señor taco’s travels

Well, the training for the
href=”http://www.aidslifecycle.org/1846″>AIDS/LifeCycle 5
continues. Today I did my third ride along the water in Emeryville
and Berkeley. I start off from my new apartment, cruise up to the

Berkeley Aquatic Park and take the path there up to the University Avenue
bike and walk bridge. Once over on the water side of I-80 I cruise up the
bay trail to Golden Gate
Fields where there is a small hill I can climb behind the building. I
then turn around and head back on the bay trail and go all the way down to
Emeryville before turning back to the University Ave. bridge and back to home.

Overall it’s a nice 11 mile loop for me to do in the mornings. The major
bummer this far is that it’s still pretty dark in the mornings so I have to
take it slower next to the Aquatic Park. When the sun is coming up earlier
I’ll be able to go a bit faster along there and go a little farther past
the horse track to extend my ride.

Cabin Fever
This season a group of friends and I all got a cabin in Tahoe. On
Friday we started our lease and Keith and I went up to take possession
of the place. It was there and we got in without incident. We went
to the supermarket and got a few communal items for the place and
waited for everyone else that would be up that weekend to show up.

First up was Ken, the hard-booter. Then came Ian and his guests. We
chilled out, admired the cabin, and then eventually packed it in for
the night so we could get up early and go hit the snow.

And Then There Was Snow
We got up early and tried to get to Northstar early, but we were
stymied by Caltrans as they decided to make us use chains on CA-267
between Kings Beach and Northstar. The pisser of it was that chains
were totally unnecessary. That added so much time that we got there a
little late. Keith went on up the hill and Ian and I got our season
passes. We all met up on the hill at some point, but before that I
did some ridding on my own.

For some reason I was more nervous than when I went to New Zealand
about getting on the board again after a break. This time was much
better though. I got on and rode without a problem. I had so much
better board control than I’ve ever had before and turns just seemed
to come very naturally. The lessons I got in NZ from Alain and Mani
helped so much that I was able to give pointers to others in our group
and hopefully help them get better. I was even able to hit black runs
without any trepidation. Turning on steeps is now easy for me even if
I’m not yet very fast at it. Over all it was a fantastic day
of riding and the snow was really good.

Zee Quads, Zey Burn!
Sunday found us getting to Squaw before the first lift. I was pretty
tired from the day before, but I strapped in and rode all the same.
We were there early enough and there were so few people we got about 7
or 8 long runs in the first hour. I was hitting the step sections
over at Lake Shirley all morning. At some point Keith and Ken went to
ride another area and I needed a break. I then soloed on Shirley and
Solitude runs for a while before I met up with them again. By then my
quads (thighs) were burning on the steep sections. So much so that I
was slowing down and not being as effective as I could have been. The
solution to that is to crouch lower, but that just burns it more.
After a bit Keith, Ken and I headed over to Gold Coast and just rode
the more mellow runs which were easier on the muscles until we rode
all the way down to the village. For a half day we got a lot of
riding in. It was pretty much a full day for us.

We then headed back to the cabin, cleaned, shoveled the front deck
(way more work than we wanted to do), showered and hit the road early.
I’m glad we got the cabin, I can’t wait to get up there again, but
first I have to move to my new apartment. More on that later.

Well, 2005 was one of my best years of my life since I’ve been out on
my own. It was a big year for personal growth and changing myself for
the better. I was able to continue my weight loss and physical
conditioning. While I only got down to about 225 pounds so far I’m in
what I consider to be good physical condition. I was thrilled to have
to depart with too many clothes that were now too big for me. That
process is continuing even now and I find that at the beginning of
2005 I was a solid 2XL wearing guy (XL on undershirts and the like)
but now at the end of the year I’m pushing into Large clothes sizes
and some XL gear is too big for me. While I’m excited about that I
know what’s looming on the horizon, most of my t-shirts are XL and
that means I’ll have to part with some damn fine ones. My favorites
are in that group and I’ll be very sad, but I’ll just have to find
something to replace them with.

I started href="http://danimal.org/SenorTacoSnowboarding">snowboarding
and riding a
bike again seriously. There were a href="http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/2005/03/20">couple href="http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/2005/04/24">of href="http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/2005/12/07">bumps along the
way, but I’ve been very fortunate to recover quickly from them.

The high lite of the year had to be my trip to href="http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/Travel/New_Zealand/">New
Zealand in August. I worked my butt off to make sure that I could
play hard and enjoy myself there and it really paid off. Next to the
NZ trip I’d have to say the accomplishment of doing some href="http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/2005/11/21#morning-hill-climb-3">hill
climbs and training for the href="http://aidslifecycle.org/1846">AIDS/LifeCycle 5 in June
2006 is the next biggest thing. That will be continuing into the new
year and I’m looking forward to getting back on the href="http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/2005/12/26">bike after the rain
lets up.

The end of the year has been a little bit of a bumpy ride, but it’s
all going to work out just fine. Our landlord told us that he’s
going to sell our place. While Keith and I thought about buying we
just didn’t want to rush into a house purchase at this point so we
ended up renting again. We’ll move into the new place in mid-January
and we’re both pretty excited about the change. I also href="http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/2005/12/07">dislocated my
shoulder, but my recovery has been very fast for that and I’m
already back up and active with full range of motion. There was some
other stuff, but now that I think about it I’m only going to say there
was other stuff and not go into detail. Sorry.

I can only hope that 2006 will be as exciting and as fulfilling for
me. There’s a lot to look forward to and I have a pretty full plate
through June already. I know of at least two weddings I’ll go to so
I’ll need to get a new suit at some point (remember what I said about
clothes sizes before? yeah, that goes double for the suit I had).
I’ll continue my physical training and hopefully I can push down even
farther towards my final goal.