A Drinking Problem

Here is my little drinking problem. Skratch, wonderful stuff that works well for me, is made by Allen Lim's company. Allend Lim may have been in a difficult place given the prevalence of douchebaggery afoot in recent years, but it's hard to overlook that he knew everything about everything and was like "oh, yeah, ummm, rice cakes are delicious."

This was sort of an easy one to dodge since Osmo came onto the market with stuff that works indistinguishably, for me, from Skratch, comes in palatable flavors, and without the bitter after taste of just being involved with dopey dope stuff. Except that now Osmo is the official drink of CTS Training Systems. CTS might have some wonderful coaches and whatnot (I like to use whatnot as often as possible, because there is a broad stripe of people for whom use of the word "whatnot" is an absolutely unpardonable sin, and what fun is life without poking people like that in the eye whenever possible?), but let's face it Chris Carmichael is like the world's ultimate dick. Look it up. He doped kids without their knowledge, exposing them to a whole range of shit that apparently did come home to roost for them, and he's just a freaking beard for the whole Lance and Ferrari show. The guy was vested with so much authority by all of these quarters, but he's nothing other than the basic personification of everything that you wouldn't want your kid to be. Or be exposed to. He's a nightmare. Or, in his parlance, NightMare(tm). Douche.

Why would Osmo be stupid enough to partner with him? I don't get it. Totally fucked up. So now I've got Nuun, which I like but I don't really like the effervescence, but I guess I have to live with it because UHH. Fucking people.

Last weekend I abused the hospitality of friends and went up skiing. It was mint. I hadn't skied since March 14, 2003 - or so said the lift ticket that was on my snow pants. First day I boarded, and I was pretty bad at it. Not terrible, just not good. I mean I was keeping up with everyone but it wasn't always fun to do it, it was a little stressful at times. So Sunday I decided to ski, which was mint. I'd inherited (literally) a set of super dope Volkl skis that I'd never used, and having never skied on shaped skis (the skis I last used were 203cm long Rossignol full bore slalom skis from circa 1994 - I used to ski a whole whole lot but then started to do more snowboarding and just sort of never updated my skis - I have mint boots though), set out on these new things that were every bit of 15" shorter than my old skis. Holy fucking shit that was fun. And I was good at it, like right away pretty much almost as good as I'd ever been (right after college I skied a TON and I don't think I'll ever be that good again). Wow. So then said friends insisted that I come up again this weekend, and who am I to say no? I wound up leading the charge on building this ridiculous kicker so a bunch of kids under 10 could try to learn to do sweet jumps. About that I will just say that stoke is a very infectious thing.

So my life is still super fucked up but a lot is pretty locked down and rolling. When you're in New England, especially this winter, you have to roll with the punch and embrace winter. Sometimes that means skiing and not worrying about doing no bike training for a weekend. Sometimes it means swimming and lifting a few nights a week instead of burning one's self the hell out on rollers. I'll probably have an extra soupcon of suck in the beginning of this year (especially after an upcoming 10 day trip to China during which who knows what the hell I'll do for exercise), but that's really just fine. Just fine.