Paying Back, or Forward, or just doing some good

I've had a fortunate life, I'll be the first to admit. Sure I've had my struggles, things have been hard but at the same time, things have always just seemed to fall into place. Along the way I've met some people who have done things for me that have just been, you know, awesome.

I have a class right now that requires some community service. So I've always been quietly impressed with Habitat for Humanity, and decided you know what? Why not. What have I found? An amazing group of people. Seriously. SERIOUSLY.

Today I took a vacation day to see how it was during the week. Today's task was pouring a basement, putting that big ole beam in, and some other tasks getting the foundation ready for the floor to be put in, and framing to start this weekend. There's this core group of guys who are retired, and have been doing this forever. One is 80, and he's been doing it for around 20 years - 3 days a week of hard work. Another, a guy from Iraq who's hoping for his own Habitat home, was one of the hardest workers I've ever met (I thought he was going to try to move that beam on his own - seriously). None of em, not a one, are getting a paycheck - they're all there out of the goodness of their hearts. Which is a whole lot of goodness, folks.

We were done by 1:30-ish, and I felt tired but good afterward, and am planning to go back to the same house on Saturday. After that, I'm planning on once a month (at least) volunteering. It's pretty easy to do, you just show up to the jobsite and start working. Good old fashioned hard work, nice people, and enough good karma to fill up memorial stadium.

By sheer accident, really, I came upon Mission Bean Coffee recently. This company is owned and operated by the People's City Mission of Lincoln, which itself is a simply fantastic organization focused on helping those most in need with everything they can. I first met Pastor Tom several weeks ago, then met with a guy named Sasha who's running the Mission Bean part of the mission. Both are just amazing people with the best outlook on life you could imagine.

Mission Bean's brews are right on great, I like good coffee and it's up there on the top of my list. I dig the Dark Roast and my wife digs the Hazlenut Cream. Best part? The profits and revenue go directly to the mission - each bag sold provides two meals (you out-of-Lincolnites can order them online). And these are Charles Dickens'-esque soup lines at the mission, they hire professional chefs to make high-quality meals. Pastor Tom said they aim for "Village Inn quality or better" because, in his words (summarized a bit) people come in there with nothing - no home, no food, and many times little dignity left - why not do everything you can to give them a great meal right off the bat to start some good feelings? Awesome. Just.. awesome. Walking through the mission they had commons areas with nice looking couches, big ole LCD TV's, computers and - really - all the amenities you'd find in a nice hotel. Amazing.

Both of these organizations have left their mark on me. Often we race to see how much we can make off everything, forgetting that sometimes making nothing can feel better than a million bucks.

Priorities

I've been working hard on this subject lately, I won't kid you, right now I'm busy. Work plus school plus family plus exercise = spinning head syndrome. Obviously blogging has fallen to the wayside, and that just stinks because there's been so much good out there. Good weather, good folks, good rides - just downright good.

Exercise has become a priority, which is awesome, I've been at the gym over my lunch hour 4 days out of 5 for the past two weeks during the work week. I've bike commuted every day but one for the past three weeks (I give myself a optional day every week), and man, it's been kinda nice. Weather? Gorgeous. Rides? Perfect. I've been doing this wacky thing - I ride to ride, no other reason. It's awesome.

The gym, however, is where I go to die. I don't have a lot of time so, you know, gotta make it count right? 30 minutes on the elliptical, then jogging on the treadmill at 5mph for 6.. and working up. That wacky treadmill was done on a whim one day and ya know what? It ain't bad. And I'm never going to make fun of joggers again. It's challenging as hell, with that in mind, I set a personal goal to jog a 12 minute mile by the end of November. I know that's snail pace, folks, but man it sure doesn't feel like it!

Yesterday I told my wife that as I was leaving the gym I became obsessed with Chipotle. I was goona do it, I was out of "lunch stuff" at work so I was going to hit Chipotle on the way home. The obsession became almost sick, one track mind focused solely on those ginormous burritos and those oh so crunchy... yeah you get the idea. Pulling into the parking lot for a second I stopped, then fired up the Daily Plate/Livestrong app on the fruitphone. Snapping that obsession out was a simple check of how many calories are in that thing.

