Ma Familia

I though I might take a minute and introduce my family

The Red Queen

Tim Burton didnt even get it close when he portrayed his wife in Alice in Wonderland. "Off with their heads", mild in comparison to what this queen will do to you if you cross her. A combination of Italian, Russian and Irish bloodlines topped with a red mane, yields an unwieldly mix of love, emotion and fire.

 Cream Puff

Most often seen driving a white Prius and hanging out with Pot Roast, Cream Puff boasts a stunning variety of culinary and design skills. 

Carrot Chopper

Carrot chopper can be found hanging out with Buttery Sticks and running her a** off. She is a known Vegan and foe to plants. She rips live carrots out of the ground, chops off their heads, skins them alive and eats them for breakfast (Gruesome). 

Little Brother

Little brother boasts a wide variety of ball juggeling skills and fancy dance moves. A known mohawk wearer, he is currently seeking a place of higher learning and a new love.

Port Man

Port man is a cancer survivior, father of three, three time half iron man finisher, all around great athlete and award winning Engineer. (Hey, If you want to boast about yourself get your own blog!).

The News

And now for the news

People around the world have discovered if you protest load enough and long enough you can overthrow any dictator. This has or is happening in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Wisconsin.

Boeing landed a contract to produce the US Air Forces Airial Tanker Fleet, wrestling the winning bid from a European competitor. Boeing workers applauded the US government for buying American. They then celebrated by getting in their Hondas, Toyotas and Hundais and driving to Walmart to buy a bunch of party supplies made in China. Correction: The management drove BMW's and went to Applebees.

Married New York Congressman Chris Lee had to step down in shame after soliciting a relationship with a woman he met on Craigs list. Apparently Chris forgot the things he was taught in Congressional Freshman orientation.
1) Never use your real name or congresional e-mail address when soliciting sex on public internet sites. "Hey its me Chris Lee my e-mail is chrislee@nycongress.gov wanna have sex wth me? Please dont tell anyone who I am.
2) Never make it look like your flexing by making a fist when taking a topless picture of yourself.
3) When soliciting sex try to use off the grid internet sites like HORNEYNYCONRGESSMEN.COM
or IFYOUREALLYNEEDITTHATBADUSEYOUROWNHAND.com or YOUSTUPIDIDIOTWHYCANTYOULOVEYOURWIFE.com or ISTHATREALLYYOURBODYORDIDYOUUSEPHOTOSHOP.com or ITREALLYLOOKSLIKEYOUPHOTOSHOPPEDTHATBODYIN.com

Taking it up the butt

 In a 48 hour period I...

1) Completed my taxes

2) Received my annual bonus. Which is shrinking at an incredible rate. While J&J profits soar.

3) Will have a colonoscopy.

I am not sure which of these is worse although they all reduce to the same thing...see title above.

Sorry there is no picture but even I think that would be inappropriate

And I add this , A blerb I did for a magazine article (I think its funny)

Gary Denton is a retired racecar engineer. He currently resides in Rochester, New York with his family. These days Gary spends his time cross country skiing, cycling and golfing. By race engineer work hour standards, he occasionally visits a place where he designs clinical diagnostic analyzers for a division of Johnson and Johnson health care companies. Gary holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from GMI Engineering and Management Institute and 6 patents in the area of Vehicle controls. He has received numerous awards including developing a low tire pressure monitoring system which won the SAE Louis Schwitzer award for Engineering Innovation and Excellence in 1995.

These are a few of my favorite things

• Jazz Music, Monk, Dianna Krall, Duke, Miles its all good.

• Coffee Starbucks Dark roasts black, Espresso and Cappuccinos. I make the best ones. See A poor mans Cup post

• Red Wine, deep dark dry reds.

• Great Food, Italian (cooked by my wife, she has this thing with garlic and olive oil that's absolutely intoxicating. People still talk about dinners they came to at our house years later. Most often asked question "Gary how come you dont weigh 300 lbs. Sushi and Indian food is also good.

• Red Wine with the above

• Single Malt Scotch Whiskey after the above

• Beer, Hoppy interesting beers not that crap they advertise on TV. Oh by the way if you see an ad on TV for something you dont want it. Think about it if something sells well on its own merits why do they need to cram it down your throat.

