Lostin76

This news was the first thing I saw on Twitter when we touched down at the airport from our trip today. LET’S F*#KING GO!!!! With TJD returning and our upgraded non-conference schedule, should be a great year.

Ha, yeah you can’t give them any space! They will take advantage of you. The taxis and the delivery trucks are both like that. I’ve lost a mirror before trying not to let a truck squeeze past me.

F*#king car horns. So sick of them and the a**holes that use them when they are not necessary. Our old place was in the middle of a block that would get backed up in the morning and evening. There was always some jerk about 15 cars back laying on his horn out of frustration. One day I was out front planting some bushels with a shovel when some dude was yelling and honking. I yelled at him to lay off and he just started honking more. His window went up quick and the honking stopped when I ran out there with the shovel. It’s how I met one of our neighbors. She started cheering after he sheepishly stopped the racket.

Ha, she would be all over that Horse logo! I do think I can sneak the Trident in somewhere. Still considering adding championship years too. I don’t want it to scream IU, but definitely want it to be obvious to me and anyone from IU.

Ha, my first thought was the trident on the headtube FRONT and CENTER. But then one of the reasons I love the brand is the Horse on the headtube. Pic below. So then I started thinking more subtle. But, it is 100% up to me. I can put Hurrying Hoosiers on the frame if I want. I really do want this bike to mean something special to me and that means IU basketball. See above, I was totally thinking the Trident on the headtube! I also like the outline of the state on the basketball. So, that is still in play. And yeah, “Steel is real.” I’ve ridden carbon and aluminum, but nothing matches the feel and flex of steel on the road. I laugh at all of those people wringing their hands over grams of weight when you can save those grams just by taking a crap before your ride! The body is the easiest way to cut weight, not frame materials.

So a few months ago, I ordered a hand built steel bike frame from a local company - Horse Cycles here in Brooklyn. It’s like a six month wait for the frame after measurements, etc. It comes with either a normal or custom paint job - I’m obviously springing for the custom paint job. I’ve pretty much got all of the parts - this will be an All-American made beast. I can buy something comparable from a store, but what is the fun it that. Plus, I want to pick every single part and assemble it myself. I don’t want something from a factory. Parts are as follows: Wheels from H.E.D, based in Minnesota Headset, bottom bracket, chainring and cranks from White Industries in California Handlebar, stem, and seatpost from Thomson Bike in Georgia Brakes, shifters, and gear cassette from SRAM in Illinois. Bar tape from Newbaum in California Tires from Rene Hearse in Oregon I’ve been going back and forth on the paint job, but I think I’ve settled on a Cream and Crimson paint job. I want to include a subtle nod to IU basketball and I think I’ve settled on five stars. But do I do five stars and a sixth star that has dotted lines around it for filling in later (being an optimist) or just only leave space for the five stars. The area for the stars would be the brake bridge over the rear wheel. This is the bike frame with a red and white paintjob: http://www.horsebrand.co/bikes/gravel-monster I actually think I would flip it and do mostly crimson with cream on the frame. You can see the brake bridge here where the five (or six stars) would be. Photo attached. My question to everyone here is - are there other subtle logos or text that I should use instead of the five stars? One alternative is that there is a very strong tradition of listing championship years on bike frames for stuff like the Tour De France and Giro D’ Italia. You often see years like 1976, 1981, and 1987 on the downtube of bike frames to signify that the bike frame won certain years. I’ve thought about just including the NCs that I’ve witnessed - 1976, 1981, and 1987. If you were building a bike that will outlast you and had to include a nod to IU basketball, what would you do?

My first reaction was both “Oh man, TJD is coming back and it crashed the servers” and “Oh no, what did one of our players/coaches do that crashed the server?”

My grandparents got me into IU basketball. My grandmother, who is now 93, never misses an IU basketball game and I still like talking to her about the team. First season was 1975. I always watched every game on a ratty B&W TV and then immediately afterwards, I would run out into my backyard and relive the key plays on my smallish basketball court. I was seven years old in 1975 and didn’t really realize the differences between the regular season and the tournament. They were all just games to me. And we always won, so I kind of thought we were like the Harlem Globetrotters. Favorite season would probably be the 1981 run, but also 1976. Have a soft spot for those early 90’s teams too. Lots of amazing memories as a Hoosier fan. Was the reason I decided to go to IU for my degree.

Ha, I saw that article headline and was like, “Nope, not reading that.” Thanks for making me read that. 🙈

It’s “landlords gone wild” season again here. We are in a rent stabilized apartment and won’t consider moving b/c of that. The unit next to us is not rent stabilized and is now $2K a month more than our unit. We won’t leave our unit until we buy a place upstate or in Vermont. Who can afford to pay $6,600 for a 1BR apartment? Obviously someone with more money than sense.

Ha, well they are! Damn peckerheads.

I didn’t know that. Have never eaten them raw. But I do know that the false morels are really bad for you too!