Yikes!

So my advice of the day? Get a cal counter or app and look at it. Man oh man. Not to mention financial impact - I got lunch stuff for a week+ for fifteen bones at the store, Chipotle would have probably been 50-75% of that cost - for "one" meal. Dang! Multiply that by 5 days and... uggh.

I might actually weigh myself one of these days, but everything is fitting better and I feel good. That's pretty awesome, let me tell you.

So to wrap everything up, my one piece of advice? Make your weight loss of the highest priority, and it will happen. It's really that easy.

Sometimes you get what you need

I've been deep in thought (again) about things, and mainly the state of our society (notice the our, I'm including myself here). A while back I was speaking with someone at work who I deeply respect, and he noted the stark difference between his generation and mine. "Back in my day" he said "we would buy a dump of a house that we could easily afford, then we'd put sweat and real equity in the thing to make it our own little mansion. Your generation seems to prefer to max themselves out buying something that they can barely afford, but don't have to do anything to. When it comes time to fix it, they just sell it."

And you know, that's so freaking true.

I know people who lease cars because "I don't want to worry about maintenance costs", nevermind the loss you take by constantly, essentially, renting a vehicle. Or those who I've seen with a computer that needs a little work, instead they decide to just replace it with a new one. We go to college and instantly expect a high-paying job that gives us lots of stuff, and when we can't really afford it, we leverage ourselves to the roof. What's with that?


We (notice the self-inclusion here) have forgotten that whole "hard work" mantra. I like Dave Ramsey, and one of the things I like best about him is his emphasis on how hard work shows results. When I've put my mind to something, and work my tail off, it has results. When I kind of amble along and hope for something to happen.. guess what? It doesn't.

Several years ago I sat around hoping for some sort of miracle that would bust me out of my lonely 500 pound prison. Some sort of miracle cure that would instantly give me the life I'd always wanted. It, obviously, didn't happen. Rather I put some hard effort forward, and now I've got most of the things I've always wanted and needed. There's one last push to get through, today I realized, that final mindset change to really push forward. I haven't done it yet, others have (like LFoaB), so I know it's possible.

Slowly but surely I'm realizing what I have that I need, and that the rest that isn't there, just requires some dang hard work on my part. I've come so close, but I always stop when the end is close. Today I caught myself wanting to stop carrying bags of wet leaves to the pickup, going "oh there's only three left, they can wait". Why? Why can they wait? Why can all of this wait? They can't! They've waited long enough, damnit!

The wants, however, they can wait.

Winter Plans (Or how I'm going to learn to lose weight when everyone is gaining)

Fall and Winter have always been tough for me, or rather, mostly winter. It seems like after a tough summer, by late August/early September I run out of gas (proverbially) and take some time off from the bike, gain some weight, then re-focus sometime in late September. This year has been no exception, right there right now, etc etc. Winter is the problem, once it starts getting really cold all I want to do is eat, drink, and stay warm.

Which is, you know, the perfect opposite of what needs to be done to lose weight/stay fit.

So this year, after three years of cold season errors, I'm putting everything together. Finally. Step 1 is that yes, I'm planning to continue bicycle commuting all year round. I rode in some pretty dang cold and slick conditions last winter, so I know what it takes to Not get hypothermia or break bones. I'm not going to even try for long commutes, and there's a complex answer to why not, but it simply breaks down to time. So my rides will amount to about 12 miles a day, which I'm going to use for the mental health benefit, when I ride at a reasonable pace (like I did yesterday) I just feel damn good afterward.

What about exercise? The other day I renewed my Y membership for that. This is where making time comes in to play, I'm blocking off 90 minutes on M-W-F to go over my "lunch hour" and hit the elliptical hardcore. Tuesdays and Thursdays are pretty crazy for me, so I generally work through lunch on those days anyway (well, right now EVERY day, but I'm working this out..). It's not the 6 hours a day they talk about on the biggest loser, but it's better than 0.. right?

Yesterday was also the first day on the elliptical and.. there's work to be done :). I keep reminding myself that I'll get there (I think I can I think I can I think I can..).. which is where it's at every year it seems like, when I first get back on those horrid awful machines. That I love. We have an odd relationship, that's for sure. I'm thinkin this year, that I won't suspend that membership over the summer.

