Why I have three rear derailleurs

There were only four of us on a "training ride" three weeks back.  One guy was about the same level as me, the other two are really strong guys.  So as we're starting up another hill about an hour into the ride, I shift into the big ring to catch up and promptly drop my chain.  It fell off on the outside, towards my pedal.  I shifted back, hoping to pull my chain back onto the ring (it's worked a couple of times), but it didn't this time.  I felt the chain catch, or I should say lock up.  I tried to force it a bit (just a bit), and then I felt the whole bike lock up.  Fortunately, by this time, I had lost a considerable amount of momentum and the bike was almost to a stop.  The wet pavement helped me from doing further damage to my drivetrain.  I pulled over and noticed my rear derailleur in my rear spokes.  Not good, not good at all.  Worse, the other guys were over the hill and gone, and I didn't have anyone's phone number with me.  So I pulled over and tried to get the bike rideable.  Did I mention that it was cold, like mid-30's?  And windy?  And the sweat in my gear was starting to make me shiver?

I was about to call home and get my wife to come get me (it would have taken her an hour plus) when my ride mates came back over the hill looking for me.  Chris Moore was able to get me one gear, one stinking gear, but that was enough to ride on, and we took off.  My one gear was 53x13 or 14, I forget.  And the derailleur hanger was at a 45 degree angle, so the derailleur pulleys were out of alignment with the chain, meaning a huge amount of drag (Chris said it felt like 50 watts, I have no clue).  It felt very tall.  Well, we went back the next 16 miles to the shop.  The whole way I can't shift.  I can't accelerate worth a flip and I don't want to stop.  At the shop, the wrench (a guy I trust a great deal, despite his misdiagnosis) informs me that, now that he's worked the derailleur hanger back, the derailleur itself is bent.  Time for a new one.  Oh, new ones cost $100.  And it's right before Christmas and with six kids, I'm pretty much broke.  So much for finishing off those last 120 miles to get to 2500 for the year...  So I did what any other near-broke cyclist would do, I went to eBay.  I put the bike in the shop, it needed a new chain anyway, and I told the guy "I'll provide the derailleur and the hanger." I spent the rest of the week looking on eBay.  Meanwhile, another wrench at another shop who's a pretty good friend (I'd buy him lunch on his birthday kind of buddy) says, "Hey, maybe I can find something at home to help you out."  Of course, I'm impatient, so after a couple of days of no news from him, I found a nice Ultegra 9 sp rear der, which would work with my 10 speed system per Shimano, and I bought it the Friday before Christmas.  Then I wait and wait.  I bought it on a Friday.  The following Thursday, I ping the eBay seller.  No response.  I ping him again on Friday, he says "Your der is on its way."  Ouch, no way it will be here before the big ride on New Year's.  Sat night, my buddy at the shop says, I've got a better der, Dura Ace, and it's yours for $5 more than the eBay der, and it's ready tomorrow.  Rock and roll!  The eBay one will be a backup.  So I buy it, take it back to the shop my bike is waiting at (same franchise), and get everything set up.  I picked it up today, but the guy tells me that the "broken" der isn't really bent.  It must have been the hanger.  Dang it, I had that the whole time!  I ordered a spare when Joseph bent one last Summer.  Then I get home, and guess what's in my mailbox?  The eBay der!!  So now I have a 9 speed Ultegra, a 10 speed Ultegra, and a 9 speed Dura Ace, with the last one installed.  Yuck, now I have to go back to try to sell one to make back some change.

Prospero Año Neuvo

I don't know if you can tell, but I came very close to using some foul Spanish in the title for this post. Many years ago when I was a Youth Minister, I came to understand the difference between "Año" and "Ano." One means year, the other means anus. The Catholic Church was making a big deal about the year 2000 and there was a National Office that was created to promote all kinds of stuff for it. They called it a Jubilee year and everything that was written in English was also in Spanish. Unfortunately, they let something slip in a final press and had to recall thousands and thousands of Spanish pamphlets proclaiming the Jubilee for Anus 2000, or maybe it was the Jubilee of 2000 Anuses (Anii?). So fast forward a year, and I'm in Six Flags at their Holiday in the Park, and there's all these signs everywhere with Merry Christmas and Happy New Year in different languages, and there's this one in front of me with "Prospero Ano Neuvo!" Happy New Anus! I included it on all my Christmas Cards that year.

