I need to get me one of those panty hose head cover things

Suited up and ready to ride. It is Saturday, so we're going long. Long for me right now is 20 miles. How sad is that?

I went for the hills. I rode in the big ring most of the ride to make me feel good about myself. 15-16 mph sounds more impressive when done in the big ring. I hope.

Rode the back roads and waived to all of the neon yellow jersey wearing team in training folks. Can't make fun of their outfits as I was wearing bright red knee warmers.

Through Argyle, over Hickory Hill and then Hilltop. At Four Corners I saw two riders pacing together over the hill there going to 407. By the time the four-way stop cleared, they were over the hill.

And I was going to catch them.

16 mph felt hard riding into the breeze, and for a second there, I thought about using the camera phone thing to show the progress of catching the breakaway. But I decided against it because gaining ground on them was too hard earned to throw any of it away turning this thing into more of a photoblog than it already is.

But I was catching them. Had they known I was coming after them, they would have been scared.

As I came up behind them, I tried to manipulate my wheezing to sound something like comfortable breathing. As I blasted by the camelback wearing, saggy pocketed, floppy saddle bagged duo, I gave a nod and a cool, but friendly, "What's up," and blew by them at 17 mph.

They had no chance to get on.

After rolling (just a little) the stop sign at Bartonville, I saw another pair riding towards the McMakin Hill. I was already in the little ring to roll in easy, but that Team in Training couple needed to be learned.

I rolled by the woman and said, "Howdy," and she responded with, "Oh, Hi!" That's right...she was surprised at not only my speed, but that I could talk casually while carrying it.

then I caught the guy who is probably her husband or boyfriend. I gave him a "Howdy" as well, but you could tell he was embarassed that I was showing him up with such ease. Heck, she probably was already fantasizing about me.

As Goins would say, "Don't hate me cuz you ain't me."

Hmph. Shewt, I was riding my heavy wheels too.

Costumes?

Nah, they have to wear uniforms to school.

Kid #2 woke up smiley, happy, cute...I wish I could have bottled it up, because she was like we think of little ones before we have one or before you've been puked on.

Kid #3 was challenging this morning. Not bad, but maybe a little sour. He was up at 2am, sort of went back down. Up again at 4am, and sort of went down. When I say, "he went down," what I mean was that he went back to sleep, but he kept kicking me in the ribs (still tender), face, jewels, wherever...while he slept.

I wanted to be mad at him, but he was sleeping. Right?

Man, I don't know anymore.

He was up for good at 4:30a-ish, so I got up, put in a Winnie the Pooh DVD for him, and tried to sleep in the chair next to the TV while he watched. The whole time, from 2am on, he really wasn't grouchy, fussy or anything (except for the kicking me part, but I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt). He was just, up.

Mama took off for work, and I got the kids ready to go. Kid #1 was pretty much up already, since he had some school work to get done, so all that was really left was getting some clothes on #2 and #3. The clothes they were to wear (set out by Mama) are the ones pictured above.

Maybe it was because he was tired, or maybe it was because he saw his outfit, but #3 got grumpy. Real grumpy. He took a cup away from #2. He would sit down if I told/asked him to "come here." When I told him I needed to brush his hair, he swatted the brush away.

He wasn't having a good morning. And #2 was having a great morning, so they evidently got their roles reversed from the usual.

I can't remember what triggered it, and it was probably just a combination of all of #3's sourness, but I ended up giving him a swat on the BT. Not the kind that is a beating (so don't call CPS or anything). I mean, this was a swat with him wearing a diaper and leather (his outfit...easy Enak) shorts.

Normally just raising our voice will get him to almost tear up (whereas Reanie will breakdown if you tell her she might stand in the corner at some point in her life), but not this time.

After swatting Buddy, he looked at me in the eye, furrowed his brow, and made Clint Eastwood eyes at me. For a split second, I actually got scared. I'm not ready to throw down with him just yet. I mean, he's only been two for a couple of days, and I didn't start whupping Noah's ass until he was 3 and 1/2 or so.

I did get them all in the car, eventually. We even got #1 to school on time. (yes, I'm mixing it up by calling them by name, then going back to the #'s. Oh well. Good literature it ain't.)

