…and I was the only one to show up. Oh well, managed to get in seven miles on my hybrid. Some how I was able to average ten mph going into the 25 mph wind, with gusts up to 38 mph. I was pretty toasty this ride with my new gloves, skull cap, and shoe covers. Even though it was in the mid-twenties, I was still sweating, guess I didn’t need the skull cap after all. 😛

…and I was dropped in the first couple miles. It was a cold and windy day and I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I showed up for my first group ride. A couple guys set out on their mountain bikes while I waited for the other group to get set (apparently the “A” group). Once everyone was ready, we were off and at a blistering pace. I held on at 20+ MPH for a little over two miles and finally fell off the back. Luckily I was able to catch up to the mountain bike duo (after missing a turn and turning around) and had a nice 18 mile ride at a decent pace. By the time we got back, my hands were cold and my feet where numb, but it was a lot of fun and I can’t wait for next weeks ride (unless its snowing again!)

The house remodeling project is coming along. The walls are framed and electrical is slowing getting in place. Monday night I ordered the doors and picked up a few dry wall tools. Since I was heading to Home Depot to order the doors, I figured I would order the tools online and they would be ready to be picked up when I got there (or so I thought). The door ordering process took a lot longer than I thought, being a software guy I saw how inefficient the ordering process was and how I would’ve changed it to make it a smoother, faster process. Once the doors were ordered, I headed over to the customer service desk to get my tools. Apparently the e-mail indicating the tools were ready to be picked up was not really true. The lady at the desk called someone over who went to go get what I ordered. I paid for the doors, updated my home address, and waited for the guy to return.

I waited a few minutes and then a few more, I got an e-mail asking to fill out a survey for how the order pick-up process was. Five minutes later I decided to fill it out and give some pretty poor scores. Ten minutes later I got up and started pacing, wondering what was taking so long. I heard the customer service lady call the guy on the phone and she said he should be coming along soon. After another ten minutes I decided to give him a few more minutes and I would be returning my items. Finally, I saw him coming out of an aisle, with a shopping cart with the four items I ordered in it. What is the point of having an in-store pick-up if I could get the items five times faster than the guy who got them?

Susan and I spent this past weekend at a bed and breakfast in Allegan. It was a little tricky getting there as the GPSs didn’t quite get us to the right location, but we eventually found it and had a really good time. It was a little cold, but we made our way over to downtown Holland to have a look around. The breakfast was good, and I wouldn’t mind going back for a nice, relaxing weekend. We even made it back in time so I could put a new garage door opener in…

A couple months back my garage door opener wasn’t working and I determined the drive gear needed replacing. I headed over to an over head garage door place and picked up a kit and had it installed in less than an hour. Everything was working again! Last week, the other opener was doing the same thing. Figuring it was the drive gear, I picked up a new one, installed it, and… the opener decided to shear it in a matter of minutes. That opener wasn’t much to speak of and apparently openers only have a life expectancy of ten years…

I had read it takes on average five hours for a novice to install an opener. I managed to get it installed in less time then that and with out too much trouble. I was hoping to re-use the safety eyes and wall push button of the old one, but eventually ended up replacing them. Unfortunately we didn’t get the extender brackets for the safety eyes, so I used the old ones… It works, but the lights are facing the bracket and it was a bit tricky to see if the beam was making it across. Everything seems to be in good working condition, hopefully I won’t have to replace the mine anytime soon!

Swapping the sculpt work-out for some cardio today. Hit up the mountain bike trails while I could… checked out the North trail, its a good warm-up! …and yes I hit the 3 foot drop again and survived! 😀

Went for a ride in the woods after work today. Was feeling frisky and hit the tech loop a second time. After nearly going over the three foot drop the first time (and bailing out at the last second), I opted to hit it, man that was fun! Also attempted a few more skinnies (logs with a flat side to ride on) than normal, all and all a great day for singletrack! As for P90, I managed to get the ab-ripper done, following a viewing of Survivor. 🙂

Hit the trails today on the mountain bike… wider is better! Saw REI had a great deal on a set of 2.2″ Continental Trail King tires. Tested them out today and they are pretty sweet. Got half-way through the main loop and I was a little more tired than usual; looked over at my front shifter and saw it was on 2 (looked down to confirm that I was actually running on the middle ring)… funny thing was my climbs seemed go smoother than normal. Figured, what the hell and finished the loop off in the middle ring! After getting home did the ab-ripper workout and that also seemed to be a tad easier!

Completed… threw some mountain biking in as a warm-up. Glad I spent some time putting a new chain and adjusting the derailleur last night… no problems on the trail. Even managed to hit the technical loop, almost went off a 3 foot drop, til I decided I better get some suspension before I try that!

