Sunday, September 6, 2009

So how is my Labor Day weekend so far?

My old roommate James was touring SWVA and camping all three nights of his weekend. Amanda and I had plans of catching up with James and camping somewhere around Bath County, VA. While Amanda and I were hanging out last night, I let the dog out, just like I've done probably millions of times since he has been alive. A couple of minutes after I let him out we could hear his tags jingling louder and more frequent than usual. I thought that maybe he was just running through the yard back to the door. I opened up the back door to let him in, just like I've done probably a million times...only this time something was not right.

Pacino darted through the apartment with his head low and his tail tucked. Amanda said, "I think he has something in his mouth." We followed him around for about two seconds when a smell hit my face that took my breath away. I wish I could describe the smell, but words cannot put into context the smell that now overrun our apartment. Pacino had drool coming out of his mouth and he would shake his head and the drool would fly all over the living room and kitchen. Amanda said, "He's been sprayed by a skunk!" And, unfortunately, she was right. While Pacino was running around and we were running him down, we turned on the light to the back patio and there was the skunk, wandering around, sniffing. This guy wasn't very big, probably the size of a short ferret, but definitely a skunk.

I immediately took him upstairs to the shower and started dousing him with water in the tub. While smelling around on him, I noticed that the smell was extremely bad under his chin near his mouth which makes me think that the skunk sprayed him in the mouth and was why he was drooling. And I don't blame him, the smell was very close to what I think tear gas would be. It would make your eyes water.

We had to decide if he was going to sleep in the bedroom with us like he normally does, or sleep downstairs so we wouldn't have to smell him. We opted for the bedroom so he wouldn't sleep on the sofa.

So this morning, we got up, had breakfast (in a house that smells like a mixture of burnt hair, garlic and popcorn) then went on to Pet Smart to get some skunk odor remover. We had rent a carpet cleaner to shampoo the carpets, throw away a bunch of towels, wash a bunch of clothes and wash Pacino one more time with the skunk odor remover. We've treated him kind of like the village leper today. He has been quarantined to the back yard while his odor remover stuff dries. He doesn't smell as bad as he did last night or even this morning, but he still stinks.

Where does James come into this? Well, we didn't get to go camping, instead we had to clean thanks to Pepe LePew and my "cat" chasing, skunk breath dog.

Happy Labor Day!

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Nuptials, beer, kayaks and sweaty dudes

Apparently some people have been taking some shots at me online about not blogging as often as they do, so I thought I'd post something today. I usually don't blog often because I don't normally think I have anything worth blogging about. After reading other blogs, I realize that maybe my life is exciting enough to write about.

As some of you may remember, I wrote about some nice titanium I had purchased a while back, well, last Tuesday (August 25), I put the ti to some use. My fiance Amanda and I got married. We decided that a big wedding just wasn't our style, so we paid a minister (Lora Luce) a small sum of money, made reservations at our favorite Hatteras Island getaway and took a vacation.

The ceremony was small, only Amanda, myself, my parents, my sister and her youngest daughter were in attendance and it was nice. We stayed in Rodanthe but had the ceremony at Jockey's Ridge State Park in Nags Head, an evening wedding on the sound. Usually sunset on the sound is nice, but on our wedding day a nice big cloud was covering the sun. Ah well.

We borrowed a couple of kayaks from a friend to take down to the island and paddle around...17ft kayaks...and now I have nowhere to store them, Amanda is out of town and I didn't want to take them off the car because I thought I would be able to return them while Amanda was gone. I haven't been able to return them, nor can I get them down by myself, so I've been driving around with two 17ft kayaks on top of my car for about a week now. If you see me out and about with those damn things, point and laugh...wait, no, don't point and laugh, help me take them off!

As far as a bachelor party goes, Greg decided to put together a bike ride at Bent Creek in NC. I think about 15 or so showed up to ride. Most guys spend their bachelor parties with some friends, strippers and beer...I spent mine with 15 sweaty dudes in lycra. Strangely enough, I wouldn't have had it any other way. We did have some beers at Papas & Beer, the local Mexican joint just down from the trail head. So, thanks Greg for the party.

Anyway, I'll try to post more often.

EDIT: Please click on the picture. Amanda gets cut out in the body of the text.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Pretty Noose is Pretty Hate

Ever get a song stuck in your head that you just can't get out? For the past few days it has been Pretty Noose by Soundgarden. Good tune.

