babies grow up

eli often (especially today) tests my patience. but, i look at his little face and i can't forget his first days.

business taxes

this is just a small portion of the receipts, forms, and invoices that i have to compile to be able to do the taxes for pedalbrakepedal. it would be much more daunting if it weren't for a few things.

first, i did keep good records. second, most of the information i need is stored on the web. and third, it's a pretty straightforward business. money comes in electronically, and goes out via credit card or handwritten check. not many other avenues to get fouled up with.

the only issues i really have are deciding where to put what expense. i'm figuring it out, but it will probably take another couple of evenings to get it all straight.

one day, when it becomes a huge empire (!!!!), i will hire someone to do all of this for me!

more christmas photos

i love this smile.
and this one, too. hanna gets a microscope.
tyson looks a lot older here.
you think this little guy is happy??
wow, man, what was in those brownies?
mmmmm, comfy.
he looks like he is laughing really hard at my wrapping job.
what the heck is in this thing?
oh, tyson i love you so much!!!
i love this look.
me and the squirts again.
tyson and eli, down for the count in our bed.

christmas photos

beautiful photo of eli and hanna, all dressed up for midnight service.
"hello, tyson? yeah, they're big! bigger than big! yes, i'm standing right next to them. no, i wouldn't kid you. would i kid you?? they're big, i tell you!"
after a good night of sleep that produced prodigious bed head, hanna wakes up to some cool christmas stuff.
....that's it. that's it. if rocky turns his head just once, i'll snatch HIS bone too and i'll have two. christmas spirit is nice and all, but if it means i'll have two bones it's over.

ford's new 5.0 is a whopper

as a long time ford fan, i have to have some admiration for the new 5 liter engine that's going to debut in the 2011 mustang. five liters of fun, along with 32 valves and 412 horsepower. it wasn't long ago that the old "302" was putting out 225 horses, and the pumped up cobra version was good for 240. recently, 32v 4.6 cobra and mach I engines were topping 300 and supercharged 32v 4.6 cobra's were at 390 hp.

there is certainly a horsepower race going on out there, too. the new camaro's 6.2 liter is doing the 426hp dance, while the 6.1 in the dodge srt products is good for 425. but both the camaro and the challenger are well on their way to 4000 pounds, and the mustang is hanging in there around 3600.

while i'm a fan of all of the pony cars now (and would own all three if i won the lottery), i must say that ford has met the typical competitive challenges of this class head on.

george burns? oh god!

seems like an odd post on christmas day, doesn't it? i would have thought so. but our pastor brought it up in the midnight service.

john denver's character in the movie "oh god" asks god, played by george burns, "god, why do you let so many bad things happen?"

god says, "why do you?"

giant tcr advanced 1

i picked up the new ride today from the fine folks at THE HUB. not only do ron and alex throw a heck of a party, but they have some pretty nice bikes, too.

the tcr advanced 1. not an SL, mind you, because i don't have that sort of cash handy. but miraculously, it has nearly identical hard points to the fastback. it was easy as poking myself in the eye with a sharp stick to get this thing set up. a few minutes with the tape measure and she was ready.

i took the liberty of swapping on the old faithful flight saddle and the powertap wheels to make it feel like home.

welcome to 2010, me!

mom's christmas treats

from the time i could remember anything, i remember my mom making these god-forsaken treats for christmas. they're made by putting rice crispies, butter, and peanut butter together in some ratio, rolling them into golf ball sized goodness, then dipping them in molten chocolate. mom did them the old fashioned way back then, using wax and the double boiler. good lord, it took her hours to make a batch. then she would pile them in some ancient tupperware tub and put them under her bed in her bedroom. she said she put them there because it was cooler than the kitchen. it was cold in her room (the coldest room in the house), but she did it because she thought she was keeping them from me.

every christmas, she would make a tub full of these things, and every christmas i would eat 50 or 60 out of the 100 that she would make. sorry, i have a sickness.

tonight, the beautiful mrs k decided she was going to make mom's treats. they turned out pretty good, the only difference being a bit softer chocolate.

