Beers @ Kris's

James and I went over to Kris's new place in Chanhaskopee (Chanhassen) last night for a few beers and grillin'. I picked up a 6'er of the new Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat beer which tasted very simular to Blue Moon. The Leinie's wheat ale did have a little bit more flavor than Blue Moon so if you like Blue Moon give Sunset Wheat a try, don't forget the slice of orange. We also had some Red Stripe & Mickeys gernades. The Red Stripe was great but I could not say the same for the Mickeys. The only thing Mickeys had going for itself was the puzzles under the giant twist off cap.

I was reading the new 'Best Of' City Pages and found this funny ad for hair removal. The before and after picture is priceless! City Pages was catching some heat from Johnny Public concerning the Best Cheap Thrill article, which was a Joke that many people took too seriously. Then comes the apology...

Links
City Pages
The Rise of American Pie
Full of Hot Air
What's Her Bra Size Game


Fo Shizzle
-MikeyB

TCOR Adopt-A-Highway

This morning our off road club, Twin City Off Road, had our first Adopt-a-Highway garbage pick-up day. Of course it couldn't have been like last week when it was 65* degrees an sunny, no it had to be 50* degrees and rainy. We figured what the hell, lets just get it done and over with. Our 2 mile stretch of highway was Hwy 46 (160th st.) between Biscayne Ave & Angus Ave in the heart of the U of M Rosemount research area.

First off when you sign up for this program they make you buy the Adopt-a-Highway sign for $150 each, technically you would need two signs for both directions of traffic. Second they give you the most worthless safety vests ever made. I felt like I was a member of the village people. The only good thing is that they supply you with a crap load of trash bags, luckily name brand Hefty trash bags.

We started out and everything was going well and everyone was in high spirits because we didn't really know what to expect, by the way there were 9 of us picking up trash. We decided to split up the group so we would get this done faster due to the never ending rain, 5 people on the north side and 4 on the south. About 1 mile down the road Nick picks up a bag in the ditch and he looks at it for a few minutes then it hits him. He just found a vibrator still packaged in the plastic bag. We laughed for a few minutes and then I pick up a box and this weird looking flesh colored item falls out. It ends up being a pocket vagina...yes this is the truth. We are just dieing of laughter now!! Someone must not have been pleased with their purchase of sex toys from Fantasy gifts and threw them out the car window. By this time we didn't care about the rain or wind because this was just to damn funny.

We continue to pick up trash and now it is starting to get a little depressing because we are soaked head to toe. It seemed like this 2 miles stretch of road would never end! We would get to a street and hope that it would be Angus Ave so we could turn around and head back to the trucks. We got to Akron Ave and then ran out of trash bags (thank god!). We tied the last bag and headed back for the long walk. We will have to go back out again this summer because there is still a lot of litter in the ditches. Hopefully next time it will be 75 degrees and sunny.

James & Norris 08'

I'd vote for them!!

Specialized Avatar Gel Saddle

After a few bike rides this spring I noticed that my butt was hurting because I was still using the original seat that came with my Trek 4300 mtn bike. I was fed up and I went over to my local Erik's bike shop to search for a new seat. I wan't to keep the new seat in the $60 price range. After a few minutes of looking I saw the Specialized gel seat and it was at the right price of $58 (on sale). Only one problem, there were 3 sizes. Which size do I get? Erik's has a size chart where you sit down on a large gel pad for 1 minute, once you get up they will measure the distance between your sit-bones. Sizes Available: 130, 143 & 155. I ended up with the 143 size. After a 100 miles of using this seat I have really noticed a difference. My sit-bones, AKA butt, is not sore after biking and you do not feel soreness everytime you sit in a chair after a long ride. I would recommend this seat in a heartbeat. It was the best $58 I have ever put towards my bike.

-MikeyB

Bikey River Bottoms

Pete and I did some of the river bottoms tonight. We went as far as we could until the Minnesota River took over the trail, 16 miles total. Enjoy the pictures!






-MikeyB

Grillin' Pics

Pete was putting on my new bike chain.










I was busy cooking some meat! Those are some MONSTER chicken breasts!










Everyone at the table and look at Aimee's dinner plates!

