Weekly and Monthly Goals

If I don't put these down then I probably won't get to them until September. The design is to put out a weekly goal list and progress report every Sunday, and to also put out a monthly goal list on the 1st of every month.

So for the month of November

Body - Drop to 190 by Dec 1st, begin track training, put together race schedule for 08
Mind - Draw a fairly accurate self-portrait, Work halfway through Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, cTake 4 GRE Practice exams, Work on penmanship everyday
Spirit - Write a letter with everyone in my immediate family

For the week beginning Nov 4th
Body - End membership at the gym, fix bike
Mind - Complete the first project in the Drawing book
Spirit - Write to Kelsey & Grandma

1st Success

Today I woke up at 6am on the dot, according to the clock in my room, which is actually about 8 minutes fast. This slight inconsistency may lead to a small problem if I ever get into a situation where I need to base my sleep schedule on a real government monitored time, but until I get to that stage I think I'll just be happy with what I've got.

Primary Goal - Wakeup at 6am, Check

It was actually pretty difficult and there was a lot of rationalization going on from both ends of the spectrum, with part of me wanting to head back to sleep, and the other half of me trying to follow the guidelines I set up last night. For me, and I think for most people, its always been a matter of getting htat first step out the bed, and then enough steps away to leave the gravitational pull of the uber comfortable sheets and sprawling warm body who I'm lucky enough to lay next to every night. In the end I simply told myself I can go back to sleep after I'm done with my posting for the morning. A perfectly respectable compromise, one whic I'm not sure if I intend to followup on, but it was enough to get me out of bed this morning.

For some reason I just received an intense urge to be in the middle of a clear mountain morning, 7000 feet above sea level with a snowboard strapped to my feet. Breathing in the delicious sharp air and preparing for that first run.

Its been too long, going on three years since I was last up a mountain side. Well, snowboarding that is.

Goals for the day
Body - Workout in the park 4x25 pushups, 4x5 pullups, 4 x15 jumpups
Mind - Drawing & GRE Practice
Spirit - Letter to Grandma & Train Solon 15 minutes

Following a true blue pattern

Given the various amounts of energy I spend towards doing things which have no real import, I'm wondering if I shouldn't come up with two different classes of daily effort, one being Passive Effort, and the other being Active Effort. Recently it seems everything I'm doing revolves around passive effort, simply floating from idea to idea with no real trajectory of thought or coalition of energy. Akin to dogpaddling upriver when I'm quite proficient with a freestroke, the feeling is quite strange, especially considering I want to enter into Harvard's GSD within the next year or so, hopefully next year, but if not, then the year afterwards, which would put me in the awkward position of having way too much time to do way too much. However, at this juncture, I simply want to transform most of this PE to AE. Its hard. Active Energy takes concentration and willpower, and the ability to ignore distractions while simultaneously returning to work once the unavoidable distractions are dealt with. I don't think I've ever had a long bout of Active Effort, which is a shame. Most of this probably lies at the feet of my high passive effort threshold. I've never had to really work for anything in my life, never had trouble fulfilling any longterm goals, although in retrospect, there is always room for improvement had I chosen. In a way, I've created my own worst enemy, willing to accept better than mediocrity, when I could be creating the best. And its basically a matter of walking down the various paths I know are in front of me without trying to hop on any others. And to keep walking everyday, regardless of pain, weather, difficulty or opposition.

This blog is one of the paths I've chosen, one of the ones I've jumped off and on continuously for over a year. And once again I wanted to quit it, because it didn't match up perfectly with my current goals. It was a blog designed to fit the wandering mind of a struggling athlete, and here I am, writing about esoteric paths with no resemblance to a workout plan, nutrition analysis or story of frustrated bicycle repairs. Yet, this blog is still mine, and represents more than just the 44 weeks left before an Ironman begins. That title of 44 weeks also applies to setting a goal and then finishing it. It still applies. This time I have 8 weeks, 8 weeks of study time before my GREs, a little over 9 weeks before the application is due. And the goal setting is applicable again. But I want to do better than floating in on a high threshold of Passive Effort. I want to use all the Active Effort I found in my Ironman to push myself everyday. To transform myself into a person who gets up and gets it done. Everyday.

Starting with this blog.

Starting with my handwriting.

Starting with waking up in the morning.

Starting with studying everyday.

Starting with corresponding with the people I love.

Starting with training and eating right.

Starting with a goal and continuing everyday with effort.

Already my mind is met with attempts by Passive Effort to creep in on these vows of lazibacy. Like not writing down that I want to make a goal for each day, or a list of goals. Or a goal for each week, and each month, and each quarter... each year. But these goals are so necessary, and the first and most important daily goal I have, the one which will provide the bedrock behind all my future success, is to wake up early. At 5am, everyday. Starting tomorrow, and continuing everyday.

Each day, at 5am, I will wake up, and write down one goal for my pyramid (body-fitness, mind-LA, spirit-family). Then throughout the day I can update this blog with progress on those goals and with little snippets from my life. So that someday, I'll have some catalog of performance to look back at, that'll be nice.

Not much going on inside here

I think I may kill this blog, start my next one with the race report from Louisville. I'd like to create a website for it, we'll see.

Laziness and effort

This first year of triathlon training has taught me quite a few thing about myself, most of which are indefinable and the gains of which are difficult to ascertain but when I look back I find a black hole of effort, that magnificent vortex sucking calories into the three disciplines of triathlon. Everyone says there is a 4th discipline, the mental aspect, but I’d like to add another, the stress management discipline. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but the stress levels I occasionally encounter on this long road destroy my morale, tackle my motivation and fuel the endless excuses not to take that first step down the path. Every day starts with that first step away from comfort, from mediocrity and subsistence. Perhaps because this triathlon represents my first true venture into the realm of competitive individual sporting, and because I have no anticipation of the reward, no inkling of what lies in store for me as the fruit of this enormous tree I’m watering. I’m lacking that extra motivation, and stress has filled its oddly sized vacuum.

Yesterday a battle raged at noon when I donned my war robes and tried to move my bicycle from stop to go. I begin my training best when I’ve already eliminated as many excuses as possible for not training before I have to make the critical choice of whether to exit the door or not. Over the course of the last two decades I developed and coaxed from my mental vocabulary the ability to procrastinate and discover in the slightest details a reason to abort a training mission. I deal with this by prepping my plan and waking up as early as near to 5am as possible (my active hour) in order to leave without fuss before I realize what the hell I’m doing and how crazy it would be not to fall back asleep next to my beautiful girlfriend in a wonderfully comfortable bed. Most of the time I’ve failed in the past, yet recently I find myself more and more successful, waking up, falling back asleep, then waking up again shortly later to berate myself and slowly, achingly, wearily drag myself from solace to torture. Urgency has become the mother of my determination, with my Ironman bearing down on me with the full force of its Herculian requirements stirring me to leave lazy behind.

