flahute

View Ascent activity on 07-Feb-10 at 02:20PM in a larger map

Short ride before the Stupor Bowl … lungs in terrible shape today; even with the inhaler, I could barely breathe throughout much of the ride. I think the average (158) and max HR (177) rates today will corroborate.

On the other hand, it’s another ride in my legs; getting that early start on the 2010 season.

ITHAKA

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

  — C.P. Cavafy (1863 – 1933), Greek poet and journalist. Translated by Edmund Keeley

An interim post just so that there is something between my last Quote of the Day, and my next Poetry Friday … there’s been a lot going on in my head lately that I’m still trying to wrap my brain around so I can put it in words. Should be able to write more this weekend.

FOUR MOUNTAIN POSTURES

Walking in the mountains
unconsciously trudging along
grab a vine
climb another ridge

Lying in the mountains
pine wind enters the ears
for no good reason
beautiful dreams are blown apart

  — Stonehouse [Shih Wu] (1272 – 1352), Chinese monk and poet. Translation by Red Pine.

View Ascent activity on 30-Jan-10 at 02:01PM in a larger map

Ride #2 for the year, and it’s obvious that whatever fitness I gained on my trip to Arizona over Christmas is now gone. With an AvgHR over 160, peaking out at 179, I was definitely struggling on anything even remotely resembling a climb … not to mention the actual climbs.

Funny thing, though … even though my pulse was really high throughout the entire ride, on the flats I felt like I was cruising easy. So maybe I’m not in quite as bad shape as I think, and it’s the air that’s causing the problems.

Tomorrow should be a ski day; at least that’s the current plan. The rest of today will be spent relaxing, doing laundry, and watching Steven Soderbergh’s Che. I watched the first part, which covers the Cuban Revolution, a couple days ago … watched a documentary on the making of the movie this morning, and am now watching the second part, covering the Bolivian years. Excellent movie. Highly recommended.

I guess Richie Rich got tired of sitting on the sidelines while his girlie girl was getting to race … so he decided to take her out by slipping her a little CERA to jack up her Hct values …

Poor Vania … did you not think that being associated with a doper might also put you under targeted suspicion as well?

I’m guessing that Vania falls more into the Mayda Munny camp, rather than the Gloria Glad camp …

Ricco’s girlfriend tests positive for CERA

Vania Rossi, a top Italian cyclocross racer and girlfriend of Riccardo Ricco, has tested positive for the blood booster CERA, the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) announced Friday.

A blood sample taken from Rossi after the January 10th Italian cyclocross championships in Milan was found to contain the drug, CONI said. Rossi finished second at the championships.

Ricco, who has a child with Rossi, tested positive for the same substance in the 2008 Tour de France and is serving a 20-month suspension set to end in March.

via Ricco’s girlfriend tests positive for CERA – VeloNews.

On the bright side, that’s one less cheater that Katie Compton will have to worry about this weekend.

SICK

“I cannot go to school today,”
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
“I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I’m going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I’ve counted sixteen chicken pox
And there’s one more–that’s seventeen,
And don’t you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut–my eyes are blue–
It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I’m sure that my left leg is broke–
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button’s caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle’s sprained,
My ‘pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb.
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow’s bent, my spine ain’t straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is–what?
What’s that? What’s that you say?
You say today is. . .Saturday?
G’bye, I’m going out to play!”

  — Shel Silverstein (1930 – 1999), American poet, singer-songwriter, musician, composer, cartoonist, screenwriter, and author of children’s books.

Every once in awhile, you just feel like telling people to … thankfully, I haven’t had one of THOSE days in a while, but I’m still diggin’ the song, what … 15 years later?

CATHERINE WHEEL – EAT MY DUST (YOU INSENSITIVE FUCK)

I think I have the best of me
Inside my head
No one else competes with me
I think I’m great
Got spirit tucked away inside

Eat my dust you insensitive fuck
Eat my dust you insensitive fuck
Eat my dust

Honeycomb Canyon Panorama

Honeycomb Canyon Panorama

… and Honeycomb Canyon was closed due to avalanche danger. Spoke to a couple members of the ski patrol who said that they may be able to open the canyon Monday afternoon, but more likely on Tuesday. Apparently they have about 15 different spots along 5-6 routes that they need to check and control if necessary.

