I Took It Too Far, Didn’t I

So theWife sends me a harmless text today asking me to remind her to tell me something.

Which begs the question: why not just type a reminder to yourself in the phone instead of typing a text to me in the phone to remind you to tell me something? But that is neither here nor there.

Anyhoo.

She also asked if I’d go to the grocery store for her. To which me – being a recent father of twins and all that comes with that including…how shall we say…a prolonged time off – responded (below in blue):

YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!

She said “lots.”

With an exclamation point!

To which I responded with this (again, below in blue):

To which she responded with this:

Nothing. Crickets. Text silence.

I took it too far didn’t I?

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The Most Dreaded Request

I’m not looking forward to the drive home tonight. Well, not so much the drive as the “errand” on the way.

Here’s the text exchange between theWife and I this afternoon:

For a minute there I thought I had wriggled out of it.

She didn’t buy it.

Things only got worse from there:

Most days I am just so glad I am a boy.

Today is not most days.

[sigh]

22

Unless you are a mathematician (or somewhat odd) you likely have not looked up a number on Wikipedia. I suppose I fall into the “somewhat odd” camp – my 8th grade geometry teacher would certainly agree I am no mathematician.

So just for fun I looked up the number twenty-two. Fascinating, I tell you.

For instance, did you know:

• When cutting a circle with just six line segments, the maximum number of pieces that can be so created is 22, thus 22 is a central polygonal number (you don’t say)

• Psalm 118 verse 22 contains all 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and is dead center of the Bible (for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to go through the effort to validate this one)

• 22 is worn by Manchester United player, John O’Shea, the only player in club history to have played all 11 positions (this one is for you Mark)

• The Titanic was traveling at a speed of 22 knots before it crashed into an iceberg (this is a somewhat dubious claim, but interesting nonetheless)

• There are 22 stars in the Paramount Films logo (this one is legit – I counted)

So what, pray tell, does 22 have to do with this post?

Eggnog. That’s what.

Because my wife loves me (or wants to kill me – I am not sure) this past winter our refrigerator looked like this on most days:

theWife buys in bulk. The real glory of this is that I am the only one in the family who really likes eggnog. Consequently I set a new benchmark for myself. Between the drive home from Fall Moab in October and the end of February I consumed a LOT of eggnog. Yes, I said February. Eggnog makes great food storage.

22 quarts to be precise (this is legit – I counted). If you are keeping track at home, that equates to:

• 792 grams of fat
• 26,400 calories
• 7.54 lbs of weight gain (assuming 3,500 calories equals an lb)

Just from the eggnog alone.

Which would be life sustaining, if that is all I consumed over the winter and hadn’t already established that I have some restraint issues when it comes to junk food.

When I started my eggnog binge back in October, I had just completed two long days of main-lined awesomeness riding with friends in Fruita. Prior to that I had completed the Leadville 100 in August and LOTOJA in September and was feeling pretty svelte (if I do say so myself).

The intervention came in February, when upon returning from a run I found a stranger in my house. I first noticed him when I walked by a bedroom mirror and caught a peripheral glimpse of him in his tights.

“Why would some dude sneak into our house in tights?” was my first thought.

“Oh sweet mercy!” was the realization.

The man in the mirror…was me.

After a pretty active year, surely you can understand how I mistook this for a stranger:

Now that I am 37, another problem I’m noticing (in addition to my sweet tooth) is that I can’t seem to keep the winter weight off.

Let’s just say this winter was an unpleasant wake up call. A real doozie.

With a planned death run across the Grand Canyon and back, RAWROD, 12 Hours of Mesa Verde, the Squaw Peak 50, Butte 100, and Park City Point 2 Point coming up over the next 5 months, I best be for doing some sit ups or getting some gastric bypass work done.

PS – I also don’t recommend going on a hair vacation and a health vacation at the same time. This winter I became Gene Frenkle.

i have problems

I like to eat food.

I mean I REALLY like to eat food.  But not all food.  For instance, theWife joined a veggie co-op last year and every other Thursday she comes home with this:

Which doesn’t excite me all that much.  You see my body has a daily vegetable quota.  Once I reach the quota the next bite of vegetable usually makes me all gaggy and such.

No.  This is more like what I prefer theWife bring home from the co-op:

Oh sweet mercy.

[Sidebar: Dug I know you are seeing those Cosmic Brownies and think you have found your culprit.  I’m innocent.  Boo’ing is an impossible task for me…I consume the treats long before they make it to the door.]

Problem #1

Over the years I have developed a Pavlovian response to junk food.

It all started as a child.

Growing up we had The Third Drawer (my friends coined the phrase). The Third Drawer was the third drawer down on the left side of the stove in our kitchen and Mom kept it fully stocked with junk food…much to my (and my friends) liking.  In all my youth, I can never remember a time when the third drawer wasn’t brimming with artery clogging, waistline expanding yumminess.

