Saturday....again

Jonnene and I with my Grandma!

Jonnene has to work this weekend so it's up to me to have all the fun. Highlight of the day was having lunch with my grandmother at a Chinese buffet restaurant she likes so that we could celebrate her birthday (which was Thursday). We had a card for her and I think I can say that she enjoyed seeing us. Mom and Jim were there as well and it looks like we all pretty well stuffed ourselves! Jonnene's work day ended very early so she could join us.

Earlier I had gone riding with Mack's group into the country north of town. Mack's rides are these little informal affairs that usually have anywhere from 6 to 10 people show up (although he's had up to 25 before) and we roughly follow whatever route he's come up with. His Saturday rides are the harder ones with a lot of distance thrown in, followed by his Sunday rides that are very easy paced but last 3-4 hours. Some of the hard-core racers will sometimes show up for the good company and the relaxed pace. I guess it reminds them of why it's fun to ride a bike. So, anyway, we rode this morning in good temps and virtually no wind, and there were only seven of us including a guy who was in town from New Orleans. Warren and I had to turn back early...he had to go to work and I had the lunch with my grandma, so we got in a bit over 50 miles. The rest of the group most likely did 60-70 when it was all said and done. My legs are really sore and achy right now so I don't know if I'll get out to ride Sunday or not. All my time trial training over the last two months consisted of shorter rides so going fifty was a stretch. But I had fun so it's all good.

I guarantee I'll sleep very soundly tonight......

The Office

Here's the improved layout of my working space. I'm going to try to keep it neater from now on and keep all the paper that's more than 6 months old filed away or thrown out!

And my new graphics and internet tool: the MacBook Pro 13! It's shown with some extras, the wireless mouse and the extra keyboard. The keyboard is for here at home and will be left here if I take the laptop with me anywhere. The mouse will go with the computer on trips 'cause I don't always want to use the track pad to make the cursor dance around. Can't wait to start using it on a regular basis....only need to get some software loaded and get the wireless internet access set up.

This is really cool...the keyboard lights up in low light!

I got in my second run this week, just an easy 2-miler at barely a 8:30 pace. The legs feel it but I'm not surprised at all. Tomorrow is a long bike ride then home again to treat Grandma to lunch for her birthday. We're taking her to a Chinese buffet-style restaurant she likes.

It's Thursday

Today is my grandmother's 97th birthday! You go, Grandma! Looking forward to your 98th...might as well see 2010, right?

My MacBook Pro came in yesterday and it is AWESOME!! I spent the day getting my work area reorganized to make it easier to work in and make it just a little neater. Today I got the MacBook set up to use the wireless mouse I got along with the separate keyboard for desk work. It has its own cooling stand with a little fan that blows against the bottom of it. I even have a cover over it to keep the dust off, at least for now. It looks so nice. Now I have to get some graphics software added, learn all the little tricks (the tracking pad can do a lot of things according to the manual), and get it hooked up to the internet. I'll still use the G4 for a while, maybe a long while, and eventually donate it or find another use for it. Later I'll post pictures of the little fella and the new work area.

Tonight's ride went much better than Tuesday's. On Tuesday my legs weren't up to snuff, still feeling the efforts from Sunday's time trial. Our team started out and soon Stan rode up alongside, telling me how I kicked butt at the ride on Thursday the week before (and I did pretty good that evening). I told him, thanks, but I didn't think that was going to happen tonight...and it didn't. About four miles in, while cruising at 28 mph, my legs were hurting and I pulled out of the pack and eeked it down to the crossroads with Elka at a much slower pace. Then I turned around to go back to the parking lot and home. Only put in 12 miles but I've done this enough to know that if it's not working then don't push it. It wasn't working....

But tonight I did way better, pretty much normal, real fast but staying with the pack. There was a crash when one of the triathletes touched wheels with another rider and hit the pavement pretty hard. The lucky thing was that a car had just passed us a couple of seconds earlier right where Seth hit the deck. If we had been going just a smidgen faster he could have landed in the path of that car! He got up, dusted himself off, and we headed back down the road. He's going to be quite sore tomorrow but, hey, at least his bike's okay!

