Steve Tilford

I have been pretty done since coming back from the cyclocross stage race in Iowa. Haven’t really been sleeping much and my hamstrings are toast. I was going to try to keep up the running, but haven’t even thought about attempting that yet.

I’m not stressed about it really. I don’t have to be going good for a month and think I have a pretty good base for it now, just need to tweak it a little and I should be fine. One thing I have going for me athletically is that I don’t really lose form over the winter much, if I keep riding. And many times I just go better and better. I think it is because there aren’t any allergens around to mess me up. But there is always the potential for getting sick. I just watched an interview with Sven Nys and he said he is heading down to Spain to train for a week, before the Christmas time races and he said that getting sick is his biggest worry.

I’ve been trying to catch up on stuff. Today I am riding over to Lawrence and getting my AWD van. I left it over there to have a friend, Marcos, look at it and diagnose a couple issues. I’m pretty okay with automobile repair, just suck at figuring out what need to be fixed. I really don’t suck at it, but I’m not nearly as good as actually doing the repair.

The AC quit working a month ago, which really isn’t a big deal, other than the defrost works a lot worse. He said that it was the clutch, which is a replaceable part. It is a little tricky changing it, but it doesn’t look that hard. Plus after changing the sway bars links, I think I now need sway bar bushings. I should have just put those it when I had it apart last week.

Plus I need to mess around with the injector wiring harness, which is buried and might be a longer job. This model van tend to have issues with these and I’m just going to try to fix it and not replace it.

Anyway, riding over there is just a hour and a half. On gravel. Pretty much my go to ride nowadays. It is supposed to be nearly 60 later in the afternoon, but I have to drive to Kansas City to get the clutch, so need to leave pretty soon, when it is still cool.

I don’t really like riding with things covering my knees, so will do just about anything to avoid it. I ride down to the 40’s with bare legs most of the time, which I realize is unusual compared to the norm.

I was thinking about how in the winter I am always just trying to catch up with what I’ve put off during the season. But when the season is the winter too, then that gets a little tough.

I was watching all the squirrels in my front yard collecting acorns and was thinking about how industrious they are. I bet we’d all be way more industrious, too, if we had to collect all the food we ate the next 4 months and stored it. Not collect by going to the grocery store, but by growing it, picking it, canning it and storing it. Like the old days.

I just read that one of the reasons we, as we Americans, are so fat is that we eat an average of 200 calories more each time we eat out. Mutiple that by the number of times an average American eats out during a week/month/year, and you’ll get a big number, which translates into a big waist.

Our cats are all putting on their winter weight. I’m not sure why they do that? Must be just a built in mechanism. They get as much food as the want and don’t have to go outside if they don’t want to, so it seems like they don’t need the extra weight. But they are all bulking up and they aren’t eating out. Just biological I guess.

Okay, I’m just blabbing here. Putting off getting dressed and getting a little cold. Better get to it.

I changed the sway bar links last week.

They were toast. Should of just done it all then.

This is what I’m buying and, hopefully, installing today. It is a clutch that runs the air conditioner. Changing it is still a little expensive, but you don’t have to recharge the system like you would have to if I put in a new compressor. Plus, I hate wasting perfectly good things. FIxing is always more rewarding than replacing.

There are tons of squirrels around this year. Sometimes we have 5-10 at a time in our yard. Could only get two in the picture this morning.

Yesterday I rode over to Lawrence on gravel, go my van and drove over to Kansas City to retrieve a car part. I was driving on Hwy. 24, with is a Kansas highway, not interstate. I had underdressed a little and didn’t really feel that good anyway.

I felt a little bonky and decided to stop at a Caseys General Store and get a slice of pizza and coffee. Their pizza isn’t have bad, but their coffee could improve some.

It got me thinking about an experience I had in Switzerland right around 30 years ago that still cracks me up.

Back in 1985, I had ridden the World Road Championships in Italy and then drove up to Switzerland with my team director, Michael Fatka and Trudi. We were going there because Michael was looking to get a dog, a Swiss Appenzeller, sort of like a Bernese Mountain dog.

Anyway, we were hanging out in Appenzell, a region just east of Zurich, close to Austria, looking at farms for these puppies. It was a good adventure. Super scenic area to ride a bike. You should make it a point to go there if you have a chance.

One evening we decided to go for fondue, because the region has a famous cheese. So we go over to this pretty expensive fondue restaurant and there is a wait, but the hostess tells us, in German, to go to the bar. So we go to the bar and order a beer each. She said it was going to be close to 30 minutes.

Just after we got our beer, the hostess came over and told us that our table was ready. So we took our beers and started to follow her. She saw that and told us we could not, absolutely could not, bring the beers to the table to have with the fondue.

Trudi can speak German, but the woman was speaking Swiss German and she explained to Trudi that the cold beer and hot cheese would kill us. Yes, she said kill us.

Her explanation was that the cold beer would harden up the cheese in our stomachs and that we would get sick and die.

So, we had to finish our beer in the bar and have warm white wine with the fondue.

I made a lot of good Swiss friends over the years and each and every time I ask them what they think about the idea of drinking cold beer with fondue. Not one has said anything different than the hostess.

I have a friend, Trudi Karrer, who I stay with near Zurich, and saw just a couple months ago at the Richmond World Road Championships. She told me for sure you would die.

My friend, Thomas Frischknecht, who came to the US when he was 19 and is a smart guy, answered similarly. Thomas said you might not die, but you’d get really sick.

My best argument to them is what is the difference between fondue and pizza? Both are bread covered with melted cheese. And we drink plenty of cold beer with pizza.

My rationale is that once food gets into your stomach, it eventually gets to 98.6 degrees, or whatever your body temperature is. It really doesn’t matter how you mix it because it all gets to the same temperature.

Of course, you can shock your system by ingesting a ton of super cold stuff. I remember drinking a huge fresh fruit slush at Sonic after a hot ride and the whole way back to my house, I could feel the skin on over my stomach and it was super cold. I thought that was creepy. But I would have no problem eating pizza and drinking a slush, which is just about the coldest thing I can think of to drink.

Anyway, I never could, or can convince, a Swiss person that fondue and beer won’t make you ill, or worst case scenario, kill you. It must be something that they were taught from childhood. All of them. And it seems to have over ridden critical thinking. Funny.

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Yearly Archives: 2015

Squirreling Away the Winter (and it is not even winter yet)

Death by Fondue