(Sniff sniff...)

Those are crying noises.

You see, my friends, it's a bittersweet end to my time on Blogger. I joined the exciting blogosphere about 18 months ago here on Blogger. Yet now there are new beginnings, brighter horizons, and oodles of joy to be found at the wonderful world of Missing Saddle. You can now find my excursive ramblings at:

http://www.iamtedking.missingsaddle.com/

Byebye.

Schnow

After an excellent Christmas holiday at home, I drove all day Sunday from New Hampshire to North Carolina. 17 hours of moving time and a hair under 1000 miles. It just made sense to travel that day and avoid later traffic congestion after the New Year. That worked out swimmingly, because it snowed 8 inches in NH the night after I left. Then they got pounded by lots more snow the next day, whereas it was a balmy 60 degrees in NC upon my arrival.

That was super duper, except that I woke up today and it was snowing and frigid! 16 degrees with a wind chill of -1. Holy moly that's cold. That's New England-like cold.

I proceded to drive into town today, which is entertaining. Southerners' driving skills are flushed right down the toilet once there's even the slightest bit of snow on the ground. We received between a trace to one inch, but people drive as though the snow's a foot deep with zero visibility. I equate it to what happens when people walk on ice. There are two basic approaches:

1) walk cautiously taking one step every 12 seconds with you arms stretched out in either direction as though you're tight rope walking.

-OR-

2) sprint around skidding like you've grown up on ice (which in the instance of many New Englanders is that case, especially if they're hockey players or skiers).

In either case, though, you end up looking like a fool if you fall on your butt... or crash you car. Thankfully I tend to avoid both.

The other highly entertaining thing occurs in the following way. Picture this: you're on your bike minding your own business as you pedal down the road, when and you faintly hear something in the distance. Yet, the direction from which this noise is coming is unknown and the noise itself is still faint and indistinguishable. You begin to coast, then cock you head a few degrees to the side, allowing for better hearing. A slight frown drapes over your face. Where is it? WHAT is it? You pedal a bit more, but the noise gets louder and more difficult to explain. You now recognize it's coming from behind at about the speed of a car or truck... sort of a buzzing sound ...almost a deep rumble... yet has the essense of a high metalic sound. Geezum crow, what is it?! Seconds pass so that now it's loud and right behind you! Terrified that you're going to be abducted by a UFO in broad daylight, you pull over onto the sidewalk and hopefully allow it to pass. What is it, you ask? It's SNOW CHAINS! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Oh man, I nearly peed myself laughing at this. We received an inch of snow in the deepest parts. ONE INCH! However, there are snow chains on cars and trucks, the mail delivery Jeeps, and the snow plows (yet, of course they plow the snow when it's more than a trace). That was a riot.

Warm and entertaining wishes to you in 2008!

Buddy the Elf, What's Your Favorite Color?

Did you hear that Appalachian State beat Delaware for the FCS title?!

Yeah, I didn't care either. Go Pats. Booya.

In more exciting news that I'm sure will be featured on the cover of the next Sports Illustrated, HealthNet had a mini camp here in Asheville. Three of their riders came to town to visit the new boss-man and partake in some riding. I happen to be friends with one John Murphy and therefore got to poach their mini camp bike practice. Under the auspices of being a friendly cyclist, I learned all sorts of insider tidbits that will allow me to trump their success in the upcoming cycling season. Victory will be mine!

We followed up a particularly lengthy and high calorie expended ride with a trip to the local bakery. I enjoyed one of their famous cinnamon buns. The picture doesn't offer any sort of scale, but I think the diameter was about 18 inches, or the size of an SUV's wheel. That might be a gross exaggeration, but I forget... The sugar coma made for omitted details.

The riding continues to be marvelous, albeit intertwined with some strange weather. Temperatures fluctuate between the 30s to the 70s in the past three weeks, and generally come in multi day phases. Three days of cold temps, four days of warm temps, etc. (It was 70 two days ago and spitting snow as I type this.) I cashed in on a recent warm day and summited the Eastern Continental Divide. I don't have the facts and statistics right here in front of me, but I'm pretty sure this is the highest point in the United States. Maybe even the world. The "ELEV 3028" refers to miles. Yup, 3,000+ MILES above sea level. Crazy. Needless to say, it was a fairly epic climb.

The fluctuating temperatures this time of year and rolling, rugged terrain strike me as very New England-like. As the fabled expression says, "You can take the cyclist out of New England, but you can't take New England out of the cyclist." Very sage. Here are two pictures from recent ride that could just as easily be Vermont or New Hampshire as they are western North Carolina. Beautious.

