This past Memorial Day weekend, I spent quite a bit of time in Frankenmuth. Friday night, we headed up there to check out the hot air balloons. It was pretty cool being close enough to feel the heat from the fires and watch the ballons take off right in front of us. Henry seemed to be enjoying himself and Susan was able to get quite a few photos using her new camera lens.

Saturday morning was an early day. I sold my road bike last year to build up my fixie/singlespeed cross bike and knew that wouldn’t be a good choice for a road race, so I decided to volunteer instead. It was pretty neat to be on the other side of the table during registration.

Some volunteers didn’t show up and I was asked to be a road marshal. I grabbed a flag, a hi-vis vest, and a map to where I’d be marshaling at. I got to the intersection and noticed there was another volunteer there, but no police. After we chatted a bit, we decided it would be wise to have two marshals running the intersection. It was a good thing we did, when the peloton came around the corner, they pretty much took up the whole road. We always had one person on the lookout for traffic and the other was directing the cyclists. It was a lot of fun!

For volunteering, I got to do the Gran Fondo di Thumb for free. I loaded up my cross bike and headed back to Frankenmuth Sunday morning. Before the ride started, I was talking with a fellow cyclist who asked if I was going to do the ride singlespeed. I replied I was doing it fixed. He took a look at my tires and said good luck with that, pushing those tires will be a lot of work.

We set off just after 8 AM. My training plan called for a two hour ride that day and I figured I’d get to the first rest stop and turn around. All I can say is riding in a pack is a lot of fun. I was able to keep up with the big dogs for about twelve miles. Right before I got dropped, the cyclist I was talking with before the ride told me I was bad-ass for keeping up as long as I did!

I was alone for the next few miles until I heard someone come up behind me. We worked together and were some of the first ones to reach the rest stop. After a short rest, a cookie, and some Gatorade, I was off on my own back to Frankenmuth. I ended up following the wrong markings when I got back into town and had to turn around a couple times to get to the finish line.

On Monday I finally installed two outside GFCI outlets so the A/C folks can come out and install the units. After that was done, we decided to take Henry to the beach. We drove up to Port Crescent and found a nice spot to relax at the state park. Henry wasn’t sure what to think. We tried dipping his toes in the water, but it must have been too cold for him. He shriveled up and was not happy about being in the water.

Even though it was a busy weekend, it was a great weekend!

Four weeks down, sixteen more to go… training has been going okay. Finally started capturing my position on my tri-bike, think I just about got it dialed in. At least I can hold aero on the trainer for a lot longer than I could when I started!

The bathroom re-model is slowing coming along. Plumbing is finished, electrical is finished, and hoping to get most of the cement board hung tomorrow. Still need to cut a hole in the roof, but it’s been raining steady for the past couple weeks now.

So I was “that guy” last night, brought the Home Depot rental truck over to Lowe’s to pick up the tub and surround. A couple months ago, we had picked out what we wanted to put in our bathroom on Home Depot’s website. I added the surround and tub to my wishlist (in case someone changed their minds and I could get exactly what we wanted). A couple weeks ago I decided it was time to get things ordered and I went to put the tub, surround, and a bathroom fan in my cart… only to find out the tub was no longer available through Home Depot… really?

I went to Sterling’s website and found out Lowe’s is also a distributor and had what we needed. So I ordered the fan from Home Depot and the tub and surround from Lowe’s. When ordering online, Lowe’s gave me an estimated delivery date of 3/29/2013. They also had me fill out delivery directions and pay a delivery fee (which I totally forgot about when I went in to pick it up). I get a call from Lowe’s saying my order was in and I could pick it up anytime…

After a little internet searching, I found out that some Lowe’s have rental trucks available; I called this Lowe’s and apparently they do not. I thought, alright, Home Depot is across the street, I’ll grab their truck and head over. After signing the rental agreement I head in to Lowe’s…

Apparently when the guy who called me said I could pick it up anytime… didn’t really mean anytime… I guess everyone that could bring my order up front was on lunch break. I must have waited 20-30 minutes before it was ready to be loaded on the truck. In the meantime I was asked to sign a ticket when I realized I had paid for a delivery and gave delivery instructions. The person behind the counter was like, whoa you did pay for delivery… -.-

After getting refunded the delivery charges (which was a lot more than the truck rental), I pulled over to the lumber area and they loaded everything on to the truck with a forklift. The tub was standing straight up and the surround was packaged next to it… both secured in a wooden crate. After they put it on the truck, the guys from Lowe’s said “thanks” and took off. Not sure if they thought since it was so heavy it wouldn’t be a problem, but I decided I better run in to get a strap to tie it down… glad I did as it did move around a bit on the bumpy Michigan roads!

