ChrisCowan.us

I'm down to 222 pounds. Unbelievable! I haven't been at this weight since I was in high school. It's almost hard to believe when I look in the mirror. The best is when people walk up to you and say, "HOLY SHIT! YOUR GETTING SKINNY!" So how did this all start... about 4 months ago I stepped on the scale and discovered that I weight 256 pounds. Everything I wore was super tight. My waistline hurt by the end of the day cause I was still squeezing into my size 38 pants. I didn't want to give into the fact that I was FAT. So I would suck it in and struggle to button up my jeans. That night I couldn't sleep cause it bothered me that I was the heaviest I'd ever been. I started thinking about why we moved to California. I wanted a lifestyle change. Not just a different climate but a change in the way I lived. I called down to Amanda to come up stairs and I told her we need to change the way we are living. I purposed we start eating health and get personal trainers to get us started on the best possible track to healthy lifestyles. I wanted to make a good example for Grace. The way I figured it most children learn their bad habits from their parents. If we started exercising and eating health then the chances of her having some of the same habits increase. I don't want her to struggle with her weight for her entire life. She needs us to be good healthy role models. The first step to our new selves was joining a gym and eating healthy. We both got personal trainers at Bally Total Fitness. The first month of going to the gym was a chore. It ranked right up there with cleaning the dog shit up in the backyard, except I was paying for this. I was sore all the time...my back hurt... every step was painful... I could hardly lift my arms... I was always tired... just Ouch! I kept asking myself if this was really worth it. Right up to the point when I started loosing weight. Then I got addicted to watching the scale drop (just about at 240 pounds). I craved workouts. I started mountain biking to work. Tony at work had this theory that if you wanted to work out regularly then you had to make it part of your everyday life. So if you commute to work then you should try and ride as far as you can then take the train the rest of the way. So I plotted a course that would give me about a 10 mile ride in the morning and an additional 10 miles at night. My first ride I was dying. My average speed was about 12 miles per hour (to get 12 mph your have to ride about 14 mph to make up for the parts where you slow down and stop for traffic lights.) Each time I rode to work (twice a week) I would try and work on that average speed so I would always push myself as hard as I could. Yesterday, I was riding at an average of 15.5 mph (which is mostly 18 mph). It's progress like this that makes it fun. I also love to lift weights. I joked before (when I was fat) that I didn't lift weights cause they where heavy. Not anymore! I've been hitting the gym about twice a week to work on my abs and upper body. I never thought I would like it as much as I do... it's great cause you can put on some heavy music and relive all your stress by lifting heavy shit. Mad about something at work, use it as motivation to reach the next weight level. It's like directing your rage and stress towards your health. The third part our my healthy lifestyle plan was eating right. No more pizza... french fries... onion rings... cookies... huge rice crispy squares. I try and stick to foods with lots of veggies. I'm not supper strict but I try and eat as healthy as possible. The nice thing about exercising, it allows you to cut corners here and there. If you have a craving it's okay to give in because chances are your going to burn those extra calories off in your next workout. I would say I'm a much happier person. I'm not as stressed out as I was before. I have more balance in my life. I think that is critical key to my happiness, balance between my life and work. That was one of the messages they kept repeating at orientation. I guess I was listening...

