Strava stalk shows you did ride last night, so at least you offset the cupcake. Kudos.

Cut with kerosene, we could call it Nutpalm.

Officially a Cat4 now.

I like the single income lifestyle, and it works well for us too. We basically live on mine, and put much of Mrs. LAJ's away. Beer living, with champagne fun. Be it bikes, lights, planting stuff, or Shar Pei... :)

Very cool on Nina, [MENTION=351576]Heathpack[/MENTION]. Still tough to see, but the end result softens the reality.

Good work, and I hope the relationship with the new kid on the block continues to grow!

Hot damn!

What the hell - did you just transfer from NY to Austin? You totally had NY something on your location. Need a roommate? hahaha.

I'm more than likely going to have to do some of this **** if I'm to make any money in my life.. e.g. switching to an IT based project management job instead of just plain project management (for signage). I could go construction based project management but everyone has told me to stay away from that nightmare.. and to be blunt - I didn't go to school for 7 years to yell at contractors over the phone who barely made it through highschool.

Congrats. Now you can look down condescendingly upon 5s based upon the fact that USAC will now sometimes let you race with and get soundly beaten by 3s in combined fields.

Exactly. I figured I rather get my arse kicked by the 3s, 4s, and masters than by the 5s. At least now I have an excuse. :D

When you say Rangers I immediately thought of the Ranger pick up truck, then realized you're talking about Range Rovers. Gotta live a little too, I hear that.

I would absolutely not be dead within 9 months. I'd get a plane ticket and bring my bicycle with me to thailand or some **** and just get absolutely lost - that's provided I'm not 300lbs by the time I'm 55 or 60.

Yeah I think that I will end up going small-ish home, so that I have more expendable income on other things that are more experience related (vacation, bikes, etc).

I like to imagine that I'd just 'do whatever I wanted in all leisure' with a big pile of money..but honestly I'd end up running a business of some sort, I don't know exactly what, but it would happen, I have too much of that nervous energy that would build up over time if I wasn't 'creating something'.

Just transfer? I grew up in CT (in the southeast, in farm country, where it sucked unimaginably), went to RPI, got a job in Albany after, worked there for three years or so, switched to telecommuting, moved to Boulder for three years, got sick of the cold, and the office I was telecommuting to was in Austin (different project than the one in Albany, which required work to be done physically within the state of NY), so I just weighed anchor and moved down. Boulder was nicer in a lot of ways, but honestly, Austin has been much better to me and I'm way happier here. It really is utterly better than Albany, which at least is a small city and has some things and people.

I don't know about Denton, but the only places in Texas I would live are Austin and San Antonio (which is a very underrated city).

Born In CT (wallingford area) grew up next to farmlands myself. Lifeguarded out at Hammonasset State Park for many years when going through school. Had 2 years in FL for school, glorious, finished up at UCONN. Ended up out here for work. Looks like I'm headed back to CT to work for another year or two (and live with family to pay off my school loans) and then I'll make my great escape to Austin or Dallas when I've got some more experience and can find work in the area.. I hate the cold. I seem to be escaping a prison only to find myself in yet another, lol.

Austin and Dallas are rather different - I'd try to visit each and figure out where you'd like to be.

Just catching up, OMG, I love that stuff!! ^^^

I am trying to convince myself not to spend 140 bucks on my beater project. But I hate crappy tires. 140 bucks gets me good tires, a taller stem and wider bars, plus 4 tubes.

I want to stop myself, but I'm not sure if I can.

Life is too short to ride crappy tires. Buy them in bulk and don't think of using them on a beater as "spending" (whenever you're riding, you'll be on tires, so more of them in use at once makes them all last longer). Same for tubes. Then for the stem and bars, is there a bike co-op you could go to and maybe trade? Or a bike swap meet?

It's wrong that you like. You know they were tablespoons.

I visited Austin a few years ago and loved it. I'm would 'settle' for Dallas if the opportunity arose; that's how much I care not for the N.E.

Yeah. I would have liked to not have skipped that last interval at 90% FTP, but HR wasn't having it. I'm still not 100% over this illness. But it was a good workout for the first ride back.

Being on the road doing group rides lately, I've forgotten just how intense zwift workout modes get. I think I may need to fudge my FTP setting down a little bit in the future so I'm not blowing up my HR like that all the time.

Assuming you were cat 5 before, congrats!

Actually, I remembered another shopping cart I had saved on a different website. My total there is only 80 bucks with shipping, no handlebars on that order.

The tires thing is mostly me being snobby. I hate the idea of wire bead tires, but I don't think this bike is really worth it at this point. They price matched some nice folding ones at 33 bucks for me on one wesbite, but the other one had decent wire bead tires at 20 bucks. I think I might go that route. I'm pretty confident the bike will see more town trips than dedicated long distance stuff. This bike might be mostly an experimental build followed by a truly nice build on another frame. At that point I'd probably sell this one.

The bars are actually fine on the bike now, they're just a little narrow. But again, I don't think I'll do long distance stuff with it, so I might just leave them.

That's the whole struggle with this project. I fully intended it to be a test of how cheaply I can build a bike and still enjoy it.

Can't say I blame you. Also, as I'm thinking about it, I don't think I ever had NY in my profile, because I didn't join until I was back in CT very briefly before moving to CO, and that's what I put in when I registered. Are you thinking of the magnificent Giants logo? :)

Don't get your hopes up. First off, much project management in this industry is yelling at offshore coders at crazy hours, and they often conveniently forget how to speak english.

Second, software project management is nothing like other industries. It's not one guy in charge any more. Go look up "the agile manifesto" (or at least the agile wikipedia page) to see how it's done nowadays. You yell at a US tech worker and they'll just tell you to go get bent.

Thanks. Mainly I'm glad I can now do races of decent length.