adios dear sandals

today is the day i formally stop wearing my rainbow sandals. as you can see, they have seen better days. after 5, yes FIVE, years of wearing you through every summer, i think it is safe to say you are kaput. our relationship began when i purchased you at your birthplace, the rainbow manufacturing store at san clemente, california.

it is with a sad tear that i discard you. you have been with me through thick and thin. 3 or 4 girlfriends. almost all of college. cross country/track races in high school. triathlons and bike races in college. travels to the west coast, canada, europe, and the outer banks. it is not easy to do this, but i am told if you love something, to let it go. and honestly, your odor, appearance, and the extensive war you have waged on my feet must come to an end. someday soon i am sure to reunite with one of your brethren, be him hemp or leather and i can only hope that we can build upon the foundation that you established. adieu dear rainbows. may you find happiness with the big kahuna in the clouds. but most likely your search for joy will find you in a landfill somewhere in central virginia.

as i slowly get over my separation anxiety and wipe the tears from my puffy eyes, i separately remember last evening when bk and adam's friend jess (who is not, as they so arguably told me, 600 lbs and having her brother's love child. man am i gullable. must have been the growler thinking for me) quite formally requested if she could call me "ryan." "come again?" i said. nobody ever wants to call me RYAN. it is always 'stava.' being the oldest of 3, i was always the first 'stava' in my family (not including my dad and his 7 brothers/sisters). it started in high school freshman year at servite when i played football (horrible idea when you are 5 foot, 100 lbs, and dont know anything about football) and everybody was addressed by last names. some big tradition i suppose. along with shaving our heads. even my teachers called me stava. seriously. after the first week of classes, everybody was on a last name basis. it has quite literally gotten to the point where now, if people call me by 'ryan,' i am far less likely to mentally process that they are talking to me than if they just call me 'stava.' then we moved to norfolk and people again just kind of started calling me stava on their own. i dont even recall telling anybody "hey, would you mind not calling me ryan? just stava." it just happened. and again in college. sure, some people call me by other names, but they are generally friends i am closer with and am framiliar with their nick-name. call me quirky. stava is just something i have assimilated to and mostly everybody else has too. so if you see me riding my bike through campus or wherever, resist the urge to yell 'ryan!' and instead, go for the more common 'stava!' your chances of getting a wink or a hello in return are much higher.

until next time crimestoppers...

is anybody here a marine biologist?!

great ride today with grant (orange) and andy (purple). they opted for the typical 45degree clothing (long base layers, knee-warmers, arm-warmers, tights) and i made the bold move to go belgian style, a light base layer, short sleeve jersey, arm-warmers, and bib shorts. when we were going over gravel roads, i felt the ancient chant of "rouuuuubaiiiiiixxxx" from deep within my soul. i am amped for harri-roubaix in 2 weekends, thats for sure.

we were hammerin. what i had planned on being a max 2 hrs with high cadence and recovery after my last study session, wound up turning into 2 hrs and 45 mins, 52 miles, with an avg speed of 18.2mph. thats including significant warm-up and cool down time. like, yoinks scoob! also, for an hour of that, we were averaging 250 watts, crankin over some fast rollers with sharp turns. good times. my legs really didnt feel that fresh but i gave it a little gas here and there to test myself out. i was able to hustle up a few climbs and keep a good rhythm up others. didn't really feel like i could get on top of my gears. i am in the process of adjusting my position on the bike, namely sliding my saddle forward so when my foot is at 9 o'clock my shin is angled more like this \ in towards the rear of the bike and less like this / which is how it looks more like now. actually its somewhere between / and right now. but you get the idea. also i want to drop my bars one spacer down to be more aerodynamic. hopefully it will be easy to get adjusted to quickly.

after making myself a large pasta dinner, the three of us +dana got together to watch "overcoming", a dvd about team csc and their race director, bjarne riis. he is a hardcore dude and seems to run quite the tight ship with his international racers. the more i learn about what these european professional cyclists put themselves through, specifically for the tour de france, the less i wish to race for a big team like that. not that i would have a chance to do so anyways, but my aspiration to do so is certainly waning. i wish cycling was a bigger deal here in the states.

tonight i should finally be able to get a good night's sleep. for some reason my biological alarm clock has been tenacious with insisting i wake at 6:45 every morning. was it the am/pm or the volume? i have been having crazy dreams lately, none of which i am interested in posting here. they are just peculiar and i guess a little definitive of my state of mind. weird how dreams can do that. i have never been one to really believe in the nuances of reading dreams or anything like that, although people i have been close to in the past have been very attached to their dreams and their meanings. in all honesty, i think its silly to use dreams as forecasting or letting them spook you, but i do think that what has happened or is happening to you can have a direct effect on what is going on with nerve firings in your brain. rem (r-something eye movement). all that jazz.