All I have to say is the first skiers to get in there after the patrol are going to be stoked. Unfortunately, as one of those silly people who have to work for a living, I will not be one of them.

Even so, my legs are worked from today … sushi and Pellegrino from Whole Foods for dinner, Vikings game on the tube. This sounds like a plan for recovery.

SPONTANEOUS ME

Spontaneous me, Nature,
The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with,
The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder,
The hill-side whiten’d with blossoms of the mountain ash,
The same, late in autumn—the hues of red, yellow, drab, purple, and light and dark green,
The rich coverlid of the grass—animals and birds—the private untrimm’d bank—
      the primitive apples—the pebble-stones,
Beautiful dripping fragments—the negligent list of one after another, as I happen to call
      them to me, or think of them,
The real poems, (what we call poems being merely pictures,)
The poems of the privacy of the night, and of men like me,
This poem, drooping shy and unseen, that I always carry, and that all men carry,
(Know, once for all, avow’d on purpose, wherever are men like me, are our lusty, lurking,
      masculine poems;)
Love-thoughts, love-juice, love-odor, love-yielding, love-climbers, and the climbing sap,
Arms and hands of love—lips of love—phallic thumb of love—breasts of
      love—bellies press’d and glued together with love,
Earth of chaste love—life that is only life after love,
The body of my love—the body of the woman I love—the body of the man—the body of
      the earth,
Soft forenoon airs that blow from the south-west,
The hairy wild-bee that murmurs and hankers up and down—that gripes the full-grown
      lady-flower, curves upon her with amorous firm legs, takes his will of her, and holds himself
      tremulous and tight till he is satisfied,
The wet of woods through the early hours,
Two sleepers at night lying close together as they sleep, one with an arm slanting down across
      and below the waist of the other,
The smell of apples, aromas from crush’d sage-plant, mint, birch-bark,
The boy’s longings, the glow and pressure as he confides to me what he was dreaming,
The dead leaf whirling its spiral whirl, and falling still and content to the ground,
The no-form’d stings that sights, people, objects, sting me with,
The hubb’d sting of myself, stinging me as much as it ever can any one,
The sensitive, orbic, underlapp’d brothers, that only privileged feelers may be intimate where they are,
The curious roamer, the hand, roaming all over the body—the bashful withdrawing of flesh
      where the fingers soothingly pause and edge themselves,
The limpid liquid within the young man,
The vexed corrosion, so pensive and so painful,
The torment—the irritable tide that will not be at rest,
The like of the same I feel—the like of the same in others,
The young man that flushes and flushes, and the young woman that flushes and flushes,
The young man that wakes, deep at night, the hot hand seeking to repress what would master
      him; The mystic amorous night—the strange half-welcome pangs, visions, sweats,
The pulse pounding through palms and trembling encircling fingers—the young man all color’d,
      red, ashamed, angry;
The souse upon me of my lover the sea, as I lie willing and naked,
The merriment of the twin-babes that crawl over the grass in the sun, the mother never turning
      her vigilant eyes from them,
The walnut-trunk, the walnut-husks, and the ripening or ripen’d long-round walnuts;
The continence of vegetables, birds, animals,
The consequent meanness of me should I skulk or find myself indecent, while birds and animals
      never once skulk or find themselves indecent;
The great chastity of paternity, to match the great chastity of maternity,
The oath of procreation I have sworn—my Adamic and fresh daughters,
The greed that eats me day and night with hungry gnaw, till I saturate what shall produce boys to
      fill my place when I am through,
The wholesome relief, repose, content;
And this bunch, pluck’d at random from myself;
It has done its work—I tossed it carelessly to fall where it may.

  — Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892), American poet, essayist, journalist and humanist.