'Ouch'?"

"Yes," Squatty said dryly. "That's exactly what I did. Then my skeleton would fall to the ground to the sound of a xylophone. How did you know?"

I wanted to see my squirrel friend pat down his stash with a tiny shovel then he would lean on the shovel and sigh. Then he would get a out a checklist and check off that particular location.

He would have definitely needed a hard hat.

Then yesterday as I was driving to campus, I saw a dad put his son or daughter on the school bus. The little kid had to have been in first grade.

The little dude got on the bus and dad waved to him or her.

Then turned to walk back to the house, got a two steps away and turned back towards the bus.

He forgot to hand the tiny backpack to his tiny child.

Must have been his first time putting Junior on the bus and he almost blew it.

It made me laugh.

Shut up. So what if I am easily amused?

It makes mornings a little more tolerable.

Table's not tabled

Table = ~70% done.

Table top is glued up, but I have to add another strip of ash to make it a little wider - 25" inches is a bit too narrow for two people to sit across from eachother. I still also need to cut the breadboard ends (prependicular strips of wood that cap each end to minimize expansion and contraction).

The legs are milled up and still need a lot of work.

The rails are done, but not glued. I don't know exactly how I will fix the rails to the top.

This will definately run into other weekends, since I am going to see my first cyclocross race

tomorrow, and going to work on Monday.

Tables are on the horizon.

We have a four-day weekend coming up. With Columbus Day this weekend, my normal weekend gets doubled. No work at the machine shop on Friday. No school Monday.

My plan is to build a table.

One weekend. At kitchen table 60" x 30", White Ash with a Paduak or Bloodwood strip down the top.

This has all the elements of a bad idea. I'll explain....

While there are 96 hours available to me, we'll half that seeing that it's not particularly plausible to think that I'll work 96 hours straight. Therefore, I have 48 hours to make this thing.

I am also not a very skilled woodworker. I am a hard worker, which does not translate to skill.

So, this could be interesting.

Some of the things I have working in my favor are:

I have this thing all planned out, design-wise. Parts list is simple; one top, four rails, four legs. Bam!

I am not getting uber-fancy. There won't be a lot of garish design features and extravagance. Just a simple table.

Bam!

Scheduling will be very important. This is what I am thinking...

Friday = Buy wood. Mill wood. Glue legs up. Cut up top. Tongue and Groove the pieces for top.

Saturday = Glue up top. Cut rail pieces. Make rail joints (I don't know what the joints are called that I am using). Glue rails together. Biscuit joint rails and top for gluing.

Sunday = Taper legs. Cut leg/rail joints. Sand everything.

Monday = Overflow day, and believe me, there will be work overflow.

I think that I am digging my grave pretty deep on this one. If I can say one thing about myself is that I am pretty good at that.

But I am as excited as I am scared about this prospect.

I will take some photos of the process, with time/date cards, in order to track my progress.

Every time I make something I want to take a series of photos to show the evolution of my parts. I think this is a perfect time to do this.

Wish me luck. I'm going to need it.

Wanna go on a car ride? Wanna go buh-byes?

I have a cat named Red.

His name is Red because he is red. He's actually orange but Orange is not a good name for a cat.

A while ago, I was moving my truck out of my driveway and I left the door open and Red started nosing around the door. I scooped him up and put him in passenger's seat and drove down the street and back.

It was really funny because Red was on "high alert" the whole time, and if you have a cat you'll know what I mean, he was in "slink-dash" mode the whole time.

You know "slink-dash" mode, right? It's when a cat is in a new, unfamiliar, or slightly threatening place, and they get really low to the ground and seem to sniff each spot before they put a foot down. I don't know if dogs do it because dogs suck and are not nearly as cool as cats.

So, fast forward to this morning.

I left my house and Red was on the deck. He wanted to go inside but it is so nice out that I told him that he should stay outside today. (Yes, I told him this. Yes, I talk to my cat.)

But I could tell that he really wanted to go in because he followed me to my truck. He only follows you around when he wants something.

So, what did I do? That's right. I scooped up Red and put him in my truck and we went for a ride around town. We went through downtown Newmarket, past the Town Hall, turned right on to Packers Falls Road, and right on Elm Street, up and over the hill by L&M, and then left on to my street.

There is a "but" in this story.

When we were on Packers Falls Road, Red let out a forlorn little, "oooowwwwwWW" cry. His voice is really cute because: one, he rarely talks so when he does it's a treat; two, he only says "ow"; and three, "ow" always goes up at the end like he's asking a question.

But today, the way he said "ow" and the look in his eyes told me that he was not having fun.

When we got on to my street, he did something he never does voluntarily -- he laid down on my lap. Then he did something he does all the time when he's stressed out -- lots of fur came off of him.

At this point, another funny thing happened. I saw my friend Angus walking up my street. It turns out that Angus was going to work on a project with classmate who happens to live on my street, but he was very surprised to see a cat on my lap.

"You have a cat!"

"Yeah, I'm just taking Red for a car ride."

{That should sum up the stupidity of the situation.}

So, the bottom line is... I don't think Red likes car rides as much as I like taking Red on car rides. This is a particular shame because Red is such a little adventurer. He wanders the neighborhood, kills things --recently he devour all but the head, left leg and tail of a chipmunk -- and gets in fights all the time.

It's a shame that we can't -- well, shouldn't -- take him on car rides.

College life feels sludgey

I had a post all loaded up and ready to go concerning Cadel Evans' well deserved World Championship win but I shelved it because I have nothing new to throw onto the fire.

Yes, he deserves it.
Yes, he finally attacked.
I hope that Silence -Lotto will actually back him up next year in the Grand Tours.

You see? Nothing that hasn't been said already.

Therefore, I will proceed to less pressing matters.

My diet.

This semester started with a bang.
I have been up on campus nearly every morning at 8:00 a.m., with a couple of exceptions mostly coming after late nights at The New Hampshire (UNH's student newspaper).

But with long workdays on campus comes miserably irregular eating patterns that have left me feeling as though I need dialysis. I feel like I am supposed to be running on 10W-40 but instead someone got lazy and put in some cheap 90-weight gear oil.

Oh man... Let me give you an example of my intake lately:

Monday went like this;
Breakfast = ghett-o's (market basket brand cheerios), one banana, 1% milk. {not so bad}
Lunch = Buffalo chicken sub (three fried chicken tenders with Blue cheese dressing with lettuce and tomato on whit bread. {tasty but not so nutritious}
Dinner = tomato soup and grilled cheese. [from Dining hall] {SUCKED, that is not dinner nor is it nutritious AT ALL}

Tuesday:
Breakfast = the usual.
Lunch = one slice pepperoni pizza, luke warm, fresh out from under the warming bulb. {SUCKED, but at least it was something...}
Dinner = maybe...

Wednesday went like this:
Breakfast = the usual
Lunch = "slider" sized cheeseburger and waffle fries. {SUCKED but something is better than nothing.