tomorrow will also be the first day in about a week where i don't have to be somewhere at 9am. wow, in saying that, i know i am going to have a rough time adjusting to work at 7:30-8 every weekday for the rest of my life. nar-nar. it is also a drag when wake up early because i usually am awoken by the strong urge to have to go potty. i have been drinking a lot more water, and i guess since i am exercising a lot more my body flushes it out of my system more quickly. its more frustrating than anything else. because you can't go back to sleep when you've gotta go. but when you get up to go, its hard to fall back asleep.

i can see the end of the week and some more races on the horizon. definitely things to look forward to.

current jam: thin line - jurassic 5

said-a-give??

just got some emails today about more sweet apartments in shadyside, pittsburgh. some really cool digs, close to walnut ave and the "georgetown" style shopping blocks. and the bars. oh yes, the bars. i love how close everything is in pgh. its not like you need to take a full day trip to go check out a new place. you can go north, south, e, or w, and find awesome stuff to do. especially during the summer i hear. ahhhh baseball games. i will need to get much pittsburgh athletic gear. penguins (hopefully), pirates, steelers. the entire proverbial spectrum. when moving to a drinking town with a football problem, one must assimilate appropriately.

have you ever started to have a serious discussion with someone about religion, politics, society, etc and you can't get a coherent thought from your brain through your mouth (i bought a boxen of donuts)? few things will make you feel like a larger shmuck. you have ideas in your head regarding your stance/opinion on God, love, government, economics. you have thought about and talked about these things before. with numerous people. some who have spent more time thinking/talking about these topics than you, and some less. but now you are suddenly unable to come out with what you want to say, you feel like an elementary school kid. not that the other person is being argumentative or differing in opinion, its just that you can't get it together mentally. in retrospect, you are confident that he/she thinks you really are a dufus. then you wonder, hm...should i play the 'don't ask me, i just live here' card? but alas, you merely saddle up and play the hand you've dealt yourself. but seriously, its really frustrating when you can see them looking at you and questioning whether you spent your time in college drinking yourself retarded or actually went to a class or two for gphil freshman year. i guess its not the end of the world. and im honestly not that concerned if somebody thinks im a royal idiot. one thing i have learned, never judge people. even if you think you know them better than they know themselves. while everyone has a different state of mind, there are common themes across the board. such as sincerity and a desire for happiness. talk to me like im at a 5th grade level. it might actually be fun. but don't judge me on my inability to put complex thoughts and ideas together. 5th graders have feelings too you know.

speaking of jmu's lame policies, i saw a kid today with a shirt that said "chuck norris double punches at jmu on weekends". i thought it was pretty damn funny. then i thought about all of the other rediculously funny norris shirts that people are going to think of somehow related to jmu. priceless. do you wonder if chuck norris is sitting at home, watching reruns of walker on wgn (or whatever channel its on) and basking in his bad-ass online domination, of which he isn't seeing a penny. sucks to be him.

wish/shopping list for pittsburgh apartment:

• dorm fridge with glass door
• hammock
• beanbag with a removable futon-style mattress
• andy warhol art posters
• comfy furniture
• wine rack
• coffee table book about coffee tables

current jam: open up - dispatch
honorable mention: crazy on you - heart; one of the sweetest intros of all time

they turn green when i laugh

my gullet full from el charro, i sit to enlighten you with the goings on of my day.


after a hearty post-dinner snack consisting of three handfuls of chocolate chips last night, i woke up around 7 to prepare for my 9am ride to exhaustion. the 3rd out of 4. see image above. in credibly attractive, i know.

as you may have already read, my prior two were quite successful in going to my maximum effort. redundancy aside, at 280 watts i went for 77-80 minutes. today however, i felt fresh. upon reaching the 80 minute mark, and feeling strong, this morning i let out a "hell yeah!" in my mind. i kept digging to the same point of exhaustion that i reached for the prior two, except this time the clock read 113 minutes. i was super stoked. i think i averaged close to 18mph and did close to 37 miles total? so they tell me. they being the grad students to which i am the lab rat. the effort was a combination of getting stronger and having a solid amount of chocolate-chip pancakes in my belly i suppose. regardless, it was great for my confidence.

i have been thinking about growing a pair and racing A for tech and conference championships at wvu. we'll see. given my increase in strength as evident on the roads and with the stationary testing, i think that i would be able to hang with the big dawgs for the entirety of the race. otherwise my self-esteem will be plummeting at break-neck speed back to earth.

sometimes you just need to take a bold leap and not dwell too much on the rational factors. that is something i have always been privy to, thinking rationally. i think that i would be better served by sometimes just jumping and acting on impulse. call it a flaw? although i don't really consider it to be, more a state of mind, an approach to decision making. and the only reason i am suggesting acting otherwise is to have different (not necessarily better) life experiences. because what is life if you don't live it? i would think that having an incredibly diverse background in decision making would a) make me an idiot for not being consistent with my decisions, b) make me wise for increasing the breadth of my experiences, or c) supply me with in-n-out double-doubles, fries, and chocolate milk-shakes for the rest of my life. lets pray for c. man do i love in-n-out. and i spite all of you who went to nationals and didn't like it, because i love them, and that's all that really matters.

