Day 6

Pasta.  Gives me all the energy I need for 7 hours of cycling, cooks ready to go in 11 minutes, and costs $1 per pound.  What more could you want?  I'll need it for the ride tomorrow!  (see below).

My Shimano Sora trucker hat.  Its bright orange and completely tacky as can be.  To appreciate why its awesome takes a little knowledge about bike parts.  It is kinda like going to a car enthusiast show and wearing a really ugly hat that has a Ford Pinto on the front.  It was given to me, so it was free which essentially tops the reasons why its so great.  Sometimes the best things you have in life cost nothing.  I have so many things like that, I feel really lucky :).

The San Luis Rey Road Race, 2014.  I had the pleasure of duking it out with my fellow 30+ cat4/5 racers today for 44 miles, and was totally drained for 99% of it.  But it was a really pretty day out in east county and I'm happy to be healthy enough to participate in such events.  Its been a cycling filled weekend, hence all the cycling posts :).

Day 5

Friendly neighbors.  Kitchen faucet backed up last week.  Landlord comes to fix by snaking the pipes.  He ends up breaking a pipe in my neighbor's garage that was connected to my sink.  Guess what happens next?  Yeah.  His entire garage was subsequently filled with whatever was in my sink drain.  Sad face.  I found out when I came home the next day and my neighbor had every single one of his belongings which had previously resided in his garage loitering in the alleyway, soaking up the sun. Needless to say that while I could easily blame this on the landlord, I feel pretty terrible at this point about the situation.  After all, I did start the chain of events by calling the landlord about my drain problem.  But alas, this can be remedied in only one way.  I fetch the last 22oz Stone IPA out of my refridgerator and hand it off to my weary neighbor, so that hopefully it will make him forget the entire situation; doubtful.  It was the least I could do, and while bubbling liquid is probably the last thing he wants to think about at this point, this particular kind HAS to be the exception.  He took it, success!  But the story doesn't end there.  This week I got home pretty tired after a long drive, a long day at work, a 5mi run, a 2500 yd swim workout, and one super fun Bodypump class.  I'm exhausted.  I'm done.  First thing I see walking up the block is neighbor dude.  I was trudging up the sidewalk carrying: my bike, my laptop bag, my gymbag, a backpack full of dirty work clothes, and a trader joes paper bag full of leftover food from my trip, and I'm about 15ft and a flight of stairs away from home.  He exclaims: "wait, I got something for you!" runs inside and emerges with something in his hand.  He attempts to hand me an ice cold IPA.  Seeing that my carrying one more thing is a physical impossibility, he slips in my TJs bag.  My neighbor is a cool dude.

Parallel parking.  An abomination of the world you say?  That's why they make self parking cars you say?  Nay!  I say: challenge accepted.  Mind you, I live in a place wherein lacking the skillz of parallel parking means an extra 10 minutes of walking to get home.  And when you carry as much stuff as I do from the car to home, THAT sir, an abomination.  To me there is not much more satisfying that arriving at home after a long day, and finding the perfect parking spot, which you know will EXACTLY fit your car, plus or minus 6 inches.  OK, so you might have to make a 23 point turn to get in, but when you do, and your neighboorhood is cheering for you when you swing the door open, and people show up with cell phone cameras to document this momentus ocassion, you will know what it means to be a parallel parking master champion.  Champagne spray!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3BGkOKVMUU

Being on a team.  Any team.  My personal favorite is my cycling team.  Participating in an activity which requires you to rely on others and simultaneously take responsibility for a small part is definitely one of the most rewarding experiences I've had thusfar.  In cycling the most humbling role as a team member is the guy that sacrifices himself for the good of the team.  Blocks the wind for his team, moves his teammate up to the front, offers him his bike in the case of an accident, brings him food or water.  They call him the domestique.  The worker.  The servant.  Try it.  Its hard.  More posts to come about this.

Day 4

A conversation with my Dad.  Especially after a long day at work after being on travel to the lonely desert.  It is definitely something to be appreciated and remembered.  So many people I've met don't have parents still alive or they don't have good relationships with them, or they just cant see them for various other reasons.   I feel especially lucky to have had such wonderful parents growing up.  It is definitely a humbling thought to know you probably made it as far as you did primarily due to your parents, and its pretty scary to think I might have that sort of influence on someone's life one day.

Mind puzzles.  Saw this one today, and was sad to say I just couldn't figure it out.  Even with the hint, had no clue.  Makes me think I really need to change the way I look at things, literally.  Usually you just stare at these things and it sort of flips in your mind the way an optical illusion does.  For me, it just wasn't happening today.  Maybe you'll have better luck.

An amazing night's sleep.  Nothing quite so simple and refreshing as a good night's sleep.  I've gotten very used to only 5 hours of sleep each night, my body functioning in the mornings on a combination of coffee and some kind of fruit and oatmeal.  With work, bike, swim and run training AND trying to have a social life, a full night's sleep is nearly impossible to come by.  I don't know how people with small children function during the day.  All I can say is hats off to parent's, and hopefully I'll figure it out one day like my parent's did.  For the time being the hotel I'm staying at has incredible beds, and no distractions.  One thing I definitely am going to start appreciating more is sleep.  

