Even Buddy Can Pretty Much Wipe His Own Butt

If you don't mind humoring me, please read this with a David Duffield or Phil Ligget accent.


Noah and I rolling with the local madness today. No real attacks, but it was still a tough pace. For the first part of the ride there were about 30-40 people with about 4-5 of them doing the pace making. Noah was one of them.

Now and again someone would get in the pace line, let Noah take his pull, but then not come through. It's frustrating, but not maddening, since there's no category requirement or obligation to do any work. heck, I've had plenty of days where I just sat on the back of these things and rolled in. just wanted company or something. But when you see your 12year old get stuck on the front when racer types are sitting in behind him, it feels good on one hand and makes me think about just how sissy some bike riders/racers can be. I'm not worried about that with Noah at all.

He got caught out of position when we went into a cross wind. The whole group was on the yellow line or over, and Noah went into the left lane with 6 or 7 other folks. I let him do it for about 3/4 of a second before I barked at him.

I did a pretty good job of keeping him in my pocket and not losing much ground on the group for this few mile stretch. Noah pulled through to help me out. This is a milestone, I think, because now I'm not just pacing and pushing him, but we're working it together.

He pulled through, and the guy behind him, who'd we'd been pulling along for about 3 miles, tried to jump across to the leaders. The guy behind him wouldn't come through and stuck Noah on the front and me behind. Ugh. I came around and took up the pace. Told Noah to just sit on. We no longer have to discuss what is going to happen next, because whenever someone jumps Noah after sitting on his wheel, we're going to drop them. No matter what.

So we did.

With some luck (train crossing) we caught the leaders. Noah worked his way back to 3rd or 4th in line and held his spot well. We stayed with things until Hilltop, picking up some riders along the way who either shortcutted or were just out riding and jumped in with us. Unfortunately, two of those guys were in front of Noah and were gapped by the group on the steepest part of the hill.

We tried and tried to fight back to the leaders. I'd pull as long as I could, and then I'd give Noah all the shove I had to see if he couldn't get close enough to finish it by himself.

He'd get really close, fade, then blow. I'd catch back up and we'd do it again. And again. And again. And again. We were fighting for it. No talking at all, just doing everything we could to get back with the leaders. Being dropped isn't fun, but we hadn't given up, and the fight was fun.

Meanwhile, I've got three jokers sitting on my wheel through all of this. I shove Noah, come to a near standstill, and the guy behind me says, "Whoa!". He's right. I didn't even check to see if anyone was there. But from that point on, I'm sprinting to catch Noah, pacing him for 30seconds or so, and then shoving him again. And again. And again (I know, we've covered this). And these guys are sitting on my wheel through all the surges and everything.

During this, one guy keeps saying, "Me next." "Me next." "Me next." He was referring to getting a shove. First of all, ask. Second of all, if you are really concerned, how about helping out a little? Third, don't fuggin grab my jersey pocket. And certainly don't do it and stop pedaling. "Me next" was only funny the first time you said it, and at that, it was only a little funny. When you grabbed my jersey, this very nearly became a blog about my second fight in two weeks, but I don't feel like reading on TXBRA about I now have anger management issues. that's why you could chew your lunch normally today. The TXBRA forum saved your life.

Trying to find my inner nice guy, I conceed and give this guy a shove too. I'm thinking that he's hanging on and maybe if I can help him a little more (as if pulling him for the last 10 miles wasn't enough), maybe we can catch the leaders. So I give him a shove. he stops pedaling while I'm accelerating. Then he...grabs his brakes!

Noah is up the road fading. I've got hardly anything in the tank, and now I have this. So I try again thinking that maybe he was just a little freaked by the acceleration. He starts coasting again, as if I'm going to push him all the way up to the leaders. Frustrated, I just shove him forward anyway with all I have. full gym rat grunt and the whole bit. He bridges up to Noah. And then attacks around him. He almost got across to the group.

One of the jokers left behind me jumps and tries to get across. Then another follows him. I sprained my neck shaking my head.

When I caught up to Noah, I told him that we were going to beat these guys (the finish line was about 6 miles away at this point). He asked "why" and I told him I'd explain later.

I set the pace. about a minute later Noah started to come around. I told him it wasn't necessary and that I wanted him to sit on and that I'd time it for the sprint.

Well, that didn't work. About a mile later we come to the Old Alton Hill and had caught these guys already. Noah attacked. they brought him back. He attacked again. They brought him back again. He attacked again. This went on until 2 miles to go. at that point Noah attacked and they cracked. There was a guy up the road dropped from the leaders and Noah caught up to him. They worked together. I just barely got across to them.

Noah and this guy were trading grown up pulls. Noah didn't even hesitate to slide in front of me, letting me sit out the rotation.

With 400m, Noah attacked again and stayed away across the line.

Noah is off to Pine Cove tomorrow for summer camp. that'll give some of these guys a week off from being pounded by a 12 year old.

Bedtime Stories With Buddy

Pretty often we'll tell the kids bedtime stories that involve characters with the names of "Muddy", "Leanie", and "Boa". Sometimes we're just too tired to come up with anything, so we'll ask them to tell us their bedtime story.

Last night, Buddy's story was about animals in the ocean.

"...and Buddy was swimming with the animals in the ocean. The dolphins, the fishes, the sharks, the octopusses, and the donkeys eating ice cream."

I'm sick, can't sleep, raced, and had a GREAT day

106, 107, 108, if I count just the 30+, which is all I was racing, so that's what I'm doing.

Noah took 51 and 52.

I'd better get to work or he's gonna catch me.

I didn't even have any pizza for him to knock out of my hand

Noah and I had finished up a local group ride, I'd ridden with him over to Lisa's, and I was...

...I was going up the hill on Shiloh. Hate that road, but it was the most direct route home. A convertible Mustang comes up next to me. Two guys in front. Two girls in the back. One other guy in the back. The guys all yell the usual stuff. I didn't wave or middle finger or anything. I really didn't care, except that when they sped by and away, a car was coming in the other lane, so they swerved back into the lane, just missing me. I went off the road, but only a little. It peeved me, for sure, as I was on a Zipp wheel that I just frickin bought, and I really, really didn't feel like taking that Vittoria through the junk.

Anyway, there's a stop sign not too far up from there, and sure enough, they are sitting two cars back when I roll up (not even chasing).

I ask, "Really? Was it worth it?"
The two guys in the front are doing a pretty good job of saying "We screwed up" and acting like it too. The guy in back was talking the talk. A lot.

Not sure why I even bothered, as I'm not one to wave or otherwise try to engage these kinds of folks, but I said, "Why don't we talk about it over here", pointing to just around the corner of the stop sign.

Before the car even stops, the guy in the back seat jumps out, taking a step on the trunk. I get a foot out and on the ground, but he catches me pretty square in the cheekbone/temple. My helmet goes all askew, but other than that, I realize I just took his best shot, while clipped in and with a cycling shoe on the ground...

What would you do?

I laughed. It was probably more of a smirk, actually. I put my bike down and gave him a shove to get him off of the road. Once on the grass in the ditch I felt like I'd evened it up a bit. He went to swinging, and for a moment I was trying to remember which hole on the Peter Pan puttputt course in Austin has the windmill.

I caught him square on the nose with the first punch. When he backed up a step and stood more upright after that, I got him right in his buck teeth. Now I got a stupid mark from those teeth on the back of my hand. He turned away for a second, and I shoved him into the ranch fence.

My intent was to just hold him there until he calmed down, but he kept fighting back, so I kept shoving his face into the mesh of the fence.

I ain't gonna lie--I was having fun.

They probably think they are the only ones who ever goofed yelled at a cyclist, and meanwhile, I've got several years of guys like them built up. Besides, do you know how expensive Vittorias are?

I wasn't restraining him as well as I'd hoped, and he was starting to squirm around (I had just ridden 50 miles), so I put him on the ground. I got hit from behind, but I couldn't tell if it was his foot kicking me or if I was now on the wrong end of a tag-team match with my only partners, Glen Dyson, 540 miles away trying to pick out the right color speedo, and Burke, who may or may not be in the country. I hit him with the best shot I got in for the entire scuffle, and not .5 second later, I was tackled harder than I'd ever been tackled before (and I was on the meat squad for the best defense in Texas in 1987).

Seems that the folks in the Mustang were convoying with another car with two guys in it, and those two guys were either jumping in or breaking it up. either way, my bell was ringing.

I'm not real good at math, but there's now 5 guys and me. the two girls got out of the car, but were standing next to it. One of the guys was picking up my bike. At this point, my mind is racing, "Are these two breaking it up or jumping me? Is that guy moving my bike off the road or taking it?"

