Pantera du jour

this '74 gts is pretty unique. there is only one like it that i could find on the web, and it's a '72 without the polish this one has. gorgeous work, i'd say.

i could probably do without the lettering down the sides, but it does say "i'm a 1974 bad ass italian muscle car" pretty well, i guess.

what a hot rear end....

and the finish work on the engine bay is glorious. the cleveland is smokin'. this thing has a price tag of about $58,000 right now, a bargain in terms of collectible sports cars.

must be the holidays

i guess i don't have to tell any of you that the days are hectic, hectic, hectic. traffic is crazy everywhere, there is snow on the ground, we were swamped at work today (geez, did everyone wake up today wanting a bike??) and there is a buzz in the air. must be the holidays.

i'm about to throw my trainer out the window. not because it isn't a good one. it's the best. but i'm already burnt out on it. and it's only december. i really wanted to get out on the bike today in the warmer weather, but there was no way i was skippin' out on work today. luckily, i've won some vhs tapes of past tours on ebay. it seems that it is pretty hard to find vhs tapes anywhere but there. no biggie. i got the 2000 tour for only $15, and the 2002 tour for $20. i can't find '99 anywhere yet, but hope to before i get bored of the others.

on a big plus, my pushups and pullups have been coming along really well. i do sets of 3 pushups, and my pr so far is 32-20-15. pullups are harder for a fat guy like me, so i do 2 sets, and the pr there is 13-7. i set both today. i usually try to do them after a trainer workout 4 times a week.

what are you getting for the holidays?

buy a ticket

buy a ticket for charity, win a NEW BIKE in the process. it's only $5, and you can do it over the phone.

i don't know what to say

.....except that i KNOW these people....

snow is for sledding...or something

as much as i hate snow, as much as i loathe snow, as much as snow makes me want to jump off a very tall bridge, the kids love snow.

hanna and tyson love the stuff. tyson couldn't even go to sleep last night because he was obsessing about going sledding on sunday. the first thing hanna said this morning was "there's a foot of snow outside! when are we going sledding??" and eli keeps going around saying "it no! it no!"

so i had no choice. i had to take them somewhere where they could sled. or slide down a hill on a round plastic thing, whatever you call that. the beautiful mrs k was going to stay home with crabby eli so i could take the kids over to st. francis park. there were 50-60 kids there with their parents. big kids, little kids, you name it. all sliding down the hills there. there were even some little jumps at the bottom that some industrious little people built so they could get some air. and some of them were getting air, although most were just using the hill as a crashing device.

hanna and tyson did plenty of crashing, hanna having the best off-the-jump crash. tyson crashed nearly every time, either by accident or by design. as i stood there freezing, i noticed how much fun these ice and mud encrusted utes were having. i don't get it. i get the rush of sliding down the hill, i don't get the fun in the cold thing. anyway, they were having a blast and were pretty worn out when i threw in the towel and told them it was time to leave. but not before i overheard some fat kid who was just dissed by his crew say "screw you guys, i'm going home!" one of us had been watching too much south park, i'm not sure which.

Pantera du jour

most Pantera's that can be found on the web seem to be '71's. this black beauty is ultra-clean and has the same wide-wheeled stance found on most resto-mod Pantera's.

sibling advice

glad to see hanna is looking out for eli's best interest....

what to do on a snowy day

rosco was having no part of it. he just got his hairs cut last week and he's still cold and pissed.

eli, on the other hand, was determined to follow the big kids outside. hat? check! coat? check! gloves? check! spiderman snow boots? you got it!

hanna and tyson had already begun building the great wall of st. louis when eli found a shovel. i told him it was the wrong kind of shovel, but he's a persistent little guy.

unhappy and unsure as to why we would want to use this big, flat thing to play in the snow, he first balked at the idea. i demonstrated a little by scooping up copious amounts of snow and flinging it into the air. he laughed hysterically as the snow rained down on the kids. he was soon on board....

...and soon just plain bored. he tried a little snow shoveling and found that falling in it was much more fun. hanna chased him around as he slipped and slid and fell. a good time was had by all but me, who had to resume the real shoveling.