all i can say is that i'm lucky i worked out hard twice today.

retiring the schwinn fastback

any day now, i'll be retiring the 2001 schwinn fastback. it's lived a long and prosperous life, and it's time to hang it up.

i really love that bike. it fits me like a glove, and it's so confidence inspiring.

why hang it up? it has approximately 14,000 miles on it. even though most of the components are swapped out (front derailleur and brakes are original), the frame and fork have done their jobs and you never know when older, high mileage stuff could give up the fight. i would hate for that to happen...and i would hate for it to happen more while i was sprinting or going down hill.

what am i getting? you'll see. i post photos here. it's as modern as it gets. and lucky me, it's very close in geometry to my beloved fastback.

the birds

over the past couple weeks, there have been massive flocks of black birds in my locale. today, they descended upon my back yard. hundreds and hundreds of birds would, as a group, go from the trees to the ground and back up to the trees. freaky. i caught them while they were down here. my camera doesn't show it, but they wrapped around my deck and into the yard on the left as well.
then i caught a bit of the exodus. it's crazy how they all get the message at the same time to move up or down. they coated the fence tops and tree branches after this photo. reminds me of the alfred hitchcock's "the birds".

new teams, new stuff, new new new

i've went teamless for 2009. it was quite liberating, really. i mean, there was no pressure to perform and certainly no pressure to show up on any given race day. if my black jersey was dirty, i would just wear my white one. or the red one. or the polka dotted one. i rather enjoyed working with whomever would work with me in breaks, and it was nice to know that the responsibility for chasing usually wasn't on my shoulders (although i usually did anyway).

but that is going to change for 2010. i've got two teams, actually. road and off-road. it's very exciting, even at my advanced age. i do intend to put more effort into racing, although i'm not sure how. i won't have much more time to ride, and i won't be able to travel really any more than i did this year. so i guess that leaves the simpler things to focus on, like weight loss. i have about 12 or 13 too many little debbies around my waist. i've been wondering what it would be like to race at, say, 160 pounds instead of 170. i might go a little faster, and maybe i won't look like a bear on a bike in photos.

first to go was all of the chocolate stuff in the cabinets. ug, that's hard. but necessary. next, i eat at least 7 times a day. i decided to cut that to 5. perhaps 3500 calories a day is bad, no? i have no idea how i burn that many calories a day (i only fluctuate 5 pounds during a 12 month period and have been the same weight since age 23), but i imagine if i cut that down to a reasonable 2700-2800 it would bode well for my 160 pound goal.

new, new, new.

hiking greensfelder

a cold, wet saturday meant that most outdoor activities were out of the question. except hiking. we took to greensfelder, the actual sight of this years fattire mtb race. the dogwood trail. it rained pretty hard on our way out, casting doubts on the hike, but it stopped when we got there and the trail was surprisingly good.
the crew was dying to do something. it's pretty hard having 3 kids couped up in the house. luckily, it was about 40 degrees.
early on, the boys were good. tyson was a bit hyper, and eli was walking along barking orders. here, i stopped them at one of the cool rock splits.
once we reached the dogwood shelter, it was time for a playground break.
a couple of funny movies of the boys sliding on their butts across the ground after coming down the slides, and we were off. eli got bored and tired and made us carry him the rest of the way. hanna and tyson found a cool rock and asked if they could bring it home.

"if you can carry it, you can have it", i said. and they carried it more than halfway around that course. they kept swapping it between them (we got it home and it weighed 5.07 pounds). going up the last grueling climb to the finish, it started to pour rain. we were lucky to have finished without getting really wet. well, most of us. tyson was pretty grubby from, well, just being a boy and getting most of greensfelder's considerable mud on him.

mission accomplished.

