HAPPY B-DAY MR. RUSSELL

Boy these youngsters seem to grow up soooooo fast. Just a few pics off of the old hard drive:

I need to work on my cheesy smile

It's a 185 miles to DC, we've got full bottles of water, half a can of Dip, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses....hit it!!!
Apparently it takes about 190 miles or so to keep Mark from cheesing it up for the Camera.
Hope you have a great day.

Dogless Dog Days

Here we are halfway through August, the mercury just seems to stay at the top of the thermometer. This has been the hottest summer in a few years, next week it should cool off....I hope. It's been tough talking myself into heading out for a ride at 5 in the blistering heat, I guess we are lucky Katie is still at Camp Michigan, otherwise she would have to suffer in this as well. She is coming home this weekend hopefully this will be an end to the Dogless days and the Dog days.

I'm heading out for a ride tonight, I'm debating between a road ride with lots of hills, or a mountain bike ride with lots of ...uh...mountains. With the Black Bear Rampage and SM100 coming up, the mountain biking seems like the way to go. I'm hoping i make a good showing at both races, I know lots of folks doing the SM100 so the pressure will be on. But as both of my blog readers know....I always look good. It should be a good time.

Here is a little pic to help think of cooler climates. This is the summit of the Col de la Croix de Fer (in the French Alps) in May of 2005. 80 degrees at the bottom, brr cold at 2067 meters. I froze my butt off that day going back down. That would be a welcome feeling today.

I was watching NASCAR...SOBER!?!

Pretty scary stuff. I'm really not sure what caused this strange behavior. Back in college, i did watch a little nascar. I've always been a car nut and i love racing. I love all kinds of racing, off-road, WRC, F1, ALMS, IRL, CART, Touring cars, and even the big trucks in europe. But as many people realize, there is a certain quality to your average die-hard NASCAR fan that is not so desireable to the Bathing masses. I like to go to the races as long as the tickets are free. The crowds are such a hassle....
But back to the reason i was watching Nascar this past Sunday. Sunday's race was at a road course, and it's much more exciting to watch cars turn left and right than just left. But the road course alone wasn't enough to get my trigger happy remote control finger to stop on the race. I wanted to see if Juan Pablo Montoya could upstage all of the Nascar regulars and win another race. The weird part about this is that I didn't like JPM when he raced F1. I am a schumacher fan, mainly because he drove a ford early in his F1 career, but later just because he was so dominant. I always felt that JPM was out of control and would crash people out of the race or run into other cars. Those "qualities" came to mind when they announced he was leaving to race cars with fenders. I thought to myself....this is the perfect type of racing for him. I really hope he keeps improving, it would be great to see a foreign born Nascar champ. Maybe they should play the national anthem of the winner at the end of each race like they do in F1.
JPM was knocked out of the race this past weekend trying to block a car for position, I'm surprised that Nascar turns a blind eye to all of that contact, but they seem to be more like NBA officials more concerned about TV and scoring than really a fair contest. Just look at all the mystery cautions that go up.

Anyhow, I have no idea what the Nascar schedule is, but if there is another road course, i'll be pulling for JPM. I can't believe i'm rooting for him...but it's not the end of the world.

36!!!

Another year has passed... In the grand scheme of things i realize i am not that old, but i am now twice as old as i was when i graduated high school...OUCH! In two years i will have been out of high school for TWENTY years. It's all good tho, i have a wonderful wife, a family that cares about me, and some really great friends. What more could you want (except maybe a 953 SS road frame). I hope everyone (both people that read my blog) has a great day. Got out and eat some Mexican food tonight in honor of my b-day. You know i am.

I'm on top of the world!

A few pics from the trip

I had already successfully exited the boat when Sara requested that we get back in for a photo...that is when i took a little dip in the prince william sound. Brrrr.
the bob worked out great, it was little top heavy tho. It was pretty chilly, a nice change for July cycling.
Denali (Mt. McKinley) came out of the clouds at 4 am. Not very dark for that time of morning. We didn't see the moon for 2 weeks.
this is the harding ice fields. a 4 mile hike straight up past the Exit glacier leads to these. There is a great restaurant at the end of the road near here. Salmon Bake. mmmm good food.
Julie, Jerry, Sara and Me standing on the Root Glacier in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

ALASKA!

We have been up here in AK for a little over a week. We've been all over, Denali, Valdez, Seward, Anchorage, we've been having a good time. I didn't bring the camera cable so i can't post any picks today, but sara took a couple of me on the Stickel towing the bob with 50lbs of camping gear back to Wonder Lake Campground in Denali. Lot's of mosquitos there....lots of them. And don't just try to spray the Deet on the bare skin parts, they will bite you through your socks....it was just nuts. We did get to see Denali mountain while at the wonder lake campground, it came out of the clouds around 4 am and stayed clear till about 11 am, lot's of pic's were taken. There was also the excitement of a moose walking through the campground one evening. The thing was HUGE!! We didn't see any bears in Denali, but while we were gone the last week, Sara's sister had two in her back yard in Anchorage....we could have stayed here to see them... We've been doing a lot of the camping thing, not too much bathing going on, we are lucky if there is running water at the campsites, and there are never showers. We payed $4 each last thursday to shower at a laundromat...(a highlight of my life) We are back in Anchorage tonight and we are heading to Wrangell mountain tomorrow with Julie and Jerry. We fly home on Friday...hopefully i'll get some pics up next weekend.
BTW...the BOB Ibex is very cool, with 50 lbs on it you know it's there, but i did do some riding with only about 30 on it and you barely knew it was back there.

Hope all is well in the lower 48, i'll bring home some mosquito bites for ya!

MOVED!

We have settled in to a little (actually tiny is a better word) place in Jasper, GA. It sure is nice to have the wife and dog around full time. It is also nice to not see my parents every night after work. Don't get me wrong, i love my parents, but I think my parents will agree that there is a reason your kids move out.

Oh, i also think that i could have gone the rest of my life without living in an apartment again. Now this place isn't as small as my place was in Belgium, but it is quite the shock after living in a house for the past 8 years. Boy i hope someone buys my house in VA soon so that i can start looking for one down here. I need to have one by this winter so that i can talk my friends from VA into coming down to ride with me. Maybe watch a little TDG. We don't even have enough space for me to keep my bike stuff here. I'm only allowed to have one bike in the house at a time. On the plus side...I keep the rest at work...uh...i'm gonna go out in the shop to work on something, don't come looking for me.

Here is a pic of our apartment building. We are on the top floor. Swimming pools...movie stars...
here is a pic from the parking lot in front of our apartment. The building on the right is the local hospital. The red brick building on the left, with the green roof, is where my wife works. Must be nice huh? It's like .2 miles. And she has been a good girl too, she rides her bike to work every day. LUCKY!!

We are off on Holiday starting this weekend, heading up to AK to do some camping, biking and hiking on our own and with sara's sis and b-n-l. should be fun. I got the Stickel back just in time to take it up there. We've also got a B.O.B. waiting for us to use there too. I would take my computer and try to post pics as we go, but i seriously doubt i'll have that many chances with an internet connection.