[ Let me explain to you waffle fries. Like waffles are delicious because there are nooks and crannies for peanut butter and syrup to hide, waffle FRIES are awful for you because there is more volume and surface area for grease to absorb. The label should say "Fat-ass fries".]

Dinner = Barb's (my dear, sweet, tiny, sailor-mouthed mother) Turkey and Black Bean Chili with a scoop of Homemade Macaroni and Chees on top. {Finally, the first REAL thing I hav eaten all week!}

I reflected on all this (except for Wednesfay dinner) as I drove home from school. I thought, "Of all that is good and holy in Oden's beard! No wonder I feel like shit, have been sleeping like shit, and had no energy lately!"

How the hell am I supposed to perform while I pump this sort grog into my body?
Better question, what am I going to do about it?
Fruits and veggies? Good idea. I'll have to get over my phobia of green food stuffs, though.
No more coffee? You got a better chance of seeing God, my friends, before I give up the delicious Brown Serpent!
More sleep? Tell that to my editor, professors and work ethic.


So, it's now Thursday - or it will be by the time you read this.

And I am going to start my day with a cup of coffee, bright and early, frantically work till 1:30 when I run to the MUB Food Court and put a burger on a piece of pizza, eat it on the way to class, then work till 11 p.m. at TNH while eating some combonation of fried food and cookies and then, as your hair shampoo label reads, LATHER, RINSE, REPEAT!

Until the end of the semester, when I will schedule a high-colonic enema, dialysis, angioplasty and a dental cleaning.

King of SchoolWorkNerds

I got up at 9:30 a.m.

I ate pancakes for breakfast.

I washed the dishes.

I showered.

I left my house at 11:15 a.m.

I arrived at the McConnell computer lab at 11:30 a.m.

I was the first one here. I had to turn the lights on because there was NO ONE ELSE HERE!!!!

I am such a NERD!

It's Sunday! Go ride your bike all day. Go to Portsmouth with your friends! Go do something other than schoolwork DWEEB!!!!

Or not. Keep working.

It'll be worth it. I promise.

from the Practical Joke File

I was showering this morning and I thought of a great practical joke.

Install a super high-power exhaust fan in your bathroom, right over the shower.

When you have a guest and they are showering and the bathroom is getting all foggy, turn on the fan.

Let me explain how powerful this fan should be. It should be powerful enough to suck the shower curtain right off of the rail. And powerful enough to suck the shampoo suds out of their hair. And powerful enough to suck the washcloth off its hook. And powerful enough to suck the falling water out of the air so that no water hits the tub.

But not powerful enough to inhale your guest because that would probably be considered negligent manslaughter, which is never funny.

Now, let me paint the picture.

"Oh wow, Sylvia. You sure love hot showers. Don't we have great water pressure? It's getting a little foggy in here. Let me turn the fan on for you."

"Oh thanks, Jerry. Yeah, I don't want fog up your walls to badly."

You hit the switch and seek shelter.

Well... I'll let your imagination do the rest.

Have a wonderful day.

Yelling bad puns

I like to yell.
I like to yell things at people also.

As a cyclist, I know how futile it is to yell things at people while you are moving past them at high rates of speed. Usually a simple phrase shouted from a car moving past a cyclist turns into a doppler smear of unrecognizable sounds.

Therefore, today when I saw a couple walking through Durham, I chose not yell at them.

I saw a sweet couple walking hand-in-hand.
They were enjoying the cool late-summer evening, stolling along, swinging their arms in unison as they held hands. They were really swinging their conjoined arms.

So, I thought it might be funny to yell, "It looks like you guys are swingers, eh?"

Get it?
I thought it was funny.
But they wouldn't have heard it and it wouldn't have been worth ruining their evening.

The last semester and bit of history

This is my last semester at UNH.

It feels good to write that.

It, also, feels odd to write that.

Maybe it's time for a recap.

Last year at this time, I was sitting in Piazza Del Popolo, in Ascoli Piceno. I was totally confused, awestruck and drinking un caffe. I was sitting with my dear roommate Alex who, bless his soul, was not afraid, like I was, to walk in to anywhere and ask for a coffee or buy produce.

Oooh! I also bought grapes on my first day in Italy. They were green and had seeds. Funny story about that -- Alex and I walked into a grocery store and found the produce. We both picked out what we wanted, and as we were doing this we saw a local fellow being helped by the produce attendant. This was strange and new. After you selected and bagged up your produce, you took it to the produce fellow so that he could weight it and put a little price sticker on it. If Alex and I had not seen this local fellow do that we would have gotten to the cashier (who presumably spoke no English which complemented our "No Italian" status nicely) and would have been totally confused as to what we supposed to do, but didn't.

But it all worked out and I bought grapes.

Four years ago at this time, I was starting my first day at UNH. I remember that a week or so before classes started Tilly and I came up to campus and she showed me the buildings where my classes were. On the first day, I confidently strode across campus thinking, "Man, this is great. I'm not one of those confused freshman that have to ask someone where their building is."

Then a young lady asked me, "Excuse me, do you know where such-and-such-building is?"

I didn't know and answered, "Sorry, I don't. This is my first day too."

Hah! Take that stupid freshman Phil! Eat that awful, bitter Humble Pie! That's right. Every last bite of it!

Five years ago at this time, I was yelling at my freshmen through a bullhorn as a senior at Tech School. (The Williamson Free School of Mechanical Trades, for those of you who aren't familiar.)

I had them up on the platform ladder doing some dumb shit. I had thought all summer about what I would have them do.

I remember Oren in particular. A good-looking black kid from the Baltimore area. He tried to look like a thug, but he was too small and I could see the anxiety in his eyes.

When he got up on the ladder, I asked him what kind of music he listened to.

"Rap," he said.

"Who have you been listening to lately?"

"Lloyd Banks," he answered.

"Sing a little for me. Give me your favorite lines," I demanded.

He stammered out the chorus.

"OK. That's good enough," I told him. "But I know you've got a soft spot. You like Celine Dion? Because I do." I got up and handed him the lyrics to My Heart Will Go On.

"I know you remember this song. I know you took your girlfriend to see it, hoping that you would get some [action]." Oren took the lyrics and, now I can't remember exactly , but I might have let him get down and read them over before returning to the ladder to sing to a crowd of 20 kids.

When he got back atop the ladder, I said to him, "Go ahead. Sing to me. Make me feel pretty."

And Oren sang. He gave us what we wanted.

He was a real trooper that day. I really admired him for doing that. He could have been a real pooper and refused to do it. But he was a real man about it - he got up there and sang his heart out. And, indeed, I did feel prettier.

Seven years ago at this time, I was starting Tech School.

Man, oh man. I was a different person back then...

I had just finished an intense one-week Soccer Manager Training Program -- also known as the "I can play soccer, oh wait, I just tried to kick a ball and my foot hit the ground before it hit the ball, hmm, I think I'll cut my losses and be a manager instead" training program.

I was meeting my Seniors for the first time.

All the freshmen had to get up on the platform ladder and do something - tell a joke, answer a humiliating question, etc.