Pantera Dujour

today's Pantera is a '71, a mixture of italian exotic and street rod. i still think it's tasteful. the rear wheels may be a little wide, but preferrable to the little skinny wheels and tires that came stock. it looks like they may have widened the stock campagnolo wheels. love the deep burgandy, and the body looks as straight as an arrow. vrrrrooom.

one of those days

i started the day ok, maybe a little better than most. i'm not a morning person, so i'm grumpy and it can only improve from there.

and today i did improve. starbucks helped. but then it went downhill. things have just conspired to ruin any shred of sunlight that my little mind could see (because god knows there isn't any sunshine for my eyes to see). by the time of this writing, i'd say i felt better this morning when i woke up...except now i can type better. and that's no way i want to spend a day.

what can i say?


nothin'.


.

my little cuties

while at my sisters cabin, we tried and tried to get some good photos for a christmas card. this one turned out pretty well. but between eli's wiggling and tyson fidgeting, it was tough. and just when the boys would get their act together, hanna would blink just as the camera flashed. it was tough. eli looks like he's seen one of the buffalo's that hang out in the area.

a pretty good one here, too. eli is just about to ask me if that's a log or a giant squid in the river.

after all the difficult pictures with eli, the older kids settled down and we got this one in front of the tree. but, we couldn't use this one as our christmas card because photo shopping eli in would just be wrong.

of course eli is all smiles while daddy is holding him. he's on a huge daddy kick right now, spewing "daddy" hundreds of times a day. sometimes he sings "daddy, daddy, daaaaaaaaaadyyyyyyy" and other times he shouts it at the top of his lungs....."DAAAAAADY!!!" yes, it's cute. yes, it's extremely annoying. yes, i really like to hear it, still.

what's with the rain?

so i have a new mountain bike, along with my other cool bikes. but they get to stay in the basement because st.louis suddenly resembles seattle or london or some other rainy place.

if this is the effects of climate change, i don't want any part of it.

i guess it wouldn't be so bad if the sun shone a little between bouts of rain/ice/sleet/snow/fog. but not a chance. no respite for the weary. my seasonal depression deepens with every passing day. i'm starting to look west for some relief. my friend schvonzie has a ringside seat in arizona that my have my name on it in a couple of weeks. if i can make it that long.

i mean, yeah, i really do like watching tdf videos. but not THAT much. it was ok for a week. but there has to be a break here and there where i get to go outside and blow off some pent up energy. i'm about to go stir crazy. i'm sweating enough to rust titanium. maybe. nah.

aya sofia and the belly dancers

deanna and i met 'the tina' and crew thursday night for a little adult dinner. they had already ordered food by the time i got there...nice selection, too. there was a little bit of everything there that i can't pronounce but really like. quite casual, i was able to sample all of it and come away full...and full of garlic. yum, yum.

there was a belly dancer there, too. she was scantily clad (what self respecting belly dancer would have on layers of clothes??) and told us how cold she was. after the tina gave her a few dollars, i gave my dollars to tina to shove into the dancers skivvies. i mean, it feels so stripperish to give a belly dancer dollars like that, you know? it makes me nervous. why don't they just have a pot on the floor, or pass around a hat? why do we have to touch someone we don't really know in such an intimate way, just so they can get paid?? it may have been better, too, had the beautiful mrs k not been there. pulling on some cute girls drawers and slipping in a george washington in front of your wife is....ahem....unnerving.

i survived and drove home happy.

talk about lazy sundays

sheesh. everybody had to get in on the lazy sunday, huh? hey, where did the monkey come from??

couldn't help myself

i spent a little time putting the el fuego together this morning. i've shifted gears a little, moving a little away from the exotic and back to more basic racing stuff. i get carried away sometimes, if you haven't noticed.

i love the black, silver, and red mix. it looks racy, and it's reasonably light, but i chose durability over exotic this time. i laced up a pair of spoked wheels this time, too, with rim-brake rims and disc hubs for versatility. the only bit of carbon on the ventana is a set of bontrager bars (the heavy ones) because i love the bend. the race face cranks are there because the homegrown has them. they are particularly narrow. of course, there is a kaiser-built sid to make the front end light and smooth.

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there were two compelling reasons for the el fuego: durability and geometry. it's a shade over 5.5lbs for the frame, which is right there with most of the aluminum full suspension frames i have weighed, but legendary for it's durability and stiffness. and, over the last year or so, i have constantly gone back to the homegrown due to it's fit. it just seems right, whatever that is. the ventana is within a millimeter of every dimension vs. the homegrown. that will make riding them back to back, or months apart, a piece of cake.