Bikey Part Sei

Since we were a bunch of wuss bags on Monday, Pete & I decided to do 30 miles last night. We did 2 laps of the Farmington, Lakeville, Apple Valley loop. Mother nature must hate us this year because the wind was our enemy again as we biked around the first lap. As we started our second lap the wind died down but the temp was starting to drop quick. It was tough but worth it as we rolled into Apple Valley.

rant - Why can't people watch their frickin' kids? As we were riding down Pilot Knob their were 2 kids just playing next to the highway with no parents in sight. I don't even know where these kids lived because we were surrounded by fields. "Mommy and Daddy are just sitting on our fat asses watching Judge Judy, how about you kid play in traffic?". WTF? Put a frickin' leash on your kids if you're not going to take the responsibility to watch them. Maybe someone should come up an Invisible Fencing for kids? That would be entertaining to watch. Put a few candy bars on the sidewalk and watch the kids go into convulsions on the ground trying to get the delicious free candy. Whatever...basically if you have kids, watch them.

MikeyB OUT!

Grillin' Time

Oh damn, it's going to beautiful outside today! Time to break out the Weber grill, head over to Von Hansons for some meat products and invite some friends over for a few beers. The Minnesota weather has been very generous this spring. Usually we just get stuck in a 4 week slump of rainy, cloudy 50* degree weather.

Link
Weber Grills

Sorry, can't write much, I have to run to a meeting.
Later
Mike

American Flyers

The guys came over to my place for biking / movie night. We froze our nuts off biking and only did 4 miles. James was having some issues mooning people on the road, namely Pete & I.

Last nights feature presentation was American Flyers. A classic 1985 movie staring Kevin Costner before his Dances With Wolves days. Marcus Sommers (Kevin Costner) is a former Olympic cycling star & also a doctor. He finds out he has a cerebral tumor which he decides to not tell his family about. He convinces his brother David (David Marshall Grant) to go out west with him to compete in a cycling race called Hell Of The West, a grueling 3 stage race that brings you through the mountains of Colorado. In the middle of the race David finds out that Marcus is sick. I don't want to give away the plot so you will have to see it for yourself. The movie also stars Rae Dawn Chong (Commando) as Marcus's girlfriend, Alexandra Paul (Bay Watch) as David's love interest, and Luca Bercovici as Muzzin who is Marcus's teammate now rival & who I think is Ted Danson's long lost brother.

Best line from the movie, "You can't be sick Marcus. You have a mustache and everything."

Personally I have always liked this movie and I would have to give it 3 snorks. It is worth seeing but you have to remember it's an 80's movie and it was the shit back in da day.

Weekend in Review

mmm...mmm...good. I just got done eating a delicious taco salad from the cafeteria here at work. Time to write about the weekend.

Friday - Aimee's mom (Cindi) was scheduled to have a Hysterectomy at 7am. We left our place at 5:15am and followed Jason to the hospital in St.Lous Park. We got to say hi to Cindi just before she went into surgery. After that is was a waiting game. We sat in the front lounge area for a while and I caught up on a few winks of sleep. We later went to the cafeteria to hang out waiting for our little buzzer to go off letting us know Cindi was out of surgery.

The surgery was suppose to last from 7am-11am then a 2 hour recovery time. After a consultation with the Doctor and finding out that the surgery was a complete success we headed back down to the cafeteria for some lunch. The food was actually pretty good. I had a grill chicken sandwich and some onion rings. mmm..onion rings! Finally our buzzer went off again which meant we can go se Cindi in her room. She was pretty tired from the anesthesia and only getting a couple hours of sleep the night before. She had to stay awake to let the anesthesia work it's way out of the body.

We left the hospital around 5:30pm. Aimee went back that night to stay with Cindi overnight. I don't think Aimee got much sleep because the nurse could not find a reclining chair for Aimee to sleep in. But the good news is Cindi is doing really good and should be out of the hospital soon.

Saturday - I woke up around 8am and I figured Aimee would call me to let me know when she was coming back. It was still early so I decided to take a 15 mile bike ride down to Farmington and back. I brought my cell phone just incase Aimee called. I get back home and still haven't heard from Aimee. I went over to Target to get some household items, still no call from Aimee. Finally noon rolls around and there is a call. She tells me that Jason and Suzie are up at the hospital and they are all going down to get some lunch. That's coo', I'll just run to Chipotle for a tasty burrito bol. Aimee gets home around 3pm and heads for bed at 5:30pm 'ish.

I ran into James when I was heading over to Target and he mentioned that he was going to have his lawn ferry, sorry I mean soccer team over for a party that night. I thought what the hell, I might as well go because Aimee is out for the night and I have nothing to do. I get over there and they are just finishing up some bocce' ball action. Then James comes up this this great idea of playing a ping-pong drinking game which he saw at the last party we were at. There is one problem, James doesn't own a ping-pong table. With how ingenious James is, he grabs both trash cans and puts a board over each can. The point of the game is to throw the ping-pong ball into your opponents cup and then if you make it, they have to slam that cup. This super game lasts about 1 hour when we finally realize how ghey it is. Finally we move onto a real drinking game that is much more fun, speed quarters! Yay, I'm not bad and this game! We used the same garbage cans and put a wooden door that James had sitting in his garage on top of the cans. This worked awesome for large crowds! I was doing pretty damn good until Cliff showed up. Cliff is the master of all games that involve quarters. My problem? He is standing to the right of me which means I lose a lot!

