the things kids say

the beautiful mrs k will probably kill me, but i have to tell this.

eli was helping us fold laundry. first, he makes fun of the way i fold laundry.

"daddy folds like this," he says, balling up clothes.

hmmm. deanna, who told him that i fold laundry that way? a little bird?

then he gets to her bra.

"mommy, where to you want your boobie fings?"

i'm laughing right now.

you gotta see this

seriously, i haven't seen the pay table at a criterium in...i don't know how long. i was thinking with 5 to go about what my apology to the family might sound like...

"sorry, deanna, sorry kids, for dragging you out to another crit where you were witness to incredible mediocrity."

but i rallied and hit the gas with 1/3 of a lap to go and got something for the effort.

slip n slide

the beautiful mrs k bought the kids a slip n slide on saturday. since we miscalculated the webster kids race start time, they decided to relax in the front yard. you know, get a tan.
that lasted about 4 minutes. they were careening down the lawn in no time. here elijah just decides that head first is the way to go.
all three, in unison. love the water caught in mid splash.
tyson bails out to the side, eli is a little late, and hanna's face is priceless.
tyson's out of control, his slider is airborne. eli is late again. hanna obviously doesn't like water in her face. pardon me while i grieve about my water bill....

sunday at the blue owl

we drove down to kimswick this morning to have lunch with my sister who is here from out of town. the blue owl is a favorite of my brother's and sister, so off we went. the drive started with a bit of vintage american iron. on the way, we saw an identical ford to this one, without a hood and the typical heretical chevy engine. up arrival, this one was already there. no word on what was under the hood.
after eating, the kids were antsy, so i took them for a walk outside the building. kimswick is a quiet little town, so we immediately noticed this lotus elise parked on the street. hanna is in love with the elise, so we took some shots.
and there were more in the parking lot. a red elise. delicious.
and a silver one, too. this is an exige, i believe.
another one. super cool color, bronze-ish brown metalflake.
and there was a caterham seven. nice piece of work.
and this trick early 60's lotus eleven. looks like a driver rather than a museum piece.
so low, so small. crazy wire wheels on it, too.
my favorite, the esprit v8. turbo v8 with a flat plane crankshaft. in yellow, too.
eli liked it, too. although he kept calling them mustangs.
and the obligatory english car was there, too. this mg was pimped out. it seems that the table next to ours in the restaurant was occupied by the local lotus car club.

macbeth did it

we were able to catch the final show of 'macbeth did it' at bishop dubourg on saturday night. rosco was the only dog cast in the play, which is good because it's hard to get dogs to say their lines or sing on command. his character was 'rock hudson', the teacup dog of a wealthy actress. i dropped him off at the school and he was cool as a cucumber. i told him to break a leg but he was already getting into character and ignored me.
the kids were excited to see the play. tyson was so excited that he went temporarily blind.
'rock' got his thank you card from the rest of the cast.....
....and his bio in the program was hilarious.
us, with the little dog star after the event. i was pretty happy that he didn't have to wear a pride-swallowing costume for the play. only the scarf. he looked pretty tired here.
and he was. when we got home, i went downstairs to check mail and he plopped onto his towel and went fast asleep. no big after-play party for this actor.

laundry day

rosco must really look forward to the day when the comforter goes through the laundry. as soon as it's in the basket he jumps into it and makes himself right at home.

don't you just love camera phones?

look closely. veeeeeerrrrrrry closely. what do you see that might be, say, adjusted incorrectly?

tuesday night bar-b-que

this is what i saw when i drove up to the races tonight...

i drove to carondelet tonight. it was the first time in years that i needed my car to get there. i had to pick up some product from a fellow rider and it just didn't make sense to ride home with wheels on my back.

i had my reservations about racing tonight. sunday was a long hot slog in the woods, and my monday morning ride was torturous. i didn't feel any better today, but i thought, maybe, just maybe, that i would snap out of it.

i must admit that i did snap out of it. i wasn't 'on fire' with anything except the 110 heat index, but i wasn't riding badly. none other than scott moninger was still in town from the big winghaven weekend, so all eyes were on him. he'd move to the front, the fast guys would move with him. i found myself on his wheel only a couple of laps in, but it didn't go anywhere. about 20 minutes in, it happened again. justin, austin, and logan jumped on the moninger train, and i went along. quickly, we gained time on the field. that lasted for 4 or 5 painful laps. sadly and inevitably, i popped and let the legend and the local fast guys do what they do. i rode the rest of the race in a bit of bother, overheated and sweating buckets. an anonymous finish is about right for my form tonight. still, better than i imagined when i woke up today.

i'm hoping for a bit of respite from the heat for sunday's race at webster.

kids sleep hard

mrs k called me in eli's room to see the boys sleeping together. they end up in the most contorted positions. i had to turn the light on to get this photo with my phone.

t-ball star

the beautiful mrs k, giving eli lessons on how to keep his eye on the ball.
he took it seriously. he whacked the ball halfway across yard several times.

spartacus wins tour de suisse!

