Fall Leaves and Snow!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yep I said snow, we got to ride around in the snow with freezing rain! It was cold too, very cold!! We left Charlotte and it was 45 degrees and then we get to Boone and it is snowing and cold. I would have hated to have been at the Appalachian game Saturday!

We missed the peak of leaf season by about a week but it was still worth the trip! When we got on the parkway we stopped at a little high priced gift shop thing and the snow was thick enough a snow ball fight broke out. They actually had the parkway closed at Mt Mitchell because of the snow, we had to turn around. Then we went down Rt80 and be the time we got down to I-40 it was in the fifties!

As far as riding my bike on the parkway? That would be a tough ride! You will either be going up hill or down hill, no in between! Long climbs and very steep? I need to give that some thought. The campgrounds are at about every 50 miles so you would only need to ride 50 a day, but it would be a tough 50! We did see 2 tough cyclist up there riding and they were out of the saddle and climbing! With no gear they were still struggling!

By the time we got down to Asheville it was sunny and 50 degrees again. We hit Bloomfield's and then made it back to the house. A long day it was but it was fun. Now for some pictures!!! I love the mountains, if I could I would move there tomorrow. But....I can't so I will enjoy several trips up there every year..... 

snow baby!

right before the snow ball fight

2 cyclist-tough guys for sure

good color in this shot

Linville Falls

Linville Falls

Fall Leaves....................

As long as I can remember I have wanted to go check out the leaves in the mountains! Every fall comes and goes and I say lets go check out the leaves. Then we never take the time or make plans to go. This year is different!

We are leaving around 6:30 tomorrow morning! Heading up to N Wilkesboro and coming down the Blue Ridge parkway! Yes I am taking the camera, I am going to shoot a thousand pictures. After we get down to Asheville and get off the parkway we are going to come down 26 to the house.

For my wife's birthday present we are stopping at Bloomfield's. If you haven't heard of it Goggle it. They have about everything you can can think of. As far as pottery, dishes and all kinda unique stuff. She loves the place and I can even get into it. The kids love the toy section and I like all the antiques. Believe it or not I ain't even taking the bicycle!

I am going to use the trip for "recon"! I have always wanted to ride a road bike down the parkway so after I drive down the thing I will know if I still want too. I know a few people who do it regularly and they like it so I know I will, I just want to check it out.

Monday I will have some pictures of the parkway with all the tree's and such. Have a good weekend, sooner or later we will get back to the bike. Right now with everything going on, Cody's knee and physical therapy. The bike has taken a back seat, but not for long!!!!!!!!!

The Big 40..................

Today is my wife's 40th birthday! I am now married to a woman in her 40's, never thought that would happen! I always thought 40 was old, even though I passed that milestone 3 years ago.

To me it wasn't that big a deal! She ain't to happy about it. I have been trying to tell her it's not, but she isn't buying it. I think 50 will be the one that gets me. So anyhow I thought I would cheer her up and put one of my favorite pictures of her up here. You have to love a woman who wears a sun dress with water proof boots while she feeds the chickens!!!!!! Happy Birthday Karen, I am glad to have you around!!!!!!

my baby......Karen

Time To Bring Out The Lights...............

Yep, it's getting dark way early now so I think we have a night ride scheduled for tomorrow night. Kelly called yesterday and is ready to ride! I look forward to the dark woods this time of year. It's exciting to me to be out there after dark. You just become more aware of what's going on! Guess what nothing is happening that ain't happening during the day. You just feel like something is watching you!

I have been by myself during the day and felt like I was being watched! I was in SC a few years ago in the middle of winter. 34 degrees, and managed to get separated from the group I was with. I had stopped because my bike wouldn't shift to the little front chain ring. By the time I got going I missed a turn and kept on going. When I figured that out it was to late! We were all at a new trail system and thank goodness I had a map! When I got to the car they were all leaving. It was to cold . Me being super human I decided to ride a second lap the way they had gone. I was in the middle of nowhere SC way back in the woods! It was creepy but man that was a blast! Just knowing I had the whole place to myself was really cool.

I wished they had kept those trails open, I really liked them. Carolina Adventure World in Winnesboro SC (it is off road park) thought they could draw in bicyclist too. It didn't work, they are in the middle of nowhere and it was just to far to draw people from Charlotte or Columbia. When they opened the trails nobody used them so they gave them to the motorcycles. But I got the chance to ride them! Only about 10 people can say that!

That day though it was cold and the middle of the week. I was the only person besides the 3 people working that where even on the property. It was almost surreal being that far out in the woods without so much as a bird chirping! All you could hear was your own breathing.

That's why I like to ride at night..... Have you ever tried a solo night ride???? Think about it.................

