Last night Munkirs & I went on the first “group ride” of the season.  We took off at 6:30 from Brookside with the aptly named “Slow Group.”  As was the case about mid-season last year, the pace of the ride made me about half crazy.  Being about a third crazy to begin with, this puts me dangerously near the tipping point.  I honestly don’t understand how you even go that slow.  I have to brake constantly, which irritates me and wastes my very valuable energy reserves.  An object in motion tends to stay in motion, as they say, especially when said object is comfortably north of 200 pounds.  I found myself watching people’s hands to see if they were braking in front of me, and they didn’t seem to be that I could tell.  Strange, I really can’t figure it out.  Well, hopefully we can stretch our legs with this group for a few weeks, get back into the swing of things, and then switch over to the “fast group.”  We’ll see.  Last year I could never quite keep up with them, which I suppose at least provides a little challenge.

Busted out the “big scooter” this morning for a ride.  Last time I was on it was an ill-fated ride on 24 Nov, so it’s sat idle for a solid three months.  It fired up without too much complaining though, with was rather surprising.  I rode it directly up to Quick Trip and treated it to a full tank of $3.55 per gallon gasoline, which must be the best dang gas in the country at that price.  Good thing it only holds three gallons.  The ride was just fine.  A little chilly, and I get a bit nervous with the shiny black slick-looking pavement in the morning, but I stayed upright so all was well.  Maybe I’d feel a little safer if I would break down and replace my six-year-old bald tires…  Nahhhhh, they got one more season in them.

How cold is too cold to ride the scooter to work?  Well, however cold it was this morning, I’d say that’s about how cold.  Whew.  I hope I can feel my fingers in time to eat my lunch.  The 15 mph headwind didn’t help any either.  Brisk.

I finally made it back to the gym yesterday,  for the first time in several months.  It really bothers me to spend all that money on our membership all winter and then never go.  Apparently I’m not bothered enough to leave the couch and head out into the cold though.  And then after a while you think, “Well, it’s been a month now, what’s another week.”  And then another, and then another…   Plus, it’s always a disappointing workout the first several times back.  I take several pounds off the stack, you know, ’cause it’s been a while.  Then I give it a shove and nothing budges.  So I take off more, and more, until it’s at the point you have to make sure nobody is looking out of sheer embarrassment.  This definitely was the scenario yesterday.  I finally gave up in sheer frustration and just called it a “cardio day.”  Of course the word “cardio” hasn’t ever really played into my so-called workouts either.  Heck, I get winded walking up the stairs from the locker room.  Oh well.  It’s a new year, and it’s my annual routine, so why change it now.  They’ve upgraded the gym considerably since I was last there, so it was nice to see all my dues at work.  I didn’t mention it to anybody though, for fear they would respond “Uh, yeah, we did that last November, glad you like it.”

Wow I totally forgot to update this today.  I was on such a roll, too.  Sorry Carl, nearly broke my streak.

Part of the reason for my near-omission might be that we didn’t do much last night.  We did head down to the Flying Saucer for a bit.  Great place.  They had the music turned up rather loud for some odd reason though.  If it would have been good music maybe I wouldn’t have noticed;  Alas, such was not the case.  They tend to play a rather eclectic mix, perhaps in an attempt to please everybody.  More likely it ends up annoying everybody though.  Anyway…  We hung out and yelled at each other over a delicious dinner of soft pretzels, then headed home and watched the entertaining Kansas State game.  Such went Monday.

OK let’s try this again;  I think maybe if I can get through the cold today, warmer weather might be upon us.  It was light out today when I got to work too, which is an encouraging sign.  Granted, it looks like rain for the next week or so, but I’ll take that over whatever snow-ice-hail crap that was last week.

After a slow start, the weekend shaped up nicely.  Can’t say I accomplished a great deal, but I had fun, which is more important in the grand scheme.  Friday I headed down to the Brooksider and met up with Martin & Brice.  We sat around discussing our strategy for the upcoming BBQ season for several hours.  If we came up with anything revolutionary I’ve long since forgotten what it was.

Saturday I met up with the same rough crowd as Friday, and we set out on a tour of the Waldo area.  Kind of crummy weather again, so it was the best idea we could come up with.  We started off the afternoon at the Corner, where we found out there was some crazy Pub Crawl going on.  Yep, we’d inadvertently run into the annual “Barstool Open,” which is some fundraiser where a big group of rowdies go around playing miniature golf and causing a general disturbance in the balance of things.  Wow, they were loud.  We hung out and watched them until the crowd got unbearably large, then moved up the street to Patrick’s.  I’d actually never been there, and it was a nice place.  They had some dart boards for a little diversion, but before we could play a game the same crowd from the last place started filtering in.  So, driven out again, we headed further north still, and landed at Finn’s.  (I don’t think it’s named that any more, but I still call it that.)  We found refuge from the crawlers at that place, they weren’t on the list for whatever reason.  Plus, they have a pool table so that gave us something to do other than talk about BBQ and…  BBQ.  After countless horribly frustrating games of billiards, we wrapped up the evening over at Kennedy’s.  While I was out touring the southlands, Donette was down at the Main Street AMC with a bunch of girls watching movies.  They were showing all the Oscar-nominated shows back-to-back over a 24 hour period for one ticket price.  Not something that would interest me, but a pretty cool idea.

Sunday I turned it down quite a bit.  Frankly two days in a row with the Martin/Brice combo had taken a toll on me, I needed a day on the couch.  After going downtown to pick up the girls from their movie extravaganza, I indeed retired to the futon for an endless stretch of Word Twist games.  I played so many rounds that I still can’t read anything without my eyes starting to scramble up all the letters into different words.  Meanwhile, Donette spent the day sleeping off her movie-fest, then got up at the crack of 5:00 and headed out to an Oscar’s party.  I finally gave up on the Word Twist about the same time, and watched a few movies myself.  I popped in Psych:9 first, which I found remarkably entertaining despite making no sense at all.  After that I found some back-to-back Dirty Harry’s playing;  Always a safe bet.