Sunday, October 27, 2013

Wild weekend

I hardly got out to ride this week.  Today was my first and only ride, although it was a bit short it was great.  Allow me to rewind to Monday first.  This work week was a hell week if there ever was one.  Firewalls constantly failing causing outages and for some reason I got stuck with both a Juniper and Cisco TAC case working on these pieces of junk.  That's still not resolved, but I think things are stable enough.

At least I had Saturday to look forward too.  My friends are in this band...no really.  They needed a sound guy and I clearly knew nothing about so I decided to volunteer.  That led to a 1:30am practice Friday morning, which so boosted my productivity that day.  I was also getting antsy since I was going to sit in for "Simple Man" by Lynyrd Skynyrd.  My playing is ok, but I was banking on all our friends being mostly inebriated before I hit the stage.  Therefore, I would sound just like Jimmy Page.  Er, I mean Gary Rossington.

My nerves were getting a little amped for the solo, but fate hadn't played her hand yet....

A few hours before sound check, Penny got a text from a couple of her friends that the lead singer, (Coach) Brad, had been in a car accident.  Turns out it was pretty bad, and he ended up staying the night in the hospital.  So the show was cancelled, and now I can go back to plunking solos out in A minor.  I think he'll be ok soon enough, his body took a pounding though.

Since we didn't go out and subsequently I was in pretty good shape (no hangover to recover from), I went out for a BuRP ride, and had some decent legs and cleaned a few technical parts of the trail I haven't cleaned in quite a while.  So that was good.  I gotta get some more miles in before October is over though so I can earn a Strava badge (250k in October).  That's pretty lightweight for some people, but that's a lot for me, especially since the back is still occasionally bothering me.

That's it for now, I'm already getting tired.  The boys are all amped so I know they won't go to bed easily...sigh.

Friday, October 18, 2013

Riding, and an old video worth a re-look

I left work a little early yesterday to get a few road miles in before the crappy weather hit this weekend.  I figured between the bad weather and the soccer games my riding chances wouldn't be very good.  So I got a solid 24 or something like that, and it felt great.  I pushed into a headwind the whole way out, and I bet I went at least twice as fast on the way home.  Something about flying along like that makes it so fun.  I ran out of gears a few times, which either means the tailwind was strong or I have some easy gears on.  Probably a bit of both.  My legs are definitely talking to me today, and I love that feeling.

Penny is really sick, she's on a z-pak trying to stave off pneumonia or something like that.  She's had a fever for a few days, and has a nasty cough too.  I've been sleeping in the guest bedroom and trying to keep my distance while still taking care of her.  It's a lot of work trying to keep up with the house and kids, but Lord knows she takes care of me the other 361 days of the year.

AB's last fall soccer game is this weekend, and it's going to be frigid.  I bet it'll just be me out there.  I'm going to have to bust out my thermals, wool socks, and winter boots.  It'll feel like cyclocross except for the lack of cowbell.

Now for the video, or "The Rant"...

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Riding again

I've been riding a bit more since I have this extra time off thanks to Congress (I'm furloughed).  I had a great ride at Minor Park today, and hopefully can get some more rides in this weekend but it's pretty action packed.

Doesn't get much better than this...


My legs/lungs/heart are in sad, sad shape.  I guess that's what happens when you take 10 months off or so.  But I feel like they are getting a little better.  There are few joys in my life greater than when I'm going fast on a bike.  It's so invigorating and liberating.  Especially when you are riding well and in the zone.  Awesome.  I've gotten a few short bursts of that since I started back up, and it's pretty addicting.  I do remember when I was in decent shape a couple of years ago and was an ok racer.  I had some speed, some handling, but there clearly was a large gap between myself and the guys who rode 100+ miles a week.  Not to belittle my efforts and accomplishments, but that's a TON of work to keep yourself in real, competitive race shape.  Like you need to be on the bike 6 days a week.  It just didn't mean that much to me and I got tired of being tired.  But now I'm round-shaped and ready to get back into some other shape.

Enough about that.

AB lost his 3rd tooth a couple of days ago, I tried ripping it out of his head but that just ended in tears.  He woke us up at 3am that night to let us know it came out.  We've been waiting at least 4 months for that thing to finally wiggle out.  It is his top front tooth, and has been loose for as long as I can remember.  The other top front tooth has been loose about the same amount, and hopefully it'll pop out here fairly soon.  Not that I'm anxious to go visit the ortho, but I'm interested in seeing what kind of budget trauma we'll have to sustain.

AB wouldn't open his mouth to show off his gappy tooth, so Kieran volunteered


We are going to see the Miami Heat tomorrow night, and then a bevy of soccer games, swim lessons, and AB is getting his 3rd grade bible tomorrow.  I think it's one of those things that he might not appreciate for awhile, but the most important thing I could ever teach him is that the world is much, much bigger than him, and there is something real that binds it all together.  The sooner he appreciates those two facts, the sooner he can find lasting happiness, which is what any parent wants for their child.
Sigh.

There is always more to write, but I felt I should at least write something since it's been a bit, and I haven't had a good excuse not too.  I've more or less enjoyed my time off, but it's about time to get back to work (which is going to be a disaster of epic proportions), and I want to make sure we get back paid.  We have some float, but I'd just as soon use it to cover something we did, rather than congressional ineptitude.