I really want one of these

In the Netherlands, they are called bakfiets (bach-feets), the plural is bakfietsen. They are huge overseas. Check out this footage of them outside a local zoo.



I especially like all the child sized seatbelts. I don't know how these would play out here unless there emerged a real bike friendly trail system, but I would love to find out. Here's an example of how family-friendly they can be.



Sleeping babies, how cute!

Better than a Blog award!

Today I experienced an epiphany. I checked out Sitemeter and saw that I had a hit. Yes, I know, I'm so desperate for attention that I check out each hit on my blog, but that only proves my eventual point. The entry click for this hit was a Google search for "lame blogs." And yessir, this one came in third!!

Check it out for yourself.

I'm so proud. And I can't believe I'm so proud. It's a tribute to the insignificance of this blog. To all the little people who have never checked out my blog, thank you. Although you'll never know how much your missing this blog was so important to me, and you'll never know you missed it because you never saw it, your apathy and ignorance is a source of courage and inspiration for me.

Edit: *sniff, sniff* I guess the vagaries of Google are beyond the ken of mortals. I am now no longer #3 on the list, but #36. Maybe the very nature of lame-ness requires that you be ignorant of it. Sort of like those folks who are sooo cooool that they shop for plaid pants at thrift stores even though they pull down six figure salaries. If you are knowingly lame, you no longer qualify as lame, but have progressed beyond lame, straight past vaguely hip, around the corner from faddish, to sit down next to passé.

Bike Lights

Ok, a while back I put up a post on riding in the dark. It is different than riding in the night, obviously. There are two points to consider. 1) Can drivers see me? and 2) Can I see the road enough to ride at a decent speed? The first point can be handled pretty inexpensively. I've got a Planet Bike Blinky Super Flash tail light and the dang thing is bright. It's not as bright as a Dinotte tail light, but it seems to do a good enough job. I even had a driver tell me at a stoplight that he liked the taillight that I had, and that was on a Saturday morning. It was cloudy, but it was between 11 and 11:30 am. If I had a spare $150, I'd get the Dinotte. Joey from Trinity Bicycles showed me one on his bike back this summer and the thing is bright. The pics from the bottom of their photo page that show a huge amount of red light look exactly like what I saw. But the Super Flash was $20 or so. Case closed. I guess if I were concerned that someone was going to hit me from behind, then I'd get the Dinotte. Yeah, the busiest part of my commute is a road that had a shoulder that's a whole lane wide. If I didn't have that, I'd spend for the Dinotte. Despite the high cost of living, it's still popular. You can handle the first question for headlights (Can drivers see me?) for relatively little cash as well. The Fredcast recommends that you actually have two lights for visibility, one flashing on your handlebars and one constant on your helmet. Folks can see that you are looking at them and respond quicker. The one for your head should probably be a relatively expensive one though, so you can use it to see the road better. I got a cheap Cateye LED for Joseph last month. I didn't realize how weak it was until I got it, but it will work as a flashing light just fine.
But for the second issue, can I see the road, you need to be prepared to spend the bucks. I originally got a NiteHawk Phoenix halogen light that had been sitting in the shop for three years. Since it had been sitting there for so long, it was marked down to 1/2 MSRP. I liked the brightness, the charger, and the setup on the bike. Unfortunately, the yellow light tended to get washed out at dusk, especially when there's cars passing by. On a dark night or on a trail, it's great though. So I ended up getting an early Christmas gift from my Pop, a NiteRider Minewt. It's the '07 model, not the one they sold last Spring. It throws the light a bit farther than the halogen and the light picks up contrasts a bit better. It also has three settings: high, low and flash; and the battery lasts longer. My commute is short enough that I don't worry about the Phoenix dying out, but on longer night rides, the 3 1/2 hour burn time is nice.
Last night I rode about 12 miles from the office to try to catch up with the bi-weekly night ride. I brought along both headlights, as I was worried that I might run through the Minewt's battery. I haven't ever had a light go out on me when I needed it, but I'm pretty good about making sure the things are charged up. I missed the ride and had to turn around and go home. So I got a chance to see how the lights worked at twilight, at dusk, and then after sunset. When there was enough light to see the road clearly, I had the Minewt on flash. It gave me the comfort I needed to approach intersections and basically let folks know I'm there. Eventually it got a bit darker and I had to go to the low beam. The high beam didn't help me see the road better, although you could see a difference between high and low, plus I wanted to be able to use it for the entire ride. Turning on the Phoenix didn't give me better vision at this point either. After I figured out that I had missed the ride and had turned back, it was after sunset. I started to head home. Unlike my normal commute, this was mostly through neighborhood streets with no defined shoulder instead of on a major road with a full lane of shoulder. The Super Flash was still adequate but the Minewt just didn't seem to throw out light far enough as I passed from block to block in mostly-darkness. After a couple of miles, I threw it on high. Then I turned on the Phoenix and noticed quite a difference. When I was riding down the major road with lots of light pollution (streetlights, car headlights), the halogen Phoenix was washed out. If I had the Minewt on low and turned the Phoenix on and off, there really wasn't a discernible difference, except at the far edges of the beam. I think this is primarily because most headlights and streetlights are halogens, so the light pollution from them washes out the halogen Phoenix. The LED light freqs thrown out by the Minewt are different enough to help me see up the road. But when there's not much light out at all, the Phoenix was a tad brighter. Using both gave me the best vision though. The Minewt threw the light out a bit farther and the light itself is easier to adjust, so it was tilted a bit further up than the Phoenix. I was planning on giving it to Joseph or to my Brother-in-law, but now it looks like I'm buying some more lights for Christmas for them. Maybe I'll buy them some different types and try them out first.

