Monster Trail Mix

I don't know what to say about this stuff other than it's addictive. I picked up some trail mix at one of the rest stations on one of my rides this year. I think the RMHC ride. I don't remember the brand but since then I've been trying to find something like it. I wanted something with M&M's in it so I tried Archer Farms "Monster" trail mix. I know this isn't the same stuff I had had, but it looked good. I eat it like an after meal desert or a quick snack. The problem is I have a hard time stopping once I start eating it. I close the lid only to reopen it again and I usually repeat that process several times before I finally quit it. One serving is supposed to be 1/4 cup, but that rarely happens. I think I ate a whole container inside of a week. That can't be good for me.


I'd estimate that it's 75% peanuts and raisins and the rest are the chips and M&M's. Whatever the ratios are, this is good stuff. Archer Farms is a brand of Target from what I read, so you can only get it there.

Five stars!

One Seven Two Five

These are my stats for the biking year 2009. I'm OK with calling the year complete even though there's a day here and there that is nice enough to go out for a spin. I have transitioned into my routine indoors at the gym now and I prefer to stick with that until next year.

I pretty much blew away any previous years stats. Partly because I got a new bike after my first 400 miles.

I kept ahead of my stats from 2007 which was the year I was comparing myself to from the beginning. When I got my new bike on July 9, I left 2007 in the dust. There's a nice little climb there at the end of September which was my Door County trip. The day we left Door County it rained and got abruptly cooler. Into the early part of October this year it stayed much cooler outside than normal so I don't have many miles after that trip.

• May: 93.6 miles
• June: 206.4 miles
• July: 512.9 miles
• August: 382.3 miles
• September: 471.5 miles
• October: 58.7 miles

I had 57 outings this year. My average distance was 30.27 miles. My shortest ride was 9.33 and my longest was 80.2 miles.

• 0-9 miles: 3
• 10-19 miles: 22
• 20-29 miles: 10
• 30-39 miles: 7
• 40-49 miles: 6
• 50-59 miles: 5
• 60-69 miles: 0
• 70-79 miles: 2
• 80+ miles: 2

My weekday evening rides after work were typically 18.5 miles so that's why the concentration of outings in the 10-19 range. I've calculated my total time at 109 hours 54 minutes which is 4 days 14 hours and 54 minutes of time on my bike with wheels in motion.

Since I have kept track with various cyclocomputers since late in 2004 I've traveled a total of roughly 5116 miles.

• 2004: 101.5
• 2005: 716.0
• 2006: 434.0
• 2007: 1236.9
• 2008: 902.3
• 2009: 1725.4

This distance is about equivalent to a round trip from Los Angeles to Honolulu (answers.com). My ultimate goal is to reach enough miles to say that cumulatively speaking I have ridden a bicycle a distance that is equal to the circumference of the earth at the equator. I'm roughly 20% of the way there now. I don't know how to figure it out, but I think it would be interesting to find out where on the earth closer to the north pole a circle of 5100 miles is. I think I'd need to know how far apart the lines of longitude are at different degrees of latitude and figure from there with my distance figure and come up with the degrees south of the pole. If I knew how to figure that out I'd probably be a member of Mensa.

Edit: I found 2 figures on the Internet for the circumference of the earth at the arctic circle. One says 10,975 miles and the other 9,945 miles. The arctic circle cuts Alaska in half north/south and runs through Siberia and the northern parts of Scandinavia. I could say I've ridden a distance equal to halfway around the world.......but at the arctic circle!

Stop, Look, and Listen

Brookers / Quiet Riot

I've been watching these rather strange videos on YouTube lately. I was searching one day for an example of an x-ray of an S curved spine and came across Brooke Brodack's Quiet Riot YouTube channel. Apparently making videos and video blogging is what the kids are doing these days and I've been completely ignorant about the whole thing. I've watched the entire lot of videos on the Quiet Riot channel and I can't figure out why I did it. I was drawn to watch them for some reason I can't figure out. They are a good break from studying I guess. Probably Brookers most viewed video is the crazed numa fan spoof video which currently has over 8 million views.

