I recieved Dosage IV in the mail on Monday, and must admit this is one of the more inspiring climbing movies I have seen. I'd say it ranks right up there with Dosage III, which I have very nearly worn out.
I'll spare you the details as they're availalbe online (linked above) if you care to find them. I can say that the production & editing are excellent, the music is quite good -except for maybe Dreamcatcher, it sounds like
TJ Hooker- and the routes/problems they focus on are hugely entertaining.
Along the lines of climbing, here's a link to a
Japanese bouldering website that is posting videos on UrbanClimer's TV site.
Rock Gal and I also attended an ABS climbing competition last weekend that got us pretty inspired to climb. The problems are challenging and I have really enjoyed working on them after seeing the competitors send them during the comp. I'll see if I can write more about it later, if I can think of a way to make it interesting...
New Toy
Here are pictures of my new toy. It kicks much ass. I think it is amazing how much fun you can buy at Goodwill for only $20 (+ tax) and another $20 worth of parts. The seating position is so low my quads and knees are getting slaughtered, but it also responds well to sprints and likes to go in the grass.
I'm thinking about riding it to the local aquatic center a couple nights a week to swim laps, so we'll see how that goes. The swim pass is like $40 for 20 punches, and swimming twice a week would allow the thing to last quite awhile. The only issue is that they have most of the lanes blocked off for swim lessons and shit right when I would want to be there.
I also dig the pegs. I don't know what to do with them, nor do I think I'll ever use them, but I think they're necessary for some reason. Now I just need two feet of chain and a padlock.
Thirty by Thirty
So I've set a goal for myself. I want to be back to my 30 inch waist by the time I am 30 years old in mid-January. I can definately stand to lose 15 or 20 pounds to help with climbing, and it will certainly make me feel better. Which, of course, is the primary reason for doing it.
To further this goal I know that I need to consistently eat better and excercise more often, especially cardio. On the excercise end I decided that I wanted to get back to riding my bike more, swim indoors and continue rock climbing and general excercise.
With the cold weather setting in getting on the road bike has been less and less appealing. I don't enjoy freezing my nuts off and sometimes I just want to ride. I don't care about getting all geared up, putting on my clipless shoes and setting a goal 40 mile route... I just want to go out and ride because it is fun. So last night I dropped by the
Goodwill store and bought a BMX bike. I also stopped by a pawn shop and met a guy named Jake. Jake is super passionate about BMX, which is totally cool, but it also meant that he wanted to sell me his old BMX bike for $300. I told him I'd have a hard time riding a $300 BMX around town and leaving it outside of stores, and he understood. Still, you have to respect anyone that is truly passionate about what they do.
But I digress... I picked up my bike from Goodwill for $20 and promptly found that the forks don't fit my Yak rack. No worries, I stuck it in the back seat and drove to
Blue Bonnett Bicycles for some parts. I knew it needed a tire, brake cables and some tubes so that part was easy. The brakes were a little suspect up front but I figured that some tinkering could take care of any problems. The bike also has rear pegs, which I'm not crazy about, but
Rock Gal wants me to keep them so that I can give her rides "and we can be totally ghetto" as she put it.
It only took me 45 minutes and 45 bucks to get the bike all together and ready to ride! I slapped on my beanie then headed out into the cold Halloween evening for some good ol' fashioned cavorting around. I love it. Sitting down on the thing is going to give me an awesome quad workout, and simply being able to jump on it and ride anywhere I want makes it easy and quick for me to get excercise. No more planning, loading gear and hoping for decent weather. Now, I just ride!
The Pinarello still has a special place in my stable, and will get ridden quite a bit as well, but the BMX makes the riding on a whim thing much easier. The last thing I wanted to do to my gorgeous road bike was bang it off curbs or dick around town.
The Ozarks
I'll need to take some time to write about everything that happened, but for now here are some pictures. I'll link these on the right as well. Just click
here for photos from our camping/rock climbing trip to
Horseshoe Canyon Ranch in Northwest Arkansas.
