epicification

Is it just me, or do most people try to increase the 'epicness' of all outdoor activities? As an example, I was talking to a small group of friends recently that don't ride bikes often (some at all). We agreed that we should all do a ride together. Then someone says lets do a century (100 miles) or says let's climb the Crest (5500 feet of climbing in 13 miles). Um, those rides are really hard! How about let's ride to an ice cream shop? Then we can think about doing something more challenging.

Certainly, we've done our share of pushing ourselves to the limit with some long, hard bike rides and some long hikes. But how's this for epic? Ride with 4 friends to a softball game,





then ride to a restaurant for dinner, and then watch a movie in 3D. A brief review: Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D was a good time. As buddy Luke says, Brendan Fraser is the new king of the B movies. And guess what? It was dark after the movie, and it rained just as we got to the restaurant. No problem, we have fenders and just turned on our lights for the ride home. Our de-epicification: let's do normal fun stuff but without a car!

Bandelier day trip

This week the Polkadot family invited me to go along with them to Bandelier, an old stomping ground of mine. I always love exploring the cliff dwellings with people who haven't seen them yet.

A couple of things I've learned visiting Bandelier:

1. These settlements were built by the ancient Pueblo Peoples. Their descendants still live in pueblos around New Mexico. They prefer that we don't call their ancestors "Anasazi," since Anasazi is a Navajo word meaning "ancient enemies."

2. The buildings and access trails at Bandelier were built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. One of the requirements for joining the Bandelier work team was that the applicant posses at least three natural teeth.

ocho

On July 8th we celebrated our 8th anniversary. We like being married to each other.

In the tradition shared by all cultures for all kinds of festivals, we celebrated with food. I took a picnic lunch to Chad: kimbap, strawberries, blueberry scones with lemon cream and iced tropical green tea. Kimbap is a pretty and tasty Korean picnic food. It's usually made with kim -- dried seaweed -- and looks like this:

I didn't have any kim on hand, but in Korea once I'd eaten kimbap wrapped with a really thin egg omelet, so I thought I'd try that. The rice is pre-soaked and cooked with extra water for super-stickyness, then flavored with a little honey, sesame oil and sesame seeds. I put carrots, celery and ham on the inside. I meant to make a dipping sauce of soy sauce, sesame oil, a little red wine vinegar and crushed red pepper -- but I forgot as I was hurrying to load the picnic on my bike.

For dinner we walked to a nearby uppity bar and grill, where we sat on the patio and ate things like grilled peach and arugula salad with bleu cheese and red pepper croutons, spinach and hazelnut cannelloni, and salmon served on a cedar plank. Chad wanted to ask if they'd box up the plank for him.

A delicious day.

a fountain of fun

Notable local news events. Neighborhood family of 4 decides to not use gasoline on July 4: they all ride bikes to the church pool party. Area man keeps me updated about how often he rides his bike to work. Local family considers selling one of their two cars since husband/dad will ride his bike to work daily.

I like to think that we played at least a small part in the above events, and maybe even a few more. Before gas became expensive people used to ask us if we rode everywhere to save money. Certainly I especially am a bit of a cheapskate, but we rode because we like to ride. My hope is that many other people find that riding a bike or walking on regular outings -- to work, church, grocery store, Pop-pop's water ice, etc. can be fun. And perhaps that driving to the gym to work out would seem silly.

Our somewhat rainy seaon has begun. So far, this is the most water we've seen in our local arroyo that is usually seco.

to the crest

The event of the day was to ride the Sandia Crest. The Crest is 5500 ft above our lil' apartment and 30 miles away as the bike rides. The degree of difficulty of the ride requires special 'athletic food' so as to prevent riders from collapsing before the finish.

That there is a black forest brownie and apricot scone from Sweet Blessings.

This is my attempt at the Moscaline photo method. I need more practice. We're having a lot of fun near the start of the climb. There aren't any photos further up the mountain because we split up to ride at our own paces, and also because I couldn't spare the energy to lift the camera out of my basket.

By a marvel of modern technology, I simultaneously took photos of myself on the crest and Jill and I in our parking lot. It's hard to pick me out of the crowd in the photo above, but I'm the guy with the yellow hat. Sadly, Jill is not in the photo. I started back down before she reached the top, and she was happy enough to forego the last mile in favor of the quicker green chile cheeseburger. Use the red arrows if necessary to find us in the photos.
My shirt normally doesn't have white stripes along the edge of my shoulder blades. Yep, it was pretty hot. But it was also cold when we first started down from the crest, and colder still when we got rained on.

So tomorrow's plan is to watch the Germans and Spaniards kick a little ball on the pitch. Even the bbb's need some rest now and again.

flowery fri

This is another Big 3 Day Weekend, so we're getting started early with our blogging. Today's plan was to hit Sadie's for lunch, and find more adventure from there.

We didn't remember until we arrived, but we actually ate at Sadie's way back in 2002 when I was an intern in Los Alamos. The lunch combo was hyuge! Hot and yummy.

The next plan was to hit the Botanical garden to make good use of our year pass. On the way, we saw Los Poblanos, our LPO (Lovely Provider of Organicfood).

The botanical gardens are in full summer mode. Lots of flowers and greenness.

We were ridin' the Treks today. I dorkified my bike with a metal basket and super tall stem. Now it's super comfortable and allows for easy loading of stuff.

All that riding makes us hungry. No photos, but we stopped by Coldstone in Nob Hill for some black cherry ice cream with fixins. Jill was already thinking of dinner while eating the ice cream, so we headed to the Pie Shack. Look who joined us for dinner. Nice car.

One day of the weekend is done. 2 to go.

something is in the air

You know how things tend to stay pretty much the same for a long time? I've had that feeling for a while now. But a couple things might actually change in the near future, I (we) hope. We'll see, and we'll keep you posted.


Brief update on my eating habits: It's been about 2 weeks since I decided to eat less. Two observations: (1) I'm able to either concentrate (at work) or exercise (ride home) on a fairly empty stomach. Somehow being hungry has become less debilitating. (2) I became obsessed with weighing myself. One reason was to make sure that I wasn't wasting away to nothing, and the other was to see if I could get a feel for how much I was eating. My weight is about 165 and and 168, after waking up in the morning and before going to bed, respectively. I'm planning to not lose any more weight -- some would have called me skinny before this experiment. Really!


Down to 2. I loaned out the Great Big Trek, circa 1979, to a friend over the weekend. He plans to train on it and do the MS150 charity ride from Bernalillo to Los Alamos. We _might_ join him. That leaves me with only the gray Trek and the big boy blue bike.