What not to do while going down...

Wow, that was a weird title...no homo! lol One thing you should not do when taking a decent is THINK TWICE! Don't panic or it could end in a FAILBLOG moment!

Off to Mission Trails...

Today is a Saturday.  Today is road bike day.  Today is Wally's bike shop ride day. Today Sergio (Old Navy Douche) did not wake up on time.  Today I was left waiting for a ride. Today I missed out on a morning ride. lol    Oh well a little over dramatic ain't I.  Well anyways, day started off with me wanting to go to the weekly shop ride and we missed out.  Doesn't matter cause we alway can figure something out to get my athletic fix.  I pulled out the iPhone and started texting away. Gathered the group and off we went to Mission Trails.  Mission trails is a man made bike trail system that was made in Mission Texas that has some of the nicest and technical paths you can find south of San Antonio.

 80 degrees, cloudy with a nice breeze!  Does not get any better than that!  It was the first time Sergio and his brother had come out to the trails and they found out a different side of the valley that they had never had the pleasure of riding through.  With short climbs and fast descents, this made for some serious fun.  I decided to take my Schwinn out, which has clipless pedals.  Mistake numero uno!  First of all I am not really that great with clips to begin with and I decided to use them at a place where I knew was gonna be difficult and there was going to be point where I needed to get of the pedals quick so not to fall.

 But again the bug bit me, the ol indestructible risk taker tried to go as fast as he could, taking jumps off every little humps, turning corners like if I was glued to the ground!  I gained some confidence. I felt that it was easy and that if the time came to bail my bike I would easily just get off....

Guess who was wrong....  We went down a section call Psychopath, one of the hardest sections on the trails with dangerous curves traveling right next to the canal. This trail system is covered in short cactus on each side of the path, I guess to add a little more wood to the fire. On one of the ups, I pushed hard thinking I could power it through and WAMMM! my handle bar hit the edge of a tree and I fell on my side because I could not unclip to gain my balance!   Amazingly I fell short of a cactus bed and just got a hand full of splinters.

Off we went again and did I learn...noooo!  I regained some confidence and started hammering away through Poo Forest, which lives up to it's name cause it smells great!  Flew through the Poo and when to another section call EL GATO.  This part is one of the fastest part of the course.  On one crazy decent with trees to the left and right my tire got caught on the branch and immediately I flew straight over my handle bars and landed right on my face and slid down to a immediate stop.  That was one of the worst falls I have had, I have fallen on stop lights from not unclipping but to fly off my bike is a totally different pain.  As I hit the floor all I saw was a white flash and then a whole bunch of white dots flying all over the place... I literally saw stars like Wile E Coyote! Luckily, as bad as that wipe-out was, all I got was a little scrape on my cheek and a small cut on my knee.  Thats when we decided we would call it quits.  You got to know when to fold them.  Survived to ride another day.

Lesson of the day....get a better helmet. lol!

The Twinkie diet, really..really?...

I would not go about it this way but it positively shows that counting calories WILL make you lose weight. Of course this doctor is not going about it the healthiest way but if you cut your caloric intake you will shed the pounds.  This was one of the main factors of my weight loss when I was just starting out.  Going from 319 down to 205 is not all about exercise, you have to eat well too!

GRAND SLAM! Little Eric of 1990

My glory days as a little league all-star! I could have been in the pros!

Swing a bat!

We had nothing to do, we missed a movie cause it was too late and we did not want to head home yet so I got the urge to get out there and swing a bat. It's awesome cheap fun and well you can do it by going out to the Zone for like a buck fifty.

Hey if your gonna go out and do it, go all the way! lol  I'm one to accept challenges.... I mean I'm one to usually setup challenges! We all did the verrrry fast pitch baseball cage.  I have not swung a bat in a while and some how my natural athletic instincts kicked in and I was hitting line drives!!! Not!!! but at least I was making contact. 9 out of 20 isn't that bad, right?

