My new bike frame... A sign of how much I'm working.

I have a new bike frame.  It was ordered in February.  It arrived Friday.  I picked it up Saturday.  I unwrapped it.  I looked at it.  I showed it to Jason and Brian.  I stuck it in the basement.  I confirmed that the paint indeed glows in the dark.  I haven't looked at it since. 

 

It is a Niner RIP9 full suspension frame.  Google will get you all you want to know about the frame and more. I've got about 60% of the parts that I need to build it.  I probably could put it together with crap I have laying around.  That wouldn't do the frame justice. 

 

I need to buy brakes, cranks and handlebars. I'll probably get that stuff early next year.

 

Okay.  Time to get back to work.

 

Pete

No Pants, No Money, No Job.

Roy Pearson, the judge who brought a $67,000,000.00 law suit against a dry cleaner for losing his pants lost his job yesterday.

While I wish evil on no man, I'm smiling a little inside.

Hugs and Kisses,

Pete

IPOD Touch

I got one. I like it. It is pretty darn cool. The 8gig seems to do all that I need it to... if the word "need" can actually be used along with an IPOD.

Pete

Oh My God

I've got THIS song in my head and I can't get it out.  Oddly enough, I don't really mind it.  :D  It is the song that turned me on to Lily Allen and I am enjoying that too.

 

Hugs and Kisses.

 

Pete

I'm slightly less boring this weekend.

I didn't hardly work all weekend.... only for a few hours Sunday night. I spent more time working on my car than on my laptop this weekend.

La and I went to the sprawling metropolis of Clifton, VA to be tourists. It didn't suck.

We played poker with friends Saturday night. I was exhausted enough that people mistook my face for a good poker face. I freaking cleaned up! I walked out of John's house $13.05 richer. I'm going to invest it.

Monday morning was kind of a rude awakening. Did I mention that I HATE daylight savings time? The Fuzzbutts (aka "cats") just don't adjust to new schedules that quickly.

Later!
Pete

I never realized how lame American Football was until today.

Hey doods.

 

Don't get me wrong.  I still watch football when I can (meaning when the Broncos are playing).  There's a new thing on DirecTV that takes an NFL game and deletes all the time between plays and boils it down to the actual time between when the ball is snapped and when the guy is tackled.  They include a brief shot of the referee if there is a penalty or a challenge.  They cut out ALL stop time.  Any guesses on how long these programs are for a football game that has a broadcast of 3 hours? 

 

 

The answer is......

 

30 minutes. 

 

Kinda adds a little perspective on the game, eh?

 

Pete

The Spork of the Gods.

I've had numerous "my life was incomplete before I found this" finds lately. I wasn't sure I could go another day without the LED bathroom faucet that makes the water coming out apear to be blue.

That pales in uselessness when compared to the titanium spork.

I'm going to have to order a few of these. They're just too cool.

Love,

Pete

The Politically Correct way to tell someone that you're staring at their ass.

Okay!  So I'm standing in line to get my coffee this morning and there's a rather striking looking Latina in line in front of me.  I somehow managed to notice that her Metro-rail pass is about to fall out of her back pocket. 

 

I am faced with a serious dilemma.  If I tell her that her metro pass is about to fall out of her pocket, it will be EXTREMELY obvious that I've been staring at her ass.  If I don't tell her, she could lose her pass and it could be a real hardship for her.  It wasn't just a metro card, it was one of the passes that give you lots of access and is paid for by your employer.  Those things are valuable and a pain to replace. 

 

I continued to stare at metro card for a while longer (the line was suprisingly long for 7:15am) while I tried to decide what to do. 

 

In the end, I turned to the woman behind me and asked her if she could tell this Latina that her Metro pass was about to fall out of her pocket.  That worked out great!  The Latina chick now thinks that the woman behind me is a perv, and the woman behind me thinks I'm a perv.  No-one is going to believe the woman behind me if she tells them that I was staring at this other woman's but because she is the one that acted on her perverted thoughs. Not me. :D 

 

It all worked out well in the end. 

 

Love,

 

Pete

I am Alpha Cat (Part 2)

You may remember a post back in May about me establishing myself as Alpha cat in our household.  When we were gone for 2 weeks in Europe, I thought that Mao would re-establish his status as alpha cat.  It didn't really happen though.  I came home and moved right back into my top cat status.

