Two Whole Years

That's how long Victoria and I have been dating, as of today, January 15th, 2009. That's a really long time. I'd say it has all been a piece of cake, but that would be a lie. It hasn't all been easy, but the fact that we've worked through the hard parts just speaks to the fact that we really care about one another (at least I think so).

It was an interesting day to be a 2 year anniversary. First of all, I had a 5 hour ride. With 4 20-minute steady state intervals. Unfortunately, they weren't real steady (I'm planning to blog about that tomorrow on TwoWheelTales.com). So I was gone for a good chunk of the day. Unfortunately.

But before I left for my ride, my wonderful Victoria gave me "Tuskan". That's what I named him (because of the tusks). I have been wanting a stuffed friend for a while because she has "Pinkbunny" (yes, all one word) and I was hoping to get one when I was down here because then it would have a story behind it... So here is a picture of Tuskan and Pinkbunny, who are now best friends (we already caught them trying to steal food from the fridge together):

When I finally got back from my ride, I was exhausted and found no Victoria, but instead an amazing breakfast sandwich waiting for me. It was delicious. When Victoria did get back (from her ride), I sat and wasted some time on the internet while Victoria took a nap (apparently she was tired). Then we went out and bought some groceries and made some delicious sweet and sour chicken for dinner. If you want the recipe, here it is (note that we substituted flour for cornstarch because we couldn't find cornstarch): http://is.gd/2P8V And here's a picture of how it turned out:

So there's a brief update of what is going on. It wasn't a real romantic 2 year anniversary, but it was fun. And as I always promise: I'll try to blog more regularly.

Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention that my friend Kat (see his blog) asked me to be his best man! I've never been a best man before. Wow, that's cool...

Questions (with a desire for feedback)

I recently wrote a post on TwoWheelTales.com asking for feedback from readers on why they think that road bike racing is so much more popular than mountain bike racing among the general public. Instead of rewriting that post here, I would love of you would head over to my article and leave me a comment there.

Insomnia (or "I hate mosquitos")

I started off the new year planning to get enough sleep every night (see my post about my 2009 Racing Goals). I have been successful in this, but it has been significantly harder than I thought it was going to be. The first two nights of the new year (actually the last night of 2008 and the first of 2009) I couldn't sleep. Most of all, it was too hot (we don't have air conditioning), and then I had to deal with mosquitos buzzing around my head. Honestly, they wouldn't have bothered me much, because mosquito bites don't bother me much, except that you can hear them when they're near your face. And these ones are especially mean, fast, and sneaky. For example, it you wait for one to land on your face, then swat at it, you end up hitting yourself in the face, and it gets away. And then, when you can't deal with them any more, and turn on the light to go on a killing spree, they stop flying around and sit on the wall or ceiling where they blend into the wood and brick. Finally, my mind simply goes out of control when I lay down to sleep. I start thinking about all of the things I want to do on the computer - websites I want to build, jerseys I want to design, things I want to learn, blog posts I want to write - and I can't shut them out.

Fortunately, I have had a few nights free of insomnia. And Victoria and I have started sleeping with the windows open, which helps with the heat. But those darned mosquitos just will not leave me alone. I've also realized that our schedule of going to bed at 2:00AM has made our attempts to go to bed at a reasonable time significantly more difficult, since our internal clocks are all out of whack. Finally, I've begun to wonder if restarting training has affected me. I actually had Sean (my coach) mention that to me once, but I never understood why that would NEGATIVELY affect your sleep.

So that's my rant about not sleeping. Basically, it stinks. If you can avoid it, do. (And don't ever go to bed with "A Whole New World" stuck in your head, it doesn't help).

Dvorak Keyboard

I'm no efficiency master. There are tons of things I do that are inefficient. But I do try to minimize them as much as I can. My most recent random attempt at better efficiency was to change my laptop keyboard layout to the Dvorak layout. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, don't worry, I hadn't heard of the Dvorak layout either. Here's a summary:

When keyboards were being invented, the keys had a tendency to jam. This caused the inventor to change the placement of the keys so that the most commonly used keys were as far apart as possible to reduce jamming. While this successfully fixed the jamming issue, it also set up keyboards incredibly inefficiently. And for some reason, we have continued to use the same layout.

Somewhere around 1930, Dr. August Dvorak tested efficiency in the office and realized that the QWERTY (standard) keyboard layout was incredibly inefficient. After much research and after trying numerous layouts, he eventually came up with the Dvorak layout. Here's the basic premise: put the most common letters under the fastest fingers on the home row. Smart, huh? 

But because everyone was so used to the QWERTY layout, few people converted, and it (obviously) has not become an industry standard.

The good news is that even though keyboards do not tend to be set up in the Dvorak layout, it is incredibly easy to change most operating systems to use the Dvorak layout. Here is a website that shows you how.

So, now that I have rambled on and on, here is my story: I changed my keyboard! It was fun. And then I pulled off all of my keys and moved them around (see picture). It took me some time to get used to it, but now I'm comfortable with it again, and I'm hoping that it will allow me to reach previously unattainable typing speeds (the fastest typist in the world uses Dvorak).