It Get's Away Sometimes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Time that is! With my wife out of town last week I was a busy dude! I guess I need to tell her how much she really is needed around the house. I did all kinda stuff I just assumed got done. Never given much thought to how it got done. Now she's back, thank goodness!

new oven.........

First thing I missed talking about happened to be our new oven. We have been in our house for 13 years and the oven finally fell out. Lowes it was, 18 months same as cash. We got a new oven and dishwasher. I put in the oven but the dishwasher, I want help for that. I don't need a water leak in the house.

Yes it works too! Karen cooked a peach cobbler as soon as I hooked it up! Now we gonna cook up a storm.

How about this shot, I never go through downtown Charlotte or around downtown, but I went that way to the airport Friday. So on the way I got this shot of the skyline. I was going to get one from the other side of town on the way home but ended up going the other way. Maybe I will get back over there before long. All the shots you see with the stadium in the skyline are taken from the west side of Charlotte.

I Need A Buyer...........

Yep, I think I have figured out how I am going to put that wooden Renovo bicycle in my garage! I have a plan! Now I need a buyer! We used to ride dirtbikes all the time before we got back into bicycles. When you ride dirt bikes you have a lot of stuff to carry with you when you head to the track. So of course we have a box trailer!

6x16ft

Not just your everyday run of the mill box trailer. Of course I had to have the top of the line Pace Arrow. This thing came with the e-tract floor, that way you put the bikes anywhere in the trailer. It has the 3ft side door solid rear door (1-ton limit) dual wheels trailer brakes. You name it!

Now it's turned into extra storage and I haven't used it in awhile. It just costs to much to ride and I worry about the kids getting hurt. Now I know I am getting old when I say something like that. I raced and have ridden since I was 7 years old, and have been hurt many times!

We can keep riding, I have another trailer we can use so I won't be without. We just don't need this trailer. So we need a buyer......

I Feel Better.................

Yesterday would not have been a good day for a post. I started a post, it was so negative I just hit the delete button and waited till today to try again! I don't know if it was the fact we had company all weekend and I was just worn out or what but I was not in a good mood. I am finally old enough I realized the best option was to keep my mouth shut!

I am glad I did too. About half way through writing I re-read it and thought man there isn't much else I can bitch about and if I was reading this blog I would not be interested and reading it any longer. Sometimes you have bad days and sometimes you have the good days. Today is a good day!!

OK, for the weekend as I said we had company and I really enjoyed seeing our friends, there dog not so much! He was a good little dog but he got on my nerves. We have a little dog and he did not like having company! They came and went and took good care of the dog but I was glad to see him go. I will be glad to have them back but no dog!!!

So as I said last week we had the 12 hour race Saturday and Cody went with his buddy Austin and watched all day. I got up and went for a little while just to watch, kinda had a small turnout! 3 years ago Kelly John and I did this race, we finished 2nd in our group and 7th overall out of all the teams that competed. The entry fee was 40 per person. Now he has raised it to 70 a person! Wonder why he had a low turnout! If you haven't noticed we are in a recession.

Sorry about no pictures I forgot my camera this morning and didn't want to wait till tomorrow to put up a post...............Peace...............

SunShine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On my shoulders! Makes me happy.....Now that you made the mistake of reading this blog that song will be stuck in your head all day. Just a little joke I thought I would play on you today. It's called mind control! Not that I am bragging but I have that super power!! I try to keep it under wraps that I have super power but sometimes it's hard to be humble!

As you might be able to tell I have no direction this morning. Just typing along and wasting time. We have the Tree shaker race this weekend, I ain't going, but we still have it. Tomorrow A.M. I plan to hit the road and knockout a few miles, nothing as hard as last weekend but still plan to put a few hours in. I plan on taking Chase somewhere but nothing solid there either.

Sometimes I worry myself to death over finalizing all my weekend plans, sometimes I don't. This weekend looks like one of the ones I don't. I plan on church again this weekend and know that's a certain time. But overall-no direction. I guess it's because we haven't had the sun in a week and just seeing it makes me happy!!!!!! See ya next week.......................................

Mighty Model A................

About 6-8 months ago I stumbled across the blog:  http://www.365daysofa.com/ . I have made mention of it a few times. Well guess what 365 days are over! That sucks, I have enjoyed it and will miss it.

The guy drove an 81 year old Model A for a year as his daily driver, rain snow sleet and heat. He went through it all! It has really been a good read and he kept on top of the blog every day. Nothing gets on my nerves worse than somebody who starts a blog and then just stops with no explanation.

Amazingly he only broke down and had to call a wrecker on 2 occations. You would think a car 81 years old would have been all kinda problems! That was not the case, I guess I under estimate older cars. To be honest I am kinda jealous that I ain't doing something like that. Yes I drive my little S10 and it is "older" but it is still a newer vehicle. So that doesn't count.