So I know you think this blog already died because I haven't updated it for a couple of days. Have some freaking patience. I have a day job and a life. For father's day we decided that it's time for me to get a new bike. It's been 9 years since I purchased the sledgehammer (my Voodoo Canzo AL). It's been a pretty trusty steed for several years. But recently I've been craving something different. My riding style has changed quite a bit. I'm now finding that most of my riding time is on smoother trails and commuting to work. Also California is made up entirely of hills. There is not one rolling trail like my beloved Pima and Dynamite. So I wanted a bike that would do a better job of transferring my peddle power. I opted for a hardtail... all this bike talk makes your eyes roll then close the window now. I looked at several different bikes. Starting with a Gary Fisher Hoo Koo E Koo (which I've been drooling over as my desktop background for about a month), a Trek 6700, a Specialized Rockhopper Pro Disc and a Cannondale F600. Out of the four bikes I got to ride the Fisher, Specialized and Cannondale, finding a 6700 in anything bigger then a 17 inch frame was near impossible. The Rockhopper was a nice bike but it's geometry is set up for more of an urban/jump style of riding. It just didn't feel very comfortable to me as a cross country trail bike. The Cannondale was a beautiful bike, the welds and hand craftsmanship is evident in every inch of the frame. It also rode very smoothly. The problem I found with it was all the proprietary components (headshock, brake levers, pedels, etc...). From past experience having the ability to easily upgrade components is essential when you are 6' 3" and wieght 200+ lbs. Things have a tendicy to break under that type of load. So where does that leave us? The Gary Fisher Hoo Koo E Koo! This thing rode just like I imagined it would when i drooled over it for the last month on my desktop. It's responsive and handles perfectly. It's fast... really fast. Every pedal stroke I could feel it accelerate (which most of the bikes did when I rode them but this is my story and I'm going to imagine that this only applied to the HKEK). It's just amazing to ride. I always tell people when they ride a bunch of bikes they will know when they found the right bike. It just feels comfortable. The bonus is the bike shop I found the bike at has an awesome service policy. Free tune-ups for the lifetime of the bike. FREE... F-R-E-E! Tune-ups cost about $55-$70 depending on the shop you take it to. They also provided a free bike fitting session and guarantee that the bike will fit you perfectly. The other cool thing is the bike shop is 7 miles down the Los Gatos Creek Trail. So I bought the HKEK in a 19 inch frame and took it home. I woke up the next day and rode to the bike shop to do my fit session. When I got there we put the bike on a stationary trainer and the bike mechanic said. "This frame is too small..." My heart sunk! "Do you have a bigger frame?" He said "Uh... Nope, we will have to special order it" I cried... not really. So I placed an order for a 21 inch Gary Fisher Hoo Koo E Koo. It should be here in a week or so... that's a week or so more of drooling over pictures.

Every once in a while when I day dream about things I would like to do I aways seem to get hung up on money. Like how much money would it take to do that? Or If I was a millionare what would I do with my life? I figured that I need only about $5000 to have one really kickass week. The kind you look back on and say to yourself, "Self, that was a kickass week!" The first thing I would do is buy a new bike, that's about $2000. I love my bike but it's always really fun to buy new equipment. The second fun thing to do is use the hell out of that new equipment. So I would take a week off from work and use the extra $3000 to explore Nor Cal and ride as many trails as possible. Take a long overnight trip up north to visit the Redwoods, see all the places you dream about in Nor Cal. My week would be filled with riding, eating, sleeping and hanging out with my family. I can't think of a better way to spend the week. What would you do?

Tonight I was exercising my right to exercise and I came across an anti-immigration rally in the park. I made a conscious effort to ride through them to quietly disrupt their rhetoric. Up until this point I have really not taken a stance on the whole issue because it hasn't really affected me. But for some reason as I was riding through this crowd of white americans I felt ashamed. These idiots are all immigrants. Everyone fucking one of them. At some point in time their grandparents decided to immigrate to the United States to pursue a better life. As far as I'm concern the only people who have a legitimate right to bitch about immigration is Native American Indians. White people sitting around bitching about how the illegals are stealing our country is like a thief bitching about someone stealing the radio they just stole. I'm the great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandson of an immigrant. That's 26 generations which means my grandparents, John and Priscilla Alden and came over on the Mayflower. They weren't born here. They didn't discover this land. They didn't migrate across the Siberian ice bridge. They showed up and decide this is where they where going to make a better life for themselves. It wasn't an easier life... just a better life. When people die to get into the United States they are doing it because facing death for the possibility of living illegally in poverty in the United States is a brighter future then staying where they are. People are not dying to get into Mexico. We have the best country in the world and everyone wants to live here. Everyone. What's the solution? There probably isn't a good one but stopping immigration will never happen. Our country was built on the back of immigrants and we will continue build upon their backs. All of our backs.

I sept on the sofa last night cause Grace had a fever of 102 degrees and she was sleeping in our bed. She tosses and turns a lot and if I'm in the bed she likes to climb on me and say daddy. I guess that is cute but not at 2 am. So I decided to try and sleep on the sofa. I've taken some pretty wonderful naps on there but I have never slept for more then 30 minutes. Now I know why My back is killing me. I'm sore everywhere... my neck... my upper back... my lower back... pretty much all over my back. I think there is an expiration time for sleep on sofas. Some how your body knows that you've slept there too long and it starts to go rotten.

Yeah... Yeah... I know it's not a very good start to a blog by predicting it's death but let's face the truth this time. I start things with the best intentions and then they slowly fade away and I get interested in other things. I even vowed at the death of my last blog that I wouldn't start a new one. So why am I doing this agian? Because every once in a while I have something to say and I would like to publish it on the internet so it can be ignored by the world. Blogging for me is similar to praying to god, I know that nobody is listening to me but it feels good to get my problems and wacky thoughts off my chest. Stay tuned... I might even post some interesting shit.