No big surprise here — I didn’t hit my weight goal of 164 this week. Didn’t even come close, really. I’ll get it next week. Just you wait and see.

Yeah, something about being all pathetic in yesterday’s post and having to give up $75 of my hard-earned dollars as penance for my lack of self control has given me the eye of the tiger. I’ll hit that 164 next week. You’ll see. Furthermore, I’ll be in the 150’s by the end of the month. Or I will be much, much poorer.

Big Money Giveaway…With a Twist

So. Today I’m giving out an amazon.com gift certificate of at least $75.

"Wait a second," I just heard you say. "What do you mean at least $75?"

"Simple," I reply, in a casual-yet-debonair way. "You could win $100 instead of $75. Wouldn’t that be cool?"

"Fat Cyclist," you now say, "It is simply not possible that you are actually increasing my potential winnings like this!"

"Yes," I say, calmly. "Yes I am."

Astounded, you blurt, "If you are truly serious and not pulling my leg, please explain how I can win even more of the fabulous Amazonian giftage!"

"Very well," I say, smoothly and confidently. "I will explain, provided you promise to use fewer exclamation marks when you talk."

"Absolutely!" you say, then catch yourself. "I mean, absolutely."

How it Works

The idea is simple. If you are willing to make a small donation — $5, $10, whatever — you increase the amount you win, if you are the winner. For example, say you leave a comment today, but don’t pledge anything in the fight against MS. If you win, you get the $75 gift certificate. If, on the other hand, you pledge $10 (or $5, or $20, or whatever) and you win, I’ll make the gift certificate $100. See, you’re doing something good, but your self interest is potentially served. Aren’t I crafty?

So here’s what you’ve got to do.

1. To be entered in the drawing, you must leave a comment to this post, today, before midnight Pacific Time. Or, if you’re not able to post a comment to this forum, send an email with your comment to contest@fatcyclist.com. I will add your comment to the list sometime today. Or tonight. Or whenever.
2. Your comment must have an e-mail address where I can contact you. If you don’t give me a way to contact you if/when you win, well…you don’t win.
3. If you have made a pledge, indicate this in your posting by writing something like "I pledged." You don’t have to say how much. But you can if you want.
4. Normal rules still apply to your pledges. So if you pledge $50 today, that still merits a bracelet. Pledge $100 and tell me what to write on one of my limbs. Pledge $500 and tell me what color you want me to paint myself for the ride, and which half.
5. If you have already pledged, you do not need to pledge again when you post a comment. I’m not going to punish you for being an early adopter.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll count how many legitimate comments (posting over and over and over won’t improve your chances; it’ll only tick me off) have been left, and then pick a comment at random. I’ll post who the winner is in my blog tomorrow, as well as send her/him email.

Strangely, I Find Myself Enthusiastic

You know what’s weird? I’m really looking forward to seeing how this little giveaway turns out. Here are some of the things I’m hoping:

• I hope for a massive number of comments. I would love to see hundreds.
• I hope for entertaining comments. It would be fun to read hundreds of witty remarks. Cleverness in your entry is not a requirement to win, however.
• I hope this raises a whole bunch of money for MS. I picked $2112 (after my favorite album from when I was in High School) as my fundraising target. Thanks to some very generous people — including some people who couldn’t really afford it — I’m a third of the way there. What if today 140 readers donated $10 each? That would rule, that’s what. Furthermore, if that happens — if my fundraising goal is surpassed today — I will show my gratitude to the readers of this blog by riding the MS150 with my shorts inside out. And post photos, of course.

Today’s weight:  166.6. Seriously. I ate in such a way yesterday that I should have been at 165 and change, but I gained .2 pounds. My guess? Still paying the price for gluttony earlier in the week — it’s hard to stop the train once it’s moving. Goal for next week is still 164, though.

As I biked to work today, my head was chockablock with troubling thoughts, all revolving around the following two facts:

• I was cold. It was the first day of September, and I was cold. I shouldn’t be cold on the first day of September, even early in the morning. It’s still supposed to be Summer. I’ve been cheated out of 20 days of Summer!
• I was fat. My weigh-in this morning showed that while I had managed to erase the pizza/chocolate chip cookie/fresh mozzarella hedonism of the previous day, I was still at 166.4 pounds.

It’s really the second point that’s got me bugged, although the first point is there for more reasons than simply to help me avoid having a single-item bullet list.

Hibernation Instinct

It’s getting dark earlier. It’s cold in the mornings. I have a nearly irresistible urge to eat as much as I possibly can, climb into a cave, and go to sleep. Pastry – which hasn’t interested me at all for about three months – suddenly sounds like the perfect food.

Historically, I know that every autumn I put on weight, some of which I will shed during spring and summer. This year, I’m betting money and dignity that I can buck this trend and lose weight, rather than obey the part of me that just…wants…to…sleep. The thing is, my weight trend for the past couple weeks shows that this isn’t happening. In fact, it looks like I’m all set to actually have a weight gain at the weekly weigh-in tomorrow.

