Olas Nah

I've never been so invested in anything that I needed forgiveness or wanted to forgive someone else. Just never worked out that way, I'm not an isolationist or anything when it comes to my social life, such as it is. Kinda like RG says though, forgiveness is really the wrong word, and I think that also speaks to far too much personal hubris. The person looking for forgiveness or to forgive somebody else is probably inflating the issue 1000x whereas the other person is often like "What the hell are you talking about, that was 25 years ago and what is your name again?", or something similar. Drama, people love drama. And they suck at communicating with each other.

A civic will last damn near forever. Buy a basic new one. 'Used car wisdom' is Soooooo 1980's-ish.

The Earth is where I keep all my stuff!

Goddammit

"Whatever it is, you should clean up this city here, because this city here is like an open sewer you know. It's full of filth and scum. And sometimes I can hardly take it. Whatever-whoever becomes the President should just really clean it up. You know what I mean? Sometimes I go out and I smell it, I get headaches it's so bad, you know...They just never go away you know...It's like...I think that the President should just clean up this whole mess here. You should just flush it right down the fuckin' toilet."

NYC is one of those places where there are great things to do, but the CITY gets in the way of most of that. I think my chief complaint was the godawful smell of the falafel stands everywhere. After a few days, it was damned oppressive.

Doesn't quite work that way Kzoo. Verizon makes you click through a 'hey, pay for text to vm' thingy, then you have to enter your code, every time, and then you have to 'wait' for the ivr prompts...no shortcutting.

VM is a PITA to answer these days. Always gotta enter a code, notifications won't go away on your phone unless you delete the sucker, the IVR prompts are laborious. It's all an attempt on their part to sell you their 'text voicemail' stuff....which I definitely liked, but it's too costly to be worthwhile. I don't get that many VM's, because SMART PEOPLE JUST SEND YOU A TEXT.

I did not see that painting with the Van Gogh stuff. Pierce Brosnan must've stolen it. I liked his stuff...but Monet sucks balls. I wouldn't call what he did 'art'. Just wasn't impressed by it. Looked pretty amateurish for art anyways. I'll post it later, but there was a few paintings, I was convinced there was a person 'in' the painting. Lifelike, crazy lifelike. Really hard to take the impressionists so seriously when there's a dude who can paint that close to real life. My most favorite Napoleonic painting was there...

Yes. This means look out, cuz I'm in America folks. The end is nigh.

I think they are coating it with something to protect it, but the whole area was blocked off..you could only kinda see it, so I didn't try to get any closer. No worry though, the MET had a crapton of mummies, obelisks, sarcophagai, etc, including the Dendur Temple inside.... The MET was awesome. I barely saw a third of it. Spent all day there and I was kinda exhausted from just reading all the stuff about each item.

No need. There's undercover cops everywhere. After my all-day visit to the MET two weeks ago, I'm walking my shitty rented bike out of Central Park, and I am aghast to see a guy running, followed by another guy, who then proceeds to wail on him like crazy, punching him in the face as he holds him down. I then see another dude join in the fun, and pin him down even more than he was pinned down before. Turns out, they are both cops engaged in their normal brutality towards the oppressed populace. Nobody did much of anything because all three of these dudes were quite large people, and I was certain that the 2nd dude had a knife or gun, which I was trying to figure out, so I wasn't getting involved in that until I knew which way to run.

It's covered in scaffolding and surrounded by tourists

Eat pizza at Sbarro's...first chance I got.

lol... The funny part is, I'd wondered about this even before I'd bought one. The very next race I did, watched a guy drop his. Nevermind all the goo that develops around the lid after a few gulps of it. Gel is messy period...but man I love the apple/cinnamon flavor. Of course, I had this one time that I 'shot' 3 shotblocks straight out of the package onto the ground, but it was no tragedy since I had 3 more and had plenty of other food to spare.

My shorts would have been the same color as the bear's fur... but gosh, it sure would be fun to just give the cubs a big hug....

The 6 bodies in my basement don't do much, so I'd say I work as hard as at least 3 of them.