Two guys, at least, are holding me. The guy who was swinging is getting up. People are yelling "The cops are right down the road!". the guy who hit me originally comes at me, and I don't know what they were all thinking, but it isn't like I'm going to just let them hold me while this guy tees off. Kids watch too much tv these days. Part of me thought it would be bad ass to just take his punches and laugh some more, but then I remembered I'm getting slower to heal.

I shook the two guys off, and the guy who was coming at me backed up. From then on I knew I wasn't going to fight anymore.

It felt good to hit him. It felt good to be hit. But I didn't care about him enough one way or the other to keep going. Besides, it was all happening really fast, and I was pretty sure then that if I did start pummeling him that I'd be dealing with a few other guys. One of them, though, kept shoving me. I turned to look at him, and he said "You don't want any of this."

I don't know why I'm wired like this, but I took a step towards him. He's a fast runner. And I'm not running anywhere in my cycling shoes. They all kept yelling about the cops. They all ran to their cars. They all took off.

I checked my helmet and my pockets for my sunglasses, and for a second I got REALLY pissed, because they are the white MFrames, and I don't know that I could get another pair. But they were fine. Just sitting in the ditch.

Just in case, I texted the license plate # to Robbie, whose number was last on my text dial thing. Breathing hard, I picked up the bike and rode home. The more time that went by, the more I was ticked with myself for not teeing off more on him.

But now, as I sit here with a sore neck and back (already), he's having to come up with his story about how he kicked the cyclist's ass. He's got to spin it well, too, because he had lots of friends there to see it, and at some point, someone will ask, "So, a cyclist picked a fight with you? How does that happen? Did he get into the car with you or what? Did he threaten you while you were in the car?" Or I'm just too optimistic that he hangs out with anyone that bright.

Noah got second on that group ride.

The Noah Channel

You are probably busy. This is the short version. Vote for Noah Williams! http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/promos/props/

For those of you who don't want to get back to work...

The Cartoon Network recently put together a video about Noah for their program Props. This is a program that showcases 20 kids across the country and their particular sport or talent. Noah and the other kids are singled out because of their level of achievement and dedication.

For those of you who don't know Noah, he's a straight A student, he plays the drums in band, he pretty much keeps his room cleaned, and he works his tail off to be the best bike racer he can be. In the last two years, Noah has won five Texas Cup titles, including overall Texas Bicycle Racer of the Year, seven State Championships, and four medals at the National Championships. He also says "Please" and "Thank you" and his good with his little brother and sisters. He'll even clean out the chicken coop without being asked after only asking him once.

This is ultimately a competition among the 20 kids with the winners being determined by a vote on the Cartoon Network website: http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/promos/props/ . I'm not sure when the voting will happen, but I'm told that (ahem) we can vote as often as we wish. Please keep in mind that it was 37 degrees and raining when they came out to film Noah riding around and for part of the interview.

*voting begins June 30, I believe

The New Classic Old Spice Original

I'm not a fancy guy. In fact, my aftershave is downright Walgreens, and it bothers me not at all. Splash a little in the palm of my hand, make my face sting a little, and it's a good start to the day or evening.

The last bottle of this I bought gave me pause. It said "original" on it. to my thinking, the original of anything doesn't need to say "original". It just is. That said, it would be contradictory to be an Old Spice snob, so I let it go. In fact, I forgot about the "original" on the bottle after awhile.

I appreciate the heft of the glass/ceramic buoy-shaped bottle that hasn't changed since the 1940's. In the mid-90's I notices that the boat had changed on the bottle, but at the time I thought I was mistaken. Why would the old ship be changed on something like this?

But it was a change. And then "orginal" was added, presumably to help Proctor & Gamble execs distinguish between the old standard and the new "sport" line.

Now, though, it's come to an end. While I was dismayed at the other changes, the last is the end for me. It is still a buoy-shaped bottle, but it is now plastic. That ruins it for me. To start my day by picking up a plastic bottle of "classic" Old Spice? I'd rather splash with straight alcohol.

And it says "classic" and "classique" on the bottle as well, as if putting something french on a bottle of Old Spice will make it high end. It's Old Spice for heaven's sake. I don't mind being unrefined or low class, but I'm not going to be cheap.

Damn.

hand to hand combat with a snake

Was working on a singlespeed road bike I'm putting together. Got frustrated with a bit on it so decided to do something otherwise productive, and went to the garden. I started tilling with our 6hp monster truck thing, but the dust was too much. I was surprised at how dry the ground was, actually. After watering what we'd already planted and then the rest of the plot, that took care of the dust, and the rest was just wrestling the tiller. Good stuff. Manly. Shaved legs, crocs and all.

After that I decided to water the new fruit trees. I guess I missed a watering day or something, what with the garden being dry as well as the new trees. Good workout for the arms yesterday. An hour with the tiller, and then several trips carrying 5gallon buckets of water. Sure, I could string up more and more hoses, but carrying buckets is fun. Ok, it's fun when Noah does it. It was work when I did it, but it was less work than rolling up hoses. I hate that.

Nobody had collected the eggs yet, so after watering, I went to do that. We have one lady who lays in a different spot than the rest, so I grabbed that one first. Went to the coop/nesting boxes, and when I opened the lid, I was greeted by a snake in one of the nests trying to wrap it's head around one of the eggs.

I don't like snakes to begin with, and I don't care if they are non-poisonous or not. I don't care if they help control the mice or not. A snake, to me, is a snake. My favorite kinds are the dead ones. But this one, taking one of my eggs.

It's dead now. I think I'm supposed to exaggerate how big it is like a fish tale, but I don't know what the proper ratio is. The thing was 2.5 foot long before I cut its head off. I'm not sure what that is in snake tales.

There it was, eating one of my eggs, and it had the audacity to make that pain face silent scream look as I hacked at it with a shovel. In my bike dork tshirt, shaved legs, cargo shorts and crocs. Listen snakes, stay away from the eggs, and I won't chop you to pieces. Now you may be perfectly safe to be around and handle, but I'm not going to take the time to look it up in a book or on the web to see if the black ringed pattern is on the outside or inside of the brown ones. If you are eating an egg and not a mouse, you are gone.

However, if I see you working on a mouse, we can talk about it. I might name you and keep you. Might. Your cousin or brother or someone who looks like you was eating one my eggs, so your family is going to pay for awhile.

That's the deal.

Buon Compleanno

tick tock you don't stop

3:57am wake up. look at clock. damn.
4:00am alarm goes off.
4:10am making "Belgian" breakfast
4:30am Noah wakes up and comes downstairs and we eat.
4:50am put bikes on the rack (one is already inside the jeep) and head over to Rob and Royce's
5:35am find their street
5:43am Noah is walking up and down the street looking above the doors for the correct address
5:48am found it.
5:55am put our stuff in Rob's car.
6:08am heading south towards Houston for the Coldsprings RR
9:12am stop and mcD's for breakfast some more
9:50am arrive at road race and register, get number pinned on and such
10:22am start warming up
11:00am race supposed to start. staged.
11:25am race actually starts
11:28am get mad because both gas stations in Coldspring are out of regular and wonder why Coldsprings hates America
12:08pm Noah finishes 2nd in his race
1:03pm Royce wins his race
1:05pm Reanie scores a goal, but I missed it since I was at the bike races.
1:45pm Tracie (team LoneStarWorks.com) wins her race
1:49pm head towards Alkek for the evening races.
2:41pm Whataburger for lunch. New girl on the register pauses when the bill is $96. Yes, darling, that's probably a mistake.
3:00pm back on the road
4:39pm stop to use a real restroom before getting to the track.
5:02pm arrive at Alkek. unload all of our stuff.
5:31pm Noah's cog comes off as he rolls into the pit. You probably heard me cussing but weren't sure why. that's why.
5:33pm I'm now fully Mackey Sasser about working on bikes.
5:47pm I finally get on the track to warm up
6:10pm track racing begins


It would get even sillier to chronolog the times of the actual races, but the fact is that I stopped looking at a clock because I knew it would be a long night. Time trials tend to be a beating not just in the effort of doing them all in one night, but also because it is the longest night of racing on the track, period. We didn't even start the last round of racing until after 10pm.

Royce rode very strong. Noah only had two races, was riding ok, which was great, all things considerd. Gutted it out for wins in both events. Was a little put out with me for not signing him for the junior open as well. So he made up for it by playing a game of hop scotch that had 369 squares. Rob looked really good on the track, but the long day was really taking a toll. Finished 6th and 7th in his events.

