Christmas and all that

Lauren and I went back to Wisconsin and Minnesota last week for the Christmas festivities. It was an eventful trip starting with the flight home. I, and Lauren, thought we were flying out of George Bush Intergalactic Airport (IAH) and it turns out we were supposed to fly out of Hobby (HOU). Stupid that those airports can't pick symbols that might actually distinguish which one is which since that are both International Airports. Thankfully, the lady that helped us wasn't already bogged down by the craziness that Christmas brings to airports and she helped us get to Chicago from which we took a bus ride home.

Further excitement came from Christmas at my Mom's house with my sister and her two kids.

The day after that, Sunday I think, Lauren and I met up with my friend Chris and we went skiing. Lauren and I are both pretty good skiers and apparently Chris had never skied before. We showed him the ropes, and how to fall. It was good times and we had Chris skiing some Blacks before we were done. Chris actually found out that skiing without falling is much more fun than falling continuously.

Monday we left for the cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul) although we pretty much hung out only in St. Paul.

Tuesday we toured some potential wedding venues but we have not picked one.

Wednesday we had a joint engagement party with Lauren's sister and her fiance. It was quite a bit of fun, got to meet lots of people and then drive home in lots of snow.

Thursday brought us loads of nice packy snow with which Lauren, Buddy (Lauren's brother), Sasha (Lauren's sister's fiance) and I built a remarkable scene. Something sort of like this but not really. I will soon post pictures of our masterpiece.
We also had a big family Christmas at Lauren's on Thursday night, everyone was awed by the snow sculpture.
On a side note: Lauren's Dad hooked us up with iPhones for Christmas!

Friday we had Christmas with Lauren's family in the morning and then drove back to my house for Christmas at my Dad's. Getting pretty exhausted of Christmas by now but I persevered.

Saturday we had the big Barber family Christmas and it was great to see all of the family. I also saw my Grandfather who is quite ill, I sure hope he starts getting better.

Sunday we were supposed to fly out of Madison early (6:30 a.m.) but the plane was held due to maintenance issues. Oh well, we had iPhones to play on. Finally we got home about 3:30 - 4 and I raked the back yard. Random, yes, but our back yard sure looks good. Then we watched Idiocracy, dumbest movie ever made!

Sure

it's been a while since I've written and quite a bit has happened since then. The biggest news is that we got a sweet foosball table. It's definitely sturdy and I've been puttin' a whoopin' on Lauren ever since. Here is a picture so now, Mom, you can't say, "You never post pictures when you say you are going to!" anymore. Here are the pictures of the furniture we got:

Sweet foosball table!

Sort of a kitchen table

Big bookshelf

Little bookshelf and bike and desk. Need to organize a little maybe...


Other good news revolves around work, Seu, and Snow.



At work I've been in training for the past two weeks learning how to do geology, turns out it's pretty dang fun! Geophysics isn't so scary anymore and I found out people actually use Sequence Stratigraphy. Nice.


Seu, forcefully or not, was removed the breeding pool of dogs as of last Tuesday, he is still barking at a slightly higher pitch.


In case you didn't hear, Houston got snow last Friday. Exciting, right? We did actually get out of work early but not because the snow was piling up but because the already terrible drivers in Houston don't actually know what snow is so they drive around like the sky is falling, it could be also be caused when people see squirrels doing this. Chaos!


We did document this unusual occasion:


Notice Seu's look of displeasure, it's not from the snow or the cold.

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.

Ruston, Louisiana that is

Last weekend was the fourth race of the Fall TMBRA series in Ruston, LA. It was a long drive (five and a half hours) but Lauren and Westley (a high school kid) picked me up at work so we could head up from there. It was a good trip but long.

This race was a little different from most races as there was a short track and time trial on Saturday and the typical cross country race on Sunday. I haven't ever done a time trial on either the road or the mountain (No special bikes or cool pictures of BA mountain bike time trials) bike so I didn't really know what to expect.