And yet I still feel lazy, still feel as if I could do more everyday, and I probably could, I could get in that evening run, and skip that second helping, swim that extra lap and push myself to another interval. I can do it, but still, more often than not, I do not. For this reason I still feel lazy, when macroscopically, I shouldn’t, not when I’m on average; racking up 200+ miles on my bicycle, 10000 + yards swimming and 15-30 miles running, every week. A person shouldn’t feel lazy with those numbers breathing down their neck. Next year I’ll stop being lazy. Next year as in October, when we start it all up again.

Coming up: The winter training plan

Truth in vision

Perhaps you need a little more experience to find the true analogies, the ones which universally relate to all, or most people, or enough people to support the analogy’s foundation… When does wisdom flower its tender buds. Perhaps once the major decisions have been made and the only remaining projects extract so little energy as to allow reflection on all the inordinately stupendous analogies the world has to offer.

I like ocean, mountains, people energy, beautiful lines and a strong community, street cafes and small roads... You know the thing America truly fails at? Its art and beauty and life, they all exist in brief spurts of vibrant flame and esoteric beauty, but these centers of light and life are always separated by vast spaces of mundane. I feel as if the mundane and the acceptance of mundane are the bane of spirit and adventure, life and energy. It devours these havens and nibbles away until the Starbucks and the Walmarts have control and the mundane can redeclare its presence and dominance.

Yet, perhaps its not any one generation’s fault and is not so simple a problem to solve that we can point to and command people to proclaim their individuality and adorn the garments of uniqueness. Perhaps we can only ask each generation to submit a few creative candidates to the test of time, to decorate the city in small doses of spirit and energy until a finally the buildup of these talents burn through mediocrity to create a nest of spirit.

In truth, perhaps the lesson lies in the combination of the two principles set above, wisdom and beauty derive from the coalescence over time of small nuggets of creativity and spirit. After an indeterminate critical mass gathers we may safely regard that conscious city or mind with the respect garnered by its lifetime of accumulation.

Small creative steps over time. The mundane fills the multitude, but given enough time, small creative steps overcome.

A ride and a swim

I rode to the Walden Pond reservation this morning, passing through a dank humid fog dense enough to arrest the use of my glasses from shear moisture accumulation. I played a cat and mouse game with the cracks and the holes, valleys and mountains plaguing Greater Boston’s average street. It is not so much the road feature itself which provides the problem, dangerous as some of those 2 foot wide gaps may be for my 3lb, 2mm thick tire, as it is the actions I must take to avoid such road hazards. My bike handling skills easily allow for the zigs and zags I must make on split-second notice, but unfortunately, the plush lexus and bmw behind me don’t notice the road gaps and canyons at 35mph, they don’t move to avoid the 4 inch hole that can send me flying. Instead they listen to Bach or 2pac and if I’m lucky, they wonder why that crazy bicyclist can’t ride in a straight line and secretly tally all the points they could have garnered if only they could find the guts to wipe these pests off their tarmac territories. If I’m unlucky, they’re in the midst of a karaoke session with their favorite Britney Spears or KISS song and before I know it, they don’t have to find the guts because they got lucky by accident and fortunately for them, blood washes off and the dent can easily be hammered out by an unskilled rubber-hammer wielding laborer from the nearby Quickie Mart.

Fix the roads.

While swimming through the fog hugging the shore after choosing to dismiss my original plan to strike out through the middle as slightly unwise for an amateur swimmer with little to no experience in open water and visibility lingering at 20-30ft. Off I set, wetsuit floating me along as I heat up to unreasonable temperatures, undoubtedly doing myself some form of damage as I pray for some cooling god to magically transport ice down my back where it will last no longer than five minutes, but what a blessed five minutes. It didn’t happen, and I continued. 1.16 miles… circa 2000 meters in about 45 minutes, with stops, that’s not a very fast pace, but its better than nothing. The next step is to do it nonstop, then to do it twice, then up and down the center a couple times, with hopefully three times out and back before the Ironman. Other than those goals I’m going to live in the pool, which ought to be sooo much fun.

Manali, Himachal Pradesh

We managed to find a luxury bus out of Delhi, not too fabulous by Western standards, but on the flats we felt sheltered from the excesses of the engine compartment, and for some reason, when you emblazon a "Volvo" symbol on the front and sides of the bus in large enough characters, it is roughly the same as adorning a semitruck with vicious looking red & orange lights arranged in snarling rictuses or blood dripping orgasms. In any case, the effect of such adornments was that other vehicles on the road dived to the side when the distinctive roar of the V-million engine asundered the nightly racket. Perhaps the drivers took special courses in the art of "chicken" and wore special talismans allowing them to bend the metal frame of their chariots in order to squeeze around the 15 ton concrete-bearing lorries while simultaneously avoiding the colorfully painted yak-drawn school bus moving at 5km/hour. All this while driving on roads occasionally reaching 5 meters in width (for two lanes of traffic) but only when counting the massive mud trenches found every few feet.



As I may or may not have mentioned, it was a surprisingly nice voyage and while Norm and I couldn't quite seem to defeat the 4-inch-too-short coffin we'd allowed ourselves to be paired up into in order to fall asleep on a hopefully clean 2-inch pad of foam, I, having the window seat, was able to entertain myself with various predictions regarding the chances of us making it up the mountain drive. I have heard descriptions of the occasionally terrifying busride in exotic locales and I like to think of myself as somewhat of a connieseur of the death-defying acrobatics of four-wheeled vehicles in precipitious locations. In Italy along the Amalfi coast, the bus drivers seemed to believe the early morning first rides were perfect for course records and testing braking systems, but luckily we were traveling south and travelling along the inside lane so I only had to worry about the occasional falling rock turning the tire and flipping us instantly off the lemon-laden cliffs in a beautiful pirouette of "ciao bella's" and "qu-est que c'ests." And even the maddening trips of southern India where busdrivers drank the blood of bulls and devoured the souls of vampires in order to maintain the fortitude to charge into certain death on the wrong side of every road with the grave and solemn duty to both intricate and extricate each and every tourists' lives countless times. No, this was manageable as well, with fear taking a back seat to fascination after fear had been stomped down by repetition. Yet there was something about travelling into the mountain passes of the Himalayas, following coursing glacial rivers whose occasional gleam of light may or may not have been that last poor unsuspecting nun's rosary floating in the water, drifting from the collision her bus made with the rapidly approaching ground. Perhaps it was the sickening switchbacks attempting to dislodge my stomach from the very comfortable position it had been lodged in since my unlikely birth, or the fact that during the night I could look up and see the crystal stars flickering their brilliance upon the road, followed by the realization that the reflection from the road was actually that same beautiful glacial river shining 150 meters below, further eclipsed by the knowledge that the only thing keeping you from getting a close up of that reflection was a meter tall wall and the four Indian-maintained strips of rubber connected to the wildly whirring engine of the banshee driver we'd contracted.



