Brian King’s Blog

Ever since the Tour of Missouri came through town I’ve been re-energized to ride more this fall. The weather was unusually nice up through Thanksgiving, allowing me to ride several times into the “cold” part of the year. Despite not getting a lot of riding in for most of the year I feel I ramped up very quickly and by the last ride I felt really strong. A positive thing to carry into the new year! I am a real wuss though in that I typically can’t stand riding when it gets below 45-50 degrees so any exercise I get will have to be indoors. I’ve never been very good at going to the gym or even riding the recumbent bike I have sitting in my basement.

However, one motivation to keep in shape over the winter is a possible trip to Fruita next spring with my friends in Denver. If I can keep that in mind I should be able to either get to a gym from time to time and spin, or else dust off my exercise bike here and give it a go now and then.

The act of publicly stating my intention to go riding next year should help keep my motivation going through the dark months of winter ahead. Of course if I don’t revisit my blog for weeks or months…

No, that won’t happen!

December 11th, 2008 | Tags: biking, fruita | Category: biking | Leave a comment

I just have to post this picture sent to me by a friend in Iraq.  Explosive ordnance disposal drives this vehicle, and well, it speaks for itself for the state of biking in Iraq.

Bikers beware in Iraq

November 10th, 2008 | Category: biking | Leave a comment

This past weekend I finally got out on some dirt this year, after doing some training laps for 4 or 5 weeks around my neighborhood. It was good to be back in the saddle and off cement, but it was a short but interesting ride…

The technical section of the trail isn’t too bad when you are in top form, but I clearly was lacking my normal balance and drive, which made the descents harrowing and the ascents brutal. The large rocky “ramp” section up was too much to even try. However, I didn’t crash, I had a lot of fun, and I eventually hit my stride on the flats down by the river. After dodging poison ivy for several miles, trying to say out of the mud bogs -this section was recently flooded- and even finding a bridge out, I had to turn around because I knew I wouldn’t make it back to the car before it got dark.

And then something happened that I couldn’t have prepared for; I got stung by a wasp! As I was happily pedaling along, minding my own business, a wasp flew into my half-open mouth – causing me to instinctively close it. This apparently made it very angry and it stung the inside of my lip. Fortunately I am not allergic to bug stings, but I was fairly alarmed as the inside of my lip swelled to the size of a small super ball. The ice in my camel back had long ago melted and I had nothing but water to apply to keep down the swelling…all my sting ointments in my first aid kit were for external use only!

So I did the only thing I could do, which was pedal. I was about 5 miles from the car, but I was able to catch some pavement for most of the return trip. I felt like a goof with a big swollen lip, but there were no spectators out in this part of the world – so I made it back with my pride. A stop at Quick Trip for some ice really helped the swelling and by the time I got home my wife didn’t even notice it until I said something.

If I learned one lesson it was the need for some sort of cold technology in my first aid kit to use to reduce swelling in emergencies such as this. You just never know what is going to happen around the next corner!

Sadly -or maybe fortunately- I didn’t have my camera with me to document the event.

October 9th, 2008 | Tags: biking, St. Louis | Category: St. Louis | Leave a comment

Earlier this week I was pushing the pedals up a big hill near my house and just thinking of random thoughts to pass the time. I wasn’t going very fast as I wasn’t in any hurry. I begin hearing a strange sound and look back over my shoulder to see a golf cart loaded with pre-teens chugging up the hill behind me. There were probably five of them, with a pair standing on the back like they were guarding the president or something. I’ve seen this cartload of kids driving all over our neighborhood and just have to wonder if these kids ever get any exercise.

Then, as if on cue, another little girl comes in off a side street riding a motorized razor scooter. For a minute we were all on the same street heading up this hill – and I couldn’t help but wonder if I was a kid today if I would also opt for the easy route of those fun rides or if I would have suffered up the hill riding a bike. “When I was a kid” we didn’t have anything but our muscles to get around town…

Looking at my watch I noted that I am officially “old” in the cosmic sense of the word. Our triad broke up, each to our destinations.

October 3rd, 2008 | Tags: sports | Category: Life | Comments (1)

This was the second year of going to this race here in St. Louis, and where last year was well hyped and well attended – this year we had to contend with Hurricane Ike going through the morning of the race. Thus, attendance was much lower, part of the race course was truncated due to flooding, and it rained a bit in the first part of the day. Despite all that, my dad and I still had a nice time seeing this race.

One of the biggest side effects of seeing all this enthusiastic bike riding was that it reignited my passion for biking.  Over the last few weeks since this race I have been riding locally to try to get back into good enough shape to hit the trails again.  In fact this weekend I have plans to actually find some dirt!  Thank you Tour of Missouri!

The race itself is a great experience for anyone interested in biking.  There is a lot of excitement, booths, and of course the hip bike-friendly people who show up for these things.  We will definitely be coming back next year, and doubly so if Lance Armstrong finds his way here.

Tons of pictures on my photo site.

Tour of Missouri Peloton

October 3rd, 2008 | Tags: biking, sports | Category: St. Louis | Leave a comment

Lately I’ve been getting invited to some events from friends with free tickets, which has allowed me to go to see things I never would have paid for on my own. Earlier this summer I went to a NASCAR event at Gateway speedway in Illinois. That was a lot of fun and was well worth the time and energy of driving there and sitting and watching it. I highly recommend the experience and under the right circumstances I’d even pay to go see another race. It is loud, energetic, and there is always something going on while the cars are in motion.