 

Over the last week or so, he has been trying to assert his dominance.  He's been misbehaving, beating up his sister and generally being a naughty cat.  I needed to assert my alpha status again. 

 

When he does something that he thinks is worthy of demonstrating his alpha cat status, he rubs his face against some stationary item in the house to get his scent on it and mark it as under his ownership.  I decided that just scolding him and locking him in the basement when he misbehaves isn't enough.  I need to establish my ownership of the house. 

 

Whenever I do something that I think is worthy of being alpha cat, I then rub my face, neck and sometimes armpits on some stationary household item near where I am.  This got an immediate reaction from Mao.  He came right up and rubbed on the thing that I just claimed as my own.  I rubbed again and when he went to rub on it, I scared him away. 

 

After doing this for 2 days, he actually started recognizing me as alpha cat.  Truly weird. 

 

I took this a step farther and decided that when he's bad, I need to mark him as my property.  You can't imagine how loud Laura laughed when she walked into the sun room to see me rubbing the cat under my armpit.  Mao didn't think it was so funny.  He kinda ran away to take a bath. 

 

It is a good thing to be king. :D

 

Love,

 

Pete

No baby birds were harmed in the preparation of this post.

Goooooooooooooooooooooood MORNING VIETNAM!!!!!!!!

Sorry. I've always wanted to saythat. :D

I was working on Squirrel Girl's bike last night and I thought a few things were worth mentioning in regards to this project.

1. I hate tubeless tires. It wasn't hard getting the old ones off. Cleaning the Stan's sealant out of the tires isn't too bad. Building wheels on the Mavic 819 rims is freaking annoying though. I hate the little threaded nipple cups (sounds kinky, eh?). The wheels turned out awesome in the end. I think she'll like them. Setting the bead isn't bad at all with a compressor. (see baby bird comment below)
2. I hate old Thomson stems. That wedge thing is stoopid. It is too easy to overtighten them.
3. Titus makes a pretty damn nice bike!!!! I really like the suspension design and the way the pivots are built. I'm impressed. I'd consider an Asylum or RAcerx29er as a future bike.

The baby bird comment comes from the fact that a little bird nested just above my air compressor in the carport. I needed the compressor to set the bead on the tubeless tires. Had I turned the compressor on, the birds would have been seriously traumatized. Instead, I drove to the gas station and used their compressor.

I feel good about myself. :D

No the freaking little birds won't shut up! It drives the cats crazy.

Pete

Bad case of Morning Legs.

After last night's Wakefield ride, my commute to work this morning was less than supper inspired.  The downhill spinning was great.  I didn't have a lot of horsepower for the two steep climbs though.  It will be interesting to see how the ride home goes.  Getting more sleep at night would help too. 

 

Pete

Weird-assed shoes.

Hi people. :D

I saw these on the internet recently. I was thinking to myself, "Self? What kind of freak would buy a pair of these?"

Vibram Five Fingers Shoes

Oh yeah... I would

They're actually really comfortable. They're a little tough to put on, but they will replace my old Keens. :D

Pete

The Commuting Bike Upgrades

Oy oy. 

 

I haven't talked about this bike for a while and it has evolved a little.  I'm on a blog simplification kick, so I'm gonna post this here instead of on my wrench blog.  

 

At the end of last riding season, I decided to build a dedicated commuting bike for this year.  I like riding the road bike, but quite honestly it I don't get a full workout in the time that I have to ride to and from work.  The ability to coast makes it a little too easy and at 5am I'm not motivated enough to keep pedaling to push the speed and thus the workout value up.  At the end of the day, I'm dogged enough that I don't really feel like hammering home.  Additionally, I shouldn't be riding faster on the bike path since that is't really safe. 

 

The new commuting bike is a fixie.  I took an old MTB frame and put a bunch of old parts on it.  I have a 44 tooth ring on the White Ind. ENO cranks and an Eno rear hub to take up the chain slack.  Most of the other parts are ancient mountain bike stuff. I put 700c wheels on it even though it is designed for 26" wheels.  I used a Paul's BMX brake up front that allows me to line up the brake pads with the larger diameter rim.  It was originally built with flat bars and bar ends. I've got full fenders on the thing and they're great on days like yesterday.

 

I liked this build a lot.  I finally got the gearing right (44x16) so that I could fly down the hills and still have enough power to crank up them too.  Riding the fixie is a lot more of a workout and I'm not really going any faster.... in fact my commute time is a bit longer with the fixie than it was on the road bike. 