After some drinking here comes another ingenious idea, lets move James's' shed. 8 drunk guys moving a shed in the middle of the dark. This could turn out to be Darwinism at it's best. We all tried lifting the shed but to no avail. Next it was time to roll it. Yeah you heard me, roll it. Surprisingly rolling the shed onto the roof and around worked. Everyone left with all their appendages intact. BTW James ran out of beer at 9pm which he should be ashamed of. Luckily I had a 8 gallon keg of Coors Light and my place.

Sunday - We went to the Hospital to visit Cindi and she appeared to be doing well or so we thought. It turns out she now has a staph infection. She is now receiving antibiotics for the infection. Hopefully she will be released on Wednesday.

After our visit Aimee and I went for a bike ride to Suzie and Jason's so they can test out their new Burley trailer they bought for Laynie. We rode down to a park in Farmington for Laynie to play in the swing. After 20 minutes or so the sunlight was starting to dim and Aimee and I had another 10 miles to go. We started on hwy 50 and headed north on Cedar to get home. We got home just as the sun was below the horizon and ended up cycling 18 miles... and we lived happily ever after.

The End.
-MikeyB

Bikey Part Cinco

Pete and I went out for a ride last evening before the storms were to hit (which they didn't). We decided to do a Tour de Bloomington. We started out at Pete's apartment and headed down to the river bottoms to see how wet they were. Well...they were about 6-9 feet under water. The Minnesota river was still running high because of the extra snow melt up north and the spring rains. By the time we will be able to bike down there the bugs will be out in full swing and the vegetation will be overgrown.

We left the river and continued our ride down Old Shakopee rd down to hwy 100 & headed north. I totally forgot the hills heading up 100, it was a leg burner. Once we got up to the hwy 494 frontage rd we stopped at the Super America for a piss break. I was starting to get a little worn out so I bought a few PowerBars (because I would have felt like an asshole charging 1 powerbar to my check card) and when I got to the register, mind you I was wearing a bike helmet, camelback & biking shorts, the casher asked me if I had any gas? I was just thinking...uuuuhhhduuuuhhh. MORON!! I'm not wearing this helmet for my health!

We started on the home stretch back to Pete's when we get to Lyndale and I thought to myself, "mmmm...sliders". Time for a detour! We started to crave the unthinkable, yes White Castle! Off we go down Lyndale for some dinner. 7 cheese sliders later we are off. As we our on our way back the sun was just about down and we were on the side walk ready to cross a street. Pete was in front of me and there was a green light & walk signal too when this 90's something Cutlass pulls up and appears to have looked both ways and sees us. Nope, Pete starts to go and so does the guy in the Cutlass. He hits Pete with the drivers side bumper of the car and the guy didn't even notice until Pete starts to yell at him and he looks in his rearview mirror. The guy turns around to make sure Pete was ok and to make sure he doesn't flee the scene of an accident. Pete ends up with a nice cut across his shin with bruises and his bike appeared to be fine. The guy kept on complaining about those darn right turns on red. Dude it's just a red light, that's like stopping at a stop sign. You look left, you look right and left again, then go! Dumb ass!! Luckly we were only a few miles from Pete's so he sucked it up and finished the ride.

Bikey Stats
Moving Time: 1:52:00
Distance: 33km(20.5mi)
Moving Speed: 17.7km/h(11.0mph) avg. - 45.38km/h (28.2mph) max.
Elevation Gain: +391m(+1,281ft)/-387m(-1,271ft)
Max Grade: 23.9°
Temperature: 16.1°C(61°F)
Wind Speed: SE 11.5knots(13.2mph) avg. - SE 13knots(15mph) max.

CDs For Sale!!

I have a lot of 1,000+ CDs for sale!!

$3,000 OBO

LINK

Bikey Part Quatre

Excellent...another bikey post. Last night was cheesy movie night but before the movie we wanted to do some biking. In attendance was Pete aka 'T-Bone', Eric aka 'James', Kris aka 'Crank', Corey aka 'Cordog' and Me...I guess aka 'MikeyB'. I had a nice and easy 15 mile ride planned through 'new' Farmington taking hwy 46 to hwy 31 south to hwy 50 and back up Cedar to my place. T-bone felt that it wasn't enough for his thirst of bikey so I planned a new route that would take us down hwy 46 to hwy 3 south into 'old' Farmington and then west on hwy 50 and back up Cedar, it was roughly 20 miles. T-bone agreed to the new route and off we go.

