What the Hell??

I woke up this morning, looked out the window at the sky and it looked cloudy and cold. No problem, it sucks but it's really not a problem. My dogs are jumping at the bit to go outside and when I open the door for them to "do their morning duty", what is this white stuff all over the ground?

It's not much but it's just a reminder that Old Man Winter it waking up and telling me to get my trainer out and set up. There is TON more of this stuff coming before we see green grass again.

Powered By......

A wise man once wrote "Powered by Yoohoo". I began to think and wonder, just what does power me. It's no secret, I'm a Clydesdale (woo hoo). I am definitely no genetically gifted, my brother was given that. I work hard for every second I take off my time. But, I do indulge every now and again. So, the question... Just what does power me? I couldn't decide on just one, there are soooo many. So I decided on a few. The top of the list has to be my beautiful wife and wonderful daughter. They are there all the time and my daugheter has finished a lot of races with me. The list goes on (and on and on) from there.

I'm just an average ole joe who really likes swimming, cycling, and running. Well, maybe not so much running, but I do it anyway. I'm racing this weekend, I'll update on Monday. Have a GREAT weekend.

The Boy has Skills

This totally has nothing to do with triathlon, but I had fun anyway. I was recruited to help out on my family’s land, I thought that I would have a good time so what-the-heck. We were installing a natural snow fence. I thought it was going to be really tough work digging holes in some REALLY rock soil and planting 5ft. pine trees all day long. Well, much to my surprise we had a backhoe when I showed up to work. Seeing this I instantly knew that our work would be cut by 75-80%. I had worked about a 2-3hours when my father in-law asked me to jump into the backhoe and start digging. Well, one small thing…. I have never operated a backhoe, or any other large piece of equipment. No problem, after a 5 minute lesson from the father in-law, I was off to work. I thought I almost broke it at one point, but I eventually got all the holes dug. I have to admit, I had a lot of fun. It’s kind of like when you were a little kid in the sandbox with your Tonka trucks, only a lot bigger. No doubt it was a long hard day of work, but I had fun.

A New Aero Position??

Last week I eluded to a little issue I had over this summer. My dear wife drove into the garage with my road bike on the roof of her Jeep.

Here's kinda how it played out:

My wife calls me at the office and asked if I was interested in getting picked up and taken out to dinner. I thought it sounded like a great idea and threw my bike up on the roof of the Jeep and had a wonderful dinner with my beautiful wife and awesome daughter.

We stopped on the way home to run an errand, no problem. OK? Picture this part, this is where it gets good. As we pull into the driveway, I was in the middle of telling my wife just how much I really love her and how awesome she is, then all of a sudden, BAM, CRUNCH!!!. We stopped and both looked at each other and simultaneously said, "What the hell was that?" Well, I think we both knew what it was and it wasn't pretty. This bike was straddling the doorway still locked into the now mangled roof rack. Speaking of the roof rack, the feet of the luggage rack were pulled through the sheet medal of the roof and ultimately had to be re-welded, grinded smooth and repainted.

To say the least my wife was not happy at all, as a matter of fact she was way more upset than I was. The way I see all of this is: nobody got hurt (this was absolutely the most important) and everything is fixable, well.... except for the bike.

I took the Jeep to the body shop to be repaired and of course I had to explain the entire situation to them ...... again. I thought they were going to laugh, but they didn't too bad. They actually told me of a woman in our small town that has ripped the lift gate off of her mini-van THREE TIMES. So, I don't feel bad. The way I see it is, I have two more chances before they start talking about me.

Everything has been repaired and I still love my wife. I got a new bike and it's pretty sweet too. I am going to part out what I can on my old bike and sell them on ebay. This should be able to feed my bike/triathlon addiction, at least for a little while anyway. All in all, it was a learning experience for all and life goes on.