Window Pics

We're halfway done! The two innermost windows have been replaced but the two outermost windows won't be worked on until the weather improves...or until Monday at the earliest.

Paul and Damon work on the first window. Paul is in his mid-seventies and has been working construction since he was 14 years old! His dad was in the construction business.

As seen from inside the living room...what do you think of our improved ventilation system? Maybe we'll just install another door?

The contrast: The window on the left is original to the house with 12 over 12 panes. On the right is the new window with 6 over 6 panes (or "lights"). The new windows are vinyl, double-paned, and energy-efficient. Plus they open up much easier than the old ones which were pretty much painted shut! We could have gone 12/12 again but fewer panes are easier to look through and is more in keeping with modern construction. We kept it at 6/6 instead of a 4/4 to keep some semblance of the old windows' colonial style.

Staying Home

I sorta hate it when I have to stay home because we have construction guys or plumbing guys or electrical guys or anybody else in the home-fix-it world drop over to fix something. Well, I stay home anyway...I work here...but I lose my freedom to run out real quick to take care of business or run an errand. I have to stick around while things are being worked on.

Now if it's interesting then I don't mind so much. We got the first of the four front windows installed today and it was a job! We discovered that we didn't have the room inside the walls as we thought we did and had to remove strips of sheetrock and header boards to give us the room we needed. But the window's in! The trim has been added to the outside but still needs chaulking. The inside jam and trim will be added when the other three windows are installed and they'll all get the insides done at the same time.

I'll have pictures tomorrow. Stay tune.

The foot's getting better. I decided to be a slug this week and just not do anything, mainly because I can't...can't run for sure...not sure if I can stuff my foot into a cycling shoe yet. I'm aiming to get back on track this Saturday at the bike club's 30th anniversary ride and I can start to get back into the groove. It's time to put in the miles again. I have over 1,400 miles so far this year but the last two weeks haven't produced much.

With One Good Foot in the Bathtub...

....and my swollen foot out of the tub, here's the latest pic on the guest bath remodeling that I'm in the middle of. The old wallpaper is finally off...or at least as much as I care to continue with and still claim the walls are ready to get "mudded up"...and I removed the old divider that was between the vanity and the toilet/tub area. That was fun...got out the old jig-saw and commenced to cuttin' everything up. Now the room looks a little more open and spacious. We can finally visualize what it's going to look like when we're done. Slap on some paint, nail up that wainscot, and we're talking one classy loo that you'll feel real comfy sitting in. Oh, and in case you're wondering why the place looks so clean...well, it IS. I like to clean up a place every time I finish a major part of the job, so that meant getting the sawdust off the floor (and off of everything else), gathering up the discarded wallpaper remnants, and patching a few holes.

We've got a lot of rain coming down right now and I'm not optimistic that we'll get any of the front windows installed Wednesday. Thursday is looking like a much better day for the installation. We'll see how that goes for us.


Another night of sticking my foot in ice water....the bruising has moved to my other toes now. Gravity will do that. If you've ever had a large bruise, and I mean a BIG one, you've probably noticed how it moves downward on your body over time. It's really weird to see that. Since my feet are about as low as you can go, the bruising is spreading over the foot...real attractive. No running this week but I'll try to get a ride in by Thursday. That shouldn't be a problem, right?

Recovering

Slept well last night but when I took Farley out for his walk my toe really started speaking to me. In fact, it hurt a lot with every other step I took and my ankle began hurting from the contortions it was making as I tried to find a less painful way to walk. Coming back to the house after a half mile of limping around the neighborhood I wasn't feeling too optimistic about the injury I got at yesterday's duathlon.

But that was the worst it would get! As the day wore on the foot got less and less painful and I was almost walking normally. Sure, the toe was still quite colorful and that corner of my foot around the four outer toes was swollen but the pain was minimal. Jonnene had said that it might be a soft tissue injury and I'm beginning to think she may be right. I can deal with that. I really didn't want a broken bone to hash about with. Tonight I finally got around to dunking my foot into a pail of ice water to reduce the swelling. It's something I don't have to do often and I'm glad, because you really have to keep your mind focused on other things during the ten minutes you have a foot in freezing water. I did this twice! Yeah, I soon felt like my foot was on fire but I kept sitting there watching TV and concentrating on the motorcycles being fabricated on "American Chopper". I don't see how most athletes do this on a regular basis...putting body parts in ice water, that is.

