Goings-ons

Things here in AF have been going well for our little family, it's always a little bit more busy than I'd like but still mostly fun (I'm a rare bread of lazy that gets a kick out of having absolutly nothing to do every now and then).

Since my last post about my rotting tooth I've been having my share of fun at the dentist with basicly two root canals. In the first one my dentist got clear down to almost the tips but could't quite get the tips, so he sent me off to a specialist to finish the job the next week.

Root canal part II was the day before Thanksgiving. One thing I was thankful for was that after all the numbing stuff wore off my tooth actualy felt pretty good and I was able to enjoy eating for the first time in a while.

The day after Thanksgiving one of my brothers hooked me up with a ticket to the BSU game vs. Fresno State.

Some people like close and exiting games, but personaly I'm a big fan of seeing my team blow the other guys away. So the second half of this one was very much what I had hoped for in the only game I got to go to this year. Loved it!

I drug along my bike to Boise for the weekend and so that Saturday I hooked up with the club ride put on by the team I'm ridding for in '09, Lactic Acid Cycling. It wasn't one of the official team rides so only a few of the racers were there but it was a great time meeting some new guys I'll be ridding with and even catching up with some old friends from Boise. Sadly by the time we were finishing off the ride on Hill road I was totaly spent and had to chill out and ride back to my car solo. But I think its a good thing to start my winter training nice and humbled, it will help me work harder.

Back in AF this last weekend the weather was surprisingly nice (kinda cold but nice) so I was able to get the bike out and find an awsome local road I'll surely be riding a ton next year and then on Sunday Kayla and I had a hunch we might not have too many nice days left and took Susie out to play at a park by the lake.

The next day I got up early to hit my first early morning roller session of the season and then headed back to the dentist chair to get a titanium post shoved down the roots of my molar.

And that brings us to today's Christmas cheer. Both my work party and my ward party fell on the same day. For lunch was a great catered dutch oven meal followed by a raffle for a bunch of loot given away by my company and a lot of our vendors. There were enough prizes that everybody got something and most prizes were pretty cool, like gift certificates and tool sets. Of course of every body there what do you think the college boy/city slicker/kid who's never shot a firearm at anything alive won?.....

Yep, that sure is a 4 foot tall elk plasma cut out of 10 gage steel. It weighs a ton and I don't even think it can fit into my car without posing a serious decapatation hazard (it's still sitting next to my desk).

At the church party tonight we finaly got Susie to not be too terified of Santa by giving her candy and letting her not acctualy have to look at him.

All I want for Christmas...

I paid my visit to the dentist today and it looks like somebody's getting quite the Christmas present this year... Nothing quite says holiday cheer like spending family's Christmas money on getting daddy a root canal! Not fun. I've already had a root canal before and while the procedure itself does suck pretty bad, I'm sure it's not the same at all when I know it's comming out of my pocket.

Also, I noticed that picture I posted previously of my tooth was unacceptibly sub-par so here goes attempt #2 at selfdentalphotography:

Work'n, Play'n, Work'n and a Little Tooth Decay'n

Times is kinda busy but mostly very good these days. The job is still going good, I'm slowly becoming the rock collector guy at work. No, that dosn't mean I'm the one who they make go collect rocks for everyone else. A "rock collector" is a machine and since the engineer I replaced was the previous specialest on the matter I've been tasked with becoming the new go-to-guy.

Susie is getting to be more and more fun to play with. She walks all over now and every day when I come home for lunch or after work she gets totaly amped to see me (that feels nice).

The house is shaping up nicely, aside from the few days last week we went without hot water and I found a big puddle in the basement that wasn't even related to the fritzed water heater. (all is well now though)

Tomorrow morning I've got my first dentist appointment in I think 8 years. With as bad of teeth as I've had my whole life it was pretty dumb of me not to be going regularly and even now it took alot to make me go back. I've had a bottom molar that hasn't been in good shape for a while, then a few months ago it broke a bit and left a big hole on the back of it. But since it didn't really hurt I was dumb enough to just ignore it (except for when large amounts of food would get stuck in it). In the last couple weeks its started hurting quite a bit so I finaly broke down and set up an appointment to get it taken care of.

For as bad as my tooth hurts, I'm dissapointed it dosn't show up better in a pic. But blow up the pic and check out the second tooth from the back on my left.

To Pro or not to Pro?

Here's a question I tought was answered a few years ago with a huge NO..... but thanks to some new rule changes and certain things in the past falling just right I kinda have to make a new decision on this. To fully understand this whole question I think we need to rewind a few yesrs....

When I first started liking bikes I was all about the mountain bike. According to all the bike magazines I was reading at the time, road bikes were for sissy whinners and I was too cool for them, however they did aknowledge that you could get into realy good shape for MTB racing by riding a road bike. So one day I took the money I had been saving up to buy a special edition Shawn Palmer suspension fork and used it to buy a road bike. From there the road bike prety much took over untill I eventualy found myself riding on a pretty awsome team of road racers.

