Enter the Dark Zone

What was hopefully the last big winter storm blew through yesterday with periodic rain showers, winds gusting up to 50mph, and nearly two fresh feet of snow in the mountains. You know it's a good storm when you hear discussion of closed and damaged bridges on one highway and avalanche control shutting down another.

So, with all of the weather whipping about I set my bike up on the trainer in the garage, popped in one of Coach Troy's Spinervals videos and prepared to, as the title of the video said, Enter the Red Zone. This was an interval training session with lots of going back and forth between the small chainring and the large one; lots of out-of-the-saddle sprinting followed by prolonged high-cadence grinds; and lots and lots of squats. I hate squats. I never enjoyed weightlifting and even when running track in college, never did I succumb to doing squats. I would do lunges and sprint the stadium benches, but never squats. Yesterday, I did squats. About 140 of them to be exact and on the last rep in each set that sadistic Coach Troy in the video had me hold the squat position for 30 seconds, then 45 seconds, then 60, and finally on the last set for 75 seconds. I was in agony.

Later on in the video, halfway through my second to last interval set, my front derailer started acting up. One second it would push the chain off the big ring and onto my foot, and the next it would drop it down too far on the low side. This being only my second ride on the bike, I was none too pleased. So I got it adjusted and working again, played back through that whole set of intervals and continued on. Finally, with one set left and about 9 minutes left in the video, the power goes out. I'm in my garage in total darkness. All I wanted to do was ride my bike, but between the squats, the dropped chain, and now the power outage, it just seems that I wasn't supposed to.

The power was out from about 5:45 till sometime in the middle of the night. Kristin and I decided that rather than rummage through our camping stuff for our backpacker stove, we'd hit the local mexican restaurant. They had power, but they also had just about every family from our neighborhood dining with them as well. Once we got home, we promptly lit every candle we could find. Some smelled of pine needles, others of vanilla. Some candles were blueberry scented, and others smelled of various spices. It was a veritable orgy of messy scents, but it gave us light.

Enough light for Kristin to read by and me to lay on the couch and finally start playing my "most anticipated game of 2006". That's right, Age of Kings for the Nintendo DS. All was going well and we were actually enjoying the quiet when suddenly I became a subject of mockery.

"I put the stylus down on my chest so I could scratch my ass, and now I can't find it."

Kristin's laughter raged long and hard and in the end she implored me to admit to saying such a thing on the blog. I don't see why it's so funny though. I mean, really, who hasn't scratched their ass and lost something in the process?

Oh, boy did that come out wrong.