I'm down to removing the tough pieces of wallpaper in the guest bathroom and it's a little tedious. Tomorrow I'll cut and remove a louvered divider between the toilet and the vanity. That'll be fun and messy...hope I can get any collateral damage repaired after that! The redo of this bathroom is more cosmetic than structural and I can do 90% or so of all that. But we'll need someone to come in and "slip" the now bare sheet-rock walls so that they'll be ready for paint and protected from the moist air when anyone takes a hot shower in there. Then I'll add some wainscot paneling along the lower part of the walls and a chair rail above that and it'll look pretty good, I think. A relatively easy and quick room improvement in the house.

We should be getting our front windows replaced starting Wednesday but the week is looking like rain will be a factor with Wednesday being the best day. So we might get the two windows under the porch replaced first and maybe wait for a better day to do the other two that are not under the porch. I like it when things are happening here at the homestead.

I've come up with a unique...well, I hope so...way to finally have a house warming party here in a couple of months. I'm thinking of an Aussie movie festival where we'll show Australian movies at scheduled times and have about 30 minutes between movies to let everyone roam about the house. Maybe start at noon on a Saturday and end around midnight. We'd show movies like The Dish, The Man From Snowy River, Australia, Mad Max, Babe, Ned Kelly, Crocodile Dundee, and whatever else we can find. This could be fun!

Big Weekend

Here it is, Sunday evening and I'm sure I'm going to sleep well tonight. It was an active weekend and I think both of us deserve some extra hours to sleep it all off. The problem for me is that I'm wondering if I have a broken little toe on my left foot or just some torn ligaments or just a deep bruise. I busted it during the duathlon I did down in Opelousas this morning when I was racking my Guru after the bike leg in preparation for my last run of the race. I rolled the bike under the high rack bar to hook it by the seat so I could get my running shoes on. As I came around the wooden rack support I banged the underside of my toe while in my running socks (I had already ditched the bike shoes) but it didn't seem that bad at first...it just hurt like a #*@##%. I pulled the runners on and headed out for that last two miles trying to ignore how much it hurt on every other step. I averaged a 7:05 mile pace, which is about a minute faster than I usually train at, so it was tolerable.

Now I'm home and I'm limping around the house trying to not bump my boo-boo against the wall, a cabinet or any other obstruction and increase the "ow" factor. The bruising has shown up and my toe is purple...yeah, baby! I might try to see if I can ride on it in the morning. I know I can't run on it for a while. If it doesn't improve over the next few days, I'll get it looked at.

Anywho, Jonnene did a bike tour in Tyler, Texas yesterday called Beauty & the Beast (Texas folks call them "rallies") that features a 1/2 mile long hill that goes from a 7% to 13% grade called the BEAST at the 32-mile point of the 64-mile ride. Guess which route Jonnene went on? I did the Beast twice in one day during a road race a couple of years ago and I remember it very well. It's a bear to climb but it is quite doable. She did great, averaged just under 18 mph for the entire ride but she was pretty tired when she got back home at 4 Saturday afternoon. Only two hours later we were on the road to my brother's house in Alexandria to sleep over before going to the duathlon at five Sunday morning.

Great shot from Jonnene of the race start...that's me in the middle.

After 16 miles on the bike, I'm thinking over my second run already.

First, the stats on my race. I got second...again...in my age group but improved from 31st overall last year to 17th overall today! I carved about 1 minute, 48 seconds off my 1:15:25 time last year to a 1:13:36 for this year. The runs were good...if you take out the busted toe part...with a 6:47/mile pace in the first run and that 7:05 the second time. My bike was faster, too, but still not what I wanted. The drive down to the race from my brother's house was in the dark since we left around 5 am but we got to the race site with only a slight misdirection but no harm. Got signed in and parked the Rav right next to the transistion area where I could set up the bike, helmet and shoes where I wanted. It was coolish with some fog rolling in I didn't go with any cold weather gear...wouldn't need it anyway. Generally speaking, everything went pretty well. There were 141 total participants, down from last year by about twenty people but it was still fast and frenetic.

