Vacation reset

Only 8 more days until our annual trip to Southern Shores NC, where various households experience the harmony and discord that marks family vacations.  These yearly cycles provide satisfying memories as well as jarring moments of reality, where emotions sometimes boil over due to an seemingly off-hand remark that is never received in the manner that it is intended.  No fault in the disher or dishee, we just all have our ways of interpreting situations.

At around Day 6 last year, as one of my brothers in law and I were chest bumping and dodging flecks of spittle in an escalating screaming match last summer, my son fretted and wondered why we were "speaking" to each other in such an unkind manner.  K says to him:  "Don't worry, everyone yells at Dad at work, too".  Damned with faint praise yet again.

But she is right, as today was one of those days where everyone is a critic and everything we do is fraught with failure, or at least it seems that way.  Some days are better than others, and that's why we look forward to vacations, where we can lose ourselves in activities that include protecting as much sand from the sun as possible by using the body as a sacrificial shield; creating the ultimate chaise lounge in the damp sand just beyond the reach of the ebbing waves; seeing just how many times nephews and nieces can bury uncles in deep sandy pits; getting tossed in the breaking crests; reading A book (inside joke, as all I read at home is monthly cycling rags); going to Captain Frank's for a FootLong (with chili, onions, mustard, the works); and riding a rental roadie with the Kitty Hawk Cycle Company crew.   This way I get to check out a different ride and not hassle over bringing down mine among the flotsam and jetsam that fills up the van.

These are just a few of the many nothings I'm planning to partake in, in addition to enjoying time with the fam.  After our fight last year, my bro in law and I had an excellent rest of the vacation, as sometimes a reset is necessary.  Vacation reset is right around the corner!!!

A solid 8

Every once in a while I get to experience the shear pleasure of eight hours of sleep, unencumbered by fitful dreams, remnants of daily tension,  or nature's interruptions, where I wake up with no trace of grogginess.  

One of the skills that I learned in architecture school was the ability to grab snippets of sleep and take advantage of them wholeheartedly, so as to avoid the dreaded all-nighters that literally wreak havoc on the body.  After about a half dozen of those I figured out that the body doesn't work well without that recharge opportunity.  I've gotten to really take advantage of those short snatches of slumber, usually around 5-6 hours nightly, sleeping hard.

No real point here, other than my appreciation of those opportunities to lose myself in the arms of morpheus, as my grandfather always used to say.

The Tour

...is now over.  And what a great spectacle it has been.  The image of CSC on the podium, with the Norwegian champ, Danish champ, Luxebourgian champ (Schleck 1), White Jersey (Schleck 2), Yellow Jersey, and the 4 others in regular kits (Stewie, Fabian, Jens, and I don't remember who) was a site to behold, as the TEAM got them there.  Hopefully the other shoe will not fall this year and we can have a clean result.  At least I won't see that dopey Bacardi commercial 4 times an hour anymore.  Mojitos are boring.  The real rum drink is the classic Cuba Libre.

Another tour this morning of the Silver Spring Weekend Warrior (SSWW) scene yielded the following observations, as I made my way from the 'cross workout to the end of the BP ride:

A bunch of guys prancing around the fields at Takoma Park MS and its environs on bikes practicing for the upcoming HupHup season.  I was one of them, and was late due to an infusion of good food and drink at our sprawling manse on Saturday.  So I was gasping for air early and my comrades suffered me gladly, as they are good fellows.  

Runners on the path that circumscribes these fields, getting in their private workouts and doing intervals.   Also gasping, but seeming to enjoy it.

The Sunday morning softball teams setting up for their final games.  I saw a colleague from work who was prepping for a doubleheader.  Softball--what's not to like?

Cyclists of all types on Beach Drive.  Roadies, triathletes, cruisers, recumbents, phreds, poseurs, you name it.  Just out there having a good time.

The Candy Cane City soccer fields are always featuring games with the local teams, pretty much all year long.  Soccer--the beautiful game.  Need I say more.

So this Tour de SSWW made me realize once again just how cool it is to have the opportunity to get out there and swing a leg over a bike or swing a bat or [insert cliche here] and escape the mundane for a few hours.  Hanging out with friends, clearing the head, and just being outside.

Transitional phrase to move the narrative into a description of the previous day's events is currently not available.

So we had a bunch of neighborhood friends over for a meat grilling and beer swilling shindig on Saturday.  A great time was had by all (we figured that about 60 people were enjoying the day) except for Nicholas, who challenged the shack to a duel and lost.  Seems that his attempt to vault onto the platform from the ground (despite a running start) did not meet with the shack's approval and he found himself on the ground with his left arm gruesomely twisted behind him.  Broke his wrist (both bones, but no protrusion through skin).  He and his parents made off to the emergency room like bandits.  Despite this injury and Noah's mom getting nailed in the side of the head with a football, there were no other calamities to report, except for the ruthless pummeling of all food and drink offered.  This was a great time, and we'll have to make  it a regular event once again.

