Games These Days

There is a place downtown called The Village Cafe. It looks like this:

One of my very favorite things to do is take Ben out to special little places like this to order fancy drinks

mmmm, chai latte.....

and play some hands-on, fierce, no-mercy games. Sorry is a favorite, but since we rode our bikes, I stuck an Angry Birds card game and the classic UNO in my purse. 

I"m not sure how nice of a person you (yeah you, reader.) are. Are you humane? Or are you merciless? We are fairly relentless against Ben when it comes to playing games. Jared more-so than myself. Sometimes the family feud gets serious though. Jared has just about quit mid-game during Angry Birds because Ben will run over and whisper in my ear about how he is going to skip his dad's turn. Jared interprets this as an alliance being formed. Then things get serious. 

"You CAN'T form an alliance!"

'da hell, dad?!?

Serious considerations here 

I know that kids need to be challenged and shouldn't just Expect to win all the time. But I'm not sure pummeling your child at checkers every chance you get instills much confidence. That is probably why game producers made games like Candy Land, where no strategy what-so-ever is involved. Keeps the parents from being assholes to their kids. I don't know what we're turning poor Ben into. Certainly he will either turn out to be a poor sport, or win all the sportsmanship awards. 

Perhaps we are strik methods are just to prepare Ben to become a professional cyclist where you are penalized for helping another person during a race. See child, NOTHING GOOD EVER COMES FROM HELPING SOMEONE ELSE!

Speaking of Richie Porte and the recent articles about him... This photo keeps showing up: 

and I know I know, the course was muddy and stuff, but.. can I just say...he just looks way too much like he's about to exclaim "I have a mole?!" 

.

Jerry Jeff Walker at Gruene Hall

Jared has been a winner at surprises lately.

A while back, for no reason in particular, he picked up tickets to see Jerry Jeff Walker at the legendary Gruene Hall. I'll  let you wiki the significance of each component there.

So we took off Friday a hair early for work with Chemistry Mole on our dashboard.

We knew time would be tight so we had dinner-of-champions

Doors opened at 8p.m. and we parked at 7:25. Just enough time to get in a line that was already a block long. Safe to say, the place was packed. 

We still managed to get 4th row seats and of course drink a few Shiners. I'm not sure we can get more Texas than this without having to purchase a pick-up truck and some guns. 

Anyway, the show was Great. The whole place stood up and started dancing during a few of the more popular songs.  For a 73yr old singer/songwriter.. That Jerry Jeff sure can still get down!

We were hangry after the show, but no where was serving real food anymore. So back at the hotel we ordered pizza and–not-even-kidding–watched the Golden Girls on the fancy cable TV. Because that's just how we roll. 

The next morning we scrolled through our handheld electronic computers (aka phones) for a half hour before finding a place that seemed suitable for breakfast and was open before noon. It was a half a mile in some direction so we figured we would walk. Fortunately (I think) we both have ADD. On the first block of our journey we came across "The Oldest Bakery in Texas!" 

How can you not stop there? We'll just have a pre-breakfast snack to hold us over until breakfast...

SO MANY CHOICES! A loaf of pumpernickel bread, a muffin (oh how I love muffins), and a brat kolache for Jared....and we were on our way.

But then...

Then we saw a bright sign with a finger pointing that said "FARMERS MARKET!"

Oh boy.

So we followed the arrow, until a block later where we saw an adorable coffee shop and suddenly I was craving a Chai Latte. It was a great stop. Great to get a chai that had a kick to it. It was actually Spicy! So good.

Then we continued to follow the fingers to the farmers market. It was so very full of so many different types of vendors. Oh so refreshing. If only we had a shopping cart!

Jared tasting all the pickled things. 

We were full enough from the bakery and farmers market samples that we never did find the restaurant we originally set out for. I have a feeling we made a good choice though. 

Next we journeyed up to San Marcos just for the hell of it. We found an adorable Cafe called the Root Cellar Cafe.  They had decent lunch food and even better Sangrias. 