So, Jonnene got to do a bit of traveling....west into Texas and then down to south Louisiana, all in about 32 hours, with a long bike ride and then helping to support me at my race. I do appreciate the support she gave...helped keep my mind a little clearer.

The Man From Snowy River

Nice fast hard ride tonight after a day of spending time working in the yard preceded by an early morning ride. I deserved a nice hot shower after all that!

Jonnene and I had the pleasure tonight of watching the last part of "The Man From Snowy River" on the TMC channel. Filmed in 1982 and is based on the poem by Banjo Paterson, written in 1890. It is one of the best loved and best known story/poems in Australian literature. Paterson also wrote the iconic Waltzing Matilda which could be considered an unofficial national anthem for the country (according to some sources I found).

If you want to hear the poem and see corresponding scenes from the movie, click on this LINK. It's really well done and if you think you see Kirk Douglas...you're right! If you haven't seen the movie, you'll be amazed at the scene known as "The Descent" ...definitely the highlight of the film and the poem.

If you'd like to read the poem, click HERE.

Oh, great, my shoes are wet....

Wow, dig this great picture that Jonnene took of me with about 150 meters to go to the finish this morning! Hit that puddle hard, dude!! Then I ran up to her, stopped, gave her a kiss, and headed for the finish line.

The Mojo Trail Run #2 is long history now and I'm home tending to my sore legs. The Wife is out shopping. I'm sitting at the computer and watching the weather to decide when to do a bike ride on Sunday with the college kids. After having Chinese takeout last night and getting the gear together, we woke up this morning not feeling like we'd had the full eight hours of sleep that we thought we had. Aren't you're supposed to feel refreshed when you've cranked out 480 straight minutes of snooze time? We got up, walked the dogs in misty air that was predicted to be gone by the weather guys last night. And it was around 38-40 degrees with, thankfully, no wind. Tolerable.

After getting our hind quarters into the Rav, we drove down to the Eddie Jones park for the exactly 5.91-mile trail run I had signed up for over a month ago. It was cold and wet at the park, drearily cloudy, and a small group of 39 runners had shown up for the fun and frivolity (about 25 other pre-registrants most likely decided to eat their entry fee and stay home in bed...the SMART ones). After hitting the loo one final time...cold weather makes me pee...a lot....it's not old age, I've always been like that.....I lined up with everyone else and got the pre-race talk: there'll be no aid stations on the course, you can carry some water if you want to, there's red tape marking the correct trail, be careful 'cause mud is slippery, etc. The gun goes off, I can see Jonnene taking pictures off to the left, and I can already feel water from the grass seeping into my trail shoes. Wow, that's cold....

I think I'm the 8th person to enter the trail head at the tree line and we head downhill on a winding trail. I'm behind a girl who looks like she's running pretty strong. I haven't been on a trail since last spring and I took most of the first half-mile getting my trail legs back again. You gotta raise your feet a bit to avoid roots, rocks, holes, and other obstacles. But it's going good and I'm staying on the girl's heels. Everyone ahead of us is pretty much gone...they're fast guys...the winner would end up being about 10 minutes faster than me. Toward the end of the first mile my legs started feeling heavy and I'm thinking "oh great, this might be an ugly run for the next five miles". Two guys passed me and that didn't sit well. But then my legs start feeling good and I got back up to my previous pace. At the end of two miles, I passed the girl and she fades back into the distance. I have one guy close behind me and there's nobody else anywhere close to us in the back. Then he passes me on a logging road which is okay because I'm happy with the pace I'm setting. On these logging roads I'm able to get up to street speed since they're mostly flatter and smoother...sorta.

