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.