Thursday, December 30, 2010
The Blog Has Moved!!
I just couldn't stand blogger any more. Wordpress is where it's at for blogs I think. Please change your subscriptions and bookmarks!
texasracinglife.com
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Tron Legacy
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Rest Week
Not only was this break good for me physically, but also emotionally. I feel like I am ready to "rage" on my bike again. Rage means go fast and hard. I will be doing five weeks of solid training before I have another rest week, and then the season starts! I will not be totally trained and ready for racing until March, but the early season races will help me prepare for this.
In other news, I convinced Ally to get a new phone, and NOT get an iPhone! She ended up with an Android based phone, which is definitely the have to have phone of 2011. Plus Verizon probably won't get the iPhone until July of next year. And the iPhone, while good, is not AS good as the Droid phones. So now I have a DroidX and she has the Droid Incredible. Hopefully she will still acknowledge my existence even though she has a smartphone.
I only work two days this week and then I am off for Christmas for 5 days. It will be nice to see the family and exchange presents. I am sad that I will miss skiing this year, but now that I don't have Christmas vacation for a month, it's harder to plan around a long trip. Maybe next year, if I can still have vacation by that time!
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Tips for Night Riding and Commuting
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Training for 2011!!!! (Actually NO)
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Time for Fall
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Sailing with Dad.
We chatted with the charter dude for a little bit about Dad’s racing days and how it would be good to get back out on the water. We were loading the boat up and about to shove off, but I suppose Dad “shoved off” a little too hard and lost his balance, falling over backward in to the water! He was unhurt except for his pride and soon got out of the water and on to dry land. The funny part was to see the demeanor of the charter guy get a little bit more nervous about letting these land ‘lubers take his boat out!
It was very difficult to get the boat out due to the strong wind that was coming straight from the direction we wanted to go. This meant that we had no way to get the sails up before the wind would take us straight into another boat in the dock. I paddle as hard as I could while Dad messed with the sails that weren’t put up correctly. Because of the wind, I couldn’t paddle hard enough to keep us from hitting parts of the dock and other boats around us, and my anxiety quickly grew. I kept thinking to myself, “Maybe the old man has forgotten how to do this, and we are screwed!”
After about 15 minutes of knocking around and messing with the sails, we got the sails up and started on a port tack. The wind was pretty gusty and Dad was not used to the boat yet. Because of this, he kept laying the boat over just a little too much, and water would rush over the gunwale and onto our feet. My anxiety at this point started to increase exponential, as described by the chart below, which shows # of expletives coming out of my mouth vs liters of water in the boat. I thought we were about to capsize!!
Soon we had the boat under control and I took a turn at the rudder. I was slow at first, being very cautious with how much list I would allow, so we crawled around the bay, even though the wind was pretty strong. Soon I became comfortable enough to let the boat go and we started to have a lot of fun.
During our cruise we also got to see a neat air show, with 5 jets flying around, looping and twirling in what looked to be an impossibly tight formation. AS the sun was setting, I felt like this was a great day with good father/son bonding. It was good to have him down!