I knew in warm up that I needed a bigger gear. I was afraid to change it out, especially with no more time to warm up on it. Seriously, this has become a problem. Rode that gear for all of the events anyway. #103, 104, and 105.

12:08am We're celebrating at Waffle House. Yeah, I got some prize money, but the SCORE came in getting a Waffle House mug!















12:38am heading to Dallas
2:25am I just can't drive anymore. Stop for gas and Rob takes the wheel.
2:28am I'm sleeping with my mouth open, drool running down my face, and I don't care one bit.
3:00am I wake up. back to sleep. wake up. back to sleep. keep doing that until we're about 20 miles from Dallas.
4:51am pull up in front of Rob's house, unload car, load jeep, say "good game", and head home.
6:10am pull up in our driveway, go let the chickens out, and go take a shower. Noah skips the shower and goes to bed.
7:55am eat breakfast with Chloe, Nono, Reanie and Buddy.
9:03am fall asleep and don't wake up until 11:40 when Noah says, "you need to take me to Mom's". I say, "ok", but Chloe ends up taking him because I'm sleeping.
12.35pm edging, trimming, brush cutting, working in the garden, etc
4:25pm (or something like that) collect seven eggs. Maximum production from our ladies! Say "Howdy" to Robbie when he stops by on a ride. keep working on stuff outside.
7:30pm eat dinner in the back yard.
8:40pm kids to bed
8:45pm work on work
11:00pm take a break to blog about the weekend.
11:18pm hit "publish post"
11:19pm still haven't unloaded the jeep

On being a Daddy vs Father

Reanie developed an ear ache Wednesday night. Took a look inside her ear, couldn't see much, but put in some homeopathic ear drop stuff thinking that because we bought it at Whole Foods, it probably won't hurt her if it wasn't the right thing. It was still bothering her, but she seemed a little better Thursday morning, and she wanted to go to school. So she did.

The school nurse called around 12:30 letting me know that Reanie was in her office and had a touch of fever and that she definitely had an ear infection.

She looked like she was hurting, and she was not nearly as chipper as normal. When we were getting in the jeep to head home, she asked if we could go to Daveed's office. It was that random. It was that sweet.

When we got home I looked in her ear and saw that there was a lot of gunk. Her ear was very obviously infected and it needed to be cleaned out. She was going along with me just fine, but she was understandably concerned that I was about to put a sticky pointy thing in her ear that was already hurting. With the sweetest and worriedest and almost scardiest eyes, she sat there and leaned over so I could get the gunk out.

She winced as I put the instrument close to her ear, even without touching. We tried a few things to calm her. We talked about the difference between feeling pain, being hurt, and discomfort, and that while this might be unpleasant for just a bit, she would actually feel a lot better when we were done. She trusted me to go on, which is a powerful thing.

The wincing continued, and we got more gunk than I thought was possible for someone to have in such little ears. I considered stopping, because the anxiety was still there, and every touch had her jump a little, and we'd clearly made a lot of progress.

But I made one more effort, and the ensuing jump that followed touching (I wasn't digging or scraping) an infected and inflamed part caused me to catch her in just the wrong way, and her ear started to bleed. I hurt her. She didn't throw a fit or scream (she never has), but the tears were flowing freely, and she was whimpering, and she was scared. Really scared. And she was hurting.

She told me she was done and that she was ready to take a nap. She was ready to go outside and play. She wanted to do her homework. She wanted to be anywhere but on that bathroom counter. And now I had to convince her to let me work even more on her ear to stop the bleeding and clean it up.

The pieces of my broken heart could be swept up off of the tile floor. She was fighting with herself to let me fix it, to trust me, but also by being scared and by being in pain. I would have done anything to take the pain away from her and carry it myself.

It was getting to the point where I really needed to leave to pick up Buddy from school, but Reanie's ear was still bleeding. I tried to reason with her that I was only using cotton to clean up, but at that point, no amount of reason or promise of pink yogurt covered pretzels was going to trump that something just got stuck in my ear and it hurt when you said it wouldn't.

She wasn't mad. I think I would have felt better if she were. Having had to hold my kid down for medicine or to clean a wound is not on the top ten list of "Cool things you get to do when you are a parent", and I did not want this to be a trauma thing. Anymore than it already had been.

We did get her ear cleaned out and treated. She did stop crying. I did not have to hold her down. When I told her that we needed to go get Buddy, she said she wanted to stay at home. She's 5yr old, and even though I'm only walking a few minutes down the road and we are in a very safe area, I wasn't keen on leaving her at home alone, no matter what Barbie Princess dvd was playing. She insisted, though. Really insisted.

I was already 5 minutes late, and I refuse to drive the half mile down the road to pick him up, so I told her to look out the window and watch me. She'd be able to see me for all but about 8 minutes of the round trip.

When I got home, she was crying, hard and loud, and sitting in a corner with her knees up to her chest. Peter Damian suddenly seemed like he had it correctly figured out.

I picked her up and held her in a way I haven't held her in years, aside from carrying her from the car to bed after a trip when she was asleep. I put together the kids' snack while holding her and she fell asleep. When I put her down on the bed, she reached up, still with her eyes closed, to be held some more, so I held her some more.

My concern beyond the obvious was that maybe it really was time to go to the doctor or even hospital. I initially took on treating her not because I think I know more about treating her than a doctor, but because we don't have insurance and the thought of taking her in to pay the nurses to clean out her ear seemed rather ridiculous. But I'd just made her ear bleed and caused her even more pain while trying to help her, which is ridiculous in its own right.

Buddy called out from the table to tell me that he was being sweet and sitting at the table to eat snack. that doesn't seem like it fits, but it really does, because it was his way to show that he was helping.

I carried Reanie back into the dining room to tell Buddy "thank you", and Reanie told Buddy, "Daddy cleaned my ear. It was hurting but it is starting to feel better." And then she asked me if she could take a nap in my bed on my pillow. "Of course you can", I said.

She slept for the next 3 hours, and I stayed there with her, just watching her sleep.

With some trepidation, she let me check her ear again before bed. This morning she was happy and bouncing and said that her ear felt better and that "it only hurts when you touch it here." It's about noon as I post this, and I haven't had a call from the school or CPS yet.

this is how we roll

At the same house, IM, email, cell phone...

Chloe worked from home yesterday afternoon.
I work from home just about all of the time.
She stopped and picked up groceries on her way home.
I went by and got groceries after picking up Reanie from school.
We even saw each other in the house before I left.

Now we have lots and lots of groceries.

One of my favorite ways to spend an hour on Saturdays

Here's Reanie after coming off the field from her first shift.












This is the "please take a picture of my number" picture.













The highlight of 5&under soccer is the snack after the game.

Does anyone know where my 15mm wrench is, and will they please take it away from me?

Last weekend was the first of the Texas Cup track races, and since they were at the Superdrome in Frisco, it was a relatively easy trip to get there. We also had several teammates planning to attend, which always makes a race weekend that much better.

Noah and I have race wheels, but because I'm a headcase about messing that stuff up, we typically only use them for championship events. This was easy enough to sort out for Noah, currently, because his rear wheel holds his expensive fancy powermeter, so putting on a race wheel means taking off the more exensive powermeter. He kept his "regular" wheel on there, which was one less thing to worry about. I put on a fancy, carbon, tri-spoke thing on the rear and intended to use the deep profile carbon wheel in the front.

That was the plan. In the future, if the plan calls for me to use a wrench or other bike tool, someone needs to duct tape my hands together behind my back.

Because Noah's bike required no adjustment, we simply made sure the tires were inflated and the bolts for the wheels were snug. He was up on the track in a matter of minutes.

The weekend before at the races, I "spun off" a cog on my regular rear wheel. No big deal, usually, as many track wheels allow you to run a cog on either side. The problem with this was that I "spun off" a cog on one side a year or so ago, so I only had the one side with threads anymore. That is, until I ruined the good side too. To get through the rest of that night, I borrowed a wheel from my teamnut, Troy.

I took the opportunity to sort out a wheel for warming up, which would be separate from my fancy race wheel. I'd have the easier gear on the warm up wheel, and when ready, I'd put the fast wheel on and get after it. It all sounds so simple.

After a couple laps around the short inner loop of the track, I took a few good, hard pedal strokes to get up on the track. It felt like I'd thrown out an anchor.

