The Tired Life

So I spent last week in Austin, TX for my work's annual sales rally. It's not so much a sales rally as it is an excuse to go drinking on the company dime, perks of working for a privately held company I guess. Ended up flying down on Monday which was great because the airport was empty but it sucked giving up a holiday to travel for work. I looked forward to this week in a way because I knew I could catch up on some sleep, granted I didn't go out at night and my roommate didn't snore, yeah we had to share rooms, kinda weird.

Monday night was good, worked out at the hotel gym and didn't try to find anyone else who had flown in early so I had no hit the sack early. Tuesday we didn't start until the afternoon so I found a Gold's gym a couple blocks from the Omni and got myself a 3 day pass, motivation to make an attempt at staying in shape while eating crappy food and drinking all week. I managed to go twice, not bad but I still felt like ass when I got home and on Sunday's ride my legs were flatter than a twenty year old gymnast.

The highlight of the week was Wednesday's outing to a bar in the Warehouse District called Cedar St. to see The Spazmatics. If you're ever in Austin on a Thursday night and want to flash back to one of those middle school dances, go see these guys. They cover all of the classic '80's songs like Devos' Whip It, The Buggle's Video Killed the Radio Star and Soft Cell's Tainted Love as well as other 80's bands like The Cure, Morrissey, and The Pixies. I didn't go out, but apparently the following night's band was another 80's cover band but more hair bands like Warrant and Guns 'n Roses, really upset I missed that one.

Last night I went to the Wizards game with some co-workers and one of our vendors. We started out at Fado's in Chinatown for drinks, Guiness was flowing too freely and I'm a bit sore in the head today. I'm not a big NBA fan, they need to clean up their contradicting thug-life, overpaid big f'ing crybaby, whinner act before they're worth my money. It was actually a good game though, a buzzer beating, game tying 3 pointer by Toronto to send the game into OT. The Wizards pulled it out for the W. Afterwards we caught up with some more people back at Fado's before finally heading home.

Today my new toy came.
I've been trying to pull the trigger on one of these for a while now and they just keep going above my pay grade but thanks to a down trodden economy, I was able to get one relatively cheap. Now I just need to sell the Power Tap to help smooth the rather large dent in my wallet.

The Front What?

Is this real? I felt like I was watching a Monty Python skit based on an Abbott and Costello routine.

Gone in 6 Seconds

What Day is it Again? The Big Update

The past 4 weeks have been a blur, I barely know what day it is at any given time let alone that it's a new year. It's already the 8th? How long until 'cross season starts? The past few weeks have been nothing but enjoying having Maddy in our lives. Although at time it's not the easiest thing, but like everyone with kids has told me, it is a very rewarding experience. She's starting to smile and can almost roll over on her own. She gets half way then stalls on her side.
I'm finally "officially" back to work but that hasn't really changed much around here. Gina has been awesome with letting me go out and ride. For a while there I was afraid to leave the house or just felt guilty doing so. She told me she knows I'll go crazy if I don't ride and that if I'm cooped up in the house all crazy that will drive her crazy so I might as well go ride. Works for me.

Sunday the Elite/Masters 30+ and 40+ teams headed out to Frederick for a long day of hammering up and down the mountains. 7,600ft of climbing in 66 miles was the plan, but as all with all plans it started out great and then somewhere it went to shit. I knew something was going to go wrong when my front wheel rolled off the roof of the car at 80mph on the highway. I happened to look up just as it was hitting the pavement and watched it bounce then roll off the road into the median. Fortunately there were no cars behind me to finish it off. A bit of a hop and slightly out of true but otherwise ok so no having to turn around and go get another wheel.

As for the ride, I was the only person with local knowledge of the roads and the route and only two of the other ten guys thought it wise to bring the cue sheet. That's a recipe for disaster on a long ride. Needless to say the ride broke up into several groups on the first long climb and the group was never together again. A new teammate Chip missed the turn chasing the lead group, ended up in Thurmont and had to have his wife come bail him out. My buddy Jeff and I gathered up the remainder of the 40+ guys and set out to hopefully regroup at High Rock, but on the climb though Catoctin Park on a road closed during winter and strewn with debris, Eric sucked a stick through his rear derailleur blowing it into more pieces than I've ever seen and finally wedging the stick into his wheel. 45 minutes of major surgery on his bike, using shift cable as dental floss, we were finally rolling again. The 40+ guys rolled back to just hit some hill repeats around Myersville while Jeff and I set out to finish the ride. A total of 5 hours later we finally rolled back to the parking lot totally spent. Legs are weak, and rightfully sore after that ride.

Today I hit the Morning Ride, Maddy was up at 5:10 so it made getting to Child Time by 6 a piece of cake, even had time to stop at Dunkin' Donuts for coffee and a double chocolate glazed donut, hmmm, chocolate. I finally replaced the bald rear tire and leaky tube on the fixie last night only to be greeted this morning with a flat. Replace a leaky tube with a more leaky tube, that's my luck. Not feeling like changing it as it would ruin my coffee and donut plan, I pumped it up and waited to see if it would hold, obviously not long enough as I realized at the end of the ride the tire was half flat, probably for most of the ride and just before bombing a big downhill which requires some skid stopping. 10 minutes later when I rolled into the garage I was at 30psi, just in time!

Working from home has it's perks, we took advantage of the nice weather (mommy what's a polar bear?) and grabbed some lunch to go at the Hollow Bean in Ellicott City and took Maddy for her first stroll through Patapsco park. We hung out on the foot path and ate while she bathed in the sunlight then proceeded down to the swinging bridge.

enjoying the warm sunlight....

Getting a free ride...

contemplating how to keep us up at night.