I realize that it isn't for everyone (mostly because most people do not have time to re-learn to type), but wouldn't it be great if all of the kids who were learning to type learned on Dvorak keyboards? We'd have a whole new generation of mega-speedy typists!

ps. You can buy stick-on letters so that your keyboard reads correctly if you don't want to pull out the keys, like I did...

Happy Holidays 2008 Card

Dear family and friends, 

For those of you who don’t already know, the two of us are spending the year abroad in South America. This has completely changed the feeling of this holiday season. Even though we’re taking full advantage of the bike-riding, lake-swimming, sun-tanning weather, we’re missing the snow and luminarios back home, and most of all, missing each and every one of you! So we thought we’d write a letter to let you know we’re missing you and update you on our adventures abroad thus far.

The first two months of our trip we spent in San Alfonso, Chile, a town of smaller than, well, smaller than small. San Alfonso is located 60 kilometers (about 36 miles) Southeast of Santiago, the capital city, in a beautiful canyon called Cajón de Maipo. Living in San Alfonso was always an adventure. Getting groceries each week consisted of two hour long rides on the rather unpredictable (but always entertaining) bus, and doing laundry meant tracking down one of the three or four people in the town who owned washing machines (and paying them an outrageous amount per load).

While in San Alfonso we met an incredible number of amazing people who made our time there, well, AMAZING! We met the Andrade family who rented us our casita, took us rafting, and gave us free range to explore the 3,600 hectares of mountains they owned. We became friends with the family who owned the market where we bought fresh bread daily, and with a wonderful taxi driver named Tito who took us to try our first Mote con Huesillo, a traditional Chilean drink. At the school where she volunteered as an English and dance teacher, Victoria made a number of small friends who called her tía and didn’t seem to notice how slowly and carefully she spoke Spanish. We were even befriended by a number of stray animals, the two most memorable being a pregnant, one-eyed cat (Pirate), and a dog that, if she were human, would be an Olympic runner (Dingbat).

We also mountain bike raced in Chile. Macky raced in four of the Copa Chile races and placed 9th, 7th, 12th, and 9th, respectively, in the Pro category. Victoria raced in the Copa Chile series finals and topped the podium in the Novicio Damas category. It was at these races that we met the “Giant Bicycles Chile” Team. They ended up becoming our adopted Chilean bike team, and the team manager Antonio, his girlfriend Paula, and her daughter Anastasia became our adopted Chilean family! During our last week in Chile we lived with them at their beautiful house in Santiago. 

San Martín de Los Andes, Argentina, where we are currently living, is turning out to be just as wonderful as San Alfonso. In addition to it being stunningly beautiful here, situated on a 15-mile-long lake in the Andes, we have met another group of (you guessed it) amazing people! During our first few days here, a number of people we barely knew helped us find a place to live and introduced us to the town. We quickly became friends with Flavio Bonilauri, the owner of a local bike shop, and his crew. Victoria even found an all girls cycling group that rides together twice a week. 

Argentina has also sharpened our culinary skills. Being used to the diversity of our moms’ delicious home-cooked meals, the shock of cooking for ourselves was just that, shocking! Unable to come up with a different meal for every night, we resorted to alternating between pasta and…pasta. Mind you, we did switch it up a bit; sometimes we ate our pasta with cheese and sometimes with tomato sauce. And sometimes, we even ate it with BOTH! But once we hit San Martín, we decided we had had enough pasta to last a lifetime. With the help of our parents and the Internet we have mastered a whole new smorgasbord of recipes. Among other things, we can now make our own tortillas, refried beans, salsa, breaded chicken, and energy bars!

We hope that this holiday season finds everyone as healthy, happy, and excited about life as we are (if someone less tan)! We are missing everyone back home, and send all of our love and wishes for an awesome 2009! 

Tear up the powder for us! 

With Love,

Macky and Victoria

P.S. We made a “Happy Holidays” slideshow for everyone using some of our favorite pictures from the trip! You can view it here.

Other links:

To see an interactive map of our trip so far, click here.

To see our complete collection of photos, visit our flickr albums.

If you want to read more about our trip from Macky’s point of view, visit his blog (okay, you've clearly already done that). 

…and if you want to read Victoria’s account of the trip, ask if you can borrow her journal or read her poetry when she gets home. 

Christmas Wishlist

It's a whole new thing for me, this Summertime Christmas. I've found it incredibly difficult to get into the Christmas spirit without snow, cold weather, a Christmas tree, lights, decorations, or skiing. Victoria and I have tried hard. We decorated (colored on) our Christmas tree (a hand-drawn picture) yesterday and made ourselves a delicious Christmas dinner of breaded chicken and twice-baked potatoes tonight, but the one big thing we're still missing is presents. You see, the problem with being poor and in a foreign country is that you can't buy one another expensive presents and there's a good chance Santa might not be able to find you. So, because I'm not planning to get any of this stuff, but I'm still trying to get into the Christmas spirit, I decided to write down my Christmas list here and explain why I want each thing. Here goes (note that these are not in any specific order):

1. The $1000 entry fee for the TransAndes mountain bike stage race (unfortunately, I need this by December 31st) because I really want to race the TransAndes Challenge.