Under real load, the wheel cocked sideways a bit and the tire was rubbing against the frame. No good. I got off the track and carried my bike back to the pit. Started fiddling with the wheel to get it recentered, but all the adjusting was actually messing with the tightness of the bearings in the hub. That's not supposed to happen. After messing with it about 5 minutes past my limit in patience, and realizing that I needed to warm up more than I needed to figure out what was going on, I put on my fancy carbon tri-spoke rear wheel.

This wheel is cool! Continental tubular tire. It makes a cool sound that is the sound of fast. It is pretty light. It is pretty stiff. It is fast. Faster than me, but that isn't a prerequisite when they sell them. They take your money and give you the wheel. Worked for me.

Well, it would have worked for me if there wasn't all that racket going on. I couldn't hear the cool sound that only deep aerodynamic wheels make because something was wrong with the hub on this wheel as well. It was too loose, which made the wheel move a few noisy millimeters side to side. Every clank and bang made me see $ signs. After a few laps of hoping it fixed itself, I was forced to do something about it when the wheel cocked sideways a bit, just like my other wheel did. I came down to the pit, again, and started using wrenches in a way that suggested I knew what I was doing.

Troy bailed me out again by letting me use his back up race wheel (a different kind of tri-spoke), so we moved cogs around, slapped that in, and bolted it down. I took this opportunity to then put on my carbon front wheel, as there was just a few more minutes of warm up left.

That's when I stripped out the valve extention to inflate the tire.

No problem, though, because I actually brought my FRONT tri-spoke, which would have worked fine had I brought the adapter to air it up. By now, though, I was irritated enough that damaging bike parts felt good, not bad, so I jammed a pump head that was a little too big into the opening, and aired that thing up. And then the announcer announced "the track is now closed to warm up. Please clear the track."

His next announcement brought Noah's race to the rail. They started, there were a couple of attacks, and eventually Noah broke away. He had a solid lead coming into the final straight. That's when his wheel broke loose and the chain came off. 35 meters to go, tire rubbing the frame, chain dangling on the chainstay and off of the crank, and there's no brakes or anything of the sort on a track bike. It was a photo finish for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. Noah managed to take that win, no thanks to his mechanic.

In what has to be one of the worst cases of judgement on our team, they let me get his wheel back on and centered and such.

A few minutes later, I was able to race with no drama. After that race, though, a new racer, who I can only imagine assumed I new what I was doing with tools based upon the amount of time I had a tool in hand before the race, asked me to help her with her bike.

We got through that day with no more mechanical issues. When we got home, I glued that valve extender to the valve of my deep profile front wheel, and it was just after I turned it tight on it's last thread that I wondered if the valve was even open. Without three words of swearing at myself, I went inside away from bike parts and tools.

On Sunday, for day #2 of the Texas Cup weekend, it was windy. Too windy for the front tri-spoke, in my opinion, so I put on my normal, hunk of junk front wheel. The tri-spoke Troy loaned me was still on the rear, even though Rob fixed the hub on my own tri-spoke. I was afraid to take one wheel off and put on another, understandably.

Front wheels don't take too much brains to put on, and I didn't have any trouble with the installation. It was, however, on my 3rd or 4th lap of warm up that I broke a spoke on it. I know, "oh no!" as if it was just another thing to go wrong, but see, it is very rare to break a front spoke. The wheel doesn't really get much stress on it. No torque is applied. Not that I had a spare spoke with me, but when a front spoke goes, in my opinion, the wheel is compromised, which is exactly what you want to be thinking when dropping down the 45 degree banking ramping it up to 38 or so mph, like I was. The subsequent loss of trueness caused the remaining intact spokes to knock off the sensor of my computer. My stupid, expensive powermeter computer.

Back in the pit, I grabbed my carbon deep profile wheel, put a pump on the valve extender, and hoped for the sake of any children nearby that the thing would take air. It did. Sigh of relief.

I returned to the track to finish warming up, and there was a "pop-pop-pop-pop" sound coming from the front wheel.

The thing about track bikes is that they are so simple. Bolt on wheels. No brakes. One gear. Simple. Basic. Good grief.

Oh, that sound? Get this. It was a bubble in the glue for the tubular. It was popping on every rotation of the wheel. Go slow, pop.....pop.....pop. Go fast, pop..pop..pop. Attack in the race, popopopopop.

I didn't mess with it.

Noah raced the cat 4's, which was the biggest field of the day, and the 13-14. He had a good day. Finished around 8th in the 4's races, and was on his way to a hat trick in the 13-14.

On his way, because just after the finish line in the 2nd race of the 13-14s, about 20m after winning, he was plowed into from behind. He crashed.

Damage to him wasn't too much. Rash, and some brusing. He was more pissed than anything, but when he learned that his expensive powermeter rear wheel was toast, the first thing he said about it was, "Am I going to be in trouble?"

While he was getting bandaged up, someone asked him if he was going to do the last race. He said, "If my bike is ok". With that, I took his bike to the pit, borrowed a rear wheel (yes, from Troy), Ken helped me get the cog and wheel changed out (Noah has to run a mandated gear because he's in the 13-14yr age group) and Troy, um, bent back Noah's handlebars so that is was only a couple inches away from straight instead of the "ouch" it was.

I believe Noah took second in that next race.

When I got home, I unloaded the gear from the car to the garage. My bike felt a little odd as I rolled it in. That's the way it feels when the front tire is going flat.

There was track racing last Friday night, but we didn't go.

Last Couple of Days--from the mouths of babes

This morning:
Reanie: DADDY! MAMA SAID I'M SICK AND I DON'T HAVE TO GO TO SCHOOL!!! I'M GOING TO PLAY WITH BIANCA (the white chicken)!


Yesterday in the bleachers at the track races:
Buddy: Mama, can I get naked?


Well, at least he asked.

On the other hand...

102.

and my kids were there, my wife was there, Lisa, Scott and Anelise were there. Teammates and friends...good day. Except for the part where Noah crashed.

With a borrowed a wheel, some handlebar "adjustment" and a few helping hands, he was rolling again for the last race of the day. It was otherwise a very good racing weekend for Noah.

I got to ride shotgun off Troy for two days. good times.

Drew Tucker and Matrix put on a good and interesting event with the Matrix Cup. It was a strong turnout for the track. Hope we can get the numbers to where they are like that regularly.

Got it out of my system

I have a weekly reminder thing on the computer to let me know to update this blog. The reminder chimes to let me know I've yet to remove it from my "to do" list. My "to do" list was and is big right now, and in terms of priority, having to update a blog seemed like an easy thing to put off until later.


But that daily reminder (because I hadn't crossed it off the "to do" list to make it "done") was more a reminder that I'm behind. Work, stuff around the house, riding...and family.


We all have our routines, and here we've recently established and reestablished new routines with Chloe going back to work and Buddy starting a new school (just to name a couple things). "Busy" for one person may not be much for another, and frankly I don't really care how one person's busy measures up to another. We all make our choices. Some choose to be more busy as a means to an end. Some are more busy because they make poor use of their time or are inefficient. Some are more busy because they can't say 'no'. In the end, busy-ness tends to add stress. I knew it was getting bad for me when "Blog" came up on my daily calendar thing and it was stressing me out. The word "blog" became an annoyance.


By not updating, I had folks asking why I hadn't updated in awhile, and then folks asking for me to update. I put the "closed" sign up and, geesh, I was flooded with calls and emails. I spent way more time answering and responding that I am with putting this up here.

Curious thing, though. the next day after the "closed" sign post, I had a few things I thought were worthy of pecking out. can't remember what they were now, but things are gradually getting back to centered.

Not putting "update blog" on my things to do list. It'll happen when it happens. I don't expect to blog about blogging again.

Still stinging from Noah's powertap getting busted up-ingly yours,
Christian
Chris
Cri
Or however you get my attention

Just don't eat me

Ate our own eggs this morning. WORTH IT. Only two or three of our pullets are laying, or, at least, are laying where I've found the eggs, so we don't get quite enough for daily use. I did, however, collect enough so that we had breakfast with just our own. Richer tasting, better tasting, fresher...I'm gushing over eggs.

We have seven who should be laying eventually, which will get us 5-6 eggs per day, which is about what we go through. We'll pick up a few more chickens or simply let them hatch as we get a handle on our situation here.

Our actual chicken run isn't yet finished being built, so we're still helping them get couped up at night, making sure they are locked up (to keep out the bad guys), and then hosing down the patio every couple days. They aren't so good at the potty training. I do have two who are laying eggs in a nesting box/spot. They are trainable.


I've never really had a pet before. There was a dog and cat over at my Dad and Pat's, and then Cami had a kitten once until we realized that I'm not just a little bit allergic to cats. Regardless, I've never really had any pet around on a regular basis, other than Buddy.

