Two Down, Two To Go

sunday was mellow. maura had another game today and i think her whole team-including herself-was gassed from yesterday's efforts. she scored a goal today and so did her friends zack and lane. a lot of promise from these youngsters in the future soccer arena. it's impressive to watch. i get pretty involved but i keep it in check so as not to be a little league dad. we went home and they still wanted to play soccer, so i put mason down for a nap and it was me against them. if they showed good dribbling skills i kind of pretended to defend against 'em. i just wanted them to get some basic skills down. they were fun. after that, they wanted to ride their bikes. maura has a new bike with gears and handbrakes so she's still getting used to that.
that's pretty much it for today. looks like a wee cold front's settling in again (figures. i washed my ride yesterday). baths all around for everybody tonight so they can be squeaky clean for school tomorrow. i think the pbs show globetrekkers is coming on tonight. my kids love watching that travel show as much as i do. it's breakfast burritos for all tomorrow morning. scored on some books and cds at my most favorite public place in jefferson county: the public library. take a look at what i scored cd-wise:
-interpol's turn on the bright lights
-elliott smith's new moon
-animal collective's feels and sung tongs
-windham hill's 25 years of piano windows
-tears for fears' songs from the big chair
i dig the windham hill stuff especially their piano artists because i grew up playing the piano and considered myself proficient at one point in my life. i'm also a fan of george winston.
i checked out the tears for fears one because that's the stuff i used to listen to when i was teenager living plano, tx. the home of lance armstrong (i used to watch him as a 14-year old triathlete lapping the pro/1/2 fields in dallas), and a great place for a diaspora for me, my wife, and most of my friends whom i consider close. do you know what you call a person from plano, texas? just a plano texan (BUH-tish!)...
again, no cycling this weekend but as i mention previously, that's ahhhhhiiiite.

Who's Your Daddy?

melissa (and her mom who decided to make a vacation out of it too) went to a school lawyer convention in north carolina this morning. what does that mean? it means yours truly'll be looking after the welfare of three kids, that's what it means (shoot. four if you count me!)! this morning wasn't so bad though because maricel spent the night with grandpa because she was going to a birthday party this morning. i couldn't take maura to her game and take maricel to her designated pickup-hence spending the night at grandpa's in order for grandpa to play delivery man for which i am grateful.
melissa and maricel left at 5 this morning so i got up to say goodbye. unfortunately mason got up an hour and a half later so i couldn't sleep in. might as well get up even though i'm slamming tired. this morning i made them a bagel omelette sandwich in order for maura to top off her gas tank for her big game. speaking of which, maura scored another goal today. she has awesome breakout speed but at the point that when the ball's about to get near the goal it kind of escapes her. she had three near misses like that.
here she is, busting a move.
oh man she looked great though...mason's down (well he's in his room, farting around not really napping yet) so it kind of frees up some time for me to clean my truck. i like trucks. actually i like all manner of vehicles that appeal to my (lack of) style (i really dig fast wagons, for instance). my cars (owned) tally is this-in chronological order: '76 dodge demon (muscle car), '83 nissan sentra (loved it!), '90 jeep wrangler (loved it!), 93 f-150 (ite), 93 volvo 855 glt (loved it!), 96 audi a-6 avant (loved it!), 95 audi s-6 avant (bittersweet!), '02 toyota tacoma (would marry it but i think there are laws against these kinds of things). i like standards too. standards are cool like that. from all these, what i really miss was the light-pressure turbo'd volvo, glt wagon-even if it was front-wheel drive. it would haul ass and haul a lot of cargo too in that cavernous wagon area. it even had a turd-row seat and a booster (the audis did too). it was a sleeper vehicle in such a way that cheese-eating high school kids would get the swedish, soccer-dad smackdown for their testosterone-induced transgression of trying to beat me off the line (i can ride the brakes like anybody else at the stop light to spool up the light pressure turbo for take-off). the look on their faces as my baby launched was priceless. it expressed oh no he di'in't!
picked up maricel from her birthday soiree with three of her classmates/friends. they were all beaming from having such a perfect trinity of enjoying each others' company.

here she is, grinning from ear-to-ear with her just finished build-a-bear named izzy, with her fiercely loyal german shepherd hanging around to ensure she's safe. no cycling today, but i get to see my kids be kids and truly enjoy themselves as these little sentient, lucid beings, with a sense of humor showing emergent personality/intellectual characteristics that at times is incomprehensible--for me--because they're growing up at a pace that i wish i could steep myself in just a wee bit longer. i'll take that trade-off...
this vegetarian pizza's (artichoke hearts, spinach, white sauce, zucchini...) what we're having for din-din. we're waiting for it to cool off. we'll wash it down with some coca-cola and watch shrek for the apres-dinner entertainment.

