The First WBL!

I went to the WBL this weekend for the inaugural run. I haven’t been to this ride ever I think, as I’ve always been doing a local ride or something that day. The ride was a 3.5 hour one that went through Watkinsville to Statham and back. For most of the ride I was in the top 10-20, with me taking 3-4 pulls. I felt pretty good, but for good reason, since the first ride is always quite docile. A couple of times during the ride the pace would kick up quite nicely, and I kept wondering who was making it do so. After one exceptionally hard pull up a hill, we slowed down, and someone said, “I guess Floyd’s off the front; we slowed down.” I thought for a second and said, “Floyd who?”. They said, “Landis dummy!”. Not until he came back to get into the rotation did I realize I was riding with a past winner (before the doping stuff) of the Tour De France! He was pretty nice, and talked to anyone who wanted to speak with him. Guys like this can completely change your view of them. I’ve been on the fence about Floyd since his suspension, but regardless of what he did, he seems like a fairly nice person, minus a bit of a mouth, lol. It reminds me of everyday instances, where people do stupid things that make people angry. I’ve done some myself in the past, but when things are done to me I try and take into consideration the reasons why someone might have done what they done, and how they react afterwards to the positive, or negative, influence it has on themselves and the people around them.

A Bit of a Pickle

Well, it seems that I’m in a bit of a pickle. The slow economy has finally hit Habersham County, and now I’m left with a job that otherwise would be good, but is now only part time. Yesterday my boss came in my office and said “We need to talk if you have a second.” I was thinking to myself “What in the world does he want? I’ve been doing pretty dang good lately.” He said he wished he didn’t have to, but our slow sales have forced him to push me back to 25 hours a week. If you do the math, that’s about 160 bucks a week less, which of course is about 640 bucks less a month. I told my wife that I think God will take care of us. I might should be worried more than I am. Don’t get me wrong; I’m worried, but I also have a bit of peace about it. I think that the economy may pick up soon and all of this mess will sort itself out. By soon I mean in about six months, though, so until then, I have a lot of things to cut back on, and may have to get another job to supplement. Unfortunately, the first thing to go was my coach. I really dreaded calling him to let him know, and hope he didn’t take it personal, but it had to be done. Today I’m cancelling our Dish Network service, and we’re going to stop eating out. Believe it or not, just those three things left us almost even to where we were. Mainly the eating out part helped, but still. For a week or two I think I’m going to catch up on things needing to be done around the house. I have a personal friend that might can use me 10-ish hours a week, so I may work with him some. I think for many people during this time, the hardest part will be trusting in God to sort things out. It’s easy to stop paying your tithes due to getting less money a month, but that’s not your money to begin with. I think if Hope and I stay faithful and trust that we will be taken care of, we’ll always find a way to weather the storm.

Update

Just to get on here and not let the blog die, I figured I'd update a little. Aaron has a double ear infection, and woke up I THINK around 3-4am this morning crying. We did what we could and he finally went back to sleep, but slept the rest of the night with us. I've been hearing from "Bicycling" subscribers that the issue with me in it is out, and I've been sent a scan of said issue. Looks like it turned out pretty good. The WBL starts Saturday, and I couldn't be more excited! I always look forward to the big group rides the WBL brings to bout those "winter blues" that are quite common from riding so much indoors during the week in the winter. Not much else to say. Christmas is coming!

Must Be Something in the Dressing!

I'm sick, and it sucks! I'm not hardcore puking sick, but I am bad upset stomach sick, and that's just as bad. You can't sit on a bike saddle when your butt hurts, lol. On another note, my wife and son are both sick as well. I also went to Black Friday at Wal-Mart yesterday and picked up a new Mario special edition DS.

Thankful!

I'm thankful for many things, but losing personal items is not one of them. Yes, I'm a video game nerd, and I've lost my Legend of Zelda Triforce Edition Nintendo DS. Sucks, I know! On a more serious note, my wife has been searching high and low for my favorite "carry-on", second only to my Iphone. She has straight up been a trooper putting up with my baby-ish whining about losing it and helping me to try and find it. I put some "extra" bike parts I have lying around so I can purchase another DS if need be, but I'm hoping it won't come to that.

Sick?

Sometimes it’s hard to decide when sick is “sick enough” to not ride the bike. In my opinion, a simple sinus issue is not something to defer me from riding. If that issue even hints at getting worse, though, I’ll take a day or two off. Hope left the heat on a couple nights ago which I guess dried out my throat, because I woke up w/ it being sore. Last night we turned it down, but I was a bit worse today. I’m on the verge of it being okay to ride and me having to take a day off. I guess we’ll see. It’s much better to take a day or two off and recoup than it is to lose a whole week to sickness because I was too stubborn to rest.

Still Here I guess...

Rode 3 hours today. 245 avg. power w/ 256 normalized. Guess I'll keep posting. The long ride made me miss church, but it didn't really hit me that church starts earlier than it used to (6:00 instead of 6:30). The bible reading w/ me and Hope is going well. We read a chapter or two a night and I'm already learning tons. Mainly a scripture from Matthew that speaks about judging people. I'm not 100% on the exact nomenclature, but it talks about seeing a speck in your brother's eye, but not being able to see the log in your own. Sit back and think about it for a minute, and if you're like me, you might get something from it!