2. A new 15" (unibody) MacBook Pro laptop set up as follows: 2.8GHz processor, 320 GB Hard Drive (@7200), 4 GB RAM. Microsoft Office, Final Cut, and Photoshop CS4 Suite installed would be a plus. My Dell is working, but has seen better days. Plus, you can dual boot run Windows on the new MacBook Pros (in case I need any of my PC programs).

3. The iAero III G or the iPro Wireless III G power meter by iBike. I have accepted that POWER is the next step to take in my training (along with riding more) and the iBike power meters look great (and are easy to switch between bikes).

4. The Garmin Edge 705 cycling computer (with heart rate and cadence, of course). The new Edge 705 is power meter compatible and works with the iBike power meters. And what would be the point of having power if you couldn't pair it with your heart rate and GPS data?

5. Any set of PowerCranks (the PowerCranks xLite Adjustable would be best). These are crank arms that DO NOT connect but both sides power the drivetrain. I am told that they work wonders for your pedal stroke and I would love to have a perfect pedal stroke (there's no point in wasting energy when you're pedaling).

6. A Retul fit for all 4 of my bikes. I had a professional bike fit a few years ago because of knee pain, but I have had a bit of pain resurface recently (I think I've grown). Now that I don't plan on growing any more, I figure this is the time to get another one.

7. 2 SRAM group sets (I'd love Red, but I'm not picky), 1 for my cyclocross bike, and 1 for my road bike. I've got low-end Shimano componentry on them right now and it just doesn't work all that well. Plus, I really like the hidden cables...

8. A smartphone. I admit that iPhone is the best known and absolutely beautiful, but since it is still unavailable for Verizon, I'll go for some other kind of phone. I want to be able to browse the web/check email from my phone, and this seems like the way to go. Plus, as a Computer Science major, it seems like I should probably stay at the forefront of the technology that is around. So, maybe a smartphone running on the new operating system, Android.

Like I said, I'm not planning on getting any of this, but it doesn't hurt to DREAM BIG right?

Galletas de Bici (Bicycle Cookies) - Homemade Energy Bars

At $4 a pop, Clif (R) Bars just aren't worth buying down here, but I still need something to train with. So I decided to search the "magical internet ball". I found tons of recipes. TONS! I didn't know where to start there were so many. So I decided to try a new approach: Twitter.

Although I found Twitter (and blogged about it) almost 11 months ago, I didn't really start using it until about a week ago. That was when I realized its potential (it also didn't hurt that I got wireless internet). So I sent out the message:

Anyone know of any good "homemade Clif Bar" recipes? I'm in Argentina and can't get Clif Bars down here, but need something to train with...

And people actually responded! I had multiple people send me suggestions and websites, and I finally decided on a variation of this recipe (thanks to @sprocketjockey).

The only problem was that it required peanut butter, another luxury that is hard to come by here in Argentina. So I decided to make that too!

Back to the "magic internet ball". And I came up with this recipe.

Between these two recipes, Victoria and I made some delicious energy bars, which we have since dubbed "Galletas de Bici" (Bicycle Cookies). I admit that they do not have the same flavor nor the same texture as real Clif (R) Bars, but they are cheaper, delicious, and easy to make.

So here is our "Galletas de Bici" recipe:

Homemade Peanut Butter (makes 1.25 cups):

1.25 cups Peanuts

0.75 cup Caramelized Peanuts

1 tsp Salt

4 tsp Olive Oil

Blend the peanuts and salt, adding olive oil slowly until the desired consistency is achieved.

Galletas de Bici (makes 18 brownie-sized bars):

1 cup Rolled Oats (regular old oatmeal)

1.5 cup chopped Dried Fruit (we used pineapple, apricots, pears, and raisins)

0.5 cup chopped Nuts (we used almonds, peanuts, cashews, and walnuts)

0.75 cup Rice Crispies (or other cereal)

0.5 cup Fat-Free Powdered Milk (we don't think the "Fat-Free" matters)

0.75 cup Sugar

2 tsp Butter

1.25 cup Homemade Peanut Butter (see above)

1 cup Honey

Chocolate

Mix all of the ingredients up to (and including) the sugar.

Melt the butter, peanut butter, and honey in a large frying pan.

Mix the melted mixture with the dry mixture (not with your hands - it's HOT).

Pour this into a wax-paper lined 9x13 inch baking pan.

Sprinkle the chocolate (or if you have a bar, grate it) over the whole concoction.

Put in oven for 5-10 minutes or until the edges brown very slightly (I'd give you a temperature, but our oven doesn't have any numbers).

Allow to cool fully.

Cut up and store in fridge.