Buddy fell asleep in the car on the way to the ne-no shop. He was pretty cute, so I wasn't mad anymore. However, I didn't mind that after Reanie ate her donuts, she ate his too.

That's right, the new threat around here is, "Don't you look at me like that, Boy, or I'll let your sister eat your donuts." Show him who's boss. gyeah.

Cabrito. No? Ovejas.

Our neighbors have goats. Every morning, as I take the POSS2 or POSS3 to school, we discuss the goats in the car. They typical conversation involves Reanie saying, "Goat," followed by "Neyeyeyey."

Then Budifer will say, "Sheep."

Reanie and/or Noah (and me until I caught on) will say, "No. GOAT."

Then Budrick says, "Sheep."

Reanie will say, "No, Buddy. GOAT!"

Then Bude says, "Sheep."

Reanie responds, "No, Buddy. That's a goat. Goats go 'neyeyeye." Sheeps's go 'baaaaaaah.'"

Then Christian says, "Goat."

Today, Reanie responded, "NO, BUDDY. THAT'S A SHEEP!"


Women.


Now look at the picture of the kid below, and tell me he's not doing that to her on purpose.

Buon Compleanno

Hey, I'm two!

Budreaux's Birthday Party!

The truck full of straw bales before we made the fort/castle.

Lawson was King of the fort/castle.

I can stand on the chair because it is my party.

Mmmm. Cake.

Yeehaw! (look closely at Anelise coming down the slide)

Busted.

Bude and his buddy Zachary partied until they dropped.

Whupped.

as always, if you want a better look at the picture, just click on it.

Uh oh...

...guess who got a cell phone that takes pictures.



First picture I took.

OK, that's not true, but Mama wouldn't let me post the first picture I took. Now this blog has upgraded to being like every other blog.

I'm so technologically behind the times. I bet nobody has Intellivision anymore.

Good thing I got dressed for work today

Some guy pulled up in our drive way a little bit ago. Had a bike on his car, and he was all decked out in cycling gear. Complete with yellow Team Discovery commemorative jersey.

Not recognizing the person, I opened the window, asked in a friendly way, "What's up?" and waited for a response.

He gave me a little head nod that told me "yo, what's up with you" or maybe it was a head nod with a little shake telling me, "What do you think I'm doing?"

Not satisfied with the exchange, I simply kept looking at him with my head out of the window from my office (no screen). After not even getting further acknowledgement from him, I quickly went to the computer to see if I had some meeting with someone today, perhaps explaining our visitor.

Nothing on the plan for today involving riding with the yellow jersey type.

So I went downstairs and outside to get a closer look. Turns out that this guy thought it was OK (it is, really) to park in our driveway because he's seen lots of cyclists here leaving for rides.

I explained the situation and told him that he could park here anyway, but I guess he was a little struck by it all. He apologized ("Sorry, my bad"), got in his car, and started to drive off. By the time he was at the end of the driveway, I pulled his bike from the grass to the driveway so he could see it...

He drove back up to me, got out of the car, shook his head, and without saying a word, put his bike back on the trunk rack and drove away. Without securing the bike to the rack.

When he hit the gravel transition from our driveway to the road, the bike hopped off one of the arms of the rack. He stopped, got out of the car, put it back on the rack (without securing it again), and drove off.

I'm trying to get back to work, but I keep getting stuck thinking about this strange occurance. Which ranks, in strangeness, higher than ranger humming "Girls just wanna have fun."

If this doesn't clean me out, nothing can

Budrick crawled into our bed too early and too late last night/this morning. Too early to really get up myself, but too late to put him back in his bed and think I could get more sleep.

So I made myself useful by throwing lunch together for Mama and Big Boy. Made some smoothies for everyone (once it was time for everyone to get up anyway, since the blender doesn't have a 'snooze' feature). But mio sforzo migliore came from the oat bran muffins I made.

Of course these are made from scratch. Do you think Chloe keeps a mix in her pantry?

OK, now I'll ge tback to work

When I get geeked on Italy stuff, guys like the Beaner roll their eyes or call BS on me. But here's a map of one of the most beautiful places in the world.

