Rand was right.  A refreshing glimmer of hope.

I read today that Ayn Rand’s magnum opus Atlas Shrugged is once again climbing the sales charts as people rediscover the novel’s prophetic description of a world brought to the brink of destruction by government control.  The affordable paperback currently sits at #44 on the Amazon sales ranking, and the Ayn Rand institute reports that sales have tripled thus far in 2009 over their 2008 pace, noting that 2008 was the best sales year ever at 200,000 copies.  Not too freakin’ bad for a novel first published in 1957!!!

“Americans are flocking to buy and read ‘Atlas Shrugged’ because there are uncanny similarities between the plot-line of the book and the events of our day” said Yaron Brook, Executive Director at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “Americans are rightfully concerned about the economic crisis and government’s increasing intervention and attempts to control the economy. Ayn Rand understood and identified the deeper causes of the crisis we’re facing, and she offered, in ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ a principled and practical solution consistent with American values.”

May only be temporarily, but for now I’m running it with uploads every 5 mins.  Will disable at night so you don’t get blank pictures.

Today was the annual MMBA Expo, for the first time held at the posh Lansing Center.  Posh is relative of course, in prior years the Expo was held in an unheated barn, so it wasn’t tough to make an upgrade.  The Expo is basically a series of speakers, a silent auction of donated items, a swap meet for used parts, a bunch of organizations with information booths, and awards for both the top trail work volunteers of the year and the CPS race award winners. Ten Mile Media posts some pix if you want to know what it all looks like. Bonus points if you can spot Eric and I.

Personally I don’t get all that excited about the Expo.  I like riding my bike, but I’m not into “the scene” and socializing with bike shop workers and such.  If I hadn’t won an award in my class I surely would not have gone.  I am a little cheesed off as well at the awards this year.  In every past year the award was actually a pretty sweet looking little trophy with a statue of a mountain biker on it.  This year it was a cheap little plastic chainring.  Seriously!  I know its just a silly little award for an amateur race series but I drove over 2 hours to pick this thing up.  Not to mention I paid a fee for the series, and by their own admission this was the highest participation year yet.  So why cheap out on it now?  Just my luck I gues. Judge for yourself, I think you will agree.

Current trophy:

Old, awesome trophy:

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what to say about this whole mess.  I just didn’t know where to begin.  Should I tell people what idiots they are for repeatedly voting all these treacherous Democrats and Republicans into office again and again?  Or maybe try to explain the massive inflation that has been and will continue to happen as a result of the insane policy of eternal deficits, ever growing federal debt, and ever expanding money supply?  But that would be a lot of work, and today I found the perfect little snippet that just sums it all up perfectly.  A reader writes in to the 5 Minute Forecast:

“I worked hard,” says a reader, adding to the housing bailout debate, “and had to start over from scratch 23 years ago when I lost all but my shirt, pants and children in a divorce. I always searched for bargains and wore clothing found at garage sales. I paid my credit card bill on time every month to avoid interest charges. I finally bought a home and was able to pay it off in approximately 12 years by loading up my payments by denying myself the new cars, vacations and other luxuries that I saw others around me enjoying. I changed my own oil under my leaky, drippy old car and put off making my home more comfortable with improvements. I finally obtained the prize last year when I paid off the mortgage and felt so good being responsible and doing the right thing.

“The joke was on me, because now my government has signed my name onto a contract to help pay for the mortgages of all of those people that I saw driving around in the new cars and enjoying their hot tub every night in their great big beautiful homes. I am glad that I bought gold along the way so at least I can eat in my broken-down paid-off shack.”

Being a very lazy person by nature, I naturally gravitate toward the “low hanging fruit” as they say when it comes to getting just about anything done.  Getting in shape and losing weight are no different.  So here are a few tips I have run across that really involve little to no effort on your part but can be very beneficial:

1. Drink lots of water. Most people are chronically mildly dehydrated so this gives you a couple benefits.  I guess if you think drinking water is too much effort for you then maybe you should stop reading right now.  64 oz daily is the generic recommendation, but basically you should keep drinking until your urine is almost clear.  Filling your stomach up with water will make you feel fuller helping you eat a bit less, and any exercise you do happen to do will be more effective.
2. Eat 5-6 small meals per day. Don’t eat more or less, or anything different, just break up what you do eat into smaller more frequent meals.  This will increase your metabolism and cut off hunger pangs before they happen.   Always eat breakfast.  And a trick I like since I pack my lunch is to just eat half my sandwich around halfway to lunch time instead of eating it all at once.
3. Sleep 8 hours. If you are doing any kind of exercise it is crucial to recover properly, and this means sleep.  If not much of your effort is wasted.
4. Eat out less. And if you do order water not soda and definitely not alcohol.  This also appeals to my cheap side.
5. Eat slowly. The bodies hunger signal is extremely slow, so eating fast causes people to keep eating well past when they have had enough.  Some people use little rules like chewing every bite 20 times.  Whatever works for you.  If you’re always the first one heading for seconds, it may be time to slow down fatty.
6. Fidget. If you’re just sitting around doing nothing tap that toe or shake that foot or whatever you do.  Nervous twitching like this consumes a surprising amount of energy – and yes people have actually studied this.
7. Turn down the heat. By keeping it as cold as you can stand in your house you will force the body to burn energy just to keep you warm, even if you’re just sitting on your butt watching TV!  And you save money on energy.  We call that a win-win.

One major benefit of my new job is getting out at an ealier time, since my start is at 5:30am.  In theory I could leave as early as 2, though I’m usually there till at least 3 taking care of one damn thing or another.  But even 3 is a real treat, which I took advantage of today by getting out for the first ride of the year.  Unfortunately it wasn’t quite as warm and sunny as Sunday, but I’m perfectly fine riding in 30 degree weather so long as its light and dry outside.  As I rode out the door it was 39 but by the time I headed home it was down to 32 and quite breezy in the wrong direction.

I had just enough daylight to do 60 minutes which is what I would have done at the gym had I opted for the warmer climate instead.  But there’s just no comparison between riding a stationary bike indoors and the thrill of riding outdoors – its so much more motivating.  I think the weight training is really helping, pushing up hills felt noticably easier.

There’s a lot of rain left in the forecast this week so that may be it for a while.  But with a few 60 degree days coming I think I’ll be logging plenty of miles very soon.