cyclocross in north county

bellfontain neighbors cross race yesterday. i had a good start. i was feeling quite good...freshly shaved legs, good weather, technical course with lots of turns. bring it on!! i was in the top three at the end of the first lap.
still concentrating hard, but beginning to fade in lap 3. those hard starts are hard on the old body.
whooosh! that whooshing sound was none other than josh johnson and kurt fletcher literally flying by on the barriers sometime in the first third of the race. josh would go on to win, kurt was top five. hmmm, maybe i should start slower like josh?
dammit, i want my 10th place! i fought it out with a couple of different groups of guys. one by one, i shed them. but drew black stuck it all the way out to the finish. i had to dig deep to beat him out of 10th. to the spectators, it may have looked like a couple of 18 wheelers drag racing backward up a mountain pass, but to us it was a battle to the death. today, i'm sore and tired and crabby.

damn, i love racing.

thanks to dennis fickinger and mike d for the photos.

just lay down anywhere, go ahead

a pile of laundry is fair game for a nap. with all of the couches, rugs, blankets, etc., that are laying around in the living room, why choose the laundry that i'm sorting? i put this stuff in the entrance to the laundry room, sorted some more stuff, and when i turned around he was already laying there, snoring even.

keeping the little general entertained, a day with the great manipulator

when the big kids are with their other parents for the weekend, it's a tough job to keep the little general entertained. he's very intense and engaging, using up every ounce of our mental energy. above, he's challenging my sense of aesthetic by wearing his cars jammies along with his rubber fireman boots.
dad: eli, are you ready to get dressed?
eli: dad, you're in front of the tv!
happy as a clam at the playground. only, he's not happy about the playground toys. oh, no. he doesn't even want to play on them. he wants me to play hide and seek with him. i tell him we could have done that at home in our own yard. he's already counting to ten, signaling to me that it's time to hide. "one, two, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, seven...."
upon arriving home from the playground, he insists that we need to buy a leaf blower. i tell him that we have one already. he says it doesn't work. i tell him that it does. he says the cord doesn't reach. i show him that it does. ah, i get it. he made me argue with him about the blower so that i would get it out to show him that it worked, and he took over after that.
he's a tough little guy. he learned how to hold it with both hands to aim it where he wanted the leaves to go. they mostly went where we could scoop them into the yard waste bags. mostly.

happenings of late

this is not actually john's car, but it's close enough.

i've ridden my bike 3 times this week, which is a 60 day record i believe. monday was a spin to get the soreness out of my body from the cross race. wednesday was a nice south county ride in the hills. today was a castlewood mtb ride.

riding in south county is a bit treacherous right now. well, there's always the truck drivin', ass kickin', bike unfriendly contingent to be concerned with, but water has made a lot of good routes unridable. meramec bottom road spoiled my wednesday ride, but it caused me to ride farther so that can't be all bad.

castlewood was a leaf lovers dream. right now, at this very moment, you can't see trail. only leaves. that said, good old castlewood is dry as a bone. still a good ride, despite the dangers lurking under the leaves.

met up with john rines today to get a little business taken care of, and i was able to behold his magnum srt8...6.1 liters and 425hp of fury. and it's a wagon. and it's red. really red. i'm smitten.

i was able to clean out the basement the last couple of days. good lord, human beings accumulate so much stuff! maybe i can relieve us of more junk tomorrow, but it's a sketchy proposition because you cannot let the kids know that you're throwing something away that they haven't played with in years.

dwayne came by yesterday to check out our kitchen. the builders didn't put in an exhaust fan in the kitchen, so we get smoked out if the oven isn't completely clean. i would be a happy man if i had an exhaust fan. and that rhymes.

non-paying ebay members are bad, m-kay?

bubba cross creve couer

chris creed took this photo of me, and thankfully you can't see my hairy legs!

besides having a big halloween weekend, there was also a cross race. having JUST finished a seven day round of antibiotics on saturday, i had little hope for a great race. committed i was, though, and still am, to doing cross races, so i saddled up and headed to creve couer.

the night before, the rabid cross community did a muddy little ditty out there in the dark. thankfully, i opted to be with the kids for trick or treating. miraculously, the course was pretty darn dry for sunday's race. there was some soft dirt, for sure, but it was not muddy at all.

i started like i knew what i was doing, clogging the course for those real crossers behind me. halfway through the first lap, i was still in 3rd place. slowly but surely, they passed. and passed. and passed some more. eventually, i was in a desperate battle for 12th place. my buddy matt james and i were having a dual when i did a slow motion endo over the rail road ties. soft dirt + soft front tire + slow corner bunny hop = endo. duh.

