Big Big Things have been Happening!

Big, big news here! My oldest child Hanna (or Hanna G as she's been called) has graduated from Mizzou.  Oh yes, she smashed that degree up and down, with honors. We're so proud of this woman! She already has some career prospects in the works, too. Thanks to Flannery Allison for the fantastic graduation photo.

After Hanna's graduation ceremony in Columbia, we had dinner with the extended family and the Beautiful Mrs. K and I posed for a glamour shot with the grad. Nevermind that I look more like her grandfather here than her dad....

We were both surprised and delighted to receive the excellent Small Business award from the Blues organization. Hanna and Eli were in attendance for the festivities. The award came with a fat check that will get donated to the Otters NICA team, too! Eli also got to ride the Zamboni, and Hanna said he looked like the King on his throne.  Love it.

Mrs. K and I had a plan to do the 12-hour mtb relay race in Poplar Bluff (called the Wolf Creek 6/12/24) with Eli to make it a family affair.  He put the kibosh on that and formed his own 3-man team with some NICA friends.  So Deanna and I enlisted our old friend JT and remade our relay team.  The concept was pretty simple...do as many laps as you can of the 11-mile mountain bike course in 12 hours. This would be Deanna's FIRST mtb race. Lots of South Side Cyclery peeps made the trek down to Poplar Bluff to do this race, and none other than Mr. Selfie himself, Matt Johnson, took this photo of just some of the awesomeness before the race.  The tents were stuffed with South Side madness and enthusiasm.

Pow! We got the party started at 10am sharp. You can see me in my natural habitat, leading at the start, along with my boy Eli just behind, and another South Sider and longtime friend Kyle on the far right. Dry, dry, awesome course...for ONE lap.

Once the first lap was done, the skies opened up and it poured.  The course held up, but our clothes and kits were soaked straight away.  Most of us brought extras (I brought 4 kits, anticipating such antics), so we looked different every lap.  I was stunned that the Beautiful Mrs. K finished her very first lap of her very first race with a smile under a thick layer of mud. She's fought pretty hard to get comfortable riding her mountain bike after her collar bone surgery last year, so this was quite a leap. Who's the photobomber??

The South Side ladies were every bit as tenacious as the dudes, putting in lap after lap.  The course held up so well that when there was a few hours of dry time, it was fast.  But you can see me in the background, with my skeptical face, knowing from years of hating mud that more rain was coming. Us mud-haters just know.

I'm not sure why I look like I'm about to kidnap Mrs. K after her second successful lap. Nor do I know why I look like I'm 300 pounds. I was actually getting a CO2 cartridge from her pocket, and I swear I haven't gained any weight.  Photogenic I am not.

Well...the skies opened up again, and in a big, big way.  Lightning and thunder called an end to the race at 6:30pm or so.  But that was AFTER South Siders Angela S and our own team mate JT had gone out for their laps.  It was pitch black and POURING rain.  But from the deep dark woods, Angela emerged and the all-women South Side team won their class.  Tough, tough women.  Congratulations! Although I don't have the photo, a South Sider also won the 6-hour solo women's race.  Congrats to Angela W for a job well done, and she's already plotting her return next year.

Also busting out of the woods during that awful storm was JT.  He had pulled through for us and our team won the Co-Ed class. He's had a rough go with some health issues and I hope he knows how proud we are that he helped us win Deanna's first mtb race! I had some kick-ass team mates for this event!

More success came from the South Side boys. These guys are friends and riding partners that race for various NICA teams in the St. Louis area.  They blasted 7 laps before they called it quits and went to eat bar-b-que. That was enough to net them second place.  Super consistent lap times from these boys, even though they had to endure some really horrendous storms during the day.

Some things are just really interesting, like our room at the Hampton Inn.  Funny that we'd get the little room-number icon of a kid on a bike.  Random, but that's us.  Just kids, big and small, on bikes.