July 2010

for the first time in months, I took a voluntary day off the bike, and slept in – it felt great.  I can see why people take a lot of days off the bike now, haha.  my legs had a full day of recovery after a couple hard weeks of straight riding.  I headed out this morning with mi madre to drop off my road bike at the shop.  I figured it’d need a bit of tidying up since it had been ridden hard a couple thousand miles already.  picked up my new glasses and got them adjusted to my face.  never thought a glasses fitting session could be so helpful but it really was.  these suckers aren’t moving off my face when I ride.  check the new specs.

thin frames means no blind spots.  surprisingly, I can see a lot more without obstruction, and in perfect clarity – my prescription got slightly worse over the past year, corrected by these new lenses.  oh, I forgot to mention, I spent the remainder of the day at my fam’s old house.  it’s where I took the photo above.  here’s what the upstairs looks like:

the sun-room is being converted into another bedroom, which will make the upstairs floor much more functional.  the beam in the center of the photo is being removed and a hallway will be going straight into the room in the back, doors on both sides to access the side bedrooms.  my stepdad is a pro-contractor and engineer.  hell, he used to work for bechtel back in the day, designing dump valves for nuclear power plants.  jobs like this are probably a walk in the park.  then we turned around, and our dog looked something like this:

apparently he was hiding in the upstairs fireplace.  he’s usually white, but in the photo he’s more…soot gray.  here’s what I was doing for a bit:

painting over some graf on the fence, awww snap.

we swung by freewheel on the way back to pick up the caad9.  I snagged more strawberry heed, and 2 samples of melon heed, as suggest by travis.  he said the taste was more mellow, and told me he’d give me some packs to try, instead of buying a whole jug.  I also grabbed more strawberry recoverite, and raspberry hammergel.  stoked to get back on the bike tomorrow!

the front tire on my kink bmx bike began to flat this morning, on my way to work.  I swung by performance bike (thankfully just a block away) and one of the mechanics there was able to swap out the inner tube right away.  problem SOLVED!

I came back to work, and checked my online banking statement.  I was missing roughly $200 from my checking account, turns out my account had been hacked and someone had used the funds on online dating sites like match.com.  I instantly jumped on the phone to resolve it, but after wasting 10 minutes with robots, I said SCREW IT, and just walked over to the branch a block away.  I was shuffled from the teller to another guy at a desk – he basically told me they can’t get the money back until it processes and clears (currently it’s pending and the money is not available in the account).  he gave me the direct number of the fraudulent claims department, as well as the menu numbers to press to get to a person.  as much as I appreciate him giving me the number, I’d much rather have him (or anyone else at the branch) do it, because they probably know a lot more than me about how to handle the claim.  I have a feeling I’ll be talking to him shortly, as soon as those funds clear…AGH.  I hope the person that used my account was attempting to find cycling chicks or something…

oh, then I got a call from the optometrist’s office: my new glasses are IN.  as mentioned several weeks ago, they’re “old man glasses”, straight black frames with an aviator type bridge, clear polycarbonate lenses with 2 types of lens thinning treatment to keep weight down (I don’t want to have to be pushing these glasses up on my face while I’m riding.  after all, they are my riding glasses) – rounded and shaved edges, and a thinner lens compound.  no transitions, or tint of any kind.  might be picking these up during the week, not sure though. my mom is picking up her glasses at the same time, so I might just wait until she goes so I can get a free ride.  jealous? SUP.

those fraud charges on my account made me feel all sad inside, so to make myself feel better, I placed an order on amazon for a tiger tail foam muscle roller.  check out this awesome image:

after a ride, I’ve been lacking a proper muscle massage to work out the lactic acid.  this muscle roller is the perfect post-ride recovery tool.  I’ll admit it…I’m the worst at leg massages.  I even think so – I’ve given myself dozens after rides, and none of them feel like they’re doing much of anything.  my cousin’s boyfriend had this laying around their house, and I played with it for a couple minutes.  it was something I knew I had to have for my muscles.  I also ordered the steelseries xai, laser gaming mouse.  ever since zain (therealzigzags.com) got his, and I tried it out in person, I knew it was THE mouse.  the high definition laser is so precise and smooth.  there is nothing on the planet that has ever felt so smooth and linear.  it’s perfectly symmetrical and the best feeling mouse I’ve ever held in my hand.

hopefully these fraud charges get reversed shortly and my life can settle a bit.  match.com -  are you F#$%ING KIDDING ME.  COME ON.

I showed up to bespoke today a bit earlier than my appointment, but ari was nice enough to start right away.  bespoke is a professional fitting studio and boutique bike shop.  they’ve got lots of customs hanging up – seven, parlee, serotta, and lots more.  ari is very knowledgeable on EVERY aspect of fitting someone on a bicycle, and told me exactly what was wrong with my current foot position inside the shoes.  apparently, I have issues with my arches, my foot bones being crushed, and some other stuff I forgot…it got pretty technical.  I’m impressed.  the first thing that was measured was my foot and toe length.  then we moved onto an esoles branded foot scanner.  it was DOPE – my foot “depth” was scanned by an air-filled bladder with a laser and camera underneath it.  it’s a bit hard to explain, but that’s what ari is setting up in the picture.

the fact that travis went to the same fitting class says even more – PROS ARE PRO.