I have had lots of people ask me about the IMT 100k on Sunday. Yes I did it, yes I finished and yes it hurt. The first 20ish miles weren't bad, aid stations every 15 miles made it a little more tolerable. The only bad thing is that between aid stations I would be starving, but when arriving at said aid stations I couldn't bare to eat anything, but ate anyway. This, of course, was with exception to the second aid station where I downed some PB&J sammies, chips, squishy orange slice candy and a cup of soda. The rest I was pretty much miserable.

The course was very demanding, either we were climbing the steepest grade known to man or we were descending the steepest grade known to man with very little cruising on rolling terrain. We started out riding through town and picking up the Creeper Trail at its crossing of Hwy 58. I kept a good warm-up pace behind the front group that I was certain would bottleneck at Beech Grove. Sure enough I caught up to a lot of them there while we were hiking our bikes up the trail. The rest of the ride, I don't remember much of. Anet Lamberson caught me at the fireroad going to Jerry's Creek. I had seen her a few times behind me going up climbs and I knew that when she caught me it would be at a climb. She took off well ahead me at the aid station at the bottom of Jerry's Creek. Apparently my cassette lockring came loose during my descent and had to have it fixed at the aid station, thanks Doug! Send my regards to your mustache!

I had Pretty Noose in my head the whole time, but it's strange how your mind wanders on some of these rides. While going through, 'I caught the moon today, pick it up and throw it away alright' I was thinking...Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship...same band members, two completely different bands, remember 'Feed your head'?

Anyway, I met some cool people along the way, the race was very well supported and I finished in just over 8 hours, 7.5 hours of actual ride time. The course ended up being around 55 miles, short of actually being 100k, but I'm not complaining.

Look at that, lunch time...here I come Big Pal!

Friday, July 10, 2009

Healthcare? Psshh!!

So, I don't normally get on here to complain about anything, I'm a fairly laid back dude. But I have to gripe today. For the past six months or so I've had a back problem, pinched nerve or something. Everytime I go from sitting to standing or walking to running, I get a sharp pain in the lower right part of my back that causes my entire right leg to get a pins and needles sensation along with a slight pain in my leg. Not a fun thing to deal with on a daily basis. So, in January I went to see a doctor about it, they tell me it's sciatica, give me some prednisone and naproxen and send me on my way. The dr. tells me that if it doesn't clear up to come back.

The drugs help a little, but the problem was still there. I tried some yoga stretching thinking that would help, and it did, but for a short period of time, I stay off the bike for a couple of weeks at the doctor's request, which wasn't an easy thing to do and switched to riding with gears.

So, last week I go back to the dr. because the problem has worsened. The dr. orders an MRI on my back for Thursday and says they will look at the results and let me know about it. I get the MRI on Thursday, July 2... today, Friday, July 10 I get a postcard in the mail that says the results of my x-ray were negative. This is not a handwritten postcard, it has checkboxes to place a check by the appropriate box that corresponds with the test I had. All it says is "x-ray of back was negative." At the bottom it says if I have any questions to call the office.

WTF!? Of course I have questions! WTF DO I DO ABOUT MY BACK?! I'm starting to think that they only ordered an MRI to say they ordered an MRI. They don't seem to care that my problem persists, no one called to say "Yo, your MRI (not x-ray) was negative, maybe you should come back in to see what we can do to help you." Instead I get a postcard with some f*^%ing checkboxes! Thanks-a-f*^%in-lot!!

Needless to say I'm going to change doctors because obviously this one doesn't care, which is strange because they have the word 'healthcare' posted everywhere in the building. Quite misleading. I hate that my boss pays for insurance that now has to pay money to this so-called "doctor" and for that I apologize to my boss, money not well spent.

Monday, June 29, 2009

High and Dry

I realize that I will get the usual "IT LIVES!!" and "Bout time!" types of replies to my all-but-abandoned blog, but I just get in those moods sometimes where I would rather read than write. But I digress.

I am planning to ride the Iron Mountain 100k on July 12 in Damascus. It won't be an easy task and I don't plan for it to be much fun. 62 miles on Iron Mountain is enough to make someone hate a bike for a long time. Hell, I've ridden 10 mile rides up there that make life miserable, but I always go back.