The two of us catch one of the guys who passed me earlier and we dropped him like a bad habit. He fades into the distance, but the other guy with me is too strong and I have to let him go. I would pretty much keep him in sight the rest of the race but wouldn't be able to catch him. At around three miles in I had made the turn on a long switchback and tried to see who was behind me. NOBODY...and I was looking as far into the woods as I could. I decided to pick it up a notch, trying to put some extra distance between me and those in back, in case I cratered toward the end. That'd give me some extra time to crawl to the finish! But it all went well. I had to straddle, jump, and avoid a lot of muddy areas, puddles....you could see the shoe marks of the runners ahead of me where they slid, sank into mud, or avoided obstacles like I was doing. After going thru an open field and back into a last wooded section, I could hear other runners behind me (but far away) yelling to each other to keep going, don't give up...that kind of thing. I just kept chugging away, surprised at good I was feeling since I haven't been running enough over the last few months to feel this good. Maybe that ibuprofen does work! And the morning oatmeal wasn't bad either.

After kissing Jonnene, which probably cost me 15 seconds, I came across the finish line in 50:36 for a 8:35/mile average...the fastest I've ever averaged on a trail run longer than three miles. That got me third in my 50-59 age group and I think, maybe, seventh overall but I haven't seen all the results yet. I changed out of my wet, muddy gear and put some dry clothes on which made me a happy fella. Got home, took a shower (which made me even happier) and now I'm relaxing.

Hope you're having a good day.

Still Raining...Cold, too

Oh, the excitement is too much around here. Into our third day of some kind of rain and this will probably be our wettest. Saturday will have only a 10% chance of the wet stuff but by then I'll be running on muddy trails in 40-degree temps rugged up just enough to keep from freezing and hoping that my running warms the rest of me up! It ought to be a hoot.

It's early Friday morning. Jonnene's gone to do her pilates at the studio and I'm just goofing off a bit right now. No running or biking in the plans for today if this rain keeps up. I could go to the gym this afternoon and ride a stationary bike but, heck, why don't I just go ahead and hit myself with a bag of rocks over and over? I'll probably do some weights while watching Fox and Friends, then get ready for the day.

BTW, the Obamster has now declared that the financial crisis might not be as bad as originally thought. Gee, that's a relief. After all the predictions of doom and gloom from him the last few weeks we now see a bit of sun through the clouds. I'm pretty sure that all that doomsday talk helped to tank the markets, too. Wall Street had no confidence in the President or Congress, and those who closely followed the shenanigans going on in Washington felt the same way. How can these bunch of clowns spend money like this? There is no perfect financial system but capitalism does the best of all of them at correcting itself and, in this case (as well as in 1927), it is not being given the chance. I'm no financial expert (hey, I'm an art major, y'know?) but even I know that what's been going on up in D.C. is not the right way to handle this. There's going to be pain no matter what but, geez, let's find out what caused all this and correct THAT, or it's going to happen again. I already have my own thoughts on what caused this. Then let those companies who can't survive go...new ones will take their place and be even stronger over time. Don't lend money to those who we know aren't going to pay it back (Congress had a strong hand in that, don't believe anything that says they didn't). And we'll get thru this faster. The worse thing we can do is spend ourselves into a third world nation and saddle the next two generations with debt. When the next recession hits...and it will someday, because everything goes in cycles...we'll still be paying for this one and that'll be the killer.

It's the Rainys

So now we're sorta in the middle of a predicted 4-day rain session, and it's gotten cold again. Wheeeee. The good thing is that all the yellow pine pollen has been washed off my truck...it seemed like the accumulation was getting think enough to measure for thickness and quickly turning the top panels of the old '98 Dakota from its Forest Green to a strange mustard yellow. The picture above shows the old trusty Dodge a couple of years ago when I drove to Los Angeles to pick up Jonnene and then drove her back to Louisiana. Imagine it with lots of yellow dust covering it...now stop imagining that because it's all gone now. But now we've got 80-90% chance of rain thru Friday night and that means muddy trails when I do my trail run on Saturday morning. Justin at Sportspectrum told me he had just measured the course Wednesday morning and it worked out to exactly 5.91 miles. He used one of those rolling wheel distance measuring devices (did I use enough words to describe that?) and ran the whole trail with it. That's more accurate than even GPS can provide in this day and age. Well, that should be lots of fun and means I'll spend part of the weekend cleaning my trail shoes after the fact.

