Thanksgiving and things

I went home for Thanksgiving last week and to go deer hunting. The weather was pretty warm which sucked because I like cold weather and all the warmth led to lots of fog on opening day of deer season. On the second day I went where my Dad had been sitting and I ended up missing a doe. The rest of the deer hunting season was pretty blah, didn't see a lot of deer and didn't have too much motivation to sit out too long. Other than deer hunting I went to see my Mom, Lauren came up, and we had some good Thanksgiving food. Lots of food.

Series Wrap-up and all

Last weekend was the last of the TMBRA races at Rocky Hill. The race was one 21 mile loop that everyone had to do. Since I had the series locked up I decided not to race but Lauren still did.

I got out to pre-ride the course on Saturday and it was pretty good. Lots of trail I hadn't ridden before and it was fun.

Since I wasn't racing on Sunday I decided to volunteer and go out and hand out water bottles for the racers about 13 miles into the race. Lot's of people that were glad to see us. Some injured people and some fast looking people. Lauren came through toward the end of the time we were out there and I was glad I was out there for her. I wasn't sure she'd finish but she's tough like that.

About the time we got back to the finish line and since it was a TMBRA race it had to start raining. Then I encouraged Lauren to the finish and then went down for awards. After some heckling about not racing from the guys in my class I took the podium:

Lauren ended up fourth in her class, CONGRATS!!
It came at some cost though:
After the race quote from Lauren, "I need to learn to fall on my right side!"

Now a little off time before training for Spring racing. I'll be going back to Wisconsin for some exciting deer hunting next weekend and all of next week. Probably have to shop for Christmas sometime soon and plan a wedding. Please give tips for the wedding part!!

Lauren and I hope Kyle is doing well!! Speedy recovery!!

Halloween and things

So I forgot to mention that my Dad came up and met Lauren and I at the race in Ruston last weekend which was really great. I think he felt a little out of his element with a bunch of mountain bikers but it was great to see him and I think he got to relax a little. Here's a picture of my Dad and I:



I was clearly celebrating Halloween a little early, good times.

Lauren and I partook in the annual festivities that include knives and punkins, yes punkins. This year, actually, I think I carved a rather large, whitish gourd but I'm still not too sure about the species of my jack-o'-lantern.

While carving, the masterpiece of Stanley Kubrik played in the background featuring Jack Torrance, Wendy Torrance, and Danny Torrance.

This is Lauren's happy cyclops thing
This is my whitish gourd thing, turned out well I thought. The outer shell was ridiculously hard leading me to use a hammer in addition to my knife to carve it. I actually ended up breaking the knife, sorry Lauren.


For Halloween evening we did the traditional Trick-or-Treat handing out of candy to all the little monsters and Michael Jacksons running around. We almost ran out of candy before we had to go to Lauren's co-worker's house for a little get-together. We had some pretty sweet costumes, I'll put up some pics once they become available to me. Halloween was pretty fun and I thoroughly enjoyed the "extra" hour of sleep last night.


Today Lauren and I ventured out to IKEA to get a shelf, a table, and a couple of chairs. Pretty sweet, I'll get some pics soon.