 

This week I made a change.  I wanted some more hand positions.  For road bike positioning (very low handlbars so that my back is flatter and I'm a bit more aggressive) makes it a little uncomfortable to just have flat bars.  I like the ability to crank up hills with them, but I needed more variety and the ability to stretch out if I want to. 

 

My pals at Speedgoat hooked me up with some 45cm-wide drop bars that will fit my MTBstem (made by Nitto).  They're AWESOME!  I put some 1980s vintage Dura-Ace brake levers on it so that I can grab the hoods when I'm out of the saddle.  That seemed to work great.  I raised the stem up a hair so that I had a little higher bar since the drop bars stretch me out a little more.  That ended up being almost perfect.  I might go for a slightly shorter stem.  We'll see.

 

I really prefer the feel of the drop bars for almost everything.  The positioning is much more intuitive for me on a road bike.  The one thing I definitely noticed is that they're not as wide as my old flat bars.  As a result I don't have the power up the hills like I did before.  I noticed it a little on the early morning climbs yesterday morning.  I noticed it a TON on the climbs on the way home.  It is going to definitely take more arm strength for me to stomp up the hills with this thing.  I guess that is good.  For now I'll go slower up the climbs but with time I'll hopefully get better technique and stronger upper body. 

 

I'm super happy with how the bike has turned out.  All I need is a basket on the front and I'll be set to go.  That will probably have to wait until I return from vacation in July. :D

 

See you on the trails.

 

Pete

Flattracking the Fixie.

Oy oy.

It was rainy and wet for the commute this morning and Dr. Einstein left the tire pressure set at 120psi for the ride in. DUMB MOVE! I didn't crash though. It was by the grace of god that I didn't though.

As always with an incident like this, there are many factors that contribute to the crash.

1. It was wet and slick.
2. This part of the trail has a groove parallel to the direction of travel and lots of paint on the pavement.
3. There was this headphone-wearing pedestrian walking erratically that jumped 2' to the left when he finally heard my bell.

Fortunately I was taking it easy today and moving pretty slowly. I jumped to the left to miss this guy and my front wheel skidded a little. The back tire dropped into a groove that is about the same width as the tire. That sent the front end sliding a bit more. As my weight shifted, I instinctively clicked my right foot out to balance. The back wheel jumped to the left a little. I countersteered just a bit and somehow the tires got grip and I straightened back up. The left foot kept pedaling as though nothing had ever happened. I clipped my right foot in and went on.

I don't honestly know how I stayed up. It was sheer dumb luck.

I lived to ride another day. :D

Pete

Osmond Mania

In honor of the Osmonds getting the band back together I went out on ebay and found something to wear to the show.

Love,

Pete

I am alpha cat!!!!

Cats are definitely hierarchical. My wife and I have two cats. Mao and Gracie are brother and sister from the same litter. Mao is a 15 pound behemoth and Gracie is a dainty little 10-pound cutie. For most of their 3 year life, Mao has been alpha cat and Gracie has been beta cat. That changes from time to time when Gracie gets sick of her big brother beating up on her. She'll go ape-shit all over him and he'll be beta cat for a day or two while she enjoys some time on top of the feline hierarchy.

Oddly enough, my wife and I often fit into the different levels of cat-ness. I usually slot in just below Mao, my wife goes back and forth between being just above or just below Gracie on the pecking order. (Keep in mind that this has nothing to do with the human hierarchy of the home. That is pretty well defined. My wife is in charge and I am a step down. I sometimes ignore what she says, but she's always on the top of the ladder.)

Last week all of this changed. The cats have their own ways of letting us know that it is time to wake up. Gracie is usually quite respectful and cute. Mao is often a bit more aggressive. As alpha cat, it is his right.

I was napping on the weekend and he decided to wake me up. He snuck a paw under the covers and extended his claws on my stomach. In my reaction to getting needled in the ribs, I moved to protect myself. I accidentally kinda whacked Mao on the side of the head. He went flying off the bed and ran away. He wasn't hurt at all, but he definitely changed his outlook on things.

Obviously I was now faster and more powerful than him, so I instantly became alpha cat. I can tell this because he now pays attention to what I tell him. He loves to play with the phone cord. Now when I tell him to stop, he stops and goes to do something else. That is one example. He really has changed his entire way that he deals with me.

