Cleveland Rocks!

So, I've been going to visit my daughter in Ohio for several years now. We usually go see my parents and sister. But, sometimes we will just pick a city in Ohio and go there. We've been to Dayton, Columbus, Dayton, Bowling Green, Dayton, Columbus........so this time we picked a different city, CLEVELAND!!! Furthermore, I knew it was going to be freeeeeeezing cold! But, we still went.

Headed out from Asheville early Friday morning...took the day off work (hard to do where I work). This is driving from NC to TN near the Smokey Mountains on I-40.

Lets skip all the exciting pictures of TN, KY, and Ohio. Here I am with my little girl at pick up. Notice the books in the foreground.....yeah sure, she gets this from me! You may be able to spot a High School Musical poster or something if you look closely.

After getting lost a few times in Masfield, Ohio we had dinner at Donatos Pizza. Well, her and I eat a lot differently. I, with the bicycling and all, tend to eat foods that are not greasy, breaded, fried, etc. She likes everything breaded and cheesy! Here we are at Donatos Pizza in Mansfield, OH. I figured this would be okay.....but we ended up getting pizza with super extra extra cheese!!! Yikes! I did get tomatoes on my half of the pizza. My weakness is that I hate to waste food, so it all gets eaten. We did manage to leave a few extra pieces un-eaten.

So, I was playing with the flash of my camera and took a bunch of picts in the mirror.....wanted to get something that looked like a floating orb above my head.....and pretty much all my attempts failed to accomplish what I was trying to do. But, I do enjoy the comedic relief of these shots.

More comedy, times two! Yeah, just trying to snap a few good shots.
Oh yeah....here is a good one. Notice my stole of feathers, i.e. boa! Actually it is not my boa....it is hers.

Oh, did I say this was a road trip? That means Starbucks Coffee (SBX) stops. Well, here we are on Saturday AM. I had the hotel coffee and I HATE hotel coffee. Here I am in front of my favorite evil corporation that treats their employees unfairly, SBX! I love SBX on the road. I think we stopped at 5 or 6 SBX's over the weekend.....we hit this one in Brecksville, OH twice.

We made it to the Cleveland Town City Center mall. I remembered going here a long time ago when I was in college at BGSU.....we went and partied in the Cleveland Flats during those years. I still remembered how to get to this mall. I'm not a big mall shopper at all. It was cool though for a short while. A lot of things were over priced.....but we didn't care.....it was cold out side.

Okay.....we spent so much money on overpriced candy that they gave us a free heart-shaped pillow!!! (pillow not pictured here.) Something like $18 for approximately 1.5 pounds of candy or something.....I think we got ripped off.......but, the pillow wasn't considered "free" after charging us for $2.79 per 1/4 pound.....or something like that.

Dear Mr. Blogspot, How many pictures can I upload into one blog?
Here is one of those "under the city" pictures.....are we lost?...the sign said I-77 Akron this a-way! Lock the doors!

Abusik reunion, guitar players Frank Obusek and Damon Conn. MAN! We hadn't seen each other since like 1994 or something. Our hairs were much longer then. We were good heavy metal kids. It was a great time to hook up with Damon again and talk about old times and what we are up to now. Damon is teaching kids in the Twinsburg Orchestra. Em wasn't too excited, but she was a great trooper listening to how her dad played music in a metal/thrash band a long time ago. I may be able to get some video posted soon. Stay tuned for that!!!

Near Lake Erie (it is 150 feet away to my right).....parked outside the Rock-N-Roll Hall of Fame. It was so freakin cold and snowy that we just had to take the opportunity for pictures. Notice the SBX cup in my hand! Just trying to stay warm.

It is cold!!!! It was single digits and below freezing with the wind chill.

Outside the RnR HoF. I had been here once before for some wedding pictures (not mine) of a friend. We had not gone into the building at that time, just sat in front with pictures. Here is Em in front with the snow and the lake-front blowing snow.....lake-affect snow on the ground.

When they took this pict, I had absolutely no intention of buying it!!!! I would have posed or something to make it more interesting. But, as we left we just "had" to buy it.

Here is the final shot....it is the full moon as seen from I-40 in TN. We skipped a lot of picture taking after the Hall of Fame.....like swimming and eating and shopping.....I can't count how many movies we bought. We had a great breakfast this morning. We left Richfield at 7:30 AM....got to Findlay around noonish.....and I made it back to Asheville at 8 PM. 1500 plus miles of driving round trip! I am zonked!!!