Tuesday evening was the first Tuesday Night Worlds training ride of 2009 and it was wild as the first one usually is. We had a big turnout of Sunrise tri-geeks and LaS'port road racers ready to start the training year right with a very fast ride. When I got there I didn't have enough time to warm up, so Mack and I headed out early expecting the pack to catch us later down the road...and they did. We were going south into a 16-20 mph headwind and as we got absorbed by the pack of 30+ riders I saw the speed ramp up to 27-28 mph. I was able to hang on for a mile before getting spit out the back...my legs were killing me without that warmup! But I kept pushing, eventually caught Chris (or "T-bone" as we call him) and then David, both of whom had taken the past year off from racing and were trying to get back into shape. David dropped off, then Chris and I caught Billy, an RAF officer on exchange with the local USAF air base. Then Chris fell off the back, leaving Billy and I team-time-trialing it to the crossroads. We could see two large groups heading for Frierson to the right from the crossroads and we made the turn, thinking we had no chance to catch back on. Then, we saw Mike riding back towards us and joining us. He's gained a little weight over the years (haven't we all?) but is an incredibly strong rider when he wants to be. The three of us starting chasing and my legs were feeling better, getting into the groove of the effort. Mike made the strong pulls and halfway to Frierson he made the final push to catch the group ahead...I thought I wouldn't make it and also considered throwing up at the time...and we did it. For the next mile we just sat in the back getting our breath back but still cruising at 26 mph into the wind.

We get to Frierson and make the right turn still motoring. Several of the riders in the group fell off at that point and eventually we were down to just seven of us, including Mike, Billy, and myself...the original chasers. Up ahead we saw three dots in the distance, other riders dropped from the lead group (and they were long gone!). So we chased those three for the better part of six miles, pace-lining and taking big pulls. One time I took a long strong pull up a long incline and then pulled over to let the next rider through....nobody came thru. After a sec I took a look back and saw Dave behind me...nobody comes thru...I finally yell out "Somebody help me here!" Dave yells back "I'm waiting for everyone to catch up!" Sure enough, the two of us had gapped the group and then I was more than willing to slow down for them! Back together, we continued the push and were getting closer to the three ahead. Turning south onto Linwood we were probably 500 meters from them and within a mile we had closed that to 200 meters. At that point, Mike made a jump to bridge to them. I waited a second and decided to go with him, the two of us going about 34 mph and I knew the group had to be somewhere behind us but a bit further back since they didn't react as quickly. We caught them, three triathletes on their tri bikes, and all three are strong riders. It was a good chase and a good catch. So we're all together going into two significant hills on Linwood. I am third placed over the first hill but on the bigger second hill my legs finally gave out and I had to let the group go. I limped the remaining five miles to the parking lot like a sick puppy but still had a 21.4 mph average for the day. Just another Worlds ride.

The kits for the Centenary cycling club came in yesterday and they look great! I had to fit a couple of kids to some borrowed bikes I had gotten my hands on last night and they got to see the jerseys. There are also tri-suits and they look pretty darn good, too. Hopefully, we'll have our first real club ride this Sunday and I can try to get these kids ready for the conference races in April. It won't be pretty since none of them have ever raced before but it'll give them a taste of the action and to figure out what to expect for next year.

Wide Open Spaces?

Well, we got the storage units installed today. Check it out!

Above is the pantry, located between the carport and the kitchen. It was a very small space and we wanted to find a way to get the most use out of it. Nearly all the shelves are adjustable. Hopefully, this'll work.

The bedroom closets turned out pretty good-looking. Now we've got to relocate our stuff and find new homes for things. I've got a couple of deep drawers in mine so I think that's where the T-shirts will go! Most of these shelves are adjustable, too. The orange bedcover was to keep any sawdust off the bed.

Note: clicking on the pictures will bring them up larger!

