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Tron Legacy

The Christmas holidays went swimmingly, but all too fast.  Not enough time was spent with my Dad, Mom, and brother, although quality time was spent.  I got some really great gift coming mostly in the form of cycling clothing and a new razor.  I got Ally an Amazon Kindle, which I believe was the go-to gift for American shoppers, but nevertheless, she was excited to have one.  Ally really likes to read, and I hope this Kindle will at least save some trees, if not our bank account.  So far it has sat on the table.  

Over the holidays, Travis and I saw Tron: Legacy (in IMAX 3D), which was very predictable but super awesome.  I knew the whole storyline from the first 5 minutes, but the graphics and music continued to surprise me throughout.  I have always liked Daft Punk, so for them to do a full movie score was incredible. They even made a cameo appearance in the club scene!  I plan on buying the soundtrack soon (which is already out), but I'm afraid I won't be able to recreate the way the music sounded with 1 bigazillion watts blaring out at you in the IMAX Theaters.  Seriously, the movie was ridiculously loud.  If people were talking in the movie, I would not have known. Below is a video (just music) of one of the songs from the soundtrack. 

The graphics in 3D were great.  Motorcycle and light air-speeders look sweet in 3D.  You could tell the producers concentrated all their efforts into this instead of the plot line.  The plot was the only disappointment I had, because they could have, with a little bit of effort, made it so much better.  They could have concentrated more on the duality between Kevin Flynn and Clu, or Good vs. Evil in Tron, or imperfect perfection of Quorra (sp?).    Or they could have just made it all about the battles on the GRID.  

On a more serious side of things, NYTimes came out with an article a couple of days ago about the Deepwater Horizon Disaster, that really moved me and was very interesting. It's sort of long so if you have some time, you can find the article here.  

Rest Week

This last week has been a cycling rest week for me.  After 4 weeks of at least 15 hours of riding each week, I was feeling like it might be time.  This left me plenty of time to catch up on YouTube videos, TV programs, and drinking beer.

Not only was this break good for me physically, but also emotionally. I feel like I am ready to "rage" on my bike again.  Rage means go fast and hard.  I will be doing five weeks of solid training before I have another rest week, and then the season starts! I will not be totally trained and ready for racing until March, but the early season races will help me prepare for this.

In other news, I convinced Ally to get a new phone, and NOT get an iPhone!  She ended up with an Android based phone, which is definitely the have to have phone of 2011. Plus Verizon probably won't get the iPhone until July of next year.  And the iPhone, while good, is not AS good as the Droid phones.  So now I have a DroidX and she has the Droid Incredible.  Hopefully she will still acknowledge my existence even though she has a smartphone.

I only work two days this week and then I am off for Christmas for 5 days. It will be nice to see the family and exchange presents. I am sad that I will miss skiing this year, but now that I don't have Christmas vacation for a month, it's harder to plan around a long trip.  Maybe next year, if I can still have vacation by that time!