señor taco’s travels

I’ve been listening to Lagwagon’s
latest album
Resolve for about two weeks now. In all of href="http://lagwagon.com/disco/disco.html">Lagwagon’s discography
I have to say this is their best album since Hoss.

The inspiration for this album is the suicide of their original drummer,
Derrick Plourde. There
is a lot of emotion in the songs. On the last song,
“Days of New,” Joey sings “Hey, Derrick!” and I almost loose it because
you can just feel the emotion that went into making an album to Derrick
and that he is missed.

I find it hard to put this album down. I listen to some stuff in between
but I keep queuing this one up in it’s entirety. This is a darker album
that the last couple from Lagwagon, but with the subject matter one
would expect that to be the case. If you like Lagwagon at all I can’t
recommend this album enough.

Take one part Green Day American
Idiot (which is one of the best albums to come around in a long time)
and add a bunch of samples and an editor named Dean Gray and you get a
well done mash-up album: American
Edit

I’ve been listening to it this afternoon and there’s some very inventive
mixing in there. I like it so far.

I wonder how long it will be allowed to stay up before some rights holder
gets their knickers in a twist. Well, I’ve got it now, so I can keep listening
to it.

Well, I rode this morning with Keeth again. It was a good ride I felt. I
went about 6.5 miles from my house to the top of the hill where Grizzly Peak
Road meets Skyline without needing to stop except for traffic signals.

You can see a map of the course.
I’m pretty happy overall. Now I need to start doing bigger rides.

I went with Keeth again this morning to climb href="http://www.inl.org/bicycle/deathride.html#mild5">Tunnel Road to
Grizzly Peak. We made it up okay, but my legs were feeling
twitchy and almost at a pre-cramp state. I stopped earlier on and
stretched just a bit and then we rocked it up the rest of the hill.
We actually got to the top faster than href="http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/2005/11/15">Tuesday so we went
for another ten minutes on Grizzly Peak toward Claremont. That tacked
on about another four miles making a nice 17.2 mile day.

I realized that I’ve worked out every day this week (Sunday-Friday) so
I’m due for a rest. I just have to help dode move his house tomorrow
and then I’m taking it easy until Monday.

I’m feeling really good and I passed under 230 pounds today. I’ve
just got to keep the diet and exercise going and I’ll get to my
goals. Fun times, fun times.

This morning Keeth and I met at the href="http://bart.gov/stations/stationguide/stationoverview_rockr.asp?ct=1">Rockridge
BART Station for a ride up Tunnel Road to Skyline and Grizzly
Peak. This was the second morning ride like this I’ve done and I know
I’m getting better at it (this was also about the fifth time I rode
that ride).

The change for this morning was that there was a warm wind coming from
over the hill, thus giving us a head wind and making some of the
steeper sections feel even more steep! We prevailed and cranked
through to the top where we had to turn around so we could make it to
work on time. Thankfully the weather was perfect this morning, clear,
warm, and bright.

According to my cyclometer we averaged 6.9MPH on the climb. Overall
it was a little more than 13 miles for me and I hit 49.6MPH max on the
hill descent. I’m really happy I can do this now because the Lifecycle
rides won’t be far off and I’ll be ready for them.

This week I’m back in line with how I was working out and eating
before I went to href="http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/Travel/New_Zealand/">New
Zealand. I was still working out but just not pushing myself very
hard and certainly not keeping an eye on how much and what I was
eating. Granted, I was able to hold my weight with some minor
fluctuations, but after a couple of months that’s just not cutting it.

Weights had also been out of my regimen for the period in
between because I had injured my elbow on the trip. It was sore
but it didn’t really bother me after a day or so while down there.
When I got back and tried to start on weights again and there was too
much pain for me to do even three or four reps. Today I got back on
the bench and did what I feel was a good work out (bench press and
dumbbell press) to get back into it. My elbow feels good and the only
parts of me that are sore are the parts that are supposed to be.

This of course leads me around to why it was that I slacked off:
motivation. I’ll admit it, I have a problem with motivation, or
rather, a lack of it. When I’m unmotivated to do something I really,
really, have a problem doing it. I mean, I will force myself to do
things that need to get done because I see the benefit in it, but I’m
probably going to mentally grind my teeth while doing it. There were
many days I really didn’t want to goto the gym, but I did it and I
usually felt better after. Somehow that just wasn’t enough though.
In preparation for going to New Zealand I was at the gym and eating
right just to get there and be able to run with it. Now, two months
on, I’ve found a few new motivational forces.

Starting now I’m going to train for next years href="http://www.aidslifecycle.org/">AIDS/Lifecycle 5. It’s a 585
mile bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles over six days. There
is still plenty of time to train for it and I’m already doing well on
my rides, I just need to increase the frequency. This will be a goal
like going to New Zealand. Get more fit, have fun, and have an
experience I’ll remember for ever. Maybe along the way I can break
myself into not being such a motivational slacker.