I “raced” in Thompsonville, MI for the 17th annual Peak 2 Peak mountain bike race for the first time this year. I wasn’t sure what to expect, it was set for the third Saturday in October, but I had a lot of fun. I signed up for the sport race which is two laps up and down Crystal Mountain.

Friday before the race, I packed the truck up and headed my way up north. The weather was looking iffy, so I ended up going by myself. I hit a few showers on the way and made a slight detour onto some dirt roads for a quick bathroom break. My bike ended up covered in dirt/mud, but by the time I got to the campground, the rain had washed all that away. I stayed at the Betsie River campground in a small cabin. I didn’t realize it had power, but was glad there was an electric space heater.

Saturday morning was very chilly, but I was up and out of bed before the sun came up. I noticed an all-day breakfast place that was nearby the race start on my through and decided that would be a great place to stop. I was not the only racer to stop in at Rosie’s Country Café and I was right, the food was pretty amazing.

Filled up with eggs, hashbrowns, biscuits and gravy I made my way over to the packet pick-up. Even though I was in the third wave, I still had plenty of time before the race started. I took my number plate (and pint glass) back to the truck to keep warm and think about what I was going to wear for the race.

I had brought my shoe covers, but decided against them, that was a mistake. I did a quick little warm-up and my fingers were freezing (even though I wore my long-fingered gloves) and my feet seemed to be okay. After my warm-up (and wishing I had grabbed a different set of gloves… I was worried about braking/shifting, especially on the downhills) I headed to the start line and we were off a few minutes later.

I wasn’t there to compete, but just enjoy the day… the sun was out, there was blue skies and the fall colors were fantastic. Everyone sprinted out of the gate, I wasn’t really interested in pushing super hard, but found a couple folks to ride with. One of those riders was on a Surly Karate Monkey and was a single-speed. Also riding a steel frame, he gave me props when I passed by.

My hands eventually warmed up, but my feet were very cold… I think the temperature hovered just under 40 degrees for the race. Going up the mountain was hard work, but the downhill made it worth it. I was hoping for a negative split, but my second lap was a few minutes slower than the first.
The ending chute was exciting, by the time I got there on my second lap the ground had been torn up and was very soft, I almost ate it on the final turn, but was happy not have an unplanned dismount (especially in front of the crowd).

In my mind, comparing this to the Soft Rock for Ore 2 Shore, they are about the same distance, but the singletrack in Peak 2 Peak make this race a lot more fun. I have a feeling if the weather cooperates, I’ll be doing this one again in the future!

Back in March, I signed up for a campsite in Young State Park just outside Boyne City for this last weekend. The Michigan Mountain Mayhem gravel race was on Saturday and we were hoping to take the boys on their first real camping trip. The weather turned out not so nice, so I ended up camping solo.

Originally, I had reserved a two night stay and was planning to take the big tent, but with sub 40 degree temps and chance of rain, Susan didn’t want to drive the boys up to stay Saturday night. I ended up taking the backpacking tent and tried to pack enough cycling gear to give me options for the race.

I left just before the kids’ bedtime and got into the campground around 10:00 pm. The drive was rain free until I turned off I-75 just north of Gaylord. When I pulled up to the ranger station near the park entrance, there were no park rangers around to get me checked in. There was a yellow phone I had to use to confirm my stay and site number.

The rain had let up a little, but it was still coming down at a steady rate as I was driving around trying to find site number 108. There were no posts with numbers at the front of each site, instead the numbers were painted on the ground. I had to make two loops and pull the map up on my phone before I was able to figure out which site was mine.

After watching the triple doppler radar, I waited for the rain to let up a little before setting up camp. I somehow managed to get the footprint, tent, and rainfly all orientated the correct way and the tent went up quickly without getting much water inside. As I was unloading the truck and putting stuff in the tent, somehow the pillow I brought had gotten wet. It was in the back next to the hatch and I think when I opened the hatch, a pool of water trickled in and got it wet.

I changed into my long underwear, used my sweatshirt as a pillow, cinched the sleeping bag around my face and managed to get a decent nights rest. Around 6:00 am, I really had to pee, but the desire to stay in the nice, warm, comfy sleeping bag outweighed that need. Eventually, I got out of bed 30 minutes later and was running to the bathroom.

I slipped back into my sleeping bag and fell asleep for another hour. It was another fight to start getting ready, but I put on the bike gear I thought I would need – socks, tights, bibs, jersey, wind-shell jacket, skull cap, buff, and my full finger gloves. I really should have brought my shoe covers and would have appreciated my winter gloves… my feet were numb for quite awhile after the race.