We get on hwy 46, also known as 160th st., and we are dragging some major ass. We are going right into the wind which is howling out of the southeast at 15mph. We finally get to the corner of hwy 46 & 3 and we are thinking maybe this isn't the best idea. But we pulled up our skirts and kept on truckin'. We were down about 2 miles on hwy 3 and what do we see? Yes a big damn hill, ugh! We kept a good pace up the hill which felt like an eternity to get up. Poor Crank is about a mile back, so we stopped atop the hill to wait for him. At this point we were at roughly 8 miles total. What is the one good thing about getting to the top of a hill? You get to go down! Oh YEEEAAHH!!! Finally a break in the action so T-Bone took out his camera for some action pictures.

We finally rolled into Farmington next to the DQ to rest and wait for Crank. I wanted to run into DQ and get a small Oreo Blizzard so bad but I held back my cravings for the delicious ice cream treat because we had another 10 miles to go. Now we are starting to head west which means the wind is at our backs finally! We were on hwy 50 cruising at a 18-20mph pace. Nothing but the smell of fresh manure, I thought I was at the state fair.

We cruised to Cedar (hwy 77) and all is good. Kris, I mean Crank's legs started to cramp up but other than that everyone was doing well. The last 5 miles was a cake walk. We had one small hill to climb at the corner of Cedar & Dodd rd by the Cub Foods. We started hauling ass down that hill and I think I hit 30mph at that point. T-Bone & James were about a mile ahead of us. They were talking girl talk and forgot where they were. We got back to my place just as the sun was going down. A perfect ride for a perfect day.

Ride Stats:
Moving Time: 1:32:07 - 4:39 pace
Distance: 32km (20 Miles)
Moving Speed: 12.9mph avg. 31.7mph max.
Elevation Gain: +775 / -794
Temperature: 59.5°F avg. - 66.2°F high
Wind Speed: ESE 9.0 avg. - ESE 12.7 max


We watched 'Over The Top' after our bike ride. Lincoln Hawk (Sylvester Stallone), as a truck driving dead beat dad arm wrestler that wants to be apart of his dorky gay acting sons life played by David Mendenhall (which his career went nowhere after this film). If you are a guy this movie is a must see and a classic.

Peace out - I drive truck, break arms, and arm wrestle. It's what I love to do, it's what I do best.
-MikeyB

Weekend in Review

Friday - Chris from Texas came up for the weekend so the guys wanted to head over to Old Chicago in Eagan that night for some drinks (tasty Shiner Bock!). Pete, Anne (who was up for the weekend), Eric, Kris, Andy, Corey, Mel, Aimee & I showed up for the drinking action. A few of Chris' friends were there and they were going to head over to their place to play some ping pong drinking game. Since they only lived a couple blocks away I figured what the hell, let’s go. We get there and there is a sheet of plywood on top of two saw horses with a bunch of cups each filled half way with beer. The object of the game is to throw the ping pong ball into your opponents’ cup. If you make it into their cup they have to 'slam' the beer. The excitement was too much for Aimee and me so we split after watching it for 20 minutes.

Saturday - Since Anne was in town we wanted to take a nice leisurely bike ride around the lakes (Harriet, Calhoun). In attendance for this ride was Kris, Mary, Pete, Anne, Eric, Aimee & I. It was a beautiful day temperature wise but Mother Nature would not let that sun peak through the clouds. We ended up taking a lunch break at Punch Pizza. A pizza cooked at 800* degrees in a wood fire oven for 90 seconds! It was very tasty but not very filling. We were suppose to call Andy so he could stop over and eat lunch with us but we all forgot to call him until we had eaten half of our pizzas. Sorry Andy!

Bike Ride Stats
Total Time (h:m:s) 1:13:22 8:34 pace
Moving Time (h:m:s) 1:10:44 5:48 pace
Distance (mi ) 12.19
Moving Speed (mph) 10.3 avg. 25.7 max.
Elevation Gain (ft) +802 / -821
(click on pic to enlarge)


Sunday - Easter, yippee! (who cares). The most boring holiday ever! We were going to have a family Easter at Jason & Suzie's house but little Laynie was not feeling good for the past few days so to ensure no one else got sick we all thought it would be a good idea to call it off. So...I decided I wanted to go to the REI scratch & dent sale at noon. I always hear about the good deals so Aimee & I went to check it out. It appears you need to get to this sale 2 hours before they open the doors because by the time we got there the line was a couple hundred people deep. They only allow so many people into the room and there is a 5 item limit. We stood in line for about 40 minutes and by the time we go into the room most of the hard goods were gone so we had to settle for some clothing. I ended up with a North Face fleece jacket that appeared to be worn once and still had the tags on it for 60% off.

