1:15:37- WITH A FLAT!!!

Had a great race this morning- I beat my goal time even while taking a flat. Felt great!

Woke up at 5:15 and put everything in the car, woke the bride and took off around 5:40. Got to the site at 6:00 and headed to transition. I had noticed a slow leak in my rear tire last night, fiddled with it a bit then but sure enough it was pretty low this morning. I figured I'd change the tube in transition and be all good. So I took off the back wheel, was waiting for Bekah to come back with my extra tube, and so I figured I'd pump up the front tire. I unscrew the little cap and the flippin valve stem on the front tire goes flying out like a missile and disappears to parts unknown. So now I need to change both tires- one slow leak and one faulty valve stem- which I do but I'm rushed and it's about 6:40 when all is done and the bike is ready. I'm in a bad mood but Bekah is extra sweet and says some kind words as I put the rest of my transition setup together.

The swim looked choppy as last year, 1-2 footers coming fast and breaking both on shore and about 200 yards out. I lined up to the leftish area of the main group as usual. The gun went off and it began. For whatever reason my stroke was leaning a bit left the entire time, but I was able to keep a good pace and feel like I was moving well. The trip out to the first buoy (triangular course) was rough as we were going into the current and breaking waves the whole way, but once we made the right turn things got faster. For some reason the race organizers thought it a good idea to have the center section of the swim pass over this really shallow part where it was about 2 feet deep and waves were pounding in. I got tossed a bit by a wave and my goggles came down by my chin. I stood up and walked about 10 feet, fixed the goggles and kept pounding. Made the second turn, rode a couple of waves back in and came out of the water about 15 yards left of the main line. Looked at my watch: 10:40 coming out of the water- I was stoked! that was way faster than I'd expected. Crossed the timing mats at 11:10 Off to T2!

Transition went quick and smooth- took all of 30 seconds end to end. Got on the bike and headed out, mashing on my shoes. no sooner had I had them strapped and started to really push when I heard a loud POP and PSSSssssshhhh... Flat- rear tire. Shit. I cursed loudly and pulled off into the grass 250 yards from transition and threw my bike down in some normann-stadler-esque frustration. Very lucky thing I had brought 3 tubes with me!!! I started to change it in a fury as rider after rider passed me. This was really frustrating but I tried to stay calm and do everything smooth. The new tires continued to be a bitch to work with but after an agonizing 6 minutes and 3 seconds (my GPS keeps good time of how long you're not moving) I was back on the road, pissed off and pushing hard.

I did not get passed by a single person on the bike, and I probably passed 85 others. I was literally riding down the middle of the road saying "on your left" with every other breath. I kept my GPS speed well above 23mph for the first 6 miles or so, pushing hard and not taking much liquid or gel. At about mile 7 my legs were burning hard so I took it back a gear, drank some gatorage, ate a gel and got back to it, back above 23. When we got back out to fort weaver road we turned straight into the wind and it was all I could do to keep it above 21. The race is advertised at 13 miles, but there's no way. My GPS usually measures short by 7-10%, but today it only measured 11.2 miles- I'm guessing we rode 12- tops. Here's what the GPS showed after the bike- time is less because it stops every whenever I'm moving less than 5 Mph.

Back into the transition area I kept flying, hopped off the bike and headed out on the run- t2 took 40 seconds. I looked at my watch coming out of t2- 36:38! The chip says i did the bike in 35:30- I hadn't been keeping track of the two transitions on the watch... Even with a flat I was faster than last year... wow!

I was pretty stoked for the run, figuring that with the time I'd made up on the swim I could get close to my original goal of 1:16 despite the flat.