But these aren't pets.

Oh, but they are.

Eddy, our rooster, hurt his leg or foot somehow. He's limping very noticeably. When Chloe noticed, she called me over to see him, and my first thought was, "alright! dinner!". But she immediately went into how she was going to take him to the vet.

Screeching brakes.

These chickens were $6 each. We only have a few more dollars invested in each of them. While I like Eddy alright, he's not even the top of the pecking order (yet). We don't need a rooster to get eggs, so he's pretty much here just to cockadoodledoo or get fried.

Then again, I'm not at the top of the pecking order around here, and I'm pretty gimpy, and we're not interested in hatching any of our own eggs...

Right out of a chicken's butt

The one on the left is a store bought, free range, organic, Montessori school egg. The one on the right is the first egg any of our ladies has laid for us. They'll get bigger. For those keeping score, it was one of the Plymouth Barred Rock (one of the black and white ones) chickens that was first to get to producing.

See, all you need is...

...a lawn tractor trailer, a pedal car and a chicken.

In case you didn't know

Chickens really love bananas.

GS Walter Mitty

I wondered if there'd be any heathens out there yesterday morning on the group ride. There were. About 40 or so, I'd say. There's usually 50-70, so this was a pretty good one. I also think some folks skipped out because they put away their leg warmers, and it was a little chilly.

It was a good, strong group, and the pace was moving along pretty well as I came upon the group. After (geesh, it is really?) 15 years or so of this ride, today I finally gave up on riding through all the neighborhoods, stop signs and stop lights to get to the start. One of the reasons we moved out here was so I didn't have to ride IN to town to ride. Over the last few weeks I've grown more and more frustrated with the 14mph, braking, surging, clogging the roads, stopping every 1/3 mile, all just to get to the roads where the ride starts in earnest, which is basically right in front of my house...Anyway, I rode around out this way until the usualish time the group would come by our road, and then jumped in.

Pretty strong headwind going out, but there were 3 or 4 guys keeping it moving in those first few miles. They were dropped once the live ammo was loaded, but at least we weren't rolling 12mph into the headwind. One of them was even getting frustrated that nobody was working. If I remember, I'll try to explain to him that there is no "right" amount of work if one is getting dropped when the ride starts for real.

About 10 miles of the quick pace stuff into the new route for the Sunday ride and things had sorted out to a lead group of 12. I was there. And this isn't even fiction.

I even attacked. Oh, it was a futile effort, but I made it look good. Too bad, though, that while I was making the effort that I was more worried about what my line looked like as I battled the strong crosswind. It is so hard to find shelter when you are off the front solo (warming up for quadrant II, Enak).

The only hiccup on the ride was when the group blew through one particular stop sign while a car was waiting. It is only worth mentioning because on this ride, most of the folks are actually good about staying confined to one lane and being largely courteous at stop signs. It did get in my head, though, and I sat up in frustration. I looked back to see that Daveed had not only stopped, but dismounted. I rolled slowly for (what seemed like) awhile, but when I didn't seen him get on his bike in a hurry, I chased. And blew. But then Daveed came by me and talked me into chasing. I dutifully guarded his back wheel.

Over the next 8 miles 13 kilometers there are 5 hills that give me trouble. The first we dealt with ok because I jumped on Daveed's back and carried my bike cyclocross style. I had a little trouble on the next hill, but we were down to 10 riders at that point, so I think the pace was taking a toll on most. No killer attacks there.

Almost immediately came "Hilltop", which doesn't really need " " since that's actually the name of the road. the lead group busted up a bit, but I was in there. It weren't pretty, at all, but I was there. Kinda.

I was gapped with 3 others. With the next hill coming at us in less than a mile two kilomters, we put in a hard chase. The thing is, the riders ahead of us were ahead of us because they were all better than us, so actually catching them was, um, hard.

But we did catch them at the bottom of hill #4. My chasing buddies stayed on while I watched them go. I wasn't letting them go by any stretch. I'm sure it wasn't a pretty sight, but I was trying to get oxygen in me through any pore and opening while squeezing out some, any, forward momentum, but the gap opened up anyway.

After cresting the top of that I went into chase mode. At that point the race was me bridging to the winning break. The finish line (there is an actual finish line on this ride) was 6 miles 10K away at that point.

Soloing from the disentegrated pack, and without teammates, I begin working my way up to the winning break. With only miles kilometers to go, there's no time to waste in letting this be dramatic. "Bring it back, now!"

I can see the group ahead. There are a few riders working together, but the rest are sitting on because they know I'm coming, and when I get there, they want to be strong enough to be close enough to see what it is like when The Real Deal comes flying by. The gap continues to come down.

The road comes to a "T" intersection. The course turns left. I have to hesitate because two riders are coming from the right. They see the leaders up ahead and sprint after them. Now there are 13 in front of me, but the immediate threat is the cheating interlopers. I must catch them. And I do. And when I do, I don't sit on and catch my breath. I don't ask them to work with me. No. I attack. The wake of my turbulence causes them to crash into the ditch, which is fortunate for them because had they latched on to my wheel, it would have been a long, painful and tortuous ride. "Perhaps they will thank me later," I think to myself.

The gap to the leaders is still coming down. The bottom of hill #5 is pretty much under water, so I have to tip toe my way through it, lest I get spotted stains on my white team kit. That would be uncooth for the victory presentation on a race like this. A car passes through, which forces me to wait, but it also gives me a chance to motorpace uphill.

Crossing the railroad tracks at the top of the hill, I see that the gap to the leaders has actually grown. "Damn that car!", I think. "Why couldn't I have paced off of a faster car? A Porche Boxter isn't much of anything, really."

With events approaching 'situation critical', I push the "Pro" button on my SRM. "I'm sorry to do so, but it is time the leaders felt the reality of, um, reality".

So now they are in front of me, and all I want to do is finish lapping them to complete the domination. I have two miles three kilometers to finish the deed. The television helicopter has already left because it isnt' good tv or good for the sport to show one person LAPPING the leaders on a 45 mile 73K race course. The crowd left long ago with the result a forgone conclusion. The extent of my domination is so thorough that the letter from USAC has already been drafted. In it, they ask me to stop racing for the good of the sport.

But I'm not going to stop.

With .62 miles 1K to go, it sinks in to me. If I do catch these leaders, I'm going to discourage people from trying hard. If they show up on these rides at all, they'll be riding in fear and just watching me. I'm doing my part to help the sport by allowing the riders in front of me to maintain some semblance of victory. They don't need to know I sat up and let them finish ahead of me. The victory and awards on this type of ride are the same whether I catch and lap them or roll in behind.

As I approached the finish line, I put my hands back on the bars, took me feet from behind my head and clipped back into the pedals. There's no need to go ahead and finish my victory salute. They already know.

Now for the good stuff

I didn't want to muddle this one up with that other post.

Mama and the family came out to the race this weekend. It's some stress, sure, to get everyone packed in the car, my bike crap, Noah's bike crap, everyone else's stuff, food...and then drive the 5 hr (that's how long it takes with this many people who realize 30s before they are going to go to the bathroom that they need to go) to Fayetteville. We did get there, though, and we completely lucked in to a new place to stay there. The house had plenty of room, everyone had a bed, there was a full kitchen, and we were just a quarter mile or so from where the races start.

With the kids a little older, I don't worry about them wandering into the road, which was a stressor for me before. They can also entertain themselves a little bit better what with there being bugs and stuff out there. I'm fortunate that Chloe was up for coming out and supporting there. In fact, I took a bottle at every feed zone, which was 9 feeds in total. Of course, having real meals was a nice treat too. And being able to kiss everyone goodnight instead of "Now Buddy wants to talk on the phone" is an invauable bonus.

To top it all off, I got a feed on stage 3 from Reanie!

the kids were upbeat the entire trip and seemed to be having a lot of fun. Mama seemed to be having a decent time as well. I worry about that when it just bike racer stuff all the time. We did have a team dinner thing on Saturday night too, so that was the icing on the cake. All in all, it seemed good.

I did feel bad when I got dropped on Stage 3, though, because it meant they had to stay out there longer than necessary. I'm coming around, so that won't happen too many more times. I'm working hard to get that "I was really good in 1993" off of this header.

Not that I have to decide, but it's a toss up as to who hands off a water bottle best in the whole world, Chloe or Reanie.

Cheater

Raced the stage race in Fayetteville this past weekend. Nothing too notable about my performance, but it was still quite a bit better than last year. From sewer to the gutter is progress.