When it was my turn, Stinky looked at me and asked, "Gordon? Oh wait, you're Bunyon's roommate right?"

"Yeah," I answered.

"You can get down," Stinky told me as he and all the other senior and juniors laughed and laughed.

You see, Tony (a.k.a.; Bunyon- as in Paul Bunyon) was one of my seniors. This was a fairly odd arrangement having a freshman and a senior, from the same shop, rooming together. I might add that Williamson was structured in a para-military, highly-regimented fashion, and had fabled and horrific tales of hazing from the distant past.

Before I got down from the ladder I asked them, " You want to hear a joke anway?"

"Uh-oh. We've got ourselves an overachiever," Stinky said.

My joke flopped. I turned red. I slunk down from the ladder.

That's as far back as I care to remember. I have already tipped my hand too completely as to how wretchedly old I am.

More importantly, these events were much more influential to my development than high school was.

At this point in my life, looking forward and backward with equal fondness and contemplation, I wouldn't want to go back and do it any other way, nor would I want to tell Young Phil anything that Old Phil now knows.

Except, maybe, start winking at cute girls more often.

a joke to spice this place up.

A guy moves out to the middle of no where in order to get away from "it all".

He has no neighbors that he can see and is starting to wonder if moving so far away from everyone was a good idea.

The next day, a man comes to his door.

"Hi. I am your nearest neighbor and I live about five miles that way," the man says, as he pionts toward a path.

"Oh, great. I was starting to get a little lonely."

"I came to in invite you to a party that I am having this coming friday," says the neighbor.

"Wow. That's really nice of you. I love to come over."

"Now, I should warn you, there's going to be a lot of music, dancing and drinking," says the neighbor.

"That's not a problem."

"And probably some fighting, too," says the neighbor.

"Oh, well that's OK. I'll just stay out of the way of that."

"And there will definately be some screwing," says the neighbor.

"Well, that's alright. I'm pretty open-minded. This sounds like quite a party. Who all is going to be there?"


"Oh, it's just going to be you and me," says the neighbor.

Thank you Billy for that gem.

Shame on you ABC News! Shame!

ABC News is covering the reaction to Supreme Court Nominee Sonja Sotamayor's 2001 comments about old latina women vs. old white men.

ABC News, in their coverage, went to the pot-stirrer Newt Gingrich for a comment.

Well.... not really.

ABC News reported that Gingrich said, " "White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw," Gingrich wrote. "

That's right, they said "Gingrich WROTE." Where, you might ask, did Gingrich write this?

ON TWITTER!!!!!!

SHAME ON YOU ABC NEWS! Shame on you for being so lazy! Twitter is not a viable source!

That could be anybody! You have no gaurentee that that is the real Newt. Did you confrim this comment? And, if you in fact did confirm this, why did you not just ask him to say it? That would be easy. He, like Rush Limbaugh, loves to spray light fluid on a fire, so why wouldn't he just say it because it would be free press for him.

You should be ashamed of yourself ABC News.
I'm am not going to punish you. I am just disappointed.

Levi should just start sucking wheels now.

I turned that miserable paper the other day. If you are interested in it -- and I don't see why you would want to -- you can check out my previous blog post.

But, today I have nothing to do and all day to do it.

I am in the MUB Computer Cluster and my fellow students are filtering in; looking worried, printing feverishly, sitting with their faces mere inches from the computer screens.

    However, I am watching the Giro and writing in my blog.

Like I said, nothing to do and all day to do it.

I was thinking about cycling-related things this morning though.

  Levi Leipheimer is no Andy Hampstead.

Now, I don't knwo much about cycling history, but I do know that Andy was the only American to win the Giro in 1988 (I think).

    [It is also funny to see an ad, possibly a TREK ad, that shows Contador kissing his Giro trophy and being able to see Hampstead's name amongst an international string of names.]

There have been a lot of reports about how the entire Astana team is riding in support of Leiphiemer. And that Levi is waiting for the Cinque Terre Time Trial. 

It is now that we have to look at Levi's history. I think that it can be accurately summed up briefly: wait for time trial, move up in the GC, suck wheels for the rest of the tour, never attack, give boring post tour interviews.

That's about it. That's how it seems to go.

I understand that if you are a GC contender that you are a marked man and that is very difficult to make killer moves. 

But, look at what Andy Hampstead did; he rode over a giant mountain in the snow! He didn't win the stage but he still rode over a mountain in the snow, which gave him the advantage he needed.       

I don't think that Leiphiemer has that sort of fire in him. I am not talking about "fire" in the sense of physiological/biochemistry make-up. But, the kind of fire that would make some one that would sing "Dude looks like a lady" on the kitchen then do naked kegs stands at a ripping party. 

More important than my opinion is the opinion of the Italian people. 

They are a fiery, excitable nation that ooze passion.  

I think that Leiphiemer should withdraw from his GC contender spot and start sucking wheels and giving boring interviews now.

Leiphiemer just doesn't have the fire to wear the Maglia Rosa. He doesn't have the personality that... well, he just doesn't a personality. Period.

And, if I know the Italians, they won't like that. 

Still Stalling and thinking about technology

I watched IRONMAN this weekend with my best friend Tilly. Well, I watched it; she watched half of it. 

And now, I am still thrashing my way through my last literature paper. Oddly enough, it does not deal with any sort of literature. We'll see how much of a train wreck this turns out to be. 

However, in my research and my leisure time I began to think about the cost and consequence of technology.

In the early- and mid-18th century (BAM! Suspensive hyphenation, suckas!) there was a technological shift away from the subsistence farming of the older colonial period toward an urbanized, industrialized society. During this time men began working away from the house in shops, factories and merchant venues. Women no longer need to dedicate long hours to converting fibers into thread, threads into cloth, and cloth into clothes. 

Historians point to this period as a time when the family structure began to mutate into what we commonly think of as traditional male-female roles; women at home, raising children; and, men out in the work place, bringing home an income. 

Technology forced this shift from subsistence farming and fairly equal labor roles in the farming homestead. Women ran the house, men ran the production of the profitable products.

There will be no smooth transition between 18th century gender roles versus technology and IRONMAN, starring Robert Downey, Jr.

Tony Stark, the main character and man made of not-iron, has an army of robots that run his house. He has robots that respond to voice commands and the subsequent snide and snotty sarcasm that he dishes out.

That is technological advancement right there. That is a worthy investment in technology -- a robot that is programmed to understand sarcasm! Brilliant! I would love to see the Honda engineers program ASIMO to understand sarcasm and playboy-style wit instead of being able to perform a task so common as walking down the stairs. I have met some very educated people that failed to understand sarcasm, which is quite pathetic since sarcasm -- while effective in some instances -- is the most base and ignominious form of humor.

There are also scenes in IRONMAN in which as fleet of robotic goo-gaws and appendages dress Tony Stark in his armored suit.  While the movie was very good, it completely rejects the idea that money is an issue. How much would all that cost? There is no sum of money in the world that could make all that possible.