The run was .2 miles longer this year than last- more along a sidewalk by the lagoon. I started off feeling like I was a little slower than max speed, but I was moving along well, getting loose. Hit the first mile marker in about 8 iminutes and sped up. Hit the first aid station soon after and dumped what I thought was water but wasnt on my head and about 45 seconds later started to feel the sticky... ewww. Hit mile 2 in 7:25 and was starting to feel it, but was pumped that it was going well. Passed the girl that had been in front of me for 20 minutes just before hitting mile 3 in 7:43, and turned to the final .7 mile stretch where I started to really push it out. About 300 yards into it I started cramping on my side but kept pushing. I was in real pain for the last 100 yards but came around and saw the clock by the finish say 1:15 and knew I was home free. Sprinted in, made my finish, and was absolutely stoked. Total run time was 27:48, which works out to a little better than a 7:35 pace, about a minute per mile faster than last year. I'm wasted here --------->


So here's the final breakdown:
Swim: 11:10, pace 1:30/100M
T1: 0:30
Bike: 35:30 (including that 6 minute Flat)
T2: 0:40
Run: 27:48 7:30/Mi

Grand Total: 1:15:36, 80th/223 overall
Subtract that damn flat and I'd have been in 37th overall (21st on the bike) and 7th in the age group... good stuff.

Race Preview: Iroquois Point Triathlon

Ok, first race of the year and I feel ready. Iroquois point- 750M swim, 13 Mile bike and a 3.5 Mile run. The ocean is usually pretty choppy and the bike and run are flat as a pancake. The bike has one really sharp 180 turn and another 500 Meter section of *ass-tastic* road, other than that it should be really fast. The run is pretty boring, really. You just run down the streets in the neighborhood where about 75% of the residents have no idea what's going on or why they can't drive their cars on their own damn roads.

It was my first race last year as well, I feel I did OK but I've done a lot of races since then, feel a lot more comfortable, and feel a lot faster. Looking forward to going fast.

Swim : (2007 Result)13:54 /(2008 Goal) 12:30

T1 : 1:52 / 1:00

Bike : 37:35/ 35:00

T2: 1:32/ 1:00

Run : 30:16/ 26:30

Total : 1:25:06 /1:16:00

2007 Age group result: 17th/27 in M25-29
2008 Goal: Top third in age group

Put actual race tires on the bike. They're pretty slick so I hope I don't have any precipitation to deal with. I forgot what a bitch it is to get brand spankin new tires on the rim.

I let the bride pick the bitchin outfit I am to wear- she chose the bumblebee suit- here's an approximate image. Those are carbon aerodynamic antennae.

She's waking up at the ass crack o dawn to be my support... yay! Should get some good pictures.

For now, going to drink a bunch of liquid, finish prep and get to bed.

Review: Horton Hears a Who

In the five years of parenting that I have thus far participated in, movie nights have increasingly become a source of dread for me. ABout 94% of Kid's CGI movies that aren't produced by Pixar have pretty much sucked so hard they could turn inside out. Most of them are so spastic and unfollowable, even I, a person afflicted with ADD, cannot follow anything going on- it's like sitting inside a wind tunnel with characters and half-assed jokes whizzing by at breakneck speed, occasionally smacking me in the face but never lingering longer than a few seconds. Case in point- last year's "Meet the Robinsons", a neurologically numbing vomitous mass that blew its entire load in its preview and had nothing left for the 110 minute feature presentation. There was literally one funny part, which had been in every commercial, and 109.5 minutes of overly color-blasted schlock. I think that movie is an excellent representation of what it must be like to be a chihuahua, high on acid , lost in a chuck-e-cheese arcade.

So, went to see Horton Hears a Who with the Fam tonight, prepared for the worst. The story is one of the few films based off of a book that I have actually read. For the first two thirds of the movie, I was mostly entertained by the occasional cute laughs and genuinely odd characters- the little yellow furball was especially funny. I was burning a lot of brain cells trying to figure out the symbology (great word) represented in what I assumed had to be some sort of metaphor for Religion, Faith, Spirituality... something... when you have a story about someone who is doing things based off of a belief in something he cannot see... well anyway that part of it never really closes its own loop. The last third of the movie really is pretty cute, appropriately intense (Nicholas was enraptured) and has some really funny and original moments- right up to the big group Journey song, which was both funny and wierd (but more funny).

The Final Word: 7.5*

All in all I give it a 7.5 out of 10. Worth seeing with the kiddos. It doesn't draw the adults in as well as a pixar movie does- (certainly tries to, by letting Jim Carrey and Steve Carrell do their thing)- but still is cute and reminds us again that "a person's a person, no matter how small"

*Method for determining specific rating as follows: I estimate you will enjoy this film 75% as much as you would enjoy spending an equal amount of time hanging out with me while I'm sitting around being awesome which is one of my favorite activities. Other favorites include wailing on my (fake) guitar, pwning noobs, riding past people on my bike, or sleeping with** my smokin hot uber-babe of a wife.


