Often times, I get really sick of a song after a few months of hearing it every direction I turn. But once in a while, a song's awesomeness is wrapped in an immunity against being overplayed. Most recently, that's been MGMT's Kids. I listen to this all the time. It's played on KEXP, youtube, and portland radio stations for well over a year and I haven't gotten sick of it. I'm no big MGMT fan. I think most of their stuff is mediocre, but they really hit paydirt with Kids.
Well, Weezer decided to cover it and mix it with Lady Gaga's Poker Face. It's pretty kickass.
Is it just me or does the audience seem like the exact opposite of a sausagefest. Young adult females love them a bowlful of Weezer in the evening hours.
I've noticed the Decemberists making their rounds on talkshows lately to play "The Wanting Comes In Waves/Repaid" from their latest album. Their latest album is done in the form of a rock opera. A continuous story is told from start to end with some help from Shara Worden(My Brightest Diamond) and Becky Stark(Lavendar Diamond). Apparently Jim James is on the album too. It makes sense to have him provide vocals for tracks where they're just rocking out.
I think Shara Worden's role as the Forest Queen is pretty awesome. I'm not a big fan of her stuff as My Brightest Diamond, but whenever she plays an accompaniment role(Decemberists, Sufjan Stevens, Dark Was The Night), I've found it to be ridiculously good.
Here's a recent video from Leno.
I think it's really cool that the Decemberists were able to get Stark and Worden to come and play their roles. I don't get why Worden decided to wear flesh colored lipstick. It looks like she doesn't have lips. Is this a new thing that I'm out of touch with?
I started a sourdough starter about 2 weeks ago(April 20th). Every sourdough starter is a reflection of the area it resides. Sourdough starter is just a collection of wild yeast feasting on sugars. This wild yeast just comes comes from the air around us. This is why San Francisco sourdough is so famous/popular. It has a unique taste that people have found to be just flat out good. I've wondered what sourdough may taste like in the pacific northwest, so I took action and harvested my own wild yeast.
Believe it or not, it's ridiculously simple. It was un-nerving at times because I thought it had died on more than one occasion since the starter wasn't feeding and doubling as vigorously as I expected it too. But Ethel(my starter) has survived and is nothing short of strong.
I've made two loaves to date with her and the taste has noticeably matured between the two loaves. The bread made from Ethel will surely just continue to mature in taste over time. This is pretty exciting.
I went and did a triathlon for the first time. The Hawthorn Farms Tri on May 3rd. This is my story.
Steve, Krista, Ian, and Janel hung out with me the night before the Tri. Steve was cool to bring me my race packet. I rooted through it to find a bunch of race number tags. One to go on my helmet. One to go on Kid Icarus(my bike). And one to go on myself. I was a bit vexed because what was I supposed to do with the one that was supposed to go on myself? I asked Steve and he told me to put it on the shirt I was gonna wear. I told him that I wasn't gonna wear a shirt. That seemed to shock everybody. It was followed with a lot of "Uhhh.....Wellll.....not sure what to do.....". I decided to write my race numbers on my chest and arms with permanent marker. I spent the rest of the night chillin' and asked Steve a few more tri questions about swimming and cycling etiquette. Steve is the most seasoned veteran I know when it comes to triathlons so it was cool talking with him. We part ways that night with Steve and I trying to mentally take each other out of the Tri. The both of us have been saying how we would be burning past each of us for a while. The day of reckoning is finally upon us.
I get up in the morning and bring a bag of stuff to the 2nd transition area to drop off. It was just a bag of clothes and stuff that i'd like to wear after the race. I drove over to transition one and prepped my stuff there. I situated kid icarus and my helmet. I placed my shoes and socks in a bag and a towel on top. I was really early, so I went into Hawthorn Farms only to meet Jason busting out to transition 1 to see Lynn transition. This was weird because Lynn was slotted for the Wave (9:15) after me. I guess she got herself into an earlier wave. Lynn's forte is clearly the swim. Changing waves let her bike and run with other at the same level, but at the cost of having to swim with very slow swimmers. Lynn probably clocks in at a 6:30 500m. I figure she was likely swimming with 10-11 minute swimmers. So as you can imagine, it was frustrating for her to have to lap people in the narrow lanes.
We had about 15 minutes until Steve's wave(8:30), so I just chilled with Jason. I took off my shirt and gave William and Matthew permanent markers to draw on my back and stuff. William was like "i can't". Jason and I were both like, "go ahead. it'll be fun", but he was clearly hesitant. Jason took a pen and wrote "Go Allen" on my back and then William smiled from ear to ear and was like "awesome". He proceeded to go buck wild in drawing on my back. Jason also wrote "Steve is slow" on my upper back, drew barbed wire around my left arm, and wrote "Hey Baby, Call Me 630-965-4054" on my stomach. I was a walking mural.
Ian and Janel show up and we go into the swim area to watch. The pool is 6 lanes. There are 4 swimmers to a lane. The lanes look narrower than normal. I guess it was to accomodate more swimmers. We cheered Steve and some other guys on. Steve is an excellent triathlete, but not what you'd call a graceful man. Watching him get out of the pool was like watching a beached porpoise try to roll over the edge and onto the concrete.