Anyway, much has been made lately about the "centerline rule". Basically, we're not supposed to go on the left side of the center line of the road. Safety's sake is the biggest reason.

For the last 12 years, at least, I've made a conscious effort to not venture over the center line at all, even if it meant I was out of the draft and put in difficulty because of it. Not that big of a deal, really, except that it is a rule so completely abused that I have been, in many, many cases, just setting myself up to be dropped. The rule isn't enforced very often at all. Most of the time the punishment is that the person or official in the follow vehicle will honk the horn.

If you ever wondered what it sounds like in a p,1,2 race, listen to this. For 3-4 hours non-stop.

As I was saying, I've just made it a point to not go over to the left side of the road. It was easy enough there for a few years because I wasn't racing at the 1,2 level anyway. But I'm fitter now. And now it is costing me for reals. And while it was frustrating for a long time, now it just pisses me off.

There was a section of road for several miles on Saturday that we did a few times. The protected side (from the wind) was on the left. There was a point a few times in the race that every rider was completely to the left edge of the road, including the very first rider in the field. Except me. Over there on the right. I'd be out there like a complete idiot, but I was an idiot who was moving up. Eventually I'd have 5-6 riders on my wheel, and once or twice I even had someone pull through (take a turn on the front), but only once (ONCE) did anyone let me in to the echelon I created. And people wonder why the second echelon never seems to form in Texas.

The energy I expended in the race that could have been saved is not insignificant. I don't want to numb your brains with powermeter cycling dorkball stuff, but there is a stress/energy measurement we use in coaching called Training Stress. 100 points is the equivalent of going as hard as you can for 1 hour. I'm looking at a file here of a LSW family member who was at 191 TSS (training stress score) for the race. he was in the pack at the end. the race was 2hr48min or so.

My TSS was 291.

Typing that out and reading it doesn't make it sound as hard as it was. And I paid for it later in the day during the time trial.

That night we talked about our firm stance in not breaking the rules. I was cracking. The opinions expressed were unanimous that if it is a rule that isn't enforced, and nobody else is following it, it doesn't seem to be a rule worth following if the only person punished is the one following it. Our team had committed for some time to being the "right kind of riders". But in the discussion, some common sense was offered that "if the road is safe, and there's no penalty, keep yourself in the race". It was enough to convince me to "go to the left side".

At the start of stage 3 on Sunday, we were lectured (making it a consitent 100% for every race I've ever done) that the officials "really mean it this time". People were going to be disqualified for their safety, the safety of others, for insurance liability reasons, to maintain the peace with the locals and to make sure we never lose Texas road racing again."

"YEAH!", I thought. Not sure why I thought this would be any different, but I wanted it to be. For Sunday's race, the wind was just such that being on the left side of the line wasn't an advantage except for a very short section of road. I was only in the field for half of the race before being dropped, but I only saw one case where everyone went left. That said, we were also passing another (different category) race at the time, so that may be why.

At that very moment I was thinking, "Well, do I or don't I?" But before I could decide, I had to go to the left to avoid the other group (within the rules in that very case).

And that's that. I have a buddy and teammate in another category who was DQ'd for crossing the center line. Go figure.

And all that is to set up this...

I received my first penalty/relagation/punishment in 27 years of racing bicycles at this race. I was given a 5second penalty for failing to sign in on Stage 3. I was standing in front of the clipboard, waiting for the guy next to me to hand me the pen when the official takes the clipboard and says, "We have to stage NOW." Someone behind me shouts out his number. The official says "got it." Then another does the same. Then another. Official is writing down whatever next to the names/numbers. I tell him, "#16, Christian Williams. I'm here." He says, "Got it" and writes it down.

And now I know what was being written down.

4H4. Start
(a) Failure to report at starting time [warning];
(b) Failure to sign the starting or finishing sheet: $20 fine

So, now that I'm a cheater, and my "record" is flawed, the center line just doesn't seem like such a big deal any more. Maybe my feelings will change when the soreness isn't so bad that I can walk around normally. At least it was 5s penalty instead of $20. If someone would have made me pay, I would have certainly been knocked with:

4H1. Disqualification.
(h) Assaulting a competitor, an official or a third party;
or
(j) Engaging in grossly unsportsmanlike conduct;

1921-2008

Alexandrina "Reanie" Glasscock, our Apple Granny, passed away yesterday. She was one of the most interesting people I've ever known, and I look forward to writing the stories about her. Among them is that her pilot's license was approved and signed by Orville Wright, and she went on to be a Flight Instructor for the military in WW II.

It seems to me that a good way to live is for there to be some great stories we leave behind.

You may or may not know Troy...

...but this is what happens when he's left to care for his daughter while his wife, Roxanne, is away on business.

Or, it is what happens when people come over to our house. I guess it could go either way.

Ouch

My shoulder hurts from throwing so many snowballs at Noah. And for the record, he's about as elusive as the hot rolls at Golden Corral.

No school for the kids today

Clearly they didn't consult with those people who work from home when they decided to close school today. The thing is, I found out there was no school when I took Reanie to school. Granted, it is wet and slushy out there, but come on! I got there (with a minimal of 4wd) just fine.

Did you know I have a minor in Recreation Administration?

Reanie is NOT afraid to be in a snowball fight, and even if you accidentally (I swear) hit her in the face, she will still keep after you. And if you happen to fall while running from her (and Mama), they will not will not show mercy.




















All I really wanted to do here was impress Eurocrash with our Texas-sized snowman.

But the top piece fell off. And then we decided to quick take a picture before the rest came down. We weren't quick enough, though. The other snowmen we built were built soundly, but this one was just for show, and it shows asit starts to come down.


And it is showing who's boss.

Just started to snow again

Two snows in a week is unusual for us. That it is in March is that much more unusual. It's coming down pretty hard now. Tried to capture the thunder on the video too, but decided I didn't want to wait out there in the cold just so you could hear it.

I'm bummed that Reanie and Noah are in school right this moment, but from the looks of the forecast, we'll have this around for a day or so.

Two hours later and it is still coming down. They closed school early for the kids. At first I was thinking that it was an overeaction, but as I drove up there to get Reanie, it was clear that it was a smart choice. The buses will run on the normal schedule, though, so those kids get to hang out at school. Noah will be bummed, but he'll still get a couple of hours of daylight to goof around outside. Hawk Rd isn't passable. Well, in the Jeep it is, but I'm not one (usually) to be stupid just for stupid's sake.

And two more hours later...I'm not interested in video anymore. We're going to play.

THIS is entertainment!

These chickens are seeing snow for the first time.

A Friday Morning Reanie Picture for You

Taken this morning before school. I'd promised Reanie she could help with the chickens this morning, but forgot in the rush, so we tapped the brake on the morning and gave the chickens some love together.

The white one is Reanie's. Her name is Bianca. But Bianca is fast, so Reanie pretty much only holds her when Noah catches Bianca for her.

On being Buddy

Buddy: Mama, say, 'Buddy do you want some hot cocoa?'


Now why on Earth would he want Mama to say that?!

one of those days at the office

Worked on a plan for an athlete who I hadn't heard from in awhile. Sent out the "just checking in" notes, left a couple voice mails, but wasn't getting anything back, not even files, which is pretty much the whole shibang when working with a powermeter.

Not 30sec away from hitting save on the updated training plan, I get an email with 25 files attached from this client. That's good news and bad news, but I was glad to get the files. I went through them and did the crunching, figured out where he was, is, and crossed that with the current plan I'd just finished. Some changes needed made.

It was a bit frustrating to have done the work for naught, but I was glad I could send out something that fit better. So I got to work on that and took steps to stay focused. Busy day here today. Need to stay focused.

A barage of emails came in at once, and at that point I was stuck for a bit trying to sort out how to get a square peg in a round hole of a thing, so I checked the email. One was from this client. He said that he wasn't sure if he wanted to race and train anymore.

Knowing that he must be near the phone if he was emailing at the time, I called him. "What's going on? How are you doing?", I say. He responds, "Oh, I was just messing with you. You told me a long time ago that when you don't hear from someone in awhile that it means they either quit or everything's fine. Everything's fine here."

Ooohhh. So I sent him his updated and revised plan (adding an extra 1 minute interval just to be spiteful, but not really. But kinda).

Needing some air after working a half day on that, I went out to put up a fence for the chickens. We let them free range and forage here, and the only protection we really give them is to close the coup at night. we open it again first thing in the morning. However, we're heading out of town this weekend for racing, so we can't close the coup at night, which means they are fair game for the beasts in the night.