Grew up hunting morels every year. We always found huge sackfuls. One year, my Dad got very ill eating them. Had to go to the hospital. We didn’t know if a false morel had snuck in or if he just had a bad reaction. Think it took him several years to eat them again. He still hunts them to this day - just texted me yesterday that he ran into a guy hunting them that said he was getting $65 a pound from a restaurant in Indy. It’s pretty rare to see them in shops out here, but you can guess that they sell for a lot more than $65 a pound in NYC.

My running days are mostly behind me (prefer biking now), but I used to be like you. Wouldn’t run for weeks or months and then just go run several miles. One time, my wife was registered for the NYC Half Marathon and was injured. She couldn’t find anyone who wanted her bib, so I ran it and did it in 1:45. Hadn’t run for months before that. I was VERY sore the next few days though. Probably not smart.

This was a long but fascinating article about a guy’s girlfriend tossing out his hard drive that had his crypto password. It was worth a LOT and he engaged in an elaborate dump searching scheme to get it back. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/13/half-a-billion-in-bitcoin-lost-in-the-dump ”When Howells had his uh-oh moment, his hard drive was already buried under other people’s trash. He wanted to go to the dump, but he was embarrassed—and afraid that nobody would believe his story. “Explaining Bitcoin at the time was not easy,” he recalls. So for about a month he told no one, and watched helplessly as the bitcoin market soared, and with it the value of his lost holdings. He remembers saying to himself, “Oh, shit—this is turning into a bigger and bigger mistake.” Around the time that his bitcoin became worth six million dollars, he confessed to Hafina. She was shocked to learn of the potential windfall, and encouraged him to go to the dump to see if anything could be done. When he told the manager there that he’d accidentally thrown away about four million pounds, he got a lot of head shakes, but eventually the manager took him to an elevated spot to survey the site: the mounds of churned earth, the depot where trash was mixed with soil, the grassed-over areas of retired landfill. Howells’s heart sank: he saw ten to fifteen soccer pitches’ worth of garbage. How could he possibly sift through it all?”

That used to be me on Saturday afternoons - the only problem with football is it’s longer, so requires twice as much beer. Your second paragraph is me. Totally me.

Wow, we are pretty similar size wise. Am 5’9” and weighed 180 when I noticed things were getting a little out of hand. I think I would be really happy at around 160 or 162 on my frame. I do know that it doesn’t get any easier to be really fit as you age, and I’m starting to think about being as healthy as possible when I retire to cut down on medical costs. Drinking is such a part of our lifestyle, but I like keeping it to just 1 or 2 times per week if we are out. Those beers or cocktails taste extra good, when you aren’t pounding them every night! Yes, summer grilling and hanging outside does make it a bit harder. I think I’ll try to plan a lot more active activities to keep my mind off of it. Also, basketball season will be a real test. IU games and beer goes together like peanut butter and jelly for me!

Ha, at least I was with my wife. But yes, we were the olds at this one for sure. The girls behind us were dancing so hard that you could feel the whole mezzanine shaking. BUT, they were having a ton of fun, which is what’s important. I’ve become pretty picky about venues. Don’t love to stand behind a sea of cellphones in the air, so there are only a few local places I’ll go to anymore. I would have used the new songs (Bon Jovi has new songs?) to get a beer or some merch too!

Ugh, that’s so horrible. And imagine that mushroom hunter who found it…

Definitely sleeping much better! I used to wake up at like 3am and have a hard time falling back to sleep. Haven’t had that issue either. We are going to Italy for 10 days next month, so I will drink a bit more there, but I do think I will stick with the not drinking at home for awhile. I didn’t mention it in my post, but I just feel so much better without it.

We saw Lorde at Radio City Music Hall last night. She is a great performer, but man it was like 98% teenage girls singing along with EVERY word of EVERY song. And then me, the grumpy old man in the mezzanine seated the whole time.

During the pandemic, we got in the habit of starting a nightly cocktail hour at 5pm. I would usually drink two cocktails or three beers if I was drinking beer. On the weekends we would drink on the terrace reading the paper starting at like 11am or noon, and then have drinks again later that evening. I noticed my pants were fitting tighter lately, and I was getting really bad heartburn/acid reflux at night while trying to fall asleep. Since the season was over, I decided to quit drinking unless we were out somewhere for dinner. Have lost almost ten pounds with just that one change in a month. AND no more heartburn. I quite taking Pepcid, b/c I don’t need it anymore. It’s not easy, b/c drinking was/is such a habit. There are many nice days where a drink or two on the terrace is so tempting, but once you just say no and move on to something else, it gets a bit easier.

I think I’m going to skip tomatoes this year. They take up so much space and really require a LOT of water growing in containers on our hot terrace. We have three really good farmers markets close to us, so it’s not like I won’t have access to good tomatoes. Am trying to grow an artichoke plant this year. Don’t really like artichokes, but if you let them go to seed, the bees love them. Other than that the usual chaos of way too many flowers and herbs has been requested by the wife.

Yikes, so glad he got the help he needed and wish him a speedy recovery. Those pics make me sad too, can’t imagine how he is feeling!

I saw the same tweet and had the same hope. Glad we were right!