Cycling NEWS

fabian cancellara put over 3 minutes into the leader in the final time trial, and a minute and a half into everyone else to get the victory.

wow, i hope, i hope, i hope this means he's on form for the tdf! i'd love to see him in yellow again for a few days.

st. joe state park mtb race

everyone knows that i'm not a fan of cold weather. i think today was really a case of 'be careful what you wish for'. heat is always an issue when you race bikes; road, mountain, bmx, etc. but off-roading can be pretty tough on a really hot day because sometimes a rider moves along at, say, 5 mph. that doesn't generate a lot of air flow. and being in the woods, there tends to be more humidity. so it can get pretty miserable. i don't know how hot it was today. let's just say hot and be done with it.

again i got the chauffeur's treatment in the twist dakota. john drives the speed limit....always. everywhere. and i just sat back and let him. it's so nice to absolve myself of responsibility sometimes. i was very pleased to see dust today. i had my sunscreen on, my bug repellent on, my water bottles filled and more waiting at the start finish. a pretty good set up, i think. and the course, while very crude, was a total mountain bikers course. not a smooth section of dirt for 7 miles. the last mile of the race was on st. joe's perfect asphalt path toward the finish.

start went well, i was following the murderous john matthews again. we distanced ourselves from the rest of the field and chewed our way through the younger experts as well as other riders on the trail. eventually, i lost sight of john. i figured that it was inevitable, as he is a demon on courses like this. i was pretty happy to stay with him as long as i did. the heat and the long course (we eventually did 3 laps) played havoc with riders all over the course. lo and behold, with only 2-3 miles to go, i caught sight of john again. ah! maybe i could catch him?? nope. he turned on the afterburners and fled the scene like a criminal. two hours and three minutes of fun, yes sir.

i was happy to have stayed upright the entire day, worked my way up to 4th place overall and 2nd in the age group, and not cramp. john and john (twist and pieffer) battled it out in the sport class, with jfp winning another round, just like rhett's. i think we're all looking forward to sac river in good ol' springfield, missouri.

bad cell phone pics of father's day dinner

my cell phone takes horrendous photos in low lighting. but, i had to document some of the buffoonery going on at grandma's house for our father's day dinner tonight. here we have just started charades. my first time up, i got "the magus". what the hell is that?
eli was really having a good time. it seemed to energize him that no one was paying any attention to him. well, we did, but he didn't think so. kevin caught him for a few moments.
mrs k and dad zim on the hot seat. i have no idea how they guessed some of the words and phrases. charades is hard. i was sweating.
kevin thought that charades was just too hard and decided to hide rather than go up for his next turn. funny, he used to fit under this table when he was 3, not so much now.

work on my own bike? never!

but i did today. i joked at the rhett's run race that my bike had the same dirt on it that it's had since the first mtn bike race of the year at lost valley. and today, just to be different, i cleaned the dirt off the bike that was there since rhett's run.

while i was at it, i put on a new chain. and new tires. ambitious as it may sound, i'm a bit embarrassed. my mountain bikes used to be so spic and span. i spent quite a bit of time on them to make sure there were no issues and they looked good.

who has time for that now? if it rolls, shifts, and brakes, it's ON. i plan on doing the st. joe state park race on sunday, so the least i could do is make sure it works.

i'm going to hold off on getting a really nice mountain bike until after 'cross season. i'm not going to spend a lot of money on a cross bike, but i have to have one and that means the mtb will stay as is.

just love this photo

this was last friday after hanna's dance recital.

eli at the carnival

the big carnival that sets up close to the house every june happened a couple saturdays ago. eli always hits the cars first. he likes this one. sort of a mixture of corvette and hot wheels? the 'engine' is always interesting to me. that's a real valve cover of some kind on top. and an alternator fan on the front. if the black dots on the sides are to be thought of as spark plugs or coil packs, then this baby is a V-16!
they had a little bounce house and it was a big hit. literally. elijah kept running into the side posts and bouncing a couple of feet backward. he did it repeatedly. hmmm. that boy ain't right.
cousin max was a great sport and accompanied eli on the worm-like roller coaster thing. eli is ready to roll.
once under way, he hits the dashboard wheel. or whatever it is. it even looks like max is having fun, doesn't it?

