Ridin' and Climbin', a Good Weekend

My good mood from the week carried on into the weekend.  Saturday morning started out early with a ride to Estes park, and I was pleasently suprised at how good I felt the entire ride.  I rode with 2 other people, and I kept inadvertantly dropping them up the hills.  There's a monster hill and 2 sets of brutal switchbacks after Glen Haven, but I managed to make it up without stopping and the view from the top made it all worth it (after I layed on the ground trying to recover from oxygen debt).  One great thing about biking 40 miles to Estes is that there's NO guilt in stopping for some tasty ice cream.  :)  Going downhill through Glen Haven on the way back was amazing.  There's nothing like passing a car, on the left, while you're still pedalling.  Try as I might, I just couldn't break 50 miles per hour though.  The fastest I could muster was 49.7, but I was glad that I could actually pedal at that high a cadence. The round trip was right around 80 miles, and next time I think I need to stay on the bike for another 20 just so I can say I did a century.

After a brief respite at home, I met up with a friend for....more ice cream.  This time Ben & Jerry's.  I figured I burned enough calories to justify 2 ice cream trips in one day (and anyone who says otherwise is itchin' for a fight).  The ice cream trip then led into a movie trip, where I finally went to see Dodge Ball.  It's one of those stupid-funny movies, which was great because I was in no mood to think.  It's worth it for the Lance cameo, if nothing else.

Sunday morning rolled around and, in retrospect, maybe I should have stayed in bed a little longer.  The first thing I did in the morning was change my oil.  A normally simple task.  Here's a tip from me, the master mechanic:  If you're going to drain oil in to something, you should be sure that there's enough empty space in it to contain all of the fluid you plan to add to it.  I know, if you look in an oil container it looks deep black, but don't confuse it for a black hole.  Twelve quarts of oil will not fit into a 10 quart container, no matter how hard you hope it will.  Needless to say, I had an Exxon Valdez style disaster on my garage floor.  And I couldn't really do anything about it until I finished changing the oil, because I certainly wasn't going to try to move my oil deprived car.  In the end, all is well.  I sprayed some degreaser and simple green on the floor and got to work with the deck brush.  I wanted to clean my garage sometime....just not yesterday.  Shortly after that debacle, I cut myself with a utility knife as I was mounting another picture for my house.  But that was the end of misery, because shortly afterward I went to the climbing gym for the first time in a LONG time.

My climbing parter gave me a good lesson in ass-whipping.  In short, we warmed up on a 5.9, then did 5.11's and the occassional 5.10.  I'm only a little sore right now, but I fully expect to be completely paralyzed by tomorrow morning.  Since it was Sunday, we went to church afterwards.  And by "church" I mean "out for beers".

Incidentally, I'm posting this using the Semagic client.  In my very brief preview of all the available clients, this is the one I liked the most so far.  It's got a nice Office style interface, but it's lacking in the WYSIWYG department. Still messing with it though.