I drove to packet pick-up, got my number and headed back to the campsite. It was only a few miles away and there was a nice bike path for part of the trip I could use. I filled my water bottles (2) up with Tailwind Nutrition, ate the rest of my granola bars and headed back to the start line.

As soon as I started going, my hands were a little cold and I knew my feet were going to be miserable. I got to the start with plenty of time and had a nice little warm-up. Soon my wave was called up and we were off… I think I was the only one riding a road-type bike with road caliper brakes. I didn’t have any problems with the narrow tires (Hutchinson Sector 32s) except the sketchy/sloppy grass at the start/finish line.

The first few miles were pavement and I was pushing a good pace. Jumping behind and drafting where possible and trying to catch the next few riders. At one point, I passed another rider wearing a bright pink Flintstones jersey. He eventually caught up to me during one of the climbs, we chatted and saw each other a few times before the finish line. I was pretty happy to finish a few minutes ahead of him! 🙂

I’m not sure which race has more overall elevation gain, this one or Barry Roubaix, but there were some pretty long climbs during this race. The first big climb was almost a mile up a gravel road, then we hit Diablo’s mountain. I didn’t realize this was a paved climb, but it was still close to a 2 mile climb at a decent incline. After some fun descents down the “mountain”, we looped around and climbed the backside of the first climb (it was a lot more fun going down than up).

Overall the race went pretty smoothly, I was able to clear all the climbs, my nutrition held up, and I finished within 5 minutes of my goal time of 3 hours.

We were given a meal ticket for lunch, but there was a line, I was cold and figured I could find somewhere else to eat. I biked back to the campsite, grabbed my shower gear and took the best hot shower ever. I found a brewery I wanted to try, outside smelt amazing, but there was a Harvest Festival going on downtown and the place was packed. I took a quick cruise through the vendors to see if there were any food truck type places, nothing jumped out at met. I did see a stand selling hot chocolate and figured I would grab a cup after lunch.

I settled on subway, got a big sub, and watched the ongoings of the festival while I ate. Kids probably would have had fun, there were quite a few activities going on. After lunch, I went to get a hot chocolate, but they had run out… 🙁

Back at the campsite, I was undecided if I was going to stay the night. After a nice long nap (rudely awoken by a guy and his metal detector), I decided to head home and sleep in a nice warm bed. I had a great time and would love to do this race again (not sure I would tent camp it though 😉 ).

I think this past weekend was our first really nice weekend of the summer. I’m lucky to have a wife who green-lighted my trip to Caseville. Saturday I packed up the explorer with camping gear and my race gear. I headed out on side roads in the afternoon and was setting up my campsite in the early evening.

I stayed one night at the Sleeper State Park and it was awesome! Although there were a lot of people, the campground didn’t seem too crowded… the camp sites are a very generous size. After struggling to set my tent up and working up quite a sweat, I changed my shirt and headed to The Thumb Brewery for packet pick up. As I was getting my bib, I found out racers received free chips and salsa at the brewery.

I couldn’t pass up free chips and salsa and also had a delicious Italian hoagie. I headed over to a gas station to pick up a quick snack for after the race and made my way back to camp. Back at the campsite I read the first couple chapters of “Training with Power”. It was getting close to sunset and I decided I would take a tour of the campground. I also wanted to get a shake-down ride in, my road bike was giving me shifting problems and I hadn’t had a chance to ride it after I made some adjustments the night before.

I took a slow ride and noticed there were a couple hiking trails. After I was satisfied with the shifting performance, I headed out on a short trail that went through the woods from one end of the campground to the other. I saw a lot of squirrels, toads, and even a whitetail deer! Oh and there were mosquitoes… lots of mosquitoes. Across the road from the campground was a beach campers could access via sky-walk.

I made it to the beach just as the sun was coming down through the clouds. I stuck around for a little while, snapped a photo, then made my way back over the sky-walk. When I got back to camp, I realized a flashlight might have been a good idea… I downloaded an app for my phone that used the flash from the camera as a pseudo flashlight and that worked well enough.

The bathrooms at the campground could use some updating, but they weren’t horrible. I got back to the tent, organized my gear for the race and climbed into my sleeping bag pretty exhausted. I was just about to fall asleep, when I could hear big booms off in the distance… someone was setting off large fireworks.