Following is a briefer description of this scene; "Dude look at those stars! Holy shit, is that the river? Down there! Where's the edge of the road? What do you mean you can't see it? No don't lean over you idiot, you might tip the bus! If you can't see it, shit, well, you can't see it. Hell no I'm not switching spots with you!"



After hours of this the mind goes numb, the

Poor Nutrition and a long swim

Body
This weekend I failed to complete many of my goals; no long ride, no long run, half the distance swimming I contemplated going into it. And not for any good reason, just because when I woke up in the morning, often early enough to get started, I chose comfort over effort, even though I often find myself more comfortable once in the effort than when I am lazing around munching on different elements of my refrigerator. But not only did I fail in my workouts, I failed in my responsibilities within the household, not running Solon, barely helping Erica with dinner and shopping and baking and all the mundane chores of a weekend following a long week. When I left the house it was to sit in the car on the way to a park or walk a few miles at such a leisurely pace my legs stiffened up from confusion, thinking they were being pulled out for use when in fact it was only a cruel joke in which the slowest possible path could be found to the destination.

Mind
Yet, I am not unhappy with myself, I read Harry Potter and got through about half the book, wonderful story, one which I can only hope to match someday if I ever get writing. My latest flirtation with thinking follows along the lines of photography, writing and fantasy, and trying to create a fantasy guide to Boston, or other major cities for that matter. It'd be fun to take modern day cityscapes and put in another world or two (in the spirit of Harry Potter), but given my relative naivety in the matter, I would have to start slow and short. What fun though to combine history, fantasy and photography in a contemporary setting.

Soul
The complete lack of work I find myself doing (or not doing) gives me the time to start exploring some of these options and with the end of the Tour de France I have more time to fill these empty hours with thoughts and meditations on the meaning of everything I see around me. I don't want to start here though, its too scattered, too mundane for me to begin thinking introspectively with the content above. So perhaps a new post will find its way to me as I note the things that mean something in the moment about to pass.

Only a mile

4:30am is early, my alarm went off at 4:30am, I didn't crawl out of bed until 4:31. Any later and I don't think I would've made it, but as soon as my feet hit the ground there was no turning back. The next step in my evolution into a truly fit athlete was planned, and onto Red I climbed to bounce through the early morning hours. Around 6am I arrive at Walden Pond, sky morning blue with the sun only barely touching the far side of the lake. Arms lifted and fell in the water before me and I stood a little in reflection before I realized I'd forgotten my towel and had to run around the corner in order to get changed... bummer...

Pulling the #39 Yamamoto rubber around me makes me feel like I'm donning the fairing of a supped-up Japanese crotchrocket, realizing whats underneath makes me feel like I forgot to order the engine. As I'm approaching the water I hear a few guys talking about first swims and glean from the conversation its one of the trio's first time out. Turns out its not, but the three let me tag along and occasionally check back for me as I struggle to find my form in this new, infinitely more murky environment. They pull ahead, I pull to the side to check the manifold, the heads, the gasket, basically to make sure the engine is still in working order. Then like a new rider at the local track, I hug to the outside, and keep everything within my very limited abilities, especially the speed (in this account lets connote speed with the depth of the water). I make my way along the edge, almost keeping pace with that earlier trio, noticing every so often that the other new guy also was struggling at points, which gave me an immeasurable boost of confidence, reminding me that everyone started at some point, and those without the insanity of teenage youth usually start with more trepidation. Around I go, those other swimmers acting as a target, gaining more confidence and slowly choosing more ambitious goals... instead of hugging the shore, bridging the gap between two distant small peninsulas, pushing myself into more even stroking, delivering all my breath to the lake without holding it back in. I have a long ways to go, but progress was being made, and Saturday's two lap swim will go much much better, I just have a feeling.

The ride back was good, more traffic of course which is always annoying, but more downhill and warmer muscles, also being able to see the cracks in the road lends some enjoyment to the process.

The goals for the next few days:

Friday :
SWIM - 20 min technique (side flotation) 20 min interval work,
BIKE - 20 min fast spinning in aero, 20 min interval
RUN - 10 min warmup 10 min interval, 10 min cooldown
situps and pushups and stretching

Saturday and Sundays schedules to come

Its unlike any other

I received my wetsuit in the mail yesterday, and last night the sleep devils stole my desire to do the swim I'd planned for the morning. The only upside of their arrival is the almost certainty I will be able to fall asleep and stay that way for a long period of time. Thats the dream at least. I'm so nervous, the pool swims break my rhythm and I haven't been able to find my breath during them. I have a feeling I will find it though as soon as I delve deeper into that well of seeping water. But first I must get there, so tomorrow and friday begin my experimentation with riding the 30 mile roudn trip with the mile long lake swim thrown into the jam to split it up a little.

Nervous...?

Hell yeah!

What are cars doing here

Its time for another post, most appropriately begun with a
random thought or analogy. 

 

What are the wind velocities influencing a tree about to
blown off a cliff in southwestern France?  And why?

 

In this most recent iteration of the journal of crazy
thoughts and sampled foods we’ll investigate the traffic design of automobiles in
their unending quest to firmly tramp down people’s creative personifications.  Just when are corporations going to introduce
creative facility into mass production? 
Certainly its been improving, but with the degree of automation taking
place in the transportation of goods, and the number of specializations which
have to be taken into account during the production of even the simplest
manufactured goods, why is personalization not a larger portion of the process.  Certainly you can change certain aspects,
size, color, heated seats, blah blah blah… Yet it seems if we standardize the
connection points (ex.  Weld points and
structural reinforcement joints), you can put just about any topping on the ice
cream as long as everything fits in the bowl. 
That may be a fairly obscure analogy to relate but it works… So why not
a civic front with a flat bed in the back, why can’t I have the dodge viper
combined with a Durango,
straight from the production line.  Why
go custom when it should be a fairly simple process of designing cars so they
can be made from a single blueprint, with an outer coat that fits just about
anyone’s wildest imaginations.  Naturally
you’d need the websites to confer personalization upon the consumer, yet that
doesn’t seem so difficult. 