Lastly, Mayo and I shot down to Greenville to visit her brother this past weekend before they drive back home to Vermont for the holidays. Mayo's brother and roommates celebrated the end to a semester of school with a pretty sweet Christmas party. The camera soon went into hiding for it's own protection, but not before catching a glimpse of me in costume. With appropriate Christmas attire required, I tried out the local consignment shop but was totally unimpressed with their selection (meanwhile, I foolishly forgot my three-piece green checkered suit with complimentary red turtleneck at home in NH. Blast.) I therefore made do with a trip next door to the Dollar Store; one roll of wrapping paper and Scotch tape later, I had a butter costume:

The outfit was a stunning success. It features articulated elbows and knees for superior dexterity, as well as slits up the side of the apron/dress/overalls/shirt for the same reason. Believe it or not, the suit remained entact for it's entire life. After about three hours with the suit still fully functioning, I simply got bored with it and removed it.

Home Sweet Home!

Mayo and I welcomed ourselves into our new home in Asheville, NC this past week! What fun. We decided to avoid competing with the crazy folk who travel on the Sunday following Thanksgiving, and instead departed early Monday morning. We worked off a good portion of Thanksgiving's delicious gluttony by packing our Penske 12' trailer to the gills. This picture does not do it full justice, but rest assured that we utilized at least 98% of the storage space available on this yellow badboy. Floor to ceiling, front to back, this truck is FULL.(FYI, Penske was great. U-Haul is the typical go to for peoples' traveling needs, but after about a minute of online research you'll realize U-Haul sucks.)

Our last night in New England gave us an idea of what we are escaping by making this journey... namely cold weather and snow. Yes a mere dusting, but snow nonetheless. In fact, as I write this one week after departing, I was told by my friends on NPR this morning that New England is being blanketed with snow today. The salt-of-the-earth part of me longingly misses a good dumping of snow in my native New England; but the cyclist part of me reminds me that at a time like this, change is good. Here's a parting shot of Mayo and me taking last minute pictures with Mayo's coworker/friend/roommate Tyne.The drive was enjoyable... or I should say, as enjoyable as a 20ish hour drive alone can be. See, in order to have a car upon arrival, Mayo drove her Hybrid Civic (which you all remember gets a sweet 40+ mpg) alongside the Penske. With an iPod full of Podcasts, I was set for the entire drive. One night and roughly 1000 miles later - with much thanks to the Ashtons for a superb night of hospitality in Virginia - we made it safe and sound to Asheville.

I can thank an untimely crash to being able to opt out of heavy lifting and moving in. My broken arm, albeit mostly healed, gave me a verbal doctor's note that I shouldn't be lifting large or unsteady objects. Nice! As a result, Mayo's brother came up from Greenville the day after our arrival to help move everything in, with me providing uplifting moral support and directions for a solid dose of feng shui in our apartment. It'll be fun having him a mere hour away... especially when the temps drop here at altitude in Asheville and I can join the Greenville winter bike league. 80 people on a winter group ride?! Unreal.

When not getting acquainted with the town, our neighbors, and the local riding scene, Mayo and I are continuing a short lived tradition of playing Scrabble. There have been lots of good games and solid plays lately; here is one of the finer and more apt plays Mayo had in a recent match. The word: SPANDEX. In fact, she opened with this word and in doing so used all seven letters for a 50 point bonus! For you non-Scrabble players out there, that is a solid move. And for you nay-sayers out there who claim that SPANDEX is a proper noun and therefore not applicable, the Scrabble online dictionary says that SPANDEX is a synthetic elastic fiber. Moreover, there is the plural SPANDEXES.

It's worth pointing out, though, that I'm undefeated in North Carolina. Two and oh, baby! Thereby bringing my record up to 5-1, including games played back home in NH.

What's new?

What isn't new is the real question. I've been busy with all sorts of crazy holiday adventures of late. I'll work chronologically through these endeavors.

To begin, I missed the autumn season here in New England during my trip overseas. I came back earlier from Australia than planned and therefore should still have gotten a taste of fall, but the weather jumped from warm to freezing seemingly overnight. I had my requisite 3ish weeks off of the bike to constitute an off season and was very excited to be riding again. However, with the temps dipping into the teens in the morning and merely 20s and 30s during mid-day, it's cooooold! In fact, two days before Thanksgiving, I set out in the morning to wonderfully blue skies, but came home just two hours later caked in snow and ice! Thankfully, my neoprene booties, regular shoe covers, toe warmers, and wool socks kept my toes slightly above the freezing point. Plus, even though my glasses were thoroughly iced over, I wouldn't have been able to see anyway with the blizzard like conditions outside! Now that's safe.

