Goin' Agro at the Ag show

Last week I got to fully immerse myself into the Ag industry at the Pocatello Ag Show. This show is a pretty big deal for my company and we've been crazy busy the last month or so getting ready for it. And of course my first completed machine not only was a huge project, but they also wanted it in the show (so I had to hurry and make it pretty).

All-in-all my machine went together really well with only a couple big hicups along the way that all got sorted out. At the show I had alot of fun spying on the other stuff being done and trying to figure out where I can go from here.

7 Layer Ride

Last week since I've neer been too big on New Years (nothing against it just don't see how it's much of a big deal) I talked my boss into letting me go in and work on New Years day so I could take Friday off without using up vacation time. This worked out great because we were able to go back to Boise Friday morning, hit some night skiing at Bogus, then I got to make it to a LAC team ride Saturday morning before coming back home to AF.

Fortunatly the roads were good and although the conditions on Bogus sucked (super cold/windy/icy) Kayla and I had alot of fun.

The night skiing got me sick of being cold so when I was getting ready for my ride the next morning and temps were in the 20's I decided not to go borderline at all. I hit up IMT for some of those heat packets to stick in my gloves and shoes then dressed with layer after layer until I missed the start of the ride because I was still putting more on. After the ride I counted up my clothing and it was something like this for the top half:

-long sleave under shirt
-BSU jersey
-wool jersey
-Linsays Cyclery jersey
-another wool jersey
-I.C.E. jersey
-long sleave fleece lined jersey/jacket
plus a set of arm warmers in there somewhere

my bottom half was well equiped too which made for a suprisingly plesent ride despite the crazy cold temps. I finished the ride feeling much stronger than expected too (nice bonus considering the troubles I've been having getting into a good training schedule)

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.