 

I think I’m going to stop ranting and start yawning.  Maybe after the lunch run I’ll have something
more constructive to add to the poor souls of the world.

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Riding with the dead

Sometimes on hard pushes I'm finally able to dissociate from the world and focus.  Whether triggered by a happy moment or a long silence, a smooth road or beautiful vista, these moments are what I live for.  Today, on a 12 mile lunch hour circuit I've really enjoyed the past two times I've done it, I relaxed and entered "the mood."



I wouldn't call it a zone because it wasn't perfect and I knew that, I had other thoughts bouncing around the sides, but it was as close to the zone as I've been in a long long time and traveling through "the mood" lifted me higher and higher.  Perhaps its simply the endorphins picking their way through my central nervous system, activating long-lost cousins of good feelings and enjoyment...



It happened as I swung past my second cemetery of the ride, the smaller one on the nicer street, just a little past the town line for Brookline.  Enormous antiquated houses overshadowed the little road, pushing against the constraints of the concrete as if trying to swallow the link between modern society and their storied pasts.  Fortunately for me, while their efforts may not have been entirely  in vain, the laws of gravity and characteristics of dead wood kept me from their vengeful clasps.  Following this narrow road I entered "the mood" and began speculating on the true role of cemeteries.  My thoughts followed the contour of the land, rising and falling with the elevation gained and lost by my madly pedaling feet, but as with my physical being, they too pushed forward, driven by their own mad motors and levers of abstraction and creativity.  What is a cemetary?  A resting place? For those who no longer need to rest?  A internment for those who lack the ability to put forth effort and therefore do not require the recovery of the weary?  As I rode, my mind flew farther and farther from these first vagaries and drew closer to another definition, perhaps the cemetery is a symbol, one which we use to counterpose life against, for who does not think of their own lives as they visit those monuments to passage? 



Then I forced myself to concentrate.  The road was getting a little hairy with enormous potholes providing a vangaurd for the street canyons and sand traps on the outsides of most corners.  Luckily I flew through this area far too fast to do anything but smile grimly in retrospect at the various amounts of danger one can ignore while strenuously exercising on two square inches of rubber moving at 28mph.



My thoughts moved, as they usually do while riding, to issues of national importance; are my feet "scraping the bottom" of the rotation? How long can I hold this pace?  What's that sharp pain?  Who's looking at me?  Drop the butt?  Oh the burn...



82 days

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More pain, less glory

Well, I assume some updates are in order.  Recently I've flown through a 100 mile spring century, totally destroying what I thought I'd be able to do and setting my sights really high for the future,  I just have to find ways to keep pushing to that next level.  My swim and run are still far from perfect, but with the bike aerobic capacity already there, I think its a matter of breathing right and perseverance for both of them while the speed gets pushed up into the stratosphere.  Being in the crust currently, I still have a ways to go, but thats the mental toughness again.  I'm one step of confidence, breath control and a good flip turn from being an allstar in the pool, and I've finally found a good rhythm with my workouts and my early work with high cadence is paying off.  And now that my fitness is really taking off, I'm looking forward to workouts and love the burn.  I mean who is this guy.  A couple years ago I prided myself on sleeping marathons of 14 hours or more and now I'm training for an Ironman with its incumbent 5am workouts and 9:30 lights-out schedule.  I guess the transformation mirrors the one in my life, from money-seeking individualist, to relative family-man altruist.  Who knows where the key changes were, but they sure as hell are there.



25 years old and the dreams have changed, although the desire to change the world still lingers just below the surface, pushing me to new and better things... We'll see if I can find them, sort them and succor them.  Or something.  Time to shed a new skin and see whats molting underneath. Twenty-five

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Pounding the trail

As I sit here debating which leg is going to be tighter when
I finally accept the fact that there is no magic panacea for soreness, I’m
realizing that I still am very warm.  I’m
sure my heart rate remains elevated and I think my visual acuity continues to
surpass the average.  However, I also
have a couple extra yawns but surprisingly, no desire whatsoever to gripe, at
anything.  I’m not sure what it is,
because yesterday I was a grumpy humbugger and probably a disaster to be
around, but today, I woke up with a pop despite what I thought was a lack of adequate
sleep, got to the gym by 5:30, worked out for a good 2 hours straight, and just
finished a wonderful run through Franklin Park where I pushed the fatigue into
a little pocket, clasped it shut and let it collect some lint while I banged
out a nice 5 miler.   Go me.

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The first Century

A momentous day...



It was a ride called the Spring Classic and it went from a town a
little north of boston, and did a loop up into New Hampshire on a
rolling hill route.  It was great, spectacular and very wet.  I wasn't
even sure if I was going to go but I managed to drag myself out of bed
at 6am and get all my gear into the car, fill up on gas and get there
by around 7:10.  Signed up, paid the entry fee, grabbed a little bite
to eat, had my bike glanced over by a mechanic who gave it the look of
death, one which I'm coming to respect from most professional eyes, but
hey, she still runs.  I actually saw one of my coworkers, Irene, from
the Alzheimer's Assoc. who was the one who convinced me to do the
Ironman this year and she was looking well except for I guess she had
an injury to her glutes that has kept her from training as hard as
she's wanted.  I'm pretty sure she's still training harder than me. 
Anyway, I'm chatting with her when they announce the groups to go out,
and the 23-25 mile an hour group leaves without me, good riddance, and
I let the 20-22 mph group take off as well.  I decide to head out with
the 18-20 mph group and bid adieu to Irene as she gives me the "good
riddance" glance.  Naturally our group catches up with the 20-22 mph
group at the first light and we never broke apart again. Which meant
the pace was dictated by the faster elements of that group, a pace
which I was surprisingly able to manage ok, probably because I was
drafting.  But with somewhere between 30 and 40 of us out there,
basically everybody was drafting.  The first 30 miles flew by and when
the first rest stop arrived at mile 46 I was a little tired from not
hydrating or eating well (I had one sip of my honey bottle - yes I
drink it straight - and maybe a quarter of my water bottle, definitely
doing a bad job) but there were all kinds of deliciousness to be had at
the waterstop so I filled up there as best as possible. 