While I was in the midst of road racing most every week I kept up a bit on the MTB and entered a few of those races whenever I could. My first MTB race I skipped over "beginner" class and won the "sport" class so I decided to upgrade right away to "expert". Through the rest of the season I got destoyed by the expert class racers but thanks to the series points counting attendance more than actual results I wound up as state champion just by showing up more than anyone else. The following year I raced expert again but was actualy winning or finising on the podium every race. When it came time for the last race of they year I got the short end of the same stick that gave me the state title the year before and even though I probably should have won the overall, I missed a race and was out of competion for it. Since winning an expert race rewarded the victor with a water bottle or similar bike gear and placing in the top 5 of the "Pro/Semi-pro" class paid cold hard cash I talied up my results over the previous year and upgraded to Semi-pro.

Since I upgraded I've only done 3 races I can think of right now. The first had some very tough competition and I was ridding great to take top 5 until a flat that turned into a 15min trailside disaster, the second I should have had 3rd but squandered a huge lead and got nipped to end up in 4th. And the third race which I did just last year was a total disgrace to the sport as I was putting in lap times that were more on par for the beginner class (I know I would have lost the sport class and maybe wouldn't have even made the podium with the beginners!).

For a couple years I've been toying with the idea of doing a bunch of MTB racing with my semi-pro license and have a goal of eventualy earning my Pro upgrade. The different license wouldn't make any diference for any local races since they all race the semi-pros and Pros together, but it would leave open the opportunity to travel to some national level race and get to toe the line with the real Pros. Not expecting awsome results but more just to be able to someday tell my kids I kinda was cool once.

Now, here we are at the current question.....USAcycling decided to change up the catagories for MTB racing from: beginner, sport, expert, semi-pro, Pro to: 3, 2, 1, Pro. With most catagories being automaticly converted into the new system except for semi-pros being given the choice of being cat 1 or Pro. So I guess the question kind of is: if you set a goal to accomplish something cool and before you do any real work towards the goal, someone offers to just hand out the reward to you, do you take it?

Here's why I'm thinking I shouldn't:

If I show up to some big race as a "Pro" but I ride slower than the weekend warriors on borrowed bikes I'd be totaly disrespecting the guys who really did earn their way to the top.

I might be missing out on alot of satisfaction of working for it and earning the upgrade.

My time is limited these days and I'm already commited to race alot on the road in '09 and if I put off my big MTB race to another year I'd still have to buy my new license next year to get the automatic upgrade and Pro liceses are very expensive to buy and not use.

Here's why I'm thinking I should:

You don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

If I raced a big Pro race I'd still only do it if I trained a ton for it and was totaly ready to make a good showing.

I might not ever have the time to earn the license outright, so this may very well be my only chance.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory wouldn't have been a very good story if when Charlie Bucket found the golden ticket for his factory tour and lifetime supply of chocolate he said "nah, we should give this to a fat kid who could realy make the most of all that chocolate."

Any thoughts?

Roughing it in my own house

The last few weeks have been super crazy, possibly even krazy enough to spell it with a "k"! But fortunatly all this krazyness has been for a good cause, getting our house buoght, modified and moved into (plus for some strange reason my new job gets a bit nuts durring potato harvest which is right now).

To recap on some of the most recent adventures:

Closed on our house sometime around the 15thish of September (I really can't remember now) and we got a good deal on a good place. It was way cheaper than anything good we could have gotten in Boise or even Poky for that matter, we stayed well within our budget and the place is awsome. Sofar AF is quite nice too.

The house was in great shape and had alot of brand new remodeling already done (new wiring, plumbing, insulation, most windows) but it needed a couple changes to make it fit our family just right. What would become Susie's room was joined with the main floor bathroom so we decided to build a wall with a door to split things up. And I needed to do some wiring to make way for an eventual dishwasher and to convert a built-in book case into a nice spot for my new TV.

The wiring went mostly smooth, took forever to fish the wires to where I needed them and I only got juiced once.

The wall was quite the ordeal of its own. Kayla's dad was in town when I started so he was a huge help it getting it framed and most of the dry wall up. From there I still had the finishing and hanging the door to do after work and on one weekend when Kayla was in Boise for the Women's Fitness Celebration. That Sunday night I decided to do a bunch of work and just stay the night at the house on our air matress..... When I showed up I realized I forgot my pillow (I'm very picky about my pillows) so I was a bit worried but not too bad. Then I worked my tail off untill about midnight and decided to go get the air matress ready. Only then did I discover that the air matress was missing the drain plug. So I suddenly realized I had no pillow, no matress, the whole house has hard-wood floors and I was way too tired to safley make the drive back to my bed in Poky.... I ended up dragging a roll of carpet pad up from the basement to go with a nasty set of cusions off the lawn funiture the seller left us (where she would sit to drink and smoke). I slept like crap and between then and now has been one long string of working at my job, working on the house, fighting off being sick and not having time to sleep.

But in the end... we're loving our house and all the projects seem to have turned out nicely.