So I heard there was some pretty sweet mountain bike trails in the area and I wanted to check them out… only problem was I didn’t have a mountain bike. I managed to find a used one last week. I gave it a 10 minute test ride, talked the guy down 20 bucks, and tossed it in my car. Once I got it home, the first thing I did was get the seat post unstuck. With the seatpost removed I gave it a good dousing of WD-40, a little bit of grease and was able to slide it up and down with out a problem. I was glad I didn’t have to resort to extreme measures to get it out.

I’ve come to the realization that most bikes can do without a kick-stand, especially if the kickstand in question won’t stay up going over bumps. That was the first thing to go! The next thing were the metal pedals… they were in pretty rough shape and I swapped those out for some bigger plastic ones I had sitting on the shelf.

My next step was to take apart the headset and see what condition the steerer was in. Not sure how the previous user was using the bike, but there was sure a crap-ton of dirt that came out. The steerer had some rust (not as bad as the seatpost) and got a healthy douse of WD-40 as well.

Once the fork was re-installed, I needed to adjust the front brake. For some reason the quick release was difficult to use, after some tweeking I managed to get that working (important for wheel removal so I can load it into my car!) With the front end tuned, I started working on the drive train.

The cassette was in pretty rough shape, I set that aside to soak in some degreaser while I started looking at the crank. Luckily I had a crank puller and was able to get the crank arms off. I didn’t have a tool for the bottom bracket, but I plan to pick one up this week so I can take that out and get some grease down there.

After getting everything cleaned up, I started putting it back together. During my test ride I noticed the back brake wasn’t very effective. The pads were pretty wore down, but I figured I could tweek it to have a mostly functioning back brake instead of a kind of working back brake. Once I got the wheel mounted I gave it a quick spin and noticed it would start rubbing the pads… there was a major wobble, not sure exactly how a wheel gets quite that bad…

I’ve heard wheel truing is more of an art and decided to let the pros take a look at it. The bike shop down by the river took a little longer than I had hoped, but man they did a great job with that wheel. Yesterday I was able to get the brakes adjusted and derailleurs dialed in.

Today, I headed up to Rotary Park for a true “break-in” of the bike. There are quite a few trails up there and I had a helluva good time exploring the different areas of the park. The bike performed pretty well considering the state it was in when I bought it. It didn’t give me much issue except for a certain gear ratio… I think this might have to do with the poor shape of the cables, but a quick barrel adjustment and it seemed to give me less of an issue. I’m pretty pumped to hit the trails again! Pictures of the bike can be found over here.

Only a few days until Rev3 Knoxville and I’m pretty excited to be racing my first olympic distance triathlon. In other fitness news, Susan completed ANOTHER 1/2 marathon over the past weekend! Learning from my experience last year, I opted to not try a 1/2 marathon, but instead signed up for the mini-marathon (a whopping 2.6 miles!)

We got to the race a little later than I would have liked and managed to catch the last bus to the start line. My race started at 6:45 and I managed to get to the start line a little after 7. I felt like a poser for starting in corral 11 for the marathon, but oh well, it was still neat. Doing the mini-marathon did have its perks, I got to the finish line and had first dibs on all the post-race refreshments, I even got in line for a finisher photo! 🙂

Once I finished my bag of pretzels and a water, I headed back to the car for a change of clothes… I now know how superman must feel changing in a phone booth… a porta-potty can’t be much different (well a little smellier I bet…) I tried to make it back to see Susan start the race, but it took longer to get to the start then I thought and I caught the last few corrals going…

I asked Susan before the race where she could use some extra encourgement, and she said around mile 12. I headed off in that direction and waited for her… I was sitting in the shade watching the runners attempt one of the last hills of the race. Not very many of them looked happy. I also saw two guys running and juggling and a group of people supporting a dragon. After quite some time, I started to get a little chilled and decided to walk along the race course.

I figured Susan had to be coming around soon, and found a nice spot in the sun and enjoyed a band that was playing just across the street. A few minutes later, Susan popped up and I gave an encouraging shout and started clapping… only to not be heard by Susan… 🙁 I walked alongside of her for awhile, wondering if she was going to notice me or not. Once we got up to the corner, she took a double take and realized it was me. We had a chat about how she was doing and I tried to give her some encouragement… she only had less then a mile to go.

In the past month I’ve spent a couple quality weekends helping my dad and his renovation project… Things ramped up quite a bit when my mom suffered some health issues and we needed to get things done… quickly! I’m slowly becoming an expert at insulation, drywall, tiling, painting, and various other home improvement projects. Something must have rubbed off, because I’ve gone ahead and started a couple of projects around our house as well.