i was still rolling pretty well for a washed up cross racer in the last few laps when people began to feel the fatigue and drop off. i buried my head and made a lot more grunting noises and went no faster (sort of like a honda civic with a fart can exhaust), but by the finish line i had worked my way up to 8th. i didn't feel proud of the placing, partly because attrition accounted for much of my late race surge, but it will have to do. i did keep my heart in it all the way to the bitter end.

my cheering section was there and that always keeps a guy going. one more race before the trip to disney, and then hopefully i can get in a couple more and make the season worthwhile.

halloween at our house

first, there was the little halloween get together at the house for the kids on tyson's soccer team. eli and his friend izzy aren't on the team, but they were invited anyway. aren't they cute? what do you think about the rubber fireman boots that spidey has on? a better choice than the bob the builder work boots? is spidey a little schizophrenic concerning his footwear??


here are some of the boys on the team. a motley crew, aren't they? how'd the little guy get in this photo, too??


later on during the real trick or treating, we went through a neighborhood haunted house. really, a guy turned his garage into a mini haunted house, including smoke machine and scary fake human limbs on the walls.


hanna, enjoying some of the fruits of her labor. i think that's a hershey bar that she's nursing. she wore the beautiful mrs k's high school jazz recital dress. it was cool!


the beautiful mrs k huddling with the boys. i think she's concealing some chocolaty goodness in her mouth. tyson actually wore croc's with his ninja outfit. i don't think ninjas wear croc's at all, but i am also doubting that spiderman wears jammies underneath the spidey suit, too.

halloween party at preschool

dad, i'm soooo excited about the halloween party at preschool today! i'm just giddy!
did you hear me? did you hear me, dad? i'm pumped, totally pumped! beefcake!
ok, i'm going in. never mind the work boots...you never know when spiderman might have to drive a front loader or backhoe. c'mon!
i just think it's so hot that i'm surrounded by all of the hot chicks in costumes. they all love me.
ok, seriously. i need to find some crime to fight. or snacks. whichever.
uh huh, uh huh, i'm strutting my stuff. see the girl dressed like a princess? she loves her some eli spidey. she's diggin' the work boots.

scanner photos, again

this one came out very nice. it's actually quite a large photo that i developed myself a year later in photography class. it was a color photo that i printed in black and white. you can read all of the graffiti on my number plate....i was a run d.m.c fan. still, credit travis mcgee for his fine photography skills. i was the one in photo classes, but every time he picked up my camera he took better photos than i did.

learned how to use scanner, watch out

i hooked up the scanner and did a few test scans on some cool old photos today. my friend from way back, kevin suttmoeller took this photo. it's from nashville, tennesse, at the nbl grand nationals. this is the quarter final. i'm the second guy in the photo from the right, in case you didn't see "tim" on my arm or didn't recognize the scowl. i had a pretty good start, it looks like. if you click on the photo and enlarge, you can see a guy sitting at the other end of the fence. that's actually brian patterson, of patterson fame.

i'm going to scan a lot more cool stuff. feel free to not look at them if they bore you.

surprise! tata nano has "issues"!

i've posted about this car and similar bargain basement cars that will eventually make it to our shores from india and china. i believe that i have also issued cautionary statements concerning buying the cheapest of the cheap. ladies and gentlemen...heed my warnings. this is not a cry of nationalism, nor a cry for protectionism, but a cry for rationalism: don't buy everything because it is the cheapest.

"tata investigates nano steering column fires"

2nd try, wabash, frisco, & pacific rr

first we had to fuel up with squishies and snacks. eli had two hats on to stave off the demons of the flu.
next, we had to wait in line for our turn on the cool trains.
here comes a train! it so cool to watch them blow off steam. all the sights and sounds of a full size rail way at a lower volume.
the tender serves as a good spot for a workman to sit.
notice the detail.
on it's way to the turntable to get turned the right way.
the red one is a diesel of some kind rather than a steamie. i wonder if he gets along with the other steamies, or if he's a mean, smelly diesel??
on the train and ready to go~!
the engine blows off a plume of steam.
the water tower. we watched the workmen fill up a couple of the trains while we waited.
and on down the line we go! the leaves and the weather were just right.
eli was full of questions.
hanna kept wondering when we'd see the zombies.
we waited in a siding while another train passed going back to the station. everyone waved!
some of the bluff views are spectacular.
over the trestle bridge. this is obviously a newer addition....
...because over in the weeds close by is the rusted hulk of the older trestle.
another shot of the old rusting trestle.
the diesel going the other way.
an very well kept old dodge in the parking lot.

a great outing, and a successful attempt at riding the trains. i would suggest to anyone that enjoys the outdoors or things mechanical to make the trip. it really is fascinating and so non-commercial. the website is: http://www.wfprr.com/

big sister, hair stylist

if i don't keep my eye out for missing hair products (comb, hair gel, etc.) they will certainly end up in eli's hair, courtesy of big sister hanna. she likes to goof with his hair. here, she said she wanted him to look like a business man.
and this photo is just because she's beautiful.