Since all posts are better with a pic, here's a random shot of me and my wall.

Time to buy some gas

I've mowed my fair share of lawns in my day, back home we had a fairly big one I mowed all growing up and now at my duplex I mow the lawn alot of the time. But the thing about it all is that with all the grass I've cut I've never once paid for the gas to go into the mowers. Simple reason is that even though it may have been my responsibility to do the labor, I didn't own the grass I was cutting, so if there was no gas I just didn't mow cuz it wasn't my problem. But comming up oh so soon all that will change.

Kayla and I just got an offer accepted on a house in American Falls. A nice little place on a corner lot nestled between a school and a golf course. Not just any golf couse either I'll have you know. I drove around it a bit a few days ago on my lunch break and half the golfers I saw looked just like Lyle from Nepoleon Dynamite, we're talking work boots, Wranglers, mesh backed John Deere hat all coupled with a putter.









In other goings ons, here's a couple pics of our most recent excitements:

Susie and I admiring the award winning preserved fruits at the Bannock County fair. The competition was very intense as I'm sure you can all tell.

A nice shot from our most recent trip to the park. This is what happens when Mamma and Daddy are paying more attention to taking pictures than to what Susie is actualy doing in the pictures.

Human After All

You know what is missing from movies these days? Music montages! I'm not talking about just any old montage either, but the awesome ones from '80s films that went one step farther by setting the montage to the tune of a song written about what's going on in the movie right then. That's what its all about! In honor of this I'm temporarily putting music back on my blog just because it's a song to go along with this post.

This last weekend I Finlay made it back to a race I've been meaning to do for a second time for several years: Mt. Harrison hill climb. About 4 years ago I won the first ever running of this race over a small but very talented field. Since then I've always had something come up to keep me from going back to try and repeat. This year I finally had my chance. I knew my fitness was somewhat sub-optimal but in classic me style, deep down I hoped that there would be some mysitic connection between me and the mountain that would help me and my slacker training schedule beat a field that included a national level pro mountain biker and a former world champion.

view from the bottom:

Soon after the start the true big guns of the day dropped me without even noticing. As the gaps became established I took my count of guys up the road to see I was in 10th place. I tried to set a rhythm for myself and noticed something kinda weird. I had been listening to Daft Punk on the drive over and now my exhaled breaths sounded like and matched up exactly with the last half of the song "Human After All" (the one playing on the blog if you havn't turned it off). It's a little depressing when you're alone on the mountain and still being taunted the whole way up!

By the end two different guys had caught me but I managed to re-drop them both. It was pretty demoralizing when one of them was talking to me and assumed I was a cat 4/5 racer, there's no way to sound cool when you reply that you're actualy a cat2........

view from the top:

When I finaly hit the top, I kept my 10th place but managed to drop a few notches on my ego-meter. On the bright side the only time I noticed the altitude (finish was at about 9400' per the GPS in my phone) the aching in my chest actualy felt really good.

Have to end with a flashback to when I was actualy cool:

Idaho Superweek wrap-up

I just got home from Idaho Falls and now is my time to elaborate. Every racer knows about a sad little secret in racing: after the race everybody wants to tell tell their own play-by-play of the race but nobody cares enough to want to listen, I think we've all been on both ends of that one. Enter the blog! Now I get to do all the telling I want and don't have to wory about seeing anybody roll their eyes at me and try to change the subject, I'm in contol here.

7/26-Allan Butler Criterium, Idaho Falls--I rolled into IF with the pre-race techno thump'n hard and spirits high. Durring warm up I felt like crap but over the years I've learned not to be worried about that because some times the worse I feel before the race the better I fell in the race (weird huh?). While rolling around my spirits dropped a bit when I saw how many teammates Sam K. had with him, all guys that are as tough or way tougher than me and nobody else had showed up with any sort of structured team to be able to put up a fight.

When the race started Sam's team (Park City Jeep) worked their advantage to perfection by launching attack after attack, every time a break didn't work out they had a handfull of other fresh dudes to counter. After racing for a few laps I satarted feeling ok, I had good legs and good hands to keep me in the action. But unfortunately in some cases my crit skills were a little too sharpened. Every time I tried to take a hard pull at the front to reel in the break, I'd rail through the corners a little to fast and open gaps behind me. The Park City guys would then cover me like I was attempting to break away and all the sudden I'd be off the front and out numbered. Mid-race after pulling for a lap and a half I tried to be Superman and attack off the front for a $50 prime and was barely nipped at the line for it, that blew me so bad I ended up getting dropped off the back of the pack for a while on a couple of occasions (thanks Rob and Justin for saving me both times).

By the end Sam and one teammate had lapped the field leaving us to fight for 3rd place. I was feeling good again and positioned myself pretty well. Sam's teammate that lapped us won the sprint and I came in near enough the front to earn myself 5th place overall. You know what that means?... Homeboy got paieeeeedd! It's been a while since I've done good enough in a paying race to walk away with a profit after counting entry fees and gas money, lets just say the last time it happend the $$ went to buying textbooks.