After our REI experiance we wanted to see how Laynie was doing so we stopped by Jason & Suzie's. We gave Laynie her Easter gifts and chatted for a while. Suzie's Mom, Dad & Aunt showed up while we were their also to drop off their gifts too.

Today is Movie Monday so the guys are going to come over to my place and we will be biking up to Farmington and back. Then we will be ordering some pizza, drink some beer and make fun of the movie 'Over The Top'; I drive truck, break arms, and arm wrestle. It's what I love to do, it's what I do best.

Bye Bye Easter Bunny.
MikeyB

Random Picture

Artist Mark Ryden

Computer Down

My home computer took a dump a few days ago so I may not be updating my blog as much as I would like for the next few weeks. In the meantime feel free to check out Pete's forum.

Random Picture

I needed to add some color to the blog. Enjoy this REI wallpaper.

Bikey Part Drei

On Saturday Pete, Kris & I met at Pete's to take the light rail from the Mall of America to downtown Minneapolis for some urban bike riding. We got off in the middle of MPLS and rode around for a while up and down the one way streets. The one thing that sucked was all the stop & go traffic because of the stop lights. We ended up at Brits Pub off of Nicollet for a Black & Tan and some lunch. After a delicious lunch we headed towards the river and biked along the river all the way down to 46th street. In total we biked 23 miles that day.

We had so much fun on Saturday we decided to do it again yesterday. Aimee & I loaded up the bikes and headed off to Pete's again Sunday morning to meet up with Kris. Kris was feeling a little sore so he had to borrow Mary's Gel seat for his butt, what a wuss. We did the MPLS streets again and then headed across the river to the U of M again for lunch at Sally's Saloon. After a tall Blue Moon and some dessert from the Skittles, Mike & Ikes, Reeses Pieces quarter vending machine we were off once again to 46th street but we decided to stay on the east side of the river. The east side seemed to be a little easier but not as good of a view. We ended up doing 18 miles so in total 40+ miles of biking for the weekend. For Pete & I, we have done 60+ miles in the past 4 days. I would love to post some picture but I was a dumbass and forgot my camera…again.

Busy Summer

Ugh...it's going to be a busy start of the summer. All kinds of stuff going on from fishing opener, some Jeepin' to a week in June fishing at Pelican Lake. May & June are pretty well booked for the weekends. I'm also planning a weekend in Aug. for the guys to go down to Milwaukee to catch a Brewers game. Mmm...tailgating, brats, burgers, beer, yummy!! It will be similar to our Hockey weekend (which we shamelessly did not do this year). I also want to go to some Twins games this year since the tickets are cheap and it's always a good time even though the Twinkies play in the inflatable toilet called the Metrodome.

-MikeyB

Bikey Part Deux!

Pete, Andy R. and I went for a longer mountain bike ride tonight. Kris was going to come but he got stuck in traffic on the other side of the metro. Andy stuck it out with us for 7 miles and then headed back while Pete and I ended up going 17.45 miles total. For the 2nd ride of the season it really wasn't that bad. I did realize that I need a different seat because my butt is a little sore. I also need to take my bike in to have a tune up done to it. It sometimes doesn't like to shift into gear.

I think we are planning something for Saturday morning and taking the train to downtown Minneapolis. It should be pretty dead downtown since it's not a weekday.

…Other than that nothing much going on.

Later Gator
-MikeyB

Bikey

It was a beautiful sunny 55* day so we decided to go for the 1st mountain bike ride of the season. In attendance: Pete, Andy, Kris, Eric, Aimee & myself. We tooled around on the roads of Apple Valley because the trails are still too wet and muddy. We biked for 5 miles and then stopped at Old Chicago for good eats & a beer. Kris (when no one was looking) tried to jump a curb in the Old Chicago parking lot and tumbled into a new black Jeep Liberty leaving behind a HUGE dent in the rear by the taillight. We just thought he was kidding for a couple minutes until we looked at the Liberty and sure enough the monster dent was there. We basically pretended we didn't see anything and when inside for some eats. So if you see someone driving a new black liberty around the south metro area with a large dent next to the passenger taillight, Kris did it!!

I Will Survive!!

YAY!! I survived the lay-offs at corp.

Random Picture

Enjoying a Silver Bullet in Vegas with Dad & Jim