In between these two days I did my first run since July 4th at FireCracker. I rejoined the weekly Wednesday morning run with Matt, Jeff, and Mike, and doesn't it make sense that my first run in seven weeks should go for four-and-a-half miles? Thank goodness these guys go at an easy pace but an easy pace also pounds your joints more, and I felt those joints getting out of bed this morning! My run tomorrow will be a lot shorter and a lot faster. I'm going to be working to get back in shape for one or two duathlons late this fall.

Dreams and Time Trials

Saturday night I had a dream about Farley. Every few months I have what I call a super-realistic "hi-definition" dream...one that is so real and so defined that it becomes as good as a memory of a real event. The thing is that I know it's a dream when it's happening and I allow myself to let it go on. I know what it feels like to lift up off the ground and fly. I remember the last time I saw my first cat, Toulouse, about 6 years after I really last saw him in 2001. I can describe details, conversations, and what I saw as if it really happened. It's weird but it doesn't happen often. Well, anyway, I saw Farley and we were in the kitchen of my other house in Bossier City. I could see the cabinets, the brown floor, and the table. It was night so the lights were on. Farley was walking around the floor, wagging his tail, and he looked like he had just had a bath. His fur was shiny and clean, and it felt good to pet him and run my hands thru his coat. He was walking around like he always did in the last years of his life but you could tell there was no burden in his gait. He was sauntering because he wanted to. He was happy. Early on I noticed that he didn't have his red collar on and I commented to him that, oh, yeah, your collar's at the other house hanging up in the laundry room with the green leash. But this dream only lasted a couple of minutes in dream-time, not as long as my usual "real" dreams last. But I got to see him again and I woke up in the dark with tears in my eyes. I still and will always miss him.

Anyway, we were in LaPlace, Louisiana...just a few miles west of New Orleans for the LA/MISS Time Trial Championships. Jonnene and I were participating. It was my last chance this year to either break an hour or set a personal best for the 40 kilometer distance. I could tell that I wasn't really sure I could do it. I was starting to feel the wear and tear of riding a bike all year and wondering if I was at the brink of burn-out. But I was still interested in doing this race so maybe....

Jonnene had a good ride, finishing second in the Women's Cat. 4's and getting a medal. She averaged 21 mph for the whole distance and getting a 1:10:56 time which was only 24 seconds slower than her best time in Texas just two weeks ago.

The problem this day was a 5-10 mph wind coming out of the NNE and the outbound part of the course just happened to go north and slowly curve to the northeast. Now this means a nice tailwind on the way back but you can only take advantage of that if you haven't worn yourself out on the way to the turn-around fighting that wind. So I started off after an inadequate 25-minute warmup. I wasn't 300 meters down the road when I saw Jonnene coming back in (she had started 70 minutes before I did) and I gave her a shout to keep it up. Then I got back to trying to go 12.4 miles down the road into the wind as fast as I could. I averaged about 22 mph the whole way and reached the turn-around at the 33:37 mark...way slow for my tastes but I couldn't do anything about it. I was amazed at how many of the guys working the turn knew my name as they shouted it out when I came by them. That was nice! But I was too busy riding my race to really look at them and see who they were.

The tailwind was sweet though. I averaged 26 mph and should have been faster but I was tired. I finished the second half in 28:49, my fastest 20K ever. I didn't break an hour but I did come within 25 seconds of my record with a 1:02:26 time (a 23.83 mph average) and a fourth place in the Men's Category 3 group. I was fairly happy with the effort and it actually energizes me for next year. The bike worked well but I'm going to make a few improvements over the winter, mostly in the gearing and maybe the aerobars. We'll see.

So here's some pictures of our race and other stuff. Enjoy.

Jonnene warms up before her start at 8:32 am.

Books are good for many things, especially holding up front wheels when the bike's on a trainer.
The medical books are the best, I hear.

These two dogs spent a lot of time playing and running. We had to make sure that no alligators would jump up and get them! We were also told to watch for gators on the road when we were riding! Doesn't happen often but it could.

Here's Jonnene in the start house getting ready to go be a bike racer.

With only a few more meters to go, I'm trying to go as fast as I can. But I was very tired and crossed the line at only 25 mph.

One of my teammates, Don Young, and I discuss our rides after we finished. Generally we weren't that happy with our efforts but there was some good we could find to apply to next year.

I just thought this was funny

Overview:	Mr. James enjoys the success of his business book that flopped in the states but became a best seller in Japan.

