Leg Pain

My legs hurt today and it's awesome. This past weekend I went out for two 60+ mile rides with 'the fast guys'. See spot ride. Spot rode far. Spot rode fast. Spot is tired. Spot has trouble getting up the stairs. Spot has 40 stairs to climb from the basement to the 3rd floor in his new house. Woof. After two years of dragging through the aches pains and eventual surgeries that resulted from my screwed up leg, I'm finally seeing some real progress and remembering what it's like to go hard on a bicycle again. My legs feel fantastically pummeled after the weekend, tired in a way that I haven't felt ages. It is awesome. I had the idea a couple of weeks ago that I wanted to do Battenkill again. 3 other speedy dudes from the club are thinking of tackling it, and I've got some unfinished business with that race. It will be a great goal to shoot for, and after this weekend's riding, it seems that it is actually doable. I'm looking forward to the challenge.

Yeah,I hauled that

Turns out that my trailer can haul 320 pounds of crap. Not sure if I want to do it again though, my legs did not much care for it. Also, things were groaning and creaking pretty badly behind me during the ride. Better not to push my luck until they make some lighter weight cement.

Hot stuff

In advance of the coming frost I picked about 10 ghost peppers from one of the neighboring plots at our community garden. At first it must seem like am awesome idea, growing a weaponized chili plant. But then you taste the things.    Most sensible people realize upon eating the smallest sliver of one, these are not peppers to be trifled with.

Fortunately, no one has made the mistake of calling me sensible.Tonight I made death sauce.

I wore rubber gloves and long sleeves as a precaution, but I probably should have added a gas mask to the list.  Blending up peppers aerosolizes little tiny spice particles that make for an unexpected dose of capsaicin to the air. After a quick hit with the blender the air became rather spicy. Jennifer was coughing all the way in the living room and I had to flee upstairs to escape the fumes .

Now that it's bottled, the plan is to let it ferment a bit naturally and "mellow" before blending it up once again and straining the chunks.  Anyone stupid with an asbestos palate interested in trading the mix in a few weeks?

So, more house equals more house repair.

Even though the new place needs MUCH less work per square foot of real estate than the Mole Hole, 3 times the house is 3 times the house, and we want to put our stamp on the whole shebang.

I've been spending evenings in the basement with my cement; mixing up some slurry to spluck onto the walls of the basement to shore up any crumbling mortar.  I was getting my rhythm down pretty good and then I ran out of mix, so I shifted from putting up mortar, to knocking it down.  I spent Friday night knocking a hole in the kitchen wall to open up a window from years past.  While dirty, that part is really rewarding because it satisfies my long-standing need to take things apart.  It's even more satisfying than peeling off the label on a bottle of beer.