This video here is Brooke and iJustine. iJustine is a viral video star according to Wikipedia. She's known for her 300 page iphone bill video (2 million views and counting). I just post this vid because it has the 2 of them in it. It' s complete nonsense. The head pinching/crushing part at the end was something I remember from Kids in the Hall. I don't know if that's where these 2 know it from or not.


The title of this video on YouTube is poop.mov and the sort of joke at the beginning is about 2 girls 1 cup. If you haven't seen "2 girls 1 cup" I suggest you keep it that way. I've seen some disturbing things before on the internet...bones breaking etc...but that video nearly tops them all. There's a lot of reaction videos on YouTube of people watching it. It's far too graphic for YouTube so the vid itself isn't on there. I'd say I handled it better than most. I didn't wretch like some people did.

I'd say that this is a video that happens because your trapped inside all day due to a snowstorm except that the video was posted in the middle of summer so I would be wrong to say that.


Is Brookers certifiably insane? I say no.

Why do I do this? Because I can. [iieeiieauiiieeihhrreurrr] This is what the internet does to your kids! Aaaaghh!

One Three Zero

I went up to Door County last weekend for a weekend of bike riding. I stayed at a lodge in Fish Creek along Hwy 42 across from Peninsula State Park. This turned out to be a pretty nice central location to start my bike rides from. My parents were planning on going up to Door County for a weekend and they decided to invite me along so I could do some biking up there. After breakfast I did my bike rides and they went off and did their activities and we met up again for dinner is pretty much how it worked out. On the way up we drove separate so I could take my bikes. On the way up Friday I had them drop me off in Sturgeon Bay near a ship yard and I rode my bike the rest of the way to Fish Creek via (mainly) Bayshore Drive along the bay side. That was a pretty nice ride. There was about as much bike traffic as there were cars until I got to Hwy 42. It was a nice warm-up ride of approx 28 miles.

Saturday I did a tour of Peninsula State Park (map here). I went mainly from the East entrance of the park up to Eagle Tower and then west thru the park on the roads and bike trials and then finished on some of the mountain bike trails. I haven't been on mountain bike trails for a while and it rather made me want to do it some more. These were simple trails as mountain bike trails go. I also found out how crappy the brakes are on my old bike...lots of sliding and squeaking. I'd forgotten about that since I've been riding my new bike. Riding my old bike just made me want to go out on my new bike later in the day so I did that. There's a lot I skipped at the park so I'd like to go back someday. This little park tour clocked in at about 13 miles.

Saturday afternoon I took a trip up to the north end of the county. I stopped about 2 miles west of the car ferry to Washington Island. Somewhere about where the "people ferry" is which I think is Gill's Rock. I took roads the whole way that were marked on a bike map they had in the office lobby of our lodge. (It looked something like this.) It was an enjoyable route. It may have been more enjoyable except for it rained on me for about 45 minutes of it. The roads were wet for other stretches and it sprinkled here and there for a while even after it stopped raining. It didn't bother me much, but I was glad when the sun came back and I was able to dry up some. This outing came in at about 49 miles.

Saturday night for dinner we went to Ephraim and ate at Wilson's. It's sort of a burger/ice cream parlor type restaurant. It looks like the 50's or something inside and they have coin operated jukeboxes right at the table to pick out songs to play from. It says "Coca-Cola" on the outside of the building so right away you know it should be good.


