Zany for Zappos, Open Water doggy paddle, Inception, Trek Trucking, Spent
Last week I had my first ordering experience with Zappos. I had heard many positives about Zappos from other people but never visited the site myself. I was hunting for a pair of Adidas Originals Firebird track pants. I was blown away when I saw they sell their clothing with FREE next day shipping, WTF?? Not only that but if you buy something and need to return it, that is free as well! Their prices didn’t strike me as out of line which made the free shipping gig even sweeter.
I ordered two pair of track pants, the Firebird and a pair of Nike’s. I deliberated at length on sizing. Track pants aren’t like jeans where you can order a certain waist and length. With jeans I would normally wear either a 32″ or 33″ waist and a 34″-36″ length. Well with track pants it is small, medium, large, extra large, etc…
The longest inseam I saw was 34″ but that was on the XL size which supposedly was for someone with a 36″ to 38″ waist. Well I hoped that the elastic waistband would contract to something even smaller. I was wrong. My package arrived the next day as promised. I eagerly tore into the box to try on the pants. First I tried on the Adidas. They were ridiculously big, practically falling off me. The Nike’s were not as loose but still way too big. I was surprised to see that I had plenty of length with the 34 inseam, actually too much as they were dragging on the ground.
So I got to try out the Zappos return system as well which was pain free as well. Now I have to consider getting mediums with the Adidas pants and maybe a large with the Nike’s. This is one of the few times that being tall is not an advantage.
Friday night instead of our normal pizza and Tivo routine Ali and I instead went down to the beach to do an open water swim with the local triathlete group. We got there a couple minutes late and just missed the main group who had already started swimming down towards the pier. We met up with Ali’s training buddy Christy so we figured we would just do our own swimming together. In retrospect I was glad we didn’t swim with the big group.
I have NEVER done any sort of distance swimming not to mention distance swimming in an open body of water. The water was rather rough for the gulf with a pretty regular stream of waves coming in. Undaunted I donned my swimming goggles, stripped down to my spandex tri trunks and headed into the warm water.
Well I officially suck at swimming. I struggled right from the start. Initially I tried to use form that was similar to what I would do in the pool where I would exhale under water and breathe when I brought my head up to the right. Well I was drinking so much gulf water it felt like I was 91 octane. It was nuts, every time I would come up for air I had water breaking across my face.
I also was tiring extremely quickly. I would do maybe 20 – 25 strokes and find myself stopping to rest. Even with my stop and go style I was able to stay ahead of Christy and Ali due to my long appendages allowing me to cover decent distance in those few strokes. By the time I was halfway into the swim I threw all semblance of proper form out the window. I was swimming with my head out of the water at all times so I could see waves coming. I also was doing some weird hybrid stroke that was half free style, half side stroke. It was REALLY a struggle.
In total I think we swam more than the 1/4 mile that is required for the Miami triathlon but there were so many stops and starts it was nuts. On the good side, the water conditions were pretty extreme so maybe it is good to experience the bad first. On the bad side, my swimming endurance is horrible. I really need to work at it.
After we got out of the water we talked with the other members of the group that probably swam close to a mile. We made no bones about how much of a struggle it was just to do a fraction of what they swam. It’s a starting point I guess.
After the swim Christy joined us for a post swim meal at Moe’s where we all enjoyed tremendously over sized burritos. We made plans to get together the following night as well since Christy’s husband was out of town. We thought it would be cool to go see Inception.
On Saturday I mowed grass while Ali cleaned inside. It was the first full mowing test since my extensive work on the mower. The Cub Cadet held up well throughout the entire session. I didn’t have any problems with the drive belt slipping and the cut was more even. I couldn’t help but yearn for the all out power I experienced on the Gravely as I slowed to less than walking pace to get through the thicker grass.
On Friday we picked up my refurbished Trek from the bike shop. Wow, it looked like an almost new bike. They did a real nice job with it. I was looking forward to putting it to the test.
So after a busy day of housework we got ready to go to the movies. The plan was to pick up Christy, get the Imax tickets first and then eat dinner. Many times the Imax showings can get sold out.
After grabbing the tickets we went back to the same Carrabas as last week. It was funny that we hadn’t gone to the movies or Carrabbas for quite awhile and then wind up doing both in two consecutive weekends.