It is always a challenge for me to think of things to do with friends/family who come visit us in Texas. We spend so much of our time at parks and riding bikes that we forget about all the other things to go do. I think we'll have to add this little Gruene, New Braunfels, San Marcos tour to our list of things-to-take-people-to-do. It is most definitely the most taste-of-texas thus far.

Mothers Day - For real

Mothers Day was fantastic. 

First, I slept in. Ben stayed with Ms. B the night before so that he could finish my gift which was a delightful little bird house. We hung it up together as soon as he got home. 

Then we proceeded to be successfully lazy! It was the first weekends since February that we were home. Whew! 

We finally got out of our pajamas sometime afternoon and mounted our bicycles for a family ride to downtown. Ali and I wandered over to Om Grown Yoga for s(om)e sacred sweating while the boys stayed at The Village Cafe and played board games.  

I have to say...I don't care for the cookie cutter, beige town of College Station, but Bryan continually makes me smile. More on that some other day.  

The best part of Mothers day was Ben begging to ride the trails together. 

Mostly, he loves to jump. Our very first lap around he turned his handlebars on his landing and eats it. We squirt some water on his battle wounds and carry on. That, I think, is the most educational part about mountain biking. You don't learn to do the really challenging things without messing up a time or two first. Its moments like that that make you, that teach you the beauty of being able to stand back up again.

Mother's Day Eve

Oh the sweet joys of being a Mom. 

At first I chuckled at Ben's answer to "I love my mom because..." but it reminded me of this proverb:

A Zen Teacher saw five of his students return from the market, riding their bicycles. When they had dismounted, the teacher asked the students,
"Why are you riding your bicycles?"
The first student replied, "The bicycle is carrying this sack of potatoes. I am glad that I do not have to carry them on my back!"
The teacher praised the student, saying, "You are a smart boy. When you grow old, you will not walk hunched over, as I do."
The second student replied, "I love to watch the trees and fields pass by as I roll down the path."
The teacher commended the student, "Your eyes are open and you see the world."
The third student replied, "When I ride my bicycle, I am content to chant, nam myoho renge kyo."
The teacher gave praise to the third student, "Your mind will roll with the ease of a newly trued wheel."
The fourth student answered, "Riding my bicycle, I live in harmony with all beings."
The teacher was pleased and said, "You are riding on the golden path of non-harming."
The fifth student replied, "I ride my bicycle to ride my bicycle."
The teacher went and sat at the feet of the fifth student, and said, "I am your disciple."

Its pretty special when put into that perspective. That a 6yr old loves for the sake of loving. Ben is a sweet kid. He picks me a flower every single time he is on a walk. Any time there is a flower. It is absolutely adorable.

He is almost 6 now... 6! That means 6 years of mom-ing + those 9 months of not getting to drink any gin, which is sort of like mom-ing. That's hard to wrap my head around (the 6 years part...). A fair number of friends have had kids in the past year or two. Now and then I will see a post about them struggling with the breakdowns and tantrums (on both ends) that comes with having to raise a plant. Dang that part was hard. The diapers, the screaming, the barfing, the screaming... and those funny-looking plants don't even give much back. I mean it. You can tell yourself all you want that those little giggling moments make it all worth it, until you realize the plant is giggling because it just shat itself and you need to get up and go change that in the next 10 minutes.

As for his comment about my favorite thing to do... "rest ... ride bikes" ...he sure nailed it.

Tis the Season in Tex-as

Howdy Y'all,

Uuum, well... we went to a delightful little holiday lights/Christmas in the Park thing tonight and, it really was a wonderful time. Especially since it was free!

The best part was probably the hayrack ride, but to Ben the best part was the PILE OF SNOW that they brought in (presumably from somewhere cold. Probably Alaska).

Unfortunately for me, both camera batteries were dead/dying and there was not enough time to get it adjusted for taking decent pictures. Fortunately for us this happens AGAIN next weekend! We will for sure be back! Free cookies and hot cocoa afterall. Now to just convince Jared to bake something for the baking contest!

