Meh.

Why do I always do this? Fuckity-fuck fuck FUCK!

Life is still wonderful.

It's the month of October...and the weather is fucking NUTS. A couple of weeks ago, downtown LA hit a high of 113 degrees. Damn. What's even more insane is the fact that their thermometer broke, so the actual degree could have been higher. Guess we'll never really know. Long Beach on the other hand tied the record at 111. FUCK. I left the Central Valley to escape that type of weather.

Last week, we had a few bouts of thunder/lightning/rain.

And now, it's started to heat back up again. I mean, I'm not complaining. I absolutely love SoCal summers and am glad it's somewhat still here. I think we just need some consistency.

Okay, sorry, done with the weather rant.

So, October. It's been a pleasant month so far. I've made a lot of new friends through solo adventures at Disneyland, we've hired new/amazing people to work in our dept at work, training for the IM is showing some amazing results, and for the last couple of days, all of my lunch break meals at work consists of Vitamix samples from their awesome presentations.

In the next couple of days, I will be going to Six Flags with a good friend. Should be SICK. I love roller coasters and am excited to finally be visiting the amusement park during Halloween time! :)

The week after that...........is going to be absolutely and insanely....ummmm...I'm honestly not too sure if words will be able to describe the weekend of the 22nd-24th.

Shannon(good friend), Phil(her boyfriend), and Lexi(shannon's blonde twin/roommate) will be making their way down here ALLLLLLL the way from Chico (yeah, I know, fucking far) to spend 3 days with me (or, all of us together, I guess?) at the most magical place in the entire universe. Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhh, should be gooooooooddddd times.


ANNNDDDD to finish it offfffff, the next week will consist of pumpkin carvin/halloweeeeeeeen parties!!! CRUNK!

Oh man...

Life is great.

Running and cycling every.single.day is kicking my ass, but I feel great.

Going back to my second home next weekend to hike the Dome and stay at the Lake.

It is going to be weird to be in the Valley and not be bouldering. I haven't nearly gone to the climbing gym down here as much as I'd like. Trying to find the balance between work/Ironman training/trying to climb as much as I can/life is hard.

Got some pretty good tailwind on my ride today going south along the bike path on the beach. Since there wasn't anyone around for a good stretch, I wanted to try to break my PR of maxing out at 33mph while sprinting. 35mph baby! That isn't really saying much though, since I did have a pretty narly tailwind.

I.Love.Long Beach.

112 miles

First day of training for next year's Ironman Tri started today. I decided to go ahead and go on a pretty lengthy bike ride.

I started the day off with making a really poor decision.

Feeling hungry, I toasted some bagels and slathered on some peanut butter. And that's all I ate. Taking with me a couple of powdered electrolytes and other misc items, I take off down PCH. At first, I told myself I'll only do a 60ish mile ride...but that soon changed after I made a new playlist on my iPod. It was then that I told myself I'm going to keep riding as far as I can until that playlist is over, THEN I'll turn around.

Bad idea.

Going south was nice and easy. There was a good tailwind and traffic was pretty light. There were a few times where I'd hit a few downhills and actually ended up passing a few vehicles. Pretty awesome. A bad habit I have while cycling is looking down a lot, either at my tires or computer. I guess that might have happened every time there was a sign telling me I was approaching San Clemente, because I did not realize I had entered that city until I passed it. My iPod finally ended it's playlist when I got to Oceanside and there, I turned around. Upon making the u-turn, the very first thing I noticed was the headwind. Good god, that headwind was horrible.

Riding into the headwind wasn't as bad, except that my stomach started rumbling consistently at about mile 70 and on. At about mile 83, my speed slowed down from an average of 22mph to 10-11mph. It was then that I had realized my body didn't have enough calories to burn off anymore. I looked at my computer, which told me I had burned off easily over 2,000 calories already...and we all know that a couple of bagels with peanut butter does not equal 2k cals.

I was losing it.

I started swerving in and out of the bike lane. I accidentally ran a red light in front of a cop (again, had my stupid head down)...and got off with a ticket for wearing my headphones instead of a $400 ticket for running the red light. The headwind seemed to be getting stronger and stronger with each mile. I felt like I could collapse at any moment. It was bad. Really bad. A few cyclists had passed me and as hard as I tried to yell at them to see if they had any spare clifbars, I couldn't even muster up the strength to get a peep out. I eventually made it to Wholefoods (my employer) which, thank goodness, is right off of PCH. There, I grabbed 5 clifbars, 2 bananas, some coconut water, a nice sandwich and got my grub on.

It was glorious.

I think I'll start my day off with some steak and potatoes next time.

Crash

Took a gnarly spill on my bike the other day. This is one of those incidences that tells me I should wear my helmet more often...

I hate it...

...when I write a new song, only to hear an almost exact version of it made popular by someone else already. And I swear these are songs that I've never heard before in my entire life.

Maybe I'm just not being original enough.

I'm confused

Blast. Can you pencil me in, when you can?

------------

The other day, the cutest little girl with the most gorgeous blue eyes came up to me while at work and tugged on my pants. I looked down, smiled and asked how I could help her. She said, "I want Acai..." and turned away as if she was embarrassed or nervous. I looked around to see if any of her parents had put her up to this, but saw no one in the general vicinity.

So, I walk her over to where we have our Acai juice and pointed out the different flavors we had. She pointed to the Blueberry/Pomegranate one and asked if I could give it to her. By the way, she was again, completely adorable. She had a yellow ribbon in her hair to match her yellow shoes and a white summer dress. What happened next completely took me by surprise.

I handed her the juice, thinking she was probably going to take it and meet up with her parents somewhere else in the store.

Nope.

She opened that bottle up, took a couple of fat chugs, closed the lid and handed it back to me...

.........

I want to adopt her.