Mt. Biking Machismo?

my boy hez-billy (get it? like hezbollah 'cept it's the exact opposite in philosophy) and i went for a last minute mountain bike ride at mount falcon before a nasty cold front came in (to ruin saturday's-today-riding). this would be my first ride off-road for '08. i intended it to be chilly-chill and we could shoot the shizzle as we endured a tortuous climb. the local folks treat this place as their p.r. setting joint or as a litmus test of their climbing skill (it's kinda technical). so it becomes really adversarial as you see climbers ahead of you because of your y-chromosome (or, if you see someone behind you you pick up your pace). the first part of the climb has some mild obstacles in the form of obtuse erosion barriers. it zaps your speed but if you time it just right there's a high probability you'll clean 'em. billy and i are chillin' climbing with some difficulty but not in the red zone and we're talking and breathing. we're both in our lactate thresholds i'm sure. and here comes this guy. i knew he was pushing it to reach us because i was in the parking lot first waiting for billy and he made sure that we'd be in front of him for the climb acting as "rabbits" for him. i wanted to chill with billy but my testosterone took over. as soon as this dude passed billy, i dropped it a gear and got into roady mode. sho' nuff i put a nice gap on him and whenever i could slap it in the middle ring i did. sho' nuff again a little bit ahead on the climb i see another dude and set my sights on him. he dab'd on a technical part of the climb where i cleaned it and kept my momentum. i passed him making sure i controlled my breathing as my non-verbal actions convey to him, "not only am i not breathing hard but i will add insult to injury and pass you. yup, dats right." i hear him match my rpms when he shifts gears. i tell myself, "ite brah, i'm going to mash these pedals just below my anaerobic threshold and if you can still hang (or even pass me), my hat's off to you." he doesn't and my testosterone has completely possessed me. i have tunnel vision of climbing like bernard hinault in some tour in the eighty's when he shafted america's golden boy: greg lemond. i reach the top and go back down to where billy is so we can ride up together. how foolish is that? i mean my behavior. i guess that's why i race so i can do spur of the moment foolishness with my legs and remotely feel satisfied about doing that. sorry y'all (okay, i'm really not).

Great Weekend!

finally! after all the snows, the soccer fields dried and we got to watch maura play. she scored another goal and another teammate of her's-zack-scored two. it was great watching her, this time i busted out my mini-digital camera and captured her goal. yeah boi!!!

this is what i mean by a warming trend. you can actually see the ground in our backyard!
after soccer, i got on my bike for a solo 3.5 h ride in where i live in the foothills. it took 40 minutes to descend and almost two hours to climb! i rode an hour in the flats because the route i took to descend wasn't the route i climbed back to my truck (that woulda been too boring). the wind was a mother yesterday but that's okay because i had all manner of food on me and both my water bottles were full of an endurance sport drink. climbing on this particular road can be tricky because at some spots there's no shoulder and sometimes it's on an uphill switchback so i worry if someone's hugging the shoulder they'll see me in time, but no worries, everybody's going chill on a saturday afternoon. my goal on these rides is crush my legs so that it's very close to cramping. i tried to find the route that had the steepest hills and on this particularly steep climb i thought i was going to fall over sideways. oh well. got back to the truck and the endorphins came out. bought a dinner for the family at qdoba's. had a lot of pinto beans in my burrito for the power of the legume to work on my oxidized muscles.

