friday we had eli's preschool graduation picnic. big sister hanna was in attendance for this momentous occasion.
"no dude, i'm telling you, contador does NOT have the giro sewn up yet. anything can happen in the last time trial!"
"these things are totally delicious. tell me they don't have any high fructose corn syrup!"
eli and his crew owned the playground.
posing with big sister and big brother. he's all grown up now.
"son, it's time we had a little talk. there comes a time when a man........"

racing season officially started, lessons learned

the whole off-the-front crew, mitch johnson, greg ott, the holtman's, jfp...and i'm sure i'm forgetting a few, but they turned out a quality event at indian camp creek park. it was a 3/6 hour endurance mountain bike event, and i wisely chose the 3 hour solo event.

the only endurance event i have done in the past was burnin' at the bluff. that doesn't count because i did it as a team. i picked this as my first event for two reasons: i HAVE to start sometime, and the beautiful mrs k sponsored the event with a fist full of cash. no excuses, i had to race today.

cross country events are almost always 2 hours or less. at least the ones that i do. so stretching my racing another hour was tough. especially since i have been a slave to my recalcitrant pancreas for the last few months. not much riding. no racing. evil pancreas.

there was a ton of people there! we did a lemans style start, where we run to our bikes parked down the way. i got into position pretty well and ended up riding with some familiar faces for most of the race. sam moore and i rode together for a while, and he was doing the solo 6 hour. after quite a bit of pushing each other, he wisely slowed to 6 hour pace, because he was killing them and didn't need to stay with me. chris ploch was killing me, and for 2 hours i successfully held back jeff yielding. but, it's a 3 hour event, right? oh, yeah. jeff pummeled me on lap 4. i limped in to the finish at 2:45 and opted not to do another lap. so, i took third out of a pretty big field.

lessons learned? i'm not a 3 hour endurance athlete. i should ride more. i should have a prosthetic pancreas made as soon as possible.

7 years ago, May 13

on may 13th, 2004, i met the beautiful mrs k for the first time. we had pizza at fortell's and a beer at mallie's on hampton. i know, i know, it sounds totally romantic, doesn't it?? it must've been good because this photo was taken exactly one year later, the day i proposed to her at the lake house.

we make a cute couple, don't we?

i can still ride a mountain bike

as luck would have it, the psycho rain showers that have plagued our great city for months did not ruin my mountain bike ride on tuesday night. i drove to castlewood after work and i was fully prepared to do wicked hill repeats up cardiac hill to avoid the muddy mess that i thought the trails would be in, but i was treated to some of the best soil i have seen in a while.

it's a shame that i felt like a wet dish rag. the humidity was right up there into sauna territory, and i am still quite unrecovered from whatever life-threatening illness i did or did not have. i did make the best of it, though. in fact, i went back this morning and hit the trails again. i felt no better. in fact probably much worse. and the humidity was legendary.

but i rode my mountain bike, dammit. and i liked it.

smile for the camera!

this alfa is a dodge viper

and never have i loved a viper so much. photo courtesy of autoblog. here is the story.