I understand that I am viewing this in a hyper-literal fashion. But, what I was left pondering as Water Ram technology of the 18th century and IRONMAN awkwardly waltzed in my head is, where does all this leave the common man, the 21st-century schlub like you and me?

If the Marvel comic book world of IRONMAN is the direction of technology, and considering the Marxist idea of alienation of increased production [as you produce more for a large company, you become increasingly like a monkey trained to pull your lever and push your button, thereby removing any sort of pride and ownership in your work], how bitter and unsatisfied will we become when all we have is a robot to laugh at our sarcastic commentary of OMG!-style celebrity blog posts? And how long will it take before "LOL", "i heart you" and "muah" replace authentic gust-busting laughter, the actual sentiment of love, and an actual kiss?

Recently, as in the last 24 hours, I have piloted this crippled train of thought from my head to the internet.  I also have thought about deleting my facebook account and not renewing my cell phone when my contract expires. 

But, then who would listen to all these clever things I have to say?

The last literature paper ever- Stalling

There is no reason for this post, other than stalling.

I am stalling like a.... (get ready for an hours-worth of bad associations that relate to the word "stalling"):

... like a regional commuter airplane piloted by a over-tired , under-trained pilot.

... like a weed whacker with improper fuel-oil mixture.

... like a cattle farmer putting the cows away for the night.

... like a jockey approaching the start gate at the Kentucky Derby.

... like a 1985 Ford Escort diesel with no fuel filter.

... like a street rod small-block's transmission at 2,000 rpm.

... like a world economy.

... like a under-qualified homeowners on their mortgage payments.

... like a compassionate Sheriff delivering an eviction notice.

... like a Portuguese body boarder chilling in a sick tube.

... like a burned-out college student sitting in a computer lab on a Sunday the day before his last literature paper is due!!!!!!!

Seacoast Coffee Shop Tour - Take 3

Yesterday, Brent, Andrew and I did the Seacoast Coffee Shop Tour. Ryan Kelly did part of it with us, but apparently he has a job... This is news to me.

It was a beautiful day. I made sure - after the second running with Bob and Scotty - to check on wind directions so that we would not get murdered by the wind all day. The wind was out the south-southwest and a sea breeze kicked up during the day. The run up the coast wasn't super fast but wasn't as punishing as the Bob/Scott iteration. 

At one point on 1A in New Hampshire, Andrew was really gassing it. I rolled next to him and cautioned him to save some gas for later. We eased off the pace because there was still 50-ish miles to ride. And, the climbing starts at about mile 85, so if you are fried leaving Portsmouth, which is usually the case, you are in for a miserable 50 miles finish.

We cruised up Maine Route 103. It was still a cross wind but wasn't a hinderance or a help.

We didn't stop at the Daily Grind in York, instead we stopped at the food market in Ogunquit. 

Brent and Andrew split a roast beef sub. It looked really tasty but I know I can't eat heavy things like that mid-ride, so I stuck to my bag of Oreos.

As we rolled out, the boys were talking about how they had never thrown up because of exercising. I said, "There's always a first time."

For the people that know the ride route or this neck of the woods from other rides, you all know that as you come out of Shore Road, you are on Route 1 for about 100 meters before you turn up left and ascend Berwick Road.

Since they had just eaten and were talking about not vomiting, I decided that it was my personal charge to make them regret eating roast beef subs.

I didn't even give my self time to get settled in and re-warmed up after our stop. 

I just went to the front and started hammering. I tried to recover on the down-hill sections of the rollers of this section of the ride.

At every rise I punched it, surging up the hills as hard as I could.

I was descending deeper into the Pain Cave but I was determined to hear partially-digest roast beef sub hit the pavement.

Brent was riding really strongly and I couldn't crack him.

Andrew was a hurting puppy though.

He did maintain his honor and didn't blow chunks. 

At one point, Brent pulled around me and I looked back and Andrew was dropping pretty far back. When I saw him I decided that I couldn't continue with my plan.

He was hurting, and at that point, with my effort up those rollers, I was hurting too. 

Right about then, Andrew fully channeled the pain and misery of the ride. 

It was at the same point, during the first ride with Carney and R.Kelly, that I told them, "If I fall into a snow bank, just leave me for dead."

Andrew got to that same point. As we crested a small rise, we saw a dump truck coming toward us in the other direction.

"AAHH!!! I want to steer into it," he yelled.

The only way I can summarize the ride is to adapt an Ice Cube song title, "[Yesterday] was a good day".

Inciting panic at every sneeze, cough or sniffle

With the outbreak and feared pandemic of Swine Flu sweeping over North America, I urge you to do our part in greasing the gears of panic and fear.

The media have been reporting on new cases that are infecting youth, healthy people and not old, sickly people. 

The media has also reported that the best way not to spread the virus is to practice basic hygiene by washing hands frequently, covering your mouth when you cough or sneeze, and if you are sick stay home.

This poses a particular difficulty for college students such as myself and the thousands of students living on campus.

Therefore, like I previously stated, I urge you to do you part to raise awareness about this potentially deadly outbreak.

Every time you see someone sneeze or hear someone cough, I want you to shout "SWINE FLU!" and point at the person like you were a Puritan accusing someone of witchcraft.

Then continue to shriek as you smear Purell all over every surface in the room.

With your help, I know we can fight this thing.

Thank you for your time. 

If you can't stand the heat, stay out the tranny bathroom

Sitting down to pee promotes nudist sensibilities.

This is what I thought while I was sitting in the "tranny bathroom" - or 'gender neutral bathroom' -  in the bowels of the MUB.

Take a moment to think about this.

On second thought, please don't; that would mean that you are just as dumb and bored as I am.

So, let me break it down for you.

The tranny bathroom is an anomaly because regardless of the sex or gender with which you identify, you are able to use either one of these bathrooms. There is clearly a men's and women's bathroom. The men's room is set up like any other men's room with two urinals and one stall. The women's is what I would think is standard for female bathrooms with two stalls.

To accurately describe the typical experience of the tranny bathroom, I must describe a sticker that is pasted to the wall next to the door lock. It reads, "For your privacy, please feel free to lock this door", or something like that (i'll fact check this for you). 

  Therefore, you will have to use the can on any occasion, only to find that the door is locked. You push and you hear the hollow and solid, "THUNK" of a deadbolt lock.  That means someone is in there taking care of business. 

 This leads me to draw two conclusions; One, they are interested in hiding their gender neutrality or ambiguity - that's cool with me, as a male that identifies as a male, I have never had to question this and therefore have no idea what the state of gender ambiguity is on this homogenous campus; Or, conclusion number two, the person in there can't handle the heat of someone of the opposite sex urinating or defecating next to them - this one roils me. 

If you can't stand the heat, stay out the tranny bathroom.

I'll now set forth some qualifiers in order to clarify the situation. I was comfortably sitting on the can, reading The New Hampshire (my university's fine newspaper) one evening, only to hear three people open the door, walk in, and then exit. 

