[Update: I forgot to attribute where I heard about the BCHD pages and news report. I read about them on Braden's Corner of the Net. My apologies, Braden. It was late and I was brain-fried from a long day.]

Dear Baltimore City Health Department and associated commissars,

I was recently pointed to your page about transfat and your PDF document about enforcement of the transfat ban. I was also made aware of this news article about the first citations for violations of the transfat ban.

I don’t live in Baltimore. But I am now determined to visit your city. Your beleaguered city, besieged by small, grasping little tyrants. I am going to bring with me some food with the highest transfat content I can find. And I am going to eat it right outside of the Baltimore City Health Department. Yes, I will commit a subversive act by eating a Twinkie or a Ho-Ho. Or maybe both!

And then I will flip you all the bird.

And I say this as a person who is on a diet and working out like mad to lose weight… and doing it successfully. But the idea that little tin-pot dictators in a frackin’ two-bit city government are taking it upon themselves to control the ingredients in what people eat down to the 1/2 a gram level is beyond being a nanny-state. You people need to all be shown the door and go find yourselves some real jobs.

Sincerely… with middle finger extended,
Someone who doesn’t really give a rats @ss about your little transfat ban.

Well, since I got a flat on the trail bike and haven’t fixed it yet, today I took out the road bike. Other than 45 minutes about a month ago, I have not ridden on the roads in about 15 years. So I just rode around Natrona Heights and Tarentum on the residential streets. I had to get re-used to the height, the feel of the skinnier, smoother tires… and especially the toe clips. I don’t use anything when cycling on the rails-to-trails, so it took a bit of time to get the hang of getting in and out of those things when starting or stopping. I practiced it several times.

But rode up and down every residential street from Birdville in Natrona Heights to Corbet Street in Tarentum going north to south… and from the Brackenridge Heights Country Club and Burtner Road in the west to 8th Avenue in the east. 8th Avenue is all the farther I went down the hill towards the river. I had no desire to have to ride up Mile Lock Lane or Spring Hill Road… not yet, anyway. When last I rode the roads, I pedaled up Spring Hill all the time… and Mile Lock once or twice, then I wised up. So eventually I will get down to river and add the rest of Tarentum, Brackenridge and Natrona to my rides.

It was a beautiful day for a ride!

Duration: ~ 1 hour
Trail: Butler-Freeport Trail

Unfortunately, I got a flat tire on the trail today and I had no way of fixing it on the trail. I’m not much for carrying spare tubes and replacing them on the trail or road. My car was at the Monroe Road trailhead and I was stranded 8 miles up the trail at Keasey Road, past Marwood. I know several people in the area I could have called for a ride, but Corey P. from the Pittsburgh Ruby Brigade happened to walk by with his dog, Merlin and recognized me behind the sunglasses and the helmet. Unbeknownst to me, he lives nearby and he gave me a ride back down to my car, for which I am very grateful. I owe him a beer.

So I didn’t get my workout finished today. Everything I did do was mostly in Zone 4 with a bit in Zone 3. I guess I’ll finish out my points for the week on the indoor bike tomorrow morning and then see about getting the tube repaired on the mountain bike. Its a shame because this weekend looks to be a beautiful one for biking on the trails. Hm… maybe I’ll take the road bike out tomorrow morning.

Duration: 1 hour, 38 minutes
Bike: NordicTrack SL-710 (stationary recumbent)

I’ve been lax in posting my rides the last two weeks because I’ve been busy. But I’m getting around to it again. Here is today’s workout. As the goals for percentages in each heart zone keep shifting higher over time, the workouts continue to stay grueling (for my ability, at least). I just hope I keep gaining enough strength and endurance to keep up with the rate the workouts increase. I certainly am losing weight, though. I’ve finally found a method that’s working for me, thanks to Cycling Fusion / Global Ride.

The wild programmer (Scriptus exemplarus aspergerii) is generally a shy creature when in its natural habitat. While some deviant boisterous specimens do exist, they are the oddity rather than the rule.