• Merino Wool - Hats, Socks Sweaters, its so soft.

• My Family, all are extremely talented and wonderful

• Mountain Biking its like Zen Meditation just try to think about your troubles while careening down a steep drop

• Road Biking, Carbon Frames are very cool

• Roller Skiing on my pneumatic wheel custom wooden roller skis. Took me 4 years to perfect the design.

• In the interest of keeping this PG I will call it Love, sorry kids and Steve.

• Cross Country Skiing (Skate skiing is almost as good as the above, but not quite)

• Working out. Full body and core workouts are the best. I realized lifting weights for bulk was rediculous 6 years ago.

• Golf, very meditative, I enjoy hitting at the range as much as playing. After 12 years of concentrating to get good at this I think I have accomplished the goal.

• Fixing stuff. I love restoring life to old things and making stuff work.

• Hiking in the Adirondacks. Views are spectacular.

• Cooking. Indian is my newest love, Making Sushi Rolls.

Now the hard part is doing all of these in one day. I have tried and I always run out of time.

These are a few of Things I hate

• NFL and College football. See previous Blog posts

• Budweiser, Miller lite etc

• Large Corporations that are turning our environment into a sess pool

• WalMart - See Above or under large Corporations selling our standard of living to China

• TV commercials

• TV shows. Most are Nonsense. The WWE has a huge following, "Its make believe folks" Its not real.

• CNN, Fox news, the news in general, its never good

• The two party system

• Highly paid CEO's, making 300 or more times the average workers pay. 20 years ago it was 30 times

• The unsustainable increase in college tuition and healthcare. Over 10% a year! Inflation is at 3%. The Cost of these things have doubled (adjusted for inflation) over the last 20 years thats

• Smart Phones and those who are distracted by them

• Face Book and those who are distracted by it.

Other than that I really don't have much of an opinion about anything!

I Give Up

Actual wording from a website I need to use for Travel:
Your new password must contain the following requirements.
Longer passwords and passwords that are not common words are more difficult for others to guess.
Please enter a new password containing at least 8 characters , containing at least 1 numbers ,
containing at least one uppercase character , containing at least one lowercase character ,
containing at least one special character , which is different than your previous 5 password.
..and they expire every 60 days.

I have at least 20 different internet sites I need to keep track of passwords for....
Next thing you know I will need to submit a stool sample to gain access to my banks web site...
It a pretty crappy financial time these days so its fitting dont you think!

Wegmans

Above is Danny Wegman. Millionaire, Philantropist, Snappy dresser and grocerier. Danny made his fortune the old fashioned way, he inherited it.  I was in his wine store today and in he walks. You would think Paris Hilton just entered the place. Everyone was like "Hey Danny hows it going", "Look its Danny". He was hard to miss, because he was wearing a knee length technicolor coat trimmed with fur. Now if your going to take most of the hard earned money from you employees and buy a 5 million dollar house on a lake why do you have to flaunt it in front of them. Dress like a regular Joe for Christ sake instead of a Pimp (But when you pay your people dirt and take all the profits maybe... I Digress). But Hey, then they wont notice you when you walk in the front door...I think I get the point. Something has gone horribly wrong in our society when the richest guy in town sells you your groceries.

So then I go over to the Grocery store. The place is jammed packed and the isles are barely wide enough to get two grocery carts side by side. They are clearly going for more product space in lieu of any room for people to walk around. I see there are these big wigs walking the floor like peacocks. I knew they were big wigs because they are dressed in business suits embroidered with Santa Clauses and Wegmans logos and Santa and his Sleigh and such. They looked rediculous. Then I caught wind of their conversation. It went something like this "Wegmans is uniquely positioned blah blah blah, to have the highest quality and best shopping experience, blah blah, of any grocery store in the state. And I swear I did not make this up, literally 2 seconds after I heard "the best shopping experience", this lady goes by me saying "I hate this place, I hate this place, I hate this place". I guess the wigs were too busy blahing to catch it. 