 

To clarify, I sat down to urinate. THERE, I SAID IT!

 I was using this time to relax, to read and to close out all the freneticism of college life, which felt particularly crushing during that week.

As I heard the second person leave, I thought, "Man, what's the big deal? I'm just sitting here." 

I was just a guy sitting, on the pot. What's so weird about that? We all sit down with our trousers at our ankles, multiple times day. 

So, why automatically leave a gender neutral zone when someone is taking care of gender neutral business?

I do concede that maybe they needed to poop. I was using a stall for something other than its specific, solid-waste-disposal purpose.

Progressing to my thesis, so that I don't bog this post down with tangential rants, if I was sitting down, peeing, reading my paper, in the traditionally women's bathroom - as evident by its configuration stated above - and a woman - undeterred by the presence of someone else in the bathroom - came in to use the adjoining stall, this would be the closest I would ever come to a member of the opposite sex in a non-sexual context.

 

This would classify as a basic and preliminary step toward Nudism, because the sexual context was removed, while incorporating some skin bearing during a day-to-day activity. (I admit now that this is the extent of my knowledge of the philosophy of Nudism.) 

 

 The next step, I feel, in the incorporation of nudist ideals and gender neutral zones would be to remove stall walls. This would remove the social anxiety associated with urination and, primarily, defecation.

In the end, had I not taken my little break, dropped my trousers, sat down to pee and read my paper, I would not have had this epiphany. 

Likewise, I would not have had this alienating experience. I am ready to incorporate new values such as gender neutral zones for gender neutral acts and nudist ideals in hopes of breaking down social anxiety. 

But most of all, I would embrace freaking out some squares and read my paper where no one can bug me. 

I want to write some stuff.

But don't really have the time.

I will give you the headlines, or heds - in downstyle.

I will not be racing as much as I originally planned this collegiate season; school is busy and I have a woodworking studio class that is fulfilling as it is time-consuming.

I am disappointed to hear the Cannondale is moving production to Taiwan. My CAAD9 will be the last Cannondale I ever buy.

The Boston Globe might be shuttered within a month or so as a result of its owner's, Times Co., gigantic debt.

I am going to try to do Exeter's Wednesday Night Rides as a part of my desire to hang with them by the end of the summer. All aboard the Pain Train!

I need a haircut.

I will be helping to make Chicken Marsala and Mac&Cheese at Holloway Commons - UNH's stat dining hall that serves roughly 6000 people per day, Monday through Friday - in order to write a feature and create an audio slideshow for my Feature Writing class.

   That's about all that is going on in my neck of the woods.

Thanks for tuning in. 

March riding and sunscreen

I am in Florida right now.

Ryan Carney is sitting next to me in his underpants and I love it.

Yesterday we rode 112 miles at about 20mph average.

I was the General all day; while everybody was clowning around after stop-sign roll-outs, I would go to the front and turn it on.

I was not interested in screwing off for 7 hours and having anything left at the end.

My plan worked.

When we hit SugarLoaf, I tried to stay with the 6 man lead group, but that was not possible.

I got up over the top and Ass.Coach Pat, Ryan and 2 D-riders dropped me and got a serious gap. Then for the next 2 mile I tried to bridge back up to them. I got within 50 meters of them, but that was all I could manage.

Later on, as Ryan Carney handed me an ice cream bar at a gas station up the street from the where we park, he said that he and Ass.Coach Pat saw me trying to catch them. Ryan turned to Pat and said, "Hey, let's make it harder for Phil."

They did.

And it was great.

The Power of a Rat-Hair Pillow

I just finished my Editing midterm.

And my teacher, Sandy Marsters, is a genius of imagery.

The test was an editing exercise that we have to copy-edit, which means we have to look for errors and mistakes. These mistakes can range from spelling mistakes, incorrect verb usage, to proper usage of suspensive hyphenation (which is my new favorite grammatical thing).

As you are trying to find all the errors in an absolute abomination of a hard news story, Sandy throws in a fictitious direct quote such as the following, about a woman that ate at a restaurant where rat hair has been found in the salad bar;

     "I've eaten from that salad bar many times," said (whoever). "I've probably eaten enough to make a whole pillow."

Yes. You read it correctly; RAT-HAIR PILLOW!!!!

I could barely contain my laughter throughout the rest of the test period.

Think about it for just 30 seconds; think about lying your head down on a pillow made of rat hair.

 Better yet, picture yourself eating a pillow made of rat hair.

Now, try to concentrate. On ANYTHING!

Shit! Now that I think about it, I should have noted, on the test, to check if rats have hair or fur.

See? That is copy-editing and how distracting rat-hair pillows can be. 

Early starts and useless nights.

It is 9:12 a.m. on Wednesday morning and I have been in the MUB Computer Cluster for nearly two hours, already.

This day is going to be a long, hard slog of border-line acceptable paper writing.

I performed some introspection last night - and no, that does not involve a mirror and a speculum sort of thing. (That's right, I just made a speculum joke. I went there.)

No. Instead, I examined my study habits.

I am useless after 6 p.m. Period, that's all. After I eat dinner and power down for a little while, I am all done. There is no kick-starting me after that. No amount of Hot Start can get me going again.

I always talk about writing papers early but never do it. Then, when it comes time to write these papers, I over-think things and the whole process takes forever.

So, last night I just read and decided to try to get an early start this morning. Hence, being the first person in the computer cluster, and getting a big "Good Morning!" from Big Gene, the room monitor fellow. It was kind of funny because as he greeted me, I noticed that he cast a quick glance around the room. (Yes, Gene, it is 7:37 a.m. and there is a college student about to start working on school work. Believe it.)

So, in order to try to loosen up my writing muscles, I am getting some thoughts out here on the blog. I hope that this little but of writing allows me to find the motivation and inspiration to write a paper about Puritan Gender Roles as portrayed through Captivity and War Narratives as well as Secondary Sources.

Wish me luck.

[This is when you say to your monitor, "Ooh. That poor bastard. Good luck, buddy."]

Thanks.

I'll need all the luck that I can get.

The full report of the 2009 Seacoast Coffee Shop Tour

It is six miles from Dover to Durham, New Hampshire.

This distance is not particularly taxing; it could be a lovely summer’s day bike ride. Downtown Dover can be a bit stressful but once you are clear of the new Hannaford’s grocery store the shoulders on Route 108 are wide and smooth. There is plenty of space between you and the cars. The hills are rolling – not steep enough to be considered real climbs and great to coast down in an aerodynamic tuck. There are even two town-line signs that mark intermediate sprints when you are riding with a group.

However, if you have already covered 98 miles in five and a half hours, this last stretch is a hellish misery. The last 40-or-so miles, my quads warn me that each pedal stroke might be their last. I stopped pulling up on my pedal stoke 40 miles ago after my left hamstring turned into a giant Charlie-horse. My left shoulder feels like someone is unzipping the skin and stabbing it with an electrified knife. My lower back is so tight that I can’t sit up straight to stretch out.
But at least I don’t have to pee again. I urinated in The Garrison Players parking lot back in Rollinsford and the coffee seems to have stopped forcing liquid out of my body.

