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.

Light'n up the blog scene!

I've noticed that the cool thing to do these days seems to be having a blog. So here it is.

Kayla beat me to it and is having a grand time on her's posting tons of pics of Susie. I'm sure there's gonna be plenty more to come since I have a hunch Santa is bringing us a new digital camera for Christmas this year.


I think I kind of just up and disappeared from most of the people I knew and hung out with in Boise about a year ago, so I guess that's where I need to catch people up from. I graduated from BSU with my B.S. in mechanical engineering in December of '06 and by mid January I found a job, so I had about 2 weeks to find a new place over here and get moved. The job actually found me, I had forgotten I posted a resume on Monster.com and this place called me up one day. The company makes big power transformers about the size of small houses. I'm a mechanical engineer for them working along side a couple other mechaincals and a bunch of electricals.

When Kayla and I moved we already knew she was pregnant but weren't really telling anyone yet. So a little less than 9 months after we moved we had Susie Belle. She is named after my Grandma on my dad's side. We both wanted an older style of name and I also liked having a good excuse to put some french in there too. The delivery ended up good but for sure had it's scary moments when we had to opt for a very unplanned c-section part way through because of baby heart rate problems. But Susie is here now and is for sure the cutest baby ever, she's huge too (before 3 mo. she was already too big for most of her 6 mo. outfits) which makes it funny to see Kayla and I lugging her around with how small we both are.

At the start of the year I tried to continue bike racing but nothing was clicking. The move messed up my early season hours big time and I never was able to attain any kind of respectable form. I spent the first part of the year in denial, still trying to be competitive but that can be summed up with my result from the Lava Rama MTB race I just now looked up for the first time. I toed the line with the pro field thinking I could do well just by virtue of being cool.... not only did I come in dead last at about 40 min. behind the winner, there were only about 3-4 expert class riders that didn't catch up and pass me. Shortly after that I threw in the towel for the year figuring a break would do me some good and spending more time with Kayla while she was having a hard time being pregers helped too. It was for sure hard to sit out the season, I missed Twilight and Bogus for the first time since I got back from France and started racing. The night of Twilight I was in Park City UT for a family reunion and got butterflies just knowing that it was going on back in Boise.