Sunday after breakfast I had to get going pretty quick. Scattered thunderstorms were forecast for later in the afternoon about 3PM so I wanted to get out before that. I drove to Jacksonport and parked at Lakeside Park at about 57 and V. I had my picnic lunch there after I got back and the park sign said it used to be a big shipyard where they loaded up lumber destined for Milwaukee and Chicago. I followed the "bike route" signs south on N. Cavepoint Drive and then through Whitefish Dunes State Park to Glidden Drive. I continued south after that. I wasn't sure exactly how far south I went until I got back and looked at the map. I followed Lake Forest State road all the way to where the Sturgeon Bay ship canal is. I walked out onto a concrete pier and watched a big yacht come in. It was super windy. You can see the pier on Google Maps on the satellite view. Glidden Drive was about the coolest part of the whole ride. It's forested the entire way and the only thing separating you from the lake is lakefront homes which are mostly in the forest also. Glidden Drive was all nice rolling hills and curves and none of them tough to climb really. On the way back I was really hauling tail. I made it back in probably 2/3 the time it took to get out in the first place. The 15 mph wind at my back didn't hurt either. I battled that the whole way down. I saw some dark clouds rolling in just as I was north of my turnaround point. I got rained on a little, but nothing like I did Saturday afternoon. It passed and cleared up again. This outing came in at just over 40 miles.
This is N. Cavepoint Drive. It wasn't this colorful just yet.


Google Satellite view.

A picture I found on the web of the pier. I didn't take my camera on this particular outing.

All weekend I kept seeing letters and numbers painted on the road. I didn't realize until my route on Sunday that the "DCC" I kept seeing stood for Door County Century and the numbers were the mile marks. I might do that ride next year. The only thing is it might conflict with Maywood. If not it might only be a week apart. That would be interesting doing 2 century rides in back to back weeks.

Sunday night we ate at PC Junction (YouTube Video here). They deliver your drinks and food on a model train. As it turned out we were the only people in the whole place, but I understand it's often mobbed during tourist season and you have to wait just to get in. I had a Baumeister Cream soda which was pretty good. I think it was bettter than Sprecher's Cream soda which I like a lot too.

Monday morning after we checked out we ate breakfast in Sister Bay at Al Johnson's Swedish Restaurant. It has a grass roof but the goats weren't grazing up there because it was raining. I had Swedish pancakes which I found out are flat. I had no idea Swedish pancakes were flat until I had these, so I learned something that morning. They were square too and they looked exactly like in this picture.

Seven Zero

Maywood 2009 I decided to take the 70 mile route. I thought it would be tougher than it turned out to be. I think I'm in better shape than other years when I've only done the 50 mile route. The big hills I remember from other years didn't seem as big this year. Plus I finally got a new bike like I've been planning on for several years. I did the second annual Ronald McDonald House Charity Ride a month before and that was only 40 miles but more hilly and I thought much more difficult. I even walked up part of a hill on that ride. It was kind of embarrassing. This hill was steep and long and partway up it turned and went up some more that you couldn't see until you made the turn. It didn't help that I clicked into the larger chainring instead of the smaller one partway up and had to work my way through that and get back to the low ring. I got to a point where I couldn't breath any harder and I had to stop. It was such a steep hill where I stopped I didn't think I could click back into my pedals and so I just walked up the rest of it. I haven't walked my bike up a hill probably since I was 12. I've got that hill in my mind and next year assuming it's on the route I'll beat that hill. It's on Peerless Road just north of Ridge Road in Dane County. The whole route was hilly and there didn't seem to be very many flatter portions to recover in before the next hill. I stopped a bunch of times just to get my breath before moving on. Not a lot of rides I go on make me feel out of shape, but this one did.

In the first part of July I picked up a Trek 7.3FX in red just like the picture above. It's a hybrid bike. If you consider all of the hybrids on the market as falling on a spectrum with "practically a mountain bike" on one end and "practically a road bike" on one the other end, I think this falls closer to the road bike end. For me it was as big of a jump as I wanted to make right now after having ridden a hardtail mountain bike for so many years. I couldn't see myself moving all the way to a road bike yet. I swapped the saddle out for one of those anatomic relief saddles after my first 70 miles, but other than that I haven't changed a thing. I got used to riding this bike pretty quick and I've been on my old bike just once and I can hardly believe I used to ride that thing so much. My new bike is so much better, and better suited to the type of riding I do anyway. It's not all that much lighter, but the roll is better on these tires than the fat mountain bike tires I had been riding on. Plus I use a larger range of gears instead of just 4 or 5. This was definitely the best money I've spent in a while. I got it at Emery's of course.
Maywood 2009 was one of the best I've done so far. I consider the Maywood Earth Ride the highlight of my riding season every year by far. It's more about the ride than the cause...which I'm not exactly sure what that is. The earth??? They changed the 65 mile route to a different area this year and made it a 70 mile route instead. As I was doing it I considered just taking the turn and going on the 100 mile loop, but I didn't. Maybe next year. I had a ton of energy left at the end. That might have had something to do with eating 3 Powerbars and a couple gel packs along the way. At the end I had some really great soup, "Chicken Tortilla" or something like that. I hung out for a while and watched the Beef Tea String Band which was pretty cool.

