LA Trip

We drove up to LA this weekend to spend some time with the family. Grandaddy wasn't doing well, and Raine had an aunt coming in from NC, so the weekend was to see them. We left Friday about noon and drove to Logansport to see Granddaddy. He was having a bad day, but we still got to visit with him for a while. Afterwards, we had dinner with John, Velda and James. Then we drove on to Ruston to Raine's parents house.

Saturday morning we got up early and got on the road bikes in the 35 deg. temps and damp roads. We rode around our old college campus for a bit, brought back the memories. Luke(little bro) met us in town and then we headed out for some hills. We rode a loop North of town and then back to the house to drop Raine off at the end of an hour and 13 miles or so. Luke and I rode to the other side of town and he headed back home as he had to work, and I took off alone. I rode a loop down to the South side of town and then back to the house. I finished up with 30 miles and 2 hours. Raine rode well on the hills, she's still getting her lungs back after being sick for a while and is learning how to deal with her asthma, too. See the whole ride here.











Saturday night I got drug to the Monroe Mardi Gras Parade, what fun that was. We visited with Raine's grandpa and his wife for a while, it was good to see them. Then off to suffer at the parade standing around in the cold. The highlight of my night was getting in a shouting match and almost coming to fists with a drunk kid who tripped over my feet. That was great. Unfortunately a policeman stepped in before I got to do the world a favor and ruin his night. Had a binge on some fried catfish at Scott's restaurant and then headed back to the house.

Sunday morning I woke up and headed out to Lincoln Parish Park for some mountain bike riding. It was 35 deg. and foggy. I did a pretty easy lap the first go round and finished in an hour. I headed out for my second lap and got almost four miles in when my chain exploded. :( Oh well, so much for my 20-mile day(and glad I didn't ride to the park like I'd planned). I hiked out and drove back to the house. I absolutely chowed down on some Johnny's Pizza then we packed up and hit the road back towards Houston.

We stopped to see Grandaddy again on the way back through. He's staying at my aunt Amy's house now, and when I first walked in I saw Amy in her recliner and I looked over at Granddaddy's hospital bed and it was empty. Gave me quite a shock, I feared the worst after seeing him Friday. Fortunately, he was asleep in the recliner right in front of me buried under the blankets and I just hadn't seen him! We had a good visit, he was much more talkative and I even got him laughing a few times, telling him we'd gone out and rode bicycles in the 35 deg. morning. It was good to get a good visit and see him in a little better spirits. James stopped in and visited for a while, then we all hit the road back to Houston. We stopped at Chili's in Lufkin for dinner, and then went our separate ways.

It was a good weekend with some riding and family visiting. And as an added bonus, even loaded down and with bikes hanging off the back, our new car got 26.67 mpg on the way home Sunday!! That's almost double what we would have gotten in the Xterra. It's already proving itself as the right way to go.

A different kind of hurting than I usually write about.

I don't really know what I'm saying here, I just needed to write about this.

As I sit here "working", my grandfather lay dying in LA. I never really knew my dad's dad. I remember my mom taking us to visit him occasionally when I was young, but I never really got to know him. Him and my dad never got along, so we weren't that close to him. In the past several years, they have made an effort to mend their relationship, and I've gotten to visit with Granddaddy a few times and see him at Christmas and Thanksgiving. But I don't really know him. What will I tell my kids about their great-grandfather? I know he liked to fish, he liked houseboats, he liked woodworking, and he drove Dodge trucks like their grandfather. But I don't really know any stories about him. Was he in the Army? I think so, that would be a good story to share, if I knew it to share.

My dad and I will do better. My children will know their grandparents and their family's history.

He will be my last grandparent to go. I'll soon be "one generation's length away from fighting life out on my own."-John Mayer

New Car

Raine and I decided to get a new vehicle to replace the Xterra. I loved that truck, but it was just killing us on the gas mileage. 90% of the time it was being driven back and forth to work getting about 13.5 mpg. Also, doing all the traveling back and forth to the races getting 14.5 mpg was totally unacceptable. Taking Raine's car to get the good mpg wasn't really an option as I didn't want to put it through all that, it's too nice a car for that. So we started shopping for cars/SUVs with comparable interior room to the Xterra, that were also capable of doing a bit of light off-roading when needed to reach those remote race sites. Emphasis on light, I can't remember the last time I really needed the full off-road capability of the Xterra(did I ever?). Just dirt roads, grassy field parking areas, etc. After searching we settled on a Subaru Forester. The Forester has a 2.5L four-cylinder engine, and claims to get 20city/27hwy mpg. It has interior room comparable to a Rav4 or CR-V, but sits lower to the ground and edges them out in gas mileage. It still has 8+ inches of ground clearance, however, and the symmetrical all-wheel drive enables it to be pretty formidable in low traction situations like snow, mud, and wet roads or grass. I like the way it drives, it's actually a sporty handling vehicle that still has tons of interior room(big enough to put a 29er inside). I have heard that the gas mileage claims are accurate, the folks at www.subaruforester.org were pretty helpful in providing info and helping me decide on the car.