It snowed here like....

.....twice in 3 weeks!!!

There are a few things in life that I cannot do......

......and this is one of them.

Crazy Bike
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When horses fart...

My first ever indoor time trial at Velosports Performance Center computrainer studio. Look closely at the image and you can see that you (FrankO) can monitor distance, watts, cadence, W/Kg and more as you ride on the computrainers. In addition, you can also monitor everyone else's effort. I couldn't quite get my watts up to where I had hoped for the 11 mile time trail course. I averaged about 259. Over a 6k TT, I can average 309 watts. But, I did learn a little more about how to use watts to monitor my effort across throughout the course. I started in the low 200 watt area and gradually increased as the TT got closer to the end. By the end of the ride I was pushing 300 to 400 watts.

31 minutes and some change was the winning time of the night. Who would have thunk? Nice picture, huh? Eyes closed and exhausted. I know I can do a better time. Check in next time.

Sunday some team members got together for an easy ride. There was some horsing around while we showed our asses.

Yes! When horses fart, things fall down.....or, was that a jolt from the electric fence?

Some new colors from the team shop sponsor Carolina Fatz. Nice to not be wearing solid black shorts. Hmmm? Does white make my butt look bigger?

Carolina Fatz is where its at!

Carolina Fatz is supporting our new team this year. Can you say Orbeas!

Velosports Performance Center Team: Day #1

Both the 2008 Velosports Performance Center Women's and Men's teams got together today for team picts and a group ride. This is a new bicycle racing team in Asheville. The Asheville racing scene is going to be hot this year.

You cannot beat team mates like these women! Need I say more? I don't think so. Truck supplied by sponsor Asheville Dodge!

Here is the other half of the Velosports team.....the Men!....including yours truly. What a handsome group of boys, huh! Just picture us in tight spandex riding through your neighborhood.

The obvious next step of the team gathering is to take a big group picture of both the women's and men's teams. What a happy bunch of bicycling girls and boys. Stayed tuned for more down the road.

Here we are on our way out departing from the Asheville Racquet Club. Cruisin up the road with some familiar Asheville faces in racing. This squad is going to rock this year!

After the women were killing the pace on the front we stopping at the Etowah Ingles for a break and resupply of food/drink.

Young junior racer Andre is up to shenanigans! Not so fast on that bike buddy....or you may never see adult-hood! Andre and I have been racing together the last two years....so, it is good to have him on the squad. One of the main reasons for me to come on board was to make sure he doesn't get into trouble.

Double pace-line shot from off the back. Cruisin down a familiar road near Etowah. We put in a good 4+ hours today. It was a great 1st day for a new team in town. See you out there on the road!

Snow & Lucy's Flowers

The day after New years would have been a great day to stay home from work!!! But, I went in to find out that several people were thinking the same thing and actually did stay home. This was the first snow of the winter.

Lucy's Flowers: I forgot a part of my lunch and had to run to the Swannanoa Ingles grocery store. While I was there I picked up flowers for my favorite admin person and adopted mother, Lucy. She is a great source of advise and guidance for me. It has become a daily routine for me to visit her every morning to check on her.

Happy New Years Eve!

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The Bakery Ride and Sloppy Buffalo Joe

About 20 or so cyclist showed up this morning for the Bakery Ride. I was looking forward to this ride today. The group rides this winter have been absolutely awesome....the best I can remember since I started riding a road bike.

Here we are heading out towards Turkey Creek and Earlies Gap. We had one climb on the ride. We all stayed together in the fog and no one went sprinting for KOM points today.

Along the way there were some roadside inflatable shenanigans going on. Marc is seen here pumping up Victor's tire. This scene must look disturbing to the locals driving by and standing on their porches....grown men in tights playing with each others bicycle equipment. A local was standing on his porch of his trailer offering advice to these two gentlemen on how to inflate the tire.

A coffee stop at Zuma's Coffee in Marshall, NC. Don't like to stand around for too long after riding because you start to get cold. Time to start rolling!

Take a close look at this picture (you can click on it to make it bigger). How many bicyclist can you count both in the store and in the window reflection?