Adrian, Arlene and Chris took their swings too and we all did pretty good. Took us back to our little league days...  I remember I was an all-star once.... I'm serious, I got video!

Crazy things we do when we are out cycling.

A triathlete training for.... well just being stupid. lol

Here we go again...

Seems like every time I do something new, we do it over and over again.  For the past couple of months I have really been training hard nearly everyday on my road bike.  Waking up around 4:30 in the morning to get ready to do some hardcore interval training with my friends Mike, Sergio, and Billy "Breakaway" Flores has become a routine.  It has become not like a fun ride but just a "got to get up and get these miles done" kinda thing. 

Getting back on my mountain bike make me feel like I can breath again. A break from the monotonous routine.  New style of riding, no worries of traffic or lights, actually riding during the day!  

Today I called up all the buddies to go on our same backroad trek that we did yesterday.  Good to have fun people around me that enjoy getting out there like me.  Sure enough everyone showed up and out we went.  Billy, Cindy, Adrian and Arlene joined in the adventure.  As aways Billy and I turn it into a competition and start racing on our bikes.  We are so used to using our road bikes, which are tons faster, that we soon realize that gearing is definatly the reason why we go fast.  We were spinning like crazy going like 150 rpm on the crank!  It's exhausting... This is a crazy workout!  Fun Fun Fun! 

I tired billy out so bad that he nearly pissed his shorts. haha

We made it back right before sundown and called it a day.

Just keep on riding!

An awesome commercial... I'm on my bike!

To all the haters that think he doped! lol.  Well the message behind it is awesome....

Went back road biking...

Got home today to get a call from my cousin Adrian.  He thinks I'm the expert at fixing things so he brought his mountain bike so I could check why his bike was clicking.  Put it up on the bike rack, grabbed myself a phillips screwdriver and tinkered away....  hahah  somehow I fixed it.  I've always been good at fixing things, my motto is if it was put together by someone before, why cant I do it!  Well being all excited that his bike was fixed I felt the need to pull out the old Schwinn and go for a quick ride. Quickly it turned from a cruise down the street to a full out "lets go off roading!" ride. 

 I love finding new paths that I have never taken and today was no exception. I wanted to get lost.  It's fun having the fear of not knowing where you are at, and if something happens how the hell are you gonna get out of it! 

All in all it was a great time with my bike out in the dirt fields. Calories burned. Success!

Ok so this is gonna take work....

I'm gonna try and blog what has happened over the past year till today so I can catch up to where I am at right now. It's gonna take a while but it still is awesome to revisit how far I have come..  Good thing is that ever since I got my camera phone I am one  to take a snap shot of everything that I do!

Always wanted to start a blog...

I have been thinking about starting one of these blogs, or diary, or what ever this is so that I can see how far I have come.  Let me get started.  This blog is going to be about my health, my obsession for cycling and what I am doing to get better at what I have come to love... I started cycling because one year ago I decided that I needed to lose weight.  I had completely let myself go. I got to the point that it completely affected my job.

 I used to install car audio in my store and in order to do some of the installs, it required me to bend down to remove doors.  My knees could not handle my weight, I could not breath crouched down and it was a pain to get back up.  I did not fit and would constantly look to others to help me do the things that could not do.  I felt horrible.  I never realized I had gotten that big, I guess you only see what you want to see.  I don't know why it happened... why did I allow myself to do that?  I finally took the initiative to do something about it.  My first thought was to go to the gym.  boring!  Then I tried to get into running... Ouch!  Then I hurt my back from trying hard.... WOW!   I thought it would be impossible...  Then one day I thought why don't I just ride a bike.  I read online that it is the best exercise for people with bad backs.  It is a good cardio workout and it was something my 319 lb self could do.

 I went to Bicycle World to get me my bike!   A brand spankin new Trek 7.3FX.  My work horse for the next 4 months. I rode that bike, and it felt good.  My back did not hurt, I put on a good sweat and it was fun.  I'll continue this later... got to get outside this house for a bit.