Stuff diet

In addition to getting real sick of riding my bike indoors this time of year, I always get a case of the pre-spring cleaning jitters...I'm a fairly restless dude most of the time and when I've gotten a workout in, I'm caught up with work and school, and there's no real house projects that are imminent, watch out--it's time to start taking stock of the accumulated stuff and start purging. I suppose we could refer to this affliction as stuff-lemia. I MUST throw extraneous crap out, and nothing is safe. As can be imagined, I tend to enjoy some rather expensive hobbies: climbing, cycling, golf, home projects requiring expensive (and wicked fun) power tools. I have accumulated a box full of "extra" bike parts when I decide that something new and shiny will make me faster (never happens, I still suck), have enough climbing protection for an 8 pitch ice route (oh yea, there aren't any of those where I live...), etc.

So I'm trying to pare down my crap to what I consider to be more spartan. One suit for work coupled with a couple of blazers and dress pants. As a salesperson, this is more than enough and I can only wear one suit at a time, right? All the oldish and out of style ties? Gone. Baseball hats that I hadn't worn in 6 months. See ya. T-shirts from 5 years ago? Right into the rag bucket. My closet is looking fit and trim, with plenty of room to spare. In fact, I have room to store extra bed linens (don't EVEN get me started on that one). I still have a bunch of cycling jersies that I don't wear anymore but a lot of them are somewhat of a memento from an event, so for now, they stay. But next spring, they'll probably be jettisoned.

Same with the workshop--I went through my toolbox the other day and was astounded to find four (!!!!!) of the EXACT same size and shape philips-head screwdriver. My cycling parts box turned up 3 flat handlebars, two worn cassettes, old-school canti brake levers for a mountain bike, two old pair of busted SPD pedals, and some mostly worn 700cc tires that I keep for my trainer. Gone, gone, gone.

I went through my climbing closet and sold a ton of gear that I just won't use anytime soon (like the 5500 cc Osprey pack--let's face it, I won't be doing any week long backpacking trips anytime soon, especially with 3 little kids). So in simple terms, I have simplified. Now I must fight the urge to replace the crap I have gotten rid of with new crap-it's a rather uplifting feeling to be honest--a life uncluttered! I am also moving this attitude in my work-I am doing my best to reject paper and rely on the digital age. Contracts, proposals, and school work-all on the computer, backed up to the external hard drive. Investment account statements are now viewed online, no need to send me the paper. If I could only get more companies to suppress paper bills and just send us an email that would help even more!

As the primary chef for the family, I have taken this to the kitchen as well-that block of Chicago Cutlery that we so desperately needed 10 years ago? The big boning knife that gets used ONCE per year by my father in law for turkey carving at Thanksgiving? He now owns it, gave him that and the fish filleting knife that hasn't been used in 3 years-I use my chef's knife and my serrated knife only. I also have a small paring knife. Everything else has to go. Do we really need seven wooden spoons? Nope. Two potato mashers, 20(!!!!!) plastic cups for the girls, or that absolutely RIDICULOUS ceramic cow thing for pouring milk??? No, no, no. All gone. Amazing how much less kitchen space we need when we're not storing crap we don't use or need!!!

NOOOOOOW for the tricky part. It seems that my beautiful, blushing bride has a deep dark secret: she's a pack rat. While I am trying to shed things that I firmly believe we don't need she's sabotaging the cleaning!!! A new challenge--I guess I won't be so bored after all!!!

It's all about the base

With another half foot of snow on the ground, I was up early this morning planning the day's activities with the kids, and I figured I would update some training notes as well. My season's goals are to improve on CX-so what that means now (and a big thanks to Cort for the sage advice) is base, base, base. I had been doing 5 x 10 minute steady state intervals a couple of times per week on the trainer but have been told that's not smart right now. So with all the snow (and no XC skis in the quiver yet) I'm paring the work down to 90 minutes on the trainer at 65-70% HR and watching a movie. Yea, 90 minutes on the sit and spin machine is a lot, but it's also a bit therepeutic-or at least that's what I keep telling myself. But even Maggie (the 12 year old border collie mix and faithful companion on many a moutain hike) looks at me strangely when I pass the 60 min. mark.

To mix things up a bit, I've also added running to my repetoire-I'm up to about 5 miles now and I'm managing that in about 45 minutes. I had planned to do a St. Patrick's Day 10K road race back home in Western Mass., but have since had to bag that as I have an all day Saturday class the day of the race. Which completely sucks. Running for me is by no means fun, but it's putting some base mileage in the bank and it's working out different muscle groups. It's been all pavement miles so far and I'll look forward to hitting the trails a bit in the spring-it has to be more interesting. Next year I want to add XC skiing to the mix-I took our 7 year old out a few back and she really enjoyed it; so much so that I had to buy her a little beginner set which she plows around the yard in now! Another family sport is born!!!

On the climbing front, I think I've finally discovered a new potential partner for swinging the ice tools-my buddy Brad was up for an outing over the Superbowl weekend and he had a ball doing it. He's ready for some easy multi-pitch, that's for sure!

Well, time to finish up my coffee and head out-to shovel!!! Big shout out to Levi and the Astana boys-this year's ATOC should come down to the wire.