Some of the frontrunners, me included by this point, had started
pushing the pace around mile 40 and were eager to get back on the road
so after about 5-10 minutes we took off again.  This time I think some
of the tired ones had gotten into the front and were barely moving so a
couple fellows and myself got out on the front of the train and started
pushing the pace again.  While the group stayed together, it was only
about five of us who were driving the pace, I kind of felt like Team
Postal  when they wanted to kill off the slower teams during the Tour
de France.  Every time I looked back, the "peloton" was stretched out
as we broke into an average of 22-23 mph on the straights.  I'm just
glad I was at the front because I hate having to deal with the traffic
as people slow down and manuevar for space and safety farther back in
the group, up near the front people just push and you simply have to be
careful you don't get too close (3 inches is too close) to the person
in front of you's back wheel.  Anyway, we're following this river and
come to a couple good hills, the first steep ones since about mile 30,
and the other couple leaders and I continue to push the pace up the
hill.  Most of the group manages to follow us, but I can hear the heavy
breathes and realize most of them are probably hurting a little bit.  I
should have taken the time to eat something here but idiot that I am...
we continue along this beautiful river road, the rain starting up a
little and the road becoming more saturated so the roaster tails of
water flicking up from tires, that before were minor annoyances, soon
became barriers to visibility.  And you could forget about being dry. 
Period.  I'd been squee-geeing water off my glasses for a while, but
now my gloves were too wet to do any good so I just settled for trying
to make out brightly colored indistinct shapes.





We finally came across a pretty big hill, maybe a couple hundred feet
long and almost straight up.  I was about fourth in line after just
putting in my pull with the other major leader right in front of me. 
Soon he starts slowing down, I found out later he slipped on a piece of
rubber and lost his rythym, and the front two begin pulling away, I'm
sitting here debating whether to break past him or let him pull me up
the hill when two guys in matching uniforms pull up next to us and
smoothly pass the both of us.  Turns out they had a break down earlier
and they were actually from the 23-25 group.  Decision made, I hop
around my buddy's back wheel and attach myself to this mini-train and
we all fly up the hill, quickly catching the original two breakaways
and pulling them into tow.  Now its just 5 of us and once we get to the
top of that hill, the normal rest and reprieve doesn't show up and we
begin flying!  Slow pulls were at 22-23 mph and the pace began to wear
at my endurance.  Luckily, the rest stop at 76 popped up in no time and
I was able to stuff some food down the now dry and empty gullet.  This
time I could have used a little longer stop but the two matching riders
pulled out almost as soon as we arrived.





This final leg of the ride was pretty tough, the rain coming down in
torrents, hills around every corner and a seeping fatigue starting to
make me count every mile.  I hang in with these time travelers from the
Spanish Inquisition and make it to about mile 95, and the last hill,
where I broke, and fell off the 20mph pace, falling to about 17 before
evening out around 19 on the flats.  I dragged myself in, grabbed some
food, talked to some of the guys I rode with and tried to stay awake on
my way home.  Man what a day.





Doing things differently, I need a new way to access the honey, it was
delicious, but too hard to get to in my back pocket and too hard to
suck out.  I need something that sucks out easier and I need to be able
to place it somewhere at the front of my bike.  I'll finagle
something.  I also need to rearrange the setup on my bike so I can add
another water bottle and drink more on the ride.  I'm glad we went out
easy, and I'm also glad I got on the fast train and pushed the pace, it
felt great.

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A group of children ran through a fire

Holding rubber bands in my hands right now I realize I was a pretty bad parent this morning.  My puppy was innocently riding in his trailer when it flipped over on a turn I took too quickly.  I take all the blame, but I might also place a little on the manufacturer who has now made it so hard to urge our puppy into the trailer.  He was not happy about the dragging.  And now I don't know what to say

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A little pain

"Bring it on," she said in a wickedly humorous soft undertone.  "Who me?" I responded quickly, now wondering what the hell I was getting myself into.  "Yeah you pipsqueak! Wake the hell up!" my alarm clock once again screamed with pitiless ferocity.  I think my alarm clock must be a "she" because the merciless, vengeance driven attacks could only stem from those double-chromosome roots.  A masculine alarm clock would simply buzz me once, perhaps blowing out an eardrum or two, but with no subtlety, no holding back, and no extending pain, unless perhaps its a Syrian torture alarm clock, then all bets are off.  But a feminine clock builds and builds, slowly but surely, starting off with a small buzz, but gaining in momentum until before I know it, a headache has foundered in that slight chasm behind the left temporal lobe, cascading that emotionless nagging into those pure, simple places which relax me as I'm waking up.  Give me the shotgun blast, the needles walking up my spine just don't do me any good.



5am



Up and out by 5:15, the air is a little chillier than I expected with the 85 degree forecast but I'll survive and I leave my sleeves at home.  10 minutes later I enter the gym and check the weight.  193.  Going down, pretty much.  I'll take it...  And then I enter, the pool room, where at 5:30am 5 people have already swarmed the 3 miniscule lanes, pushing themselves up and down the pool by pure willpower.  I know this because their form should have been actually sending them backwards in the pool and while I stood there watching their odd defiance of the laws of physics, a sly little lady almost snuck into my lane but luckily I whipped out my my sterling gold goggles, knocked her into a trash chute and began my workout.  My endurance seems to be going up, and I was doing 100 yards sets without too much trouble, although for some reason my tight chest wouldn't let mem breathe as properly as I needed.  Without taking the rather drastic approach of adding a set of lungs in my armpit cavities, I finally managed to get the bubbles to flow out of my nose in a fairly predictable manner.  I'm just hoping when I show up tomorrow morning there won't be a full deck of swimmers waiting to mangle the water (irreparable of course) with their piston stroke mechanics.



Off to the ride I went, and finding myself promptly lost, I proceeded to increase my exposure by pretending to ride backwards down the wrong side of the street.  Successful, unfortunately, no.  Widely imaginative, an astounding YES!  But I did manage to find my way back home an hour later where a strangely intransigent puppy both refused to run with me, and later refused to walk.  I believe his most valuable moment of the morning was when he pretended to be a bucking horse on a long tether and ran circles around me trying to achieve freedom from my mostly nonviolent methods of confinement.  Why he choses to leave the treats in my hand for the poop on the ground is a question none of our psychologists can answer for me.  Maybe its time to revisit that voodoo mistress who set me up with the new Cadillac.



Live crazier

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I guess its better if I just start writing

I think its been a month since I last posted anything so I better get back on track.  Its surprising because I have a new bed thats been letting me sleep better and longer, but I've fallen off on many of the things which were keeping my schedule together before.  Well perhaps not many... but enough.  And I guess the fact that I don't really use the computer at home anymore has stymied some of the creative opportunities there but whatever.