Other than that the previous week went swimmingly, with work getting in the way of all kinds of fun.  One day I'll describe my friend Tchad's encounter with some crown vetch after his leg seized on him so viciously at the end of our Saturday ride that he couldn't get up.

Actually, that's pretty much the story.

"We don't do soy"

The routine in July is to think that there is a lull at work, get hammered by the myriad of deadlines that seem to crop up since everyone needs work done before "vacation", and become a cycling weekend warrior.

The respite, such as it is, is the nightly broadcast of the Toor Day Fraaance on the Man Channel.  I'm not one to complain about the quality of the broadcast, as I recall the anemic offerings of the '80's as John Tesh led us through his musical (GAAAAK!!) interpretations of this exotic event.

I will heartily complain, however, about the ads during this broadcast.  As I am a lemming, I have always been influenced by creative advertising.  By the same token, I am an independently minded lemming who detests insipid advertising, and I tailor my consuming habits based on the bounty or dearth of creativity.  

With this criteria, I will never buy or drink Mike's Hard Lemonade.  

The current offerings from Madison Avenue feature an Effeminate Lisper who is expressing his inner feelings via various interpretations of the product or its packaging.  Always nervously looking over his shoulder, he tentatively tries to spread his wings, always ready to flinch when the Real Working Men (Bullying Bossman and Snickering Yesman) drop in to express the collective size of their manhood by effectively dopeslapping the hapless stooge and saying "We don't do soy".

The irony is definitely there, but misplaced, as they're advertising an alcoholic version of LEMONADE, fercryinoutloud, and trying to look hardcore.  I love lemonade, but nothing is prissier than an overly sweetened cocktail drink.  This coming from an unadulterated fan of Belgian Lambics, candy martinis, shandies, and margaritas.  If this ad were funny, this product may show up on this list.  Fratboy louts picking on snivelling fatboys aren't funny, but they sure can be if the writers didn't take the easy way out with the "edgy" tension.

Hey Mike, next time you want to use Type A alpha dogs running roughshod over spineless wimps to advertise your swilly product, make it worth our while by shilling for something other than an alcoholic version of a Capri Sun juicebox.  Just a thought.

I wonder how Bullying Bossman would have handled the crash in today's stage, in which Gerolsteiner's Sven Kraus, with about 5K to go, hit a traffic sign at the end of the traffic island, broke his bike IN HALF, and bent the sign to boot.   Kraus got up, waited for his team car, got a new bike, and finished the stage.  Give that man a lemonade.

Workaround

Sometimes the pictures don't post properly and can't be moved easily blah blah blah.

Anywho, here's the (almost) final result of the great nonsleepinginhammock weekend.

Trim next week! 

Hammock

All I could think of on Saturday morning, as my legs and lungs faded just past the Travilah convenience store, an hour into a 2.5 hour ride, comrades up the road, was the need to sleep.  My lids were heavy and I really considered stopping at the side of the road and taking a little snooze.  I told one of the boys to roll on ahead at tempo, don't wait for me; I could barely manage Zone 1.  I mapped out the day in front of me:  ladies were occupied in the afternoon, teenager could easily hang out with his buddies.  I saw a golden window of opportunity (for about 1.75 hours) for a nap in the hammock, one of life's true pleasures.

I was tired.

The previous weekend was spent fretting about the work that had to be done while I was at my Grandmother's funeral (and doing it before we left), going out of town for the sad reunion, and jumping back into the fire when we got back.  It's not that the work isn't abundant, rather clients aren't paying because money's tight for everyone, and while we should be comfortable we're going pay period to pay period, and that's no fun for a small business.  It'll work itself out.  It always does...It's just not fun while It's going through its gyrations.

So I rolled in just as the heat was rising, ready to slide into the arms of morpheus on a dangling sling in the yard.  It was still pleasant out, everyone was still around, there was a buzzing energy through the house, and there was an unpainted party shack out back and three cans of unopened paint beckoning me just a bit louder.

I realized that not only did I have 2 willing and able indentured servants at my command, but 2 of their friends too.  I figured that we could paint this thing within the day and prep it for trim next weekend, and I could even get a nap in to boot.

So out came the midtone paper (aka shopping bag) and colored pencils to decide on the color scheme...

Then the swarm of painters (2 girls on yellow, a boy on blue, and another boy on red).  I got to boss everyone around.

Pretty soon we were done.  Not bad for a couple hours of work.  They dripped enough paint on the deck to inspire an end of project Jackson Pollack exercise with the remaining paint.  More on that some other time.

Filial duties required that I help my dad move some bookcases and help my mom untangle the spaghetti of computer cabling while trying to figure out why her sound card wasn't working.  Then I was off to Ashburn to hang with friends from high school that I only see once a year.  I thought I wasn't going to stay long, but before I knew it it was 1:08 AM and I needed to get back home--I had CX practice at 7:30 AM.  Amazing how time flies when you see people you haven't seen in decades.  I literally hadn't seen a few of them for 27 years (1981).