Now, we like to feed folks out here, but the coyotes and other critters don't bring us coffee or wine or anything, so I'd rather not just serve them up chicken, you know? So we put up a fence to keep the chickens in and the critters out. It's a temporary thing, but still took some time and work.

I wanted to make sure we didn't leave any spots unsecured, so I went to putting the chickens in their new pen for a few hours to see if there were going to be any issues. But to my amazement, one chicken was already in the pen...? Thinking that perhaps she flew in there (they'll get over a 2-3 foot thing if motivated, but this fence is 4ft tall, so...), I was tempted to just pull the fence down and take our chances. Chickens aren't exactly super smart, so they won't necessarily remember to get in the same way they got out and vice versa.

I sat out there a bit trying to clear my head from the run around I had at work and sort out this problem. At that point I decided to just go ahead and put all the chickens in the pen and just see what happened until it was time to go. No real time to come up with another solution. If it didn't work, we'd probably lose some or all, but I didn't feel like spending the rest of the day on it, either. They're just chickens who don't even lay eggs yet.

Catching chickens isn't real easy. Especially when Buddy is around. But they'll come to food, usually, so I set some out and took to grabbing them and tossing them over the fence into the new pen.

We have 8 chickens. After the 10th time of throwing a chicken over the fence, I did the math.

Because I know you have to get to work or have other stuff to do, and I need to get back to work myself, I'll make the long story short...there was a gap under the fence, and the chickens were walking right back under it to the food that I was using as bait to catch them and put them over the fence.


My mood for the day is: treadmill. working hard, but not getting anywhere.

when 18 months ago is a blast from the past

The Cartoon Network folks will be here tomorrow to catch a whiff of Noah being Noah. On top of the general getting ready for that, they asked me to get some home pictures and video of him for potential use. This entailed pulling out a hard drive I hadn't seen in awhile to look at some pictures and videos. A couple of these struck me in how much he's changed yet stayed the same.

The first one here is a short video of Noah getting ready for the Time Trial at Road Nationals in 2006 (10 years old). The second is a picture of Noah (7 years old) and Sara (Chloe's cousin from Italy) out in the pasture with wild donkey's.

Enough about the kids. Let's get serious for a moment.

Flossing.

When flossing, do you think it is acceptable to go ahead and eat whatever food ends up on the floss, or should it be disposed in another way?

My take is that I already intended to eat it once, so I might as well. But that kind of logic troubles me when I think of puke.

I'm sorry, but I don't have any pictures for this particular entry.

Noah's new rig

It's a new frame and fork, as the other stuff is the same goods he's been riding for a couple years. He received a new Fuji Team Pro frameset in November. I ordered a size bigger than what he needed, figuring he'd grow. But Noah hit a serious growth spurt and promptly grew right out of it. Robbie and Fuji set us up again and got this new Fuji SL frameset just in time for Hollywood this weekend. Pro-style pic with the bike in the 52x14! The rooster's name is Eddy.

I love the drive to school in the mornings!

Me: (driving) Happy Valentine's Day!
Reanie: Happy Valentimes Day!
Buddy: Happy Birthday!
Reanie: Buddy, it's Valentimes Day! We get cards and a party!
Buddy: (concerned look on his face and thinking for a moment) Merry Christmas, Daddy!
Reanie: No, silly. It's Valentimes Day. We draw hearts and flowers and pink and red!
Buddy: I want to go to Sprouts (local grocer)
Reanie: (worried and sincere) Daddy, I don't think I made Buddy a Valentime.
Buddy: I love you Reanie.
Reanie: I love you too, Buddy.

And then they held hands until we dropped off Reanie.

Bonus feature

Move it

Love me some chain saw

Saturday. Wake up. Get some work done before everyone wakes up. Eat breakfast with my kids. Go out to do some miles before catching up with a local group ride. Stop to mess with seatpost. Stop again and mess with it some more. Stop again to mess with it some more. Stop once more, ready to quit cycling altogether only to find that the clamp is cracked. Ride home. Replace seatpost. Forget to measure saddle exactly. Guess and get pretty close. Head out to see if it is possible to meet up with the group ride afterall. Time trial like crazy thinking they are only a minute or so up the road. Get demoralized that I can't even catch the people who would get dropped. Look back at a stop sign and see the group. Join the group and struggle for a bit as I've been going full tilt trying to catch the group behind me. A mile later someone crashes and nobody stops, so I stop. He's ok so I chase back on just as we hit the hill on Hilltop. Get caught at a stop sign that the leaders blew. The group that formed up the hill waits. Someone thinks it is clear when it isn't and almost gets smushed by 70mph traffic. Smoking tires stink. This is all about a mile from where I was hit. I get sick to my stomach and throw up. Ride some more after that, thinking it might be a good way to get skinny. Catch up with Ribblit and ride some extra miles. Get home, take a shower, eat lunch. Set the DVD/VCR thing to record one of my 1992 VHS tapes to DVD, finally, after buying the thing to do it more than 2 years ago. Take a nap with Reanie. Wake up, hit the Saeco and get the chainsaw running to attack the tree that attacked the playset. Get frustrated trying to find the good lopers and pruning saw for Mama to get the kindling-sized stuff, only to see her ripping the limbs and breaking them on her leg. 3.5 hr later, and not able to much lift my arms or hear anything anymore, the pictures show the progress. Mama wants to go out for dinner, so we take the top down on the jeep and head for Mi Ranchito. Huevos Rancheros (over easy) for me. Take the back roads home. Buddy helps me drive. Get the kids in bed. Mess with work stuff for a couple hours. Get to bed myself just before it turns tomorrow.

Or I could have just gone down to Castroville and raced my bike. I know the guys are saying it was a hard, hard race, but I could have used an easy day like that.

It's kinda like putting a picture of Britany Spears on the cover. It isn't really news, and there's nothing new to report, but it'll sell copy.

Bibi won the Solo Elite Women 4 hour series (mtn bike) put on by DORBA.

Don't mess with her.

See, it's funny because...

But seriously, don't mess with her.

It's almost 8am (4pm EuroCrash time) and here's two funny things I've heard this morning

"The nilla wafers in your banana pudding are organic. Really."
"Here's your coffee. Now go take a nap." (I've been up awhile)

Hey kids

Daddy had a pretty good weekend at the office.

Reanie's playlist

A few weeks ago, Reanie spent some time going through my iTunes with me. Noah has his own play list, so she wanted to get her own. This is the list she ended up sorting out:

Take on Me-- a-ha
Roam-- B-52's
Good Day Sunshine-- The Beatles
Beautiful-- Christina Aguilera
Bubbly-- Colbie Caillat
Big Girls Don't Cry-- Fergie
I Ran-- A Flock of Seagulls
Over My Head-- The Fray
Daughters-- John Mayer
Don't Stop Believin'-- Journey
Behind These Hazel Eyes-- Kelly Clarkson
Our House-- Madness
Safety Dance-- Men Without Hats
Desitantion Unknown-- Missing Persons
I Melt With You-- Modern English
Always Something There to Remind Me-- Naked Eyes
Unwritten-- Natasha Bedingfield
Sister Christian-- Night Ranger
I'm Gonna Be-- The Proclaimers
Pretty in Pink-- The Psychedelic Furs

We have about 1500 songs on iTunes, and while we certainly didn't go through all of them, it was clear that Reanie has an affinity for 80's music. My guess is the easy to learn lyrics and danceability is what appeals. Some of my Reanie highlights as a parent are watching her dance and sing to these songs. A few of these I added if for no other reason that I like them for her, but when the CD is playing in the car, as each and every song starts playing she says, "This is my favorite!"

I remember playing my Mom's 8-track tapes of The Eagles and Boston, but those were albums that were out after I'd been born, whereas this stuff is more like me listening to music from the 50's. Pat (my step-Mother) had some albums I'd spin when there. I played Wild Thing-- The Troggs and Papa-oo-mow-mow (can't think of the actual name)-- The Beach Boys, and others like those over and over again. The Doors and Jimi Hendrix, while I'm sure made quality music, it is like art I just don't get. I can hear it, and I know that many think it is great and appreciate it deeply, but it is lost on me. That isn't to say that much of the 80's music is good in the sense that the musicianship or lyrics are that artful, but I like it. So does Reanie. I also like the chicken fried steak sandwich at Sonic.

But when thinking about comfort songs we all have, it occurs to me that I have a great deal on my iTunes that guys my age might not want to admit to owning. And while there is plenty of recent music that gets me to enjoying the amp and bass in the Jeep, it's the 80's stuff that I'll seek out when nobody is looking.

Then again, when I know Reanie will sing along full blast with what is playing, it's like getting a corner piece of birthday cake with all that extra frosting.

