Up and gone to Tucson

So we woke up in Las Cruces, New Mexico on Friday morning to find 2 inches of snow on the ground, and the town in a form of shambles/chaos that I really cannot describe. Being a wisconsinite, 2 inches of snow barely even gets the time of day to scrape off the car, we just figure that it will blow off by the time we get to the freeway onramp in the morning with the other people not really caring about the snow. But in Las Cruces, you'd be lucky to find a store that actually sells snow shovels, and if you did, they are probably closed because of the snow. So, my logical response to the situaiton as to really any situation involving bikes and snow: move to Tucson.

After a morning full of cleaning the house, i packed my shrinking number of possessions into the Matrix and set out. I saw a good month of training in las cruces, and i will really miss all the glass on the side of the road, but its on to warmer climate and Mt. Lemmon. I moved all my things in while the other guy who is living here was out of the house, and then I left so he would come back to find someone moved in, but not knowing who. It wasnt until the morning when he found a sleeping me on the other bed that he knew, "oh, jim stemper is apparently staying here, man im such a lucky person!"

So, in my new-found excitement for snow-less roads, in true stemper fasion, i overdid it. Climbed lemmon not once, but twice in a row. Theres something really ridiculous about riding up and down a mountian for under 2 hours (a-thank you), spinning the bike around at the base of the mountian, and saying "one" as if you were doing laps in a pool. The "one" really isnt as enthusiastic as the idea of 2 reps was the night before, but more reflective of your soon to be realizatoin of a horrible idea. But thats part of the job, sometimes the only way to get yourself abide by the Eddie Merckx wisdom of "Ride Lots" is to trick yourself into a self-centered ego-trip situation. A situation where you convince yourself that your a wuss if you dont do that completly senseless thing, twice. Naturally, my enthusiasm did not carry into my second day (today), where i again had to trick myself into a ride where the only place for water was 2.5 hours away, so theres no turning back after you get an hour and a half in and realize what an idiot you are. Tis a tricky life i lead.

But, despite the constant lieing to oneself, life is pretty excellent here in the old Tuc-son. No TV, 7 harry potter books, all the high-school books i never acutally read but hear are good, and an under-inflated workout ball have led me to think that somehow I will not only leave here in 3 months a better biker, but a smarter person to boot. Here you see another ploy to trick myself into doing something i may regret later, like starting catcher in the rye, again.

Well, considering the lack of a TV and a couch, i suppose those of you who read this will become overwhelmed with the frequency of similar posts. Just remember one thing, if its raining or snowing in tucson, your job is way better than my job. Otherwise, i pretty much got you on that one (unless you enjoy buying things, because then your job is pretty awesome).

Have a great day!

Let the o-ten begin

By o-ten, i of course am reffering to the confusing new challenge we have when stating the year 2010. After 9 years of adding an "o" to the front of the year number, we now have to pull ourselves away from the conditioning and calmly say "ten".

I digress. The 2010 training season has begun here in Las Cruces NM. I didnt know what to expect coming here aside that i knew matt busche is a great guy to ride with. On our first ride i saw a dog run across the street and yelled "wild dog!" which it was not. All in all, aside from being completly green as far as my readyness to ride a bike, things have gone well in these first two weeks. The house is good, we went to Tucson/Pheonix to pick up chad hartley last week, so theres surely no shortage of dude in this house.

The diet has changed, which i was pretty cool with, but last night i remember dreaming about a ton of melted cheese mixed in with what can only be described as a bowl of "hot awful". I woke up and kind of shrugged it off, but now i am just a bit uneasy with the entire situation. Interesting, eh?

In other news, Kenda released the new jersey which is pretty exciting, cant wait to get a box full of new things to wear:

Thats sweet id say. Today we get to ride and then head back to tucson for the weekend for some Mt. Lemmon action. I am personally looking to redeem myself after spending at least an hour yesterday cutting the bead off my old tires and placing them in my new tires, only to find you are NOT supposed to cut them to make them smaller. That was a total bummer.

Well thats a good update for now. Tough life man, tough. life.

Halloween and New Mexico

Halloween. Some see it as an oppertunity for being naked in public. Some see it as a chance to paint something on their body to make it look better. Some make it look worse. And others spend 2 hours at home depot, 3 seconds at target, and 5 hours in their basement to create this:

As you can see, not only was it genious, but also effective. Noone was even trying to get close to me in that thing... oh yes, i am in there. If i retracted my arms and face into the cone, it did a great job of holding my place in line at bar louie. I really dont need to write about it, i need to put more pictures up.

So yes, that happened. I tried to win a costume contest by standing next to it even knowing i hadn't entered it (JJ was there too) and i hear over the loudspeaker "would pooh bear and the traffic cone please leave the stage, you cant win." Oh well, i am convinced i would have won. Annie was a gangster and however overshadowed she felt by both my excitement about the cone and its actual looming presense in a room, it was still a good costume. So holloween was interesting. Its tough to move around in a bar dressed as a huge traffic cone.

In other recent news, I moved to New Mexico yesterday. The drive was a bit tough (not as hard as the leaving) but thats ok. The Matrix lost a hub cap (which is apparently called a "wheel cover"), making my car look super ghetto and making me super upset.

So it was clearly a big week. Had my first ride today. Found some food, met up with Mathew Buche and hit the wal-mart which was enormous (the store, not the meeting up), and things are going pretty well. The most horrifying moment so far was shaving my legs and finding out that all the fat i accumulated in my long offseason went right to my ankles, or what used to be ankles and now just look like a continuation of my leg. gonna have to work that issue out pronto... im spanish!

enjoy your time doing what it is your doing, my free time is phenominal so if you need some busy work done, send it on over, 10 bucks an hour, it will get done. i might even spill some wal-mart style salsa on it, which is awesome.

adios

LEGO SHIRT

This is incredible.... thankyou BKG for the tip off:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/interactive/bed1/

This shirt may or may not be the greatest idea i have ever seen.

Finally a shirt that will allow me to wear all my ideas and hard work on my chest for all to see. Thats really all i have to say right now. Tonight is halloween, stay tuned for some excellent pictures. Im not going to tell you what i have spent 5 hours constructing, but i will say tonight I will be helpful in directing traffic and saving parking spaces.... And i will not be wearing this: brief jerkey

Talk to you tomorrow.

Well well well, looky what we have here...

Hey look what i found! Another blog! Another way for me to force my ideas upon you without allowing you any say in the matter. You may already know me from my previous http://busighrus.blogspot.com/ and i would reccomend you check out some of the first posts ever on that blog, they are from my stronger blogging days.
So what start yet another blog if i am admittantly beyond my prime? Because for some reason i feel you, the reader, may somehow be interested in what me, the biker, may be up too. So I thought what better way to achieve that goal than to have a blog about it. So here it is. I am getting a camera to help me help you understand what is going on, so you will have visual information like this:

Thats super helpful, dont you think?

So, anyways, I hope to keep up talking about training, races, where im living, and stuff like that, but i am sure I will mainly focus on typing nonsense and hoping you find it somewhat enjoyable. I also started a twitter account which there is a link for somewhere on this page.

Enjoy your day!