As I roll through downtown Durham, the Seacoast Coffee Shop Tour is nearly complete. All I have to do is thrash my way up the hill that is in front of Holloway Commons and coast back to my truck in the outdoor-pool parking lot. The Seacoast Coffee Shop Tour was: 6 hours and 3 minutes on a bike; 105 miles; 3 states; 10 towns and 6 coffee shops.

The tour is not a sanctioned event and it benefits no charity organization. It actually serves no purpose at all – other than a training ride. Early season rides are usually long rides that allows your body to acclimate itself to riding, after months of riding the ass-groove on the couch.

The ride was the brainchild of UNH graduate and local cyclist Ryan Kelly. He mused about it in his blog. He wanted to combine two things that have universal appeal, riding bikes and drinking coffee. In the post, he recognizes the good and bad points of this ride. Good, riding bikes and drinking coffee. Bad, 6 hours of stopping and starting riding in the dead of winter.

As a way of adding my personal touch and challenge to this ride, I decide to do it all on my single-speed bike. Last winter I found the joy in riding a bike with only one gear. This year I decide to challenge – in retrospect, I would use the word ‘punish’ – myself by doing The Seacoast Coffee Shop Tour with only one gear.

After a long string of emails, we meet up at the Breaking New Grounds coffee shop in Durham at 7:45 a.m. and a chilly 22 degrees. Ryan already has his first cup of coffee when I arrive; black, Hazelnut.

There are two current UNH Cycling Team members there, not including me, that were going to only do a portion of the ride with us. Allison Gehnrich and Sean Berry accompany us to Exeter then head back to campus. Both Allison and Sean are exhibiting their usual behavior; Allison looks slightly frightened and Sean is not wearing enough clothing.

“I’m wearing leg warmers and two pairs of bib shorts,” Ryan said. The two pairs were necessary to protect his “situation” from getting too cold, he explained as he waved a hand over his crotch. The jacket he was wearing was a UNH Cycling Team jacket from his freshmen year. “The zipper broke the week I got it and I just got it fixed last week.”

Ryan Carne has a long-sleeve base layer, short sleeve jersey, a winter cycling jacket and a women’s white and black windbreaker. (Later on in York, Maine, he will remove a folded-up, plastic grocery bag from the front of his shorts, re-fold it and re-insert it. Again, situational protection.) He is has a slight build, probably weighing 150 pounds, soaking wet.

We roll out of Durham promptly at 8 o’clock and head south on Route 108.

We arrive at the Big Bean in Newmarket at about 8:30 a.m. Ryan gets his second cup of coffee and a muffin. I buy my first cup. We drink our coffee as quickly as possible in order to keep on schedule. Ryan calculated that all of our stops should take no longer than 10 minutes so that we don’t have to finish in the dark.

My friend Jack meets us at the Big Bean. Jack, 64, has ridden and raced bicycles for the about 25 years and currently has less than 6 months to prepare for his second trip to the Senior Nationals.

We saddle up after we pay for our coffees and thank the waitresses for their good-luck-on-your-hair-brained-plan wishes. We all gather together to take a picture in front of the Big Bean. I plan on taking a picture at each coffee shop in order to document the adventure.

We ride south to Me & Ollie’s in Exeter. Through this leg of the ride, I am pushing at hot pace. I am at the front of our pack, feeling like a million dollars. I am doing exactly what I said I wouldn’t do; go hard from the start and run out of gas by the middle of the ride. However, my excitement overrides forethought and I don’t realize this at the time.

I even catch the pack unaware and scoop up a few town-line sprints on the way to Exeter.
At Me & Ollie’s, Carney jokes that this will be the only century, or 100 mile ride, that we will actually gain weight because of all the stops, coffee and pastries. I order a Gooey Granola Roll that lives up to Ryan’s hype.

I snap a few photos of us spread out on couches, our bikes stacked against each other out side.
It is important to eat when you’re doing long rides. If you run out of gas 50 miles from home, you have 3 options; limp home, stopping at every convenient store on the way in order to shove Little Debby cakes down your gullet – Little Debby’s usually give you the biggest bang for your buck, as far as the calories to dollars ratio; you can call someone for a ride home – something that no self-respecting cyclist would ever do; or you can just man-up and grind your way home, fueled by self-hatred for blowing up mid-ride, repeating “I am never going to do this again” like a fifteen year-old that raided his parents liquor cabinet the night before.

I fit into the last category.

Ryan, Carney and I leave Me & Ollie’s, headed fro Amesbury, Mass. in search of our fourth coffee shop. Allison, Sean and Jack ride north, toward Durham and Newmarket, because they don’t have other things to do.

On Route 150, Josh Austin, another local rider that races with Ryan and Carney for Nor’East Cycling Team, catches up with us. I told him about our ride earlier in the week and Ryan had called him from our last stop.

We don’t find a coffee shop in downtown Amesbury and Ryan does not appreciate my suggestion of Dunkin Donuts. His tone is firm, almost like an annoyed parent.
Newburyport, Mass. was next on the list. I ride up to Ryan and put my hand on his shoulder, telling him that his was a great idea.

“I have a thousand bad ideas for everyone good idea,” he says.

“Well, this was a good one,” I say as we soak up the sunshine in the cloud-less sky. I still feel as though I am full of energy and excitement.

We do a lap of Newburyport and all we see is a Starbucks. I don’t even think of suggesting another chain. Ryan asks a man walking his dogs if there is a coffee shop near by that isn’t Starbucks.

The man chuckles and gives us directions Plum Island Coffee Roasters, which is in a yacht storage yard.

Ryan is the first one of us through the door. But he stops half through the doorway.

“This place is sick! It’s so warm in here,” he says. A fire in the corner and side-ways glancing patrons greet us.

I get my second coffee drink, a cappuccino. Everybody else orders crumb cakes or pastries. We fill our water bottles in the bathroom with warm water because they will soon cool to about 35 degrees, the outside air temperature.

“I wish I could order a cup of luke-warm coffee so I could just chug it,” Ryan complains. If it weren’t steaming hot, he could throw them back and be on the bike in less than 5 minutes. Instead, we have to sit and sip them slowly.

Everybody uses the bathroom, except for me. Ryan’s previous coffees started taking effect between Exeter and Amesbury. The magic of coffee has not affected me, yet.
While we put on our helmets and re-mount our bikes, a patron exits the shop and strikes up a conversation. The commentary is generally the same.

You always hear something like “You guys are crazy” or “Good for you”. But the man outside Plum Island Coffee Roasters throws in something new.

He says he enjoys doing his 25-mile rides, which is good enough for him – nothing crazy like 100 miles in the middle of winter.

“When I start riding my bike, my wife always says, ‘You keep riding that bike’,” he says. “Anyone that tells you that riding a bike impedes your sexual performance is a liar. My wife always tells me, ‘Keep riding that bike’.”

We all have a laugh, thank him for his adivce and ride on.

