Any Given Sunday

Woke up early: spin class. 2 hours of spin ups and then low cadence work plus one legged drills. quote of the day: "Pretend you're going to be on display at Body Worlds and you want to be the one with the awesome hamstrings."

Got home, finished winter vegetable stew in the slow cooker, moved on to yam-and-butternut-squash soup so lunch is ready all week. Out the door for night skiing.

James was kind enough to do the driving tonight. He also helped me with my ski technique which was long overdue and got me back into the groove, literally: side cut anyone? Awesome night "shredding the gnar", jumping off boxes and discussing the bigger questions of life over hot chocolate and -- yes, I admit -- Wendy's.

So tired I can't sleep. Goodnight anyway!

My favourite "lines"

From http://michaeldmiller.wordpress.com/

I'm lucky that part of my dayjob involves doing a lot of reading and research -- everything from new bio technologies to the rules of Cricket. One thing I'm always looking for is a good quotation, and luckily there are some great sites out there to help you find that academic or poetic line to back up what you're trying to present.

Once, my dayjob involved some research on bikes. And so I thought I'd share with you the great lines I found. Here are my favourite quotations on bikes; if there's one I missed, add it as a comment!

Life is like riding a bicycle - in order to keep your balance, you must keep moving. ~Albert Einstein

The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart. ~Iris Murdoch, The Red and the Green

When man invented the bicycle he reached the peak of his attainments. Here was a machine of precision and balance for the convenience of man. And (unlike subsequent inventions for man's convenience) the more he used it, the fitter his body became. Here, for once, was a product of man's brain that was entirely beneficial to those who used it, and of no harm or irritation to others. Progress should have stopped when man invented the bicycle. ~Elizabeth West, Hovel in the Hills

When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. ~H.G. Wells

When I go biking, I repeat a mantra of the day's sensations: bright sun, blue sky, warm breeze, blue jay's call, ice melting and so on. This helps me transcend the traffic, ignore the clamorings of work, leave all the mind theaters behind and focus on nature instead. I still must abide by the rules of the road, of biking, of gravity. But I am mentally far away from civilization. The world is breaking someone else's heart. ~Diane Ackerman

For instance, the bicycle is the most efficient machine ever created: Converting calories into gas, a bicycle gets the equivalent of three thousand miles per gallon. ~Bill Strickland, The Quotable Cyclist

A bicycle does get you there and more ... And there is always the thin edge of danger to keep you alert and comfortably apprehensive. Dogs become dogs again and snap at your raincoat; potholes become personal. And getting there is all the fun. ~Bill Emerson, "On Bicycling," Saturday Evening Post, 29 July 1967

The bicycle is just as good company as most husbands and, when it gets old and shabby, a woman can dispose of it and get a new one without shocking the entire community. ~Ann Strong

Melancholy is incompatible with bicycling. ~James E. Starrs

Until mountain biking came along, the bike scene was ruled by a small elite cadre of people who seemed allergic to enthusiasm. ~Jacquie Phelan

Get a bicycle. You will not regret it if you live. ~Mark Twain, "Taming the Bicycle"

Cycling is unique. No other sport lets you go like that - where there's only the bike left to hold you up. If you ran as hard, you'd fall over. Your legs wouldn't support you. ~Steve Johnson

The hardest part of raising a child is teaching them to ride bicycles. A shaky child on a bicycle for the first time needs both support and freedom. The realization that this is what the child will always need can hit hard. ~Sloan Wilson

It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle. ~Ernest Hemingway

Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride. ~John F. Kennedy

Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia. ~H.G. Wells

Bicycling is the nearest approximation I know to the flight of birds. The airplane simply carries a man on its back like an obedient Pegasus; it gives him no wings of his own. ~Louis J. Helle, Jr.

The secret to mountain biking is pretty simple. The slower you go the more likely it is you'll crash. ~Julie Furtado

Quote of the Day

“When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road,
without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.”

~Sir Arthur Conan Doyle