So the day after we got it we were already putting it to work with a bike trip to Huntsville State Park. We met Lisa H. there and we all rode a lap together. Afterwards Lisa and I turned out a semi fast fun lap. She was riding well, I know why she's an Expert!!! It was so nice knowing while we were buzzing down the interstate on the way home, we were getting 25+ mpg(allowance for the bikes and rack on the back). Here's a picture from after we got home.

Excruciating? You bet.

A few weekends ago, I rode the Talon Trails Excruciation Exam. I'm just now finding the energy to write about it. Sorry about that. The race was an 85 mile trail/road/dirt road odyssey through the beginnings of the TX hill country. Raine(the Wife) and I drove over to Bluff Creek Ranch, Warda, TX, the night before the race and set up camp. To bed we went, and I had trouble sleeping knowing what was staring me in the face the coming morning.

We were up before sunrise, getting registered was the first priority. With that taken care of(not without a hang-up or two) I hustled back to camp to get ready. Put the bike together, air in the tires, get food and drink together for the ride, get my jersey pockets filled up, Raine's cooking me breakfast, and before I know it and before I'm ready they're calling for the pre-race meeting. I hustled up to finish, ran to the meeting, and threw some food down as fast as I could, but not enough I know. The meeting was over, and we headed over to the start area.

I had no intentions or illusions of making this a race, I was just there for the miles. The start was Le Mans style, maybe 40 yards to a tree and then around it and back to the bike. I jogged pretty slowly, wanting to make sure that everyone who would be riding seriously would be in front of me. On the first Warda lap I rode with a few other friends for a bit, then passed up to Shaun Taylor. I finished the lap with him and then hit the road. I took it pretty slow on the road, as I was gonna wait on team Acci-Dent to catch up. A couple of friends I worked with on the South TX Death Ride last year caught up and I pacelined with them for a while, then decided to hang back and wait some more. Hit the first checkpoint where Raine was volunteering, and boy it would have been easy to quit there. I was soaking wet from riding through thick fog for an hour and a half, she was there with the truck, dry clothes, and my dog. But I kept going on down the road. I got to Rocky Hill and Dent still hadn't caught up so I decided to go on out to keep moving. The lap at Rocky Hill was neat, I'd never ridden some of that back stuff, it was pretty cool. Then of course we had to ride Y-kNot, all I could think was "why, why, why?" Back to the bottom and I headed out on the road back to Warda. I left with another rider who had dropped me pretty good on the road from BCR to RHR, but I had caught and passed him towards the end of RHR and put a few minutes on him before the end of the trail. He was in my class, and it was at this point that I started thinking, hey, I could at least beat somebody. We chit-chatted out on the road a good bit, I figured out he was a roadie and could probably drop me if he wanted on the road. But I also knew judging by the way I passed him at RHR if we got back to BCR together I could take him. We got to the last checkpoint where Raine was waiting on me again and she told me that Dent's bike had exploded on him before he even finished the first lap at BCR. So off we went to BCR, and the other rider never tried anything. He let me go into the singletrack first, and I wasn't really feeling like trying anything either. I just held a steady pace, but it turned out I dropped him pretty quickly. Once I figured out he was gone, I ramped it up a bit to make sure he stayed back there. I wound up putting five minutes on him in that three mile section.

I finished in 7:11, probably could have been a fair bit faster if I hadn't spent so much time waiting for Dent to catch up. But the time didn't matter to me really, I enjoyed the all day ride. On the way back to BCR, my arms were just totally toast. I could barely sit normal on the bike. Once I hit the singletrack back at BCR, every bump I hit felt like the fork was locked out. My wrist was the worst, still very, very tender for a couple days. That washboard road really did a number on it. Thank goodness I had the bigwheels to smooth it out some.

So that caps off my third mt. bike endurance event: Ouachita Challenge '06, South Texas Death Ride '07, and Excruciation Exam '08. They're all miserable, long, and challenging; but in the end extremely satisfying.