Cup Cakes errrr frosting

We enjoy mixing it up in how we spend our evenings.

Sometimes it is silly stuff like making milk blue, but other times it is delicious stuff like making/coloring frosting for cupcakes!

True story is that we were playing Candy Land and I had drawn the cupcake (for the 324 time. I always get the @#$!ing cupcake). Ben saw it and declared that he wanted to make cupcakes. I thought: who wouldn't!? So we made cupcakes and frosting.

I walked in at one point and snapped this shot. I immediately walked out. They were clearly sneaking something and not telling me about it.

Here is Ben's lesson in frosting:

Mix it gently as to not make a mess.

Dip Finger. Fall in love.

Question the purpose of the whole cupcake part anyway. Next time I am fairly certain he will just ask to make cupcakes.

Which reminds me of a delightful book we have called If you give a cat a cupcake.

It is a great story and closely parallels what happens when you give a 2yr old a cupcake.

Blue Milk

Sometimes... The little things are what make parenting worth it all.

Jared always pesters Ben, who regularly asks for "fresh milk." In Jared's ...Jaredness, he questions Ben's request with return questions such as "you want... red milk?" "you want... yellow milk?" "you want... blue milk?" To which Ben always replies "noooo daaaaddyyyyy" with a snicker.

Ben, being the growing individual that he is, has caught on though. And finally told Jared "Yes!" one of these times. Being the consistent parent that Jared is...... he made Ben blue milk.

Thanksgivin'

Oooh Texas. You have isolated us, but we shall not be held down! We shall still cook delicious meals and give thanks for ...stuff.

We still made ourselves some sweet taters.

And Jared picked up a wee little chicken to wrap up in bacon and to stuff with stuffing. Whoah was that good.

Even Ben enjoyed a bit of it, as did Homer who is our friend Betsy's new little puppy. Oh yes, Texas, we even managed to not celebrate alone! No no! We grabbed someone else who was far from family! Thanks again for joining us, Betsy!

We even made some apple piiie. Yum.

So aside from not having family around, it wound up being a pretty lovely little, normal thanksgiving. We even went for a walk after dinner, but before pie, over to the park!

One of the strangest things was that it was still warm. 60 degrees on Thanksgiving? That will throw these Iowa folk for a loop!

What was even More strange was the Thanksgiving potluck that happened at work. Fortunate for me, none of them know about this little space of internet that I occupy, so I feel that I can share. It wasn't strange in a "bad" way anyway though, just in a "ahhh, people are just people." sort of way.

You see, in the administrative offices, they are well a bunch of prudes. Not all, but some. One in particular. We'll call her...Snude. Just for the hell of it. She is the lady who, no matter what you say, she can one-up it... even when it really isn't better. And this is about Everything. Well I had the pleasure of sitting in her vicinity during the potluck and somehow, one of the ladies started telling the story about beating the crap out of her ex-husband's girlfriend outside of wal mart or something and going to jail for it. Snude proceeds to jump in and tell a similar story involving one of her [4] ex-husbands. She of course did not get arrested for it though, but claimed she probably should have.

My boss (not in the admin services and not a prude) turns and asks one of my other co-workers if she had ever been to jail. "no!" She didn't ask me. Come to think of it, she didn't ask herself either!! I have never been in jail. Can you imagine if there would have been alcohol involved at this potluck?!?!

Later Snude gave me a dirty look for sharing that Jared did not know my middle name when we bought our Iowa house together.

It really felt like family. I enjoyed it.

I like my job. I like Thanksgiving, too.

Thanks.

Twinkle Twinkle

We like daycare.
Not just because it gives us a few hours in our day to not have to be playing trains or dinosaurs, but also because Ben gets to do all sorts of new things with new people. We believe it is good for him.
Apparently, they sing quite a few songs at daycare. One day when we picked Ben up, continued singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star over and over again. He would sometimes switch straight into singing the alphabet... probably on accident. They used to do songs at his other daycare too. We knew because he would do the motions to things like The Wheels on the Bus before we ever showed them to him.