Thank You for the support via comments, tweets, and emails after my last post - as my wife commented, it means a LOT to me. It's been a tough couple months, but my head is up, and man are those leaves gorgeous on the bike path. Go check 'em out, fall only happens once a year.

The Right to Bare Arms

I have this sinking suspicion that this will be the last image like this for some time to come now, our winter has come early and come with a vengeance. So awesome, right? Notice I said "winter" and didn't mention "fall", seems we've skipped right over the whole fall thing into winter. But, enough about the weather.

Where have I been? Today I got stopped by a reader on the bike path, noticed by my record-holding amount of headset spacers, and it's not the first time today that I've been reminded that I've not blogged for some time. Yeah, about that, oops. Been over a month, actually. Yeesh. So what's happened? Where have I been? I refer to it as the quad-fecta: I'm back in school, the kids are back in school, work is busier than ever, and we have this toddler guy in the mix. I do lots of typing for work and school, so blogging has fallen by the wayside in a terrible way. And so has my cycling, and my health overall.


That photo was taken last week on a particularly miserable day - it was 40 degrees, raining steadily with a wind blowing right in my face, and I wasn't at all prepared for it clothing-wise. I lucked out and had a rain jacket in the car, and my light windproof gloves kept the cold at bay a little bit, but man.. it was wretched. It wasn't just that, though, my self-discipline has been particularly terrible lately with regard to the old intake thing, and terrible with regard to the whole exercise thing, that day it was wearing hard on my head as I realized I couldn't just hammer it home in 10 minutes like I used to be able to pull off. The cold muscles managed to get me there in 20, with a 5 minute stop to get out of the rain and convince myself to keep riding.

I'm human, it's becoming all too evident, but man I'm getting tired of falling off the wagon, then having to write about it. I've written a lot about it, but thing is, getting back on is tough as nails - but you can still get back on. I figure that I'm still ahead in the getting back on vs falling off score, which in the end is all that matters - but at some point you've got to just man the hell up and do it. I can find more excuses not to do something than I can find to do it, and I can find all kinds of excuses why I chose not to do it - or I could just use all that energy and freaking do it.

Did that little thought rollercoaster make any sense? Still on board? Hah

Anyway, someone said something today that really hit me - "baby steps are just procrastination", ya know, so true. I'm a huge fan of Dave Ramsey, and he continually emphasizes this magical concept of "hard work", and the benefits thereof. I'm still adding them together in my brain, and waiting for the output.

So how many times have I made one of these "I'm back on the wagon" posts? Hell, I don't even know at this point, and even I am sick of reading 'em, but I'm hoping that maybe someone reading goes "well crap, happens to someone else, guess there is a way out after all". That's it.

But man, I'm really sick of writing them. Maybe just sick enough for once to do some size 14 steps.

The most wonderful time of the year

For the past three years this tree has been my indicator that fall is coming, for whatever reason (likely some very scientific one regarding what kind of tree it is, but my science is with this silicon-based things..). When I was up north on saturday during the GLGA EPICNESS 2.0 I noticed a couple trees on MMR's that were startin to color up, and man, it's nice to see it happening here. The weather has been phenomenal, in the afternoons on the ride home it's been in the 70s with the morning being ever so chilly in the 40s. But that's nothing a little wool-n-argyle style can't fix...

I'm seriously ordeirng 7 pairs of these things. They are comfy beyond words. Wore my other Sock Guy socks today, and it just wan't the same. The style just wasn't there.

This morning was one of those where I both wished that I had woken up earlier, and that I had taken the day off. Something about it the second I got on the saddle.. just perfect. Added to that, had a chance meeting on the trail with a reader, and a LJS employee who helped make my story possible, Peter. Great to meet you, Peter, hope I catch you out there again! To say Lincoln has a awesome cycling community is putting it mildly. Much like saying it has an awesome trail system.

More like an absolutely awesome trail system. Seriously, go find out. Go lose yourself for 15, 20, or 30 minutes on a trail. Forget about life for a bit and spin the cranks - or maybe just walk. Whatever you do, just have a blast doing it.