(** Sleeping with could be defined more specifically as sleeping adjacent to but not touching, lest I be thwacked)

Manliness(*)

I have cried in the following movies that other men will admit to crying in:

Braveheart: "freedom!"

Saving Private Ryan: "Earn This"

Big Fish: wept like a schoolgirl. Any man who has a good relationship with his father will cry in this movie. If you watched it and didn't cry, that means your dad never loved you. Maybe you shouldn't have been such a little bastard, eh?


Schindler: You can't not get a touch teary when they give him that ring. Bawlage.

I have also cried in the following movies that may suprise you:

Return of the King: "I can't carry that burden Mr. Frodo, But I can carry you!" I'd be lying if a little part of the reason that my boy Sam is named Sam wasn't that Samwise Gamgee is the greatest , most faithful friend in all of fiction.

Iron Giant: I really like that robot. Even though the movie has this absurd anti-military/government slant, it's soooo good.

The Green Mile: I read this book, and thought it phenomenal, so when I watched the movie (on a date) I got a little choked up in parts. My date wasn't impressed.



There's gotta be more, just can't think of them right now. Basically I will cry whenever the hero sacrifices himself for the good of another(s), and there is a strong score booming in the background. Make way for the waterworks. Any suggestions for other weepers I may be missing?

on the Consumption of Wheaties

I must've accidentally tripled my red blood cell count or inadvertently taken a shot of epitestosterone before today's ride because for some reason I was a monster out there today. Nobody was hanging with me. It was weird. I was convinced that the guys were all taking it easy or something but only the mighty Bryant who is probably in the top 3% of Triathletes worldwide was ahead of me. This pretty much sums up my feelings from today:

High-5 Failure

I saw an older woman in the grocery store parking lot today.. She was pushing her cart full of various wares and a small caucasian child I can only assume she must have stolen or won in some sort of gambling scheme.

She looked familiar, I felt that I knew her from somewhere so I thought I'd be fun and give her a high five, but she shrunk away from me in abject terror and ran away screaming. She continued yelling at me in her native tongue, couldn't make out the details. This was very disconcerting, and I feel bad.

Melting Faces

Was fiddlin with iMovie and rock band last night. Here's what I did. Prepare to get your ass rocked and/or your face melted. Or... enjoy my dorkitude. I need a drummer and then I can get a whole band video together. Sweet.

Cleaning the toilet

1. Put both lids of the toilet up and add 1/8 cup of pet shampoo to the water in the bowl.

2. Pick up the cat and soothe him while you carry him towards the bathroom.

3. In one smooth movement, put the cat in the toilet and close both lids. You may need to stand on the lid.

4. The cat will self agitate and make ample suds. Never mind the noises that come from the toilet, the cat is actually enjoying this.

5. Flush the toilet three or four times. This provides a "power-wash" and rinse".

6. Have someone open the front door of your home. Be sure that there are no people between the bathroom and the front door.

7. Stand behind the toilet as far as you can, and quickly lift both lids.

8. The cat will rocket out of the toilet, streak through the bathroom, and run outside where he will dry himself off.

9. Both the commode and the cat will be sparkling clean.

take a good look

Let's say you were a squirrel walking through a huge forest, and you happened across an enormous tree in the middle of that forest. You could easily tell that it was the largest tree for miles, many squirrels around you could easily agree that it's the largest tree they'd ever seen. But, there's no way of telling, for any squirrel, if that tree is the largest tree in the history of the planet.

Such is the conundrum of Tiger Woods. Everyone agrees he's the best golfer around today, there is really no comparison. Most everybody agrees he's the best golfer there ever was- the problem now everyone seems to be concerning themselves with is whether he's the best golfer there ever will be, or if he's better at golf than Jordan was at Basketball, or Babe was at baseball, or Pele, or Lance Armstrong, or any other in a long line of stupifyingly good athletes.