There, in the upper right, you can see Taceno and Cortenova, and a little southwest of there is a place called Esino Lario (which is usually part of the Giro di Lombardia route). Well, the cabin that Nuccia left Chloe is on the road between those two places. Now look across the lake at the tip there. What do you see? Bellagio. That's right. A little south of there? Madonna di Ghisallo.

Need help with the scale of the map? It is about 10K from the left edge of the map to the right.

Here's something more for the bike geeks. Third picture from the bottom...the one of the lake...that's the lake separating Bellagio and Esino Lario. On just the other side of the mountain is the cabin.

OK, sorry. Just got all "homesick" there for a moment. I'll eat some pasta and be alright.

So, who wants to go?

Angel Fire crew...do you remember?

I almost sort of do. Anyway, I got the iTunes spitting songs as I work. The Divinyls I Touch Myself is playing. Good trip. Good times. We owned that place, eh Brad?

Working the fields

We had all of the kids working the field the other day. Before the POSS2 got home with Mama, Noah and I were out in the pasture working on the 400m track we're building for running and riding ove rthe fall/winter.

It is pretty well cut in now. We're hoping for some rain to help the good grass take and finish off the goat head/sticker burrs for good, but in the meantime, we keep plugging away at it.

On Monday, I was ready to give it another cutting, but since we were expecting some rain, I wanted to clear the cow crap off of the trail. Make for better walking and running when out there in the dark.

So, Noah and I were shoveling the crap into the wheel barrrow. He was working pretty hard. Had to remind him that the faster we got it done, the less time we were working with shit, but we got it done.

When we got to the last 100m, I hollered to him, "Are you having fun?" He couldn't hear me since he had his playstation thing headphones on (he can listen to music with it--he was listening to Beastie Boys). He took out the headphones, asked "What?" and I repeated. His response was, "Well, I'm not having fun, but I'm doing OK."

Just as we finished the shovel work, Mama arrived with the POSS2, and they got on the lawn tractor with me, and we got to work cutting the track even closer to the ground. They helped drive.

The track is just about 400m long. 100m is a down slope, and about 50m-ish is flat, and the rest is uphill-ish. But really, it is all pretty flat. Just feels more uphill when you are out there. I've ridden my road bike out there and not picked up anything in the tires, so I think we've got it cleaned pretty good. It is about 8.5 feet wide all the way around.

We'll have some sort of play/training out there in the coming months.

Do you remember your first real bike ride?

I remember riding with Matt McCullough at SWT and we got excited about doing rides that seemed so far to us.

Anyway, Noah and I went out for 13.5 miles today. He's been off the bike, and I've been off the bike even more. But we knocked it out.

I've felt less fatigue after doing 120 mile rides before. Long, long way to go.

Hold Your Line (and nobody is wearing a helmet)

About 3 min of pure entertainment.. Work safe, too.

Must eat

To continue on this narcissistic theme, I am so frikkin' hungry to be a bike racer again. I'm chomping at the bit to get to training. But I catch myself when I realize I'm going to be doing 15-20 mile rides for awhile, and those will make me tired.

Long way to go.

For Crying Out Loud

I'm so done with The Racing Post. Not that anybody really cares, but dang, I just don't want to be in those pages anymore.

Why?

Doesn't really matter, but it is safe to say that even if I do still own the thing, I definitely can't control what is printed in its pages. Not even when it is my own damn column.

Gump says, "And that's all I got to say about that."

Uh oh

Upon waking from her afternoon nap, Reanie told me, "Santa is making my presents."

Brody is in the house!

My sister Shaun and b-i-l Neal made me an uncle again today. Brody Allen Harpstrite comes at us with 8.13 lbs and 20 1/4 in. Big Brother Aidan is happy to have someone to big brother to.

Oh yeah? Well you should have seen the other guy.

Dent. The car is gray, so stuff didn't show up in the pictures too well.

If you click on the pic you may be able to see it a little better.

There is a good gouge at the top of the dent, and you might be able to see one along the top of the pin stripe. It looks like a tire mark under the mirror on the door.