Well, since I had the camera it is usually difficult to get a picture of myself. But today there was no way that I was going to blog without a picture of me....I's gots to satisfy my terrestrial admirers. So here are the instructions in case you can't figure them out yourself: extend arm, pretend to act normal, and snap the picture. It isn't that simple really. I've done this a few times now....and honestly, you have to try several attempts before you get a good shot. I went through 4 or 5 pictures before this one came out (thank God for digital cameras, huh). AND in addition to the complexity of this rather simple procedure, there is something just weird about taking a picture of yourself when nobody is watching that starts to spin your mojo into a fuss. This shot was snapped after the group ride when I ventured off for another hour and 1000-ish feet of climbing.

Here is ride profile downloaded from my cyclocomputer. You can see towards the end of the profile my extra hour and 1000-ish feet of extra climbing (the yellow data peak). Total ride was 4 hours and 65 miles and 4478 feet of climbing. Good for me this time of year. I could probably have used another 1 hour of base riding. But, I got other things to do.......like write stupid blogs about my bike rides and after-ride meals.

Minus the red top on my water bottle this came out quite contrasty. I was going to make up a story about a flash of bright light from a meteor impact or maybe a hovering alien space craft (yes, I have extra-terrestrial admirers too) or something else. But actually, I took the picture and used PSP to "enhance" the contrast to make the shot look more interesting so that I can increase my blog ratings and viewership in an effort to increase sponsorship so that I can take more pictures and post more blogs in the future. So, this picture is admittedly doped up man....but I assure you, in an effort to keep my PSP/anti-PSP ratios down, that the other picts only have flash or no flash applied to them, which is within the limit and entirely legal in the world of blogging.

BONUS BLOG: Here is the after-ride meal. Usually during the last couple hours of my rides I start thinking about what I can eat when I get home. After a stop at my friends coffee shop, I came home and threw together ground buffalo, diced fresh mushrooms, and 3-grain tempe.

Then I popped open a can of DelMonte Sloppy Joe and added it to the meaty mix.

Hey, I'm not a vegetarian, but my meat has heart! Can you see the heart? This is a result of glycogen deficiency in the blood stream from long rides where you only have one clif bar. Light headedness causes me to do things like this. No actually, this is a special heart-felt sentiment meant for someone off on a distant island in the middle of the Pacific. :-)

BONUS BLOG BONUS QUESTION: Okay, guess what I do with the gatorade that I did not drink during my ride......I pour it into a glass and drink it with my special sloppy buffalo joe sandwich......notice the bed of spinach underneath. This was yummy. I'm trying to meet my red meat quota for the year. Buffalo is the way to go.....very tasty, better for you and a nice link in the circle of life.

Mud Snow and Mtn bikes

So here is the little perfect egg and sesame bagel pre-ride breakfast sandwich....with melted Parmesan cheese inside the egg. yummy!

My camera wanted to take a picture of itself....and I guess I had to be in it also.

A mountain biking we go at Dupont State Forest near Etowah, NC. I hadn't been to Dupont in years and could not pass up this opportunities with the Wednesday un-usual suspects ride. We got muddy and there was snow on the ground. About 1/2 way through the 3 hour ride I was experiencing chain-suck and could not use my small chainring. By the end of the ride I had so much mud and crud in my gears and I was down to a 2-speed....rear derailleur was locked up and I only had the granny gear cog in the back and my big and middle chain rings up front. It was nice to get back to the car.


Rockin down the forest roads together in Dupont. There were about 10 of us riding. We rode forest roads, single track, slick rock and paved roads. I'm not sure how far we rode but we were out for about 3 hours.

I was covered with mud after the ride. I was wet on the outside but pretty dry on the inside. It was a great ride.

Velosports Performance Center

More to come later.

A Peek into My iTunes

If I weren't human, I'd want to be a winged creature......

....but maybe I can still be human and fly!

A Day to Ride the Mountain Bike

It has been since December 2004 that I last rode a mountain bike. I've received several invites to ride lately, so I figured that I was meant to ride when I got another invite today.....especially since I didn't know exactly what I was going to do today when I woke up. The weather was windy and a road ride was out of the question.
This (the bike) is where it all started for me, the mountain bike. I used to visit Pisgah regularly to ride and camp. See the mud on my mountain bike. It is from December 2004. Still caked on there. The shifting is still quick after 3 years of hanging on the bike rack. Everything worked well.

There were four of us on today's ride in Pisgah. Dan, Laura, me and Ehrin are pictured here. Zona, the dog, is not pictured. She was great trooper and ran with us the entire way, even on the fast descents. It got a little cold on a forest road descent, but we quickly warmed up on the climbs. The single track downhills were a little tricky for me since I had not been riding for a while. I forgot how much I loved mountain biking. Can't wait to do it again.