hanna looks like a mouse

again, a little gem that i extracted from the cell phone. hanna was in a play not long ago called 'bedbugs' and the little black nose was part of the ensemble.

ford aspire, ranchero style

i finally sync-ed up my phone to my computer. i've had it since march, so it's about time.

in doing so, i found this little gem. hanna and i were taking a walk one night...and there it was. it was a thing of redneck beauty...the aspire-chero. a bold melding of the super econo-box ford aspire and the legendary ranchero.

it seems some ambitious youngsters thought it would be a great thing to turn the aspire into a small pickup truck. well, judge for yourselves, dear reader: what has been accomplished here?

a history of wagons

i got to thinking the other day when i was shampooing the seats in my horribly dirty station wagon that i actually learned to drive in a ford wagon.

my first real girlfriend wheeled one of these things around like it was a sports car. being a two-wheeled, self-propelled kind of guy, i was terrified of the beast. my parents torino's were no match for the sheer size of the country squire. we went everywhere in that thing, and i was NEVER behind the wheel. well, when my 16th birthday approached, i was feeling the pressure to drive. ug. i hated the thought of it.

i was a terrible driver. (no jokes about how some things never change!) it was quite embarrassing to have my girlfriend cart me around, but it was more embarrassing that i didn't know how to drive and didn't want to. i was certain that getting behind the wheel of a car the size of a garage wasn't a good idea. how did she drive that thing so well?? a few times behind the wheel and it was quite evident that i would be walking until at least 2009.

eventually, i got my license and drove my parents cars a bit. my mom had a smaller car by that time (an '81 malibu, wow!!) and it was much easier to negotiate. it's quite funny that i became a car buff, considering my first impressions of driving. and it's even more hilarious that i now drive the modern equivalent of a country squire!

maybe i'll keep it and make hanna and tyson use it as their first cars.

....and THAT, my friends, would be an amazing turn of the worm, wouldn't it?

i just found this

i was using the 'little' camera the other day and downloaded some photos from it. i guess i hadn't used it in a while, because i found this little gem on it. our kids are so sweet!

eli has a friend

eli found an adorable little friend last week. the beautiful mrs k's lifelong buddy lori came to st. louis for a visit with her daughter nicole. at first, eli just wanted to show nicole his monster trucks, and she obliged with limited interest. soon, they began to hit it off. it was funny to see him interact with a younger child, since he's always around much older kids.

hanna's dance recital

the big dance recital was last night. i caught hanna just as she was entering the building. she was very excited and quite radiant...notice she doesn't have her glasses on? she was trying out contacts for the first time!
the house was PACKED! literally sold out!
there were no photos allowed at the event, so i couldn't get any of the actual dancing. but i did get hanna and her cousin shelby afterward. they were so excited and had a great time. and they received flowers, just like on broadway.

now THAT'S creativity!

the best selling american car

not what you thought, huh? 457,000 of them sold last year. we have one right here in our basement, too. and it never needs new tires!

slicks no more

i have made every excuse in the book. i don't have time. they cost a lot of money. i want to get a new car, anyway. i'm lazy.

well, today i drove my car 3 10ths of a mile to a tire shop and said..."tires. alignment. nothing more, or you won't get paid."

two hours later, i had new tires. now i don't have to cringe when it rains. last time i drove to get hanna, i was driving 50 mph in a rainstorm on the highway. too much hydroplaning go on from the slicks. that was pretty stupid and just not worth the risk.

i would have to say getting new tires for the car is sort of like getting a cavity filled. it's a lot worse just to sit and worry about it than to just have it done.

aren't they so cute??

rosco's comfort checklist:
a/c set at 74 degrees? check.
overstuffed chair? check.
not one but two sleeping bags? check.

this photo of eli and the beautiful mrs k is so darn cute.
hey, dad! i was just thinking that i hadn't had a snack in a while and it's almost bedtime. whaddaya say you and me go down to the kitchen and grab some chocolate milk and oreos?
mmm, no, i don't remember eating those donuts. mmm, no, i don't remember having any chocolate covered granola bars. uhhh, yeah, you're going to have to talk to mom about those dolly madison's....