So anyway. I'm not sure there was too much more of a point to this, but here is Ben helping me sing along. :)

Early Morning drizzle

This morning, while walking into work after parking my bicycle, I saw a man who looked as though he could be Roger Baer's brother.


Roger, on the right.

And he was riding a bicycle like this:


He was wearing a white dress shirt and dark dress pants. Probably a librarian? (he was parking at the library...). It had rained this morning, so the roads were still drying out. Since it isn't particularly cold here (70 degrees this morning at 8am) I figure the next best excuse someone could make to not ride would be... rain!

And it gave me hope for the world for some reason.

That perhaps there are more Rogers in the world and that perhaps everyone really could commute to school. I wish I would have gone and talked to that man. Ah well, I'm sure i'll see him around. There are only so many roger baer-esk men riding bikes to campus and parking at the library at 8am. :)

Pac Burley

Well! The PacBurley is nearly complete and ready for Halloween. All it needs now is a few folks dressed in costumes to parade it around on Halloween night.

The designer in me knew that we needed to take it for a test run before Halloween arrived. The plan is to join the regular Monday night social ride and do the short loop before returning into town to begin trick-or-treating. That means that the rig will have to hold up for at least 15 miles or so. To test it, we rode out on a new road to a little park called Lick Creek park.

The park is a wonderful little surprise, despite the ugly brochure, just 8.5 miles from our house, making it a perfect Burley pulling distance. The main trail is a well packed gravel type with a number of side trails that are more single-track style. It seemed everyone around brought their dogs to walk/run. Probably because if you walk/ride in College Station you wind up getting hit by things like motorcycles.

Most importantly, our burley contraption worked! The Pac-Man rubs a bit against the wheel, but we realized that if we just cut it a bit, he'll be juuust fine. We even found some battery powered Christmas lights to string up along the back. They looked Awesome as we rode home in the sunset.

So now it only has to survive one more voyage! We're not sure whether it will stay on afterwards or not... it might be hard to part with. My guess though is that by the end of Halloween night it will be dangling by a few strands of twine and some tape, begging to be put out of its misery.

Still no rear wheel for my road bike...........

Cleat Defeat

The last few rides have presented me with the most unpleasant experience of unexpectedly becoming unclipped from my pedals. This was generally happening on steep climbs or during a hard interval. Neither time being convenient and at least once resulting in a tipping over. So I finally bit the $9 bullet and bought a new set of cleats. The local bike shop actually had them cheaper than anywhere online. Bike things are rarely that great of a deal online these days, just fyi. Not that there needs to be another reason to support your local bike shop, but... there is a pretty good one!

The task of replacing cleats is generally extremely simple. Unscrew two screws, replace parts. Easy.

These cleats however have apparently been in my shoes, which have been ridden forever, for quite a while. So upon taking out the first screw. The screw stuck to my multitool. Crap.

The second screw wouldn't budge. It instead stripped out the head into a circle shape. Well this is a conundrum. Now how do I get it out!? So after e-mailing out to the local mt bike club for suggestions, one came back of using a dremel to make a straight line so that a flathead screwdriver would fit. After a few rounds with the dremel, I finally got it to work. Finally, at 4:46pm, 15minutes before I needed to leave for the group ride! Yesss!!!

Riding was great. I did a fast lap with one of the guys, Mike, and then joined up with the group ride at 6:15 until it was dark. Good, clean ride.

The Spirit of Adventure

Planned ride for today:

60 mile fast group ride.

Reality: Broken road wheel. No go.

New Plan:

Take a family ride at the Somerville Lake trails.