ginger bread cookies

the beautiful mrs k was conspicuously absent today during ginger bread cookie making. seems she had to take tyson to a birthday party (and she was probably really tired of all the arts and crafts things the kids were forcing upon her this weekend). so, with these two looking at me like i was the last hope. i had to take one for the team...i had to cook.
and boy, were they happy. this concoction was killing me. it was dry and it tried to fall apart. i had flour all over me. my arms hurt from stirring. it was mortifying. do you think these kids cared?
finally, after getting them out of the oven, it was time to decorate them. one of them was practically DOA...he was all flaky and falling apart. so we avoided him and concentrated on the others. sort of like ginger-bear triage.
eli wanted me to do the first one for him. hanna was working on her own, so i said what the heck and gave eli a bear with sort of an insipid look.
hanna made one VERY happy looking ginger-bear. except for that very large gum drop button on his upper chest. sort of out of place.
eli's own attempt was quite good, really. i totally dig the charles manson-esque eyes. when it was all said and done, eli didn't even like the taste and went into the living room to play with his dump truck.

car battery for the freestyle

with the freestyle just turning 4 years old this fall, i was not surprised to hear the engine turning over slowly during the last couple of weeks. cold weather, almost 90,000 miles, 4 year old battery, over 20 start-ups a day...yeah, it was getting close.

yesterday, the beautiful mrs k came to me whilst i was eating breakfast and broke the news to me. it was almost like she was telling me a distant relative had died.

"well, your car didn't start."

knowing how many trips i had to make in the family truckster, i had to spring into action. i grabbed the jumper cables, hooked the truckster up to the fusion, presto. started right up. drove straight up to the auto parts store, left her running, and plunked down $84 for 640 cold cranking amps. done deal. it really couldn't have been easier, except for that $84 part. 6 year warranty? good lord. the freestyle will have 250,000 miles on it by then!

in it's 90,000 miles, the freestyle has needed:
rear brake pads
car battery
tires
gas
oil
febreze
lysol
air fresheners

i'm impressed with this most boring mode of transportation. i'm sure i'll need front brakes and rotors by spring. it will be due for it's 100,000 mile transmission service, too, which is about $350. all in all, it doesn't have the expensive service intervals that "nice" cars have, and i'm still able to eek 20 mpg even with all the start-ups and full loads that happen on a daily basis.

sometimes, quietly doing the job makes a product extremely satisfying. now i just need my manhood back.

Best of 2009

you know, everyone and their brother does a "best of" when the year end rolls around. most of the time, people don't even pay attention.

there are so many things that are "best of" this year. new jobs changed our lives for the better. many, many new friends changed our lives for the better. tons of new experiences, new opportunities, new goals...

as good as 2009 turned out to be, all of those things are nothing without US.

so, without further explanation, this is my best of 2009. not the photos. the people.

more photos of the family

those crazy kids. this is a good photo of the three of them before the reception friday night.
and this is a good photo of the beautiful mrs k and i. i think i look like my dad here, only a lot taller.

wedding reception, breakfast with santa

we had a wedding reception for angela and darren on friday night. of course there were many festivities, including an arm wrestling tournament. max and hanna went at it for a while. max beat her right handed....
...and she requested a rematch with her "good arm".
and despite what looks like a rules violation, she won left handed. she's got some muscles in that wraith like body of hers.
eli just wanted to take photos. with any available camera. CHEEEEESE!
here i am, giving tyson my best sylvester stallone "over the top" impression. hanna approves.
after a long night of eating and arm wrestling, the beautiful mrs k and i danced for a while.
since we're never on the blog together, i'm putting another photo of us in here.
bright and early the next morning, it was breakfast with santa time. eli enjoyed the fork as much as the pancakes. those grapes? nope. the kid will NOT eat fruit.
i wonder what he is asking santa for? trouble?
arts and crafts time for the kids. except eli, he's dreaming of the toys on the wall that he can't wait to get out and terrorize the other patrons.
this would have been a nice photo, except instead of "that's just right", eli thought i said "open wide." easy mistake.
aren't they cute?? they are pretty easy to direct in photos now.
eli and his girlfriend.
not a bad attempt at a photo with cousins max and gus. max must been tired from the arm wrestling the night before.