So the bike is well, screwed.  And this isn't an easy fix.  Well, relatively speaking its easy compared to some of the things you could do to a bicycle, but its neither a fast nor quick fix, and will require more than a couple pennies.  Basically I sheared the pedal threads on the crank.  Not so helpful for much more than teaching you how to ride with one leg, which is in fact quite helpful sometimes.  Not now.



Other than that fairly major fadoogle, my bike was in ok fashion, minus the back breaks, front breaks, front wheel hub, seat, stem-threading, oh and the fact that 7 years after the initial purchase, I've finally found out the sizing may be wrong for me, which counters many years of stubborn refusal to admit to friends there might be something wrong with how freakishly high my seat always was (I don't think a change in geometry would change that at all).  I wish I wish I wish.... I had a genie bottle, that'd probably be better thanything else I might ask for.

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A new perspective

I guess I'm getting into the groove of this bloggin thing because i'm entirely ready to move into a fantasy world and leave this real lief stuff far behind. Who really wants to read the same drivel about how good or bad a workout went, how many hours a real person spent doing something or somewhat? Its just time to stop it and get down to the work of fabricating the personality my superego keeps on trying to impose on me.

I used to have these dreams or rather, I used to be unable to get to sleep because every time I closed my eyes I'd experience a titanic struggle between my id and superego, finding myself rocking back and forth between imagery of extreme fatness or extreme thinness. One second I'd visualize this person expanding and expanding, the next shrinking and shrinking, and unable to get to sleep the entire time, for hours on hours, as I tried to get my brain to normalize and see figures as normal.

I figure it was a simply due to the dark time in my life, one of uncertainty where pink elephants were no longer joyous, and Santa Claus lost weight. Luckily that time is past, I've moved on to greener fields, with a wonderful girlfriend, a beautiful puppy, and some strangely endearing desire to always be finding something new and interesting to do or push myself at.

Ah why not, just keep running

Honored and surprised

I've been a little taken aback by the mental and training philosophies I've seen in a brief survey of the bloggers out there in the tri community. Maybe I don't realize it, but what i'm doing is pretty extreme. Never having raced, never having run a marathon, swam a mile and having done only a few centuries, and I have the audacity to assume I can finish an Ironman.

Sure why not.

Honestly, I truly believe there is nothing standing between me and this goal but my own willpower and motivation. Sure I won't beat the competition, sure I'll be beat to crap by everything in the way, and will probably exhaust myself far beyond my means or any idea of what I think I'm doing, but thats ok, I can deal, because its in pursuit of something truly meaningful to me... me. I'm fairly content with being selfish and arrogant, however, leaving everything to chance and hoping for the best, not pushing hard enough nor long enough are not in me. I will finish this large son of a bitch, and well, not the best certainly, that comes with time I assume, and who nows how time will treat my fancy.

dreams, Dreams and DREAMS

Every day I encounter these dreams of mine,cauterizing my soul with their bleak imagery and haunting wisps of reality. HOw to figure out the obscurities of my mind from these ... Concentrate... I keep going off on these tangents of thoughts as I try and figure out the best concepts and wording wfor my ideas and ramblings. By their vvery nature, ramblings should be incoherent, poorly worded, and ... there I go again, trying to find another word for tantamount, because it doesn't quite work and look where I've led myyself, far fromt he topic of dreams and their meaningfulness to the id, ego and superego. SO where to begin again. Oh yeas, my dreams of late, have been occcuring with more and more vividness and this internal dream, ex[ressedduring the waking moments of my sleep, inversely compares with the vivacity of my life. Now I'm settling into my work, Train routine, things are so slow, and yet pass so quickly. How is it possible this paradox exists within my time frame. dream - swimming with shark. Dream - completing my Ironman. DREAM - Creating an afterschool program for the gifted. Why not. ... Maybe I should start writing these lbogs when I'm not scattered all to pieces and my mind tired from a day full of vibrant nothingness, the kind always idling up behind me ready to strike away the moments of nonequilibrium... Gone now is rationality, in its place, true reamblings.

Sharks and Soldiers

I had a few dreams last night that could pass off as vivid, one in which I was exploring a land where the middle east interacted with Japanese mercenaries and the green line ran North-South past desolate outcroppings of red and white stone. Then another where soldiers were dropped into shark infested waters with some sort of propulsion and forced to make the best of things. The sharks and stingrays swam around after me/them and we tired to keep away to the best of our ability. The last dream kin of had something to do with the first one in that a mercenary from Japan, coming through hostile territory and definitely not taking any prisoners fell in love with a beautiful Japanese woman, so maybe he was a Arab mercenary in Japan, that makes more sense with the things i remember. Only now he was lost and returned to home in his native land after years of searching for his bride-to-be. Despondent and alone save for brother and father, his condition grew worse until one day a young ragged woman comes knocking at the door, scraped knees and clothing barely hanging on her. His brother calls him over to see whats going on and the mercenary finds his beloved and they go to snuggle up on the futon.

Interesting enough, I think this has quite the makings of a good story, and kind of a unique one at that. It would take some research into some of the various master swordsmen/assassins of the middle east, and the customs and culture of feudal Japan, but I'm sure a short story could evolve from the short premises. One strong on the starkness and brittle world of all those involved, wheree a unique narrative voice commands the scene A scholar assassin perhaps.

A little time left for thought

So now its time to fall asleep

A couple days forgotten

It strikes me during swims and runs and biking of carious lengths the incongruous nature of our sport. The desire to zone out and the need to be in the moment. Can you really pass four hours without a break, without stopping from the concentration of the present. I felt today the difficulty of maintaing that concentration, but also the absolute necessity of it. The need to forgo thoughts of past and future in order to summon all of the energies of the moment onto the action at hand. Difficult it si, for what happens when you lose it, you become distracted. And how do you build it? What ways will I build the moment when everything else is forgotten except for the present. So not only when I'm in that intense climbing, painvful burning muscles stage, but also when I want to cruise steady, cruise solid.

So what new insights have I had in the past few days. My swim will improve. My bike must improve, my run is doing ok. The daily routine has expanded once more, which it has needed to because I'm simply not getting the stretching I need. Unfortunately the victim of increased exercise time is sleep, for I will not give up the fam and such, so I'm down to 7 hours a night, which I've found myself surviing on already the past few weeks, soits not such a big change. Also dropping the heavy dinners, which should round out my diet nicely and I can finally say goodbye to this winter/lifetime weight, clean out my system, and see what kind of energy a proteien man has. I'm almost tempted just to eat my dog's food with some extra fruit on the side. 52% formulated proteien with 12% fat. Crazy good for you if you ask me, but it doesn't taste so great and I like my tenderloin steaks.

