I owe you more

October 25, 2008 – 4:01 pm

I haven’t said a word on here since getting to Amsterdam..  Nor have I posted in the other blog yet either.

I would now, but we’re about to head out and explore the town on a Saturday night.  I’ll post something soon, promise.

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Farkin’ Finally

October 22, 2008 – 5:09 pm

After the months (years?) of planning, we’re sitting at the airport, grabbing dinner and a beer at Chilis, heading to Amsterdam.

Add a .com to the post title, and you’ll find a trip blog.

And thanks for seeing us off Jeremy!!

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The Bush Monster is HUNGRY!!

October 17, 2008 – 9:44 am

Feed ME!!!

Feed ME!!!

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200,000 Strong and Going

October 13, 2008 – 1:45 pm
Roll Over Originally uploaded by netgeek

Our main vehicle, the 2002 Jeep Liberty, rolled over to 200,000 this past week. It was kind of funny that it picked last Thursday to hit this mark.

Marty had decided that it was silly that we drove to every biking group ride that we did, so she decided to start a local ride. Thursday nights out of Mount Clemens, a nice paved path social ride, with a meeting at a bar after for drinks and food.

Last Thursday was our first ride, and after the ride, we rode home, changed, and drove the ~1 mile up to the bar and back. It was during this short ~2 miles round trip that we rolled over to 200K.

My goal now is to try to stretch this vehicle out to 250K, because it would be neat to put 1/4 of a million miles onto a car that we purchased new. My truck isn’t far behind at ~170,000.

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Breezy October Ride

October 4, 2008 – 7:01 pm

Earlier in the week, Marty and I chatted with Kristi and Eric about doing the Beat the Train ride on Saturday morning.  Last night while watching a movie at Mikes, we came to our senses.  (I’ve never done the Beat the Train ride, but that’s mostly because it starts on Saturday mornings at 6AM from Fort Wayne.  To really get down there and be ready to ride @ 6AM, we’d have to be out of the house @ 5AM, and I think that makes it quite clear while we’ve never done the ride yet.

So, we convinced Krist and Eric to come over to our neck of the woods at a much more reasonable hour of 10AM for a ride around the steets and paths by our house.  Jon decided to join us too.

I obviously didnt realize Marty was going to take a picture.

I obviously didn't realize Marty was going to take a picture.

We hit the road a little after 10AM, and headed out toward Dodge Park via the Metro Parkway path.  Jon had recently met with someone regarding putting legit dirt trails into the park, so we explore the existing trails he had been scouting.  We rode under Van Dyke, and headed over toward the underpass beneth Hall Rd in Utica.  Kristi and Eric weren’t sure where we were leading them, so they were surprised we we came popped up heads up by Van Dyke.

Bridge over Clinton River by Hall Road in Utica.

Bridge over Clinton River by Hall Road in Utica.

We resisted the urge to get custard at Erma’s or grabe a burger and beer at the Shamrock, and headed back toward home.  Not many stops on the way back, and got back around 1:30PM.  Changed out clothes, and headed out for breakfast/lunch to fed the hungry bikers.

Great weather (started ~40, and was close to 60 when we ended) and had a great ride with friends.  About 32 miles when we finished up.  Perfect ride!

GPS tracks from my Garmin.

GPS tracks from my Garmin.

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September is over….FINALLY!

September 30, 2008 – 1:36 pm

At some point early in the month, I was thinking about how glad I would be to see October, because that would mean that I survived the end of September.

The week leading up the Addison Oaks Race was a blur of last minute activity, but in the end, everything came off PERFECTLY.  The race was well attended (333 racers) and the weather was perfect.   I couldn’t be happier about how the race turned out, and I we couldn’t have done it without the help of a WHOLE lot of volunteers.   It would have been a disater without those people who stepped up, and were willing and able to do whatever it took to make the race a success.

Racers starting off their race.

Racers starting off their race.

We were out at Addison Oaks from 7AM till 5PM.  About 10 minutes after the raffle was completed, and the final cleanup began, Marty and I got in our car and headed to Metro Airport to fly to Vegas for Interbike.