So I'm shirtless and people are constantly staring at me and chuckling. Some point and some just stare. After a while, I got used to it. It was really warm in the pool area, so I didn't mind. But when I was standing outside to watch and cheer Steve in Transition 1, I was really really cold. This started to have me worried about going shirtless for the entire race. Krista saw my concern and advised me to get into the warm-up pool to stay warm.I got myself ready and into the pool area.
I was slotted to go last(4th) in my lane. I wasn't too happy about that, cause I knew that I'd blow past the people ahead of me. The whistle blows and I head out the gate on fire. 3/4 down the lane, I already tap the dude's foot in front of me. BUT!!!! He doesn't stop at the end of the lane to let me pass. That little piece of crap. I was pissed. So I just pushed off like crazy and swam on the left side of the lane to pass the first two ahead of me before the #1 would run into me. I wasted way too much energy doing it, but I did it. This kind of killed me and I slowed down quite a bit to a more normal pace. I had to pass #1 again and passed #2 and #3 again before getting out of the pool.
I wanted to keep my transition time to a minimum. I felt that gave me the best chance to beat Steve since I think he's faster than me in general. So I immediately wiped down, slid on socks, my running shoes and hopped onto my bike with my helmet on and away I went.
I felt good. I was feeling really good. I was pounding away with Kid Icarus. But within the first two miles, 6 people passed me. I'm not used to getting passed much. I don't normally get passed in runs, so this was really really discouraging. The people who did pass me had super tricked out bikes with clips ins and aero bars and everything. They looked pro and legit, but I was still pissed and pretty depressed about it. Morale was low. I kept plowing away though and I ended up not having anybody else pass me and I ended up passing 2 of them back up later during the cycle. It was surprisingly nice. No rain. The sun was shining. It was a really pretty ride through the farms and countryside of northern hillsboro. You actually ride by the farm that the reality show with the little people are on. I can't say I've ever ridden so hard continuously as I did then. Whenever I ride to work, it's hard work, but there's always periods where it's easy to break and not pedal(big downhill, etc). But since this was a race, I was shifting gears to pedal hard downhill too. Looking back, it was fun. I've never went that fast before. The ride was really sparse in general, since the starts were so staggered. It's no Tour de France where there's a pack and a peloton. Instead, i saw like 6 or 8 people total. There were only 2-4 riders in my view at any time. Most of the time, it was only one. As for how my shirtless experiment was going, I'd say a-ok. I didn't feel cold at all and it felt good to have the wind blowing against my skin with the sun warming it.
I got to Transition 2, and I got off in the dismount area and started to run to put my bike on a rack with my transition 2 stuff. Woah nelly! My knees did a double take. They were like, "hold the fuck up. we just worked overtime to bike you 13 miles in PR time and now you want to run?! Well here's a fuck you!". So, there was some bumbling with my running. Post race, Ian definitely let me know that I looked funny running right off the bike with my knees buckling and all. I didn't have to change shoes or anything. Saving time! I started running and within the first 30 seconds, I felt like shit and wanted to puke. That feeling went away after 10 seconds though.
The first 2 miles were a flat out struggle. It's so weird having your legs and quads feel like huge blocks of concrete and cement. You know you can run faster...considerably faster. Instead, you're running at a 1-2 minute pace slower. It seems extra slow after going so fast on a bike too. I run and there are two turnabouts. I'm getting some comments on my mural now from the volunteers. It's funny because they only see my front(call me, race numbers, barbed wire) and then when I turn around at the turnabout, they see the real art. I see Steve! This is really really odd and perplexing because his heat started a 1/2 hour earlier than mine. Either I'm going to destroy him legitimately or something has terribly gone wrong with him. Eventually I finish. I finish strong too. Like I was getting my normal stride back in the last mile. It's incredible the differerence I felt. I would've fared much better in a 10k, just cause I could run at a good clip after the two miles.
Post Race, I found out that Steve blew a flat tire. He didn't have any tools and stuff, so he sat at the side of the road thinking what to do? Well, somebody stopped and gave him a new tube and pump and stuff. He's not allowed to actually touch anything as per race rules, but he gave the stuff to Steve. Steve eventually got his tire changed and was on his way.
How did the no-shirt thing work out? Pretty awesome I think. I felt like a minimalist. I think there was only one other person that did what I did in the entire thing. I ran, bike, and swam in my swimming jammers the entire time. I felt pretty accomplished. I think I'll make it a personal thing of mine to always do this and have people write all over my body.
My final times and splits were pretty good. I was 2 minutes off of my target for a finish time. I ended up finishing in an hour and 17 minutes. I do lay claim that I was the fastest triathlete in one of the categories. Transition 2 time. I burned through that in a hot hot 25 seconds. Hell yeah.
Fenders. I bought some racing fenders specifically for this because I thought it was gonna be raining durin gthe race. NOBODY else had fenders. I saw a ton of bikes on racks. ZERO fenders. Kid Icarus felt like such a dork being prepared for the rain. Kid Icarus also had his lights attached just in case too. He felt so embarrassed. I hate fenders. I immediately ripped them off Kid Icarus when I got back home. Kid Icarus can breathe again.
I've switched to blogspot to host my blog. This is a longtime coming since I haven't actually maintained a blog since I switched hosting providers from GoDaddy to BlueHost. As a sidenote, I wholeheartedly recommend BlueHost and would not recommend GoDaddy.
I'm gonna try to import all my old posts from simplephp.
A lot's happened since my last simplephp post, but we'll see if I ever get to doing a re-cap. I can't even remember...