Netflix Update #?

In order of most recent at the top of the list. I linked each one this time with the IMDB. I've suspended my Netflix account as of a couple weeks ago. I'm too busy lately to be taking the time out every week to watch another movie. There's still a long list of things on my queue I'd like to get. They let you suspend your account for up to 90 days before it reactivates. That'll be about right.

Eastern Promises
Æon Flux
Ultraviolet
Push
Burn After Reading
Gran Torino
Pink Floyd: The Dark Side of the Moon
Taken
Valkyrie
The Quiet
In The Shadow of the Moon
Killshot

Photo Dump

This is a collection of dumb, hilarious, outrageous, or odd stuff I've found on the internet.


Ask your daddy why he's hooked on killing!

Bruno Kammerl`s Punktlandung

Moon Landings Confirmed

I saw part of a TV show recently that was heavily weighted with evidence for conspiracy theories that we never landed on the moon but light on rebuttal. While skepticism is largely a good thing, conspiracy theories are another. In any case with the 40 anniversary of Apollo 11 landing I'm sure this was why this program was on. If you think that we never landed on the moon, or even if you are inclined to believe we did, but are given pause by some of the conspiracy theories, give this site a read.


Clavius.org

Pretty much every point made by the conspiracy nuts is debunked from the claims of moving flags to faked photos to to moon rocks.



I recently saw the documentary "In the Shadow of the Moon". I'd recommend it if your even slightly interested in the Apollo missions to the moon. I centers a bit on Apollo 11, but it has many of the living astronauts that were involved in the missions with the exception of Neil giving first hand accounts and describing their experiences and the surrounding events of that time period. Interesting stuff. For some reason it had not occurred to me until I was watching this that John F. Kennedy never lived to see the day man landed on the moon.

Tempur-Pedic Mattress

I picked up one of these Tempur-Pedic beds maybe about 2 months ago. I've been wanting a new mattress for a long time and an opportunity came about to get one of these second hand that was about a year old. It's basically like the photo, but without the fancy wood frame and without the pillows. Brand new for just a metal frame, box, and the mattress in queen size these are about $2000 before tax and delivery. You can't use an ordinary frame and box spring though, because these mattresses weigh a lot more than a normal mattress. With my dad's help we hauled it away for 500 bucks.
It's the best $500 I've spent in a while. It's real comfortable. You sort of sink in and are enveloped a bit when you lay on it. I sleep on either side now all night where I used to roll from one side to the other a lot more. I have an "S" shape in my spine, so I could always only stay on one side until it got uncomfortable and then I'd switch. Now either side is comfortable indefinitely and occasionally I'll even sleep on my back.

I saw a video of the steamroller demonstration once, but all I can find at the moment is a photo. If I remember correctly they rolled over it once out and once back and it came right back to shape.

Dream Dates continued

Jill Wagner from the Mercury commercials.


She's on Wipeout too, but I didn't know that until the Superbowl this year when they had a special edition of Wipeout on after the game.

Here's an nice compilation video of the "Big Balls" part of the obstacle course on Wipeout.

Another Netflix Update

My second blog post of this whole year! Even Jonathan posts more often and he retired from regular blogging last Dec 31. Here's a rundown of how I have entertained myself in terms of the moving picture shows I've seen since my last Netflix update. Beginning with the most recent and going back to late last year sometime.

