desk and deciding that I don't really
feel like working. Last week we moved back to the building and floor that we were on last year and I was lucky enough to get the same window seat I had before, it's really distracting but I love
it. This picture isn't great but it's from my phone that is sitting on the desk beside me, it's what I look at most of the day to keep from going mad :) We had a great weekend for the first
time in a while, it was actually perfect. I went out for a ride with John Friday after, we only rode 23 miles but it felt good to get out and do something after a long week of being stuck inside
and doing very menial tasks at
work. We ended up getting together with Lisa and Theresa for a couple beers after the ride, it was a great Friday night. Saturday morning both Lisa and I went for a ride with John, Jeffrey
(works with me and is a friend of John's as well) and another guy John knows. We saw some incredible scenery, about 100 other bikers, and put on 30 more miles before the day was over. This time
we met at John's place and grilled up some tasty dinner to go with our celebratory beers. We were both tired but surprisingly didn't feel as bad as we thought we might after putting on 50 miles in two
days. Sunday morning we took a friend of Lisa's from work and her boyfriend with us on the shop mountain bike ride, oh and Stella got to join us as well. Everyone had fun and in true form Stella
was out cold for the rest of the day after only about 5 miles, she spent the rest of the day snoozing in the sun while we cleaned up the garage and worked on the road bikes. We were able to get the
rest of the mess from the fence and laundry room door projects cleaned up and got a set of Aerobars mounted on Lisa's bike. After riding a bunch of miles it becomes clear why many people have them,
that forward position makes you more aerodynamic, more comfortable, more efficient and, well, you look cooler too :) We're going to see how she likes them and I'll probably get a set for my bike as
well, I need to pick up the stem that I ordered and get that installed first. Anyway, I guess that's about it for the weekend, hope it sounded as awesome as it really was. I have the long weekend
off and Lisa is stuck working the holiday but I'll be working on staining the fence if the weather holds so technically we're both working. Our friends Tad and Danielle from back in the RIT days will
be coming through town this week so we'll be hanging out with them a bit as they do some tourist stuff and crash at our place. I guess Danielle has been training for a triathalon and will be bringing
her bike with her so we may get a ride in while she's here, hopefully that works out. Have a great week and safe holiday weekend!
June 22, 2009: Happy Monday everyone, hope you had a great weekend. Things have been quite busy around here since we spoke last, sorry as always about the gap in
posts. We haven't done much around the house since finishing the fence project, we're hoping to get the staining going this weekend and if we're lucky we might even get it finished. We've
been trying to do as much riding as possible with our crazy work schedules. After watching Lisa enjoy her road bike so much I decided that I should part ways with my old Specialized Epic and replace
it with a road bike to ride with Lisa and John and a few others that ride together. I was able to get a sweet deal on a Specialized Roubaix Comp which is a sub 20 pound carbon frame bike. I've
ridden it with Lisa once and so far am very happy with it, it's so fast and soooo smooth. I'm going to need to swap out the stem for a shorter one because it seems that I'm really sized between large
and extra large. It's an XL so I'm feeling a little too stretched out, a shorter stem should take care of that and make it feel just right. Hopefully I'll get that taken care of tonight and be
able to go out on another ride with Lisa later this week. We got back yesterday afternoon from our camping trip to Eastern Washington and were so tired that we were in bed by 10pm, it was a long
weekend but tons of fun. The weather on the other side of the mountains was clear, dry and windy, very windy in fact. Stella seemed to enjoy her first camping trip and out of the 5 dogs
that were in our group she was certainly one of the best behaved. After setting up the tent and showing Stella where her bed was at earlier in the day she made it clear to us at about 10pm that
she was tired and wanted to turn in for the night. On her leash she walked me down to the tent and tried to nose up the zipper to go in :) Anyway, I'm sure I'll come up with more to say but
for now I'm out.
June 8, 2009: And we're back! My plan of getting things wrapped up at work went completely sideways and after arriving for work on Tuesday morning I found out that I had to fly back to Dallas
to finish up some work. The trick is that I had to fly out that day at 3pm!! I was barely able to run home and grab up some clean clothes, a tooth brush and my razor before missing my flight. We got in late that
night and started bright and early the next morning, 8am but really 6am with the time change. We worked basically straight through to 5am the next day, slept for five hours then worked straight through to 3am the next morning,
slept two hours then left for the airport to get back to Seattle 15 minutes after Gregg landed from NH. We grabbed some lunch, picked up a truck load of 6 x 6 posts and a new door for the garage to the laundry room and figured
out our design and spent the rest of the day removing the old fence, posts and concrete. I think we crashed at about midnight, quite and end to quite a week. We spent the next few days working on the fence and ran into
very few issues with our plans and how to make them happen. The weather was amazing but the heat was just a little too much, especially for this time of year. I was digging holes in full sun at 93 degrees, brutal.
I believe we killed an entire case of water in the first two days alone. We did have to do some customizing for the gate latching system, because we used the larger posts we had to weld up a larger steel latch bolt to make up
the length we were missing. Other than the fence fun we replaced the door between the laundry room and the garage with one that swings out, it's amazing how much space you save by not having that door swinging into the
room. We were able to get out and ride the mountain bikes four times and had a good time, especially after getting my bent crank replaced with a new, not bent one. Well, it's about time to get some work done around here so
I should bail out, check out the new pictures of the fence and enjoy the weather, Summer is nearly here!