Happy Birthday Haley!

Today we celebrated Haley's first b-day. Thanks to all the friends and family that made her day tons of fun. Haley's pap-pap made a huge Elmo cake, which was awesome, and we picked up some Elmo cookies at the PA Bakery. Good stuff.

Factor in the gifts from a couple days ago and I think we're in good shape for a few years. Whoever came up with this Elmo thing is a genius. And rich. Thanks again to everyone who came and helped us celebrate. We couldn't have made it through this first year without all the support we get from you. Hebe gets special mention for the handwritten card. Very nice, thanks.

Now we'll see if TLW will sleep tonight with all that sugar she ate today.

Peppers

The strawberry wins. Funny, that happens to be one of my least favorite fruits. I don't have a problem eating them as part of a cake or a muffin or something like that, but all by it's lonesome, the strawberry is low on my list. Time for the veggies. This time vote for multiple choices. One footnote in the fruit voting, I forgot The Tomato. Despite it's confusion as a veggie, I don't feel good about adding it to the list. Sorry.

I haven't touched a bike since last Thursday. I feel fatness and lethargy setting in. So far, I don't seem to mind a bit. Although the weather could cooperate a tad and stop being so nice out.

One more week of winter vacation to go. I've been trying to catch up on making DVD's of little Haley's first year. We've taken over 3000 pictures in the past year of which I'm guessing 90% were of TLW. I also have over 5hrs of video to navigate. Fun to look back. It's only been a year but the first one is the busiest for little babies. I would say her walking to crawling ratio is up to approx 40/60 split. She can walk fine but sees crawling as a faster more stable mode of travel still. We'll get there. Then the fun really starts.

Orange you glad I......haven't I heard this before

I think I wrapped up all the gifting loose ends today. Actually, The Legend is still on my gift list. Yo, Hebe, any needs or wants?

Auntie Em and I braved the Crapitol City Mall this afternoon. As full as the parking lot seemed outside, it wasn’t all that bad inside. We breezed through our visit unscathed. Fun times.

Coakley’s wings last night. The best. A pretzel ham & cheese sammy too. Very tastey.

This is my way of breaking the news to The Wifey that there is yet another new bike in the garage. See, I don’t keep my bike stuff a secret. Actually, this is addition by subtraction. I bought a LeMond Zurich frameset but I’m selling my Salsa ‘crosser. I absolutely loved that frame, but, I figured I try to pass it on to the highest bidder while it still might have some value. As opposed trashing it making it my winter roadie/commuter sled. I’d much rather trash a perfectly nice, 2.1lb full carbon LeMond frame. BTW, first impressions of the LeMond; awesome! Very stiff and rigid. Moreso than my Madone. I wouldn’t say uncomfortably stiff but if I were 15lbs heavier that’s exactly what I’d be saying.

Catching up with old high school friends tonight. Our first chance to meet little Katie H. Then it’s a wonderful xmas breakfast Saturday morning. A wonderful xmas turkey Sunday evening. A wonderful xmas ham Monday afternoon. Somewhere in there I’m going to have to fit in a wonderful xmas beer or three. The fridge as it sits right now bears some Guinnesses (guinness’?, guinni’s?, what the hell is the plural of Guinness anyway?), Spaten, Franziskaner, Yuengling. I think we need to get busy.

I need a nap after that trip to the mall. It always takes all my energy. Only three days left to vote for your favorite fruit. How on earth is my favorite fruit, The Orange, in a tie with someone elses favorite fruit, The Kumquat? Who among us has ever eaten a kumquat? Who even knew a kumquat was a fruit. Kinda like a titmouse isn’t even a tit, or a mouse.

nor'shitter (a pictorial)

Which of these pics doesn't belong. TLW learning to sew.

ketchup

Sorry for the delay. I’m sure you, my loyal readers, have been beside yourself wondering what’s going on. My apologies.

‘Cross is done for the season. I almost made the Triple C my last event but something was tugging at me to do one more race. I finished up with the final event in the PA CX Series at Wonderland in Lancaster, which doubled as the PA States race as well. I had no real aspirations to crush the competition as I’ve raced the Elite Masters category in the PA Series this season. It was a good learning experience racing the old guys. I have a tremendous amount of respect for these fellas and I hope I at least showed I belong. For the most part these guys have been doing cx longer than any and really have it dialed. At any rate, Wonderland was another serious slop-fest. Lots of running. Refer back to Lehigh/T-town for my thoughts on running. This time was different though. I was doing this race purely and solely because I love ‘cross. I was happy to finish the season healthy and wiser than when I started.

