Another day another ride

Liz and I decided to check out some bluegrass music that was going on in Blacksburg last night. On our to the town we came up on a cyclist who in the middle of the country walking with his bike. There is really no graceful way to walk in cycling shoes. It just looks silly. Anyway, it was raining and this guy clearly had a long walk ahead of him, so we stopped. It wasn't real easy to stuff his bike into our trunk, but after taking off both wheels and putting a seat down we got the bike in. Just like that we had a third passenger with us. He seemed really grateful for the lift.  He told us that he was a VT freshman from somewhere on the east coast. However, his father got his degree from Purdue and his grandparent live in Chicago. He seemed like a nice kid. It worked out well since he gave us directions to where we needed to go. The bluegrass music was cool, and there were some people dancing which was fun to watch.

A different kind of adventure

The plan was to quick drive to the mechanic to pick the new car tire and then jet home and hop on the bike for a quick ride. Then, it all went south. I was exiting the parking lot and the brakes went out on the Ford. I'll tell you...losing your brakes is the weirdest feeling you can have in when driving. After driving that car for 7 year (or so) those extra two inches of down made it feel like my foot was being eaten by the engine itself. 

Thankfully, I was only going 3 mph, and I didn't hit anyone. I called a for a tow truck and dropped of the car at the mechanic for yet another patch. Since I didn't get home till later than anticipated, I was relegated to biking for 50 minutes on the trainer while watching football. Somebody should tell Peyton Manning that he is an old man and shouldn't throw so many touchdowns. Nobody likes seeing a grown man go through a midlife crisis.

Tomorrow's adventure. The start of interval training....

Readjusting life

A friend at work just bought a road bike, so he's been peppering me daily with questions about the proper way to do things. After all, I am an expert. Friday, we had a very serious discussion about how long your cycling socks should be. (correct answer: neither too short or too long). 

Overall, him getting a bike has been great for my own routine. If he's going to tell me stories about what he learns on his daily bike ride, I better have a parallel story of what crazy stuff happened on my hardcore ride. This has forced me to get more adventurous on my rides in order to come up with interesting things to talk about. Last year, I had two bike routes and I never deviated from them. It felt safe; It was what I liked; It was really boring. It's just not that exciting to tell your friend that on your ride you saw that Farmer Bill has finally cut his hay field. 

So in the last two weeks,I've inserted some spontaneity. I've gotten lost in the national forest, made a serious bid to ride all the way to West Virginia, unexpectedly climbed a really really big mountain, and descended that really really big mountain. Going down the mountain was by far the most terrifying experience.

I like the change. I hope it lasts. I'll be getting better brakes soon.

Are chickens are doing well. They have laid 40 eggs to date. That comes out to 2 eggs a day! Perfect.

The great pepper mystery

Once upon a time (July 30, 2012), we moved to a whole new part of the world. One of the first things Liz and I wanted to do was start a garden. We like gardening; We thought it would make our house seem more like a home; It gave us something to forward to.   However, there really aren't a lot of seedlings available at the end of July. We went to a couple of stores and they didn't have anything worth buying. But THEN...THEN....THEN....we stopped at this little market that sold produce which they grew in the back yard of the store. It was a long shot, but we saw that the owner had pepper plants growing in the pots, and we asked if we could buy a few of the actual plants. He said smiled and said something in Spanish. We never actually understood him. Turns out he was giving away his pepper plants for free. We were estatic and grabbed three plants before he changed his mind. We tried paying for them but he had none of it.

After planting them, we realized that we had no clue what kind of peppers we grabbed. It was a mystery. We knew that they were not green peppers, and we were hoping for banana peppers. We watered those plants, debugged the plants, and watched them thrive. We were rewarded with a great crop of yummy looking peppers that started to turn orange.

Tonight we decided to pick a pepper and solve mystery. Liz cut it into a few pieces, and I noticed that it smelled spicy. We each took a small piece and placed them to our tongue. I must not have placed more than a pin head of the pepper onto my tongue for more than a split second. What followed was incredibly unpleasant. I can best describe it as oral torture. Both liz and I instantly started sweating and looking for ways to escape the sensation. It was painfully hot. In the following 10 minutes,  WE DRANK all of our HALF and HALF in search of relief. After 20 minutes we knew we were ok, but our mouths were still tingly.

All this for just a touch to the tongue!!! Thank goodness neither of us bit into the thing.


We figured out that it was a habenero pepper. We looked up pepper hotness online (after calming down).

habanero peppers = 350,000 to 500,000 scoville units
jalapeno peppers = 5,000 scoville units
Anahiem peppers = 1,500 scoville units

Training Result 13.07.2012 03:11

My first mountain ride!


Training Result 13.07.2012 03:11


You have to use the settings button on the chart to view the elevation gain. I would also suggest deselecting the speed to view it best. I'll still trying to figure out how to embed the picture straight into the blog post.

IMG00148-20120626-1150.jpg

Penny wants to know what is going on.

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