From this point on there is long gap between coffee shops. We tried to find one on Hampton Beach but nearly every store has a “closed for the season” sign hanging in the window.

On B Street, after riding past the closed Ships Inn Coffee Shop, my two cups of coffee want out. Ryan and I pull in to the entrance of a parking garage in order to urinate, out of the buffeting winds coming from the west. The last thing you want at the midpoint of a ride this long is to have a stream of coffee-pee blow back all over your leg.

From Hampton to Portsmouth, we fight the western crosswind and scream up the coast. During this section Josh and Ryan ride in front of Carney and me. Josh has a bad habit, Ryan tells me later, of getting on the front of the group and riding – in this situation, referred to as pulling – hard. This is particularly miserable for me because I am not as strong of a rider as Josh is, but also because I have one gear.

I can’t shift gears because I only have one. If I want to go faster, I have to pedal faster; if I want to go up a steep hill I have to stand up and push really hard. My internal monologue on steep climbs is “Le-eg Press! Le-eg Press!” I say ‘leg’ slowly, and then say ‘press’ as I push down on the pedal. I need a mantra that allows me to stay focused as my fellow riders select one of their 20 gears.

For the 21 miles between Hampton Beach and our next stop, Breaking New Grounds in Portsmouth, my legs are spinning as fast as they can. I am bouncing on my saddle, a sign that you cannot efficiently peddle faster. My heart rate (which I know because I always ride with a heart rate monitor so I have a gauge of how hard I am working, how many calories I’ve burned, time in zones, etc.) was much too high. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to sustain a pace like that all day.

It was near Wallis Sands State Beach that my legs started to feel rubbery.
Near the Portsmouth-Rye town line, Carney and I race for the town line and my legs turn to Jell-O. I have a bad feeling that I won’t be finishing the rest of the ride.
The Portsmouth Breaking New Grounds is a glorious bastion of cookies, coffee, pastries and hot-air hand-dryers.

At this point, I only look like a cyclist but it feels as though there is nothing left inside of me. In order to fill this void, I order a medium coffee, a chocolate turtle cookie and a croissant. However, my perceptions are skewed; my coffee is a cauldron, not a cup; my cookie is the size of a baby’s head; and my croissant is foot-long sub.

I inhale all of it.

I head to the bathroom to use the hand dryer to warm up my shoes. I hit the button twice per shoe, which dries the moisture that is trapped in my shoe by my neoprene shoe covers, or booties.

Ryan says that it is time to leave and Josh decides no to join us for the rest of the ride. In this, I find hope that I might finish this ridiculous ride.

As we approach York Harbor, a part of York that is about 2 miles south of the touristy York Beach, I feel an anxious wave roll over me. I look at my heart rate monitor, which reads 176 beats per minute. This is way too high.

“OK, my heart rate is officially now determined by caffeine and not exertion level,” I announce to Ryan and Carney. They chuckle.

I start blinking more than usual, but still feel empty.

York Beach is just as dead as Hampton Beach but The Daily Grind coffee shop is open. Ryan and I have that “not-so-fresh” feeling anymore. In order to finish this ride, we stay only long enough to use the bathroom and pound some juice.

From this point on, we don’t stop at another coffee shop.

From this point on, the fun isover.

At Ogunquit, we turn west and head up Berwick Road. At mile 80-or-so, we have to start climbing some hills and it is hell.

“We got him on the ropes,” Carney shouts as he briefly accelerates up the hill.
“Heckler’s all over his machine,” Ryan yells, accusing me of thrashing around on my bike in an uncontrolled and labored manner.

They’re right. I am throwing my bike left to right as I struggle up the hill. If they decided to, they could drop me; they could just float away from me with their stupid gears. I am against the ropes but I have no choice but to finish.

We crest a slight hill and Ryan asks Carney how fast we are going.

“14.5 miles per hour,” Carney says.

“I don’t think I could go any faster if I had to,” Ryan says. As long as someone else is suffering as much as you are, your own misery is easier to accept.

In the distance between Ogunquit and Dover, all the coffee, water and juice I drank during the ride decides to make my miserable state worse. Within the next fifteen mile, I stop to urinate four times. Each time Ryan groans, “Ahh … again?”

The rest of the ride might as well be a black spot in my memory. From South Berwick back to UNH, the ride turned into an exercise in pain management – how to block out every piece of sensory input that tells your body to stop. Every muscle ache and joint twinge compels you to bail out of this flaming wreck that is your body.

As we head south on Route 4 from Southwest out of Berwick, I try to hide in Ryan’s draft so that I don’t have fighting against the wind. I float around behind him until I hear the least amount of wind noise. When it’s relatively quiet, you know you’re in the sweet spot – that he working harder than I am.

As we cross the Dover town line, I have never been happier to in Dover. Only because it means that I am one town closer to the end of this ride.

We roll through downtown Dover, Ryan and Carney say me that they are going to stop at Dos Amigos Burrito’s.

Should I stop and gorge on burritos, try to make a dent in my 4453 kilocalorie deficit?

“If I stop now, I won’t get started again,” I tell them. I say good-bye, thanks for coming on this adventure with me.

I tell Ryan that it was a great idea, again.

Before we split up, Ryan says that we should do this again – when the weather is nice, when we’re in shape. “Like, April.”

“Yeah, sounds good. I’ll do it, just let me know when. Enjoy your burritos,” I say as I keep pedaling my way up Central Ave.

Then, there is just me.

And 6 measly miles between me and a pointless success.



All rights reserved.
This is the property of Phil Heckler and only Phil Heckler.
I rode it, I wrote it and therefore I own it!
Any taking, biting, sampling, plagerism or copying will result in legal action.
You've been warned.

A Dinner Party for the Ages and Ageless!

- cokes and cola

- cheese head string cheese, cr. cheese, Parmesean Cheese

- Quaker Quakes and oatmeal bread

- bread, oatmeal bread and mini bagels

- lemon and onions

- G.F. Chicken nuggets and fish stix

- Hamburg

- pizza

- pretzels

- orange juice

There are so many way to organize and cross-reference this list.

Barb and I went food shopping about a week ago and somebody left their list in an impulse magazine rack at the check out.

 I read it, re-read it and tried my hardest to wrap my find around this list.

You can group liquids together; cola, cokes, orange juice.

There are multiple cheese products; cheese head string cheese, cr.(eam) cheese and, presumably, Parmesan Cheese.

There are two vegetables; Onions and lemons.

There are two pressed and formed food-esque items; fish stix and G.F. chicken nuggets (We can only guess what "G.F." stands for) and I'll even put Hostess Pies and Quaker Quakes into this group.

They also love their carbs; pizza, pretzels, bread, oatmeal bread.

   Or you could group things in a different manner, perhaps "Things to make a meal".

   Let's see.... what could we have for dinner tonight? We'll add some class to our dinner by making a three-course meal.

   As a something to nibble on before our dinner party kicks off, we'll have a platter of pretzels and Quaker Quakes on a beautiful Dale "The Intimidator" Earnhardt commemorative plate.