Day 3

The old guy in the grocery store.  He interrupted me, while I was carefully considering the number of grams of fat in the Vitamin D, 100%, full flavored and extremely sweet whole milk I had just put in my basket.  He looked at me and said, "What you rrreally want is this."  He yanked down a smaller bottle with a green label, and turns it over in his hand.  "This goat's milk is much better than the stuff from cow's, and it's naturally homogenized".  Turns out the old dude is right.  Of course my first reaction is to pretend to be interested in what he is saying, because what I really want to do is get my milk and leave.  I ended up sticking with the whole cow's milk,  but what I learned is that not all random people are crazy, and I really should give people the benefit of the doubt sometimes.  

Firm handshakes.  I spend a lot of time listening to people at work.  During meetings, during lunch.  I read their emails, and try to respond promptly and effectively.  Email, presentations with computers, and text messaging have really destroyed the everyday personal touch.  Today I shook a person's hand at work following a briefing that made me realize how weak and exhausted he was.  It was kind of shocking actually, it was a real softie.  This guy's hands felt like they hadn't touched anything harder than a piece of cheesecake for his whole life.  I found it hard to believe that someone who had an image of being so much more together and powerful had one of the most weak, awkward, and pitiful handshakes I'd ever had the joy of experiencing.  Personal touch and confidence is important to me and I hadn't really given much thought to how important that is, so here's to a firm shake.

The ingenuity, perseverance, and curiosity of children.  Take this little guy for example.  If you asked any person with reasonable knowledge of what conditions would be like outside a jumbo jet at 35,000ft (that's roughly six and a half miles) and traveling at Mach 0.8, that person would tell you there is a reason why you can't open the windows for a little fresh air.   And maybe you should wear this if you were going to attempt the feat.  But you didn't ask a reasonable person.  No instead you asked a child who wanted to go home to see his parents, so he didn't consider all that, he just wanted to go home.  Among the challenges of such logic (or lack thereof), the air temperature (about -60 degrees F), the sheer speed of the air hitting your skin (about 500mph) and the lack of oxygen (your brain would receive ~5x less oxygen at that altitude).  But nonetheless, little dude crosses the tarmac of an international airport, in plain sight of the tower, security, tucks up in the belly of a skyscraper with wings, flies for 5 hours in aforementioned conditions and then rolls out of the landing gear hold like nothing special just happened after the plane lands.  Turns out he just wants to know where his Mom is.  While unfortunately (or fortunately?) he traveled to Hawaii instead of to Somalia (where his Mother was), its the thought that counts.  And if I was a parent, I'd be stoked if my kid tried something like that to get home.  Hopefully there are other kids out there with these crazy ideas and maybe someday kids with this kind of perseverance will get us to Mars.

Day 2

Drivers that are nice.  What's that you say?  Drivers can be nice??  Yep.  Today on base at NAWS China Lake there is a street which at 4p is completely full of cars going 50-55mph for everyone that just got off work, no stop sign.  The street perpendicular to this has a stop sign, with just as many weary folks waiting to go home.  Anywhere else you'd see the people with no stop sign just continue on and make everyone at the stop sign (lets say 20 cars) wait til there was no cross traffic.  Nope.  The cars going 55mph slowed down to a crawl, flashed their lights, and EACH ONE took turns letting the cars at the stop sign turn right and join traffic.

Cockroaches.  Why?  Lets just say I thought the only thing that could wake a person fully for a boring pre-flight briefing at my work was 2 cups of coffee and 8 hours of sleep.  BUT after only 5 hours of sleep and 1.5 cups of coffee... I was checking emails in the hangar and felt something strange UNDER my pants at about knee level.  Huh, strange.  Hangar doors closed... its not windy in here.  Wait.  Definitely that is not wind.  And I probably didn't feel anything til now because you're wearing dress socks... !!
Yep, more awake than from the sleep and the coffee.  I even let the 1.25" long dude live, maybe he'll wake you up :).

People that talk (legitimate conversation, like hello, how are you, how is your day, I like your tattoo) to Subway employees.  I always just want my sandwich exactly made like the last one, and I'll bet the people that work there need a break from the words "6 inch" and "chips and drink".  In fact the words "chips and drink" are so recognizable at the end of that sandwich line it really becomes this funky concoction of the english language and sounds to me like "chipandrink".  Anyhow, people that take the time to talk to the machines er people that work at Subway are awesome.

The Beginning, Day 1

Starting this blog because I think everyone, no matter how terrible you may think a single day of your life may be, can find 3 simple things that can turn your day around.  For me, I just wanted something simple to share my thoughts in hopes of inspiring others to think of 3 things that made today great for you. 

So here goes.

3 things that made today a great day.

4-8-2014

      DavidGuetta Radio, Pandora station, highly recommend for a running tempo workout.  Who doesn't want to have a dance party on-the-run?

      Taking my girlfriend out to a Italian-Greek fusion restaurant on my lunch break.  Good food, good company, and ice cream afterwards on a hot day. 

      Learning that “fancy” when used in terms of ketchup refers to its specific gravity, in layman’s terms: “fancy” ketchup is thicker that normal ketchup.  Heard it on the radio.