I watched two shots of his on sunday- I happened to remember that he was tied for the lead going into the day just in time to tune in to him hitting his approach into 18. Then, as he seems to do all the time, he rolled in the longest putt of his week to win at the last by a stroke. I had the most eery feeling watching that putt roll... I felt like I knew it was going in. So awesome. I whooped and hollered and yelled down for the bride to tell her what happened. She didn't care, but I was pretty stoked. I've watched tiger since I was 15 and he was 18, winning his first of three US Amateurs. I watched every stroke of the 97 Masters and watched his chip on 16 in '05 live, screaming like a goon when it dropped. There is nothing more fun than watching this guy win. What a great time to be a golf fan.

Due to Popular demand

For my #1 Fan....

Mushroom Chicken

6-8 boneless chicken breasts
large can of mushroom soup
small can of mushroom pieces
1/2 cup of cooking sherry (the cooking stuff- regular sherry tastes like something you'd make in a prison cell toilet)
small bag of stuffing (crumbles, not cubes)
1/4 cup of melted butter
6-8 slices of swiss cheese

spray baking pan or line with foil. place breasts in pan and pepper. Mix soup, mushrooms, and sherry until it's a single goopy mass. Place cheese slices on each breast, top with goop, and sprinkle all the stuffing over that, covering all the goop. Drizzle butter over stuffing, my nizzle. Bake uncovered at 350 for 1 hour. Remove and eat with fork.

It's Ass-Tastic!

Drama!!

Drama in the cycling world!! Two of our guys got separated from a big group of Steves + me and now they are voicing their butt-hurtitude across the interwebs. Problem is we went to pretty great lengths to find both of them. I think we feel bad that we never found them, but jeez, they're making it sound like we ditched them in compton with KKK hoods on carrying large burlap sacks with dollar signs on the side. Lighten up dudes! Nobody tried to ditch you!!

2 down, 2 to go

Last week Friday we got the oldest boy a fish tank and four fish for his birthday. Two angelfish and two of these other things that reminded me of some great whiskered waterborne monstrosity that grows to 1700 lbs in the Amazon, but currently is still a harmless sardine.

I had made some comments to the bride when she purchased the fish that they were doomed, as we as a family have a knack for the unintentional murder of living things. We have killed every last plant in the house(some twice) the yard and landscaping is in rough shape, and we gave away my beloved dog because he was too much for two working student/parents. I reminded her of our track record as soon as I got home and saw her putting the tank together- she had bought it without letting me know because she knew what I would say.

"those fish are toast."

After getting home from my ride this morning I was looking in the fish tank, trying to locate fish #3 and #4, couldn't see them anywhere.

As I foresaw, she woke up Thursday morning to find two of our four birthday fish doing the backstroke along the top of the tank. She didn't tell me till today after I asked about 3 and 4, because she didn't want to hear my gloating over being right (thanks for reading my gloating, BTW)

The culprit du jour is our youngest, who as I've mentioned in earlier posts took to feeding the fish goldfish crackers, and in one instance, a tostito. But I don't really blame him, we've been killing things for a while. It's just us. We kill things. We have an aura that makes things die. We suck the life force out of all that is around us.

My parents were cursed with an inability to get people who RSVP'd to show up to their parties, and had terrible luck with used cars.

We are cursed with an aura of doom. The aura's not that bad, in comparison.

Best of luck, 1 & 2.

On PowerPoint

It's Final Presentation Day in MGMT 3420- International Marketing. My fellow students are taking their turns beating me to death with stupidity. Proper PowerPoint presentations should be the very first class taught in college. For your final presentation, if you read your slide you fail. If your slide has more than 20 words, fail. No pictures, fail. There is absolutely nothing more excruciatingly assrapingly painful than sitting through a shitty powerpoint presentation. The attorney general recently ruled that the CIA can no longer use it as an interrogation technique. As the student clicks to slide 34, they proceed to read all fourteen bulleted points, out loud, to the class, at precisely 1/5th the speed with which you can read the slides. Then, as the get down close to the bottom, every heart in the room flutters with the possibility that this could be the last slide.. hoping, maybe, please, but no, here comes ass-tastic slide 35 with 17 bullets slapped haphazardly over whatever template looked coolest to the brilliant slug standing in front of the class. The only interesting point occurs when they mispronounce one of the words they copy/pasted off of Wikipedia. Dear Sweet God somebody teach these people that powerpoint isn't meant to be a text projection system. If we all wanted to read your word document, you should have just put that up on the screen. I can read your slide. Don't read it to me.