Now I just need to find me a few more crits while I'm feel'n the flow and before the snow starts flying here in Pokey. (unfortunately I think the only one I have left is the last of the Holt crits here in town)

My own Private Idaho Superweek

In US bike racing theres a pretty famous set of races back east somewhere that tons of pros and elites like to do and they call it "SUPERWEEK". I've never gotten to go to these and probably never will but this week my Idaho racing schedule has gifted me with my own mini Idaho version of this. I'm 3/4 of the way through 4 criteriums that happened to fall in a one week span.

Here's how it's shaken down sofar:

7/19-Twilight Criterium, Boise--This year I was relegated out of the big dance under the lights and raced in the cat2 only race. With the course change for this year and racing in broad daylight it was still a crit but it sure didn't feel like Twilight. With having no Pros/1s in the field I figured I'd have a shot at a top finish and raced with that in mind by trying to conserve my energy. Then towards the end I thought I was jumping into the winning move but when the other guys sat up I was suddenly stranded in no man's land off the front. As I startred dangling out there they called a prime for $40 and I figured "what the heck, that's more than my entry fee" and drilled it for a lap to get the cash. As I crossed the line taking the $$ they anounced 10 laps to go and I realized I was toast, so I sat in trying to recover and ended up taking 18th place. Not terrible but not nearly what I had hoped for.

7/20-State Championship Criterium, Hidden Springs--The next day I got to be mixed in with the cat 1s again for what I figured would be a tougher race than the night before. I stayed in the pack again saving energy but unfortunately the day would be won by an early break off the front. So I hung on to try out my sprinting legs. I'm pretty proud of the way the end of the race when for me: I pulled off near text-book crit stataegy by putting myself near the front and moving up one spot every lap (like: 7 laps to go be in 7th wheel, 6 laps to go be in 6th wheel, ect.). By the final series of corners I was in 3rd wheel and pulled off a great sprint to come around the Cal Giant Berries guy in front of me and hold off another dude from coming around me to get 2nd in the field sprint! First in the sprint was the Bob's team's designated sprinter so I guess that's still pretty good to come in just behind him. I ended up 6th, one spot out of the $$...ouch.

7/22-Local Holt Arena Crit, Pocatello--This is part of a summer long crit series and coming into this one I had a good lead in the series but 2nd place was the very tough Sam K. who's been dominating me in every other type of local race (TTs and hill climbs). In the previous races Sam figured he didn't like trying to beat me in the group sprints and I learned that if he gets away even slightly he'd TT away and darn near lap me. So for this one we ended up playing some serious games with each other. It played out just like we were on the velodrome, I'd sit on his wheel and he'd come to almost a standstill trying to force me to lead, then he's throw down a HUGE attack and we'd repeat this just about every lap. The other guys just took off and ended up lapping us TWICE! In the end I nipped him and held my lead, but brought other guys back into contention for the series:( Crazy enough that has to have been simultaniously the slowest and most painful crit I've ever done.

7/26-Allan Butler Criterium, Idaho Falls-- This one is still to come and I'm expecting big things from it. My crit skills are nicely sharpened and I think the field will be mostly Utah guys that probably wont take me seriously because they'll just figure I'm too skinny to race crits. With any luck I'll get to prove them wrong.

Idaho it is

We'll... I had a great trip over to Minneapolis to have my interview with QBP. It went well but according to the news they had for me yesterday it sounds like it went even better for one other candiate. So I've accepted the job in American Falls and will be starting there as soon as I'm done serving out my last 3 weeks here at VTC.
I'm excited for my new job since I'll be able to do a ton of real engineering work as opposed to my current job that could really be done by a draftsman. And staying in Idaho closer to family will be really nice too.
Kayla and I loaded up Susie last night and drove around AF a bit to check it out. We are for sure looking to buy a house and will probably do so out there to save money and time on the daily commute. We spotted a couple places that look good that we will be trying to get inside soon with a realator to check them over more.
Aside from all that, in the more important world of bike racing :) This weekend is the Twilight Crit in Boise. I skipped it last year and this year I've been demoted. Or more like the race was promoted, the main event is planned to be a bigger race in the national calender than in previous years so they changed it to Pro/1 only and since I'm only a lowly cat 2 racer I've been pushed out of the big one. That's a bummer but on the other hand it will be nice to have a lower level race that I can have a shot at doing well in instead of the big one where I just raced it to be there (and hang on for the finish). Hopefuly I can put in a respectable ride, my training has been slacking and last Tuesday I was feeling so bad I got dropped big time in a group ride that I can usualy hand out some major punishment in. With any luck that was just a lingering weakness left over from the 4th of July 10K run where Kayla stomoped me :(

Change is in the air

I don't think anyone at my current job has ever read this blog, so I'm betting I'm save to talk about this... It's looking like the Steve-O Parker family is gonna be moving soon, the only question now is how far are we gonna go. I've been interviewing at a couple places and things seem to be working out. One of the places is a potato harvester manufacturer in American Falls, ID; the job is none too glamorus but it is a good one with alot of cool engineering work to be done (as opposed to my current job where I'm not really alowed to be an engineer who thinks). That job just called me this afternoon is now on the table as a real offer. Because of gas prices and since we just rent now, if I take that job we'd move out to AF where we'd buy a house and become real certified adults (I fugure parent + homeowner finaly merits that advancement).

