Chente and a Bike Race

This past holiday weekend was front loaded! Big day on Saturday, as I finally got to see Vicente Fernandez live in Concert. I totally dig the mariachi scene and if you are into that sort of thing - Vicente (Chente) is the man!

his son, Vicente Jr., opened the show promptly at 8PM and sang with the Mariachi for about half an hour. Then Vicente came on stage and lit it up for nearly three hours of unbelievable singing.

It was a real treat for my wife, and this gringo!

A couple of my favorites that he sang and that I could find online:

Lyrics to Mujeres Divinas (a song about love, women, heartbreak, and ther realization that some of the best moments in life have been spent at the side of a woman):

Hablando de mujeres y traiciones
se fueron consumiendo las botellas
pidieron que cantara mis canciones
y yo cante unas dos en contra de ellas

De pronto que se acerca un caballero
su pelo ya pintaba algunas canas
me dijo le suplico companero
que no hable en mi presencia de las damas

Le dije que nosotros simplemente
hablamos de lo mal que nos pagaron

que si alquien opinaba diferente
sería porque jamas lo traicionaron(x2)

Me dijo yo soy uno de los seres
que mas a soportado los fracasos
y siempre me dejaron las mujeres
llorando y con el alma hecha pedazos
Mas nunca les reprocho mis heridas
se tiene que sufrir cuando se ama

las horas mas hermosas de mi vida
las he pasado al lado de una dama

pudieramos morir en las cantinas
y nunca lograriamos olvidarlas

mujeres o mujeres tan divinas
no queda otro camino que adorarlas(x2)





Lyrics to "mi viejo" (kind of a sad song about fathers/sons, in a way - really sad, but you need that every once in awhile, eh?)

Es un buen tipo mi viejo
que anda solo y esperando
tiene la tristeza larga
de tanto venir andando

Yo lo miro desde lejos
pero somos tan distintos
es que crecio con el siglo
con tranvia y vino tinto....

Viejo mi querido viejo
ahora ya caminas lento
como perdonando el viento
yo soy tu sangre mi viejo
soy tu silencio y tu tiempo.....

El tiene los ojos buenos
y una figura pesada
la edad se le vino encima
sin carnaval, ni comparsa

Yo tengo los anos nuevos
y mi padre los anos viejos
el dolor lo lleva dentro
y tiene historia sin tiempo

Viejo, mi querido viejo
ahora ya caminas lento
como perdonando al viento
yo soy tu sangre mi viejo
soy tu silencio y tu tiempo

Yo soy tu sangre mi viejo.......




Lyrics to "Para Siempre" (another song about love -kind of a sappy one! ;-) )

Vale mas, un buen amor
Que mil costales de oro
Vale mas, un buen amor
Por eso eres mi tesoro
Valgo mucho, junto a ti
Y soy muy feliz contigo
Vales mucho, para mi
Con el corazón te digo
Olvidemos, el pasado
Y lo que diga la gente
La verdad es, que te amo
Y me amas, Para siempre
Olvidemos, el pasado
Y vivamos, el presente
Lo que importa es
Que me amas,
y te amo, para siempre
Vale mucho, un gran amor
Que en el perdón a crecido
Hoy se que el llanto sirvió
Para reforzar el nido
Olvidemos el pasado
Y lo que diga la gente
Lo que importa es que te amo
Y me amas, para siempre
Olvidemos el pasado
Y vivamos el presente
Lo que importa es que me amas
Y te amo, para siempre

My wife totally loves this novela - in which Vicente Fernandez sings the theme song "Para Siempre"

http://www.esmas.com/fuegoenlasangre/

You know you want to check out that Novela link - c'mon, you can't resist, can you!? :-)

Oh yeah, I did a bike race in the morning, too - state TT up in Palmdale - I went as hard as I could, and wound up nearly dead last in the M35-39 category. I've got my work cut out for me next year, eh!? ;-)

More details about my ride (and others experiences) here.

With some solid work, and a bit of luck, I might be able to move up from 20th to 19th in the results! LOL!

Seriously, though, I'm glad I went up there and gave it a go - sometimes you just have to run what you brung! This coming weekend is the state crit in Dana Point, so we'll see how things turn out for that deal.

HED Interview

Cool Steve Hed interview over on Road magazine's site that I just ran across:



http://roadmagazine.net/road_home/road/interviews/hed08/hed08.html

Der Kinder/Stream of Consciousness

I spent a bit of time in Germany last summer:

and I want to convince myself that I remember that "Der Kinder" in German is something like: "the children"...

I'm not totally sure why "Der Kinder" popped into my head when I received a semi-spam related email from Amazon today about their "Kindle" product - but I'll pull no punches and admit that "Der Kinder" did.

Cool slowmo of a Kindle being dropped from two and a half feet (oooh, that sounds so much lower than 30 whole inches!!!! ;-) ) :

The concept of reading intrigues me - I'm a conceptual kind of guy - and don't get me wrong - I absolutely love the written word, especially when there is thought behind it! Drivel like this blog (which isn't a great example of the written word!) serves multiple purposes for me, personally - in all honesty, I started doing this thing in order to force me to write. I need all the practice I can get!