Thoughts on this season. It IS possible to race solidly without ever actually “training”. I rode a fair amount. I made my rides hard when it felt good to go hard. I never felt burned out. I figured out my CyclingPeaks software a little better and used my PowerTap to my advantage. I never rode two hours when I only felt like one and a half. Somehow, it worked out ok.

Also, by not putting expectations on myself to finish top 10 or top 15 or whatever, I took further pressure off myself and just went out and raced as hard as I could and lived with the results, good or bad. Sure, there were times I felt great about things and times I wished I did better. But, as a whole, I’m happy.

Thoughts on next season. Probably take the same approach. I will make every attempt to work on my glaring weakness. I can’t run. I loathe the run. One-third(2) of the races I did involved a serious amount of running. At Lehigh, 4th thru 8th(me) was separated by 1:20. I couldn’t run to save my skin that day. Perhaps a little running in advance of cx season will aid my cause.

I’d like to race a larger number of events next season. I’m still feeling my way in this race scene. It’s crazy to see some of these guys racing from April thru December. I find it hard to focus on 10 weeks. It was awesome to have The Wifey and TLW attend a few of my races. It’s not easy packing up a 10month old and hanging out in a field for 2-3hrs while I do my thing. That should get easier as time goes on.

Enough about that.

Little Haley is doing amazingly well. I declared she was officially walking on Thanksgiving Day and she thanked me by refusing to work on her craft again until a few days ago. She seems to have found her bravery again and is steaming ahead full gas on walking skills. 13 days until Haley officially leaves infancy and hits toddler-ness. One year old. That will be fun.

She has taken a real affection for eating oranges with her dad. I love oranges. When I sit down to eat an orange, it’s not just one orange. Two or three is the norm although years ago I remember eating 6,7, sometimes 8 oranges in a sitting. Love ‘em. Haley will practically crawl up my legs to get a chunk of citrus. She clamors for as much as I’ll give her. Earlier this week she was suffering from a cold so all the vitamin C was doing her some good.

Two more days of work and I’m done for ’07. that will be nice. No plans. Maybe a little shopping. Hang with my two wonderful ladies. I will visit a fast food joint for the first and only time this year. Probably Wendy’s and probably that double patty jalapeno cheddar artery clogger thing. Watch some good xmas movies. Ride a bike or two. No doubt shovel some white shat that’s fallen from the sky.

That’s all.

Ooooooh fffuuuudge.................

Go ahead and guess what explitive I just fired out as this was unfolding? Dummy. Thank you Dennis Smith for being in the right place at the right time.

Lemme tell ya

Hebe ‘Cross has come and gone just like that. As usual I have mixed emotions. After not racing for a month I was expecting the customary shock to the system. We raced 5 laps and I didn’t feel good until 2 to go. My legs came in just around the time Tom McDaniel caught me and some other dude. I was stoked to have McD with me because he’s a big dude with loads of horsepower to shelter and tow me on the flats. Shame is the other dude stacked the barriers and ate shit right in front of me with 1.5 to go. What disappointed me was I wasn’t riding in his line. I was ready to attack him over the barriers on the left but when he lost his footing he clogged the entire left side. I T-boned him good twisting my stem/bars in the process. By the time I straightened my sled and got going again McD was 10 seconds up the road. See-ya. To make matters even testier, I never totally straightened my stem so for the final lap and a half my bars were a tad to the right. I was happy to hold off Moats. He’s been right on my tail at a few races this season but hasn’t quite caught me yet. In the end I finished 15th. Good MAC points. Without the incident I probably would have lost a sprint with McD for 13th. Although 12th was only a couple seconds ahead of him so who knows how it would have worked out if we could have worked together somehow.

What bugs me is when dumb stuff like that happens beyond my control. If I had screwed up on my own would have been easier to swallow. The course was an absolute blast. Very fast and in true Hebe form it was super flowy. You could pedal through just about everything. Fun times. Brewer won the sprint for the win. Good for him. He’s a nice guy and real friendly. On the plus side from my view is although I finished 15th, I was only 2 minutes behind the winning group. For such a fast race I can take satisfaction in that. At Wissy I was 1:40 back and that was all the way back in October when my level of fitness was a tad better. Mike had a nice finish in his race, 4th.

I wanted to stay for the Elite races but due to the impending crap weather for Sunday The Wifey and I decided to get our tree today which didn’t give us much time to work with. Last year when we snagged our tree TLW was still about a month away. This year we got to take her along and let her be part of the choosing process. I think she picked out a nice tree for her first Xmas. Now that it’s officially December I will no longer allow myself to be grumpy about all the holiday talk/music/ads/bullcrappery. With Thanksgiving being a little early this year, quite frankly, November 24th is just silly to be seeing A Christmas Story on TV. And yet, there it was. Silly.

Look at those teeth!

Haley choose her tree

The Wifey agrees