back to my day. went to class. im beginning to believe more and more every passing day that yes, class truly is for chumps. more on that in the following weeks. had a little lunch out on the quad solo style. nothing like some good people-watching to make me confident that i am not a spaz after all. lived like eastern-euro-trash by hitting up the urec sauna for 15, jumping under a cold shower, then getting back in the sauna for another 10-15. with none other than the always amicable and socially outgoing jakobim.

riding home i tried to pop a wheelie on my road bike. i didn't fall over, but i was flirting with catastrophe. i think i needed one more easy gear, or a more significant uphill. i will try again, mark my words.

next a spontaneous invite to el charro to put us back right where we started. mostly uneventful monday, with a little splash of emerill lagasse "BAM!" i might try to watch 24 for the first time tonight. if you feel like leaving a comment, how about your favorite prime-time television show currently running? i need to find something to fill the void in my life from 8-11 on weeknights. the greatest shows ever (seinfeld and family guy) don't count.

ps: how about george mason!?!? i am torn between picking lsu or ucla to win it all. lsu has way more talent, and big baby is just so adorable, so i think i am going to pick the tigers to do it all. i can do that, because i didn't make a bracket. suckers.

current jam: lola - the kinks

madness

at least they lost to UCLA. i felt bad cheering against the bruins, but i had to stick with my team. could have been worse, could have been some garbage school like USC or something. while i was pulling for morrison and the zags to make it to the final 4 and possibly slide their way into the national championship game, i have to say i am glad they lost to UCLA. especially since UCLA looked phenomenal in their elite 8 game last night against memphis (in that pretty bruin blue to boot). so i will dutifully cheer for the west coast team through the remainder of their existence in the tourney.

speaking of, i think the refs have been doing an awesome job during the madness. they have been letting the kids play and not calling some of the iffy fouls. it adds so much more to the whole idea of college basketball, with players getting so amped for their schools and for advancing without having to worry about losing momentum b/c of lame refs. so i tip my hat to you, mr. part-time-worker-at-foot-locker. not to mention the games themselves have been AWESOME!i love march madness.

yesterday's quote-unquote bagel ride was a sub-par showing by the harrisonburg hardcore. i was the only other person who showed up in the mid 30-degree snow and rain to go out and ride, and had unfortunately missed the other rider by a minute or two upon reaching the bike shop. so i headed out on my own towards melrose and new market, quickly offing my extra long sleeve-layer. the snow and rain stopped, the skies cleared, and the legs warmed up. over the course of my ride i rode a strong tempo over some hills, an easier tempo up others. the roads were dry and i decided to add on some extra loops, going farther and farther outside of town.

i hadn't been out on a ride by myself for a good numbef of weeks, and it was nice to just relax; not worrying about holding a wheel or talking to anybody. my legs felt pretty solid, not great but not hindering my pedaling. lets hope i can keep getting stronger through the spring/summer. i tried calling mckeegan and grant when i was riding back into town, to see if they wanted to hop on their steeds and lead me on another hour loop or so, but to no avail, they still were waiting for the weather to "clear up". poo-poo. next time boys.

prior to the bagel ride (and silently part of my motivation to ride in the nar-nar weather) i made/ate 6 scrumptulescent chocolate chip pancakes.

i came to the conclusion (after eating a little of the leftover batter while waiting to flip my 'cakes) that dough/batter is God's gift to man. there are very few things as tasty/horrible for your health. brownie batter, chocolate chip/walnut/coconut cookie dough, bread dough (for those of us out there whose moms made dough for pizzas, bread, and pasta at one point). i mean honestly, if you've got about 4 scoops of dough left to make the last few cookies of the batch, are you going to scrape every last ounce out of the bowl kicking and screaming? or are you going to sit down in front of the tv while your cookies are baking and polish off the remnants of the bowl raw? no contest. guilty as charged.

another swift move is sliding into the kitchen while mom is making a batch, shoplifting a spoon out of the drawer, and removing a healthy portion of dough and walking out of the kitchen like nothing happened. all while her back is turned checking the cookies currently baking. its like a mission impossible def-con 5 operation. minus the bullets. plus the delicious dough. mmmmm. my arteries curse in angst, yet i do not hear.

uneventful week ahead. full of mediocrity and laziness most likely. i can't race at hopkins/umd next weekend because of my testing, which really sucks because those were gonna be some big-time races. oh well. looks like i will just have to turn up the epo...er...juice for va tech, harri-roubaix, and confrence champs at wvu in april.

