Rain Delay

Yesterday morning started off with me putting in an application to Argosy for a shuttle driver position. Guess I've resorted to looking for any job I can possibly find. Anyway the online app was a pain in the ass and took about 90 minutes to complete.

After that I had to go cut grass at the old house and then went and picked up Judi's camera and dropped it off at the bike shop. Came home, ate, showered, put in some more app's and then went back to BAM. I did get an unexpected call while I was at home though. Last week I put in an app for a new Nike store that will be opening up in Monroe. One of the recruiters called me for some screening. She said that I'd hear back sometime next week about an interview. Of course I'm not a huge fan of Nike but it's a possible job. I'm still hopefull that I'll get a call for an engineering position though.

I was also leading out the liesure ride last night from BAM. I was really hopefull nobody would show so I could head to the BMX track but I wasn't that fortunate. Instead 2 guys showed up on BMX bikes. I say guys because they were mid 30's! And smoking a cigar outside of the shop before we left. Apparently they decided to join to get some excercise in. And after 2 or 3 miles they were pretty well toast. But they stuck it out for the full 8 miles or so.

From there it was off to Kristi's. We walked the mile or so up to Yagoot for some yogurt. I think it's going to be a weekly occurance from here out. She had the original flavor with strawberries, roasted pecans and blueberries and I had strawberries and pineapple on mine. She wasn't too surprised with my selection. I LOVE pineapple! On the way back we talked about jobs (or the lack there of) and about moving in together. It's still a scary proposition for me. But, at the same time it seems to make sense. I'm there almost all the time as is and honestly I hate not being with her. Even so, everything seems so easy with her. And we go from stupid to serious in the blink of an eye without much middle ground. All the stuff that I thought might cause a fight we've talked about without ANY fighting. And the only "fights" we have are about station selection in the car.

This morning I was supposed to go for a hill ride with Bill. A guy from the bike shop who, like me, started riding to lose weight. So far I think he's down 20 or so pounds. But the rain is here and thus. No ride. So instead I'm writing. Hopefully the rain will stop soon.

Lazy day, sort of

Today was pretty lax. I didn't get out of bed until 9 or so and even then I was in NO hurry to do anything. But Kristi had to go babysit for Abby her niece. This was mainly because her sister is still in the hospital after having Evelyn yesterday afternoon. Kristi was soooo happy when we went to see her yesterday evening! I think she could have held her all night. But, we couldn't stay all night and left about 9:30.

So anyway, back to today. I started reading "Murder on the Orient Express" this afternoon for school. And messed around trying to get a gps watch to work, unsuccessfully. And then about 5:30 Judi came over to go to the Time Trials in Cleves. She'd never done it before and was apparently so nervous she thought she might throw up before hand. Pretty picture right? Jaime from the MS ride last year was there as well tonight. Anyway, Judi was second off the line as they start everyone in 30 second intervals. Jaime was 6th I think. And I was 9th. Everytime I do these I always think "what the fuck do I do this for!". It's always painful, ALWAYS!

Judi finished just under 30 minutes at 29:55. Don't remember what Jaime did. And I set a new PR for myself at 28:54. Of course I did a 27:30 or so last year. And I'm trying to rationalize the difference by telling myself that it's because I don't have aerobars this year. But I think it's because I'm in worse shape. Who knows? The aerobars would shave a good minute off I'm sure. At least that's what they did last year. And then because I'm an enormous dork I just had to create a nice little excel program to calculate average mph and plot to a graph (seen below).

After the tt excitement it started to rain while we were waiting for our times. Since Judi and I rode down we were going to get wet. But, Jamie and Mary came to the rescue and let us put our bikes in their cars and drove us back to my house. All in all we got about 26 miles in. 5 from my house to the course, 11 for a pre-race course check and then 10.2 for the race.

Good Ride + Good Friends + Kristi = Great Weekend!

So Friday I was scheduled for a 45 minute swim. Figured I'd get it in after class in the morning. Unfortunately my classes had given me a headache. It didn't seem all that bad by the time I got to the pool at the rec center but after 15 minutes my head was pounding. The next 15 minutes was brutal and I felt dizzy and sick. Sooo, I cut the workout short and headed back home.

I slept for an hour or two and took some advil once home. The combination got rid of the headache. And it was then off to work the Coke booth at our local church festival (St. Al's). Kristi and I were only supposed to work from 4:30 to 7 but wound up staying until a little after 9. I had the pleasure of getting all the drinks from the truck to the booth and taking care of all the ice as well. Kristi was taking money along with my mom and some friends of my parents were helping out as well.

From the festival Kristi and I went to Zip Dip for some ice cream. I threatened to get a face cone but she said she'd never talk to me again if I did. So I got Jimmies (i.e. sprinkles) instead. When I ordered Jimmies she asked what the hell Jimmies were. I was in shock! Her sister used to work at an ice cream place and she didn't know what Jimmies were. Apparently I'm old school because everyone calls them sprinkles now. But, I will continue to call them Jimmies if for no other reason than to annoy Kristi.

When saturday rolled around I was supposed to lead a 50 mile ride out of Bicycles and More. But, nobody showed. Judi had said something about her and Sandi doing a 50 miler out route 8 at 9:30 or 10 so I gave her a call to see if I could meet up with them. As it turned out Sandi chickened out but Amanda decided to join instead. As I rolled into the lot Amanda was already there waiting and Judi came in a little while later. At this point I already had 20 miles in for the morning. Because I road from home to the shop and then downtown.

Rt.8 is an extremely boring ride down along the river. It's shrouded in trees on both sides and is mostly flat with some rolling hills. I don't think any one of us actually enjoy that ride. But it's always better with friends. And I hadn't ridden with Amanda since some time last October I guess. So the tally on the Rt.8 portion was 55miles at an 18.3 mph pace. And I was tired when we were done.

But, no rest for the weary because I had to get to Kristi's another 5 or so miles away. And of course in order to get there I have to climb from the river all the way up Gilbert to MLK. It's probably a 2 mile uphill stretch that was miserable by myself. Eventually I got there and we had to leave ASAP so we could go back to the festival to work again. Fortunately she drove us back to my house so I could get a shower and then we were off.

Again I wound up hauling the 50 lb bags of ice and all the pop from the truck to the booth. Not exactly what I wanted to be doing but oh well. Right at 7 it started raining, bad. And because our booth was at the bottom of the parking lot it flooded! And we got all wet. But, we got to leave at that point because our scheduled time was up and it wasn't that busy.

Sunday it was off to Kings Island with the FREE tickets I had gotten from working the festival. This was Kristi's birthday present since she'd been talking about wanting to go for some time. We started off at Top Gun and then Son of Beast. We didn't have to wait for either ride which was nice and we got seats at the front. Which are, of course, the only seats to have. From SOB we headed to the Drop Tower. Drop Tower is badass because you just dangle there 26 stories in the air before it throws you at the ground! And it was WAY outside Kristi's comfort zone. But she enjoyed it afterwards. We hit all the big rides including the 2 new ones Firehawk and Diamondback. We had front seats on all of them including The Beast! Which is possible the best ride EVER! The only downer on the day was that the backwards racer was replaced with another forward looking train and I was PISSED! It just wasn't the same.