Now that I can breathe...

... it seems an apropos time to blog. With the spring semester, finally, ending I've found myself with 10 days of free time, and I've totally wasted half of them. Just kidding. Or am I? The answer really depends on how you define "waste." I cleaned my apartment one day. That was out-fucking-standing. I'd been too busy to be arsed with cleaning anything not chamois, or food related. My shower was so clean, I didn't want to use it. Contemplating this for about five minutes however, my own stink overpowered me and in to the shower I went. I've watched a lot of hockey, which is important when it's 100 degrees (or something similar) outside. One must have hockey in absurdly hot temperatures!

That said, there have been two stand-out things this week. Bicycle riding and Transmetropolitan.

Spider Jerusalem, journalist.

The comic amounts to a caricature of Hunter S. Thompson - Gonzo journalist extraordinaire - set in a future of endless technology. It's crass, it's crude, and to call it "insanely profane," would be a criminal understatement. I'll call it bliss on paper. Vertigo has seen so fit as to repackage the stories in to 11 volumes of graphic novels. I've been inhaling a volume a night, pure bliss. I think the apartment has thick walls; I rarely hear my neighbors. I hope for their sake there is terrific sound-proofing, I've been positively cackling with delight.

I don't have any race results to attest to a great improvement in my racing prowess, nor do I (think I) have any notable power results. My coach continues to tell me things quite on the contrary. I suppose I pay him for such things, I best accept them, yeah? This weekend however, was the closest thing to a tangible result I've gotten in a few months of training. A 3 hour mountain bike ride with Coach B. and The Speedy Dub, a local fast guy with legs intent, only, on tearing apart lesser beings. A couple of obnoxious mechanicals aside, I stayed with the pair of them. Climbing the Bays fire tower, I sat on their wheels. Granted they were riding a conversational pace, and I was trying to impale my helmet on my stem, I was there. Better news still, my lackluster descending (on a mountain bike) is improving too, they didn't get away from me, despite better skills and/or gravitational and/or weight advantage. I'll call that a win. Phenomenally fun, too.