Soaked

F you Slurry Beta. If you woulda gotten off your ass three years ago and actually made biking chaps a reality, I wouldn’t be in the predicament I am now. Had to go home over lunch to sell some shit we don’t want to take across the country. Wouldn’t ya know it, light rain starts as I am helping the lady, who was 15 mins late, put the dresser into her SUV. Go inside, gather my stuff, check again that there is nothing in the fridge to eat, and decide I should hit the road before the rain gets too bad. I grab the goretex shell for the torso, but risk the jeans because it is just too damn hot (88 in the rain, motherfucker) to go slip the pants shell over my jeans. But guess what? Too late, dude. I get two blocks away, still four from work, and it opens up. Torrential. Mother. Fucker. Probably just 15 mins too late, too; thanks a lot lady.



But really, I blame Beta. He talked and talked and talked about biking chaps, how they were gonna revolutionize commuting, how the tops of your jeans would never be wet again. But no. Idle chit chat. Grow a pair, dammit! Make biking chaps happen already! What the else you gonna be doin’ with that fancy law degree?



I am soaking fucking wet right now. My undies are wet, this is gross. My shaved head is dripping. I am surly as hell. And hungry. I have 4 and a half hours left at work. I SAY EFFF YOOUUUUU, man!



In Seattle, I’ll have to be better prepared.

Day 1

Here is what Day 1 of Tour de Awesome has in store.*






Note the flatness, we only ascend 417 feet in total, and descend an equal amount (406 ft). 44 Miles is a lot easier over flat terrain, and over half (more like 2/3 I reckon) is on a bike only path, meaning no worries about cars or what have you.



I've been reading in bike & outdoorsy mags that nutrition plays a huge role in endurance and total output. That shouldn't be too surprising, but there are a few good things to keep in mind.



One popular idea is that you should carboload before a big outing or sporting event. Partially true. Carboloading is good to do, but the way most people do it is wrong. Instead of eating 3 lbs of pasta the night before, you should carboload for the whole week or so leading up to your event. This allows you to do it slowly, a little bit extra per day, so you body can better digest everything. For many, old fashioned means of carboloading can cause sleeplessness and indigestion and other GI issues. And GI issues are not what you want to be worrying about when you spending 45 miles on a bike saddle.



Also, it'll be important for our group to consume lot of calories while on the bike. We'll have to load our pockets with bars and maybe even some gels. And loads of water. Dehydration and bonking (no calories left to burn) can kill a fun group ride, we don't want anyone to be miserable on the bike or feeling like they can't go on. And once those things set in, it's too late to fix them, so we'l lall have to be dilligent about eating and drinking a lot as we go. We've got a long weekend ahead of us!

)

This is gonna be awesome.


*Note: We are not sure if the Tour de Awesome will make it all the way to D-town, we may cut it off at Jame's cabin, do more boating and swimming and partying, and then just pedaling back from there instead of having to get a car ride back from Duluth.. stay tuned, more ride details to come.

Thanks, James

An email I got yesterday from my pal James:

As the owner of a partially soccer based blog, I thought you might enjoy "THE BEST SOCCER CLIP EVER"

EVER,
James

Mormons don't know how to party...

But Angel Moroni does. In fact, here is his telling of the greatest holiday of all times. I got him to write something for the Domestique by saying: my 4th was better. Here is his response.

"Let's see, where is the better place to be in the summer, a crowded city crawling with power hungry deuschebags, or the greatest state in the Union, Minnesota? I'll go with Minnesota. So where is the best place to celebrate America's birthday? At a cabin in Minnesota, of course.

The day began with me being about an hour late to Dan S's apartment to begin our bike ride to Lake Collinwood, about 65 miles due west of Minneapolis. Around 9:30, Dan S, Dan E, and I caught the greenway and began our journey west. James and I had biked nearly all the way to Kraemerica's cabing on the previous Sunday, but enlist Brandon to pick us up about 12 miles away because we thought we were going to miss the boat parade. Because of this, we had a great route and didn't have to spend really any time hovering around a map. Our route included an always fun journey through the bays of Lake Minnetonka, and proceeded on into the glorious countryside of rural MN.

Dan E hit the wall about mile 40, but we after a couple food breaks and chilling out breaks, we made it up to the cabin around 2. It was nearly 95 degrees out, so the first order of
business was to hydrate. Luckly, Dan's girlfriend Kayla drove up the return car with all our camping equipment and 3 gallons of water. We drank and ate fresh cherries for about an hour, then tapped the keg, opened the Rossi, and began to celebrate America's birthday for real.