He is content with spending his life staring at rectangular pieces of backlit canvas, and occasionally bashing on rectangular pieces of polished material. Come to think of it, most of his activities revolve around rectangles: the rectangular nutrient clumps he tends to favor eating, the rectangular primitive communication device he always carries around, the beige or black boxes he is so attached to, even organizing his workspace into cubes.

The programmer’s activity involves stringing together symbols in intricate patterns which they place on their canvases, obeying complicated self-imposed rules. They are inevitably proud of their symbols and compare them among each other to advance in the hierarchy. Some deem their symbols so valuable that they never show them to another, while others do the same for fear their symbols are not up to par.

Amongst themselves, they can quickly sense when someone is inferior to the standards they uphold, and most often attempt to enlighten less gifted peers; the same less gifted peers will often not take that kindly and, in a surprising twist, both consider the other group arrogant and come off as arrogant themselves.

When taken out of his natural habitat however, the programmer is utterly confused and sees the world around him as a great challenge. Anything that does not conform to the patterns clearly laid out in his symbols is deemed illogical and useless, which causes concern among humans (which is an entirely different species, despite the similarities). He will often try to improve various aspects of the world around him using the methods learned when dealing with symbols, and usually fail; however, his failure only gives him reason to point out that he actually acted correctly, and that outside influences (which are usually humans) are to blame for everything that goes wrong. This usually has the side effect of the same humans considering the programmer arrogant or stupid.

When dealing with programmers it is best to avoid upsetting them; however that may not prove an easy task, as their minds work very differently from those of other species. The best defense is to arm yourself with a modicum of information about symbols (you don’t have to understand them yourself) or even better, about specific symbols written by famous programmers. It’s enough to mention them to calm him down and make him go into a lot of detail on why those symbols are completely wrong and his are better. This is especially useful if you happen to remember symbols from a dialect that is opposed or otherwise dissonant to the programmer’s natural one (like C-SHARP [ˈsi.ˈʃaɾp] versus JAVA [ˈdʒavɐ]), although in some specimens it can also produce bouts of rage.

Also remember that due to his peculiar habits, programmers have a hard time reproducing and as such they are considered an endangered species. Efforts to instigate them to reproduce (much like in the case of giant pandas, Ailuropoda melanoleuca) have been mostly met with failure. So try to be kind to them, as they are generally docile and not a danger unless provoked by displays of misplaced affection or (what they would deem as) illogical thinking.

Programmers are part of our heritage and we should do our best to preserve this wondrous species for future generations.

Today was a “recovery ride” concentrating on lower heart zones and getting closer to the desired percentage of time in each zone. I’m finding it impossible to get the right amount of HZ 1 time when I’m riding outdoors.

Duration: 47 minutes

This was a road ride… my first in years. Can you tell? After many years of rails-to-trails riding, with their low grades, my hill-climbing ability leaves a lot to be desired. I guess I know what I’ll be working on. Once a week road ride, twice a week trail rides and twice a week indoor rides for a while… then I’ll add another road ride.

To those who aided, planned and committed the attacks nine years ago, and to those who may tacitly agree with or are silently satisfied by them, regardless of your intentions or motives: you have only created an event that I will not forget. It has only deepened my faith and strengthened my resolve and made me confirm the following… I will not submit.

2010/09/07 Workout
Distance 17.5 miles
Duration: 1 hour, 22 minutes

2010/09/08 Workout
Distance 17 miles
Duration: 1 hour

My watch stopped recording for 10 minutes near the beginning of the workout. That’s why the graph is only 1 hour and 15 minutes long and its why there’s that long, very straight line in the graph in the first 10 minutes. I was in heart zone 1 for the whole 10 minute period that doesn’t appear on the graph.

Rode outside with the Global Ride/Cycling Fusion crew. It was supposed to be an easy ride today and it was mostly… except for two hills that briefly shot me up to heart zone 5.