Watch a Steve jobs presentation. Two words per slide. Pictures. Videos. Jokes. I don't even like the guy and I buy whatever he's selling.

I am so ready to be done with school. It's depressing.

I'm Ron Burgundy??

On the flinging of Poo.

Two Red-Assed Orangutans, Phil and Mike, were sitting in their tree. Their tree was entirely filled with chimpanzees, who were loud and annoying, but it's a nice tree so they liked it and stayed.

One day, all the chimps in the tree were having their big annual poo flinging contest. They were flinging poo thirty, fourty, even some of the bigger ones were throwing turds some fifty feet.

Phil and Mike, as they liked to do, made fun of most of the seemingly weak-armed chimps. The two had been poo flinging experts back in their previous tree, a Red-Assed Orangutan tree, but now that they had moved Mike didn't to it as much as Phil anymore, but still reminisced with Phil about poo-flinging glories of days past.

After a couple of rather stinging insults from Mike directed at the chimps and their frail poo flinging form, Phil thought he'd razz Mike for a change of pace and claim that Mike couldn't throw a turd 40 feet. Mike had thrown poo a hundred feet back in the old days when turd hurtling took up most of the day, and it was downright insulting that Phil would claim he couldn't toss a buttnugget a measly 40 feet.

Unfortunately, some of the chimps overheard the argument and thought it a good time to chime in and egg Mike on and get some revenge for all his chimp related insults over the past months. Most of the chimps were jealous of Phil and Mike's larger stature and more impressive bellowing skills, (to say nothing of those glorious bright red asses) So, soon the whole tree was chattering about Mike and Phil and their challenge. It was too late to back down for Mike, he had to prove himself.

Phil was a little worried because he knew his friend hadn't chucked a turd more than 10 feet in a while, and even then only for the purpose of sheer necessity (a chimp had been looking the other way while perched precariously on the end of a branch- the resulting fall was as spectacularly hilarious as it was fatal). You see turdchucking had fallen out of fashion as they'd done so darn much of it in the old tree. He whispered to Mike that maybe they should just forget about the whole thing and get on with life, but it was too late- the pressure was ratcheted up and the poo needed flinging.

So, the next morning, at the crack of dawn (it flies farthest in the morning, when covered with poo dew) Phil and Mike went down to the Poo Tossing ring at the base of the tree and
Phil threw a couple of practice tosses out the the 38-45 foot rang so Mike was sure to get the right fecal trajectory.

Mike picked out the most aerodynamic, dimpled stool he could find, heaved back, and hurled it into the morning sky.

Thump. 32 feet.

"Just warming up, good one Mike, now you're ready" encouraged Phil. He could see in Mike's eyes he was surprised at how short it had fallen. "Must've been my twingy elbow", he muttered while picking up another stinky dimpler.

Grunt, heave, eyes to the sky, Splat. 33 feet.

Silence in the tree as Mike grabbed the nearest colon biscuit he could reach.

Splud. 29 feet.

Off flew a corn-studded stink cylinder

splat. 28 feet.

silence.

Mike slowly walked back to the tree and swung up a few branches to the usual perch. Phil followed in silence.

Chimps stopped by from time to time, either goading poor Mike or offering advice on butt-mudslinging, but none of it was really that helpful. They were weak little chimps, not strong and gorgeously red-assed Orangutans. It wasn't s'posed to be that way.

Phil felt terrible as well, as he could see that his good friend, the only one in the tree that he had known since the old days, was now worse off because of his own actions.

Neither of them slept all that well that night.

The next morning, Phil walked over to Mike's branch and put his arm around his old pal. He brought his other hand from around his back and opened it in front of mike. there in his hand was the most perfectly formed buttrocket ever produced by a Red Assed Orangutan. Nearly round with some excellent gripping stones on the seam and a couple of sticks poking out in several spots, were he in a better mood, he would have flung it on the spot for sheer joy.

