How much?

So on 4/26, I started tracking everything I ate, with the goal of losing 10 lbs by the end of the month. For example an egg is 74 calories. A large avacado, 300, a tablespoon of my favorite salsa, 20. Non fat milk, 110, a cup of museli, 440.

Here is what I learned:

1. If you track everything you eat, and write it down each and every day, you really begin to pay attention to each and every thing you put in your nasty little mouth.

2. Calculation your basal rate is kinda hard because it's how much it takes you to be alive, plus some extra wild ass guessing factor. I originally estimated I burned 2250 calories a day. Three weeks in, my weight loss was much more than my calorie loss, so somewhere my calc was screwed up. So, I now think my basal rate is more like 2500 a day.

3. If I ate well (no ice cream or cookies or stuff like that) I was pretty easy to stay below 2500. I averaged a net 900 calorie difference.

4. On big exercize days, I allowed myself another 300-500 calories. Big days were in excess of 2500 calorie burn days.

5. I averaged 400 calories @ each meal and another 400 calories in snacks.

When I started working again a year ago, I was 172 ish. A month ago, I was more than 180. Today, I weighed 167.7, with less than 10% body fat.

In another month I plan on being below 160.

Italy - 1 Month

Day 1 Rome
Days 2-3 Florence
Days 4-6 Lucca and Pisa
Days 7-8 Cinque Terre
Days 9-10 Piedmont
Days 11-12 Milan and Italian Lakes
Days 13-15 Venice

OK enough.

5/24 - XM radio in truck stops working. Bummer
5/25 - Cranks fail on Bianchi bike. Bummer
5/26 - Hard drive fails on laptop computer. Bummer.
5/26 - Bail on 7 Hills of Kirkland. Bummer.
5/27 - Get told they probably won't renew my contract. I gotta look for a job. Bummer.

Mrs Dirtbagger sends me this.


General influence of Mercury retrograde

Mercury rules over the mind's processes, studying, communication, businesses, travels and the like. When Mercury reverses its direction, all these areas are affected as well.

This is an excellent time to work on old projects that never got to be finished. So, think about the things you started and never finalized.

Next, you might wish to prevent any bad things to happen to you: so double-check your agenda, call your business partners to confirm that everything goes as planned, have everything ready before the deadline and leave some extra time for unexpected events. Make copies of your important files and documents, save your work more often.

The other solution is to go on vacation or at least slow down the pace of your projects. You will find that going slowly during the Mercury retrograde period will spare you many efforts of redoing the same action that wasn't performed right the first time.

7 Hills of Kirkland

So I've wanted to ride this damned thing on my singlespeed so bad. Last year I couldn't because of my stupid ritchey cranks kept giving me problems. Read that is the damned left crank arm kept falling off. Fucking thing.

So Fabien helped me a ton by getting it replaced on warranty and Ritchey sent me a brand new pair. Excellent. We got the bike in his shop and we install the 2nd set of cranks 9 months or so ago.

All was just fine and dandy until about 6 weeks ago. I had gone off on a 5+ hour ride on the single speed. Left foot felt squirrely. Hmmm...Cleat? Pedal? Nope left crank arm.

So I have Mrs Dirtbagger come get me in the super Toyota. The 7 hills is only a couple of weeks away. I've ridden a little so I can do the 62 easy. If I take it slow I'm sure I can do the 100.

I take the bike over to Sammamish Valley Cycle. They will do a good job. I've got a week to go.

Work was busy as hell and I didn't get to ride the bike at all. Saturday comes, the 7 is in 2 days. I get on the bike and it sounds like the bottom bracket is gonna totally explode. SHIT.

I blast over to Samm Cycles. Alvin was there and super helpful....We talked about options, and he was willing to fix the bike right there. I eventually decided to by the tools and tear apart my litespeed 9 speed dura ace and use that crank since I knew it was bomber.

I get the Ritchey off the Bianchi, and get Dura Ace off the Litespeed. Oh guess what, the first generation of bearings on the Dura Ace is a round bearing and a needle bearing. Take them apart and bearings go everywhere. Great, guess I'll be using the Shimano Bianchi bottom bracket, since the Dura Ace one just became toast. One of the mechanics said "Oh they don't make that bottom bracket for that crank any longer." Now I sure as fuck know why.

So i proced to use Saturday and most of Sunday trying to get the bike together. When all is said and done, I'm not happy. I destroyed one crank arm to put together another and in the end wasn't even confident about it. So that night, the bike was together and I asked myself? Was this worth all that? Isn't this trying to tell you something? What do you need to learn here? I could easily imagine being in Carnation or MONroe or some craphole like that and having the Crank arm spin off, wondering how many hours it would take the sag wagon to get to me. Shit.

So what did I do? I bailed big time. 7 Hills got my 70 bucks. Oh well.

So 2 years in a row, 2 missed 7 Hills for 2 Ritchey Cranksets is just 2 fucking much.

Next year, I'm gonna ride 7 Hills on a Unicycle.

Hmmm

I see a new bike in my future.


This one is quite nice. I dig the blue.


This one is super nice. Neuvo-retro. Very cool...

62

Rode the singlespeed 62 miles...