The other possibility....This weekend I'm being flown out to Minneapolis to have a final round interview with QBP (check out www.qbp.com and www.salsacycles.com). The job is a product design and development engineer working with Salsa and a few other brands owned by QBP. Basicly from what I know of the possition it's my dream job, exactly what I had in mind when I was suffering through those years of my engineering degree: designing bikes, building/riding prototypes, hanging around with other bike dorks all day-every day and even getting paid for it.

Monday evening after the QBP interview I should know alot more about what the furure holds for me and my little family. Even if I get the offer in Minnesoda, all of Kayla and I's talk sofar has been purely hypothetical, so there's still alot of thinking and praying to be done no matter what the outcome is. just wish me luck.

Too much travel

Last week my work sent me to Virginia for some lame training. Aside from living in France for a couple years I've never traveled much at all, so getting over to that end of the country was kind of nice, but many parts of the trip realy kinda sucked.

One saving grace was that a few weeks ago Kayla and I finaly needed new cell phones bad enough that she let me buy some. I got one to satisfy the tech nerd inside:

Its a Blackjack 2, and comes with all the bells and whistles to make me clap my hands and shreek with joy!: GPS, Windows Mobile 6, full media player and even caller ID! One of the first things I did was download an NES emulator along with about 800 nintendo games. Needless to say my bathroom breaks have gotten alot longer and Kayla has hated this thing since about day two. Sadly though even in my tech nerd glory I'm still a bit of a poser, I didn't buy a data plan so I can't realy use it for email and internet surfing like it's made for, I even have to cringe a bit when I get text mesages because I have to pay for them individualy.

So, the phone did help alot to keep me pacified on the planes and bus, oh yes the BUS. My company is super cheap and my travel plans were not too well organized so since I had to return to Boise instead of Pocatello, I had the pleasure of taking a Greyhound from SLC to Boise. It took 9 painful hours to make the trip, since my MP3 player was out of order durring that week I was treated with listening to the old ladies behind me get aquainted by telling stories about their health problems (mostly tooth loss) and illegitimate grand children they had living with them.

After 17 hours of travel on Friday I woke up bright and early Saturday to do the LP200 relay bike race from Boise to Sun Valley. It's a fun race where you have a team of 4 riders who work together to cover the distance. The course is broken up into 10 sections where different riders can swap out and take turns and/or ride together. I rode the first section, a couple in between and we all rode the final leg together. In all I rode something like 90 miles and our team finished in about 8hours45min, good enough for 12th out of about 60 teams. Not too bad and I'd say mainly thanks to Justin M. kicking butt on the hilly stretches.

After the race I had to get back to Pokey so Kayla met up with me in Twin Falls where I loaded my bike in our car and we took off. Unfortunately it wasn't until we got home that I realized that when I loaded my bike I forgot my bag of bike gear on the curb in front of the gas station back in Twin. Luckly I called them up and they found my bag to set aside for me. Sunday was busy with church stuff and I was wasted all day, so I had to wait until Monday and take the day off work to go back to get the bag. I convinced Kayla and Susie to make a day of it with me so we went and checked out the falls while we were there.

Hmmmm......

Durring a little Saturday afternoon channel surfing a few days ago I thought of something that may have been lingering in the back of my mind for a while without realizing it:

Anybody else notice a resemblance? No offense Susie, honestly I think you're the cutest little Miss Stay Puft I've ever seen.

Winna-Winna-Winna vs. Debbi Downer

Kayla decided she wanted to run a low key race and push Susie in the jogger for it. So she found a little fun-run 5K in Idaho Falls that we went to yesterday morning. I thought I'd run in it too just because it was cheap and I was there anyway. So when all was said and done out of the 100 or so folks who showed up for it........I won! After I crossed the line with a good 20-30 yards on 2nd place I was feeling realy good about myself and my result in the first 5K I've ever raced and walked around to cool off while I waited to cheer for Kayla and Susie as they finished. They came in as the first stroller by a long shot and she was even up really far in the women's overall. After Kayla was done our conversation went something like this:

Me: good job
Kayla: thanks
M: I won!
K: Cool, what was your time?
M: I donknow? 19:somthing.
K: Oh...that's a good high school girl's time....

Whhaaaaa-Waaaaaa

Really she is proud of me, but there's nothing like a little off-the-cuff brutal honesty to keep things in perspective.

Boxed kind of week

I know just saying I had a boxed kind of week doesn't really make any sense, but...I guess that's what the body of this post is for.