I slept pretty well, although I was awoken around 3:00 am by some lady talking on the phone. All I managed to make out was hot dog buns and raccoons getting into them (sounded pretty serious!)

I was awake just before my alarm went off (6:00 am) thinking about what I should do next… it was chilly and hard to get out of the sleeping bag. I eventually rolled out of bed around 6:30ish. I had a clif bar for breakfast and before I knew it, it was 7:00 am and I was in my tri-suit, heading towards the race start. Being this close to the race was pretty much awesome, I think it was about a 5 minute drive.

I got to transition, set my gear up and headed over to body marking and chip pick-up. After getting numbers written on my arm, I put sunscreen on and that pretty much allowed my wetsuit to smear off the numbers… oh well!

After checking on my gear, I made my way back to the car for a few fig newton’s and the rest of my water. The athlete’s meeting was hard to hear for some reason, but I did manage to catch the important parts for the sprint race.

The water was calm and clear and the temp was 68 degrees F, perfect swimming conditions! The swim passed by some sand bars and made it interesting. A lot of folks were walking these parts, but I figured this is a swim, not a walk and managed to front-crawl the whole way.

Without any wind to contend with I was impressed with how straight I swam. I was able to sight off other swimmers while breathing instead of slowing down to look ahead. For not having much swim training this year, I think I did a pretty good job on the swim.

I walked the sandy beach from the swim exit and was able to get my cap, goggles and watch (which I did not lose in the lake :)) off and my wetsuit down around my waist. I got to the sidewalk and started to jog into transition.

Having issues with the timing chip and wetsuit at the last race, I quickly took the chip off and my wetsuit slipped off without any trouble. I put my bike gear on and ran towards bike out and past the mount line.

I kept it in an easy gear until we were out of the park and on the road. I shifted to a harder gear and started to hammer. I wanted to make up for my poor bike leg during my last race… with this in mind, I was able to set a PR on the bike course!

I finished my Tailwind Nutrition (lemon flavored) as I was heading back into the park. I quickly dropped my bike off, slipped on my running shoes and headed out for the run. The plan was to do 11:00 min / mile and my starting pace was in the 8:00 min / mile range. I started to ease up a little and talked with a fellow racer for a bit. He went up ahead and my pace started to hover around 10:30 min / mile.

I had a good run for me (my weakest discipline) and ended up finishing with an average of 10:34 min / mile. Looking back at the HR data, I might have been able to push a little harder, but was happy to finish with a sprint at the end!

While waiting for transition to open, I sat in the sun to dry out. I was in the right place at the right time and was one of the first few people they let into transition (one or two people at a time). I loaded up my race gear and made my way to the campground.

Not wanting to get all sweaty after taking a shower, I decided to tear down camp in my tri-suit. I did get a comment from a camper passing by asking, “is this a new event in the Ironman, are they timing you?” I managed to reply with a Yeah, he laughed and sped off. After showering, I started the hour and forty minute trek back home. I got caught up with the family and unpacked the car.

Susan’s folks are in town for the week, so we got to go out for dinner last night. We went to Michigan on Main and it was pretty neat, we sat outside in downtown Frankenmuth; where we could watch the busy bustling of visitors and could hear live music being played on a stage near by. It was definitely a great weekend!

This weekend I returned to a race that began it all. This time three years ago I was nervously getting ready for my first triathlon. This time around it was much different. After dropping the dog off at the kennel, and cramming my race gear along with the baby’s stuff, we were off to the KOA in Oscoda.

I knew we weren’t going to make the packet pick-up Friday night, so I wasn’t in too much of a hurry to get up there. We stopped to eat in Bay City and noticed there was quite a stench in the air (something to do with farmers and sugar beets).

We got to the campground after the office closed, but they had a bag with our name on it and a key to the cabin we reserved. According to some people a cabin isn’t “camping”, but it was great to have running water and power, especially with a three month old baby!

I went to put my trisuit on race morning and was having difficulty getting the zipper up. It looks like it got off track at the bottom and the more I tried, the more it started to tear the fabric. I ended up racing with it all the way zipped down.

Saturday morning was a busy one, we found a spot to park near the finish line and I headed over to packet pick-up. I managed to get my race number and swim cap moments before they shut down and proceeded to set up transition and headed over to body marking.

The swim had been moved to inside the harbor due to a storm producing 3-4 foot whitecaps, it actually worked out quite well. There were a few sprinkles before the sprint race started and it seemed pretty cold until I got in the water.