Arrested Development Season 1-3 (8 DVD's total)
I Am Legend
Balls Out: Gary the Tennis Coach
Pineapple Express
Next
The Pursuit of Happyness
Snakes on a Plane
He Was a Quiet Man
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
Balls of Fury
88 Minutes
Role Models
Cloverfield
Resident Evil: Degeneration
21
Lakeview Terrace
The Killpoint (2 DVD)
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
All the Pretty Horses
Trade
Borderland
10,000 BC
Vantage Point
Into the Blue
The Dark Knight
Hancock
Reno 911 Season 2 (3 DVD)
25th Hour
8 Mile
Jumper
Reno 911 Season 1 (3 DVD)

In addition to this I also have seen Wall.E, The House Bunny, and something else I can't remember on New Years.

I'm disappointed by a lot of movies I've seen lately. I shouldn't be surprised really. I see most stuff to satisfy my curiosity more than it is that I think I'm going to be seeing a great movie. I thought 10,000 BC was pretty good even though that movie gets bashed by most reviewers. I thought Cloverfield was pretty good too. Arrested Development is hilarious. I like that I can whip through an entire TV series in a matter of weeks and without commercials. I'm doing the same thing right now with the V TV series. I managed to find a way to download it off the Internet and I'm working my way through 19 episodes. The events in that show are about as unlikely as anything seen on The Dukes of Hazzard, only this has lizard aliens disguised as people for enemies. ABC is going to have a new "V" TV series this fall. Juliet from Lost is in it. I wonder if they will eat hamsters. Kia hamsters (see post below).

Kia Hamsters

The greatest commercial on TV right now. That Goldfish song is infectious.

Ants Part 2

I had to "take care" of some ants again. This time they don't have a clear reason for being there or a clear source. There's no trail to the door or anywhere. They seem to come right out from under the carpet there by the border between carpet and kitchen floor. There's about enough space to slide an index card underneath the edging but it's enough for the ants. There were only about 2 or 3 at a time coming out there until I put out the poison. I put a old jelly jar on top of the ant bait packet and then covered that with a shoebox so my cat wouldn't bother it. I took all that off about 3 hours later and found what's in these pictures. That was 2 days ago, now all the ants are gone. They probably all went underneath the carpet and died.

These images are 1024x768 wallpaper sized for your desktop. Enjoy!

Roomba Driver

Not my cat. Not my vacuum. Just something crazy I found on the internet.

Dream Dates

I started this list of dream dates right here on my blog quite a while ago but I've never expanded on it. These are in no particular order.

1. Mary Katherine Ham

This must be an old screen cap. She's no longer blogging on townhall.com. She's been replaced by Amanda Carpenter as the internet cop from townhall.com on the O'Reilly Factor. You can still find Mary Katherine Ham on the Factor quite a bit though. Usually paired up in the same segment with Juan Williams for some reason. Youtube video here also.

2. Barbara Bush
I don't know anything about Barbara other than she's beautiful and the President's daughter. I just think those 2 things would make it an interesting evening.

3. Claire LittletonClaire Littleton is actually a character on Lost. Emilie de Ravin is married but technically it would be OK to go out with Claire from Lost since Charlie is out of the picture now. It might be difficult to find her though, I think she went missing again near the end of last season.

4. Jessica Kiper AKA Sugar

I grabbed the first 2 images from the CBS site mostly because they show the record adapter necklace she wore. I was going to put them in an earlier post but I didn't. She didn't get a single vote from the jury at the end but I don't think she much expected to. She should be on the next fans vs favorites for sure if they do that again. On the Survivor website it says she named her dog Major P. Pants. That's hilarious. It said she was a pin-up model so I googled it one time and found those Thanksgiving photos. I have photos of a topless female survivor contestant on my blog now. That sounds a lot worse that it really is.

5. ?
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?
10. ?

Happy Thanksgiving!

My Civic Literacy Score

The quiz can be found here.

I don't feel to great about my score. I got an 81.81% (or 27/33). After looking at the average scores though, I'm not too embarrassed to post it here for the whole world to see. I didn't remember what a Puritan was and I guessed incorrectly. I scored in the top 3% which I think says less about me and more about how ignorant the sample subjects were with regard to civic matters.