our attempt at the little short line railroad

first off, i'm not sure why the little general is giving me grief all the time now when i try to take his photo. especially since he has his bear, has on his thomas hat, and is going to ride the little steam trains in glenco.
he became happier when hanna hammed it up for the camera. then, naturally, he had to be in it.
there. by putting the camera backward over my head while i drove, i snapped this photo of hanna, sans the little general. i'm sure this is not a safe driving technique, don't try this at home kids.
the railway is so super cool it makes me giddy. the rails are 12" wide. the railway winds through some of the best terrain deep west county has to offer.
it's such a cool sight to get the scale of how big these things are. check out the workman, getting one of the steam engines ready for tomorrow's rides. yes, tomorrow. we were a day early. no rides for us today. so we decided to walk the al foster trail, and it was not hard to convince the kids to do so when i told them about al foster and zombie road.
we immediately caught one of the little engines on it's way down the tracks. they were blowing the leaves off of the railway.
a miniature version of what you'd see in a big rail yard. again, so cool.
we walked along the trail, which was towered over by these enormous bluffs. since it has rained so much lately, there were tons of cool streams coming off the bluffs.
a place to switch the points.
a cool tree that hanna wanted to be photographed next to.
aww, mommy and eli back at the parking lot.
a sweet photo of me with the oldest and youngest.
the beautiful mrs k and i getting a chance to have the rare photo of us together.
the al foster trail in sherman. the trestle area there is very cool.
full of graffiti, there is something very intriguing about railroad trestles.
the other direction, as it stretches out across the meramec.
little house on the prarie. or, just a cool farm house looking up into the fields from st. paul road in sherman.
next to the start/finish area of the last castlewood race there are quite a few homes edging up to the meramec. this old farm implement just sits in one of the yards. much cooler than a garden gnome, for sure.

scenes from around my house

i have no idea why he gave me "the lip" when i asked him to smile for the camera. he pouts really hard sometimes by sticking his bottom lip out soooo far. he did this about 10 seconds after he was born, and the look is pretty much the same now.
rosco has been a real fixture under my desk lately. he seems really bored.
when i asked both of the boys to smile for me, eli fell over and kicked tyson in the eye. they were watching some scary movies on disney.
the beautiful mrs k has such beautiful red hair. i like it when it's kind of messy, but she'll be pretty mad when i post this photo of her looking through the coupons.

ah, 1984

eli: dad, what is this silly show you are watching?
me: ghost busters
eli: what?
me: ghost busters, they chase down ghosts.
......silence........
eli: mom, come quick! dad is watching chase ghosters and they're ghosting, chasing...come on!

of course, we only got through a few minutes before bedtime procedures turned into pandemonium. that put an end to ghost busters #1, and certainly meant there would be no watching ghost busters #2.

the end?

"is this the end???"
photo courtesy of dan miller. thanks, dan!

sunday was bubbacross #2 at faust park. saturday night was #1, but i have been a bit under the weather with the bubonic plague going around at my home, so i opted out.

the photo says it all. it was over not a moment too soon. i shall have to master this awful cycling sport sooner or later, as 17th place is enough to make one quit and roll over his bikes with a steam roller.

the very sad thing about cyclocross races is the 24 hour regeneration period. no matter how sore you are, or how badly you place, 24 hours later there's a reshuffling of history and for some reason you think that it's a good idea to do it again.

jefferson barracks park next sunday.

silly season tempered

all of the cycling rags call the fall the silly season...what with all the trades and contracts and whatnot. it's my silly season, too.

it seems that the fall is when i start thinking about what i'm going to change with my bikes. for 30 years, that's usually meant full bike changes, nay, usually two or three full bike changes before settling on something in the spring.

this year is quite a bit different. i was thinking that age had caught up to me and tempered my desire for change. but it's not that, i believe, because i'm just as rabidly excited by new bikes and stuff as i ever have. no, i think the fall of 2009 is different because i have found two bikes that i am utterly attached to. i truly believe that changing would be for the sake of change, not because it would bring about a better ride.

my 2001 fastback limited is just right. short of having a custom bike made replicating it's exact dimensions, there is no reason to change it. when it breaks, i'll change it. the superfly is just that, super. fits right, rides right, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

....all that said...there are a few nagging details about the 'fly that i addressed recently. the stock wheels were replaced today with some xt 29'ers, and i have my 2x9 setup nailed down.

there. done. great. let's ride.

pitstop!

ok, now everybody, this is the pitstop! no one goes across this line without getting air in their tires! (note exquisite straight line drawing abilities)
(furious pumping) ok, tyson, you have to have air in your tires to win the race. mommy, put on the pumper thing so i can pump! (more furious pumping) uh, uh, this is hard. mommy, can you pump?