guitar cat

Killian is attempting to play my guitar, but lacking opposable thumbs and without much musical aptitude, he just gnaws on the tuning keys, guitar string and sticks his paws into the soundhole of the guitar.

MS150

I finished the MS150 for the second time! It was even better this time because I got to ride it with Kristin! The NICycling team left NI on two coach buses around 3pm on Friday to drive down to Houston. We stayed at a hotel about a mile from the start line. Saturday morning the alarm went off at 5:15am and we ate breakfast, got changed, checked out and loaded our non-cycling stuff into the truck that would meet us at the half way point in La Grange. At 7am our team left right from the hotel parking lot, which was great because we were able to avoid the huge mass start (did I mention 13,000 cyclists do this ride?). The weather was great and we had a nice tail wind most of Saturday. We stopped at the breakpoint at mile 25 for refueling and then for lunch at mile 50. After lunch we stopped 2 more times and got to La Grange around 3:30pm.


Alan, me, Kristin and Cory at the finish of Day 1 in La Grange


Here are the showers on Day 1 there are semi trailers!


NI Tent

Our team had our own tent, food, port-a-johns... which was great. After some showering, eating, a massage from Russ and relaxing it was time to get ready for bed. We were up the next morning around 4:15am, threw our bicycles over the fence to hold our place in the start line, and got in the pancake line. The start was packed, we're lucky to have such a great tent spot because it puts us in the front of the line. I've heard if you're in the back it can take up to 2hrs it get out of La Grange!

We pushed off around 7am, I had some trouble clipping into my pedals, all the mud from the day before was clogging them up. After I cleared out my cleats I had to walk around at the breakpoints and lunch in my socks so I wouldn't re-clog them up. It wasn't that bad walking around in socks, but I would have preferred shoes in the port-a-johns... We took the challenge route and went through Bastrop State Park which is beautiful, but has some challenging hills. We stopped twice before lunch, at lunch and twice after lunch and got into Austin around 2:30pm.

It was wonderful experience. I love riding through the little towns and seeing everyone out in the streets cheering. And all the people with MS who came out and thanked every rider who came by, brought tears to our eyes. And riding it with Kristin was great, it was a lot more fun having someone there to ride, train and celebrate with. :-)


Russ and I at the finish line

New Bike

I got a Breezer I7 folding bike from work last week. It had been in the upstairs warehouse for over 4 years and couldn't be sold as new, so I bought it. It's sweet. I need to true the wheels and adjust the brakes, some slight cleaning up. I ride it to the mailboxes each afternoon and at some point to work. It's somewhat of a novelty, but acutually a pretty cool bike.

Up to 40mph Wind Gusts

That was the wind advisory on Saturday morning. And the temperature was 52 at 8am. But we were still optimistic about our 55mph bike ride we had planned. Kristin, Russ and I rode out in long sleeves and shorts, with our summer gloves (which are for padding your hands not keeping them warm). The first 12 miles were pretty miserable, directly into the wind, some of the gusts almost blew us over! We averaged about 10mph on those first 12 miles, and it was hard to keep that pace! Around mile 15 we got to a low water crossing that we weren't able to cross, the water was too deep (over a foot) and too cold! So we turned around and tried to improvise a route. Our new route took us on a little exploring and we ended up getting chased by a couple dogs who turned out to be friendly. Which was really good since they ended up cornering us in a dead end. We ended up only doing 38 miles, but it was hard 38 miles!

After our cold, windy ride we headed up to the NI company picnic with Kristin & Phil. We had a nice time, there was beer, bbq, bands... and lots of babies :-)


Russ is holding Anita and Scot's 4 month old boy Grant!

Jury Duty

At 1:30 this afternoon I reported to the Travis County Courthouse for my first jury duty. Actually it was just jury selection and as it turns out the prosecutor and defendant signed a plea bargain while us jurors were waiting outside the court room. So no jury duty for me, which is a good thing, there's just too much going on right now. But a part of me was excited to see a real trial and be a part of the legal system.

Yard work in April

Still a work in progress, but the lawn and yard are coming along pretty well. The little live oak tree survived the ice storm and we have plans to plant a red oak in the yard as well. Some of the plants didn't survive winter (we didn't plant them, the previous owners did). We'll plant more and make the yard look really good hopefully by late April, May.

Aren't they cute?

I know have a million pictures of Killian and Max but yesterday when they were sunbathing in the front window they looked so cute and I couldn't help but take a couple more :-)