Another very annoying thing about Wegmans is they rebrand everything. Eggs, Milk, Crackers, everything has the Wegmans brand on it. Its less expensive but.. the quality is sub par. Take any Wegmans item and compare to the national brand and the Wegmans item is crap. hey cut corners to get the price down. Probably paying the workers in the factories who make this stuff $8 and hour. I buy national brands, although they are getting harder to find at Wegmans. They even have Wegmans potatoes. The potatoes for god sake have Danny name on them. Why not put the name of the farmer who grew them on the label, he did a hell of a lot more to bring me those potatoes than the person who put them in a bag and resold them to me. The only reason I shop there is because of what Americans fear most, The loss of Convenience.

During the summer I bought my vegetables from the Farmer who grew them, I try to buy my produce and meat from local producers, who have their name on the label, some times they even hand me the item and tell me about how it was produced. We have got to get back to small produced mom and pop culture. I am not really into making some fur trimmed coat wearing dude richer.  

A poor mans cup

My BF BIL (Thats Best Friend Brother in law. BF are also his initials). He has a knack for over doing it a bit. Pictured above is his home espresso/cappuccino center. Its one step below the full blown restaurant style machine, referred to as ProSumer (Professional Consumer model in case you need me to hit you over the head with it). It makes great I mean knock your socks off great cappuccino and espresso. Its plumbed into the water supply and the motor in the grinder next to it could power a small lawn mower.  He has a tamper which puts exactly 30 lbs of force on the grinds in the filter basket and a thermometer in the milk frothing jug. As well as insulated glass shot glass so you dont burn your hands when lifting an aromatic frothy shot into your mouth. He has his beans delivered express overnight from some far off town in Ohio or somewhere in the middle west. Only certain roasters will do. After visiting him for a week a developed a taste for the aromatic and tasty blends only capable of being brewed by such a contraption. So being the poor guy with 2 kids and a wife in college, I contrapted my own version of the home espresso experience which I will attempt to explain.

First I resurrected my old espresso maker from our dungeon.  The water goes into a little bucket which I fill at the sink. My grinder motor threatens to stall on every grind of the bean. I press the beans into the filter basket with my perscription medicine pill bottle (Lid is the perfect diameter, its also quite interesting as BF's wife is a pharmacist). I froth the milk in the cup I am going to drink out of, using experience and guesswork to know when it is hot enough. I dispense the espresso into these little porcelain cup my wife bought and I buy my beans at a wholesale club. Makes a pretty good cup if you do it right. Took me about 10 cups to get the process down and get that perfect draw of crema every espresso enthusiast craves. There you go a poor mans espresso experience. Next week a poor mans roller skiing experience!

Bad Wizards

Bottled water is a scam  http://storyofstuff.org/bottledwater/ I use a reusable sports bottle and drink tap. Pretty much sums it up about corporations too.

My mailbox is piled high with junk everyday, so I went to http://www.catalogchoice.org and did something about it.

The BCS series is corrupt 

http://www.rockchalktalk.com/2010/11/11/1807701/sports-illustrated-talks-bcs-playoff-and-why-we-continue-to-spin-our

I don't watch college football. Instead I support my Div I daughters running and rowing! and my son who won a NY State Championship in Nordic skiing.  Pro Football and Baseball players are up there too in my book, Hey Michael Vick was a detested criminal now he throws a couple of passes and hes a hero again! and Jeter, dont get me started, the definition of cheating is, Intent to deceive by lying to your opponent ! Could you imagine if I did this at work, Hey FDA that blood test is safe, yeh really it is.


My cable TV brings me commercials and insulting news like FOX and Mad Money. So I turned it off. Instead I installed a HD antenna in my attic and get 11 crisp clear HD channels over the air for free!
Dont really have time to watch em much but if I'm watching commercials I better not be paying for the service as well.

My newspaper tells me all the awful corrupt things done by Hedge Fund managers, politicians, professional sports players, Corporate CEO's, CFO's and directors. Throw in the bad behavior of entertainment celebrities (When you hit a thin shot in golf its called a Calista Flockhart, When you hit a fat one its a queen Latifa, when you hit it in a group of trees and cant get out its a Lindsay Lohan because your in jail). So I canceled my newspaper.

 Richest man in the world, poorest product in the universe. I have a 10 year old mac that outperforms my brand new windows PC.

 Bill was interviewed on 60 minutes. He was saying he was trying to figure out what to do with all his money and he said you could have 1000 people fanning you. Bill clearly is not thinking creatively enough!