From what I’ve seen/heard the average cost of an Invisible brand dog fence installation is ~$2000. Looking to save some green, we decided to do it ourselves. After a bit of research, I had found a site that sold a very similar kit (made by the same people as the Invisible brand dog fences) for under $300. Wanting to make the installation easier, I had wanted to rent a trench digger that automatically buried the wire. Somehow I was talked out of doing it this way, and needed to come up with another plan.

After buying a riding lawn mower not too long ago (which is very, very sweet) and being a member of the Sears shopper rewards program, I had about 25 bucks I could use at Sears. I thought I would use this money towards an electric edger/trencher. Edging with a weedwacker works, but I had wanted an edger anyway and this seemed like a good opportunity… or so I thought.

When I went to pick out the lawn mower, the employees at Sears were super helpful and friendly. That was not the case when I went to pick up the edger. Wanting to get an early start on Saturday, I stopped into Sears after Susan’s award dinner (5 years at Dow Corning!) I got there about 15 minutes before the store closed, but knew exactly what I wanted. The person who was “helping” me wasn’t very friendly and didn’t seem to be very cooperative. Long story short, I went to checkout and when I told him I wanted to use my shopper reward points he said I needed my PIN number… which I had no clue of, but I could reset it on-line… I wasn’t exactly happy about this, because that was the only reason I was buying this thing, particularly at Sears…

After a quick skim through the manual, I had the edger trenching in no time. I soon found out the directions for “locking” the extension cord weren’t very good and the cord kept unplugging itself from the unit. After messing around with it, I finally got it to stay in as I was trenching around our yard… this process took 4 or 5 hours to finish. I mounted the wall unit and started dragging wire around the yard, when I realized we weren’t going to have enough.

The box says the kit was good for 25 acres, but I failed to see the small print that said additional wire/flags would be required. Luckily they had the same type of wire at Lowe’s and we were able to continue with installation. Once everything was wired, we tested the system, made a few tweaks and started burying the wire. Our grass on the one side was pretty viney and I was having a lot of trouble getting the wire to the bottom of the trench.

I pulled out my new fangled trenching device and was able to bury the wire coming from the wall unit to the outside loop (the cross wire). By this time it was getting dark and I left the rest of wire burying for the next day. It took another 4 or 5 hours to bury the wire, using lawn staples and caulk to go across the driveway… I was happy to see a green light on the wall unit when all was said and done.

We wanted to take training really slowly with Waldo, I figured once he gets running, he would probably being going fast enough to run right through it. The first couple days we had him on his leash and went towards the boundary flags until the collar beeped. We used “retreat” to turn and run towards the inside. This went really well and I was ready for an off-leash trial… not sure if Waldo was though… He was doing good, fetching the ball and following me around the yard. He started doing his circles, then figure 8’s and started going faster. Sure enough he hit the boundary… he let out a cry and just stood on the other side… I was happy he didn’t run off into the neighbors yard, like he usually does. I managed to get his collar off and decided that was good for today and brought him inside.

The next day we went out and did the same thing, this time however when we were walking around the house, he slowly made his way to the boundary… he heard that beep and turned around and jogged towards the inside… he got a lot of praise for that… success was at hand!

The other project I’m working on is getting our basement/garage into a more organized area. I’m putting together a workbench (hopefully pictures to come soon). I searched the internet and found some plans I liked and modified them using Google’s SketchUp software. Not having a truck, I knew lumber would be a pain to get home, but figured I could rent the Home Depot truck to get everything I needed.

So Monday I headed over there to find out the truck was being used by someone else… did I put off getting the lumber? pffsssh of course not, I did the next best thing… rented a U-Haul truck just down the road. Once I got the truck loaded up and heading home, I got the great idea of dropping a couple things off at Goodwill on the return trip.

I don’t recommend backing down our driveway in a 14′ U-Haul truck with no spotter, I managed to scrape a little paint off the truck on our mailbox… whoops! The other night I spent a bit of time cutting the 2×4’s to size. When I had about 3 cuts left (using my circular saw… yeah I need some real tools :P), our neighbor came over and offered me to use his stand which would have definitely helped to cut the boards. I really appreciated the offer, but like I said, I only had a few more cuts to do… I felt bad he hauled that thing over and didn’t use it, but he should have came over sooner! 😉

We did have a nice talk about what I was doing (I think its an unwritten rule to see what the neighbor is up to when they have their power tools out) and he wanted to know how the invisible fence was working. I did want to get my plywood cut to size, but figured I’ll wait until another day to do that as I told him I was just about done cutting…

I’ve also put together a makeshift bike stand… I still need to put a base on it (that will come from the 4’x8′ piece of plywood I need to cut) and hopefully I’ll get some pictures of that up on here as well. I really like my new bike and was sad to see the bike computer wasn’t working properly.

