It's all kind of blur...

Wow! I can't believe what I've done in the past two weeks.

• stripped wallpaper in the kitchen and prepped walls for paint


• picked out a paint color, finally


• painted kitchen a sagey green


• oiled the kitchen cabinets, instead of replacing the beasts


• cleaned the house. I mean, really cleaned it
  

Then we had a party! Nothing like having 15 people over to inspire a few projects and a thorough cleaning.

We worked our "regular" jobs all day then came home and worked on the kitchen until at least 10. We did that little routine for about 5 or 6 days in a row. That's the way to get shit done, just do it.

Then, the wine party. It was really pretty cool. It sounds kind of snobby and top-drawer, but it ended up being a lot of fun. It seemed a lot less snobby, at least, after I got a few small glasses of wine under my belt.

Now, this week it will be a little crazy too. I had a big presentation this morning, along with the requisite lack of sleep. And I leave at zero am on Thursday to work an apt. assoc. trade show in Nashville. I'm pretty excited about that!

Then back to Cleveland late nite Friday. Whirlwind 3 weeks, huh?

Tucson Rocks

Check out the bit of film about my favorite desert cycling town. Snagged this little gem from my favorite cycling blog www.drunkcyclist.com

DD and I vowed to crush El Tour de Tucson in the next year or so. Yes, we will give it the crushing midwestern style, drinking a six pack while tooling down the last 10 miles on Silverbell.

oaaahhhhhhh yeahhhhhhhhh

I might actually fucking log in

I just finished reading one of my fave blogs: www.arcticglass.blogspot.com

I love reading her blog, am usually inspired to write and then I relax, take a few deep breaths.
And then I don't write.

So today, I will write. At least a little.

My favorite ride so far this year was sometime in early June. It had rained, it was still fairly cloudy and massive thunderheads were threatening to the south. Not heeding any sane advice our coaches had givenin the past, we decided to head out.

The ground was nice and soggy, the trail was still pretty wet. There were tons of puddles on the bike trail and in the road. There were tons of blossoms, seed pods and general treee-type detritous in the path. We were riding our mountain bikes (set up specifically to nearly mimic road bikes, but anyway...)

The park was deserted, no doubt because of the threat of rain and possibly thunder and lightning. No one on foot, no die-hard long distance runners, no recreational bikers with the "baby carriers" attached. Not much of anything or anyone. It was bliss.

We went a few hundred yards and it started to rain. Just a nice, soft, friendly rain. No thunder. No lightning. The mean black clouds also started to roll away....to be replaced by happy, grey rain clouds. You know the kind of rain that rains all day and soaks your yard and vegetable garden with rainy goodness? Yep, it was that kind of rain.

We were like little kids playing in puddles. We were pretty much soaked in about 15 minutes. Within 5 minutes we were covered with mud, road muck and tons of "tree stuff" Our bikes were coated too. No one was around, so were rarely even changed cadence and rarely had to use our brakes. When we did actually brake, we gave good thought to it because most of our braking involved slowly pushing the brake levers so as to "scrub" water from our rims so we could force a stop.

We were out about an hour, I have no idea how many miles we went. We were soaked. We were filthy. We were elated. The point on a day like that seems more about the experience, the fun, the dirt, the water than any average speed record or interval training. It's more like that for me anyway...the Zen of biking, not the quantity.