…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!

This weekend I ran my first 5K of the year, the Montrose Frozen Blueberry race. Normally there’s a foot of snow on the ground and windchill temperatures in the low teens, but this year it was in the mid-fifties and a prefect day for a 5K! After the race I managed to catch half a play-off game before we headed out for date night.

For Christmas I had gotten Susan a couple tickets to Cinderella the Ballet. Before heading to The Whiting in Flint, we decided to eat out, apparently a lot of other people had the same idea. Our first choice, Italia Gardens was packed and had at least a 20 minute wait. We opted to go to Senior Lucky’s that was also pretty busy. We hadn’t been there before, but the people at work said it was pretty good… it sure was! Although it wasn’t Susan’s favorite ballet, I think she had a good time.

After church on Sunday, I tried to catch some of the play-off action and in between games I started working on getting another wall framed in. I learned an important lesson, if you need a sledgehammer to get the wall in place, it’s probably not the right size. After trying to “nudge” the wall, I managed to split the top plate. A little more sledgehammer action and the wall was down and in pieces. I rebuilt the wall (a little shorter this time) and got it in place. Just need to run to the hardware store to pick up some more 2×4’s and I can start working on another wall.

So, it has been awhile since this site has received some updates in the form of a blog post, so here goes!

As can be seen in the top right corner of this site, my big race is coming up quickly! As part of my training plan, I decided to enter a smaller race as a “warm-up” for the year and had a lot of fun doing so!

It was the 4th Annual Pi Delta-thlon (a unique race experience) and experience it was! I managed to convince Susan to come with me for packet pick-up the day before the race, she wasn’t too impressed with the campus of MTSU. I wasn’t too impressed with the one ways and lack of signage for the pick-up. We finally managed to find the rec center and were trying to find a parking spot. I was behind a card and figured if I followed him I wouldn’t have a chance. Unknown to me, the way I turned was a one-way, but slipped into a spot just before the car that was in front of me rounded the car (hehe, sneaky, but it worked!)

On the way back home, Susan mentioned how long a drive it was to get to Murfreesboro, which I responded with, yeah I plan on leaving around 5 AM to get set up for the race. She rolled her eyes and I figured I was flying solo for this race. I tried getting to bed early, but was pretty excited for my first triathlon of the year, I couldn’t sleep and 5 o’clock couldn’t come soon enough.

As much as I wanted to use my new bike, I opted for my roadie. I had cleaned, de-greased, re-greased, lubed and put new handle bar tape the day before the race and that definitely made for a smooth ride.

I swear there is no time when I-24 is free of traffic, even early morning on a Sunday! Although I do wish my commutes to work had similar volumes of traffic… I got to the rec center and started unloading. I aired up my bike tires and took it for a quick spin around the parking lot, making sure I didn’t mess anything up the day before… I headed off to transition to get set up (not realizing I forgot to leave my bike shoes unbuckled… again!!) >:(

After I got my number written on my arms, I headed back to the car for a powerbar and some water. I always like looking at the attractive…er…fast looking bikes and seeing how everyone has theirs set-up. It was getting close to 7:30 and I figured I would check on my spot and make sure no one messed with my stuff.

When I racked my bike in, I was the first and only one there, now the rack was completely full and people were trying to cram bikes in all around me… My stuff seemed to be out of the way and I figured I’d take a look on how traffic flow was going to work during transitions. The mount and dismount lines for the bike were quite a ways away, I should really learn to leave my shoes on the bike and slip them on/off while riding, but I think I’d need tri shoes to do that safely! 😉 I did managed to run with my bike and not fall…

After getting the flow down, I figured I should probably do a few laps in the pool to warm-up. I was probably the only one to shower before hand, but at least I followed the rules. 🙂 The water was cooler than what I typically train in and it actually felt kind of nice. Shortly after my warm-up someone came over the megaphone and said something and the lifeguards were getting everyone out of the pool.

Counting is a tough part of the race. During sign up we all entered our estimated swim time, which seeded us accordingly. The lowest numbers have the fastest predicted times and the highest numbers the slowest. I’m pretty sure no one after the first few people were in correct order. I was 226, found 224 and stuck by him near the back of the line.

After we had been waiting for a very long time and the line not moving much, a lady came up and said they were already in the high 200’s. Well we decided to head to the front, which was good because I was ready to go! I knew I was going to overestimate how long it would take me to do the 300 meters, but I wasn’t sure how fast I was going to be compared to everyone else. Well, #224 started right in front of me and I had passed him before we got to the second length. I passed quite a lot of people during the swim, at one point I even managed to swim under someone!