Every time I ride a bike I feel better inside. It's not science, nope, it's just plain stinkin' rotten fun - something I think the world forgot how to do for awhile during the recession, wars, and all the nonsense that's been going on for too dang long. Smile, and the rest will follow.

That's all I've got for today. Shaping up to be a great week, I've got a feeling..

New Gear I've been digging

This weekend on the GLGA I finally got to try out some new gear on a long gravel grinder, which is more like saying, it's the first time I've really tried some of it... heh :). When I started out, I dug real reviews of stuff from real folks, espescially bigger folks, so when I find something that works I like to give my spiel on it. Here goes!

Bontrager RL MTB Shoe:

Let me summarize this real quick - the GLGA was the first really long ride with clipless shoes/pedals, and it's also the first really long ride that I've not had foot numbness or pain on. In fact, my feet were downright dang comfy the whole ride, and afterwards, something that I couldn't say was entirely true last year when I was still on my sneakers and platforms kick. I have big, wide feet that are next to impossible to find comfy shoes for, but these things fit me as good, or maybe even better, than my work shoes - which I bought at an actual shoe shop, and weren't what we call cheap (I got sick of hurting feet all day). I like these shoes so much that I'm wanting to pick up another pair, just in case Bontrager got a wild hair and decided to discontinue them. Maybe two more pairs.

I'm only partially kidding.

Next: Aerotech Designs Jersey

Disclosure: Aerotech Designs sent me this jersey and a pair of shorts as a thank you for allowing them to use my previous review of my favorite shorts ever on their website. Which was awesome, and worked out well because I've been wanting try a jersey for some time.. but anyway, here's the deal - for $35 bones, this is a pretty dang good piece of clothing. I've been using it a couple times a week since I got it, and about the only sign of wear is the reflective strip across the butt/pockets, which is coming off thanks to washing.. or probably forgetting to not-dry. The fit is excellent, and the pockets are awesome, I really appreciated having them on the GLGA for the cue sheet and nutrition. Most of all, it was comfy for the entire ride.

My only gripe? I wish the fabric was a "smooth" type, like Under Armor shirts. So next year I'll probably go the route of a "smoother" fabric, but I'll pick another one or two of these up. Oh, and I wish they came in black.

Planet Bike Blaze 1W CREE headlamp:

Last year I found the limits of my cheapo Bell Luxeon-based LED headlamp. It was OK, but not even good and certainly not great. With winter coming a little while ago I figured it was time for a new headlamp, so I picked this up. Now has been the first chance I've really had to use it.. and...

It's awesome. Seriously.

I got into light geeking a couple years ago, and I have a nice little stock of a couple really nice SureFires, Innova (tacticals), and some Streamlights. So I judge lights on that level, which bike lights - unless you spend a ton - haven't been able to compete with. Until now.

This light is awesome, simply awesome. When I bought the LHT I picked up a Planet Bike Superflash taillamp, and that thing is killer, this is no exception. Way to go Planet bike, this thing has awesome throw, spill, runs on AA's, and is cheap. You can't go wrong. Want more light? Get two. This winter is going to be SOOO much easier with this light.

Yeah, I'm about to review socks: Twin Six Argyle sock:

Here's the deal: I wouldn't review something like, you know, socks unless I thought they were really good, and had a impact on my comfort on the bike. Well, they are really dang good, and they are really comfortable on the bike. I didn't buy them because of that, I bought them because I was at Cycle Works picking up some spare tubes, saw 'em and had a little laugh at the geekiness factor. I'd been meaning to try out some wool cycling socks, and I dig the good stuff Twin Six does for the cancer fight - so I grabbed 'em. And I'm glad I did.

Just like my Smartwool socks that I use for hiking/winter cycling, they're immensely comfortable while also keeping the feet from getting that "clammy" sweaty feeling. Sock Guy socks seem to do a great job in both, but after 4 or 5 hours they start to feel kind of damp. I don't like that feeling. These, at no point, got to there - and I sweat a LOT.

So I was comfortable, and stylin'. I'd like to drop some more pounds so I can sport the matching jersey next season. Yes, I'm totally serious.

That's all I've got for today, folks. Lookin' forward to a nice spin home.. awe yeah!