Sherman named head coach - News

Sherman named head coach - News

I dunno. He's never been a head coach in college, so never been in charge of recruiting. And that's more than half of college coaching. He's been an NFL head coach, but never of a team that had a quarterback not named Brett Favre. Methinks that he might not be that much better than Fran. At least Fran had a great pedigree. And for 7 years at $1.8 million? I know that's what the head coach at a "major" team like A&M should be paid, but this guy seems like a reach. If he has a cheap buyout clause, then I'm on the bandwagon. Otherwise, I'm just kinda hanging here, waiting to see what the recruit class looks like and see what he puts on the field.

Mike Huckabee, Chuck Norris approved

This is just freaking hilarious.



I don't really support Huckabee, I actually think all politicians are basically out for themselves instead of the betterment of the nation. But this, this makes me want to vote for him. This is just too much chutzpah to ignore.

Need to do work while still getting in that winter training?

I need one of these. A very nice mix of hi-tech and lo-tech.

Check this out

Just found this on accident and found it fascinating. It makes me think all about my own kids' experience with homeschooling.



So it seems that educational structures and objectives are totally skew with what college students experience or how they see the world.

H/T to Digital Edu. Like I said, I just stumbled upon it, no guarantees that this guy would approve of anything I say, or vice versa.

Reunification, everybody's doing it

OK, for something different, a blog entry that has nothing to do with family or cycling...

I just read this about possible reunification between the Roman Catholic Church and elements of the Orthodox Church. Hat tip to Marcel at Mary's Aggies. I say "elements of" only because the Russian Orthodox (not the oldest or most prestigious, but certainly the largest) members walked out because there were reps from the Estonian Orthodox church there, and the Russians apparently look on the Estonians like the Chinese do the Taiwanese. It will be interesting to see if this sticks. Since the Orthodox church is "Autocephalous," meaning that the Patriarch of Serbia has no real authority over folks under the Patriarch of Romania, it remains to be seen if each Patriarch will have to independently agree to the document, although maybe they already did, the reports I've read aren't clear. I also did a bit of Googling and found an interview with the representative Bishop from the Russian Orthodox church where he makes it clear that he agrees with the primacy of the Patriarch of Rome (the Pope) but that it's a primacy of honor, not of jurisdiction. In other words, yup, he's the first, but not really in any meaningful way. It's like letting your older brother ride shotgun so he won't mess with you you in the back seat. It looks nice and all, but it's really not something all that meaningful. It might be a good start, or it might not go anywhere. There's also a CNS report out that has some interesting tidbits. The Russian Orthodox are saying "We weren't there, it might not count." And Cardinal Kaspar points out in a Vatican Radio interview that "I think it will need a whole decade." OK, something to pray for, but it doesn't look like anything's going to happen soon.