Yesterday, seven of us ventured to parts of the course I had never been, mainly the FR climb from the bottom of Jerry's Creek up to Barton Gap. When I first saw the map of this course and realized that we would be doing most of our climbing on fire roads I didn't think much of it and was quite relieved. My perception of this changed yesterday. We climbed the FR from Jerry's Creek to Barton Gap then to Skulls Gap, all of about 7 miles of it. The course will actually turn onto Skulls Gap trail about a half mile from the top, but it took FOREVER to climb to that point. Sprinkle in my crash into a rocky ravine at mile 5 (of a 25 mile ride) coming down Jerry's Creek that left me barely able to use my left leg from the worst charlie horse I've ever had, along with the flat tire I got before the FR climb that I still had to stop and pump up about every 10-15 mins and my complete disregard for nourishment. I took no food, no gels and no gatorade. All I had was a camelback full of water that I was almost glad to finish off because it was pretty warm near the end of the ride.

As I topped FR84 to descend back down to the main road, Doug, one of the guys that rode with us, was driving his truck up the FR to see if I or Jon wanted a ride back to the cars. I had ridden that far with a partially flat and still deflating tire, no fuel and a bum leg, I'll be damned if I'm not finishing it. So I coasted to the end of the ride in so much pain I was almost in tears.

The 100k is gonna suck much worse than Sunday's ride, but I will have the benefit of rest stops, food, cold water and the same insane determination that got me through Sunday's ride.

Here is the Garmin data for the ride if you care. The elevation will be off because, well, because it always is.

Amanda is starting an eight week running program that gradually builds up her strength and endurance for running. My leg hurts like MOTHERF*&$#ER today, but I'm gonna run with her. I think she will do well!

Friday, May 8, 2009

Not tonight, my friend.

It seems like this week has lasted forever, but alas, it is the weekend. Amanda and I had plans of camping this weekend with my sister and bro-in-law, but sudden events prevented that. On Monday, Amanda's uncle was admitted to the hospital. He had been in a fight with lung cancer for a couple of years now, but around 9:30 last night, he passed away. Amanda spent everyday since Monday hanging at the hospital to be with her family. I went over fairly often myself, but managed to get some work in as well. I'll miss Alan, he was a good guy. I hated to see him in the condition he was in, but when I think of him, I'll probably only remember the better times. Funny how the brain works that way.

On a much lighter note, Amanda and I made a trip to K-Mart the other night. It's the closest mega-store to us, so we visit it often. Sometimes the K Mart will have bikes on display in the aisles, recently a 3-wheeled beach cruiser type with a basket on the back and a tailgate. I usually hop on one and ride it around the sporting goods department and embarrass Amanda, but the trip on Wednesday night was different. As we walked by electronics a shiny brown bike caught my eye, a beach cruiser. I walked over to it and was diggin' the color. I said, "Oh man, I want this", which is usually what I say when I'm around bikes. Amanda usually replies, "Another friggin' bike?! You are not getting another bike", but Wednesday night she said, "Well, get it". Say what? Oh yeah, she said I could buy it! This doesn't happen often, so I jumped on it. Jumped on it as in buy it, not jump on it ride it.

There are a few things I need for it, a headlight, some sweet mirrors and a rear rack. I hope to be sportin' this lil' lady at the next CRAWL. I'll even give her a name.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Runnin' with the....animals.

Not much going on early this week, but I do have an update from this past weekend's Animal Chase 5K. I placed 37th out of 94 runners. Better than mid-pack, but it friggin' hurt. I'm not much of a runner, other than the 2-ish miles a few guys and myself run every Wed. during lunch, so I didn't really have high expectations.

I started the run at a pretty brisk pace for my fitness level. I wanted to keep that pace the whole time. First mile down, just at seven minutes. I get not even 1/4 mile past the mile marker and already I see the leaders heading back to the start/finish, so quick oxygen-deprived math says they're doing it in 16 minutes or so. Turns out the 5k was just a warm-up run for these guys for the 10k after. The second half of the run is basically a slow uphill grade that is totally noticeable on the run back, not so much on the first half of the run. I pushed myself as hard as I could. I could feel my abs getting tight, my shoulders were hurting pretty bad and every time I turned my head in any direction, I got really dizzy twisting it back to look ahead. As I approached the finish line, I could hear people behind me panting and stomping their heavy feet and one kid was on the side of the trail, "Go Dad! You got it! You can pass him Dad! Pass him Dad!" I'm not sure if "Dad" was behind me or not, but I was damned if I were going to let him pass me at the finish line, so I did the best version of a sprint to the finish I could muster up...and no one passed me.

At the end, my time was 26 minutes 26 seconds for a 5k. Not too bad.

It was nice to get out and suffer doing something other than riding a bike. I do enjoy bike riding, but a change is good sometimes and I've really taken to this whole running thing. Maybe I'll go get a new pair of runnin' shoes?