Life is a lot like the new Harry Potter movie, there are a lot of bad wizards out there. I know who the good ones are but I cant always recognize the bad ones. I do like to watch 60 minutes, available on free over the air HD by the way. They are really good at identifying the bad wizards. And once your identified, look out, I have a wand made of elder!

The 12 days of cycling (Cycling is better than christmas)

My wife is out of town so instead of throwing a kegger or having the guys over for beer, cigars and poker. I thought I would bike every day instead of taking a car and blog about it. Check back every day for an update to this entry. My little ploy to get you coming back for more.
 
 I thought I would put the new ones upfront so y'all dont have to do so much scrolling. Hard work that it is.

 On the Twelfth day of Biking: Back to work. Some screw up with the Disability paper work and I was sent home at 11 am. Now I did call them last Friday is everything OK, "Yes you are all set", Now I cant get a hold of anyone at the disability company to tell me what the problem is. Also my internet connection did not work and it has so far taken me 4 phone calls/ talks with the admin to get someone to fix it and it still is not fixed after a day and a half. Much has led me to infinite frustration, which I took out on a 3 hour bike ride.

So here is the song: You know how it goes, last verse same as the first, you get the idea

On the twelfth day of biking my true love gave to me:

12 corporate cock ups
11 road rashes
10 days of resting
9 mountain bike meditations
8 Disability reps a calling
7 Cross bikes a blowin
6 Bubble persons bubbling
5 Ports a flushing
4 Pacers pushing
3 skin tight ski suits
2 much knee pain
And a pharmacist commenting on my bike shorts, ole!

 On the eleventh day of Biking: Mission accomplished! First race back since being diagnosed with cancer! It wasn't without incident, I crashed on the first lap. Going down a hill into turn onto a gravel section I washed out and hit the gravel.

As I lay on the ground in pain I had a choice, Quit (which I almost did) or continue. I decided if I could come this far I should finish what I started, if I nothing was broken. Nope nothing broken. I almost cried, but continued and passed a bunch of people before finishing. I crashed two more times trying to un-clip a sticky pedal but by that point it did not matter. Once your ego gets bruised and your emotions are shot it really does not matter what happens you just keep going.  Lots of people cheered for my super hero costume although they will never know the full story like you my readers do.

On the tenth day of Biking: I took a rest day to gear up for tomorrows Cyclo Race. You get to wear a costume since its near Halloween. I am going as Portman, I think I look like the character pretty well. Except for actual Portmans, round shape, I have a rather muscular psyche, I digress. It will be quite Muddy during the race so the costume may be quite sullied, so I thought I would show it to you in ts immaculate from.

On the ninth day of Biking: I am not mountain biking, but if I did, I would stay off the hard trails. If I was mountain biking I would notice how connected I feel to the bike through the pedals and the handle bar how mountain biking is a whole body exercise. You don't just sit and pedal, you balance, pull up on the bars, lean, look where you are going down the trail. It would be quite involved, if I was mountain biking of course. Mountain biking is like meditating. If meditation is supposed the keep all that mental chatter from going on in your head, then this (if I was doing it) will do that right now. Nothing like going down a trail, braking and trying to negotiate a tight turn to take everything off your mind except trying to keep your wheels upright. Go down a steep and you will be meditating like a zen master. It is like an adrenaline rush combined with the most calm feeling you ever experienced. Add in endorphins and exercise and you have the perfect activity, if I was doing it of course. 

On the eighth day of Biking: 33:05 would have placed me 5th in the overall bike times. Not bad for a guy 3 months out of chemo! Didn't beat Mr Skin suit he got 30:00. Got a call from my disability insurance company while riding at 175 beats per minute, guy must have wondered why I was panting so hard (gee this guy is worse than we thought he sounds really out of breath, and he wants to go back to work) Not kidding, he was calling about my long term disability, I almost hit a tree taking his call (kidding). I stopped to take the call and then almost hit the tree.


On the seventh day of biking: Quick ride home from B's school after dropping off the car. Wind was at my back and it felt fast fast fast and the cyclocross bike ridden be E in the summer. She lets me borrow it for races you see! I promise a legitimate run of the Black diamond course on the cyclocross bike tomorrow. See if I can come close to Mr skin suits time!

