Catching Up

I have a lot of catching up to do. I haven't posted anything for a while, so I feel there is a bit to catch up on. Not that anyone has been dying from lack of Dan-Blog, but I'll try to get updated here.

New Ride

First off, I am pretty sure Valentine's day this year was the best ever. I took Buena out for several hours in the warm sunshine of Scottsdale, AZ. We had a wonderful time. (Buena is my new smokin' hot bike) here she is stripped down:Talk about a sweet ride. She's a Lemond Buenos Aires (Hence the name Buena. Does anybody else out there actually name their bikes???)

So she's built up with all my old parts from Felt ("Felt", oddly enough was a Felt brand bicycle, obviously not one of my more creative/imaginative names. One day I'll do a post on all my bikes and how they got their names....yeah, I can just hear the excitement in you eyes as you merely think about reading all about that)

Anyway, so I've been pretty stoked about the new frame. She handles like a champ and weighs less than steaks I've eaten in one sitting (950 grams to be exact..slightly less than the combined weight of the Olsen twins. Lance was always very weight conscience in his selection of bike parts, who knew it would carry over to his selection of women )
I can just imagine an after dinner conversation:

Lance: Hey Olsen Twin, I think we can shave about 35 grams if we cut your hair 3 inches shorter

Olsen Twin: You got it, dude!

Lance: And guess what else, if we got a chisel big enough, we could get some of that perma-stuck makeup you and your sister sell off your face to save another 454 grams.

Olsen Twin: You're in big twouble mister!

Ok, sorry for the diversion, I couldn't resist. Point of the story is that Buena is light, and fast, and pretty. She's kind of a project in work, however. Ever so slowly, over the next few months and as money becomes available, she will be getting upgraded to a full SRAM Red gruppo, new 2008 Race X Lite wheels, along with a few other hand selected tweaks.


That is all I have to say now. I'll finish the rest of the updates in a bit.

Don't forget to check out my ultra-whiny post on V-day, I finally finished it.

My thoughts on Valentines Day.

A single guy's thoughts on Valentine's Day...

Ok, so here they are.
We live in a world, where the "have's" love to show off what they have to not only the "have not's" but also the other "have's". You can see this quite evidently in just about every aspect of life. Look at what kind of car people with money drive. I saw this first hand when we were down in Scottsdale this last week. Why on earth would you spend over $100,000 on a car unless it was to show what you had. Yet I saw more than one Ferrari, Bentley, Hummer, that I highly doubt were purchased for their "functional" aspect. They were purchased by the owners to show what they had.

I can tell you are already thinking that I am a hypocrite, and yes, you are right. I happen to have a nice bike that I like to show off. I have even been known to make a purchase of two in my life that maybe wasn't made on the basis of function, but more looks. (I once special ordered a seat from Colorado for full retail price just to get one that was the right color to match the yellow highlights on my bike. And the fact that I am even telling you this furthers my point even more)

The point is people generally like to be seen with what they have. It must be some kind of self esteem builder. Letterman's jacket sales across the nation are another prime example of this principle. Who really cares, other than the wearer of the jacket, that you lettered in debate, drill team, and football all in the same semester?

(once again, I make no claim to be exempt from this principle, I put patches on my jacket for anything I could possibly think of and wore the thing everyday, probably even to church if my parents would have let me, I had a blue tie I really think would have looked good with it)

So that is all Valentine's day is. Some lady back in the day decided to come up with one more way to flaunt what she had; a guy wrapped around her finger so tight he'd fork over whatever amount of money he had to to "show her how he felt".

(PS No, I am not bitter or anything)

Anyway, so what do girls want for Valentine's day? A small note expressing how much she is appreciated and loved, or a freakin' giant stuffed animal with balloons and flowers she "has" to carry around all day only to draw attention to what she has...a man wound around her finger. You tell me.

The best part of the whole thing is that we've associated it with a religious figure. (St. Valentine, who I can assure you would be rolling over in his grave if he even knew what his male descendants were being duped into doing)

I guess that is all I have to say about that. And no, I do not wonder why I am single, I am fully aware of several of the reasons.

PS The whole wedding ring thing falls under the exact same idea.

Squaw Peak in a Basement

Last Thursday I rode Squaw Peak.

This may seem odd to anyone who is aware of a few key points

• It is February
  
• Squaw Peak road is covered in several feet of snow
• I had split pea soup for lunch on Thursday

While the 3rd point actually has nothing to do with the ride, the snow did. You see, I actually rode Squaw in Aaron's basement.

I realize some of you may be thinking that I've taken this whole mental visualization concept a bit too far, but no, I really did climb 1600 ft over 4 miles.

My buddy Aaron recently started an intense training company where he goes to people's houses, tests their physical abilities, and helps them train for things like cycling, running, fly fishing, and even triathlon (Author's note: Triathlon currently ranks 41.2 notches below fly fishing on the "Scale of All-Time Coolest Sports")

Anyway, with this new business he's started, he has also acquired computer equipment you can attach to your bike while you ride inside which controls your resistance and such. After entering such vital information as your age, height, weight, marital status, and shoe size the computer can generate virtual rides.

(Shoe size actually has nothing to do with anything. Marital status, on the other hand changes the programming significantly. Due to immense decreases in physical fitness after marriage, the computer lightens all resistance by 94% to even it all up)

So of course we had to program in Squaw Peak. Granted it is all the work without any of the view, which is pretty much what makes the whole ride worth the pain, but that is besides the point.

The point is how cool it was to be virtually climbing a mountain in February.

To answer your next question, no, I did not break any records this time around. I know what you are thinking. Something along these lines:

"But Dan, you've been lifting weights all winter to the point that you have to find fat freshmen to sit on the leg press machine to get enough weight to actually get a workout. Shouldn't you be able to ride up Squaw with one leg faster than that Killer Hiller kid yet?"

To answer your thoughts, no. No, I can't. And to be honest, I probably never will. Kyle "Killer Hiller" will forever hold the Squaw Peak record between the two of us. For a while it bounced between the two of us, until that fateful Saturday afternoon back in October of 2006 when Kyle laid down a whopping 23 minute burn up the hill to beat my previous best by more than a minute and a half.

Needless to say he's held it ever since. However, now that's he's married he should try the computer simulation. With that "marriage bonus" he could quite possibly break the 20 minute mark...if he could just get his body fat back down to 3% (Since getting married Kyle's body fat has rocketed up to an obese 6%)

Either way, I hope the points of today's post are clear:

• Winter stinks for training
• Riding inside is more fun when you are hooked up to a computer
• Marriage makes you slow
• Squaw Peak is important to Provo in ways other than enabling freshmen girls to get out of the VL club (you know who I am referring to)
• Split pea soup and shoe size have nothing to do with anything

Well, I'm off to find a computer program that lets you set up virtual rides consisting of 24 miles of downhill.