The kicker is he lives in Northern Michigan and has driven it all winter and summer for a solid year. So when I say snow I mean snow. He even drove it from MI to Hershey Pennsylvania for the big swap meet they have every fall. He even stayed on all back roads for the entire trip! What we can drive in 4 hours usually takes him about 7 hours.

Anyhow, I am going to miss the read. Again, I am glad he kept the blog up to date and so detailed. If you ever want to check it out just hit the link above. I liked it....................... 

Hump Day..................

Hump day blues! So far the weather this week has been a total mess, hence I haven't done anything but drink beer. I've had so much beer I don't want anymore beer. That will make my wife happy! Sometimes I get the feeling she don't like me drinking beer all the time! Not really sure why? LOL..

Oh well, it finally stopped raining so maybe I can get out this afternoon. Although we have company coming this weekend, I ought to help clean the house. I can do that right after I get home from riding. That might workout! If not the beer store isn't very far from the house. If I am going to be in trouble for not cleaning I might as well be in trouble for drinking too..

OK yesterday I made the comment about getting ready for a race, if I decide I want to race. Well I found something I like the looks of. Trans-Iowa

Look that up on the world wide web. You race a 335 mile loop around Iowa all on gravel roads no less! But the real kicker to it is you have to do it totally self supported and you only have 36 hours to do it in! At the start they give you a cue sheet with directions to the next check point. When you get there, within a time limit you get the directions for the next leg. If you don't make the cutoff your race is over right there. Then you have to find your own way back to the start!

You basically have to maintain a 10mph average, with about a 3 hour window for rest over the 36 hour time limit. What do you get when you finish? NOTHING! Sound like fun.   

Getting Better.....................

The legs are getting better! I know where I stand just by how long recovery is after a hard ride. Right now I am at the 2 day stage in my training process. Training, for what you ask? That's a good question, I just want to get in race shape so if something comes along I want to do; I will be able to do! Does that make sense? In my little mind it makes perfect sense. Plus my bud Kelly is working a real job again and getting slack on his seat time. Next time we ride I want to make him hurt! That's what good friends are for!!!

We have the winter short track series coming up, I doubt I ride it though. Not a big fan of short track racing and we have fall cyclocross which I sure as hell ain't doing. So my main goal is getting ready for the Southern Classic series next year. I like cross country racing over a short track race with a bunch of candy ass road racers who are scared of real Mtn Bike racing!

Any moron can ride around in a field and jump over barriers! I say that but if you want to see some funny crashes, go on YouTube and search out muddy cyclcross racing. It will make you laugh! No offence to all my candy ass road riding buddies.........LOL........

By the way we are getting rain again, it's been about 2 weeks, so I guess we need it. Although it ain't working with my recovery time line. I need to ride tonight so I have my fingers crossed. Hope it clears out soon.

No Pain No Gain..............

I hate that saying, I am sitting here with my legs still hurting from the effort they put forth on Saturday. How I am going to gain from this pain still eludes me. Right now it is keeping me from going very hard at all.

Saturday we went down to Pageland SC and hit the hills. Yes they have hills in SC, long hills. Every time I tell people I am heading south to ride hills they look at me funny. We did 50 miles with about 8000ft of climbing! That will make any body's legs hurt. I only got a few pictures, Alex and I climb just a little faster than Glen so we would wait at the top for him. Then as soon as he would get to the top we would say "lets go". He caught on to that about the 3rd time! We got a laugh out of it.

Next, I woke up Saturday am and found my mail spread down the middle of the road! "Mailbox down" again! I go through this about twice a year. The road comes over a hill and goes to the left right at my driveway. So about every 6 months I am putting my mailbox back together. Of course everybody says I need to get a brick mailbox. Why? I ask! If I do that then I am going to have twice as much to clean up! I have this down to a science. One trip to Lowes and $40.00 later I have the works. Of course I use the same hole.

Renovo................

I have a plan! OK I need to fill ya in on this, wooden bicycles! I started this post and realized I had not posted about the wooden handmade bicycles on here. I did that review on our company blog and hadn't even mentioned it here. What was I thinking??? You have to check this out..

Handmade per order,or should should I say, per deposit. They don't even start production before they get your deposit! Then when your build comes up the rest is due before the build begins. Renovo is a company out of San Francisco CA, checkout their website:  http://www.renovobikes.com/

How can I work in the building business and not have a wooden bicycle! I have 10 bikes and never even heard of these guys. Then my engineer at work came across them and brought it to my attention. I have to have one of these. Just look at the detail and the care they take to produce them. The kicker to it is they are not art only, they art you can ride! They are just as strong as carbon fiber! No kidding, checkout the stats on their website, these are the bomb!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now We Can Talk...................

About the weekend! What a difference a day makes, now I can talk about my plans! Wednesday is to early to talk about it but Thursday I start to get fired up about the weekend. I am like a little kid, every Thursday I get excited about the 2 days of unlimited possibilities! I only work to make enough money to pay and play.

