La Copa Mundial y Roland Garros
you may notice that i have nary an entry of bike mileage of recent. why? the answers are quite myriad. first may be that the pinche French Open is on every a.m. when i get up, and continues through the well past lunch. i've complained abt tennis alot this spring. por otro lado i like to watch it. i like 'Rafa'. i like Roger. i like Vaidisova beating the complete shit out of the ball. i've watched alot and i'll watch more now that mens' semis are tomorrow, and the finals this weekend. mornings are a good time to ride, and so far i've used my mornings to watch pinche tennis.
we also had a nice Detroit weekend in there, watching the Tigers lose with 2 outs in the top of the 9th to the Bosox. terrible. Todd Jones terrible. pinche Pistons lost too. if they had pushed it to game 7, Z and i would've gone, but alas it was not to be.
i HAVE worked out some, going to the gym a couple times and taking a couple jogs. this has positive effects on my overall health, but puts absolutely NO mileage in the legs. we'll get there.
Except now the Copa starts tomorrow. lots and lots and lots of soccer "matches" (right?) on ESPN2. i'm as "American" as they come with respects to sports. i grew up following the Big Red Machine, and grew to appreciate the St. Louis Cardinals in my time there. Oh, and i have LOTS of baseball cards. and i've always been a fan of "America's Team", the Cowboys, given that i lived there a brief spell too. and don't forget basketball, especially the KY Wildcats. how can you not root for a team that's been so successful while representing one of the poorest populations in the country? UNC? brie and wine? Duke, ivy walls and rapist lacrosse players (not really a fair comment there).
BUT i've grown the gave an appreciation for 'Football', especially since i long ago dipped my toe into that other Euro spectacle that is professional cycling. Lemond, Hinault, Merckx, Indurain, Boonen, Museuw, oh yeah, and Armstrong. love the ciclismo and starting to like 'futbol' as well. don't know if the Yanks can get out of group. Italy, Czechs and Ghana all pose difficult challenges, especially with the first two. I can see 3 and done. but they've surprised and impressed before. Italy is all a flutter with scandal. the Czechs are dealing with injuries and Ghana isn't too great. Let's hope.
and lastly i've been reading a GREAT book,The Omnivore's Dilema by Micheal Pollard. it's an extension of Fast Food Nation, except this time taking into account the origin of the "foods"- read components- before being processed by Mickey D's. frankly, as disturbing as FFN was, this is much more so, because the impact of Industrial Food is so much greater than the choice of visiting just 1 restaurant. the premise is that we have a food economy based on just two 'crops', Corn, and to a lesser extent Soybeans. the book effectively delineates just how these crops impact everything we eat, though to our strong detriment. furthermore, he does a pretty damn good job tearing down 'Organic', or at least modern 'Organic' as opposed to the older hippie Whole Food notion. the image that comes to my mind at this instant is Soylent Green, for those of who who've seen that movie.
if the adage "You are what you eat" has an validity, then we're all corn, chemicals, and cancer. i think a few folks who read this blog are also bike commuters, so in turn are folks already predisposed to thinking 'outside' the mainstream box. this book will make you want to think even more outside that box about your culinary decisions at least.
!Forza America!
we also had a nice Detroit weekend in there, watching the Tigers lose with 2 outs in the top of the 9th to the Bosox. terrible. Todd Jones terrible. pinche Pistons lost too. if they had pushed it to game 7, Z and i would've gone, but alas it was not to be.
i HAVE worked out some, going to the gym a couple times and taking a couple jogs. this has positive effects on my overall health, but puts absolutely NO mileage in the legs. we'll get there.
Except now the Copa starts tomorrow. lots and lots and lots of soccer "matches" (right?) on ESPN2. i'm as "American" as they come with respects to sports. i grew up following the Big Red Machine, and grew to appreciate the St. Louis Cardinals in my time there. Oh, and i have LOTS of baseball cards. and i've always been a fan of "America's Team", the Cowboys, given that i lived there a brief spell too. and don't forget basketball, especially the KY Wildcats. how can you not root for a team that's been so successful while representing one of the poorest populations in the country? UNC? brie and wine? Duke, ivy walls and rapist lacrosse players (not really a fair comment there).
BUT i've grown the gave an appreciation for 'Football', especially since i long ago dipped my toe into that other Euro spectacle that is professional cycling. Lemond, Hinault, Merckx, Indurain, Boonen, Museuw, oh yeah, and Armstrong. love the ciclismo and starting to like 'futbol' as well. don't know if the Yanks can get out of group. Italy, Czechs and Ghana all pose difficult challenges, especially with the first two. I can see 3 and done. but they've surprised and impressed before. Italy is all a flutter with scandal. the Czechs are dealing with injuries and Ghana isn't too great. Let's hope.
and lastly i've been reading a GREAT book,The Omnivore's Dilema by Micheal Pollard. it's an extension of Fast Food Nation, except this time taking into account the origin of the "foods"- read components- before being processed by Mickey D's. frankly, as disturbing as FFN was, this is much more so, because the impact of Industrial Food is so much greater than the choice of visiting just 1 restaurant. the premise is that we have a food economy based on just two 'crops', Corn, and to a lesser extent Soybeans. the book effectively delineates just how these crops impact everything we eat, though to our strong detriment. furthermore, he does a pretty damn good job tearing down 'Organic', or at least modern 'Organic' as opposed to the older hippie Whole Food notion. the image that comes to my mind at this instant is Soylent Green, for those of who who've seen that movie.
if the adage "You are what you eat" has an validity, then we're all corn, chemicals, and cancer. i think a few folks who read this blog are also bike commuters, so in turn are folks already predisposed to thinking 'outside' the mainstream box. this book will make you want to think even more outside that box about your culinary decisions at least.
!Forza America!
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