Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Distractions, trainer rides, snow & chili

Distractions. Distractions. Distractions. Distractions. And more distractions.

Thats what ya get when you are job free (which I've been referring to as "early retirement") in the middle of winter (That last one more often than is probably healthy for a man with my single status).

Last winter I borrowed a CycleOps trainer from BikeSource (FYI that photo is not me. Amazing the things a Google search gets you) and got cable T.V. to keep me from going bonkers.
It seemed to work.
I rode the trainer a lot, sometimes for a couple hours at a time, and watched a lot of T.V. The only time I seemed to go outside was to drive to work.

Not this year.

Although I own 3 rear wheel trainers & 4 sets of rollers (some these items are for KC Sprints use) with the exception of testing KC Sprints stuff I have logged zero miles on any sort of indoor cycling device.
Meanwhile the interweb is full of Facepage comments & Twittering tweets about how the snow, that is dumping on everyone seemingly nation wide, is causing everyone to retreat inside to trainer/roller sessions & spin classes to get their "training miles" logged.
Training miles?
OK I guess I get that if say you are a paid professional cyclist.
But in most cases that people complaining about the weather interfering with their "training" are the "weekend warrior" types that probably take racing way to seriously to start with.
You know the type. You probably either ride with one or are one.
Not that it is a bad thing. But more often than not you desire to take racing too seriously gets in the way of my racing fun. Well the few times a year I race that is.

"I ain't no racist." - Sov

Now that being said I'm not saying that I have hung my bikes up for the winter.
Quite the opposite.
I've logged more miles this winter outside in the cold and sometimes snow that I every have in previous years.
Case in point the 01/11/11 ride.
This winter I've made a point of getting out for some kind of ride, even if its just a short jaunt to the corner store almost everyday. Now for the racer types this isn't really training.
But then again like I said I'm not a racer type.
However, I'm outside on my bike not sitting inside whining about how the cold or wet or snow is keeping me off my bike.
If I want to complain about something I've got plenty of other things to complain about than the weather.
Besides sometimes that little jaunt to the store turns into an hour plus for bombing around the neighborhood.

Speaking of the weather:
If you aren't reading this in Kansas City then you aren't (well maybe not although its snowing or has snowed over most of the country) experiencing the Snowpocalypse. Right now all over the city people are freaking out, mobbing the supermarkets (if they can get there) or just sitting in rush hour traffic turning their normally 30 minute commute into a 3 hours commute.
Its a nice day to be unemployed.

Speaking of being unemployed instead of working on my resume today or on line job hunting I've worked on writing the above (funny how sometimes something so short and pointless can take all day) and making chili.

My chili recipe is a modified version of what my folks used to make.
Typically mine is a lot spicier then what we had as kids and the ingredient list seems to change almost every time I make it.

1/2 lbs of browned ground beet
1/2 lbs of browned ground sausage
1 hand full of real bacon bits
1 can of diced tomatoes with green chilies
1 can of red kidney beans
2 cans of chili beans
2 cans of black beans
1 can of black olives
1 can of Snap-E-Tom tomato & green chilies cocktail
*I also threw in 5 or 6 turkey meat balls (likely to get eaten in the taste testing process), some diced red, yellow & green peppers along with some jalapeƱo pepper slices (hence the spice).

Tuesday snow day Chili

Tasty stuff. Or at least I hope. I guess I'll find out in about 5 minutes.

Oh by the way. It kicks ass

FYI my chili kicks ass

2 comments:

MSDos5 said...

I laughed

Angie Colina McNeil said...

You rock my world sexilicious! You make me laugh and really say all the things I want to say about amateur racers!