speaking of performance enhancing drugs, i guess there is this new one called IGF-1, an undetectable growth hormone being investigated in Belgium. Erin Bishop had an great post regarding testing riders for EPO post-penalty. basically following the same rules as a former inmate does with a probation officer. it appears that this new growth hormone (EPO is not a growth hormone, it is a blood booster) may be quite widespread in the pro peloton. i guess we'll find out in the near future. and what, Fillip Meirhaeghe is Belgian? i am not directing that towards Belgians in general, i just think that he is a horrible role model for their country and should probably be the first guy tested for IGF-1 when they eventually come out with tests. i guess the whole mentality of europeans vs americans with doping in cycling factors in too. not that (i think) they think it constitutes a lesser degree of cheating, but we as americans are appalled that people do it in the first place, and europeans simply seem to shrug their shoulders and assume that almost everyone does it anyways.

again, all of this is just my opinion. dopers suck, kick them out of racing for at least 5 years, test them randomly while they are banned from racing, and stay on top of drugs they might be using. sounds simple enough, right?

and so i end this long entry, have a great week everybody. damn, i just realized that i wrote all of that without my music playing.

still workin on that chris horner smirk...

like a butterfly

i can't believe that i only have 5 weeks of classes left until i graduate. 6 weeks if you include exams. haha, exams.

i have entered my cocoon as a male, middle class, white college student and will resplendently emerge as a male, middle class, white young professional. it will be a glorious transition, and completely unexpected.

i really don't know what to expect after graduating. i know where i will be living (pittsburgh) and what i will be doing (training to be a buyer for *bleep*), but in terms of moving to a new city, not knowing anybody, and having to start from scratch, im in the dark. i am incredibly excited, don't get me wrong. but i feel like i am getting closer with every day to the cliff of chaos. not in the literal meaning of the word, more along the lines of the opposite of homeostasis. its thrilling and frightening at the same time, because it can really go both ways. but life is what you make of it, eh? it i get caught on my heels, of course its going to be heavy. but if i move up there in june with an ambitious attitude, confidence, and the compulsion to make things great, i think everything will work out just fine. and if it doesn't, then i will need to just keep trying. learned that from my dad.

time to take care of some errands around the apartment. laundry, bills, thank you letters. bagel ride saturday @ 9:30am. be there.

and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love
you make - the beatles

harder, better, faster, stronger

embarked on a ride with mckeegan and grant out to dry river and then some. my legs were a little sore from my testing yesterday, but all in all i felt pretty good. you'd be amazed how much eating a little food and drinking enough water/cytomax on a ride can do for your energy. after drafting andy while he was doing his two sets of 10 min intervals a lil under 300 watts, we cruised around, south of reddish and hit some spectacularly beautiful roads. i swear this kid knows some of the prettiest loops in rockingham. after cranking it up a few climbs with the boys, i disclosed the entirety of my limited knowledge about climbing, techniques, and tactics. wound up getting in about 55 miles over 3 hrs. not too shabby.

considering that i hadn't even sat on my bike for approximately 18 months up until august, and when i tried to ride with these same guys last semester i was getting smoked, it is very encouraging to be able to hang with them on these bigger rides. a little boost to the self esteem is good once in a while. when i think about the progress (physical and mental) i have made with my riding since september, optimism is sky high. some decent race results helps too. not to mention that the simple act of riding my bike has done wonders for my mental state in general. while it was painfully challenging to find the motivation to get on the bike from the beginning of december through the end of january, i am glad that i was able to some of the time. its just so relaxing and helps me empty my head, take out a little frustration on the roads, and put things in perspective. The fact that I am getting stronger and faster certainly makes it easier to put my mind at ease too. don't think any of that makes too much sense, oh well.

time to watch some bball. go zags!!

it makes my muscles look huge

Sweet nectar of the Gods!

I will probably use this to post interesting tidbits of my life and emotional state. I will give you advanced warning, it fluctuates quite frequently. Most likely you will find occasional zen reflections, current events in my personal bubble (as well as outside of my apathy), and whatever I feel like sharing with you, my dutiful readers. Maybe even topics of extreme importance.

Comments are encouraged and welcomed, as long as you aren't a jerk about it.

Brief outline of today. Woke up early for my second session of riding to exhaustion for Mike Saunders' "accelerade" study. Right on schedule with my last session, they put me at 280 watts and I dug and suffered and sweated (creating my own little reservoir right there under the velotron) to last for about an hour and 20 minutes. I was surprised I could push for that long given the fact that I had an incredibly lower glucose level than my first session. Good stuff. Its making for some phenomenal training. Moderate ride tomorrow with McKeegan hopefully. Hopefully I'll be recovered enough. One last note, I will try to refrain from being too emo. So don't worry your pretty little head about reading an entry that may or may not pertain to you. Carly Simon said it best.