And it reminds me also of this, although this is a bit less autocephalous and a bit more "OK, now that we've got spit in the eye by the Episcopalian Church, we can see a bit more clearly. Please let us in your club."
Hat tips to Marcel (a buddy of mine from college), to the Shrine of the Holy Whapping (never met him), and to the Bovina Blovinator (never heard of them, but that's more about my ignorance than their importance).

It get too dark too early now

OK, so I'm walking out to the car after work. I had spandex on under my clothes and my bike in the trunk. It was between 5:30 to 5:40. Fortunately I had remembered to grab the battery for my head light before I left this morning. When I finally stepped off at nearly six pm, dusk had fallen. In fact, sunset was at 5:30, so dusk had not only fallen on his keister, but he was passed out on the median mumbling something about an old college flame. No problem, I thought. I've got my trusty 10w halogen headlight mounted on the handlebars. That with a blinky taillight will keep me visible. And those items did just that. Unfortunately I came to understand why my headlight was on clearance for $80 and why some folks will pay > $400 for a top flight HID system. I'm sure cars could see my headlight, but with all of the streetlights and headlights of traffic passing, I could barely see 15-20 feet in front of me. If it had been darker, then I would have done fine. But as it was, I needed more light to cut through the light pollution to really see the ground. It'll be fine for those night rides through the parks, but I think I need to spend a couple of hundred bucks to get me a dinotte or maybe a minewt dual. Then Joseph can put on my niterider and come meet me halfway or something.

"Doping in sports is a victimless crime"

Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be so. This is troubling in that not only are innocent children the ones bearing the burden, but that the athletes probably didn't even know that they were taking PEDs (Performance Enhancing Drugs). Today's athletes are putting not only their own health at risk, but the health of their progeny if/when they dope.

Saturday ride

OK, there's more in my life than just cycling, but that seems to be one of the few things I feel OK blogging about. So it goes. Saturday morning I decide to take the plunge and go on the big shop ride, 55 miles. I remembered that Andy Hollinger has said that if he's there, no one will get dropped. I've done some other shop rides, 30-odd affairs, and I usually fall off after about 12-15 miles and make my own way home. This ride goes to a completely different part of Ft. Worth and a part that I don't know well enough to get back on my own. But I knew that I couldn't ride on Sunday (HS cycling league practice), or Monday (business trip) or Tuesday (conf call at 8 AM), so I wanted to get in some miles. Of course, I forgot my cell phone in the car, so I couldn't log the miles with bimactive. And I don't know the route, so I can't manually input it. So I get on this ride. I think I fell off the back four times. Once, they came to a stop light barely a hundred meters after I popped. Then I fell off again, but they turned away from the wind and got a little slope down, so it was no problem to get right back on. A third time I fell back and thought I would be waiting for Andy (who fell back miles before), but I think the group got held up by another light. The last time, I was riding on perhaps the worst chip-seal that I've ever ridden on. I don't mean that it was broken up in semi-potholes. I mean that it was without blemish, except for the chip seal itself was so bad it was like the road had some sort of skin disease. And there was a hill, and I was tired, and, oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the chipseal was all kinds of nasty. One of the better riders, Colt Bates, came back and rode with me up the last few hills. Quite an encourager. I never really rotated through with anyone, just stayed in the back and took what draft I could. I did jump at the end, but after a short rally I popped and sharked back to the back of the pack. I still finished with the pack though. I think I'm getting an idea of what my strengths and weaknesses are. Of course, like everyone else, I hate hills, but on long low-grade climbs, I think I have an advantage. Being 250, I don't have to get up out of the seat to really mash down with power, so lots of hills where other guys are standing up, I'm motoring past still in my seat and not putting in that much effort. And on the other side of the hill, I can totally tear up most smaller riders. I need to work on steeper hills, longer high HR efforts, and maybe learn to sprint in there somewhere.

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.