The tears are leaking from my eyes. 5am yoga and stretching, here I come.

Awakening

I know I sensed her, but the mistiness of her approach baffled my confused emotions. Yet I prevailed and withdrew myself from her entangled grasp, and struck down the Secretary of State before she could wrap her poisoned fangs around my jugular. Or something like this.. I don't know why I'd be having dreams about Condi Rice and a hypothetical Secretary of State but there ya go, stuck in the mind of a young professional in the middle of Boston are enough lingering details of political junkism to evoke a rather vivid dream of government oppression and back door maneuvering. Naturally, following the guidelines of all aspects of my memory, I don't know many of the details, and as I close my eyes to try and recall more, I feel their desire to stay shut so perhaps this avenue of recourse is better pursued another time, with another dream. In truth, one of the thoughts popping up.... I'm still learning to relax within myself. If thats another way of saying accept myself. What a challenge, and one which I really don't know if I can agree with, for if you accept yourself as you are, then you do you stop trying to become better, and I'm pretty sure on this one, but no one's perfect, and those that seem closest are those that really accept their perfection the least.I guess death is the final acceptance ceremony, the ultimate, and those who cannot accept themselves, perhaps they live the longest, or the shortest depending on their outlook on what it means tnot to meet your expectations.

Another stream of thought before breakfast

Balance

For the first time in awhile I feel like balance is coming to me in the pool, well that's a lie, the first time ever the balance is coming to me in the pool. Breathing no longer feels as if I'm going to never make the stroke without using my hand as a prop, not the easiest procedure in the water, although seemingly natural for the body to do. Instead to lean into that water, perhaps the 2nd most counterintuitive notion known to man after that haloed maxim about getting in a land war anywhere in Asia (I think the Persian Gulf counts).

I also had a breakthrough on the bike, training pretty hard despite my not having planned in this schedule. After awhile, I just took off my normally blessed earphones, great for commuting back and forth, back and forth, and just sat on that spinning machine and span, and let my legs work and my mind work and stream, both following each other on the peaks and the lows, and shit, it was only for an hour with 10 minutes of intervals interspersed in there, but everything flowed, well except for my damn chafing legs and the refusal of my gluteus maximus to comfortably settle into my cushion of choice. I think though, a new saddle is in order, and I'm going to get the most perfect one possible for me, regardless of cost, because just like the bed I wish I had, if I'm going to be spending the better part of most days in the darn thing, I might as well be as comfy as possible.

Time to join the lady for some zzz

Well now its another morning, and last night I dreamd of something quite odd, not sure I fully understand but at one point I was outside at the ATM, and decided to pull out 100 dollars but there was this weird guy behind me, blond, skinhead type, looking at me intently and when i pulled out the money, instead of a hundred, it was simply a large folded over one dollar bill, which I was angry about, but the guy behind me seemed to want it really badly and started circling me threateningly, so I threw it at him and while it was in the eir I charged him at the same time as he charged me, and then I woke up. Odd to say thte least. I had some other dreams but everything seems to be fading pretty rapidly so I guess I'll have to forgo that.

The goals for the day;

Eat well
Swim well
Bike well

I think I'll go on a ride down to the waterfront, although I hear the neighborhood is one of the poorer in the city, lets hope I don't get mugged or somethign fun like that.

Why not recap?

All in all, today went well, I'm pretty sure tomorrow will be much lazier than either today or Monday, but that seems to be the story. I'll probably have to figure out some way to workout on Tuesday and Thursday evenings if I decide to keep up this schedule, but at least I'll be getting a minimum of around 15 miles a day on the bike, and interval work mostly if I can get my way, although that's kind of dangerous in traffic. I figure if I work hard in the right areas I can get away with not having as many workouts. So I figure I'll spend a minimum of 55 minutes on the bike a day, 30-50 minutes in the pool and those days when I have the lunch free I'll be able to get in 45-55 minutes running. Thats about 3 hours minimum, and on the longer days, it'll be 100 min commuting, 50 minutes spinning, 30-60 minutes in the pool and if I can drop in a jog with Solon that'd be good too for an extra 20-40 minutes. I guess at the max that would be about 4 hours. To go much beyond that I'd have to dip into either sleep or relationship time, and I don't want to do either of those.

I just finished listening to this amazing book called Ultramarathon man by some guy named Dean who runs 100+ mile events all year round, while being a good father, good husband and working 8-10 hours a day. Inspirational to say the least, and while I don't think I'll start doing the 4 hours of sleep a night routine, its message of perseverance and the ability of the mind and heart to conquer and push on the body beyond its conceivable limits strikes me as the way to approach life. All aspects of life. And I feel I've started making inroads into this mindset. I'm still far too lazy, but luckily I'm trying to nip that in the butt with increased workouts, a consistent wakeup time, and the willingness to push myself. I just need to push myself, and more and more and more. It can be done with the willpower, and focus is the key. The choice I make. now that my thoughts are becoming a little discombobulated I think I'll sign off and see what tomorrow brings.

A new day, new dreams

Luckily for all of us, dreams about life can't change too much, they're based on our background and environment, genetics and personality. Those factors don't change over night. Hoever, the dreams that attack the mind do change rather rapidly, and trying to unravel their meanings is harder than catching a catfish in a alligator-infested mangrove. However, that analogy gives a sense of danger to the exercise of catching and deciphering dreams, but perhaps thats not it at all. The difficulty is where the challenge lies for how do you define flying really. No psychologoist can or should really do it for you because they don't know your past, your future plans, nor what kinds of emotions and aptitudes give you reason to soar. I think for myself though, finding myself in a dream where I am lord and comander of a fort or castle and having the ability to fly. But deeper there is a section where in a race, I let my brother do the running, and even though he should have the ability to win, he only comes in second for fear of pushing too hard too early. As an extension of my own convern for myself, perhaps I should take this into account and push harder and harder without this silly concern, to truly embrace what I feel is the perfect incarnation of self. A far different cry from lastn night's dream of finding myself at the ironman in the saem sorry shape I'm in right now.

Last week's food binge and lack of meaningful exercise took its toll, gaining me a few pounds, and now I have to take it all off, a steady downhill coaster of reducing appetite and eating right to reach a far more ideal weight for the goals I have. Its going to be hard, but its time to step up to the plate.

A perfectly respectable day

I swear they don't stop, they don't give up and they certainly don't understand how necessary it is for me to check the contents of that trashcan. It is necessary, no vital, for me to make sure nothing in there is contaminated in case they decide they want to eat some of it again. I mean, who are they kidding, I'm on their side and they get all hopped up and try to force me away every time. I'm doing this for them! Enough ranting and raving about the hypocrisy's of two-legged lugs, I don't have the time in my 14 years.