I had a decent swim, but am pretty bummed that someone managed to grab my Garmin 310XT and rip it off its wrist strap. The swim exit to T1 was a bit of a run and I was struggling to get the top half of my wetsuit down. Once I got into transition, it was around my waist and I somehow managed to blow right past where my bike was racked in.

I quickly had the wetsuit down to my ankles, but struggled a bit to get it off. I put on my wet bike shoes, helmet, and wanted to wear my sunglasses, but they insta-fogged after I put them on and I couldn’t really see anything so I left them behind.

I really wanted to push the bike and try to hang on during the run. I think I accomplished that… I passed a lot of people and was only passed by two people on the bike. The second person that passed me, I was able to catch them in T2.

That leaves us with the run. Without a watch to keep my run two minutes, walk one minute pace… I did A LOT of counting. It seemed to work out pretty well, overall I finished fourteen minutes faster than the last time I did this race!

After I finished and had some much needed bananas and cookies, we headed back to the cabin for a quick shower and change of clothes. We went back to get my gear and I packed up my wet stuff as best I could.

The sun started to come out and the skies turned blue, so we headed out to the state park and took a look at a lighthouse (missing the last tour of the day by 30 minutes :(). After a quick walk out to the fog horn and a glimpse of the beach, we were on our way back to the campground.

The blue skies turned gray and we had a quick down-pouring soon after. Our plan was to have a campfire and cook dinner; unfortunately I had to make a run for food because I couldn’t get the fire going. The air was extremely humid and I was having a hard time even getting the newspaper to stay burning. I also bought a bag of charcoal so I could at least cook some breakfast in the morning.

The bag of charcoal I had bought was a small one that you light on fire. It said no lighter fluid needed, but I wanted to have a camp breakfast, so I gave it a healthy dousing. After breakfast, we packed up, snapped a couple of pictures and were off!

Well, it wasn’t the ideal weekend for a camping trip to Cedar Point, but
we still had a lot of fun! Around lunch time on Friday, we finally made
the go decision… I went home, took the dog out and loaded our camping
gear into the car. A quick phone call and a couple clicks on the internet
and the dog had a reservation at the kennel, us at the campground and
tickets to get into the park. After we dropped the dog off, we headed to
Ohio. We arrived at the campground around 10:30 PM… yeah it was pretty
dark there and the numbers on the sites were hard to read. We found our
spot, the only one left in the row… there were quite a few campers there
that got to see us put our tent up, in the dark.

Either the tent is getting easier to put up or we are getting better at
it, because I think we had a record time of 15 minutes getting it up.
After transferring our stuff from the car to the tent, I went to hook up
our extension cord to charge my phone, that was quickly running out of
juice! Unfortunately, there wasn’t a normal hook-up on our site, or any
sites nearby…

The next day I went to the office, they have power convertors we could
have used, but they didn’t have any left… I did manage to get my phone
charged up enough to call my sister to find out they wouldn’t be coming
this time… we’ll have to plan something a little further out next time.
🙂 We headed off to get some food and see if we could find a converter to
buy… Upon entering Meijer, I was in front of Susan and sort of talking
over my shoulder. I turn and realize she wasn’t there and she wasn’t in
the parking lot. Apparently when she said, at the camp site mind you, she
had to use the restroom, she thought it’d be alright to just take off
without telling me… After I found out she wasn’t abducted, we got our
food and some things we forgot to pack, but no converter. Thinking a
hardware store might be a good spot, we went over to Menard’s and didn’t
have much luck. They had a converter that went the opposite way of what we
needed… so close yet so far.

We got into the park and it was pretty dark out. We were able to get on
quite a few rides without waiting very long at all, then around two
o’clock it started to sprinkle and a lot of rides were being closed due to
the weather. We decided it was a good time to get some food and wait to
see if the rain let up. After eating, we headed back to our campsite and
it was still coming down… I’m not sure how Susan was able to sleep
through it, but it really started to pour and there was some thunder that
was quite loud. After her nap, the rain finally started to let up and we
headed back to the park. We were able to get on a couple rides and decided
to head over to Millennium Force. It was the 10th anniversary of the
Millennium Force and we noticed in line there was this guy with the
anniversary shirt, hat, and a number of Millennium Force pins on the
hat… I dared Susan to ask him if he liked this ride, but she wouldn’t do
it. 😉 We managed to get on the platform, a few trains back from the
silver gates when they had to close it due to rain. Since we were staying
nice and dry, we thought we’d wait it out. Several annoying teeny-bopper
stories later and quite a few people leaving, they sent a test train (it
was about an hour or so…) Then the next trains went and every cheered.
If I were to guess, I’d say Mr. Millennium Force could have shed a tear…
Millennium Force is a whole different ride at night, but man it is totally
worth the wait!