Interbike week was a combination of recovering from the prior week, going 10+ hours a day between the show and outdoor demo, and crashing in our room.  We didn’t get a chance to attend the CX race, the Crit, or really do ANY Vegas type stuff.  No partying, no gambling, no adult entertainment.  It was a week of bikes and crashing on the couch.

But, the good news is that by the time we got home on Saturday, we were actually pretty recovered from the last couple of weeks.  Got lots of cool swag, got to check out a lot of cool new bikes and cycling related stuff, and generally had a great week with perfect weather.

So, now it’s back to normal life… We, at least for 3 weeks, then we head off to AMSTERDAMN!

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LONG day finally over

September 22, 2008 – 1:51 am

Today, today was a very long day.

We starting out leaving the house a ~6:30AM to head to Addison Oaks for the CPS XC race that the Metro North chapter was holding.  Thanks to a bit of luck, great timing company and land manager, and a LOT of help from a ton of great volunteers, the race was a success, and we had 333 racers.  The chapter should do VERY well off this race, and should set a precident for great races in the coming years.

Then, at 5:00PM, pretty much as soon as the race was finished, and we started cleanup, Marty and I got int he truck and headed to Metro Airport to catch a plane to Vegas.  Couple of beers in the terminal, and we caught our flight.  A little over 4 hour flight, picking up the rental car, and heading to where we were staying, and we finally got in ~11PM (2AM Eastern Time).  So, now we’ve had a bite to each, and are winding down watching a little TV before we totall crash, as it’s heading toward 3AM.  21 hour day, not to shabby.

And not something I want to do very often, even as well as everything worked out.

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New seat for my meat

September 19, 2008 – 5:13 pm

Look what Marty found the other day at Macomb Cycle for me.

A exact replacement saddle for the one that I wrecked on my SS.

Unlike my old one, this one has straight rails.

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Fat Tire: Gift from the West

September 18, 2008 – 12:18 pm

Our friends Krisi and Erik have been vacationing out west that past couple of weeks.  Bouncing around and riding their bikes.  They are back in town, and were at our regular Wednesday night Stony Creek group ride.

While riding, Kristi told Marty that they had a present from out west for us, and “It’s Fat”  (Marty’s first guess was a puppy.  hehe)  About half way up the climb to the top of Mt Sheldon, it occured to her.  FAT TIRE!!

Six Pack of Fat Tire!

Six Pack of Fat Tire!

So, when we got back to the parking lot, Kristi gave us our gift.  A six pack of our very own!  It’s in our fridge right now, perfectly cooled to proper drinking temperature.

A HUGE thanks to Kristi and Erik for our WONDERFUL gift!

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Chrome is losing it’s shine

September 18, 2008 – 11:55 am

I’ve been using Chrom at work since it came out a few weeks ago (not using it at home because there isn’t an official Mac version yet)  While I’m pretty happy with the overall features and feel of Chrome, it’s alpha software quirks are bad enough that I’ve went mostly back to FF3 for now.

I’ve had a few times where Gmail has started to become hosed.  I’ll go to do something (open an email, do a serach, send a new email) and I’ll get the “Working….” notice, and then the “Still Working….” and it just sort of locks up.  I won’t be able to do anything, and even if I click away and give up on what I’m doing, it just never really recovers.  If I do a page refresh, I get the status bar as the page loads, and it hangs at about 98%, and never finishes.  If I try to shut Chrome down, I’ll get ONE Chrome process that windows cannot close (that’s one of my BIGGEST bitches about Windows.  Damnit, an application should NEVER be able to refuse to shut down when the OS tells it to.  Any OS that doesn’t have complete overall control of running apps is faulty)

What’s strange is I think that the hung Chrom process somehow hoses my access to Gmail,  because at that point, I won’t even be able to use Gmail in FF3.  Rebooting the whole computer is the only thing to bring everything back to normal.

As much as I love Chrome, this has happened about 4-5 times in total already, and that’s just a hiccup I can’t deal with at this point.  I’ll wait till the first update and give it another whirl from there.  And I’ll gladly give it a try on my Mac when the OSX version is released.

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