Counting Down the Days

Since my vicarious racing team is sucking old man's balls, I need to take matters into my own hands and transport myself to the race course to get myself silly drunk and do a Belgian drunken lounge to try and encourage my virtual team riders to either try to ride their bikes or get their arses off the course and stop embarrassing themselves any further. This is still another 16 sleeps away, so I have plenty of time to get my plan together. Unfortunately I will have my family on tow, so I probably need to park somewhere on one spot rather than see the race at 15 spots between beer refills. Anyway. We'll fly to Amsterdam on 28th, meet up with some friends, rent a car and drive down to Oudenaarde to see the race. It should be OK.

I have not been updating my blog for both of you readers, and I must apologize for that. Full-time job does take its time and limit the time available for spare time activities. In other words....I'm lazy as foock.

What else....I got my man cave finished and LED screen hung on the wall. Who cares if some cover plates are missing!? I also have my trainer set in the basement, but since I insulated 50% of the walls, it's getting bit too warm for training down there. I could probably start some sort of shotty DIY blog soon. It's a good space for training though and I have my trainer set-up for the next two weeks, so I can get my 10 hours of winter training in.

Now pardon me. It's my weekly 45 minutes of alone time for enjoying my beer and listening to some old fark music.

p.s. I will post some RVV photos soon.

Winter, day 278

So what to do on a winter day in NW Ontario bush? They tell you to come out and play.

C'est Fantastique

As a follow-up on a previous post. Them old farts have some fast in their blood.

Needless to say that my riding or any sport activity for that matter has been minimal recently.


Quand Ari rencontre la nouvelle Aston by GQFrance

EPIC

The word epic gets tossed around lot nowadays on blog posts, tweets and other forums, where all kinds of self-lovers like to tell the world what they have or haven't done or thought about doing recently. Epic is often used as an adjective to describe a bike ride. However, quite often a ride is referred to as an epic ride before it has even happened. This is like predicting some completely unpredictable future event and while at it, I would like to have next weekend's lotto numbers. In my opinion you can't predict epic, plan epic or make epic. You can definitely choose actions that are known to be favorable in creating circumstances for epic ride, such as riding 200 km, but just riding 200 km doesn't mean that it's epic. If it's something that you can potentially replicate every weekend, it most likely is not epic. Epic ride can also happen completely unexpectedly in most unfavorable circumstances. In my books epic is not easy, safe and/or always fun.

I will go for an epic ski in a bit after Melissa comes home from her epic run. Just kidding, for me an epic ride is like fine wine, making of it is kinda messy and not really that much fun, but it does get better as time passes and eventually you actually think that you enjoy it. I've never puked or have eaten frozen apples during or have eaten strawberry jam with a spoon after making wine though, but all of the above have happened during or after a ride that may be called epic. I'm getting older though and know when to stop before things get too epic.

That Smug Winter Thing

There is no match in smugness to XC skiing. There's a very specific set of rules to the whole thing and I'm not too sure I meet any of these rules. The HC group of XC skiers, also known as norwads, smells the rule breakers from mils (no spelling error here, mil = 11 km) away and do not hesitate to give stink eyes to pariahs. One major mistake is to drive a vehicle other than Subaru or VW. It is also easier to become a mensa member than a norwad, but a good way to get accepted by the community is to use wooden skis, wear wool shirts, carry a backbag (Fjällräven gets extra points) or actually be a real norwegian.

Anyway, I headed into the norwad nest today for my first ski outing. It turns out that I didn't learn to ski over the summer this year either. It was quite a torture fest like the first time often is.

Hopefully the weather cooperates this winter.

Went out for a quick boot with little hoot too and she had learnt some skiing over the summer.

Someone Turned the Ski Season On

Now where can I find packed trails?

Rooster Ride

Since there was no racing this weekend, and I felt like I can delay my basement re-finishing project by at least another day, we went for a ride on Saturday. It was good times and I managed to show some of the Roosters some routes in the good end of town. There were some new trails, some abandoned plans due to absolutely brutal trails, some rednecks and some gunshots of course. I didn't take any photos because I was, you know, riding my bike for the most time. 

Mrs. Hoot was kind enough to cook some chili for our after ride gathering around a bonfire and that wrapped up a good day. 

Dave mentioned that we should do this more often and maybe without the beers after. That sounds awful lot like training, but I may be talked into silliness like that. Let's see what happens next weekend...