I slammed 4 beers during the meal and was feeling a bit silly. Silly means I talk more for the better or worse. I was still feeling it as we were waiting for the movie to start. At one point while the previews were playing a woman stood up in front of us and I said in a voice loud enough that she probably heard “you make a better door than window”. Yea I was a little buzzed.
For some reason I assumed that since we were watching Inception on IMAX that it was also in 3D. It wasn’t. Initially I was a bit disappointed we weren’t handed a set of glasses but the sheer size of IMAX does a good job of immersing you in the movie regardless of the amount of dimensions.
The movie was good, all three of us liked it. The special effects were incredible. I’m not talking about the normal, awesome computer generated stuff. There are fight scenes that just make you scratch your head and wonder how they could do that, even with the assistance of computers. The plot would be very hard to follow if you were not paying close attention at all times as it gets several layers deep. I’d give the movie an A-. It is definitely best viewed in a theater. (or a 73 inch tv with the lights out) 🙂
On Sunday Ali went to spinning with Christy and then planned to run afterward. I planned my own brick.
I was excited to give my newly cleaned Trek a try. I mounted my under seat bag and water bottle holder onto the Trek and shoved off. I immediately noticed that I couldn’t get my bike shoes snapped into the pedals. My buddy told me they were SPD pedals but I am thinking they may be one of the SPD variations, no matter how I tried I could not get locked in securely.
So I had to do an about face and swap the pedals off my other road bike. I was already sweating profusely just swapping the pedals due to the high humidity. I hadn’t even hit the open road yet. Once I completed the swap I hopped and, clipped in and was on my way.
The first upgrade that I enjoyed was the shifting which is all controlled from the brake levers that also act as shifters. It is click index shifting. I move the right lever to the left and I go down a gear, I moved the second black lever on the same side and I go up a gear, it shifted very cleanly.
The Trek 2200 is an 18 speed bike where as my Dawes is a 14 speed. Having the additional gears means additional speed although I never got all the way to 18th. I think I went as high as 16th gear. The normal Immokalee Road headwind was present but not as brutal as it can be for the ride.
I was able to maintain a solid pace for the first half of the ride and surprisingly keep almost the same pace for the second half. At the halfway point I had a bit of a scare. I was stopping to get a drink as I was sweating buckets. Just before I was at a dead stop I was like “Oh shit, I forgot I am clipped in” I quickly snapped my right foot out of the pedal but the movement shifted my weight to the left beyond recovery. I fell to the left INTO the lane of traffic. I only fell maybe a foot or two into the lane and luckily there were no cars coming by at that instant. It had the potential to be ugly. My fall knocked the chain off and gave me a nice little brush burn across the thigh but other than that I escaped unscathed.
As I got closer to my house I realized that I had a chance to do the ride in under an hour. If my memory is correct, I think my best time on the Publix ride was 1:03 something. I pulled into our driveway at 59:29, beating the 1 hour mark.
Needless to say I really like the Trek. I just ordered a cheap GPS mount so I can have my numbers right in front of me at all times.
I wanted to do a brick so even though I was tired and a sweaty beyond belief I wanted to get on the treadmill. I immediately threw on my running shoes, grabbed some water and a towel and started running at a 9:13 pace. Originally I hoped to pull 3 miles, instead I once again stopped at two. I was just beat. I hopped in the pool afterward but just to cool off, I didn’t do any laps.
After Ali got home we both ate lunch and then crashed. We were both extremely tired from our respective bricks. My normal, no nap edict was out the window. I HAD to sleep. We slept for two and a half hours and I still didn’t feel like getting up, my body was toast. The rest of the day I felt wiped out.
Over the weekend I got to dig into my two new video game additions, the Cataclysm beta and Starcaft II. I didn’t play Cataclysm too much but enough to make a level 7 Worgen. I got to a point where there is a bugged quest that slows your progress and stopped there.
I have played a lot more Starcraft 2. It is so well done. The cinematics that are built into the single player missions are very cool and really keep you wrapped up in the storyline. In SC 2 you have the ability to control much larger groups of units. It is such simple fun to grab a huge group and just send them into an area in auto attack mode. Watching all the chaos unfurl on your screen is just total eye candy.
I have found the single player missions challenging but not too difficult up to this point. I really like the game and highly recommend it.