Packing a wet tent up is never fun, but we managed to get everything
back in the car and headed back home… blue skies and sunny with a few
clouds… go figure! We picked Waldo up from the Kennel and he was really
excited to see us, Scout on the other hand not so much… She just wanted
more food (and water!) All and all it was a pretty fun weekend!

Figure I’d start this off with a little recap of our weekend. We ran up
to Tawas for a 5K and a little fun in the sun. After getting all our
camping gear out and in the car, we were on our way… until we had to
turn around and get Susan’s socks for the race. It was getting late into the
evening, and we decided to hit up A&W for a little grub. They were serving
outdoors to the cars pulled up, but we went inside only to find out we
didn’t really order with a server. Each table has a phone on it and once you
were ready, you placed your order through the phone. That was pretty neat!
The food was good, we got some burgers and a couple of huge root beer
floats (at least I thought it was good, I didn’t throw, my onion rings on
the ground 😉 ). Being well fed, we headed up north on a two-lane road,
which seemed to take a really long time. We managed to find the KoA
Camground even though Google maps told us to turn to the right, when it
was actually to the left.

The campground was really nice, the bathrooms were probably the nicest
campground bathrooms I’d ever seen! We managed to get our tent set up
without too much trouble (seemed to take awhile to find just the “right”
spot to set it up and the grey poles are definitely shorter than the red
ones 🙂 ). After a long day at work, driving, camp site setting up, we
were pretty tired, only problem was it was pretty warm and super humid
(not ideal sleep conditions the day before a race!) With my cellphone set
as an alarm clock we tried to sleep through that nasty humidity, I managed
only a couple hours of sleep. When the phone/alarm clock went off, we
started getting ready for the race by the bay. Although the campground had
a pancake breakfast going on, we were already in Tawas, fueled and ready.
A work buddy of mine was checking in at the last minute as I picked up our
shirts and numbers. A quick warm up back to the car and race time was
getting close.

The only thing nice I can say about the weather was it didn’t rain, but
man was it horrible to race in. It was still very humid and trying to run
(walk) through it was not an easy task. Susan thought she did good in the
walk, so we stayed for the awards ceremony (she finished 8th overall,
three away from a prize…) My time was pretty bad, but at least I crossed
the finish line still standing! After the awards were handed out, we went
over to the beach for a little kite flying. I somehow managed to get the
big kite up this weekend! In the process I nearly lost my index finger
(ok, maybe just a little cut, but it still hurt!) A sudden wind change
brought it back down nearly hitting the kids playing underneath the kites
(that’s right, a whole big beach to play on, go right where a kite could
hit you…) I pulled my little one out and it went up without much effort
(even after crashing into the water, whoops…) The kids weren’t moving
and by this time we were getting kind of hungry, so we retreated from the
beach. We hit up a pizzeria for lunch.

After lunch, we checked out the dog show that was happening in the
little park across the street (they were doing sprints and not the
obstacle course, so that got boring pretty quickly.) There was a kite shop
down by the beach, we stepped in and hadn’t realized it was the tiniest
shop you’d ever been in. It was getting pretty close to nap-time, so we
went back to the campsite for a little rest. Noticing a mini-golf course
alongside the road, we thought it’d be fun to try. We didn’t realize it
was the #5 mini-golf course in the state rated by AAA (it wasn’t all that
impressive, but it was pretty fun). Susan managed to get two hole-in-ones,
but I somehow ended up a couple strokes ahead in the end (and almost a
hole-in-one on the last hole for a free game, this close > < ). Our
bellies were rumbling after that intense round of golf and we headed over
to a locally owned restaurant. The food was really good there and we had
some entertainment on the streets.

Hitting up the ice cream shoppe we listened to a band play a couple
songs (…Susan didn’t even want to dance with me). It was getting dark
and the bands weren’t all that great, so we went back to the campsite to
sit around the camp fire (we actually weren’t tired enough to not have a
camp fire this trip!) After demonstrating my boyscout skills, I had what
you could call a fire that didn’t want to show its flames very much. I
think the wood might have been damp, as there was a lot of smoke and not a
lot of flames. After going through nearly a bundle of wood, it was smore
time! The smores were awesome and the temperature had cooled off to be
quite comfortable (well in a snug sleeping bag that is 😉 )
On the way back home, I had wanted to get a sweatshirt, but the shops
were closed… we did get to see some classic cars as a show was
happening… (wonder if the streets are ever open). We did pretty good on
packing, only managed to forget some pillowcases (which K-Mart had some on
sale) and all and all it was a pretty awesome weekend.

