Skip to main content

Memorial Weekend Highlights

1. If you have a temporary crown, do not eat Milk Duds. If you ignore this, know that Fixodent may be required to reattach the crown to your now nubbin tooth.

2. The Sunflower Bike Shop in Lawrence is fantastic. Their people are helpful, but don’t hover. I will not specifically call out any Kansas City bike shops, but several could learn tips about customer service from Sunflower.

3. My old tri shoes were starting to mildew, so I bought a new pair. They remind me of the shoes Uncle Eddie gave to Clark in the movie Vacation.

4. A new helmet was also purchased. My old helmet was involved in an altercation involving a “Road Closed” sign. (Yes, my head was in it at the time.) I used it for three more years, not realizing helmets are good for one collision only.

5. If a restaurant is good enough, I have no problem eating there two days in a row, as was the case with Esquina in Lawrence. The tofu tacos are especially good.

6. While I like the concept of open water swims, I am squeamish about things touching me while in the water. Twenty of us showed up to swim 3,000 meters around the perimeter of Weatherby Lake yesterday. Problem is, the perimeter is where all the lake crap (seaweed, lakeweed, whatever) is floating. Love the people, love the lake, but do not love having tentacle-like vegetation brushing against my face.

7. Do not leave cupcakes with buttercream frosting unattended in your car when it’s 80 degrees out. That’s a no-brainer, but I’m a slow learner.

8. When riding yesterday on an unfamiliar bike path, I see a sign showing a bicycle on a steep descent. So I ride my brakes and proceed slowly down the hill. To a large creek. So while someone thought to alert riders to steep and technical, they didn’t think the fact the path ended in a waterway was important. Huh.

9. Boyfriend and I met some friends Sunday for a bike ride. It was going to be Sundae’s debut. (Sundae is a mountain bike that Boyfriend built for me out of his bicycle graveyard.) It took me .38 miles to break the chain. I felt awful because, well, I broke it. He felt bad because the chain was defective. Clearly, we're newly dating since we both assumed responsibility. If this had happened a year in, the conversation would’ve been much different.

10. Finally, we watched a show last night on KCPT about international cemeteries where U.S. vets are buried. It was touching, sad and beautiful. But mostly, it was a nice way to remind me of what the holiday is about.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Get This Party Started

So what do you do when you're reclining in a hospital bed, Olympic beach volleyball on the TV and watching petocin slowly drip through an IV into your arm? You blog. As of 3:32pm, all is manageable. Ask me in an hour or two and the tune will most likely be different. Petocin scares the crap out me, but as long as it gets the baby out of me, I'm trying to not freak out. I woke up this morning and greeted the day as a normal Monday. After walking Trudy a few miles and spending 40 minutes on the elliptical, it dawned on me I felt a little crampy, for lack of a better term. And without getting too graphic, I started to wonder if my water had broken. (It was nothing like it's portrayed on television.) So I called a handful of friends and my sister to get some feedback. All signs pointed to yes, so I called my doctor's office which said just go to the hospital. I took Trudy for a second walk while waiting for Husband to get home and try not to overreact. At the hospi...
2 comments
Read more

Adding Some Color

I distinctly remember my first encounter with food coloring. It was love at first chemical-laden sight. Mom and I were icing sugar cookies. We'd made a bowl of white icing. Then she broke out the food coloring. I was memorized by the bright colors and giddy at the thought of mixing them. Like most six year olds, I believed more was better. So the icing started a lovely pink after a few drops of red. Next came lavender with some blue. Then Mom turned her back just long enough for me to reenact the movie Cocktail with food coloring. Every color was going in and hell with a few drops, more is better. This is fantastic, I thought, as I created a rainbow in the bowl. I stirred with glee until I realized the rainbow was disappearing. The icing was turning a disgusting shade of gray-brown. This was terrible. No one wants to eat icing that looks like poop. So you're thinking, nice little story Jen. Way to point out that more isn't necessarily better. But that's actually n...
2 comments
Read more

The Softride Has Left The Building

Today I bid adieu to my first triathlon bike – a Softride Rocket TT named Sally. (“Ride, Sally, Ride...”) While technically still mine until the ebay auction ends tomorrow, she has been dropped off at the bike store for clean up and packing. We’ll ship her off to the new owner this weekend and that will be the end of my beam bike era. A Softride is considered old school in the triathlon world and is mocked mercilessly by roadies. Sally has a carbon beam, no down tube and 650 wheels – basically the low-rider Cadillac of bikes. While it doesn’t have a stiff suspension or a brag-worthy weight, it has one thing – comfort. This is something I desperately needed when training for my first Ironman. Sally raced at Kona in 2001 and Wisconsin in 2003. She was dependable and attention-getting. Like riding a motorcycle, Softride enthusiasts also offered the casual hand wave when you encountered another one on the road. However, there are fewer out there these days. The Softride...
2 comments
Read more