First off, as anybody who knows me well, knows well: I am a huge fan of breakfast cereal. But normally I stick to the off-brand bagged stuff, not only is it cheaper but I've also grown to like it better than the name brand stuff it is made to imitate. Then comes along a sale at Abertsons for 10 for $10 on General Mills cereals and now Kayla and I are quite stocked up on all the brand name goodies I've kept away from for quite some time. It sure is a nice feeling to open up the cupboard and have such a bountiful selection.

Second, on Wednesday night the local bike club put on a time-trial that's part of a season long series of races. I can usually TT pretty well for being such a skinny guy (most times it's the big powerful riders that dominate this kind of race). This time I had to work later than usual and showed up with-out enough time for my normal warm-up on the trainer so I just pulled the bike out and rode around the start for a bit before my turn. While I rolled around I had some not too swell of luck and flatted both tires on the aero wheels for my TT bike (for those who don't race bikes: in a TT, equipment with low aerodynamic drag can make a very big difference and racers spend thousands of dollars to get it). Luckily Sam K. is such a cool guy he lent me a very nice extra front wheel he had but that still left me with an old school boxed rim rear wheel instead of my normal disk wheel. I took off for the race anyway just to record a time (expecting a terrible one) and ended up riding my fastest time ever on that course. My last fastest time was a few years ago when I came over here for the Gate City Grind stage race and was riding strong in those days.

Lastly in my boxed week just to round it out: Susie is on some crazy expensive baby formula her doctor put her on a while ago. To save some money I bought a big box of the stuff on Ebay that should be getting here any day. Kinda crazy when $110 for a six-pack is bargain shopping!!

Goings ons

This week I am yet again a lone man in the eastern Idaho wilderness. After running Robie this last weekend Kayla and Susie opted to stay Nampa until next weekend when I'll be going back for a race of my own. I've been passing my time playing on the computer which I just upgraded the RAM in (thanks ebay) and bought a kinda new super bargan monitor for ($25 from my work for a few month old 19" LCD!). Also I've been avoiding the TV by listening to the audiobook "Bringing Down the House" it's the book that the movie "21" is based on about a true story MIT blackjack club that works out a system to count cards and beat Vegas. Great book sofar, I will probably finish it on my drive back to Boise on Friday.

Kayla's race to Robie went pretty good. I think it went mostly like she expected, even though I could tell she had hoped to do a little better. She finished in the top 30 which is amazing considering she had Susie by C-section just a little over 7 months before the race. Now we're trying to figure out what her next race will be, but for now that depends on a few things that are up in the air.

My first two races of the year when ok, but not great. In the Slammer I didn't finsh as well as I hoped for, but I feel ok about it since I felt good all race and I think I just played around a little too much with some of the hopeless break atempts, oh well it was nice to be in a race again. Then I went down to SLC for the Hell of the North race and that was kinda weird. I got dropped at the halfway point, I didn't realy feel like I blew up, I just plain couldn't go fast enough at the right times. But at least several other people mentioned how hard the first half was, so that's at least some consolation. And add onto that, the last time I looked at the results they were botched and had me finishing in 10th place!

This coming weekend is the Emmett-Roubaix race. I am hoping for a good result here, my main goal is to be with the leaders at the bottom of the finishing climb, which means I'll have to survive the gravel sections this year. If I can put all my effort into making it to the climb, then it's all just a matter of luck I think. If my climbing legs from the days of yore are there that day I think I can do well, but if they don't show up, I will just have to watch the finsh take place a few switchbacks up the hill from me.

It's that time again!

I'm heading off to my first race of the year in the morning. And all day today I've been getting ready in the best ways I know how. First off if you want to go fast everybody knows you've got to have a shinny bike. So I figure if a shinny bike is fast, mirror polished ought to be down right untouchable....

Unfortunately I couldn't get the digital camera to show it's truly obscene beauty, but for a good feel for what it looks like at it's best notice the reflection of the pedal on the downtube in the pic. After a really good polish job my bike goes from being silver to being so mirrored that it really doesn't have a color, it just reflects everything around it. I know what you're thinking and don't get me wrong, yes this level of shine does involve a huge waste of time, in fact almost a full year's worth. This is what happens when someone who's a nut about bikes spends a year mostly off his bike but not necessarily away from his bike. I ended many weeks realizing that I had spent more time wet-sanding and polishing my bike than I had spent riding it.

The next preparation for race day also has spent a long time in the making...

I think most every non-bike racer has questioned the leg shaving thing at least once. There's lots of reasons we give: faster healing of road rash, more aero, better for massages, ect. But I have to admit my biggest reason is probably mental. When my legs are hairy, to me they look and feel like these scrawny dangling appendages hanging from the lower part of my body, but when they're shaved they seem more like purpose built machines, they're not scrawny, they're light weight and efficient.

As for the actual race, I'm just going to show up and see what happens. I've done this race several times and it's always been a pretty big disappointment. This year might be different though. I've trained with a lot more focus and dedication than I ever did before, but it's still very early in the season and a long way off when I'm shooting to be in top form.