Something people might not know, a jug of Carlo Rossi floats. We pontooned out to the middle of the lake, put our lifejackets between our legs, and played a little game that became known as Rossi Tossi in perfectly temperatured water. Rossi Tossi consists of drinking some Rossi, then Tossing it into the water in the direction of the next drinker. It goes under water for a second, but then floats back up to the surface. I can't really adequetely explain how fun this was.

We headed back in from the pontoon adventure, did some grilling, then hopped back on a fully loaded pontoon to the park across the lake. Supplied with SoCo, grass, beer, frisbee, and good spirits, we went to the park for a great game of 500. We headed back to the cabin around dark, and enjoyed multiple fireworks shows around the lake as we continued our celebration.

It was amazing, Jake sums it up a little better on his blog.

Good times. T-9 days until hurricane DomestiqueBeta (editors note: a.k.a., "Two of DC's most wanted") hits the cities, the excitement is palpable."

Palpable, indeed. Thanks Moroni.

One. Week. Left.

Scary, really. One week left at work, one week left in DC. Am I packed? Sorta, kinda, not really. But getting there. Am I ready to bounce? Yes. And no. But more yes than no. I’ll miss my pals tho’.

I don’t think I’ll be working that much this week, so check back often as I plan to actually do some posting. Even if they are lame, “I am really bored at work posts,” like this one. Part of me thinks that forcing myself to compose my thoughts and write on this stupid thing will help me when I go back to being a student. That part of me is also good at rationalizing a lot of my bad or pointless habits, you know, like drugs, alcohol, junk food, and yes, blogging.

This morning I have been reading the live blogcast of the Tour De France by Bicycling Mag contributor Joe Linsdey. I am not that into the Tour, but intrigued enough that I’ll read someone blog live about it and hit my refresh button every 90 seconds. Especially with nothing else to do. And it’s informative to folks like me who don’t know anything about cycling as a sport, especially because of the blog format. People can leave comments for Lindsey, such as “how do teams work together” like someone did earlier, and then get their learn on when Lindsey gets around to addressing their questions.

Sometimes teams will form a pact to work together. This works best if the teams have complementary goals. In the CSC/Astana case, Astana is there for one reason: to win the overall. But CSC's best guy is Carlos Sastre, who could well be a top-five finisher but isn't a likely threat to win - he just doesn't time-trial well enough. And, CSC in the pre-Basso days was all about opportunism: take a win where you can find it. They went for everything - stage wins, intermediate sprints, KoM points, the team competition, whatever. They're omnivores and I'd bet they're back to that approach this year. They have yellow now, so they want to hold on to it. Astana may offer to help them a bit in that if, later in the race, CSC might help Astana chase down a rival for the overall.

Neat, eh?

I have been meaning to blog about my favorite holiday ever, the Fourth Of July (FOJ), but haven’t gotten around to it yet. It was incredible. I highly recommend floating down the Shenandoah River in an inner tube with a floating beer cooler in tow. I also highly recommend viewing the fireworks from a roofdeck, preferably in a relatively high part of the city, such as Mt Pleasant. From there you can see fireworks from neighboring cities and towns in literally every direction, including a wonderful view of the biggest and baddest of them all, over the Mall. Angel M. shares my love of FOJ. I hope you do, too. And to the haters out there who complained that it was on a Wednesday, grow a pair and plan ahead next time: take Thursday off. Hell, take Friday off too. I did. Moroni, if you care to recount your FOJ exploits, send me the manuscript and I’ll post it here for the world to see. But I am pretty sure mine was better.

Ouch!

USA Men's team not looking too good in the Copa America. They got trounced against Argentina, and were made fools again against Paraguay. I simply do not understand the logic here, playing their best players against sub-par competition in the Gold Cup, then trotting the youngins out against the better South American teams. I understand the Gold Cup has ramifications on CONCACAF qualifying, but couldn't we have beaten a lot of those teams without our best players? Wouldn't they be best served playing against stronger competition? Sigh.

The Domestique would wager Argentina to win it all, if only he had a booky.

Jesus Sandals, etc.

What a momentous weekend we had here at the Domestique, folks, here's the run-down.