And I did get up at 6:30, pulled out the 'cross bike, and had the best workout (except for an actual CX race) ever with some fine folks from DC Velo, NCVC, and DCMTB.  This is a keeper, and hopefully I will be able to finish in the top 100 in every race I enter this fall.  Joined up with the BP ride later that morning and got some more miles in.  An enormous seafood feast for supper with family and extended family (grilled tilapia, while flaky, is a definite go-to).  I hit the sack hard.

Quite a weekend.  I never did lay on that hammock, though.

Independence Day

A few weeks ago I wrote about my grandmother, who was dying.

She is now free, as of 12:30 this afternoon on July 4.  She took a nap after breakfast, and now rests peacefully.

I told my kids that it is a rarity to know a great grandparent, even moreso to grow taller than she.  They were lucky to know her as well as they did, as were the rest of us.

Mary Pierina Maisto, 1913-2008.

Imperfection

After a week off where I actually surprised myself by not checking in too much at work and focusing on why we vacation in the first place, I thought I had actually figured out this whole "recharge" thing.  Short work week ahead and a shack to paint over the holiday weekend, plus 3 straight days of outdoor riding, hanging with the fam, what's not to like?

How naive.

By 8:30 AM on Monday morning all of the angst that I had so laboriously squeezed out of the system over seven days rushed back in, not unlike a CO2 cartridge filling a replacement tube in its speedily efficient manner.  I'll be putting in some hours this weekend to hit some deadlines.  Work is work, and no one cares how hard it can be, because we're all busy.  At least we're gainfully employed, and in my profession, not being busy is a death knell.

So I "drilled down" (current overused business term du jour--same genus, phylum, and species as "at the end of the day") into my fragile psyche and realized that the daily battles all have to do with accepting imperfection.  Even such mundane issues as whether or not the foundation wall lines up exactly with the face of stud--no matter how carefully we draw these things (by hand or on CAD), figure out the dimensional math (2 & 3D), and convey such info on drawings, they will still be misinterpreted in some fashion along the way, as it gets passed from me to estimator to project manager to superintendent to stake-out surveyor to concrete subcontractor to framing subcontractor to masonry subcontractor...(like a dynamic game of telephone or post office or whatever message mangling game we played as kids) to result in an imperfect condition, like so:

I could be a hardcase who likes to bust balls and order the work to be torn out just because I have that power, or accept the fact that everything these days is overengineered for self-preservation purposes, resulting in work that has to be corrected in a manner that keeps the project going but does not compromise life safety and is ultimately hidden behind finish work.  I choose the latter.  Only real assholes flex their muscles in the unnecessary manner that satisfies small egos; kind of like some of my critics in architecture school who actually drew on peoples presentation drawings during juries to make a point.  Unnecessary and uncool.

Anyway, when deadlines are coming hard and fast, I chant the mantra:  "the perfect is the enemy of the good".  If I strove for perfection, I don't think I would ever finish a drawing. 

"Substantial completion"

For a compulsive non-finisher like myself, this is significant, as we conceived, designed, built, and sheathed this little party shack in six days.  In the parlance of architectural contract administration mumbo jumbo, the building is substantially complete, otherwise known as the point at which the building can be used for its intended purpose, specifically, wiling away the summer days and just plain hanging out.

We finished up on Saturday, thinking that maybe we would paint it before the end of the weekend.  Cooler heads prevailed, as we had pretty much neglected everything else around the house and we enjoyed the Shaq "au naturel" for awhile.  Perhaps the activity for the nation's birthday weekend will be the application of color.

Great ride on Saturday, though I ran out of gas on the false flat out on Esworthy and lost the pack.  No matter, as about 8 of us headed back after Bretton Woods (the rest went on to Poolesville) and I got back into tempo.  Sometimes the mind just plays tricks, especially on that section of road.  Can't seem to dig deep on some days.

Saturday night:  Date night.  QHT in Silver Spring to see the Jelly Roll Mortals and J.P. McDermott and Western Bop over some Belgian brews and hot wings with friends from college...While I never listened much to this style of music I realized that it is the distinct underpinning of the best American band ever, which cloaks its roots with speed and discordant harmonies and achingly good stuff...

Sunday I joined the BP ride late and then went out to Reston to see Ray and James mix it up with the 4's, and Harry hang in for a good while with the Pros and 1's 2's & 3's.

Having not raced since CX in December, it seemed quite fast and I was content to support the boys and be the token soigneur, handing up a cold one (water, not beer) to Ray as he cooled down. At one point in the race it looked like Ray was losing contact with the main field behind a couple of gapped riders--I yelled "Dig deep Ray!" and he blasted around them, reconnected, and then proceeded to attack twice in the waning laps to make things more exciting.  

I was thinking about the effort it takes to do that, and the willpower too, as my mind dances with the argument of sticking it out or sitting up when I'm in that situation.  It reminds me of an interview with some Olympic swimmer some time ago, where she willed herself to work through the pain because "I can rest later".  When I find myself on the rivet, and this discussion in my head begins, I choose NOT to procrastinate.

That's why I'm usually one of the guys getting gapped...