So it’s been a couple days… er… months since I last wrote, I figured
I’d break this blog up into sections. Grab a cool beverage, put your feet
up and get reading!

The Lawn

Okay, I last left you off thinking our lawn was about to become the “It”
spot in Falcon Crest. People would come from far and wide to see how
beautiful a lawn could really be… Unfortunately things didn’t work out
this way. A day or two after my last blog entry (first week of June), a
funny thing happened… it rained… and when it rains it pours… We
ended up having a stretch of three or four days with severe thunderstorms
and showers… you can just guess what happened, all our seed washed away!
We learned two important things from this… firstly – never seed before
heavy rains and secondly – always know where your gutters downspouts
drain. Not sure exactly what the builders were thinking, but they decided
to have one of the downspouts go under the sidewalk that leads to the side
door of our garage. This is all and well, except they didn’t have any
where for the water to go. We got so much rain, it created a small hole
were water was coming up out of the ground. I’m glad to say this problem
is fixed. Our lawn guy put in what he called a “pop-up”. It’s a little
green thing in the ground that raises when the water fills up the
downspout, and settles back down once it stops raining. For a small fee,
he redid all our downspouts this way, which is really cool as I don’t have
to move them when I’m mowing the grass (once we get grass…) and we don’t
have to worry about them blowing away, which has happened in the past!

I bet right about now, you’re wondering when we’ll actually have a nice,
lush, soft, green lawn… I’m thinking the same thing myself. After the
seed washed away, we started getting a little growth. Some of it was good
grass, while most of it was weeds… Not wanting to spray over the weeds,
the lawn guy came out and killed off the lawn (for the second time now…)
A few days went by, then weeks, then finally he came out again to kill off
some more growth that had occurred (third time…). Finally, this past
weekend, he brought his tiller and broke the crust that had formed,
re-raked the yard, and sprayed it once more (four times… man weeds can
be tough =P). Right now the lawn looks really good compared to what it did
a few days ago, it’s just missing that green stuff on top… you know…
grass! Looks like rain is in the forecast, so maybe he’s putting off
spraying for a couple days. Boy, I’m glad I’m saving all this gas money
not having to run my lawnmower =/.

Running

If you haven’t heard we’ve done quite a few races already this summer.
There was the Loons Pennant Race I had mentioned in a blog earlier, the
Pinconning Cheese Fest Fun Run, the Dow Run/Walk, and the Cheasning
Riverboat run. The Dow one was really nice, it started off at the Midland
Community Center and looped through various streets of Midland. It would
have been nice if the water they handed out along the way was colder, but
it was a fun race. I signed up to do the 5K run and managed to finish just
over 37 minutes. Susan did the walk and was a little disappointed she
didn’t beat her time from the Pennant race. We also learned never to
forget your safety pins, but a quick run to Walgreen’s never hurts! The
Cheese Fest run was two miles and everyone that entered got a small block
of cheese, well almost everyone… Susan didn’t… It was a warm day and I
really wanted to run the whole thing ( well as least the first mile anyway
;)), but I was overcoming a cold and was only able to run part of it. When
I crossed the finish line, the clock said “21:25”, but to get our
“official” time we had to hand in our numbers. The only problem with this
is there was a bunch of kids that cut in front of me, I managed to get my
position back, but unfortunately Susan wasn’t able to and got a slightly
worse time then she actually finished… oh well… I ran the Cheasning
race and beat my previous time… I finished in 33:03. Susan also ran in
this race and almost got her time put down as a walker, which would have
given her a really good walk time, but she told them she signed up to run.

Scout

Scout’s doing well, even if she hasn’t reached her recommended weight
yet (she might be gaining =/). We got her back on the old food which
probably doesn’t help things much, but we had so much left over we thought
we’d better use it. She still begs for food and gets really annoying until
we feed her… It’s been pretty warm lately and Scout’s been losing quite
a bit of fur. To help with this problem we usually brush her, but one day
we (and when I say “we” I really mean Susan) thought it would be a good
idea to give her a bath. Out came the small tub we use to bath the cat in
and the struggle began. Scout’s big enough now that should could spread all
four legs across the lip of the tub and not get wet. After quite a bit of
struggle, we (both of us now) got her feet wet. She wasn’t too happy about
this and managed to dig one of her back claws pretty deep into my palm.
I’ve never seen Scout’s tail so big… it was super-puffed out. After she
scratched me I gave up on the whole bath thing. Susan tried to get her in
the water again, but Scout was helping things and managed to avoid getting
a bath. I think if we (Susan) try this again, we’ll be getting a bigger
tub! If you haven’t seen the latest pictures of her, head on over to the
pictures of the week!

