gilrs loose with a camera

too cool

whoa. who is that cool girl??

a lotus for hanna?

another car that hanna is quite fond of is the lotus exige, elise? i don't know the differences between them but they are quite fetching. i took a few photos of this blue one to give her more incentive to get a job...er...to give her incentive to get good grades.

stealing rocky's food

as i watched rosco stretch upward to the rim of rocky's food bowl, he sort of reminded me of a small bear. a very small bear with big ears.

one more photo

courtesy of dennis fickinger

the steps at the mt pleasant winery cross race were fun. there were 7 or 8 steps, followed by 20 yards or so of flat, then 7 or 8 more steps. this section was right after the gut buster climb near the end of the course.

a bugatti for hanna

photo courtesy of autoblog.com

the new bugatti veyron super sport. how can it get more extreme than it already is?

mount pleasant winery cyclocross

photos courtesy of mike dawson

proof that i actually raced my mountain bike at a 'cross race. this photo shows the elevation changes in the course.
i look like i'm tip toeing over the barriers, but i'm thinking this is where i started to realize how heavy my bike was over the barriers. i even had a full water bottle!

full moon

i've been a mountain biking fool lately. i was motivated by a posting on stlbiking by eric pirtle a few weeks back. he stated that it was pretty silly to be riding road bikes in grassy fields (cyclocross racing) when the weather and the trails were so great right now. i took that to heart and i have been off-road 11 days in the last 3 weeks. somewhat of a record for me.

today, since mt. pleasant winery is such a great venue for a cross race, i decided to take some of my off-road prowess to the cross course there. last year, it was a real ball buster due to the climbing nature of the course, so i figured my mountain bike would be a great tool for the job. and, this year's course was again a climbers course, as well as a course with MANY tough corners. my theory proved sound.

i had a good start, never fell back very far, and finished 7th. i'm proud of my 7th. that cross stuff is hard. and i could not have done it without my own personal cheering section that consisted of the beautiful mrs k, eli, aunt katie and uncle kevin. and to top it off, there were throngs of crazy cross fans around the course and i heard so many cheering for me. there were a few "go mountain bike guy" cheers which was pretty cool, too.

so the full moon usually means that people act weird. this time, the full moon was kind and it turned out to be a stellar day.

biking and weekend recap

this past week, i rode my mountain bike 3 times. wednesday, i rode at greensfelder and traced the race loop that was used earlier this year, plus a couple times down the greenrock from the end of the dogwood. quite fun, but i ran out of time, tragically spending only a little more than an hour. friday was my day off, so i revisited greensfelder. perfect weather, great trail...ah, two hours on honest single track is all i can ask for these days. plus, i ran into some horseback riders that were actually NICE to me. wow.

saturday, deanna and i took the family to our super secret trails. we met kevin and katie there. first we hiked a bit, then kevin, deanna, and i took to the trails with our bikes. after a couple of spectacular endo's, mrs k dismounted and played with the kids. i took off on my own for a hot lap and called it a day.

hanna and tyson did a little exploratory hiking of their own while we were out. they even packed their own backpacks full of supplies.

we ended saturday night with a harry potter episode. we started sunday morning with another harry potter episode. then we did yard work. it's amazing how much we can get done when all of the kakouris family gets to work. i even vacuumed the carpet in the flex and took the kids for ted drewes.

birthday celebration!

eli could hardly contain himself once he found out i had gotten the beautiful mrs k an ice cream cake.
the kids sang happy birthday to mommy. and so did rocky. he howls whenever there is singing. or maybe he was howling for cake.
the sugar from the cake prompted a dress up session. no wonder the youngest kid always grows up the angry, feisty one!

it's deanna's birthday!

ain't she purty?? love you, honey!

my wife is a good woman

seriously, how many women would do this for their husband? she took her entire saturday, along with eli, to find a cool car for me. well, for all of us really. it's a 2010 mustang convertible.
it has the cool saddle leather interior and all of the options.
love the rear view!
very clean ride. it's used, but we're not ballers and it cost half that of a 2011, and half of what a gt would cost. i saw it this morning for the first time in the light and i'm already in love with it.

the beautiful mrs k is a good woman.

riding chubb trail

this is my third day in a row riding my mountain bike. i went to cliff cave on wednesday and thursday, which turned out to be really fun. but for today, i wanted to turn up the heat a bit and i went to the old stand-by, chubb trail.

and i needed to turn up the heat, as it was cold today. it was still in the 30's by noon. i wasn't going to wimp out, though. i went riding anyway.

the trail was super challenging. the lack of rain around hear means lots of loose gravel, and on top of that were tons of leaves. no matter. i went up and down and sped all around. i spent the better part of two hours there, all on the west tyson side. now my body is sore.

i have to stop forgetting how much fun mountain biking is.

cute kid photos

hanna is very photogenic and is always ready for the camera. this was from halloween.
eli has never met a camera he didn't love. here, he is hamming it up while wearing the coolest little under armor shirt that he had to wear under his costume. he was acting like he was a tough muscle guy.

cliff cave

from the early 90's until the early 2000's, we raced at cliff cave quite a bit. some years, there were 3 or 4 events there. it was a super popular venue. really swoopy, flowing trails with a few fun g-outs and some cool rock stuff. for some reason, it has fallen out of favor and we haven't raced there in years.

over the last weekend, the gorc guys did some trail work there and the bluff side of the course has some new trail. i saddled up the mountain bike and took a few laps on wednesday morning and it was fun. the bluff side was fun and technical as it has always been. the other side has toned down quite a bit, with most of the g-outs having just disappeared. it was very smooth, though, and the famous, treacherous downhill has been rerouted, but not completely sorted.

all in all, i want to go back and have some more single track fun.

refinancing the house

homey the clown says, "refinance your home" and come out with mo' money, mo' money, mo' money!

i was pleased as punch to have originally bought our home for something like 5.75% back in 2005. i mean, that was crazy low interest then. but rates are even lower now. in the mid 4's. so naturally, it made sense to refinance...even more sense with the zero closing costs offered by our bank. the only output on our part was a few minutes of paperwork and an hour last week with the notary to sign the papers.

not bad.