why

I couldn't help but go out on tuesday night and lay down some first tracks somewhere. The plan was to meet up at 6-ish and head out to the trails for some hiking and sledding. Once there, we decided to nix any formal hiking since we'd be doing enough of that just going from hill to hill. I brought my Clark Griswald edition metal disc sled, but it proved to be useless. 5 dollar plastic tobaggans were the tool for the night. We were unsure of how the hills of the cross country course would sled since I've only ever ridden my bike and ran on them. They were ok, and all of them got better after we laid a few base tracks. Otter was loving the snow since he's a polar bear trapped in a dog's body. Last weekend he jumped into a hole at the edge of a frozen lake for a bit of swimming and then proceeded to get out and lay on the ice after he was soaking wet-all the while acting as if it were 75 and sunny out. His issue with the snow however was that snow and ice would get packed up in his pads and start to bother him. He'd stop and lay down to gnaw at his feet so I would try and help too by getting out as much as I could with my hands. Maybe I should look into getting him some little booties for the winter. After a few hours we became cold tired and hungry, so we made our way over to the local Denny's. Big mistake. I didn't go to work yesterday because of it. I slept all day instead and had no appetite. Fun times.

Mardi Gras this weekend. Woohoo. Parade. Drinking. Bockman playing at Cicero's that night. Cross racing in the snow on Sunday. Chance to win some money, I feel strong so I'm gonna give it a shot.

If you're going to go through the trouble of putting a bumper sticker on your car, why won't you at least put it on halfway straight?

tuesday the sixth of february

Long time, no post. Not much is new. Got a new caad9 road frame, but haven't taken it off the trainer yet. Hopefully I'll get it out this weekend. Even on the trainer it feels stiffer than the schwinn I was riding. It ought to fit me better too. I've been putting more time in on the cross bike than anything else. Trails at siue are awesome right now, but the new loop is quite lumpy still and kills my hands when I ride the cross bike with lobster claws on. I hit a wall last night when I stopped being smooth in the woods beacuse I hadn't eaten anything. I was still fine on the road, but i couldn't coordinate anything well in the woods. Tried the pork burrito at qdoba-once is enough for me, chicken still the best. Later, I went and watched the departed-not bad.

We had to put one of our cats to sleep yesterday, she was about 16 years old (apparently that's about 80 in human years) and has been going downhill for a while. Tumor in her nose, fluid in her lungs, fun stuff like that. I'm sad to see her go, but her quality of life wasn't what it used to be.