During one of my last rides I noticed the cadence sensor wasn’t picking up any information, but the speedometer was still working. I stopped and tried to fix it on the side of the road and quickly learned it’s not easy to clip in going uphill (totally biffed it on the road… nothing but my pride was damaged). Then the last time I took it out, I saw the speedometer wasn’t working nor the cadence sensor… I picked up a new battery and I think that solved one issue. I then realized the magnet for the speed sensor had moved and wasn’t crossing over the sensor, hopefully that fixes everything.

With the dog fence installation this weekend, I wasn’t able to get my Sunday ride in to see if everything’s fixed, but I’m hoping it is. With the weather to surely get cold/rainy/snowy out I had wanted to get a bike trainer I could use on the really nasty days. Bike Nashbar was having a sale and offered free shipping on all trainers and rollers. I opted for the rollers and they FINALLY came yesterday. Not sure why, but two days in a row FedEx had a “delivery exception” and didn’t even make an attempt to deliver to the house.

Once I got home, I took the dog out (who was really good) and decided I needed to give the rollers a try. Well, it’s like learning how to ride a bike all over again. With a trainer your bike is usually locked on the back axle, while on the rollers you are essentially balancing yourself on 3 drums. After a quick trial run I noticed the drum furthest back looked kind of funny. Sure enough there was a good size dent in the aluminum drum (heavy sigh…) It wasn’t long before I was packing the rollers back up and heading to the local FedEx office, hopefully my next set comes in on time and undamaged! 😀

This triathlon bug has really gotten a hold over me. For some unknown reason I decided to throw my name in the Escape From Alcatraz lottery at the end of September. Names were drawn the first week of October and somehow I managed to get picked. After planning the trip out and looking at the cost (entry fee is $405) I finally made the decision I wasn’t going to do it next year… This would have been the longest tri I would have attempted and I was feeling pretty bummed about getting picked and not going (although I want to do this race someday!)

I really wanted to attempt a tri around this distance and started looking around at different races around the same time (June). I stumbled upon the Rev3 page and remember reading about their race in Knoxville on www.BeginnerTriathlete.com. It didn’t take long for me to decide I wanted to do this race and Susan seemed pretty excited to spend a long weekend in the Knoxville area the first week of May. Today I made it official, I’m signed up and getting super excited!

Things are quite busy in the Jeske household as of late. Susan found out
about a job opportunity, with Corning, in Clarksville, TN. So, my job hunt
focus will now be going south (quite literally). I’ve applied for a dozen
or so jobs and have had two phone interviews already! Hopefully, I’ll hear
something back this week. Once I land a job down there, it’s two weeks at
DICE and I’ll be heading to Tennessee. Susan still has a few more months
left to finish her MBA and will probably move at the end of this year…

Scout’s become more adventurous towards Waldo, although she doesn’t
really care for him much. She will come down stairs nowadays, usually
begging for food. Most of her time is locked away in the dark on her
“throne”. We decided to scrape the toilet training, Scout seems set in her
ways and things weren’t progressing well. Waldo has gotten a lot bigger
(probably close to 50 lbs) and has lost a lot of fur… We took him in for
a haircut and he got shaved down… he actually doesn’t look quite so bad
anymore, maybe I’ll get a picture of him up soon.

We’ve had a couple races since the last time I posted… Susan’s still
doing good, finishing in the top of her age division. I managed to improve
my time a little bit in May, but for some reason the race earlier this
month was a tough one. The Pinconning CheeseTown challenge is coming this
weekend and I’m hoping to improve my pace time (even though it is a 5 mile
race 🙂 ). I’ve officially started my triathlon training last week… I’ve
already paid, so it’s too late to back out now! If you head over to the
gym page you can see my goals for each week in the three different sports,
so far, so bad… I didn’t quite make my goals last week… by the end,
there should be a lot of green on that table! 😀

Wanting to get the most out of my bike, we went to the bike store last
Thursday to pick up some clip-less pedals. For those not familiar clip-less
pedals are actually pedals you clip into (makes sense, doesn’t it?) You
wear these really spiffy looking shoes, that aren’t very much fun to walk
in, and become one with the bike. After installing the pedals, I tested
clipping in and out in the driveway and in front of the house… I was
ready, or so I thought… We hit the trails and the first stop we come to
I un-clip the right side and somehow started leaning to the left. Luckily,
I was able to get my left foot out in time before I hit the pavement… I
wasn’t so lucky last night. We were just about done with our ride and one
of the last stops, I really was one with the bike, all the way down to the
ground. I caught myself and didn’t really scrape my knee too bad… I
guess I must not have hurt myself that bad, as when Susan asked if I was
ok, she just kept going… I got back on my bike, only thing that really
was hurt was my pride. 😉