I like to ride my bicycle

Ay yo. What it do? I totally got it in my head that I was gonna make this blog update a weekly thing, but here we are two weeks later and I'm finally getting around to it. Let's start things off right with a brand spankin new Made In China Podcast. We're now on volume 6 and I got way more in the trunk for you. Let me know if you're enjoying the music, if you'd like to hear more of something, if you want to know the name of a track or artist, if you would like me to not include something, what your favorite color is, whatever it may be let me know. I've gotten a few emails over the last 6 months or so that have the occasional "I'm diggin the podcast" but those have been few and far between. The reason I do the podcast is because I love music and I have a LOT of it, so I'd like to pass some of it on to you. If you haven't downloaded one yet, give it a try. Who knows, you just might like something on it. Also, tell your friends. Seriously. If you know someone who likes music tell them you know this dude who's posting a podcast occasionally on his blog about living in China. Hell, they don't even have to read the blog since they probably wouldn't care about my bike rides (probably even less than you do) or anything else I talk about here on my little corner of the world wide web. Anyways, this podcast was an effort at putting some music together that makes me feel good. Some rockin tunes, some feel good tunes, and the highlight track called The Sun by Ghostface Killah feat. Raekwon, The Rza, and Slick Rick. This will remain as one of my favorite tracks of all time. Some of the rhymes are pretty terrible (surprisingly enough, given the line up of mc's), but it makes me feel like all is right in the world when I can listen to 4 gangsta ass mfers who usually rap about hard shit, talking about how dope the sun is. Check it out.

Ok, last time around I wasn't terribly happy to be back here in Chinatown. Since then things have started to settle back in and I'm getting more used to things. I'm on this 'new me' kick for the new semester. I rearranged my room, put some shit up on the walls to make it a little more home-like, and have decided I'm gonna start changing things up. I signed up for a the olympic distance lifetime triathlon in July right after I get back, and then another almost-olympic distance tri the week after lifetime. That means some I'm in for some lifestyle changes here. With my new teaching schedule I don't have to go into work until about 9:30 (instead of being in the classroom at 8 like last semester) and then my first class isn't until 10:50. It's really nice. This means I have more time in the morning. I'm gonna start (i hope) running and biking in the morning soon, like as soon as it starts warming up which is pretty much right now. I also decided to switch things up on the food front so last week I went to Wu Mart (swear to god that's what it's called) bought frying pan and ingredients, and have now made myself pancakes for breakfast 4 out of the last 6 days.

The biggest reason for me beginning to enjoy China a little more lately was last Saturday which may remain the most epic saturday of my time in Beijing. It started out with a bike ride, but we did a new route that was about 100k out to the mountains and back. Our goal was a climb called Python Hill, which isn't so much a hill as a small mountain. It gains 500 meters in elevation over just less than 10k giving it an average 5% grade with a lot of places steeper than that. What does that mean, you might be wondering. Imagine some of the steeper hills that climbs out of the mississippi river valley back up to the main roads. Now imagine one of those that is 10 kilometers long instead of a couple of blocks. Last weekend we abandoned our attempt on the summit because there was still plenty of big patches of ice and snow due to the 'storm' a few days before. The ice wasn't terrible going up, but we decided it would make for a pretty annoying descent so we stopped about 4k up the road and turned around. Here's some pictures that Tom (the dude from Belgium that organizes the group) took on the ride:

We did the ride again yesterday and I can now say that that climb is a mother f*****r. It took me 34 and half minutes to make it to the top and I was the second one up, a few minutes in front of the larger bunch. Anyways, back to last weekend. Sometime in January I mentioned some guys I met at a party who wanted to play music. This last weekend play music we did. I spent most of my time on the keyboard but played a couple songs on drums. This dude Armando has a real sweet set up in his apartment with an electronic drum kit, a guitar, his bass and a keyboard all hooked up to some monitors and run through his macbook running Logic Pro. I'm sure that means nothing to most of you, but some apparent readers will understand that it's pretty sweet, and that's all you need to know. After playing music and drinking a few beers with them for about 3 hours I made my merry way to a hip hop show. Who was playing you might be wondering. Well, I'll tell you: PEOPLE UNDER THE (MFING) STAIRS. That's who. If you don't know, these guys are one of my favorite groups. They are superb and i suggest you check them out sometime. Needless to say, the show was off the chain like mr. t on welfare. Really. It was amazing. It was sooooooo nice to see a good hip hop show because it has been far too long for me, and this show was the best I could've hoped for. To give you an idea of how excited I was, here's photographic evidence of me throwing my hands in the air, but obviously caring. A whole lot. (hint: I'm the tall lanky dude in the corner).

The playing music thing is turning into a weekly event which is great. We did it again last night and then went out for some drinks afterwards with Jon (a dude I work with) and Joori (hsi girlfriend at who's bday party I met Armando, Tony, and David (the guys I'm playing music with) I bought a new camera for my birthday (a Nikon D40x for those of you who know cameras) and it's pretty dope. I'm trying to take it around with me so i can take pictures of my life here in China. For some reason I can't load them up here and I'm getting impatient so if you want check out a few pictures from last night here. I'll probably continue to post more pictures there. That about wraps things up here. Keep on with all the keeping on you all are doing on a daily basis. Go ahead and give yourself a high five from me for being awesome (or have someone else give it to you, but remember it's from me). Until we meet again, here's something ridiculous.....ly awesome.

Latro.

-B