I didn’t get a chance to ride today and I don’t know if I will be able to ride anymore this weekend.  I had to come home after work and do some things around the house, mostly taking the dog out and running her dry of energy, then changing Kelly’s oil in her car.  All things that need to be done to get ready for our big trip this weekend.  We are headed down to Pennsylvania to watch a Penn State football game.  They are always a good time with the tailgating and all around nonsense that goes on.  I will try to get a ride in tomorrow after work, but I can’t promise anything as I am still not packed for the trip.  I still have to get my things together as well as the dog’s.  Traveling with her is always such a good time.  She runs back and forth between front and back seat, then after 3 hours of that, she lays down and takes a 15 minute nap before she does it all again.  Good times.

I do need to try and get some better training in or at least something more consistent.  That is the one good thing about getting he trainer out.  No matter how early is gets dark or how cold and rainy it is, I can always get a quality workout in and it generally only tales 1.5 hours.  However, there is no substitution for actually riding outdoors.

This weekend was rather uneventful.  Friday ended off with a 2 hour ride after work and 3 hours of cleaning up 3 different bikes.  Saturday was full of riding in the pouring rain followed by watching Penn State lose to #1 ranked Ohio State.  Ohh well, can’t win them all.  unfortunately, I was unable to get a ride in on Sunday as I took the dog for a walk.  Doesn’t seem like such a big event, but she was finally cleared to go for a walk.  She had some melanomas removed from her paw (thank goodness they were benign) and he was given the order for bed rest for 2 weeks.  Sunday was the end of those 2 weeks.  I never saw a dog so happy to run and run and run and run and….well you get the idea.  It was nice just to be out in the woods without much else going on except the dog tearing all over the place.

Even though I didn’t get a ton of riding in and not much else, I thought it was a nice weekend.  It was nice to give my back a nice rest being it has been a little sore recently due to a wicked fire wood splitting incident.

Well, its official.  The new website is up and running 100%.  This is over a month or 2 coming so I am excited and relieved that it is finally here.  All the url’s now redirect you to the correct spot but feel free to update all your bookmarks.  If any of you are tooling around the site and any link doesn’t work, let me know.  I was doing all this nonsense late last night so there might be an error somewhere on the site, but lets hope not..

It seems as if Levi Leipheimer will be joining former Discovery teammate and 2007 tour winner, Alberto Contador and ex-team manager Johan Bruyneel over on the Astana team.

Velonews Link

Well, its been done.  The I finally got around to updating the site to the new theme and tomorrow morning I will be working on the new name.  From now on, the site will be commonly known as outdooraddict.org.  I thought the new name for the site was quite fitting for my life style.  I decided to change everything and make the new name because typing in my full name seemed like such a pain.  Now there will be a lot less key strokes for all.  I am keeping the old url around and it will automatically redirect you toward the new name, but really, it will be just as easy to type in the new stuff.

I like the new theme.  It took me quite some time to figure out exactly which one to use.  I must have looked for more than a thousand of them until I found this one.  I like it, for now.  I am sure at some point I will get sick of it as well, but until then, I will stick with this one.

There has been a lack of postings by me lately.  I am sorry.  It is a problem we are working on here at headquarters.  I will try not to let it happen again..

Today was easily 75 degrees outside. I sat inside at my office. It was a shame. My boss told me to leave about 3:30 to go get a ride in. I am still not really doing well with solid food. Every time I eat something that isn’t soup, I feel like dying all over again. Needless to say, I am trying to stay away from real food for a bit more time. That does mean that I am completely wiped out being I have eaten nothing much more than soup and water. I didn’t go for a ride. I sat there wishing I was outside. When I came home, I decided to get our screen door hung. Sure, it is almost November, but better late than never, no? Since I hung one door, I decided to fix a few other things around the house that needed to be done. Seems as if my honey-do list is almost done now.

On a side note, while I was cleaning up some of the mess I created tonight, I had to clean up and put away our bird cage. Last week, my pet bird died. To be completely honest, I didn’t lose any sleep about it. Even though it wasn’t the most exciting thing to have a bird, I had him for a little more than 10 years. After 10 years of something, you become used to things. I do miss coming home and hearing him tweet. I do miss him singing all the time and going crazy every time a bunch of birds were at the bird feeder outside his window. How about a quick moment of silence for him, as my house is certainly more quiet with out him, as he will be missed…….

It has been quite a long week since I last posted anything.  First, I showed my skills and won the beginner class of the Great Glenn Cyclocross Series on Sunday.  Its not as great as it sounds.  I beat one person who is 61 years old who has had both knees replaced.  I don’t feel like such a winner anymore.  Monday and Tuesday weren’t anything special.  I did get to ride on Tuesday night on the single speed.  Wednesday I got to ride with Sven over in Davis Hill for a night ride.  It was a rather nice ride.  I have never been on those trails and I liked the way they were laid out.  This is where things went downhill.   I got home, tried going to sleep and at about 11 that is when the “magic” started happening.  Next followed more then 36 hours of throwing up.  GOOD TIMES.  The one upside of it is that I have lost more than 7 lbs so far.  That is a positive thing, I guess.  Other than that, I have been most likely laying around the house, which is somewhat fun, but having to get up to puke every once in a while isn’t so much.  Unfortunately I won’t be able to do the race tomorrow because the lack of solid food for 3 days has left me so week that I get tired just walking up the stairs.

It has been one long week.  Hopefully next week will be much better and I will be able to get some more decent rides in.

We are not joggers.  That is Pearl Izumi’s ad campaign for their running gear.  Tonight I have decided that I am not a jogger….or a runner or anything of the sort.  I have decided that at this point in time, I am dropping the half marathon training plan for now.  The main reason….simple, there is WAY too much good biking to be done.  I have a cyclocross race tomorrow and I haven’t ridden a bike in quite some time because I have been busy running.  Not that there is anything wrong with running, but for me, my major concentration is biking.  I started running for the sole purpose to train for an adventure race that is March 1st.  I have plenty of time once the bike off season come to start to train for that.  So for now, I am putting the running shoes down and picking back up the cycling shoes.  This is the best time of the year, in my opinion, for mountain biking.  It is much cooler, the sweat isn’t pouring off of me the entire time, and now I can do a 2 hour night ride and still be home by 7:30pm.  How great is that?!?!

Tomorrow is my the first Cyclocross race of the series and I am ready to go.   After some major issues building my bike last night, broken rear dérailleur, but now things are all built and ready to go.  I am ready for the race.  Hopefully my lack of training won’t be an issue.

The first race of my 2008 season has been added to my schedule.   The American SS Championship.  The best part about it is that it is here in North Conway.  There is no better way to train for a race than to ride that trail everyday.  Ohh yea.  It might be the coffee I drank this morning or it might be the excitement, but I am a little giddy this morning after I read this.