today, sunday, i went for a 4 h ride with christopher. all small chainring (except when it's not!). the national weather service said gusts up to 37 miles an hour. so we made sure we headed out into the headwind. oh my god, it was surprising that we didn't get blown into each others wheels at times it was so intense. the sun was out and life was grand. two days in a row without anything to cover the knees or arms (how 'bout that sandra?) and boatloads of sunscreen. we were screaming back on the road and sometimes i dropped it a couple of gears so that i could get a super-high rpm on the legs to completely fatigued my pistons. with about 30 minutes remaining mr. cramps started to show itself. that's good because the last 30 minutes of a road race (or the last five laps of a crit), that's when stupid time in the pack shows up and the speeds go up. my legs need to be used to applying more watts towards the end of the ride to emulate a sprint finish. i chugged some water (went through three today, had to stop at a convenience store) and the cramps pretty much went away once the intensity fell off. it was a great weekend (oh, and my digital camera's finally dying)!

check out the (short sleeved jersey and watch) tan line (yes i'm a poseur)!

This is BOOO-SHEET!!

Tonight: Snow. Low around 18. North northeast wind between 6 and 15 mph, with gusts as high as 24 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. Total nighttime snow accumulation of 6 to 10 inches possible.
this is the forecast for tonight, april 16th from the national weather service for where i live...
that's my truck back in the blizzard of '06. i had to dig it out of our driveway. check out the height of the snow flanking my ride!

Maricel's birthday

we celebrated maricel's 8th birthday at a pottery place where 5 of her bestest buds attended. at the pottery place they got to pick a: plate, cup, mug, or saucer to paint (and ultimately fire in their kiln). it was awesome planning on melissa's part and the girls were soooo involved in their craft. it went off without a hitch and we also ate the cake and ice cream there too. my oldest daughter's growing up on me. i asked her politely when she was 5 to not grow up anymore because she was so amazingly cute at that age. she said "yes" but i guess she's not sticking to her plan. she's going to be a third grader next year! i'm old and she's getting older. hmmmmmm.........
we surprised her with a 7 speed mountain bike (what else would a cycling dad give their kids?) with a front shock to boot, amongst other presents. she rides like the devil now so i can't wait for the snow to melt when we can chase each other on bikes on our property up here. our only neighbor is a winterbird so we're the only ones on our private street! mason's my last child to teach the art of generating and sustaining the gyroscopic effect whilst steering on two wheels.
all that cake and ice cream ingested'll give me energy on future bike rides and more descending weight. my theory on cake and ice cream is the lame adage waste not, want not. my translation? tis better to go in my tummy than in a landfill. yessir.

My Girls and My Flashback to the 80s

my honey-melissa-is working late tonight and i was too lazy to actually make anything so we went to heidi's deli for some din-din. i ordered an egg salad sandwich and for my dual princesses i ordered the kid's mealx2 of egg salad, milk, and a side of potato salad. the muzak machine was playing 80s hits and subsequently played some songs i grew up listening to in a town called plano (texas) where i grew up and attended high school. they played psychedelic furs
and frankie goes to hollywood. here's a live video of them performing welcome to the pleasure dome. if you didn't get the vibe: they're gay (i'm not a homophobe) and they made some danceable, synth, brit-pop in the 80s.

holeee shmokes did it bring back a boat load o'memories. the frankie song playing was welcome to the pleasure dome. so when they started saying shooting stars never stop, even when they reach the top (x2), there goes a supernova, what a pushover yeah...i started sing/saying it too. don't worry we were the only ones there except for a couple of hillbillies probably talking about the intricacies of their john deere tractor (or a reasonable facsimile thereof). my girls didn't know what to make of it. i think-as to not plagiarize our military lexicon-they were in shock and awe. shock, as in why the hell is daddy singing and dancing in our booth; and awe, as in ahhh shnap daddy's kinda cool singing a song we'd never ever think he'd know. it was too funny. it's extremely enlightening and very meaningful as a parent to have conversation with your kid about anything and they can reply with quality statements that show understanding. it's like these emergent characteristics keep me amazed at their ever developing noggin' and ever expanding demonstration of vocabulary and syntax-it's like a miracle or something...
now we're home. maricel just finished her homework and i'm about to school them on the board game trouble.
let me finish with my middle child maura. she participated in her very first soccer game saturday and scored a goal! melissa and i were yelling ourselves silly (not in the little league dad sort of way) for her teammates and anybody else we knew. it was genuinely a hoot and a holler!