Probably the biggest difference I've noticed about getting ready to race this year has been my dreams. In all my years of bike racing, before this year I never once had a dream where I won a bike race. I had a whole series of them where I would show up missing most of my gear and be totally panicked and would miss the start, but this year was the first time I ever dreamed about a race going well and even winning it. I'm not at all predicting a win for myself anytime soon, but I'm sure that that's at least a sign that my mind and body might finlay be up to the task of racing with the big boys in the group that gets to toe the start line last.

I woulda, but...

After starting the week terrible with being sick and not being able to ride I thought I could at least finish it off with a nice ride. I had a great loop planned down into Arbon Valley with a bit of meandering thrown in. The weather forcast was the same as for the last several days and they all tuned out nice so I figured that wouldn't be a problem...

At about 9:00am I looked out and saw:

I wasn't too stressed, I just figured I'd wait for it to warm up a bit and ride in the afternoon. So Kayla did her Saturday run before my ride and a little while after she got home it looked a bit like this :(

After a good dose of cursing Pocatello winters I eventualy dried my tears and slinked away into the basement to ride the rollers. The only ray of sunshine was that I at least had the re-runs of the '08 Tour of California to watch as I pedaled away without moving.

Here's what it looked like outside when I finished:The cycling club here planned to start the weekly Tuesday night rides this week but I'm not sure the roads will be ready in time for that. But I do have my fingers crossed for the impromptu TT we have planned for Thursday night. I just need to get some new cables to string-up my TT bike and I should be ready to rock. Speaking of that, the Boise crowed kicked off the season this weekend with a TT that I skipped. It was a long way to go for such a short race and even if by some freak chance I did get lucky and do well in that race all that would have done is make me a marked man for the other races in the series. My racing starts in 2 weeks with the Slammer, which will have to both check my form and get me back into racing mode (not sure how my nerves will handle coming back from a year off).

Suffering on the bike sure beats suffering off the bike

Last weekend I got to go to Boise to pick up Kayla and Susie after their little vacation. It sure was nice to have them back after a week and a half of solitude back home.

While in Boise I decided to take another shot at getting together with some of my old chums for a good hard ride. The ride was great, humbling in many aspects but great overall. We cruised out for a nice little Emmett-Horseshoe Bend loop (about 80 miles with a couple tough spots). I hung in well for the majority of the day, but the two times that everybod realy turned the screws I got dropped. When I rolled back to the car in Boise I felt like I still had several more miles in my legs but just an inability to realy ride hard like I'll need to do very soon. In the days afterwards I browsed the blogs of some of the other rides in the group and felt better that they refered to it as a tough ride. When you think about it, if I'm gonna get my butt handed to me on a ride at least I can feel good knowing that it was done by what was for sure the strongest group riding in the state that day.

This past week has been an easy one on my training callender, that was suposed to be getting me ready to start another hard few weeks. But Friday night Susie woke up throwing-up a bunch. She toughed it out really well and was mostly better by Saturday night. Then Sunday evening whatever it was that Susie had hit both Kayla and I realy hard. We couldn't keep anything in our systems and spent 10-12 hours whimpering and taking turns running to the bathroom. I don't think I've ever been so sick and for such a short period of time, by Monday morning we were both feeling well enough to start eating again (gently though). I had been planing on losing a few pounds as the racing season progressed, but wow, I hit my target racing weight in a matter of hours on Sunday.

Dry roads + not too cold = happy

Kayla and Susie decided to abondon me for a week or so to go back to the Boise area for a while and stay with family. That's left me here alone to waste all my time outside of work with riding my bike and playing video games (I guess the unmarried me would be kind of a loner).

Yesterday by some miricle that seems to never happen around here, the day of the week that had nice weather actualy fell on a Saturday when I could enjoy it. So after sleeping in late for the first time in a long while I put on my space suit of cold weather riding gear and headed out into the scorching 35 degree heat.

It was mostly sunny all day and not much wind which made for a nice day to be on the bike. The 4-5 foot walls of snow on both sides of the roads in some parts made for a cool tunnel feeling and made me feel very lucky to have dry pavement under my tires.

Since most all of my riding this year has been indoors I wasn't sure how my endurance would translate to outside distances. I planned a kinda tough loop that I thought would wipe me out. But when I rolled back into town I had 60 miles in my legs and was feeling fresher and stronger than I've felt on a bike in a couple years so I decided to loop out around the airport for some extra distance. By the time I got home I had just over 80 miles for the day and was finaly sapped of all my energy and could only shake my head as I tried to figure out why I ever thought it was a good idea to move into a house on top of a big/steep hill.

For Kayla

Tagged
I've Been Tagged...I've been tagged by Kayla, I usualy never do these things but since she realy wanted me to I guess I will, but I'm for sure not gonna pass it on to anyone else.

What I was doing 10 years ago...I think in Feb. of '98 I was thinking about running for Sargent at Arms in the student body presidency (I won which resulted in me doing the daily video anouncements, having a vote in the ASB meetings and no real responsibilities). I was working on my part in a high school play "Of Moss and Men" it was a kinda lame who-done-it/ murder mystery/comedy where I was the star of the show with, no joke, zero lines. My charicter was a def/mute butler so I never talked but was on stage for most of the play and got to do some fun physical comedy.

