Saturday ... was nice. I had a friend who had worked at CollinsWoerman over for dinner. It was a down home type dinner with two types of pot pie. One was a double mushroom and triple onion pot pie simmered in a red wine broth that was excellent and the other was an italian sausage, carrot, celery, mushroom, onion, mix. We had a layered pudding that rocked the casbah for desert, and lots of wine. Oh yeah - I LOVE wine.
Sunday ...I spent the day with Paul riding. I was BOOKING IT!! Going 17-20 mph pretty much the entire way, it was AWESOME! It feels good to be able to rock it out now. Unfortunately, I ate before riding back and had an upset stomach - I really can't eat and then ride. I came home and crashed out and then did a massive overload of dish washing from the night before prior to going out for sushi for the first time (for real). Sushi is really interesting. I didn't like the sea urchin at all - the texture was really weird (and it looked like brains). The eel was yummy, and I found that raw fish have a very delicate flavor. Wasabi is awesome and sake is dangerously delicious! I'm going to have to go a couple more times before I decide whether I relaly like it or not. Plus, I realized a cosmopolitan life style in the city is good, is wonderful, is amazing. I'm so happy I left Kansas and came to where I belong.
Monday ... I felt like I was all done healing in terms of my ribs and neck. The area on my leg where I took a chunk out of myself with the crank was still giving me problems, but the worst was over. Beautiful days were here for sure, the sun was shining and I wanted to be outside!!! I realized I was also changing my thinking about my workouts. The last 2 months (thyroid problems, sinus infection, and rib issues) showed me that balance between the bike and life is needed. Basically if I have a choice between spending a summer day writing while having coffee with Paul and "training" = training takes back seat. Then again, my outlook constantly changes about - well - most everything.
Wednesday the 22nd ... was admin day. We get flowers at work, (sarcastic)...woo.hoo. However, I really was pleasantly surprised - the team I'm on got me flowers and cupcakes AND a giftcard for over $120 to a spa nearby - YAY! Plus, my "mentor" gave me flowers too - so now my desk looks like a floral shop :) I love flowers.
I also "raced" - which completely utterly sucked. I found out then that my ribs weren't healed (or that they were healed unless I pushed my body to it's outer limits, flew it off of rolling dirt bumps, threw it down a rocky tree-root riddled track, then strained it getting up really evil short hills.) My neck was shot and bike wasn't set up right so my lower back was thrashed. Oh yeah - and weird feeling called "fear" entered into my mind as I looked down a 10' or so drop that was at a very severe angle and ended into a sand trap to immediately do a 180 turn. I did it and everything else that made me frightened (this would hurt if I wiped out... there's a thorn bush that would tear me up, I bet that tree is very solid, that's a long ways down, blah blah blah). I did them simply because they scared me, but I wasn't really expecting that to be such a large part of my mentality. Fear is only useful if it doesn't get in the way. It was going bearable until the douchebags who lapped me started screaming that "We're RACING" - yelling for us to get off the course (me and the sport class people pre-riding). I yelled at them I was racing too.... just not very well.
That was the last straw - I was in a lot of pain (lower back especially), my ribs and neck hurt, and all these weren't normal race agony, they were sharp "PAY ATTENTION TO ME" pain. Not something that's totally wise to "play through." so I came to the next open area that I could ditch and rode back to the truck. I did about 2 1/4 laps. We were supposed to do 3. I really didn't care at that point. All I could think of afterwards was "Why in the hell do I do this?" I'm still wondering about that. But after taking this upcoming week off, I'll go back and do it again the Wednesday after that....You definitely have to be a little masochistic to do this to your body over and over again.
Friday the 24th started out crappy and ended up really fun. I had a icky boring day at work and ended up breaking the valve on my back tire taking it down from the bike rack at work. After some indecision/discussion about whether I could put the bike on the bus or fix it at work I fixed the tire and busted butt going home. I typically do my commute in 40-45 minutes, and my fastest time so far was 32 or 31 minutes. Going home on Friday in rush hour traffic I made it in 27 minutes. (insert excited expression here)!!!!!!!! That's AWESOME. It felt really great (well, I was sore the next day and it was really hard when I did it, but I felt great nevertheless).
So I was totally psyched going into the rest of the evening. Paul and I went to a book reading about dive bars at Abraxus http://www.abraxusbooks.com/page.php?inc=dive_bars and ended up doing a dive bar drinking bonanza with the rest of the people afterwards. It was really fun. I drank enough, but not too much, which was perfect. Ended up going out for breakfast the next day, reading, writing, generally having a really chill and nice weekend together with Paul.
So besides the fact I've been fighting insomnia for the past two weeks or so, I'm doing pretty good. I'm happy it's summer and I'm reading some really great books about neurology and consciousness. I'm making good delicious food (baked potato soup and some coconut macaroons today). I'm happy, even through I'm a little sleep-deprived.
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