Night Riding

It's getting darker earlier now. I heard that our regular Tuesday - Thursday shop ride will be phasing out this week due to dusk coming earlier and earlier. Shame that Joseph and I are just now getting tuned in. The alternate to it is laps at Texas Motor Speedway, ok for me but a hoof for Joseph. So today, due to a class that I had at 8 am at work, I had to get up at the butt crack of dawn and ride in the dark. I have a nice set of lights, a 10W halogen front light and a super blinky back light, but I still felt like I was taking my life in my hands when I pedaled off today. It wasn't that early, say 6:30 or so. Dawn was right around 7, so the last couple of miles I turned off my headlight. I think I'll be doing it again tomorrow and for the rest of the winter. I guess I better get used to it. There's also going to be a night ride starting at the shop sometime soon, maybe in a month or two. That's supposed to be a blast. Kinda slow compared to the regular ride and you need lights, but it's supposed to be the funnest ride out there. Maybe I can find a used set of lights for Joseph, maybe even Emily could keep up.

There's all kinds of good in this world

I read a story on CNN that shows me what evangelism could be, maybe what it should be. A little Iraqi boy was disfigured by some nasties last January who poured gasoline over him and lit him on fire. The father goes to the Iraqi Ministry of Health and the parliament to see what help he can find for his boy, but to no avail. He finds some reporters from CNN and 12,000 viewers donate to a special fund set up at the Children's Burn Foundation. He's here now in the states to get medical treatment, and as a bonus, he gets to see the beach in Malibu. While there, some folks from a local church are there on a Father-child beach trip. They see him, approach the interpreter, and ask if they can pray for him. The Iraqi family accepts and the church folks get down on their knees in the sand and surround the family, praying for healing and support. They even pray for forgiveness for the folks who injured this child. That's evangelism. We need to send folks over to Iraq to get on their knees in the sand and pray. I'm not a leftie or a fundie, and I think we're stuck in Iraq until they are ready to hold their own, but I think we need more missionaries there.
By the way, the CNN article identifies the church as Valley Peak, but it's almost certainly the Church at Rocky Peak. It's in the same town that the article mentions and there was a Father - child beach event there last Sunday.

Mark Shea falls victim to the disease that he's diagnosing

So I check Mark Shea's blog daily. OK, several times a day. He's got great stuff and I appreciate his sense of humor. In fact, I get a bit bummed when he doesn't have the time to post. He reads a ton on the 'net and lots of folks email him stuff so his site is a great nexus. He posted a nice article from InsideCatholic.com today that he wrote. On this article, I have a point of contention though. In order to point out how biased the media is about Pope Benedict XVI, he did a number of Google searches about him, like "Benedict XVI" rigid, and recorded the number of hits. So if lot's of folks think Pope B XVI is a rigid sort of guy, then there would be lots of hits. One problem, he did this for Google, so that's the entire Internet, not just what the LA Times or NY Post think of him. It's all the random left wing bloggers, all the whacked-out Fundies who think Jack Chick has a true vision, and all the random pages with lists of search terms hoping to catch traffic. All it would have taken would be to click the "News" link on the top of the Google search page to get an idea of how often that set of words was used by media types. Of course, the numbers given would have been much smaller, but a true indication of how prevalent those terms are used by the media, not the 'net. OK, I think I've beat the Internet <> Media drum. There's another issue that I have with this. He never gives those numbers any context by comparing them to searches that would be considered kind. So, no listing of how many hits "Benedict XVI" loving would show. In fact, that search gave more hits than the top one on his list. So going by the logic that he presents, there's more a feeling that the Pope is loving among the media than a feeling that he is rigid, more than he's "cracking down" on anything, in fact. Clicking on the "News" link here again gives a similar ratio of hits, although the numbers are much less impressive.
So what's the point? Isn't it OK for Mark to take a bit of license? I mean, I'm saying that the ratios don't change when we go from searching the whole 'net versus searching news articles, so he's not really twisting anything or presenting false info, right?
OK, technically, he's not lying or anything, but the gist of his article is about how unbelievably dumb the media is about religion. His reason? "They huddle together in packs, quoting each other and loading up their computers with macros that spit out the required text without their having to fire a single neuron to write it." Uhm, Mark, isn't that what you kinda-sorta did here? You took some Google hit numbers out of context, and they were the wrong numbers, by the way, and then said that they proved something that they didn't prove. I agree totally with the rest of your article, but using the Google examples as support only weakens your point and shows you as guilty of the very same slovenly approach to information that you are accusing the media of taking.
I wrote him an email about it, don't know if he'll respond. Busy guy that Mark. I pray he's really, really busy, doing things that bring him mucho $$ and that the Providence of God is shown again in his life.