The swim seemed to go by really fast and before I knew it, I was climbing up the ladder and jogging off to T1. When I got to T1 I had troubles getting my socks on (need to bring the white ones instead of the black ones…) and found out my bike shoes were still buckled. With all the trouble I had, I still had a pretty decent T1 time! I was on my bike and cruising.

I had not looked at the elevation profile for the course, but compared to what I train on, it was super flat. There were a couple of hills, but nothing compared to the monster hills around our house. I managed to pass a few people on the bike and the only guy that passed me, I was able to catch and pass him back. Near the end of the course, there was an intersection where police were guiding traffic.

I thought I saw someone turn left at the light, but seeing as how there was another cyclist in front of me, I decided to follow her. As we approached the intersection, she yells “Which way do I go?”. There was no response from the police, and I’m thinking, crap what do I do now? As we get to the other side we both turn towards the police and she asks again which way to go. The response was, “back to the rec center.” Oh wow… that’s helpful. Then another officer said he didn’t know. The cyclist spotted a couple sorority sisters in pink helmets and asked which way to go, and they got us on track, totally costing me like 2 minutes on the bike… 😉 As we were getting closer to the transition area, I really wanted to pass this cyclist. She seemed to be just out of reach until I really stepped it up on the straight-away back to transition. I managed to pass her, but she beat me out of T2. -.-

That little maneuver on the bike really got my heart racing and I wasn’t sure what that meant for the run. I managed to finish the run without taking a walk break and passed a couple people in the process! Although it wasn’t quite the advertised distance of 3.14 miles (due to construction) I still managed a good pace and as I crossed the finish line, I was thinking, dang I could have went faster!

Although that one intersection posed a problem and apparently the criss-cross of the transition paths caused some people problems, it was still a great race! I had a lot of fun and managed to finish faster than my goal time of 1 hour 15 minutes! 😀

Looking at my training log a couple weeks ago, I noticed my bike training has been suffering a little. I re-arranged my schedule to include 3 bike sessions instead of 2 and cut my 3 times running down to 2. So far this has helped me get a lot of time in the saddle (T.I.T.S) and get adjusted to my new bike. Training has really ramped up and I’m super pumped for the race coming up in May.

Two weekends ago I had taken my bike up the the Ashland City rail trail and stopped by Cheatham Lake on the way back. It’s a nice park with a swimming area and I figured what a great place to get some open water swimming (OWS) in. Last week-end I pulled out the wetsuit and we headed down that way.

The Jimmy John’s sandwiches we got were pretty disappointing and it took me awhile before I was ready to hit the water. We were watching the kids “play” in the water… for about 2 minutes before they realized how cold it was and ran out. The water temp was around 63 degrees F. It didn’t seem too bad, until I was neck deep and water was getting into the wetsuit. A few times around the buoys though, and I was actually pretty comfortable. I almost ran into some people and darn near went head first into a buoy, but managed to avoid any collisions. I guess people were pointing at me, and I felt super “cool” making my way to the water in my wetsuit, but I got a pretty good work out in and found out its a lot easier to get out of a wet wetsuit then a dry one!

For Easter, we visited my folks in New Madrid. My mom is making progress and definitely had a lot of improvement since the last time I saw her. As always, I got to have a learning experience as we tried to get the dining room ceiling finished before dinner was done (we put some tiles up, but weren’t quite able to finish in time). Apparently tiles from the same dye lot can be different colors and my dad has about 150 tiles he won’t be able to use.

We took a box of tiles home to see how the color looks, and it’s pretty darn close to the fake tile linoleum we have now. We had been thinking about tiling our kitchen and now it seems like I got a new home improvement project that will be happening once I get the deck done…

I’ve been meaning to add a new post on here for awhile, just haven’t gotten around to it. 😉 November seemed to sneak up on us this year, maybe its because we’re used to lots of white stuff covering the ground and being very cold. I managed to finish my second ever five mile race the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

I developed an app to help keep me on track during my training for the race. Although I didn’t beat my previous time, I felt a lot better finishing this race then that one. It also didn’t help my time that the course was a lot tougher, a stiff wind that always seemed to be coming right at you (even after the turn-around point) and hilly! I took a quick lead ahead of Susan to put some time between us, and as we passed each other, her words “I’m catching up to you!” was all the motivation I needed to keep going strong!