Why I haven't downgraded

A good friend of ours has two kids. The boy, tired of his game which he had mastered, asked his sister if he could play her game. She said, "no." A negotiation ensued. The final deal was that he would allow her to kick him in the nuts, twice, if she allowed him to play her game. With a deal struck, so were his nuts, and he got to play the game.

I'd rather get kicked in the nuts and play the p,1,2s. And if my nuts just can't take it one weekend, I'll race 35+ until I'm ready for my next kicking.

Wind vs Willow Tree vs Swingset

We're having wicked wind today. 45+mph gusts.
Bummer for the swingset. Good news for firewood.

I didn't like that tree much anyway.

You're welcome. I think.

One of my kids: Daddy, come here, please.
Me: Where are you?
One of my kids: In the bathroom.
Me: Ok. Just a second.

a few seconds pass and I make my way to the bathroom

Me: Yes? Oh. Did you go big job?
One of my kids: Yes
Me: (checking the toilet) I bet you feel better.
One of my kids: I do
Me: That was big.
One of my kids: Thank you

maybe we meant more spa than Sparta

so we rode. water up to our pedals in most parts. higher in others. the wind picked up. visibility was suck. But we didn't turn around until it started hailing on us. Not very Spartan of us, but we did eat some pink, heart-shaped cookies and had a latte while we tried to warm up enough to ride back home.

Did the Spartans wear long sleeve rain jeckets?

Some of my teamnuts came out to southern California for a January training camp last year. They picked this area because of the mild weather, the mountains for climbing, the beauty and offerings of things to do for their significant others. Adding to their confidence was that several pro teams base their training camps out of Santa Barbara at this time of year as well.

During their camp last year, they caught several days of rain. Being southern California, they figured it was just a spell of bad luck that they had that weather.

The talk of the fun they had and the great riding in spite of the rain motivated a return trip this year, and in all of that I was given the green light to attend as well.

So here we are in Santa Barbara.

On Monday, it was 36deg at the top of Gibralter, which is where we were and nobody was all that fired up to descend, but at the same time, we were freezing and shivering uncontrollably. Getting colder was really the best option. It started raining that afternoon.

On Tuesday we nutted up and went out in the rain. If you go all the way to somewhere else for a training camp, bagging out on riding is a sin and you go to hell. That's what our leaders were saying anyway. We got muddy and wet and knocked out some miles anyway. It was...fun.

It continued to rain. It is raining now. We're looking out the window as I type and the general mood is that we are all sissies but are going out anyway. Spartan. Except the Spartans didn't have the sissy talk. Then again, the Spartans didn't have to put on leg warmers that are still wet from the day before.

Quote of the Day

Some jackholes who, though we were all, including the cars, moving less than 10mph, were offended that we were on the road.

After some stupid stuff they did in their car and stupider stuff they said, one of us says, "Why don't you get out of the car?"

One of the punks says, "Why don't you get in the car?"

Anyway, a few blocks later they are pulled over by the police.

I think we have a handle on it now

yesterday blogged about being graded as a parent and put in there that Mama is currently a full time chicken and Buddy rancher. I assure you that no chickens were harmed in filming this video.

Report card

It isn't too often we get a parenting report card. Recently, though, we've (Chloe and I) been thinking about how we score. What with Chloe now being a full time chicken and Buddy rancher, we've been reminded just how easy it is to miss parenting "assigments", especially when everything else seems relatively ok.

But being a parent isn't something where making just a passing grade is good enough. But trying to ace the exam isn't much of a reality either.

This morning, when dropping Reanie off for school, a car pulled up behind ours and dropped off a little girl. I've seen Reanie walk with this little girl to school several times. today, though, this little girl came right up to Reanie and they gave each other a hug. That's never happened before.

I asked Reanie who this was, and Reanie said, "She's my friend."
So I asked what her friend's name is, and she said, "I don't know."

By now they are walking a step ahead of me towards the cross walk, and they are holding hands.

Grabbing Reanie's other hand, we walk the spot where Reanie and I usually stop, kiss, say "Have a great day" and so forth. During this walk, I ask Reanie's friend what her name is, and she says what I think is "Lamtasha". So I say, "Lamtasha?" and she replies, "No, Tamarasa."
"Tamarasa?"
"No, Tamasha."
"Tamasha?"

And she laughed at me.

I asked her what grade she's in (she's a head taller than Reanie), and she said, "Kindergarten!" She said it with more exclamation points, but I refuse to do that, and instead, spend 21 words saying she did.

At that point, Reanie and I kissed, I said "y'all have a great day", and at that moment they skipped, together, holding hands, backpacks bouncing away.

Today, if I were grading myself, I'm getting an "A".

Friday afternoon

I thought I got them all Tom Sawyered there for a moment.


It sounds like a train from my office

of brains and snot

the running joke, especially with two prime snot makers in our household, is that when someone sneezes and rains snot, we say that their brains came out to ask if they need a tissue.

While running errands last night, Reanie sneezed. I asked her if her brains came out. She said, "No (laughing), but my pants came unbuttoned."

If for no other reason...

...than for me to get Reanie to say she works at the Chicken Ranch.

I'm better at being a jackass than you.

Where Reanie goes to school is in a neighborhood where it is customary for parents to drive their kids to school for the .5 to 1 mile walk it may be. I'm not judging them at all, as I'll take our scooter the .5 mile to the bus stop to pick up Noah so he doesn't have to drag his drum kit all the way home.

Anyway, in the mornings, it is an absolute whipping to get Reanie to school, as she does have to be driven to school because we can't leave her at the bus stop in the mornings while getting Buddy to school (no buses for him), and because Noah doesn't always ride the bus from here, so he can't wait with her.

As I said, anyway...

So I'm in the daily traffic jam in front of Reanie's school. I never wait in the car line to drop her off at the door, as doing so would make Buddy late for school, and because I'll eat my brain by just sitting there waiting to move 5 feet, whereas I'm ok being 5 min late if it means we kept moving. So I usually go into a nearby cul-de-sac, park the car, walk Reanie 100yard or so to the crosswalk in front of the school, where a teacher works that crosswalk, and from there Reanie can get to the school and to class by herself.

Today there was even more congestion than usual, and we sat parked in traffic for 5 minutes, just a couple car lengths from the crosswalk. Thinking I'd help get Reanie to school on time, I told her she could go ahead and get out and walk in the grass to the crosswalk instead of waiting until we went all the way around to our normal parking spot. I thought I was helping move things along since we were stopped anyway.

In getting out of the car, she fell (in the grass). No big deal, but as I said, we'd been sitting there in traffic for 5 minutes. Of course, that's when traffic ahead of me started moving. With Reanie on the ground and her backpack under the car, the car behind me lays into the horn. Not the "beep beep, traffic is moving again" honk, but the "@%$&! YOU are the cause of everything bad and are probably a terrorist" honk.

And when I got out to help her, the car behind me decided that there would be no break in the honking, so they just laid into it with a middle finger extended out the window and a HHHOOOOOOOOOONNNNNKK. Good morning.

I gathered Reanie and helped her get composed, and she went on up to the teacher at the crosswalk. At my car door, I looked back to the lady behind me and was going to give some "I'm sorry" gesture. She rolled up her window (middle finger was out the window), started honking again, and her two kids got out of the car and walked to the crosswalk, while I just stood there looking dumber than normal.

I couldn't even think of something clever to say, though she appeared to be swearing up a storm. So I opened my door...

...then decided to tie my shoe before getting in the car.

A conversation that will happen in the next couple of days...

someone: Noah, you are walking funny and have a knot on the back of your head. What happened?

Noah: Well, we were tailgating and eating breakfast in the parking lot at the Cotton Bowl when my Step-Dad and Dad started tossing the football. I wanted to get in on that and walked up to Scott. It was really cold, so I had my gloves on and my hands in my pockets and a hat and my jacket hood on my head, so I couldn't see very well. As my Dad passed me the ball, I couldn't get my hands out of my pockets, so I started backing up, not wanting to get hit by the ball, even though I was dressed in something like one of those party Sumo suits. I backed up several steps, lost my balance, fell backwards in the parking lot and hit my head on the bumper of a truck, setting off the alarm. The Missouri and Arkansas fans seemed about as equally concerned, but they were tailgating too, so other important things were happening at the time. Scott, Papaw (Noah's Grandfather on his Mother's side) and my Dad laughed. The owner of the truck made sure his doors were locked with his remote.

(Dad enters the room, faces Noah)
Dad: Please don't tell that story anymore.