You got to pay the people, and playing takes money. Those are the only reasons I can think of that justify going to work 5 days a week, it ain't cause I want too.

 This weekend I am going to do a long road ride and plan to take the wife over to the lake and play on the canoe. Should be fun, hopefully the wind will be down so she will enjoy it more. A canoe is not fun if the wind is bad.

I love the fall and look forward to the change in the weather every year, my one complaint. The earlier sunsets! Yesterday I got home and hit the road as quick as possible, the sun gets to an angle that I just don't feel comfortable being on the road. The only time of year it's a concern is fall. To many people are on the way home from work and having the sun in their eyes and not me is not my favorite thing.

As you can see I got home at 6:45 and look at the sun on the tree line. At 7:30 it's dark these days so no need to push my luck. I got stuck out late last week and got home after dark, so I am trying to avoid that happening again. When time changes it will be time to just wait and do the night road riding! Looking forward to it actually....................

Mid Week.............

It seems like I always have a hard time coming up with something on a Wednesday. It's to early to start talking about what I might do on the weekend and I am usually tired of talking about the previous weekend. The kid is doing fine and I haven't been on my bike yet this week so it is pretty much business as usual. We did go buy gold plated groceries the other night , but I know you don't want to hear about Wal-mart.

So I thought I would share some random pics with ya. The first one is of my wife, in the ditch moving a turtle off the road. She was afraid it was going to get ran over, so we turned around so she could move it.

Next we have Lake Twitty, this lake is about a mile from my house and we never use it. It's the drinking water for Monroe, you can only fish there. No swimming or skiing allowed. But we do have a canoe and a kayak and a small fishing boat. So why the hell ain't I using this. Don't get me wrong, we have used it before but we just don't use it like we should. I guess we stay to busy doing other things.

I do want to get over there when the leaves start changing. I know I can get some good pictures. Most of the shore line has no houses to clutter it up. Rather large lake also.

Day to Day.....................

Well the kid is trying! Saturday he wasn't very motivated and started to cough a little, after being put under you have to watch out for pneumonia. Much to his disliking it was time to get "motivated" the wife had to put on her nurse hat and stop being mom for awhile. If he would have been in the hospital still they would have had him up and moving so that's what we did!

He wasn't to happy about it, I swear he has been fighting a touch of depression. When you are as active as he is and have something like this happen to you, it's pretty traumatic. He went from riding and racing his bike, playing soccer and going non-stop, to STOP. All in the span of 10 seconds! If you have kids you understand what I mean when I say "I wish it had been me instead of him". So anyhow Saturday just getting up and moving he was worn out.

living room/bedroom

He had a few of his girl friends drop by and say hi, that seemed to cheer him up a little bit. Now this part is gonna make you laugh! The biggest motivator to get up and get moving was when he found out the 2 grandma's were gonna take turns watching him this week! He didn't like that, he was looking forward to some peace and quite. Instead he has grandma watching over his shoulder!

Sunday he figured out how to get up off the floor with no help and he came outside and hung out and started getting back to the old Cody. Since he was outside and looking for something to do I put him to work! The front grill on my little blue S10 has been faded out every since I got the truck 2 years ago. I have been meaning to paint it, just never got around too it. So I gave him the job! I pulled the truck up in the garage gave him a roll of tape, got the stool for him and told him to get to it! He was tickled to have something to do and did a damn good job off it.

new black paint next is the bumper.

Halfway through the job he ran out of paint so we loaded up and went to Lowes for another can. That trip, the fresh air and having a project kicked his but. He slept good Sunday night and yesterday he even had a smile on his face. Things are looking up!!!!!!

Trying To Get Back To Normal.........

OK, it's been a few days and we need to catch up! We had Cody's surgery Thursday am and he got to come home Friday. My house has 3 doors and all of them have steps to get in the house, that was the first hurdle! Next his bedroom is on the 2nd floor so now he is sleeping in the living room floor, I brought his mattress down stairs and hooked him up. The up side to this is now he has the biggest TV in the house now!! He would rather have his privacy back but for now he can deal with it.

So everything went pretty good he now has a new knee and a bottle full of pain pills. We follow up this coming Friday with the knee doctor and then we start physical therapy after. That's gonna be a real eye opener for the kid. When they say just relax that's when you better get ready for the pain! No I haven't told him about that, I will let him figure that out.

I got a few pictures from the surgery they take them with the camera they use for the doc to see what he is doing. They don't show me to much without someone there to tell me what I am looking at. But what the hell when have you seen the inside of a knee lately.

going in behind the knee cap..

where there should be an ACL

new ACL !!!!!

Pretty neat ain't it. My wife the nurse understands this but I don't. I just have to take her word for "it looks good" To me it just kinda gross's me out.............................