"New challenge," whispered Phil. "See that chimp on the edge of that branch?"

Mike smiled, and hurled the chocolate missile.

school

OK, sitting in MGMT 3100: Management in contemporary society.

We're watching a travel channel doc video about tokyo: Fishmarkets, sumo wrestlers, cell phones, crowded subways

this has nothing to do with operating a business in an ethical manner.

HPU costs ~400 bucks per class. In most classes you have two tests and a paper, maybe a smidge of homework. I guess you get what you pay for. There are no hard classes.

I don't thing I have ever worked "hard" on anything in school. Don't get me wrong, it's been hard starting and completing papers in the 3 hours before they are due...

Is real college harder or am I just super smart? Probably the latter. Jon smart.



Holomua Me Ka 'Oia'i'o: Hawaiian for "Tougher than UH, but still doesn't interfere with surfing"

tactical acquisition

just acquired all 7 harry potter audiobooks, as read by brit stephen fry in a very british voice with very british pronunciation. at 72 hours total length, should take care of traffic boredom until november.

Momentum Multisport- Phenomenal!!

At the risk of sounding like a paid advertisement....

I was downtown this morning and had a little time so I figured I'd stop over at Momentum Multisport, the bike shop that sponsors the HACC (my club). I poked around for a minute looking at the wares and on a whim asked one of the mechanics, Tom, to take a look at my Orbea cause ever since I've had it it's had this quirky creak and hollow popping sound when I crank down on it real hard. (Gil recognizes this as the sound of being left behind) Tom took a look and said the bottom bracket needed some work, and it'd be $25 and he might have it done that day. Fair enough, says I, and went home to do homework.

Tom calls me at about 4:30 and says to come down and pick up the bike, it's done. I get down there and find out that it turned out it wasn't the bottom bracket- he had spent 3 HOURS taking various parts off, cleaning, lubing, tightening, and tinkering until he got all the problems fixed (there were several- I had no idea). Even so, he refused to charge any more than the originally quoted $25! I got on the bike and the thing doesn't make a sound- it has NEVER not made a sound, even after full overhauls at the pearl city bike shop. I was totally stoked, my bike is better than I've ever had it- I didn't realize it could be so smooth and quiet! And $25 bucks for 3 hours of hard work... amazing. Let's just say that from now on I'm driving the extra 10 miles to Momentum and get my bike in to see Tom. Now, if only I could get him to work on my truck...

their website

saturday morning surprise

I woke to the sounds of my youngest doing something downstairs, not sure what, it's never good. Someday I'd love to go downstairs and catch him balancing the checkbook or cleaning out the fruit drawer of the fridge, but not yet, and not this time. Go down to investigate and there he is putting goldfish crackers in the fish tank. I guess that makes sense in several ways, fish probably like smaller fish made of bread. so I couldn't be that angry, even though the wife told him to stop putting food in the fish tank yesterday. It's hard to get mad at the best looking, smartest two year old on earth.

XBOX 360 how I love thee

if you ever want your ass turned inside out and handed back to you, come find me(Disastro Slick) on XBOX live playing COD4, HALO 3, Guitar Hero, or Rock Band. I have been pwning noobs since goldeneye... consider yourself warned. If you are truly up to the challenge, gird up thy loins and bring it.

FYI, this only makes me very slightly nerdy. Here is a scale to see how nerdy you are for playing a game, ranked by game type:

Nerdiness factor
0-3 Sports games that aren't tennis
3-5 Shooting/war games based on reality or near reality
6-7 futuristic shooter games, fighting games
8-9 any game that was intended for the Japanese
10 anything that says "dragon" in the title
12 anything that says RPG
15 anything that involves Mana
20 any MMORPG
25 a tennis game
30 Everquest
50 Dungeons and Dragons
100 World of Warcraft.