Mr. James: "The original title of this book was 'Jimmy James, Capitalist Lion Tamer' but I see now that it's... 'Jimmy James, Macho Business Donkey Wrestler'... you know what it is... I had the book translated in to Japanese then back in again into English. Macho Business Donkey Wrestler... well there you go... it's got kind of a ring to it don't it? Anyway, I wanted to read from chapter three... which is the story of my first rise to financial prominence... I had a small house of brokerage on Wall Street... many days no business come to my hut... my hut... but Jimmy has fear? A thousand times no. I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey strong bowels were girded with strength like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo... dung. ...Glorious sunset of my heart was fading. Soon the super karate monkey death car would park in my space. But Jimmy has fancy plans... and pants to match. The monkey clown horrible karate round and yummy like cute small baby chick would beat the donkey."

I hear cooler weather's coming

Okay, so I'm in this large pack of riders leaving the village of Frierson, heading toward I-49 about six miles away. We're flying down this bumpy, pock-marked road at about 26-27 mph and I'm reaching for whatever energy stores I can find in this 54-year old body. I looked over at Frenchie and said, "I thought the Thursday night rides were supposed to be easier than Tuesday night!" He just smiled and replies, "What do you mean...this IS easier." He's suffering as much as I am. But we're hanging in and sometimes I find myself at the front...how that happens I'm not sure. The speed was fast the whole ride, even when it was easy or easier. By the time we got to Linwood Road, we had dropped half the group and I started to lose touch with the front group. Considering we started the training ride with about 25 riders, there were only eight left to drop me. Later down Linwood I would catch up to two of them and finish back in with them.

Now I'm going to take it easy until the district time trials down in LaPlace near New Orleans this Sunday. Jonnene and I are signed up and I'm thinking this'll probably be my last bike race for the year. I'm not burned out yet but I'm starting to feel the beginnings of that weariness and not wanting to ride as much as I used to. It usually happens around August for me, partly due to riding all summer in the heat which makes me feel drained a lot and also that real life is busy during this time. I'm close to 4,000 miles which is the most I've ever done to this point of the year. I still plan to do a duathlon or two before the year is out (start running again next week) and would like to do the Louisiana Trails run again in November but we'll see how that goes.

Centenary College begins its fall semester next week and we moved my niece into her dorm Wednesday. That was exciting, mostly watching her (and her mother's) nervousness and anticipation...I was cool as a cucumber and enjoying the whole thing. I saw a couple of my cycling club kids who were helping people unload their cars and talked to them a bit. I have to get the club going again and schedule some rides and club meetings next week. As long as I'm getting paid I guess I should do it, huh? More of the members have gotten bikes over the summer and others remembered to bring theirs so I'm expecting more participation. I know we have folks who'll be doing triathlons in the spring but I also need to grow the road racing side of the club. My goal this year is to get more members out of the regular student body since my current membership consists of guys and gals from the swimming and cross-country teams, and I lose them when their main sports are in season.

Too Long Ago...

I love going thru my old photos, reliving some memories, gawking at the clothes, and sometimes amazed I've lived up to this point with all I've done. I'm going to post some of my old pictures from the 70's and 80's every once in a while just to review the situation that set it and why it was taken. The picture above was taken in the Spring of 1975 of my good friend Paul, at left, and myself when we were both 19 years old. We're standing on the east bank of Bayou Desiard on the campus of then Northeast Louisiana University (now known as the University of Louisiana at Monroe). We're about 100 yards south of the traffic bridge that crosses the bayou, near where the Natatorium swim complex would be built a couple of years later. When this shot was taken, Paul had gotten a new tripod and wanted to try it out. So we set it up with his camera and used the timer to get some pics of us just standing around. Seems to have worked! As you can tell, we were letting our hair grow long as was the style for the guys back then and we're wearing our flared-leg, worn-out jeans. I'm also wearing my first synthetic material (nylon) shirt that looked pretty neat but felt really weird....I was a child of cotton materials. I'm betting this picture was taken on a Sunday when the campus was really quiet and hardly anyone was around (I miss those kind of weekends). Probably the funniest part is seeing how skinny we both were...Paul's not quite that thin anymore and I'm struggling to stay as slender as I am!

New Toy...well, not yet

THE OLD: Apple MacIntosh G4 - meant to be good at home or the office.