Racquetball

I played the infamous child star in the area. He’s 16 and if he doesn’t
win the Michigan championship, he’s in second! I was able to get 5 points
against him, while everyone else that tried, couldn’t get more then 2!
He’s been playing since he was 5 and is extremely talented. Even though I
got banged up the other night (took a racquet to the face, hit myself in
the leg with my racquet and got drilled just below the rib cage on a
serve that was long anyway =/), I still try to get down to the courts to
play once or twice a week. I even got to play doubles a couple times…
which at first seems like there’s a lot of people on the court, but it’s
actuallypretty fun. I’m really excited for the ladder season to start up,
sounds like Mittag will be doing it too!

Work

Work’s been going great, I’m getting a lot done and my boss says I’m
doing a good job. I’ll be a full time employee (for real this time) on
September 15th and am pretty excited for that! Susan’s job has been kind
of hectic lately… she started up a new process not too long ago and was
on call for the DeHate family camp out… She thinks she may have found a
lead on solving a problem she’s been working on for awhile now.

Once we get the data converted properly, we’ll be deploying our software to a
client for beta testing. It was suppose to happen this week, but some
issues needed to be fixed before we could go… maybe next week… The
company picnic is this weekend, it sounds like it’ll be a lot of fun!

DeHate Campout

Even though Susan couldn’t go, I went out to the camp out for the day.
Instead of a canoe trip, this year we had the DeHate Olympic Games. We all
drew from a hat to pick teams. The I’s and H’s looked pretty similar and
we had to figure who was on which team. We *cough* rigged *cough* it so my
mom and I were on the same team. We also had another team mate who was
pretty young (and pretty annoying…) There was horseshoes, mini-golf
(from hell), water balloon toss, bocche ball, cornhole, mini-basketball,
and ladder ball. Each station you met up with another team and played the
game together except for cornhole. Depending on how well you did, you got
a gold, silver, or bronze (aka pink) star. The team with the most gold and
silver stars was the winner. Our first event was the mini-golf, and man
that was tough, it was one hole at the bottom of an eight foot incline
with all kinds of roots growing out of the ground… we got the bronze
star on this one. We did pretty good on the other events, and when we got
to cornhole, we ripped it up. Not having played the game before, we
managed to get quite a few in the hole… “CORNHOLE!!!” yeah you have to
say it for it to count! 😉 The food was really good, especially Susan’s
Pizza Pasta, and pretty soon it was time to go. Next year, we’ll be
camping (hopefully… if someone isn’t on call.)

Cedar Point

We have been making good use of our season passes so far. We even got to
be chaperones for one trip. That was kind of fun, except for the annoying
bus driver. Dow Corning treated all their interns to a trip to the park
and Susan signed us up to be chaperones (even though technically I should
have been a guest 🙂 ). The plan was to leave early on a Saturday morning,
the only problem with this was sometimes plans don’t go according to the
plan… We headed over to the meeting spot for the two buses, only problem
was, there was a total of four people there… yup the buses were in the
wrong spot (or 50 interns were, you pick =P). So after getting to the
right spot, the day snacks were no where to be found (oh yeah, we got
fed!) So we waited around for the food to arrive, packed up the buses, and
were off, about an hour later then the plan. The bus driver told the same
story over a few times, but it was a good trip. We got to watch movies,
got to go to the park for free, got to eat for free, and didn’t have to
pay for gas, can’t hardly beat that!

Our last trip wasn’t as much fun as the others though… Someone said it
wasn’t suppose to rain, someone was wrong… We got to our camp site (same
place as last time and probably will be the last time there…) and it was
incredibly muggy out… and the bugs were out. After getting the tent set
up, I was pretty dang sweaty, and hopped in the shower, while Susan
attended to all her bug bites… The next day we went to the park, and it
was pretty cloudy. It rained a little, and a lot of the rides shutdown.
Then, near the end of the day it started to rain a little harder, we
decided to go, hoping Sunday would be clear… it wasn’t, we packed up our
went tent and came home… almost without getting lost. We were coming
back and past an exited I thought we should have taken. Well being
adventurous, I decided to stay on the road we were on – that’s the way the
bus driver did it afterall. All was good and well until we got to Toledo,
I missed another exit I should have taken… after driving around and
circling back, I managed to find that exit again and was able to get back
into Michigan, from there it was easy and all while my avigator was
sleeping… Halloween weekends start in September and you better believe
we’ll be there as much as we can!