On Friday I had another opportunity to see another sporting event which I never would have dreamed I’d see – the PGA tour! The event was hosted at the Bellerive Country Club in Ladue, Missouri.

First, the good news is that the event itself was pretty cool. We walked a portion of the course and saw a lot of the bigger names in golf today (no Tiger Woods, alas he was injured). It was pretty interesting to watch them play through a hole, see the crowd react to their shots, and generally see first hand all the oddities which you normally see on TV as you pass the Golf channel on the remote (I don’t watch golf, and haven’t played the game for 15 years). It is amazing to see a crowd of hundreds huddled around the green, all becoming perfectly quiet while these guys make their putts. The game of golf, as a sport, would hardly entertain someone who isn’t interested in golf as our day was mostly spent walking from hole to hole and if you didn’t watch carefully you wouldn’t even know who the big names were (they were however usually surrounded by the most people). On that score, golf is a hard sport to actually watch for the uninitiated.

The day itself was a bit of a downer though as the course parking lot was washed out which forced everyone to park at Riverport (miles away) and my friend and I literally spent 4-5 hours of our day either waiting in line for the shuttle bus, walking to or from the bus stops, or sitting on the bus. It was totally and utterly crazy to expect that many people to ride shuttles to the event (the bus ride was almost 30 minutes!). Imagine a line of people a quarter mile long and about 10 people wide! Bad form!

If I had free tickets again I might be pursuaded to go to another PGA tour event (we even had the high dollar tickets for free lunch, snacks, beer, etc which still didn’t help much) but I would never pay to go see another event. That said, if it did have one positive side effect I actually do feel the urge to get my clubs out, clean off the 15 years of dust, and go to the driving range. Golf is just one of those sports which is fun to play, but is a struggle to watch from the sidelines.

NASCAR 1: PGA 0

September 7th, 2008 | Tags: sports | Category: Games | Comments (1)

After owing a Blackberry Curve for the better part of a year, I finally got involved in the one game that ships with the device after I had some free time during a recent game convention. The premise is simple enough, being like any number of block/brick games which require you to bounce a ball with a little paddle and break through bricks on the screen.

The game is frustratingly addictive, especially once you realize that everything either comes together or blows apart on Level 16. For many months of play (casual play, I’m not playing it around the clock!) I would do well on all the levels up until the dreaded 16th. No matter how many lives I accumulated, it usually sapped them all. However, one day I squeaked past the level only to be greeted with the strange land on the other side – and I wasn’t mentally prepared to overcome them.

Now though, I’ve made it past 16 with enough lives to make a serious run at completing the whole 34-level game. I have one life left, I’m on level 27, and hoping to take these fumes in my tank the whole distance. I’ve realized though that once you’ve gotten past the “hard” level at 16, the game really opens up and becomes easier. It becomes more about ball control as you go along…which usually means just getting the ball where it needs to go and then it follows its own path the rest of the way. Easy!

The secret to level 16 is to get the ball as vertical as possible when it goes over the top brick. For untold games I would shoot the ball sideways up the chimney so that it was shooting across the top and coming back down the other side over and over. If the balls is vertical it mostly does all the work for you. If you are really lucky you will get the gun power up, which allows you to remove the bottom row of indestructible bricks and hit the rest of the bricks from the bottom.

BrickBreaker continues the addiction which is inherent with Blackberry. Play with caution!

UPDATE: I was stopped at level 31. Now I have to start all over!

UPDATE 2: I reached level 33, had one ball left, and only a few bricks left to clear. Bricks were pretty low on the screen but I was feeling confident–until the ball did one of those crazy things and fit perfectly on the diagonal and dropped before I realized what had happened. So close! Oh yeah, in some games I waste 8 lives on level 16, while others I get through without losing ANY! Crazy game…

UPDATE 3: Victory! While some may see this as the ultimate time waster – I feel like I’ve accomplished a heroic feat by getting through all 34 levels.  It happened so fast I barely had time to appreciate it – and I whizzed right through level 34 and back to do level 1 again (it repeats the same 34 levels, but the ball moves faster now).  I told my wife that once I beat it I could finally quit playing it, but it turns out the game is actually more enjoyable now that I’m not stressed to make it to the end.  If I die on level 16 for the 1001st time, no big deal!  At least now I know that victory is possible.

September 7th, 2008 | Tags: Games | Category: Games | Comments (1)

Playground at Suson Park

For my first post it is fitting that I include my playground buddy, G-man. G and I often give mom the nights off so she can relax by going on adventures around town. More often than not this involves a trip to the playground and his favorite pastime of swinging!

Tonight we took an adventure to Suson Park, in South St. Louis County, Missouri. They recently rebuilt the entire playground with all new equipment, new soft surfacing, and landscaping. It has become one of the nicest parks on the south side of the city, and easily beats the parks in Jefferson County.

I know that looking closely at this picture G-man appears to be far from having fun, but what he is actually doing is displaying his displeasure at having his picture taken by a strange person he doesn’t know.  A kind man offered to snap a picture of the two of us – and you can clearly see that one of us was more excited than the other!  G perked up as soon as the camera was turned off, of course.

August 27th, 2008 | Tags: parks, playground, St. Louis | Category: St. Louis | Comments (1)