On the sixth day of biking: There is no biking on the sixth day of biking because (after reading this blog) my mom told me to take it easy and my daughter told me not to mountain bike. Dr says yes, wife says yes, daughter says no, because Portmantm might pop the port the Dr put in. My daughter created the Portmantm bubble person character ,

who will be making an appearance at the Halloween Cyclocross race on the 12th day of biking, my first race in over a year, stay tuned.
(Portmantm and the Portmantm  character are trademarks of annemariedenton.com, all rights are reserved, all patents legitimate, all reasons known to all persons who know it and believe in the bubble person heir-achy their heirs are apparent and thus insoluble and undeliverable to no one)










On the fifth day of biking: 32 miles round trip to the Oncologist to get my port flushed.I am exhausted and can hardly type due to my  neurapathy so this is the entire post.

On the fourth day of biking: Two of my friends came by for a 20 mile road ride. One friend said he had not been on his bike in 2 weeks and had been over eating and drinking so he would not be very fast. He buried me and my other friend up the first hill and never let up. I was hammering in a high gear and my friend was standing up mashing away at the pedals trying to keep up with this guy and he looked like he was just soft pedaling along coasting occasionally. How does he do it? He said it was carbo loading, I think he had secretly been at the gym on the trainer.

On the third day of biking: I rode about 8 miles, one way, to watch a run and bike race. Kind of wished I was competing but I cant run yet so I can wait. The competitors all looked like they were in a lot of pain. I thought this was fun? 

On the second day of biking: I got the clearance from my doctor and my wife to go Mountain biking. When I asked the doctor if it was dangerous for me to go mountain biking with my port(commonly known by my kids as as popping my port), He said its dangerous you can kill yourself mountain biking. I certainly know that. But no more dangerous with my port. So I went. Hit my knee cap on the handlebars and it hurt like hell. I really enjoy the endorphin rush when I am wreathing in pain :( I am not really sure if I like mountain biking now.

One the first day of biking: I went to the pharmacy to pick up a 30 day supply of my neurapathy medicine. It was raining, so it was a bit cold and wet, but I managed. The lady behind the counter asked me if I had seen some TV show on last night which featured an overweight man wearing bike shorts for the entire episode. I wondered what she meant by that, but she said I looked good in mine. Brings back memories of the line in caddy shack when Ted Knight is trying on an ugly hat and Rodney Dangerfeld says "But it looks good on you".

A Pant Load

Beware: The following is a graphic (and very funny) description of the events that happened on the 4th of this month. Hearty souls, read on. Other, you have been warned.

Getting your rectum rebuilt (Yes I was ripped a new one) is pretty disturbing to your bowel habits. Re-establishing healthy, satisfying, everything is right with the world poos (Credit to CS for this one) has been challenging. But I have just about done it. Except for one minor issue, that I have readily come to find is very important when adding any medicines or vitamins to your regimen.

I have had this problem where a shall we say, "Never Trust a Fart" pretty much describes it..or have your ever heard of a 'shart"....well you get the idea. The other day I am riding my bike in the pouring rain..pedaling along and I stand up on the pedals because I have this pressure which feels like I need to relieve and uh oh that was stupid I shouldn't have done that, I think I just gave myself a racing stripe in my bike shorts. I sit back down on the seat and yes confirmed major pant load in there. So I am soaked, 10 miles from home, its cold and I have shi.. myself.  Time for a major re-eavaluation of why this is happening.

After some research I have figured it out. I have been taking 250mg of magnesium for a nerve issue. This was part of a supplement regimen prescribed by my doctors. Turns out magnesium causes diarrhea. I guess they failed to mention it might make me poop my pants, but hey, you cant be expected to be warned of everything.

Why I make the face?

I almost forgot why this blog is titled make the face. Its because when I am racing (ski, bike run etc) my face contorts into all sorts of funny expressions as I strain to exert all my energy and concentration to go as fast as I possibly can.  Someone once pointed out, why race? your not getting paid for it. Although I won a bottle on wine once.  Why do this? To stay physically fit of course. But you can stay fit by just exercising with a group or by yourself. Why pay the entry fee, train your butt off and put yourself through all the agony and pain that comes when the gun goes off and your ego tells you that you need to get one step ahead of that son-of-a-b in front of you.