Add 10 points and conk yourself with a sha-lay-lee (no idea how to spell it, so there's the phonetics) if you EVER talk about your exploits in the office.

as long as your game has a sniper rifle or guitar in it and it does not include mana or the casting of spells, it is cool. And don't tell me that your level 70 elf hunter has a blunderbuss with +8 range, that's not a sniper rifle any more than a muskrat is a fourteenth century cathedral. If the game you are playing involves orcs, goblins, elves, the lute of elven lore, the sword of xinthar or a quest across the plains of klaznor, kill yourself now before you become one of these:




Feel free to get aggro on me. I can hang

diamonds in the rough

Weight loss

OK, so here's the before shot. Yeah, I know, supremely gay pose. I have no doubt that more gay men find it attractive than do straight women. What can I say, I had just gotten off an 8 month deployment and had been drinking and thought "I'm in really good shape, I ought to document this for posterity and/or online dating purposes" So i did, and ever since this picture has kinda haunted me. It's just that when a kid who's always been just a little soft around the midsection suddenly finds himself in shape and drunk, there are many worse things he could do than take a photograph of himself in his barracks room while still wearing his stupid rigger's belt (tool). I wish there were a non-asswipe pose picture of me in this condition, but at that time in my life I didn't do a lot of shirtless photography and never really took more, so this is all i've got to show what once was. I hope to replace it with another similar one where I'm in the same shape, but maybe in not quite as homoerotic a pose.

I probably weighed 170-175 pounds in this picture, which was taken in March of '02. I was doing 30 pullups and running a 20 minute 3 mile and spending my weekends drinking, smoking, and being uncivilized. By June taco bell had gotten me back up to a beefy 190, where I bounced around +/- 5 lbs till I got out of the corps and promptly got up somewhere close to 210, where I stayed +/- 5 lbs till I started doing triathlons, which has taken about 10-15 pounds off.


So he'res last summer... 205 or so, blech. Note the beginnings of man boobs.


Today i weigh 196. I want to be in the 180's by April, and by the Half Ironman, back down to the mid/low 170's.

Let's see how I do! Will keep you updated...










Why does it feel so good to put this embarrassing, personal crap on the internet for all to see? What is wrong with me?

riding deep with the HACC

I ride Tuesdays and Thursdays and occasionally Saturdays with the Hickam Area Cycling Club, or HACC. For a while I kinda half-assed riding with them, but I bought a jersey so now I'm pretty much committed. They're awesome to train with and once you get used to the idea of wearing spandex, it's best to wear good looking spandex.

As with most things that are awesome, they are led by former Marines.

Girmsey is the HACC Daddy and probably the nicest human ever, although his taste in hats is somewhat suspect












Ol Man Loomis isn't technically a leader, but he does provide equal parts inspiration(30 time Ironman Finisher) and comic relief (if you can't win, CHEAT)






Rollin deep on Hickam, take note of blaze orange awesomeness on two wheels over on the right.











the website: www.hacchawaii.com

2008 Races

my race calendar for '08:

1. Iroquois Point Triathlon- End of March

2. Lanikai Triathlon- Mid April















3. (maybe) Honolulu Triathlon- Mid May








4. (the big one) Honu Half Ironman- May 31st



(multiplied by 0.5)


5. (the other big one) Lifetime Fitness Triathlon - back home in Minneapolis!- July 12








6. Tinman- July (?)

The Bike

I really love this thing. I don't really know much about what it is... it's an Orbea, sure, it's got the Euskaltel paint job and a italian threaded lower bracket or something- the guy at the bike shop told me that (or something similar). Anyhoo, I like it. It's mine, it's fast, it's creaky for some reason (I mantain b/c it's not built to handle this much horsepower, which is funnier when I'm wheezing ten yards behind the pack) it's a little on the heavy side, but hey... so am I. It's also visible from space thanks to the bitchin blaze orange color scheme. It's kick ass. I've put a bit more than 500 miles on it in '08 and I'm gonna put about a jillion more on this year.

Oh yeah, and the background of the photo says so much... that's TWO guitar hero guitars and one ROCK BAND guitar hanging up next to some hotel bathroom art and my ol' blues. The ManCove.

The Jon FAQ 1

Since so many of you have asked, I'll tell:

Sara asks: "Jon, what inspired you to start your own Blog?"

a: Sara, I go against the flow. I'm not really a run-with-the-pack kind of guy, I really am more of a wild loner. So when I saw that a couple of my friends who I want to impress had made cool blogs, I had to jump on that bandwagon and get me some of that wild action!