Um, yeah. Pockets. Use 'em. Otherwise, use Clif Shotblocks. No worries about goo, and they are much the same as a gel. Honestly, far more convenient than gels overall. Not as acidic either when you take them in, whereas some gels necessitate you drinking a decent amount of water to wash them down immediately. Not that this isn't a bad idea, but you can just eat the Shotblocks and take your time about drinking some water to back them up. Gels are indeed messy period. Don't bother with that Hammer Gel flask....you're going to drop it during a ride and wish you'd never invested in it. Everyone I've ever seen, known, or that has ever lived has dropped the flask during a ride or race or other event.

SW has not yet seen my wrath....

But, I brought some PBR....

Hahaha, goddammit, we're both old

Play some satanic ritual chanting.

That book about the 'Titan'.....was on board the Titanic in its library too.

Way too much money in 'Vegas to be made on that horse NOT winning the triple crown.

Strava's only partially to blame. I put the rest on Facebook. Back when I first started riding in '04, club rides would at best perhaps average around 18-19mph for the 'fast' ride, and now, it's rare for us to average less than 21mph, and we often do 19-20 on even the 'hilly' rides. Facebook has helped this along by making everyone in the community patently aware of everyone else they know and their fitness levels, and not just by following them on Strava. The constant egging on via FB posts, ride invites, small elite groups of Cat3-ish riders and other neo-pro types who like to decimate slower riders to feel good about themselves. 5 years ago there was really just bike club rides, and now there are large amounts of various training rides and groups each week putting in some serious riding. And that being said..... Bike clubs are falling apart, because people aren't showing up to the rides anymore. It's like this; "Hey man I see the club ride has a hilly 50miler tomorrow". "Nah dude, come to my house in the morning. Gonna be a bunch of racers there, and we're gonna drive an hour down to the mountains and put in a 70miler hammerfest over Mount St Helens and then go drink beer after". "Sweet! I'm in. I wouldn't want to ride with those slow club fuckers anyway". For this reason, I too also don't tend to show up to the club rides. Nobody's there anymore. Used to be, there's a huge variety of riders present, some fast, some slow, some new guys who get introduced to the faster dudes, and now there's none of that. New riders are often scared off by the uber-fast pace of the faster group, so they don't even try. The few I see show up on the scene now that survive are ones who are often friends of a faster dude. What makes matters worse on FB too, there's always that gaggle of guys you know who either don't work, or don't seem to have jobs that tick you off. They think nothing about taking 2-3 days off and doing some mountain tour bike riding, or racing back to back weekends out of state, or just putting in a 90 mile solo ride on a Tuesday, well on their way to a 400 mile week of riding. Ugh. And they post this stuff all over FB... Seems also like everybody, as Nate has said, has to be racing or training for one to be considered acceptable in the community. The pressure I get (as a faster rider) to enter crits, road races, etc, and just show up for some massive hammerfests is immense, and I very often just don't have the stomach for it. I rarely encounter guys who are somewhere in the middle on fitness or who don't race. Seems like it's always a bunch of either complete newbies (who will be a Cat3 in 6 months), or guys who are.... Cat3s. I shit you not though, there's this one group of riders near me who would each be a very strong Cat3 rider....but they don't even race!! It's like, dude, WTF are you pushing this pace so hard... I am convinced that more than a few of these people are taking various doping products btw. Ever since I've taken up cycling, I've liked to ride fast, but as far as 'training' for something, I might devote about a month or two towards it. I just lose interest after that time, as the constant bike riding, prep and other things just start to bore me. I LOVE cycling, but if I make it all I'm about, period, then I would lose interest. Cycling has to have an appeal to me (something I'm not doing but might want to do) for me to keep the interest, so I have natural highs and lows that I go through with regard to riding and doing events or races. This time last year I was perhaps to be considered a 'fast' Cat3 in fitness, and things were looking strong, but I just got tired of constantly heading out for a ride. Loved the fitness level I had, and how lean I was, but it's a serious amount of work, and the last thing I want is a 2nd job.