Friday night at the saloon with some 5 great friends and one really really lame/weird middle aged man who tagged along somehow to hit on the 3 ladies in our troupe. Descriptors for "Jay" ranged from: "creepy" to "gay?" to "pill-popper" to "big fucking loser." For the record, home slice was not gay, unless my gaydar is broke. He was definitely interested in flirting with the ladies and closed the night by inviting two of them back to his place to "pop open some champagne." As an aside, this is why middle-aged men can land women in their 20s: they have the disposable income to keep around chilled bottles of bubbly for those lucky nights when they run into some younger lady drunk enough to go home with them. This is hardly fair. This lame-O went home alone though, thankfully.

Saturday I picked up some Jesus sandals and an REI membership. These may go down as two of my bigger accomplishments this summer. By Jesus sandals, I of course mean Chacos. These ones here on the left, to be exact. I call them this for a couple of reasons, listed here in no particular order. (1) So comfortable, Jesus would surely wear these if the day of reckoning were tomorrow. I have no doubt he is already an REI member though, so they probably couldn't up-sell him like they did me. But really, these things are amazing. I haven't taken them off yet, except to sleep and play soccer. So comfortable, it's like walking on air, which only Jesus can do. (2) They probably look better with a Jesus-esque robe or tunic, and yet I do not hesitate to rock them with blue jeans, as I do not wear my Jesus-esque tunic outside of the house. (3) They are expensive, not so expensive that only Jesus can afford them (because I clearly purchased a pair), but it would certainly help to have His water-into-wine move to turn all this office paper in my recycle bin into a big stack of Benjamins. If I had that, I'd buy a pair of them for everyone in my life. Which Jesus would want, because he is all about spreading the love. (4) They're primarily marketed as water sandals and hiking sandals. Well, He is the only one I know who can walk on water (beat that Angel Moroni), AND he loooooves hisself a good walk thru the woods; I mean, what savior doesn't?

Clearly, they are some nice sandals. I highly recommend them.

Also on Saturday, I played in my final co-ed game, in fact my final soccer game, here in the District. We were in the finals against a team we tied in the regular season and got handled, 4-2. But we did have three fans in attendence, so that was pretty cool. You know who you are, and thanks for coming.

It'll be sad to leave all my soccer teams here in the district. I had a really successful spring season though, so I feel like I left on a high note. Check out these stats:

• Combined record (two men's teams, one co-ed): 20-5-4 (win % of 70%) including payoffs
• Men's team 1... 1st out of 158 teams in the state (DC/NoVA/MD) in goals against average (0.78 per game), 4th out of 158 in winning percentage (88.9%)
• Men's team 2... 3rd out of 158 in goals against average (.89 per game), 17th in winning percentage (77.8%)
• My co-ed league doesn't track stats as closely as the mens leagues, but by my calculations we let in 11 goals throughout the season and playoffs, so over the course of 12 games that is a GAA of 0.92... not too shabby.

Now, the two mens teams are actually ranked against eachother, so on the two teams I play for, we are in the top 5 in GAA. Guess where I play on the field? That's right, defense and/or keeper. Now I ain't saying I am the reason our teams don't give up goals, but there is a correlation there between me and three teams with GAAs below 1. I ain't sayin', I'm just sayin...

Anyways, enough about me on my own blog, let's talk about the Raven. The Raven is a pretty awesome bar in DC and among my posse, is generally considered in the top two (Saloon being the other one, in fact this was an argument that Beta, Steff, and I had this weekend, which bar is better and why--I vote Saloon). So we went there on Saturday night and drunkenness ensued and that was fun.

Sunday I awoke to the urge for buckwheat and blueberry pancakces. Which were amazing to the taste, but pretty ugly to the eye. I am not the pancake maker in the house. I try, but can never quite get it right. I blame the hardware, we just don't have the right pan for the job in my opinion (Alton Brown would agree, I am sure).

The weather was amazing on Sunday, so after spending the morning packing and whatnot, I went for a nice ride in the hills of upper NW DC. Basically I went and found the biggest baddest hills I could find in the area and attacked them. I can't wait to get out in the real mountains out West. I think I'll get my ass kicked, but that is the fun part. We then capped it all off with a BBQ /housewarming event up in Tacoma Park.

Busy weekend, eh? Did I mention I did it all in my Jesus sandals? As a matter of fact, I am blogging to you right now, live from my office, with my Jesus sandals fit comfortably on my feet (and if you already own a pair of these lovelies, you know exactly what I mean).