Thankfully, the snow has since subsided and I've been able to cash in on a few really nice days of riding. Sure it's chilly, but completely managable so far.

Next adventure involves many trips to the doctors. I don't remember what I last filled you in on, so I'll just jump right into things. I know at this point that I sustained a broken tibia at the knee. Plus some strained ligaments thrown in there too, but that's all healing very nicely. Next, my ribs hurt for about 3 straight weeks. They were horrifically painful to touch, and I nearly passed out once when I sneezed and in doing so put my ribs through the ringer. Ow.

The more recent revelations involve my shoulders. They both hurt quite a bit, but have been feeling better as the days and weeks tick by. I'm trying hard to not be a hypocondriac, so I would just explain how my knee was doing during my doctor's visits, but then at home I'd complain to everyone else about these other aches and pains. Finally I told the doc that I have shoulder problems, which resulted in some physical tests and an MRI. Diagnosis: torn cartilage and a fractured humerus! (...the upper bone in the arm.) I know you're all experienced radiologists, so you can clearly see the white "explosion" at the top of the bone on the right. Yup, fracture. The good news is that it's now about six weeks post crash so it's healing well and there's not much to be done anyway. I still need to baby it a bit, but so far so good. Plus I've been doing some PT with therabands and the fine people of Access Rehabilitation. They're wonderful and have been seeing me time and again over the years, always getting me back to full strength.

Next up, Thanksgiving! Food was of course plentiful and delicious. I made a pumpkin praline tort for dessert, which was the icing on the cake - pun intended. The company was wonderful up at my aunt and uncle's new house in Maine. Plus my second cousins (or cousins once removed or whatever it's called) came over with even more dessert, so we had something like five full dessert items for nine people. Remarkable.

During the post appetiser/pre entree period, Robbie and I played the world's longest game of Jenga. Coincidentally it also turned out to be the world's first ever draw. We played until the wooden logs darn near touched the ceiling and decided it would be wise to call it quits since a) it was time for dinner and b) we didn't feel like picking up the mess. Honestly, it was probably 4 feet high. (We've been playing lots of games lately. Robbie talks about games of Scrabble in his recent entry, and I'll point out the score is now 3 to 1, in favor of the good guy!)

Last but not least, it's a King family tradition to fetch our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. It's also a Splaine family tradition to do the same, so for the past half dozen years, we've teamed up and enjoyed this holiday tradition together. We arrived on a beautiful day, unloaded from the car, and were immediatley reprimanded for bringing a chainsaw to chop down our trees! As mentioned, this is tradition, so for the past three or four years, we've discovered that a chainsaw is the only worthwhile way to fell a tree. Alas, Robbie said something like, "We've been doing this for years" and probably something under his breath as we walked away like, "...and I'm the one holding the chainsaw here, fella!" Off we went.

The Splaines picked theirs out first, which went down in a matter of seconds thanks to the green machine. It turns out that it already has some ornaments in the form of an infestation, as seen by the sizable hole in the trunk. But they're honorable folks, so rather than ditching the tree in the surrounding forrest and picking another, they loaded it up and headed for home. (I think Decia in particular loves it!)

That's the recent news and adventures from here. I wish you a wonderful November and December...

Happy Holidays from the Kings!

Becoming One With Nature

I'm riding my bike again. I was officially cleared by the good doctors at Access Sports Medicine last Wednesday, roughly three and a half weeks after my human bowling ball experiment in Australia. It feels excellent to be able to ride again, and relatively pain free. The human body is an amazing being.

In the meantime while waiting for the all-clear to ride again, I took up hiking. They were very mellow hikes with an estimated elevation change of about 12 feet over the course of an hour long expedition. Then one day while spending time in Vermont with Mayo, we decided on a portion of the Long Trail near Bromley Mountain. Thankfully I brought my set of carabiners, because this was an epic hike. Oh, I brought my Camelback too. Wisely. The light at the end of this proverbial tunnel was left over Halloween candy. Mayo brought two pieces, which we shared at the half-way mark. In this picture, she's hoarding one piece which warranted a tongue gesture by yours truly.
My dear friend Scott Nielsen made the trek up to Vermont the same weekend, which was superb. I don't have any good pictures (nor any pictures, for that matter) of us hanging out, but the sky was particularly impressive which looked like an epic fire in the sky. This picture doesn't do complete justice to the scene, but it was one of the more amazing sunsets I've ever seen.
Ciao.
tk

Impressive.

With all due respect and credit to the photographer and subject of this photo, all I can say is wow.

From Velonews photogallery.