The changes are not only in the dealings between Mao and me. Gracie treats me differently too. As charlie cat, she now works really hard to please the new, more affectionate alpha cat. With that in mind, she gets first pick of where to sleep on the bed when it is time to hit the hay. She chooses a prime spot up by our heads. Mao is relegated to the bottom of the bed. She also gets some respect when it is time to play. Usually Mao just takes over any game that Gracie and I are playing. Now he actually waits his turn until she's done.

My wife seems to jump between charlie cat and delta cat. That hasn't really changed with my ascention to alpha status.

I'm a benevolent and kind alpha cat. He still gets play time and lots of affection. At some point that will be seen as weakness by him and he'll try to assert his alpha status. I'm working on ways to keep alpha status without whacking him on the head. My guess is that a squirt bottle with water in it might be used. :D

Later.

Pete

One less tooth makes a difference....

Oy oy.

I've been baaaaaaaaad lately. I either haven't had much to say or haven't had time to say it. I'd like to change that a bit. A lot has happened lately and I'd like to get back to blogging about it.

One of the changes for me lately is getting back in the swing of commuting by bicycle. I was seriously sick earlier this year (reason #204 why I haven't been posting much) and a few weeks ago got the thumbs up from the doc to really get back to riding as much as I want.

I'd been riding a few days per week, but not alot of intensity or distance. I was just putting miles in.

Two weeks ago I started riding to work again when my schedule allowed. That had me riding Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The big difference is that I've been riding the fixed gear bike lately. I was a little worried about getting the right gearing and I thought I had it about spot on.

Running a 44x17 gear I was a little uncomfortable on both the downhills and uphills. I'd have to be ready to hit the brake if I got spinning too fast and needed to back off on the downhills. The flats and gradual inclines/declines felt pretty good. The steep climbs were pretty tough. Some were a pretty normal stomp, but two climbs on the way in and three climbs on the way home were slow, tough cranking to get to the top. That kinda made me feel like I had the right gear.

This weekend I got a 16t cog and thought I'd give that a try. What a huge change 1 tooth makes. The hills that were slightly uncomfortable became much faster and much easier to keep up with the spin. The downhill near home that has one of those radar-activated speed signs recorded me at 19mph with the 44x17 when I was pretty close to spinning out. I hit it this morning and was going 24mph and didn't feel bad at all about the spin. It was really nice.

The climbs were another story. The two slow cranks on the way to the work required even more cranking, though I don't think I really moved any slower up them with the 44x16 gear.

Overall my normal commute time to work was cut by almost 11 minutes. Everything rolled faster.

It will be interesting to see what happens on the way home. Riding home is mostly uphill, though there are realy only 3 hills of the slow cranking variety. In theory I should be able to stomp up the others with only a little more effort than with 44x17.... I'll be moving a little faster though. I should also get more recovery on the short downhills that I have leading up to the bigger climbs. That should make the climbs a little easeir. 44x17 didn't give me much recovery time because I was having to work so hard to keep spinning so fast.

One last comment... I'm spinning 180mm cranks. Chris Jabberhockey is thinking of ditching his White Industries cranks. He doesn't like the way the chainrings are set up. He's doinked at least one by hammering it on a log. If he feels like selling them, I might drop down to 175s. It would make my spin a lot better. I'll see how this works for a while first.

As usual, I've babbled on about shit hat no-one but me cares about. :D

Talk to you soon.

Pete

Quuote for the day...

Guy Noire:  "She walked into my life wearing a Mt. Rushmore t-shirt.  Those guys never looked so good, particularly Washington and Jefferson.... kind of bloated, but definitely happy."

 

Love,

 

Pete

My friend's new dog.

My friend Maxine got a new dog.  It is a long story how it found her and I will gladly spare you that. 

 

It is a breed of dog that someone is trying to establish.  It is called a Poochi.  That is a cross between a poodle and a chijuajua.  I suggested that the name is boring.  They should have called the breend Chiwoodle. 

 

Okay.  That's the end of my marginally funny story.  You can pretend to laugh now.

 

Pete

Mexican NASCAR

Oy oy.

 

Yesterday was the NASCAR Busch series race held each year in Mexico City.  It is a road course event and I've really grown to love it.  It was broadcast in Spanish on ESPN and in English on ESPN2.  I watched ESPN.  It was extremely cool to see the difference in coverage, even though I could barely understand a word. 