Seems to me that our media obsessed culture will be part of Americas undoing. The media has too much influence over the uninformed and the ignorant. Everyone over 18 (minus felons) gets one vote. Even people who get their news (exclusively?) from SNL, John Stewart, and the Colbert Report.

Video from How Obama Got Elected.com.

Items From My Past (Part 4)

Some Industrial Arts projects from 7th or 8th grade. I remember I shot my rocket off before the countdown was finished. It wasn't even close. I wasn't listening closely enough when Mr.Boettcher gave instructions for the launcher. I remember there was a switch and a red button on it. I misunderstood and thought that the switch was supposed to be turned first at anytime during the countdown from 10 and then we pressed the red button to launch at the finish of the countdown. I don't know how I got that idea, but I flipped the switch halfway through the count of nine, then it went dead silent as my rocket shot up into the sky. I was as shocked as everyone else was.
Impressions of my teeth before I had braces. Some of the teeth are broken out but I think they were always like that. I wonder if dentists still give these away when they're done with them.

Strong Funds compressed t-shirt. I don't know why I've kept this. My grandma gave it to me a long time ago. It's sort of a novelty item I guess. It's fairly small. Without measuring I'd say maybe 4" x 2.5" x 1.5". Strong Funds doesn't exist anymore.

I don't know when I started buying 45 RPM records, but without counting I'd guess that I have about 40 of them. I think I probably bought them from sometime around 6th grade up until about the time they stopped selling them outside of music shops. The centers of a 7" record are bigger so you have to use one of these center adapters. If this shape looks familiar it's because Jessica, AKA "Sugar" on Survivor Gabon wears a necklace that's shaped like this.
A photo strip from what I believe was my first photo booth experience. If you saw me walking down the street today you'd have a hard time matching me up with the guy in these photos. I saw my girlfriend that's in these photos about 2 years ago and she looks pretty much the same. I found another photo of us with the Easter Bunny but that never needs to see the light of day as far as I'm concerned. I didn't want to do it in the first place but it was early on in the relationship and I got pressured into it by her and her friend. We were at the mall looking around at prom dresses as I recall. Seems odd that I was even along for that.

My Wendy's uniform. I have the apron, pants, shirt, hat, name tag and everything. Some of the local Wendy's franchises were owned by Junior Bridgeman the former Milwaukee Bucks player. That's why it says Bridgeman Foods on the uniform sleeve. I met him a time or two when he came out to our Wendy's. I don't remember how I ended up with the wall plaque with the Wendy's Creed on it. It think it was just laying around in the back office or something and I took it home. I found some old pay stubs too. My first Wendy's stubs say that I made $3.40/hour. I've come a ways since I was 16. I don't think I've ever thrown out a single pay stub from any job I've ever had. I have envelopes labeled for each year full of pay stubs from any job I had going back to when I was 16. I'd probably have them from before that but my paper route didn't pay me by check. I had to go out and collect the money myself straight from my customers. I keep a lot of strange items. I probably wouldn't have all this stuff if I moved more frequently. Plus I've always had the space to keep everything.

My last item is a brochure from my visit to the World Trade Center. We were vacationing in the Poconos and took a bus trip to New York City for a day. We went to the World Trade Center, the Statue of Liberty, and some kind of shopping place near a marina or something. At the World Trade Center we went to the observation floor at the top but for reasons I can't remember nobody was going out on the roof. When I found my box of old vacation brochures I dug around in it right away hoping to find a WTC one considering what's happened to these building since then. I was real happy to find this.

After seeing this aerial photo I was curious so I looked it up which towers got hit when and on what sides with relation to this photo. It breaks down like this:

• The photo on the brochure is facing about north so 1WTC (north tower) is the more distant one on the left and 2WTC (south tower) is on the right.
• 1WTC (north tower) got hit at 8:46AM impacting floors 93-99 on the north side (the side opposite of what we can see in the brochure photo). It was hit first but collapsed last at about 10:28AM.
• 2WTC (south tower) got hit 9:02AM impacting floors 77-85 on the south side. It collapsed at about 9:59AM, a few minutes short of an hour after impact.