   If anybody is thirsty, feel free to offer them your diverse selection of beverages; Cokes, cola and orange juice.

   We'll start with an appetizer of 3-Cheese Alaskan Halibut Mini-Bagel Bruschetta; torn up string cheese, cream cheese and Fish Stix (the "X" marks the spot for tastiness) on mini bagels toasted to perfection with a dusting of the finest Kraft Parmesan Cheese.

   Next, we'll move on to the first course, Chicken Nugget Pizza. A delicious Market Basket deep-dish pizza with chicken nuggets artfully arrayed in the shape of the Talladega Speedway.

   For the second course, get ready for Hamburg Surprise! The surprise is ONIONS! A pound of 93% lean ground beef simmered in lemon juice , with a dash of O.J. We'll make a casserole by layering oatmeal bread, hamburg, veins of string cheese with a crumbled Hostess Pie crust. Bake for 15 minutes or until heated all the way through.

   For dessert, we have everybody's favorite, Deep-Fried Cookie Mix! Heat up that vat of partially hydrogenated soybean oil - we have to watch our Trans Fats, don't we? - and toss in cabbage-sized balls of Cookie Mix. Let them sizzle until they are a dark brown on the outside and gooey on the inside.        

* Here's a fun tip; if your guest are gamblers, make a game out of dessert. Get a fondue-pot style fry-a-lator and  put it in the center of the dinner table. See who can make the farthest, half court shot of Cookie Mix in to the fry-a-lator. Takes bets. If your friends are like mine, they're only in Gamblers Anonymous to shut up a spouse - they'll need this non-track-related betting outlet. It's not gambling if it is between friends, right? *

     I hope your dinner party is a hit. 

I bet, it will be!

Coffee Tour - Completed

The Seacoast Coffee Shop Tour was a success.

We rode to 3 states, 10 towns, 6 coffee shops.

We rode 105 miles. 

I peed on the side of the road 4 times.

I bonked before the halfway mark.

I suffered for 4 of the 6 hours we were riding.

I will need at least 3 days to recover from this ridiculous feat.

I have cemented my caffeine addiction.

I did it all on a 44-17 single speed road bike.

I am done with my base miles.

Overall, it was pure sweet hell.

And I will be doing it again when the weather gets better.

Seacoast Coffee Shop Tour 2009

What better way to spend a saturday than peddle your ass around seacoast New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maine?
Wait, maybe the didn't come out right?

Let me start again.

What better way to spend a Februrary day than to ride your bike to ten different coffee shops in three different states?

That's better. That's less ambiguous and licentious.

But that is what R.Kelly and I are going to do on saturday; at least ten coffee shops in ten towns, in 100 miles, in under 7 hours (or before the sun goes down whichever comes first).

I put a hit out to my fellow seacoast-area cyclists and have gotten a mixed bag of results.
Jay told me that he would gladly join me for this ride when the predominant color of the world returns to green, you crazy bastard! Keep in mind, his words not mine.

This is going to be an epic day of riding, extreme stimulant overdose, cookies and cakes, and alot of peeing on the side of the road.

The route will be as follows:
- 8:00 a.m. roll out from Breaking New Grounds in Durham.
- The Big Bean in Newmarket.
- Me and Ollie's in Exeter.
- Hollow Cafe or in Amesbury, on Main Street (I looked it up but don't remember the name).
-Plum Island Roasters or Caffe Di Siena in Newburyport, on some street (I looked it up but don't remember the name).
- some place in either Hampton, Seabrook or Salisbury.
- Cafe Kilim in Portsmouth (although I heard there is a really good place in Kittery).
- there's a bunch of places in Ogunquit (I have been there before but I don't remember its name).
- some place in South Berwick.
- Cafe on the Corner in Dover,
then back to Durham.

Wow.... this is going to be epic. A century ride in February? I've never done it and it might kill me, but it will be quite an adventure.

Stay tuned for an account and pictures.

What they try to slip past you

I don't feel particular motivated to write anything tonight, which includes my profile about a lovely married couple.

One thing that did catch my ear this evening was a quick couple of lines Charlie Gibson read from the teleprompter.

I'll paraphrase it for you:

American Airlines, as of April, will no longer be having a customer service telephone line. If you wish to comment on anything, you must write an e-mail or send a letter.

To steal a line from Frank Wheeler, it seems to me that there is considerable amount of bullshit going on here!

If they are cutting back the staff necessary to field phone calls in order to save money, why should we believe American Airlines will leave the requisite staff in place to read all the e-mails and letters that will coming their way?

Is it just me or does anyone else think the mailing address will be one of those industrial sized document shredders? And the e-mail address might as well be AmericanAirlinesCustomerService@kissmyass.youallfellforourtrick.com.

Since the Annuciation...

So alot has happened since I declared my blod D.O.A.
School has started.
I have begun training for what promises to be an eventful collegiate racing season.
I have interviewed a delightful couple for an english class.
I have managed to fall behind in my reading for class already.

But the most momentous thing of late is that I have begun listening to NPR.
In the past, my music choice has usually been -as was deftly described on one of those commentary shows about the 80's- "music that makes you want to drive fast and punch people."
It was metal, metal, punk, screaming and loud. I remembering thinking that NPR was just what old people listened to because they just couldn't handle as much rocking as I could.
My sister once tried to convince me that NPR wasn't just blabbering and grim news. That there was actually good content. I poo-poo-ed her. I tend to do that alot; poo-poo-ing, in general.
However, I now find NPR to be an excellent source of news, entertainment and generally interesting programing for my short drives around the seacoast area.
I might be getting to old to rock. I don't entirely believe that. I am only offering that as some sort of explanantion.
I think my ability to rock hasn't diminished at all. I cite for you an indoor training ride that I did with the team two saturdays ago. When AC/DC's "Shook Me All Night Long" came on, I had no qualms about shouting all the lyrics, which were particularly ill-timed; it was the two minutes of 10 out of 10 Rate of Perceived Effort (my heartrate soared to somewhere around 190 beats per minute).

On another topic, on World News Tonight this evening, an anchor did a piece about the country's ultra-rich continuing to spend exorbitant amounts of money on luxuxry items, specifically $40,000 suits. These suits are hand-tailored from exotic fabrics, like Alaskan Yak fur, and the white pinstripes are actually white gold!
This left me with one desire; I would love to slap a rich person, particularlly an imbecile that bought one of these suits.
Just flat-out slap him or her. In this situation, I would have no problem if it were a women.
Man, that would feel good... for me.

the forgotten blogs destiny.

I think that my blog is now deceased.

I have not written much since I have returned.
I am not sure if I will continue to write in the future.

There is not much to write about anymore.
As of now, the days proceed in the fashion: wake up, work, come home, shower, go to sleep. Lather, rinse, repeat endlessly.

This is only until school starts again on the 20th.
Then everything will change.

I will start writing again when I start racing in the spring....

... I promise. By that time I will have something worthwhile to write about.