I therefore choose to blame my weight gain on the season. I’m just working up my layer of winter blubber. Pure, unavoidable biology.

Weight Plateau

I’m now in the mid-160’s, which is the low end of where my weight naturally sits. Which means I’ve lost all the weight I’m going to easily lose. The easy combination of trimming my bad habits and exercising more has pretty much hit its limit. If I want to continue losing weight, I’m going to need to go from "No more chips after 6:00PM" to "No more chips."

My weight has hovered in the mid-160’s range for about a month now, so the fact that my weight isn’t going to drop in big leaps and bounds doing the simple things should have occurred to me by now. And yet it hasn’t. I blame you, dear reader, for not calling this to my attention. What do you think I’m paying you for? Well, evidently most of you believe your job is to tell me it’s easy to ride down a flight of stairs. And while that is certainly useful information that I’m happy to hear six or eight times per day, you’re going to have to do more if you expect a raise.

Tomorrow, This Blog Will Probably Cost Me

I’m going to need to lose 2.4 pounds by tomorrow’s weigh-in (possible, but not probable) or face giving someone a $75 amazon.com gift certificate. The temptation is to pay up, accept that it’s not easy to lose weight when it’s getting colder and I don’t have a big race ahead of me, and shut the sweepstakes down. But I’m not going to. I’ll either start losing weight again, or I’ll keep ponying up $25 / week.

That said, I’m eating reaaalllly light today.

Today’s Weight: 166.4lbs.

Bike riding has been a huge part of my life for about ten years now. You’d think that by now, I’d have at least tried everything I want to try.

To my shame, this is not the case. It’s not even close. There are all kinds of things I still haven’t tried, all kinds of skills I have not acquired.

These are the ones I can remember right this second. Some I expect to try, a few I expect to master. Some I will neither try nor master.

• Trackstand: This one comes first, because it was while I was failing to do a trackstand at a light this morning that the idea for this list came to me. You know, with as much time as I spend on a bike, by now I should be able to balance on it when it’s not moving. But I wobble, jerk back and forth, and within a few seconds have to put a foot down. Someday, I’m just going to spend an afternoon doing nothing but practicing my trackstand. I don’t know if it’ll do any good, but I’m going to do it anyway.
• Nose wheelie: My friend Rick does the coolest stop on his mountain bike: he grabs his front brake, his rear wheel goes high into the air, and he comes to a stop, balanced in a nose wheelie. He’s like a cute little trained seal doing that. I wish I looked like a cute little trained seal. I’ve got more of a walrus body type, alas.
• Race in a velodrome: I put this in the list because I’ve got the bike on order and I know for sure I’ll race in a velodrome next season. But it is something I’ve wanted to try now for more than five years. It’s nice to have something on the list I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to check off. Of course, racing well is a whole ‘nuther kettle of fish.
• Solo a 24 hour event: I’ve done the 24 Hours of Moab as part of a 5-person team, and as part of a 2-person team. I’ve signed up to do it solo, but then bailed out at the last moment. One thing that bugs me about people racing 24 hour events "solo," though, is nobody ever really seems to do it solo. They’ve got all kinds of people taking care of them and their bikes between laps. If I were to race a 24 hour race solo, I’d want to do it truly solo. I ride myself, I feed myself, I take care of my bike myself. When I finished, I would thump my chest and thumb my nose at the sissy-boys with crews.
• Finish Leadville in under 9 hours: I’ve gone on about this endlessly already; I’m not going start in about it today. Still, it belongs on the list.
• Ride a unicycle: Let’s be clear: unicycles are ridiculous. But I know for sure my kids would be more impressed with some guy juggling and riding a unicycle than they are with anything I can currently do on the bike. Maybe if I could ride a unicycle I could also do a trackstand.
• Ride a BMX course: I see kids cornering, jumping, and sprinting like nobody’s business on BMX courses and I can’t help but wish I had ridden BMX when I was a kid. I’d be twice the bike handler I am right now. Too late for that now, but I’d still like to get out on a BMX course and see what it’s like.
• Do a wheelie drop: All of my friends can wheelie off ledges. I, on the other hand, go down nose-first. It’s not the right way.
• Ride a wheelie: Sure, I can pop a wheelie. But I can’t ride it down the street. I don’t know whether my kids would think this or riding the unicycle would be cooler.
• Ride down a flight of stairs: I’ve seen outdoor flights of stairs and thought to myself, "I think I could ride down that." But I never do. Chicken.
• Develop a smooth pedaling cadence: This is my biggest shame. If I think about it, my cadence is pretty smooth; my upstroke is strong, my dead spot is small (I think). But when I’m just riding along, I’ll often find myself pedaling triangles (nobody pedals squares; don’t believe those who say they do).

So much time on a bike, so little accomplished.

Today’s Weight: 166.0