 

I like that NASCAR has slowly become a little more international.  Not only do they now have Toyota in the line-up, but they've also got some foreign drivers.  There were 7 drivers from Mexico in the race.  The top 10 had a Colombian, 2 Mexicans and an Aussi.  The race was finally won by Juan Pablo Montoya.  It was a great race!

 

One of the things I enjoyed was the pronunciation of some of the names by the Mexican announcers.  My personal favorite was "J. J. Yeley", which in Spanish comes out, "Yay Yay Yeley". 

 

NASCAR has the rap of being an American sport that deosn't really interest the rest of the world.  It was very cool to see 72,000 Mexicans show up to enjoy some racing.  NASCAR and the Mexican hosts for this race seemed to put on a great show.  With luck, it will bring some new fans to racing as well as some tollerance and enlightenment to American race fans. 

 

I can' wait for next year's race.  Maybe we'll even get a cup race down there. 

 

Pete

Building a new fixie...

Ahhhh... the project has started.  I ordered parts and they'll start trickling in over the next week or so.  Hopefully I'll have it all and built by the middle of next week.  Finding time and a place to ride it are going to be tough. 

 

What is it???? 

 

I've wanted a big-tired fixie for riding off road for a while.  This will be fully rigid and at this point will have absolutely no brakes.  The frame is designed around the Surly 3.7" endomorph tire and Large Marge rim.  From what I was told, there are only 6 of these frames in existance.  The frame is steel and the welding work on it is seriously cool looking.  The fork is definitely a little different than what I'm used to.  It uses a through axle and a kind-of unique bearing set-up.  I can't really describe it more until I actually see what it looks like. 

 

I went with shorter cranks than usual -- 175mm.  The bottom bracket spindle is one of those 48 spline variety.  ISIS cranks and BB were an option, but I went with the weird splined ones because I also went with tubular chromoly cranks for strength.  It is easy to mess up your cranks when you can't coast over obstacles.  Someone my size has to be careful with that.  I'm also going seriously retro with this and getting platform pedals for it. 

 

To start out with I'll just be getting used to riding this thing.  I'll use it as a grocery getter and just do some urban riding on it so I get used to not coasting.  Hopefully by early spring I'll be hitting the trails with it.  In the beginning it will be mostly mellow stuff... Wakefield, Rosaryville and maybe Schaeffer.  I'm definitely going to have to learn to deal with log hops on this. 

 

I'll post photos when I start getting stuff in.  I don't mean to be so mysterious.  I'm just not sure how it is going to turn out until I have parts in hand. 

 

More to come soon. :D

 

Pete

 

 

My Political Commentary for Today

US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates said today that the US is not planning a war with Iran. You can read the story HERE if you want. It has nothing to do with the comment I'm going to make.

I'm wondering if that headline is supposed to make Americans feel better? Obviously the Bush Administration didn't plan a war with Iraq either. That did not stop them from invading.

Love,

Pete

Severe Weather Warning.

I got sick of my Mom sending all of these tales of snow and woe from Colorado. They've had 9 major storms since December 19th. She's still got many feet of snow on the ground. Though it melts a little here and there, another storm comes along and adds to the pile.

In response, I decided to make up my own weather advisory for the DC area.

Our weather-free winter is taking a radical turn. We're expecting a severe dusting of snow tonight with some drifts reaching 2" by morning. Mild breeze warnings have been issued and they've advised people who are driving that the roads might be moist. The local authorities are making urgent "don't drive unless you feel like it" pleas to the public. I can only hope that we'll pull through this one smoothly.

It reminds me of the weather advisory from Kent Brockman, Action News anchor on The Simpsons, "The death toll from today's killer storm is still at zero, but it is poised to shoot up at any moment!".

I hope you all survive this storm with grace and serenity.

Pete

A Love Story...

A friend of mine sent me a link for an on-line madlib love story.  I decided to give it a try.   Here's the story that came out of it: 

 

My Love Story

 

One squishy summer day at Rhode Island you see the most intense creature you have ever seen. Their name is The Queen of England , and every move she makes just turns you on more and more. You nudge your best friend Kareem Abdul Jabar and say, "Wow, that has to be the most tart body I have ever seen." Suddenly, she looks in your direction and starts walking right towards you!!! she says, "I noticed you staring at me from over there. I just had to tell you, that I think you are so Portuguese , and was wondering if you'd like to go to Tasmania with me and harvest radishes in the moonlight ?" With a stupid smile on your face you say, " Chicks dig guys with green shoes " and go with them. When you finally get to Tasmania , she moves closer to you, and gives you the biggest kiss ever. The two of you are passionately kissing, when you feel a plumber hit you on the back of the head. You open your eyes to find out it's all a dream, but there is a note left next to your bed.