Over the years, my fondness for treats has evolved into an addiction.  Literally.

Case in point, we ate dinner with Mark and Rachel a couple weeks back.  Rachel being famous for her skills whipped up a wicked cake of lemony deliciousness and combined it with chocolate pools of heaven.  Being the great hostess she is, she sent us home with a sizeable portion of what was left of the cake.  I ate two slices at dinner and then most of what she sent home.  Looking back I think I ate half of that cake.  HALF.  By myself.

Herein lies one of my problems.  I can’t say no when offered junk food.  I can’t stop myself from finding and consuming junk food.  I know where every junk food stash is at the office.  I can never stop with just one.  I usually will eat junk food until I am sick.  I even eat when it doesn’t sound good.  I can’t stop myself.

Admittedly, my “habit” is a running punchline at the office.  That’s not good right?

Problem #2

I am getting older.

I was blessed with good genes.  My parents are thin.  I grew up thin – so thin, in fact, my friends would  ask me to pull up my shirt and suck in to show the rib cage in all it’s glory.  They used to call me Alien.  Nice, huh?

These days when I pull up the shirt and suck in…it looks the same as when I don’t suck in.  Bulbous.

Age and junk food began to collide around 2001.  That was the year we bought 19 boxes of girl scout cookies from a nice lady at work.  One month later I was complaining to theWife that all of the girl scout cookies were gone.  She said of all 19 BOXES she had only eaten one sleeve of thin mints.  Houston, we had a problem.

So what I am about to type is not based in vanity, more to illustrate the point.

When I met theWife in college, I was spending 4-5 days a week out climbing the crags around St. George, consequently I was in pretty good shape.  The first time theWife saw me with my shirt off her comment was “look at your body.”

Today? She calls me Shrek.

I think she has a fair argument for bait and switch.

Problem #3

Further, emphasizing the problem are the guys in the neighborhood.  All great guys to be sure, but all also are incredibly fit and much faster than me on a bike.

Sam is the Wunderkind.  It appears Mark has affixed anvils where his calves should be.  Rick looks like he just came off the Pro Tour.  Erik is almost always shirtless in 60 degrees.  JDub and I started in about the same place a year ago and now I can’t catch him up a climb.  Even Dug – the elder statesman – in an off year, is no slouch on the bike.

Eating junk food like I do makes it nigh impossible to match pedal strokes with these dudes.

Problem #4

With all the riding I did this year in prep for Leadville and LOTOJA I actually lost weight…20lbs.  That’s great right?  Correction, that WAS great.  Only, one month after LOTOJA I have put 10 lbs back on.  ONE MONTH.

What’s worse is I look like I have added 30 lbs.

Last weekend I put on the jersey and shorts to go out and ride some dirt for a few hours and this is what I saw in the mirror:

I’ve got rolls and ripples popping up all over the place.

That’s it.  I resolve to not gain weight this winter.

Problem #5

So I started with some ab workouts.  It was hot that morning, so I had my shirt off.  I was laying on my back crunching and twisting when I heard it.

It sounded like a fart.  Funny, didn’t smell like one. Come to think of it…didn’t come from the traditional location either.  Slightly perplexed I continued with my routine.

When it happened again I was horrified. I had pinpointed the source.  It was a back flab fart.

What on the great green earth is a back flab fart you ask?

Well my friends, a back flab fart occurs when you eat too damn much junk food, don’t exercise enough, take off your shirt and do ab workouts on a yoga mat.  Combining blub rolls and sweat on a non-absorbant surface traps pockets of air that rupture as you roll about…thus creating the back flab fart.

To quote Kramer:

Look away, I’m hideous.

remember two things

So you know how sometimes you’re doing a thing and then you do a bunch of other things after you did the first thing and then you kind of forgot that you did the first thing?

That happened to me yesterday.

I went for a really great ride up Big Cottonwood Canyon (that was the thing).

Then I met the family halfway down the canyon for pancakes and eggs around the campfire (a great family tradition I married into).  After that we went looking for fireworks and food to celebrate the nation’s birth  (those were the other things).

Upon returning home I learned two things I feel are VERY important to share with you all:

The First Thing

Always, ALWAYS remember after a bike ride (no matter how many things you’ve done in between) that you attached your bike to the roof rack BEFORE you drive into the garage.  Otherwise THIS could happen to you:

Uh huh.

It’s like reading the end of Old Yeller all over again.

My legs went weak when I first saw the destruction.

Five minutes later I found myself sitting awkwardly on the running board of the car.  Apparently in my fragile state I opted to sit pinned between the door and the seat rather than just collapsing back into the driver’s seat.  Traumatic episodes tend to have that effect.

The Second Thing

After you futilely attempt to use your bike as a battering ram and your wife asks “what was THAT?”   I recommend you DON’T respond with:

“That was my f*cking bike.”

Especially NOT when the kids are still in the car.

Commit these two simple lessons to memory and you will find bliss.

Here endeth the lesson.