I also got started on the renovation of the guest bathroom. It's really not much...just tearing off and removing the old wallpaper, getting the walls replastered, paint them, and add wainscot siding to the bottom of the walls. That'll make it look much nicer, giving it a sort of Shaker theme. Right now the pain-in-the-booty is getting the wallpaper off. I'm using a chemical gel which will allow me to scrap off the adhesive liner that didn't come off when I peeled the rest of the wallpaper away. Everything else will be easy and quick compared to this!

The weekend was pretty busy in its own way. I rode both days, totalling 110 miles, and the wind was brutal out there, especially on Sunday. Jonnene got 53 miles in on Saturday and rode the hills north of Bossier City, what we call Rocky Mount. It's surprisingly hilly for Louisiana but then we are close to Arkansas and Texas, so we're borrowing on some of their rolling topography as it falls down on us. Next weekend I have the six-mile Mojo Trail Run #2 to do and the weekend following is the Sunrise Duathlon in Opelousas which is the Louisiana State Duathlon Championship. I got second in my age group last year but I'm not so sure I'll do as well this time. I know of at least 2-3 guys who have "aged up" into my group and that'll make it a lot more competitive...maybe they won't show up this year.

Three Bagger

I knew I was going to get a lot done today when I was walking Farley this morning. I had finished my early morning bike ride, got home, changed, and took him out for his walk. It's definitely getting closer to spring as it's getting lighter sooner and by 7:15 am dawn had taken control of the start of the day. So we're walking along and we covered some ground, including a street we'd never done before and by the time we got back home I had three pretty full poop bags in my possession! Since he's 13 years old now...surely getting on there for a Black Lab...I observe his peeing and pooping for signs of his health. If he's doing what he's supposed to do then he in good shape and I'm happy. This is only the third time I can remember Farley producing a three-bagger during a walk, so he got the job done and was lighter on his feet. Maybe that was a sign that I'd get a lot done, too.

I have spent most of today getting things done for the Centenary Cycling Club, especially for the collegiate triathlon national championships happening in Lubbock, Texas this April. Got the hotel rooms reserved and went thru everything regarding registration and seeding of the athletes, plus organizing a weekly ride schedule. This took way more time than I thought it would but at least I'm more aware of what needs to be done the remainder of this month...a lot.

In the meantime, I've spent time renovating our pantry and master bedroom closets to prepare for installation of a new organization system we got from Closets In Order (LINK). That meant tearing out the old shelves and supports, patching the walls, and repainting these areas to look almost brand new. Plus it saved us some money from not having them do it for us. We figured that if we were going to install something that won't be removed while we live here, then let's make the rest of the space nice and complimentary of the new additions.

Here's the front of the house PhotoShopped with 4-over-4 windows on the left side and 6-over-6 windows on the right. We're going with the 6/6 to retain some measure of the original look but with fewer panes.

Our other project is about to get underway...replacing the four windows in the front of our house. These windows are original to the place which means they've been there for over 45 years on the sunward side. You can see the sun damage between the panes...these are 12-over-12 windows and quite large...as well as in the ledges which are nearly at ground level and we think may be leaking a bit when it rains in the front corner bike/bedroom (we only suspect it but definitely think it's an eventuality). Even though we want to renovate the master bath and kitchen soon, we felt this was a project that needed to be done and could be done in a shorter amount of time. Plus we will get up to a $1500 energy rebate on our income taxes for next year so that'll help ease the cost a bit.

I decided not to do the Rouge-Roubaix bike race on Sunday down in St. Francisville (LINK in VeloNews). The last two weekends were full ones, especially with Jonnene having to work last weekend, so we're going to stay home. My legs haven't been feeling too energetic lately either and I don't need to be out in the middle of the Tunica Trace without the get-up-and-go that I'd need out there. If this race was two weeks ago I would have been there in a heartbeat but this weekend is not a good idea and I'm going to listen to my body on this one. With everything going on with the Centenary cycling and stuff, my first race probably won't be until late May. So I might as well ease off a bit and pace the training 'til then. I've got 1,200 miles so far this year so I'm not doing too bad.