Shay asks: "Jon, tell us about your family life"

a: Shay, I'm a father of two and a husband (of one), am in the beginning of a promising career as a cubicle ranger, and enjoy the outdoors. Our family life typically consists of one family meal per week, beach on Sundays and the rest of the time trying to survive our middle class existence. I continue to lobby for a 30 Hour Day, which I feel would allow me to actually get something done.

Shaquondah Asks: "What do you like to do in your spare time?"

a: Shaquondah, If I admit that I actually have spare time, it will be taken from me and filled with various tasks. If I had such a thing, I would use it to play XBOX and take a nap.

Jacqui asks: "Jon, you have a unique blend of outright cockiness combined with self-effacing humor, it's like you want people to first dislike you, and then mock you... why? what's wrong with you"

a: Well, Jacqui, it all started when I was a kid and realized that I was pretty much awesomer than everyone, and continues to this day when I continue to be so out of this world intelligent and funny that I am the only one who gets my own humor, which, as mentioned, is truly awesome. Now, with this blog, my awesomeness is exposed to the world and surely some other truly awesome people will join me in my greatness. Recently, I was asked how I thought I could encourage people, and I replied that the best way I could think of was to stand upwind of them and hope some of my awesomeness sort of blows off of me and sticks to them, yknow, like pollen.

Thoughts on the showering process

my showering process was greatly simplified by the invention of the shampoo/bodywash combo in a single bottle. All I have to do now is dump a shot of goo on my head, lather it up real good, and then use my nog as the base refilling station for my varied bodily soap needs. I used to just use shampoo for the same thing... like most men I only wash parts that have hair on them, so shampoo works fine, and every follicle on me has such shine, bounce & body. But now the presence of the word "body wash" on my shampoo bottle puts me at greater ease.

Numero Uno

For my very most first blog post, I might as well set the bar as low as possible:

I like monkeys.

The pet store was selling them for five cents a piece. I thought this was odd since they were normally a couple thousand. I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth so I bought 200 monkeys.

I took my 200 monkeys home. I have a big car. I let one of them drive. His name was Sigmund. He was retarded. In fact, none of them were really bright. They kept punching themselves in the genitals. I laughed. They punched me in the genitals. I stopped laughing.

I herded them into my room. They didn't adapt very well to their new environment. They would screech and hurl themselves off the couch at high speeds and slam into the wall. Although humorous at first, the spectacle lost its novelty halfway into it's third hour.

Two hours later i found out why all the monkeys were so inexpensive; they all died. No apparent reason. They all just sort of dropped dead. Kinda like when you buy a goldfish and it dies five hours later.

Goddamn cheap monkeys.

I didn't know what to do. There were 200 dead monkeys lying all over my room; on the bed, in the dresser, hanging from my bookcase. It looked like i had 200 throw rugs. I tried to flush one down the toilet. It didn't work. It got stuck. Then I had one dead, wet monkey and one-hundred ninety-nine dead, dry monkeys. I tried to pretend that they were just stuffed animals. That worked for awhile, that is until they began to decompose. It started to smell real bad.

I had to pee but there was a dead monkey in my toilet and I didn't want to call a plumber. I was embarassed. I tried to slow down the decomposition by freezing them. Unfortunately there was only enough room for two at a time, so I had to change them every 30 seconds. I also had to eat all of the food in the freezer so it didn't go bad. I tried to burn them, but little did I know that my bed was flammable.

I had to extinguish the fire. Then I had one dead, wet monkey in my toilet, two dead, frozen monkeys in my freezer, and one hundred ninety-seven dead, charred monkeys in a pile on my bed.

The odor wasn't improving.

I became agitated at my inability to dispose of the dead monkeys and I really had to use the bathroom. So I went and severely beat one of the monkeys. I felt better. I tried throwing them away but the garbage man said the city was not allowed to dispose of charred primates. I told him I had a wet one. He couldn't take it either. I didn't bother asking about the frozen ones.

I finally arrived at a solution. I gave them out as Christmas gifts. My friends didn't quite know what to say. They pretended to like them, but I could tell they were lying. Ingrates. So I punched them in the genitals.

I like monkeys.