I found out this morning just exactly what my new ride is like. Maybe I'm rushing ahead of myself. Through my careful coaxing of their egos, the occasional well-placed lick and my strategic placement of stroller links on their computers, they finally fell into my trap. I am now the proud owner of a hot orange and blue two wheeler, and I've got these two so wrapped around my little paw they CHOOSE to pull me around without pay, return or stock dividends. I'm thinking of writing a manual on slave maintenance and management but I'm still building experience. Anyway, back to the meat...mmmm, turkey.... turkey.... wait wait, thats not what I'm thinking of, oh yeah, well I'm not that impressed with the suspension, but I do enjoy the uuuuhhh's and aaahhh's from all my admiring fans, and I can't complain about the lack of effort and hand-delivered room service. Yeah, I live the life.

You are REEdiculous

You have to understand, I"m not mad at them, I don't hold any enmity nor will I bark at or bite them for what they've done, but in no way or form am I happy about the current state of affairs. I should be on top of the world, instead, I lay here once again, succumbing to their tiresome efforts to adjust my energy level. Let me gather my thoughts and fill you in from the beginning.

I wake myself early today, my stomach is grumblinga little more heartily than when I went to bed and I peek over to check if they're still sleeping and low and behold the big lugs are out like 2 ton sloths. I swear, if I have to rattle this cage and whine every damn morning I'm going to explode. Well lets see, normally when I face this way and bang my nose just like this...

"Sleepytime Solon, go back to sleep"

Damn, compulsion, falling asleep, must stay awake, how do they do it, must stay awake, must....


Well that worked a little bit better square-wheeled donkey cart. Let's try this again, whine, higher pitch, yes nice nice, they're stirring, now don't pay attention to them, face towards the door. Yes, good good, get out of bed ya big lug,

"I've got him honey," his low voice mumbles. Even I have a hard time figuring out what he's saying. "You sure?" she asks, man what a dulcet sound, what I'd give for pipes like those, maybe if I practice a little... "Solon, be quiet, I'm coming... afslkj safd." If I didn't know better I'd say Evan was just swearing at me. "Darling he doesn't know better," my poor clueless Erica whispers on my behalf.

As soon as he opens the cage, I'm just going to wander over to the bed... yes walk past, towards the door... "come on Solon," DAMN he noticed, ok, fight the compulsion, fight it! "Come on Solon, Solon come here, Let's go." ARGH, feet...moving...of own accord, must fight, grrrr, now I want to go outside, I swear I didn't want to go outside a second ago, but now I do, I don't understand, but with enough study, some well-placed licks, and the occasional attack of slobber, I'll discover the truth.

WHOA, the explosion leaving my ass is insane, my god, it just keeps going, I think I"m lifting up in the air... "Holy s((t!," even the big lug is impressed, I have to try that more often. Instant poo.

"Sorry buddy, you're not coming in bed after that performance, you probably need some time alone to rest the hinny as it is." Damn, ixnay on the superpoopay, apparently the "controllers" won't let me in bed after I fill the yard with delicious tasting brown goop, I'll have to plan some other way.

In and running

Lets see if I can't get this stream of thought out of the gates like our poor late Barbaro, but without teh stumbling and subsequent death which would lead to a collapse of the mind. I wonder why I just thought of achy breaky heart, the lame country song from the nineties which caught on with just about anybody possessing a set of ears.

So I need to do some training changes in order to idealize my body composition, basically, remove temptation save for one day a week, and work REALLY REALLY hard on said day. In order to get to this stage of working out, which will probably be performed on my bicycle, I'll need to fix that goddamn chain. But once I do, then I think things will change and I can get myself in order. But I have 60 days to lose 30lbs, which I don't think will be too hard, it means a calorie deficit of 1500 every single day, but I think if I start eating smaller dinners and bigger breakfasts with more small meals throughout the day I should be able to burn through that. However, like training my dog, I need to train myself to ignore the distractions, willpower my way through it. I think this may rely on keeping a journal for every day, which that beginnerathlete may help out with.

What else do I want to write, nothing at all right now

You'd be surprised

Solon has arrived and with him the joy of unrequited love, total abandon, and a preponderance for flea bites. My god, how can so many of the buggers have arrived so quickly, found me so easily and sucked down all of my blood so efficiently. I just can't believe it. The gorgeous pup surprises me everyday with his wonderful little ways, sometimes he does less than enchant when he pisses on the floor, but we've kept the shit out and every part of me remains happy with that. I think my goals for tomorrow include trainng the pup, going to the aquarium, reading up on training, and then starting the process of printing out those transparencies so I can put some beautiful artwork on the walls. I don't have much more to say right now, only that I'll be trying to view the world from Solon's eyes in the future, at least part of the time, and seeing how my imagination can cope with that goal.

Himalayas, not for me

Let's see how fast I can churn this out. Why have the Himalayas when you can have a pale yellow-walled, inordinately noisy, unduly uncompensating receptionist job at an altruistic organization teaching small children the ways of the cold hard world they've been thrust into by their homeless parents.

Why choose pristine mountain landscapes and thousands of hillsides covered by thousand-year-old corrugated terrace systems tended by smiling hunchbacked Sherpas lovingly tending their blossoming apple trees? I certainly dont' know why I would choose the jagged fingernails of God as they stand fighting the erosive elements of time. In fact I didn't choose those benefits of cheap food and painfully beautiful vistas for the following reasons, easily understandable and empathized with using the following Office versus Heavenly mountains comparison list;

• Daily chores

1. Office : Sitting comfortably in the same languid position for 8 hours with occasional interaction with associates. Answering the phone and politely conversing with angry mothers worried about the status of their lost children
2. Himalayas : Hiking through uncomfortably radiant forests after crossing glacial riverlets while occasionally stopping for baths in hot springs.

Verdict: Office easily wins this battle, who really wants stunning horizons brought by the long struggles of many hours of hiking when in fact a perfect groove can be acheived in your chair with minimal work.

• Location

1. Office : In the middle of a revamped part of the Boston ghetto, increasingly rare reports of gunfire reported as witnesses are killed off, a Brewery sign topping the nicely dilapidiated brick walls and a newly designed playspace bordering the overflowing trashcans.
2. Himalayas : Too tiny roads leading up tortuous tree-infested cobblestone roads with no hope for a fearless descent as oxen and foxes crowd the green space bordering the sheer cliffs overlooking broken canyons and barely sparkling rivers...

MMM... klucnh