Reality: We ready ourselves, a little cooler of lunch goods, the diaper bag, our bikes. Great! We're off.
5 minutes down the road me: "honey, we don't have the multi-tool..."
Jared: "ooooh, we better go get it."
So we do. Good. Whew.
Per usual on our family rides, we stop to get donuts beforehand. We don't "looove" donuts or anything, we just like kind of trashy, cheap places with interesting people. So places like "Donut Palace" out in Skook Texas makes for a delicious 3 person $2.15 breakfast. I mean, REALLY, where else can you get breakfast for a price like that? Benjamin thanked the donut princess (it was a donut palace... and she didn't look quite old enough to be a Queen... perhaps she was just a palace chef...?) about a dozen times which made her just about pee her pants with happiness and we continued on.

We made it to the lake and as usual at state parks there is an entrance gate of sorts where you have to park and purchase a day pass. Upon getting out of the car, we see a mom, dad and child (8 or so? 9?) on bikes. So I ask them if they knew if we had to pay to get in and where the trails started.
The mom says "yep, you get a pass in that building, the trails start down thattaway."

So we go inside, the family following behind us, a group of boyscouts in front of us. As we wait, the mom says "We have a season pass, you should let us get you in." So we did, and as the cashier drills her on how many of us there are, how many vehicles, the colors, our ancestry, rate of inflation on a cup of coffee if it originally cost $.75 in 2001 and today costs $1.13......... Okay, those last few were a lie, but she asked a lot of questions. Then proceeded to charge the mom $28. We asked her how much we owed her for our portion and she refused. Nice! We ask where we should park and the mom points us to either the visitor lot, or to their campsite which was right at a trailhead. So we go for the campsite.

Their son's bike had gotten a flat on the way back to the campsite, and the LEAST we could do was offer up our bike pump.

So we load up and carry on, but the trail was mostly just sandy, mowed grass. Too much work for Jared who keeps spinning his rear tire out and barely any work for me. So we scratch this riding plan too.

New new plan:

Ride on the road until we find another road to ride on and ride on it until we feel enough time has passed. WHAT CAN GO WRONG!??!

Reality: We cruise along some delightful roads, windy and slight rolling hills. Rolled past ranches, oil rigs, dogs chasing us. A wonderful time.

Me: "hmm, I think my cleat on my shoe has come loose or something...feels weird..."
Jared: "uh oh"

**~90 seconds later...

/////chhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhttttthhhhhhhhhhhh//////

My lady business is on my top tube, my elbows are cocked backwards as my chin is just about resting on my stem. My toes are dragging along the ground in some attempt to both maintain my balance and stop me. Now I know what kids on those Strider bikes feel like!!!

Jared looks back as this MUST have sounded and looked AWFULLY confusing. //really i was just trying a new, more aero position...//

It would appear that a very important bolt had been wiggling itself loose.

All I know is that these became my new brakes:

They aren't the Avid BB7s I'm used to on the El Mar but amazingly, they did the trick!

Good thing we went back for that multi-tool...

All better-ish! Good enough to get us back anyway. FIRST things first, some lunch.

Now, usually when we get back from adventure around a park, we let Ben play at a playground, load up and head home. Today however, those nice nice people from the beginning of the story were at their campsite. Their son had received another flat tire so they gave up for the afternoon and in the meantime had unloaded Literally as much food as we probably have in our house. And it was all Great. I mean.... those fancy Terra chips, Kettle chips, a Huge sack of "organic" oranges (whatever organic means these days), sandwich materials, grape tomatoes, jugs of water and iced tea, and on and on and on. That wasn't just it, they also had 2 fans plugged in and going for under their shade tent thinger, an iPod speaker music playing contraption, and a Suburban filled with other mystical, entertaining things. They had this camping business down. And and and they offered every morsel of it up to us in that fashion that was almost awkward seeing how we had Nothing to give in return. Nothing. Would you like a smelly sock that has been roaming around in the back of our car for 4 months? And we sat and chatted with them at their loaded picnic table for the next 4 hours about little tidbits of nothing, museums, camping adventures, raccoons, food, etc..

The hospitality of these folks was ...unheard of. We arrived as complete strangers and left being treated as if we had been their life-long, loyal friends.

We drove home in the late afternoon, after a week from hell, reminded that there is good in the world. That was better than any ride either of us could have possibly planned.