Anyway, I like the concept of reading, and unfortunately, I have this 25 mile commute to where I work. So, I've found a way to add some "reading" into my day: I listen to audiobooks on the drive into work. I typically listen to non-fiction, but this past week, I purchased and listened to "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy (a recommendation from my Coach - not the one you're probaby thinking of - is that a bad thing, having multiple "coaches"??). This is the same author that wrote "No Country for Old Men" - saw that movie BTW, and thought it was pretty brutal, but totally dug it.

Having listened to the unabridged reading of "The Road", I can't wait to listen to the reading of his original prose in "No Country...". This guy has an unbelievable way with the written word.

I can't really describe it - it's just unreal. Seriously, I can remember driving into work and listening to his sensory laden descriptions of the post-apocalyptic American landscape and asking myself "did I just hear what I thought I heard" - unreal. And I learned some new words along the way - well, maybe didn't learn, but "heard" and became curious about some words. I even worked one or two into a conversation at work - amazing how I was able to work "sepulcher" in a business meeting at a golf company! ;-)

Anyway, great stuff by Mr. McCarthy - interesting plot, too - a real thinker/contemplater. If you are into superficial entertainment, though, this one might not be so good for you. At face value, it's a story about a father and a son who go for a walk to the ocean. Nothing more.

Anyway, the Kindle is intriguing to me, in that it solves a book storage problem for me. I've got a lot of books around here, and I'm running out of space in my double-wide:

;-)

peace,

kraig

Hindsight...

..is 20/20.

Well, I planned to get a couple of hard efforts in last weekend to put the final touches on my preparation for the Masters Road Champs here in Socal this coming Saturday.

It all started probably 6 years ago, maybe...

That's when I got tired of getting my ass handed to me in the Pro 1,2 races - and I thought the only way I wouldn't get my ass handed to me was to recreate the mega hours on the bike I had done in the past. I didn't want to do that again...

So, that's when I swallowed the pride and took a downgrade from a cat 1 to a cat 3. I still wanted to ride my bike a bit, but didn't want to grovel and suffer and ultimately get destroyed by the pros on a weekly basis.

Well, this past weekend, that decision to take the downgrade threw a bit of a spanner in the works during the Cat 3 Barrio Logan Crit.

Two laps to go, and I was sitting probably third wheel, when a rider from the UC cyclery/?? flooring team who was on the front (or maybe second wheel), and by himself - decided he wanted to get acquainted with the pavement for no particular reason...

I had nowhere to go and t-boned him at 45kph - went over the bars and landed hard on my right elbow/hip - and, as we all know, the elbow bone is connected to the shoulder bone. I couldn't really move my arm/shoulder so I made a trip to the ER. ER doc took some x-rays, and diagnosed an AC separation. Yeah, that diagnosis didn't turn out to be correct - my regular doc today correctly diagnosed it as a rotator cuff injury, and it seems as if it is healing pretty well. I basically immobilized the area for 60 hours, loaded up on ibuprofen, and iced the heck out of it.

I was pretty upset when it happened, since there was no reason for this crash - I sure hope that the rolled tire I saw on this rider's bike in the aftermath wasn't the cause (fwiw, there were several other crashes in that race, and I considered stopping mid-race...) - and the result of this crash put my near term goal of the masters road champs in jeopardy. I'm feeling a bit more positive now, though.

It has been a bit of an emotional roller coaster for me the past few days. I've gone from anger to denial ("I'm not hurt - I'll be fine in a day or so"), to resignation, and back to the possibility of racing this weekend...

I pedaled on the trainer today, and to my surprise, once I got the blood flowing in the ol' shoulder area, it seemed to loosen up a bit. I tried to make some power and things seemed to get better as time progressed.

I'll give it a go tomorrow outside up couser to see where the power is, and how the shoulder feels while working the bars out of the saddle - but the jarring from real roads might make it a short one... Smooth, slow movements are OK, the quick, or unexpected motions are not so good.

As I type this, and with a bit more perspective and positive vibes - it's just bike racing, and healing should be my first concern. That's easy to say, huh?!

Hindsight is 20/20 and I shouldn't have done that crit - the competitor inside got the better of me - but here I am, not 100% healthy... There's only one thing I can do...

And that's to keep moving forward!

Stripped Down - Fill the Right

Well, I got a swift kick in the rear a week or so ago by a BTR/kdublog reader asking what's up with the whole stripped down series... That wasn't the first time I'd heard that! :-)

I finally got the next installment done -> Fill!

Heres the first installment in the series:

http://www.biketechreview.com/performance/stripped_down.htm

and the latest:

http://www.biketechreview.com/performance/stripped_down_3.htm

Any Golfers Out There?

I've been doing the sporting good product thing for a little over a decade now (a couple years in the bike biz, and the rest where I currently am in the golf biz), and I still get pumped when the team I am on launches a new product:

http://www.taylormadegolf.com/campaigns/burnerbloodline/content/microsite/

When new product ships, it's a crazy mix of nerves and pride for the team - it's an amazing process to be involved in - to watch an idea go from thin air, to a 2-d sketch, to a 3-d model to several iterations of prototypes... There are a lot of folks involved along the way, and that is pretty cool.

I don't think I step away from the process enough to really appreciate what goes on, sometimes. A golf club seems so simple, but the projects rarely are! Those challenges along the way, with the pressure of being a bit under the gun, are where it's at for me.

Back to work, though - we gotta come up with the next product that will make the Tour Burner obsolete in 18 months! ;-)