5 Things on my "To-Do" list today...(I'll do tomorrow since today is over) 1. ride 2. make it to work on time 3. get home to play with Susie while Kayla runs 4. ride again 5. hang out with Kayla

3 Bad habits I have...1. picking my nose, I know it's grose but sometimes you've gotta do what you've gotta do and it's not my fault it feels good. 2. Not eating enough, it's just never a high priority of mine. 3. Eating too much candy.

Places I have lived...Parma ID-Rexburg ID-Provo UT-Albi France-Toulon FR-Brive FR-Frejus FR-Boise ID-Pocatello ID

Things Most people don't know about me...Doing drama stuff in high school is probably one, I believe evolution is very close to the truth and when I dream about winning the lotery one of the first things I'd buy would be some realy nice watches.

Keep'n on keep'n on

Since the last blog I supose not a ton has happened but here you go anyway.

A few weeks ago I accomplished the monumental feat of watching the Rocky series (I-V anyway) in less than a week, and the real kicker was when I tackled III, IV and V back to back to back. No, I'm not letting on to how much excessive free time I have, just how much time I've been spending in the basement on my bike in front of the TV. For the marathon session I had to pound out a 5-hour ride inside and the pain of that much Rocky actualy made me forget I was even still on my bike. Pocatello hasn't been a pleasent place to train lately. I've made it outside for a grand total of 2 rides this year (the only 2 since September or October of last year) the rest has all been either in my basement or a couple have been in the basement of a local bike shop with a couple other folks.

Do you know that feeling you get when you're walking around the local D.I. and you spot some thing you have to have and you'd be willing to pay ten times the humble asking price if needed? A couple days ago I had that moment when I spotted an old school Power Pad for the NES! And just to prove that miracles do happen I just happend to have an NES at home with a game (Super Team Games) made for the Power Pad! I've now decided I need to find some way to work it into my bike training schedule, and judging by how exausted I got playing it earier this evening it will be great for maxing out my heart rate.

Hmmmm, what else.......... Oh, I got our tax return this week. That was exciting, it would have been realy fun to blow it all on something really cool but in the long run I think I'm better off with having used most of it to zero out my credit cards and pay off some hospital bills from Susie's birth.

Like always Kayla's blog has all the recent happenings with Susie (like here finaly getting a hang of the rolling over thing).

Speeding up to slow down

I had been excited about this weekend all week long. Kayla and I decided to come to Boise and let Susie hang out with her grandparents and I was going to take advantage of the slightly milder Boise winters to go for a nice long bike ride with some of my old teammates to replace the 4 hour rollers ride I had planned. However that all changed when Friday afternooon I realized I was about to blow chunks all over my desk at work and had to go home sick. Kayla still convinced me to make the drive with her and even though I am feeling alot better today I still feel sick and my ride on the old stomping grounds is still out of the question. Oh well, a little rest and some time just hanging out with Susie might do me some good. Kayla is still taking advantiage of the somewhat warmer temps and is out on a long run now in her efforts to get ready for Robie.

My little pudd'n pop

I wonder if Susie just thinks that the outside world is nothing but snow. It snows way too much over here, but on the bright side she sure does look cute in her coats and hats.

What's this dedication stuff and where in the world did it come from?

Towards the end of last year I decided I still wanted to race my bike a bit more before settling down into being a mildly sporting average joe. Also my year off from racing made me realize there was alot more I wanted from the sport which required giving it an honest effort.

Before a couple months ago I had started to believe that 5:00am didn't exist. Or at least in terms of cycling and training. My methods for training in the past involved staying up till 2:00-3:00am either doing homework or wasting time, riding occasionally during the week if I felt like it and cramming as much riding into the weekend as I could muster. But when it came time to lay out a plan for '08 I talked Kayla into being my coach to keep me on track and give me some direction which I've really never had before. We setup a training calender and for my first time ever in cycling I put pen to paper to write out some goals. Nothing spectacular or unreasonable but for sure enough that to accomplish them will push me to my limits this year. Since the start of November I've been waking up at 5:00am just about every weekday to log some miles on the rollers before going to work at 8:00am (in college I don't think I ever rode in the morning even when my classes didn't start until 11:00!).

I've decided to go about this in what I like to think of as the "Rocky IV" method. Apart from the rollers and trainer I've also adopted a routine involving strength training(random heavy objects taped to a bar and in a backpack) and running in the snow (if only I had some wood to split and a pair of Russians following me I'd be set). I don't have any new equipment for the new season (apart from hopefully a new, probably used, wheel set before races start) and for some strange reason I kind of like it that way.

How will this all pan out? Only one way to find out. But considering that on even my best years in the past when January rolled around I always caught myself saying "maybe it's time I start thinking about riding more than once a week", I think this is gonna be a good one.