Okay, so maybe you didn’t need a cold beverage to get through this blog,
but atleast you won’t be thirsty now!

I learned quite a lot this Memorial Day Weekend. First of all I learned
that Susan and I can put a tent up in the dark. That’s right, we’re
hardcore campers now… Seeing as how we had a three day weekend we
thought we’d break in our Cedar Point season passes. We took off after
work, and a quick stop at Q-Doba’s and managed to get to our campsite
around 10:30 PM. After pulling out our lantern and one flashlight, we
managed to get our tent up in about 30 minutes without any major problems.
That brings us to the second thing I learned, that it only takes about 3
hours to get to Cedar Point (3.5 if you need to turn around cause you
missed your exit… whoops!), so the drive isn’t too bad.

We went to the park (after getting free parking with our season pass 🙂
) and were standing in front of the entrance where I learned something
else. Cedar Point’s signage for a season pass makes no sense. After
standing for 15 minutes in a non-moving line, we started to wonder if we
were actually in the right line… so we decided to get in another line.
We should have stayed in the first line, but in the end it didn’t really
matter. So, we got in a much longer line and waited to get our pictures
taken (it’s not on the card they give you, but it pops up every time you
swipe it…) With our cards we got in the park quickly and were ready to
ride! Susan conquered her fear of the 420 foot 120 mph coaster known only
as “Top-Thrill Dragster”. Unfortunately, we don’t have picture
documentation of such an event, but trust me I was there… Maverick was
down for a little bit that day, but man that ride is freaking awesome
(except at night, when the bugs are out!)

After getting lunch Susan wasn’t feeling well and we headed back to the
campground. We both took a nap and were back in the park later that day.
On Sunday we went back again and rode pretty much the whole day, when I
learned something else. Nap taking is pretty much a necessity when you go
to a park back-to-back days. About 40 minutes from closing time we were so
exhausted we decided to call it a day.

We also got our jackets before the
park closed, which we should have stayed in the line we were in the day
before to get them, but I convinced the guy we bought the tickets in the
fall while the offer was still valid. I also learned that the guy working
didn’t really know what he was doing, because he had people in front of us
that he was helping for like 30 minutes (and he had to get help from a
co-worker). Though, the jackets were worth the wait, V.I.P. all the way!
Wanting to have a camp fire that night, I managed to get one going (with a
little boy scout water 😉 ) and we made smores. Even though I was super
sleepy, I stayed up until the fire died down and doused the embers with
water (little did I know that was pretty much a waste of time). Yes, the
thunderstorm came and we survived it! Although, I did learn the tent has a
few holes in it and there were a couple small (really small) puddles in
the corners… so we stayed dry! There wer a couple lightning strikes that
sounded really close, but no trees fell on us and the tent didn’t blow
away, so that was good!

After packing up our soaking tent (on the outside) and the rest of our
gear, it was back to Freeland we go. We got home to see the lawn guy came
and re-graded our lawn. It looks a lot better then it did and it sounds
like we’ll be getting seeded either today or tomorrow, so we should have
the beginnings of a lawn in about two weeks, yay!

I’ve learned a couple important lessons this past weekend… When in a canoe and trying to soak someone with a water cannon, don’t lean too far over, especially if the person in front of the canoe is leaning the same way… Also, camping in the rain is not a pleasant experience (though we got our tent down just before it started to really rain). If you haven’t guessed it, me and Susan went camping this weekend. It was the 7th Annual Dehate Campout, we even got some fancy orange shirts (pictures to come possibly). If was a lot of fun, minus the whole tipping over in the canoe part, though I did find out my flash drive works after being submerged…

We recently found out our kitten, Pepper, has ringworm so he’s currently in his fortress of solitude in the basement. The vet gave us some shampoo to cure it, which by the way Pepper is not too fond of taking a bath.

As far as the Midland employment hunt goes, I’m still unemployed. Computer Management Technologies (CMT), in Saginaw, should be getting back to me soon with some good news hopefully. I’ve also been in contact with someone at EDS and could get a work-at-home programmer’s position (that would be sweet)…