Susan was on call for Thanksgiving so we watched the game and had a nice little meal for ourselves. Susan made the dessert and I somehow got to do everything else! Waldo has been doing good, he seems almost like another dog now that we let him out by himself. We should have gotten the invisible fence a lot sooner!

After finding a good deal on cyber Monday for a 32″ LED HDTV and hooking it up, I started looking into alternative means to Charter for cable and internet. To get the HD Channels on a 2nd tv we would need to rent another receiver from Charter and get charged five more bucks per month. Charter’s internet pricing was cheaper than AT&T’s for high speed, so I started looking for options for cable. DirectTV definitely had the best 2-year contract deal, but once the 2 years was up, it jumped to a ridiculous amount and I didn’t really want to enter into a contract. The other option, Dish network, was pretty closely priced to Charter and provided more channels, but we’d still have to get two receivers and charged extra per month for the second one (I think it was 7 bucks here).

Then I had a radical idea, what if we ditched cable altogether? I don’t typically watch a whole lot of tv anyway, so after convincing Susan we could save quite a bit of money, we decided to give it a shot.

The first step was to see what major networks were in range of our house. Using a couple tools on the internet, I found ABC to be the furthest one out at around 40 miles. This is important as someone is addicted to Once Upon a Time, no ABC meant no deal!

The next step was to test an antenna with at least a 40 mile range. There’s some pretty neat antennas out now-a days, including ones that are paper thin and can actually look like part of your decor. I saw Best Buy had an antenna with a 50 mile range and figured if I wasn’t able to get all the stations I needed *ahem* ABC *ahem*, I’d return it and for go this great idea. After getting the antenna home and hooking it up to the tv, I was able to get 18 channels (most in HD), including ABC!

One of these days I’m going to actually figure out WTF is up with our coaxial cable wiring. We have a dish in our backyard with three lines attached to it. Our cable box has a 2-way splitter and a 4-way splitter (the 2-way feeds into the 4-way). Inside our house, we have a wall jack in each of the upstairs bedrooms, the upstairs tv area, a wall jack and a line in the living room, a wall jack and TWO lines in the master bedroom. Hauling my old school CRT around I determined neither upstairs jack worked nor the wall jack in the master. Outside there are two sets of three wires cut. One set comes from the satellite and one set obviously goes to the wall jacks. I still don’t know why 2 working lines were needed for the living room and bedroom, but that’s what I got…

Before venturing off into the attic I wanted to make sure I got my wiring figured right. The plans were to keep the one tv upstairs and the other for the master. I disconnected the 4-way splitter from the 2-way and wanted to get one of the lines that went to the master. I must have been lucky as the first cable I tried happened to be the right one. After marking each end of the cable, I saw the upstairs jack was already marked (isn’t that convenient?). I moved the incoming line to the 4-way splitter that way I could hook up the modem to whatever line I wanted and both of the tv lines to the 2-way splitter.

Once the wiring was figured out I was off to get a 50′ line to run from the attic to the cable box. We don’t have a full attic and a tall person doesn’t belong in ours. It wasn’t easy and the A/C unit didn’t make it pleasant going in and out of the attic. Once I started the mounting process I found out there was enough slop that I couldn’t use my ratchet wrench for the lag bolts, no it wasn’t metric because I tried that to and didn’t have much luck. I also thought to myself, gee I better not drop one of these bolts in the 6 inches of blown insulation, but happened to do that at least 5 or 6 times, almost gave up looking for the last one I dropped… 🙁 After a dozen trips in and out of the attic I finally had the antenna mounted. Using an app on my phone, I pointed in the direction I thought would be good and went to program the tv’s. Lo and behold I managed to pick up 22 channels including all of the major broadcasting networks, success! I was really happy to not have to play the adjust, scan, adjust, scan, adjust, scan game!

Along with the antenna, I also got a set top box. I went with Roku XS. It lets you stream HD content to your tv from a few different sources, including NetFlix (which we had) and HuluPlus (which I signed up for, $7.99 / month). So, after taxes and fees and all that fun stuff, we were paying close to $85 / month for cable television, add $5 for HD channels on the second tv and figuring the $8 for HuluPlus let’s say that’s a savings of $80 per month. That’s almost 1000 dollars a year we’ll be saving by dropping cable, I know there’s a better way to spend that money… such as say a new triathlon bike! 😉

Speaking of which, my triathlon training has officially started a couple weeks ago. Watching the Kona coverage (the Super Bowl of triathlons) last Saturday has got me pumped up and I can’t wait to get to the starting line to see how my training pays off!

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!