It reads: " The Queen of England is the love you've been waiting your whole life for. she will ask you out in 69 days or less, but only if you send this e-mail to at least 10 people within the next few minutes. The more people you send it to, the sooner they will ask you out, and you both fall in love. Do not take this lightly, because if you simply ignore this, you will have bad luck in love for the next 69 years!"

 

 

Farticus! FEEL MY POWER!!!

Kids are great.  I've got friends who have particularly strange kids.  My friend Kwan has two AWESOME kids.  This story is about his boy Ty.  Ty is in second grade. 

 

Ty came home this week and announced that he has a new nickname:  Farticus.  It is like Sparticus, but different.  He runs around and says, "I am Farticus!  Feel my POWER!" and then he farts. 

 

When he told his parents this, his mom hung her head in shame.  Kwan, on the other hand, did an okay  job of pretening not to think it was funny.  He really had to work at it though.  Kwan told him that this was a bad thing to do and that if he continued to do it, he would lose all his friends.  Ty's first response was to say that wasn't true. People flocked around him because they thought it was funny.  He then added that he didn't really care if he lost all his friends bechasue HE thought it was funny. 

 

What makes this story even funnier is that Kwan is now trying to teach his son to control his farts.  Kwan should probably change his name to Burpicus because he's completely incapable of controlling his own burps. 

 

I'm obviously on a similar intellectual level as Ty because I think it is funny and I can't wait till he comes over to my house and I can teach him some more naughty, but harmless stuff.  :D 

 

Pete

Modified Cars in Germany.

Hey folks.

I just got back from a week in Germany. I was doing work stuff the whole time and got almost no opportunity to relax. I did a little touristing, but not near enough for my taste. The one day that I would have had time to walk around and shop had hurricane force winds and we ended up staying in.

As always, I enjoyed seeing the cars that people drive. I had a few observations that I thought I'd relate.

1) There's a BMW that we don't get here in the states that looks pretty cool. Imagine if they made a Z4 in a 4-door wagon. Well you don't really have to imagine it because they do. They don't sell them in the US though. It is a cool looking car.

2) There are very few modified cars in Germany. I saw 2 or 3 cars with aftermarket wheels and only one car with enough modifications that it really changed the body lines at all. It was a pretty cool Alpha Romeo spyder with flared fenders and wide, deep-dish wheels. That's it! Everything else was stock and 95% of the cars had steel wheels. I know it is winter and many folks will bring out the bling for summer. I just thought it was interesting.

3) In America, VW's large van is called the Eurovan. That made me wonder, What do they call that same model in Europe? The Amerivan? NOPE. It is the Transporter. I actually knew that from previous trips and plenty of time on Vortex. What I didn't know is that they have a special edition model called the California Cruiser. :D

4) In the 90's VW made many themed editions of the Golf. One that I hadn't seen before, but saw three examples of last week was the Bon Jovi edition VW Golf Wagon TDi. I didn't see much special about it except for the badging.

5) Driving on the autobahn is pretty cool. Conditions were not ideal to really fly, but we got our Passat wagon TDi up to about 180kph in the left lane.

Later folks. It is good to be home.

Pete

Geography Lessons.

I read this article at my desk this morning and thought it was funny.

LIMA (Reuters) - Royal Nepal Airlines has apologized to Peru after mistakenly using a photo of the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu to promote tourism in Nepal.

Peru's foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday the flagship carrier of the Himalayan kingdom, about half way around the world from the Andean country, had put the picture of Peru's tourism icon, Machu Picchu, on a poster under a slogan "Have you seen Nepal?"

Here's the whole article.

Have a nice day, dammit!

Pete

Finally a good run.

I'll keep this short. After over 3 weeks off my workout regimen due to injury, I finally got a good run in last night. It wasn't long. It wasn't fast. It was, however, 100% pain-free.

I took it slow and easy and made sure that I stretched well before going out and I used good form while running. It is easy to fall into the trap of shuffling along and not lifting your knees when you're trying to run slowly on a recovery run. That can start bad habits which lead to injuries.

I can't tell you what a relief it was to complete a whole loop after coming up lame the last three times I tried.

We'll try it again today. :D

Pete