Wed Night ride

Wow, that was fun. I rode the TBi night ride last night. It starts at 6 pm, so it's not that dark for the first hour or so. Much of the ride is on trails through parks, and the intent is to have a fun ride, not train for this weekend's race, so the pace is quite a bit easier than the Tuesday/Thursday rides. Lot's of guys ride with their wives, which is a welcome addition. I was jealous that I wasn't able to bring my own. She told me, she's only a bike purchase and a babysitter for six away from joining me. I think she'd rock. Anyway, the ride requires lights. Lots of folks have gotten nice LED's or HID lights. My 10w Halogen looked teensy by comparison. But it did the job. Maybe I will upgrade later. I was surprised by the performance that one guy got out of some Princeton Tec lights. Those guys are only $30 or so. Of course, he had 2 on his bike and one on his helmet, but they seemed to be bright enough, and they had that blue tint that seems to make things easier to see. Hmmm... I think I have an idea for a Christmas list. You can see the ride on my cycling blog. I don't know how often I can ride these. It was a rough night of solo parenting for Kim. Maybe every other week or so?

Reunion or Re-Onion?

This upcoming weekend is my 20th HS reunion. Scary stuff. The website that they have set up is really pretty good. It has a nice combination of "Did I look like that?" pictures, complete with yours truly sporting a Coors Light can (Coors, it's not even real beer, is it?) combined with "Where I am now," posts and "Look at my kids" pictures. I think it really whets everyone's appetite for the big shin-dig on Saturday night. I guess the biggest downer for me is all the folks who are divorced. Very rarely is it a good ending, usually it's a bad thing, especially with kids. I guess some might see it as making the best of a bad situation, but it hurts to see folks that I grew up with divorced, and so many of them. I just am one of those that sees marriage as a forever thing. From my folks closing arguments in a big fight ("Well, it's too bad, you're stuck with me!" with a big, broad smile, soon followed by apologies and a kiss) to the my understanding of the Catholic Sacramental model of Marriage (Bam! Kapow! Abra Kadabra, the two are now ONE!!!) to my own twisted home-grown, amateur-theologian understanding of marriage as a life-long object lesson on the love and passion of Christ for His Bride, the Church, it's always a one-way street. You can see it in the language. You get married, meaning that you undergo a change. You don't say, "I'm going to get eating," or "I'm going to get watching a football game." Those are just events in your life, you don't stay in that state forever. It's more like "I am going to get tattooed," or "I am going to get in shape." Marriage is a change of who and what you are. You stay that way until God pulls you apart by killing one of you. OK, maybe others won't agree (maybe I'm too post-modern to stand firmer on this). But all I've ever known about marriage is that it happens once and you stick to it forever. And that has brought such purpose to my life. I am still totally in love with my wife after 14 years of marriage. I have to be honest, I think I'm more in awe of her now than when we first got hitched. I heard a guy quoted on the radio saying "The fact that I get to wake up next to her each morning has got to be the best scam I have ever been a part of..." So maybe I got really really lucky, or married above my station, but I'm not married to her still because it feels right, but because it just is right.
So, lot's of folks from my class are divorced, and somehow that hurts me. Maybe it hurts because it makes my marriage seem not as important somehow, or that other folks don't cherish it the way I do. Maybe it's because it's folks who I grew up with, from my hometown, who in some way have lived life much the same as I have. I dunno. I do want to hug my wife right now. Maybe I just want it to reassure myself that she's still mine, or that I'm still a good husband. Grace just doesn't sit well with us, does it? Almost as bad as sin.