There is also a dent on the piece between the windshield and the door/mirror.


As much that mirror hurt, I kinda wanted it to have some visible damage. By the way, this is the only look I've really had at the car; I didn't look at closely that day.

This shows the initial impact at the corer of the bumper and then a different gouge at the front of the fender.

Thursday Update on Wooombpf

So it is an update for today, but I'll start with yesterday. Got a little worried yesterday. Physically and mentally I took some steps backwards, but I think (now) that it was due to a cumulative lack of sleep. It is hard to sleep when there is no good way to lie down.

I tried doubling up some sleeping meds, even with the pain killer and muscle relaxant. Nothing worked. Finally, yesterday afternoon, I finally just crashed. Even with the "wooombpf" sound playing every 15-20 minutes, and the increase in the gnawing feeling that when I ride I'm gonna have some issues, I finally just slept. It was only for an hour, since I had to pick up Noah from school, but it was a full-on, sweat through my clothes and the sheets, slobber on my pillow, hard sleep.

Awaking from that, I was somewhat refreshed. My left side ribs and left side guts, which are giving me the most trouble overall, were very sore, but it was the first time I've even FELT like getting up since the bump.

Noah and I drove the couple of miles over to where I was hit. I've mentioned several times how lucky I was, but it is even more evident now. I'm lucky for just missinig a drive way (instead I landed in a ditch). I just missed hitting a street sign ("Narrow Bridge Ahead') and the narrow bridge that was ahead. Where I fell was, in fact, right in front of the golf course. For those familiar with the area, it was next to the hole that runs parallel to the road.

I slept some more when we got home, and it was just as deep a sleep as earlier. Had to wake up to go get the POSS2's since Mama was held up in an important meeting, but we managed.

Noah watched the babies while I slept even more. It seems that I sleep for about an hour very deeply, then I wake up, go get a drink or something to eat, say "Hi" to everyone that lives here, and then I sleep again for another hour or so. This was one of the first days in a long time that we actually got everyone to bed on time, and I slept from then pretty much through the night, minus the POSS2's coming in to customarily make sure we are still there or something.

All that said, aside from my left side ribs and guts, I feel sore but lots, lots better. My elbow works, but I don't have much range of motion, and I absolutely can't bang it on anything. But I think we've for sure turned a corner here.

You couldn't tell that I just left to go to the doctor, but I did. Definite broken rib on the left side (just one, though?), so I feel less of a wuss knowing that something is indeed busted. Nothing is broken in my shoulder, but I didn't really expect there to be since it feels like tissue/ligament/tendon issues and not bone issues.


All things considered, I fell pretty ok. If I can talk Noah into bringing the trainer to the house from the barn, I might even get my track bike on there and spin for just a something small in the next couple of days.

Tuesday Update on Wooombpf

Busy day. Had lots of folks stop by. Scored well with Niles, because he brought by lots of venison. Andrew D stopped by on his ride, which was cool. My Mom made a brief stop on her way to Longview.

Lots of calls too. It has been pleasantly overwhelming.

I feel worse physically today, but my head is totally clear. Recieved a letter from the guy's insurance company telling me to call them when I'm off the pain meds and that I need to send them some tax stuff for the last three years. Now, that's getting into my business, but I think it is a good sign that we are getting somewhere, though.

My body did stiffen up quite a bit from yesterday. I think it is due to feeling better yesterday so I moved around too much. Or maybe it was the Pilates video. Who knows?

Becky brought some books by yesterday. I read some stuff by Sedaris, which is laugh out loud funny, but once I started the second book of his, I felt like it was too much. Now reading Pico Iyer's Video Night in Kathmandu and diggin' it. And I ate all of the shortbread cookies she brought by too.

It is worth noting here that Noah has really stepped up in the last week. He's helping out tons, and he was already good about helping out before. I think he's a keeper.

When my Mom stopped by, she left behind a big plastic tub that has all kinds of stuff from my growing up years. There's my cub scout shirt, some pictures of when I was a baby, a few books, a baby tooth, my first BMX jersey, some stories that I wrote in second grade, etc. A childhood in a box. Pretty neat.