I'm getting a new computer soon. It's time. I've had my Apple Quicksilver G4 since 2002 and it's long in the tooth by computer technology standards. I've replaced the hard drive, got it a DVD-CD player/recorder, and maxed out its RAM during the time I've had it and it's done a wonderful job. In fact, I can still keep using it for at least a couple more years if it doesn't suddenly die on me. I can still do graphics work and design on it. I can still surf the internet. It's only the third computer I've owned since 1994....I'm good at making them last a long time. But most of the new software being written now is beyond the operating system of my trusty G4 (not that I get much new software anyway...I can make what I have last a long time, too).

THE NEW: 2009 Apple MacBook Pro 13 - small and powerful, take it anywhere.

So this is what I'm looking at...the Apple MacBook Pro with the 13" screen. I asked a friend who's well versed in all things Apple and Mac, told him I wanted to get a laptop this time that had the power to enable me to still do what I do with the G4 and then some. He was quick to recommend the MacBook Pro...very quick. He said it's an awesome machine for 2009, told me what setup and memory to get. Why the small one? I can hook up my larger flat-screen monitor to it at my desk along with a separate keyboard and mouse, and can even use both monitors. Then the smaller size makes it easier to carry around when I travel. He thought that would take care of what I needed both at home and on the road.

I'll order it before the end of this month to take advantage of a $100 rebate. I'm kinda excited about it but I temper that by realizing that there'll be a period of time where I have to get it set up, tied in to the internet here at home, get some graphics software, and other things to make it run the way I want...should take a couple of months before I'm satisfied with it. In the meantime I'm already getting some of the components I need: a separate keyboard (it is THIN!) and the adaptor so I can hook up my current monitor to the MacBook. Still need to get a wireless mouse (which I use when I travel...I hate using those trackpads that are built in). Should be nice.....

Here's a fun music video

"Daylight" by Matt & Kim.

It's the background song for that Barcardi commercial which shows the guy going back through time to get his mojito drink.

chorus
and in the daylight we can hitchhike to maine
i hope that someday i’ll see without these frames
and in the daylight i don’t pick up my phone
cause in the daylight anywhere feels like home

Getting Back in da Groove

Oh, I know. I haven't posted anything for a while. I'll try to be better! This is a start....

Here's me crossing the finish line after 24.8 miles of hurtin'...did a not-so-great 1:04:28 but had to deal with a headwind on the return. Works out to a 23.1 mph average but I wasn't real pleased.

Last weekend, Jonnene and I went down to Castroville, Texas (about 30-something miles west of San Antonio) to do the Texas State Time Trial Championships. It was essentially a workout for both of us to prepare for the Louisiana/Mississippi TT's in two weeks. Being from Louisiana, we weren't eligible for any awards but we got a good workout. Jonnene improved on her time from the Arkansas time trials (see below) and is improving her time trialing even better than she probably thought she would. Her 1:10:30 got her 12th in the 25-deep Category 4 women's grouping. My race didn't start well before it even started: I blew out a tire on my disc wheel during my warmup and had to use a spare rear wheel I had brought with me. I always bring spare wheels when I go to races out of town. Of course, the spare wheel was not a disc so I'd lose some aero advantage out there on the course. I started fast with the tailwind but when I got about 3 miles into the ride I looked down and saw my front wheel skewer was loose! Had to pull over and tighten it, all within 10 seconds. Then I took off again, catching my 30-second man within the next mile. I would catch and pass five other riders and be caught by three who had started behind me. After a very smooth turn-around it was a battle against the headwind and the last four miles pretty much killed what had been a pretty good average speed (I was at 24.7 mph at the turn-around).

The rest of the weekend we spent in San Antonio, touring the Alamo and the RiverWalk. We did the good touristy thing and just walked about the area. I'm interested in the history there and it's always strange to know you're walking on an old battleground that now has a shopping mall on it!

Photos from the Arkansas State Time Trial Championships

(Above) After my ride....a 1:03:20 for a 23.5 mph average and I got a good idea where my fitness level was. The course was flat with a few bumps in it but I was pretty much happy with my effort. Photo by Paul Stillings

Jonnene rolling in after doing her very first 40 kilometer time trial. I wanted her to finish under 75 minutes and she did, with a 1:11:55 run. I was proud of her! Photo by Paul Stillings

One of my best buddies, Paul, came out to take photos of our race and we all went out to eat lunch later. I think we're trying to gang-sign here but it's not working out too well. I guess we're too white? Photo not by Paul Stillings