SIDE NOTE: I've also never tried a tandem time trial, I'm gonna have to ask Lauren if she's into that kind of thing.

The short track race was the first race on Saturday but I didn't do it because it didn't count for the Cat 2 GC and it costed more money. The time trial was pretty much what I expected it to be, a painfest. I downed a GU and some drink right before I started which may not have been a good idea. Oh well. The race was pretty good. The first guy I caught was nice and got off the trail for me right before a slippery corner which I slid out in losing a couple second for sure. The second guy I caught was not so nice and he didn't let me by even though I was considerably faster than he. He did proceed to stall out on a switchback leading up to the finish making me stop and costing me a few more seconds. In the end I got second a mere six seconds out of first.
Here's some TT pics:

Racing, intensely

The cross country race was on Sunday and I was really looking for a win. I started out pretty fast trying to stay at the front and was feeling pretty sore from the TT and probably a little sore still from the 24 hour race but feeling alright. We stayed with the whole field for a while and then three of us (James, Josh, and I) started pulling away. I went back in forth from second to first to third and when I pulled back into second James took off. Neither Josh or I could respond and James built a decent lead. Josh and I took turns pulling until Josh tore off his derailleur. This happened at a good time for me since I looked back and saw a couple guys from our class closing in. I picked up the pace a little and held everyone off for second.
Here's a XC photo:

I ended up second overall in the GC to James but it was enough to solidify a win for the series. Yay!! I am not going to race the last race now but Lauren is so I'll get some updates.

Lauren did tear it up at Ruston, too:

She looks awfully perky though for racing. Game face Lauren!!

The awesome pictures are from KarmaBiker!

24 hours, whew!

It was a fast weekend and a hard fought battle. We stayed in La Grange on Friday night so we were closer to the race on Saturday. The race started at noon on Saturday so we had to be out there around 10 for the pre-race meeting and to get set-up for the race. I also had to meet the rest of the team since it was a last minute team that got put together. The three guys on the team are all from San Antonio: Steve, Simon, and Micah.

Steve was the team captain

Simon is a professional trainer, triathlete, and nutritionist

Micah was the first time racer who had never ridden Rocky Hill Ranch

Simon was the first rider out for us and he did well. Steve was out number 2, I rode number 3, and Micah was number 4. We ran a lap schedule of 1,2,1,2,3,4,3,4. I think this gives more rest than running 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4.

Like last year, I thought I pushed it too hard on my first lap and wasn't feeling too great but I put down a 58 minute lap, fastest lap for the whole team. Second lap was good (1:01:32). My second lap was at dusk so I got to see a sweet view of a really good, orange sunset as I was cresting the last sorta big climb on the course, sweet. Night laps of 1:03 and 1:06 were pretty good night laps I thought. Since there were no overall standings we didn't really know how we were doing beyond knowing that we were in the top three. I figured we were in third due to some slow night laps. Thinking it was my last lap of the race I pushed it as hard as I could and threw down a 1:00 lap. Simon went out and was going to take the last lap but when he came in he told me to go. Great . . .

Thinking we were close to the team in front of us I hammered it as hard as I could to try to catch him but I couldn't, even with a 1:03 lap.

Turns out we weren't very close to the first place team but we did end up in second, not bad for a last minute team, especially with a first-time racer.

I felt pretty sick the rest of the day and really tired. At least this year there wasn't anyone yelling "Go Racer!" all night.

Here's some pics:

Going out on the second lap . . .

20 hours later,

Coming in at the finish, sorry, no mid-race photos

Not feeling so well, little cramping going on

Looking good with the team

MMMMMM! Pickle Juice!!

The team, our team name was 'The Justice League'. From left, Steve, Micah, Simon, Me.

The massage last night felt really good and definitely helped with the recovery.

Thanks to Lauren for sort of being support and getting off the cot so I could try to sleep a little.

Thanks also to Teresa and Cecilia for making the trip out so the doggies could play and y'all could hang out a little.