Why? To learn about yourself. To experience the physical discomfort that you would never ever get yourself into when exercising. Once you start to push yourself past what you thought were your limits you realize your limits are far above what you thought they were. Your pain threshold increases, you learn how to forget about the pain and redirect it elsewhere. A very important skill when dealing with the physical agony I just went through. You learn how to overcome obstacles. Things that once were hard are now possible. Hills dont look as steep, roads not as long and mountains not so high. You become mentally tougher, able to get through bad situations with more ease.

I have not entered a race in a year. Will I enter one again? You bet the funny expression on my face I will. Just not for a while, I need to heal some more. Then look out I have a new threshold and resolve to race with. My face will get contorted again!

Tattoo You

Surviving cancer makes you do some interesting things. Whims become reality, life experiences are sought out, things you have thought about doing get done, little annoyances become unimportant, inhibitions become non existant and I got a tattoo. Its the Chinease characters which you would read to pronounce my wifes name. I vetted this with a friend of mine from China. I didnt want to end up like the poor guy who got "This is an ugly boy" tattooed on him. Although I saw a photo of the guy and you know what, It kind of suits him.

I got the tattoo at the same place my sister in law got most of her body tattooed, so I knew the work would be good, Not all artists or parlors do this type of quality work, Look at it its fibrant color and crisp outline. Not those fuzzy green things many people have. If your going to get one get a quality artist at a high end place, its worth it.

Did it hurt? "Yes it hurts" its a tattoo. Feels like intense bee stings, 5 seconds at time until the artists stops and mercifully wipes it, then 5 seconds of pain. But hey, lets face it, after what I have been through in the last 8 months, my pain tolerance is up a bit.

Why did I get it? Its a life experience I wanted to have. Its an omage to my wife of 23 years who is my soul mate and who is part of me. It in a place where it won't show most ofthe time but I will see it every day. Me and my friends at the gym who will see it in the shower, "Not that I look at the guys at the gym in the shower"... I digress.

Stranger Than Fiction

Today I walked in on my wife mounting another guy, fortunately she flipped him over and put him into an arm bar as shown above. No, she was not cheating on me just taking her Jujitsu class. This is full contact Mixed martial arts fighting. What the hell! I have been watching the World Extreme Cage fighting on Versus for about a year now and I am fascinated by all the moves these guys can do. If you read back a blog post or two you can see I want to do some martial arts and now my wife has beat me to it. Damn. Unfortunately I cant participate myself since I have a device implanted inside me which cant come out for a few more months. But when it does I am hitting the mat and learning this stuff so I can at least defend myself if my wife decides to go wacko and try to break my arm or choke me. Provides a strong contrast to playing golf too.

Imagine a tiny 5 ft 4 in redhead fighting with these young ripped guys. Its even funnier when she turns absolutely beat red while trying to defend being choked. Impressive stuff. You go girl!

Free Bike!

I got this bike for free. My generous local cycle shop owner gave it to me after he fixed it up a bit. I spent $60 on parts and added some old parts I already had. A friend of mine built two $8000 bikes when I was building this. He spent more on water bottle cages than I spent on this bike.  Its got a bit of character, a coke can shim to keep the seat post from slipping, a huge setback seat post from an old stunt bike, and salmon colored bar tape picked out by AM to match the lettering on the frame. There's nothing like having a professional artist/designer on staff! Oh and let me tell you about the private golf instructor on my staff. His name is Michael Breed (Read a few posts back). This is another thing I get for free. Every week I get a 1 hour private golf lesson from a guy who teaches the pros and was once an assistant at Augusta National. Its all about counting your blessings now isn't it. Back to free bike. Free bike made me understand you don't need to spend $8000 to have a fun time or build your fitness. This bike has done more for my pedaling technique and quad strength than I could have imagined. When aboard my carbon race bike I find myself spinning more and doing more with less energy.

This bike is fast. It has cyclocross tires and rolls over everything from grass to dirt to gravel. It is perfect for the rails to trails path we have here. The other thing about free bike is it blew my perception of what a single speed is. You can go up steep hills quite easily and it spins very freely and is quick on flat terrain.  What did I need all those gears for anyway. Anyone in my family can ride it and ride it anywhere.  So thanks to AM (Bar tape selection) and CS (Everything else). Live hard and ride free! 
BTW: Free bike has a free water bottle cage.