PS. I didn't know that this would get picked up by Technorati. My apologies if this seems a bit mean. I have the utmost regard for Mark. I even tipped him (too bad I'm a lousy tipper).

Moving Sucks

We moved last week. Saturday, August 25th, I was in the attic pulling down old Christmas and Easter decorations and had just come inside for a drink when someone called about Ivan's death the night before. It hit Kim hard. It still does. I don't think that other team member's death would have have hit the whole team that hard. Because Ivan was so distant from his father, he belonged to all of us in a sense. A half-dozen people helped Tom put Ivan's bike together, donating parts and labor. Ivan was the boy becoming a man before our eyes. So packing on Saturday seemed pointless. Sunday night there was a ride for Ivan, four laps around the local Jr. College. They passed a hat and raised about 2 grand. I only came to work on Tuesday of last week, spending the rest of the time trying to pack and trying to cope. Wednesday night there was the last weekly crit for our team. All of the proceeds went to Ivan's memory. Some folks donated extra prize money. Normally the A race will return say $50-$60, but folks donated $400, with another $200 for the B race. That got people's attention. So many riders came up and said, "Hey, instead of racing against each other for the prize money that we'll probably donate back, let's race together." Half of the racers wore TBi jerseys and did exactly that. Every prime, and almost every place was won by someone wearing the new jerseys. And you don't usually see that many TBi jerseys in the A race to begin with. Very nice.
Thursday really hurt. Andy Hollinger had asked me to prepare a short prayer, just in case Ivan's pastor was late, so I did. The pastor was there on time though. The kids were over at Grandma's so we were packing like crazy until an hour or so beforehand. Kim got there late with Joseph and Emily. The service was simple: Andy said a few words, Ivan's pastor said a few words and led us in prayer. Then Andy asked for folks to talk about their memories of Ivan. Andy finished by reading some letters that Tom and Bobbye had written about Ivan, and then Lauren Hollinger and Randy Wallis sang Amazing Grace and that was that. It really sank in after that for Joseph. Lots of tears. We took Emily back to Grandma's but Joseph came home with us. He needed to be with us.
So not enough time. Not enough time to move, not enough time to pull ourselves gradually away from our friends on Finian Lane, or the schools. Not enough time to fully grieve for Ivan who did not live long enough for us to know him as well as I wish we could have. I know that Ivan has all of time now. And I don't feel that he's missing out. He's in heaven, and all the earthly joys that we might think he's "missing," going to and finishing school, getting married, having kids, they are but shadows of the joy in the presence of God. They are but smoke, scattered by the wind in comparison to spending eternity with the Almighty. I just wish I had taken more time, been more direct with Ivan, and been further enriched by that.
One story that didn't make the paper: Ivan ran cross country. One girl came up after the service and spoke with Tom. She said that she had also ran CC, and that no one would run with her except Ivan when she was recovering from an injury. When she raced, Ivan would run along the sidelines, encouraging her with a small stuffed monkey that was the team mascot for the entire race. She gave that monkey to Tom. Ivan was that encourager to many. I told Joseph that he needed to be that encourager now.

We're IN!!

We officially closed on our new house on Friday, August 31st. For those of you keeping count, that means that we were one calendar month from putting a sign up on our old house to closing on our new house. All in all, it was probably too fast. We got a total of one offer for our house. We looked at a total of one house in that month. It was one that we had looked at online for a while. This still scares the crud out of me. OK, the house is just right. It's not a Hampton's Mansion, but it's huge compared to anything I've ever lived in. I'm intimidated by the price. Our mortgage payment roughly doubled. That means that all of the times I would buy "little things" that at Bicycles Inc. are going to be gone. Instead of just buying basically what I want when I want, I'm going to have to budget stuff. Yuck. Christmas will be a bit rougher this year. Hopefully stuff will even out next year. I think the annual bonus in March will go straight to the mortgage. No fun.
This house also has stairs. Good and bad. Stairs means that the A/C (two units) will be a bit more efficient because there's more cubic space to surface area. Stairs means an extra floor with extra room. Stairs means that the kids can be sent upstairs to their room and you can't hear them ranting. Stairs also means that little girls can fall down them. Stairs also means that big, fat Dads can twist their bad knee with impunity when moving stuff upstairs. Stairs.