The little things... like garbage

We love Ames... let me add just one more reason.... and maybe this happens elsewhere and I really can't wait to find out if it does.

If we forget to put our trash out. The trash gents bring orange barrels to where we've left our garbage thing...

and take our trash from there out to the garbage truck.

I mean... a nice restaurant builds a reputation off of quality food and great service. Grocery stores say "where there's a helpful smile, in every aisle." but not to many people think about their garbage Service. So this morning I say "thanks" Chitty garbage for some great trash service, because we are Totally forgetful and you still take care of us. Win.

Finished!

Welp, Jared did it.

errr, is doing it. At this very moment, he is defending allll of the blah blah, narfa narfa that he has been working on here at ISU for the past however many years.

His creation is complete:

oops.

Wrong image. That is our future mode of transportation... not jared's research.

THIS is jared's research:

Yeah I know, R. L. Stine came up with this stuff YEARS ago ...and called it Monster Blood:

Significantly more interesting than ....Jared's benzobisblahblahnarfanarf. ;) I don't think the Monster Blood is organic though... Organic in the carbon sense, not in the "USDA Certified Organic" stuff. I have a feeling you wouldn't want to eat or drink jared's research. Then again, would you want to drink Monster Blood? ......"well, if it had an organic stamp on it, of course!"

Where was I?

Oh yes! Jared is done!! In the past 5 years he's gotten some publications, some university awards, some honor cords, some ACS award, a taekwondo black belt, a Benji-pooper, and of course...me!

Yep, Jared has grown from this:

to this:

.........hmmm.....

Anyway.........Congrats, Jared. Love you. :)

Yep, getting hitched someday.

Well family, Jared finally did it. He finally popped "the" question. You know the one. The one that everyone has been asking about for well over 2 years... And yep, I said "yes"

He asked on the 4th day of our RAGBRAI journey. ...after 240 some bicycle miles he must have been delirious enough to go for it. Now, we didn't do RAGBRAI the normal way (Usually you start on the western edge of Iowa and ride all the way across the state until the Mississippi). Instead we rode our bikes out to the start of RAGBRAI in a small group, and then hopped into the chaos. We did this self-supported... pulling our tent, sleeping pads, food, clothes, etc in a trailer behind a bike. ...whoah, talk about a workout.

I must tangent here for a moment. One of the most inspiring parts of cycling is when the ride is over (for me at least). When you look back to the moments when you Swore your legs would not push over one more pedal stroke, where you begged quietly in your head for a serious mechanical issue to end it all, or pray for some truck to offer to pick you up and drive you to the end. But somehow, something within us gets us to keep pushing beyond what we would have ever expected our bodies to be capable of. The moments of determination where you decide not to give up... those are the priceless victories that no one gives prizes or schwag for (unless that turning point happens in a race that you end up winning, I suppose), but that are certainly wroth at least 15 experience points. Along our ragbrai journey, i'd say we ALL hit at least one of those moments, and won. Awesome.

What made it even better was digging through that challenge with Jared alongside! He has never taken on such a physical challenge, and like every other challenge we've barreled through together, we conquered it with flying colors, crap-tons of food, countless cornfield pee stops, and a few saddle sores (our other challenges have unfortunately not previously included the extra elements).

So on that 4th day of our journey, when we were slamming a couple of smoothies underneath of a shade tree together Jared pulls his keychain out of a plastic baggie that had been in his sweaty jersey pocket. On the keychain he had been carrying the ring around. As he fumbles to take the ring off, he asks me to marry him.

Happy RAGBRAI indeed.

Winter Cross

So... since this blog is mostly for family... and I keep attempting to explain what this "cyclocross" business is to family... I figured I should do a post to help make some sense of it.

Typically, you have a tight winding course 1-2 miles long and it is ridden for 45ish minuets. It is set up on grass (or maybe sand or mud or...whatever) with at least a few hills and a few barriers. Part of a course might look something like this.

And they put barriers at the dumbest (most challenging?) places, like here:

The perspective makes it hard to tell, but that is a ~20" barrier on a slippery, steep little climb.

This however is normal fall cyclocross.............
we all know... that it is now mid-December and the rain/mud has turned to SNOW!!

So the course this past weekend looked a bit more like this:

I'm in the red. You can see in the background a rider dropping down the slope, about to enter a winding part of the course. Then over a ..."natural" barrier.

^ not me.

The snow makes it a whole new ball game. There was a section where we rode up and down a sort of ditch line.

It was...slippery to say the least.

Going down looked something like this:

or this:

^not me

What those pictures don't show is what the riders are riding down INTO. Each time riding down the off-camber ditchline, one is riding right into this concrete barrier and/or the river.

FUN!

^me.

Before this particular race, we were told to bring 50 pennies. ....At the start they announced that at some point during the race we had to exit the course and run to the top of the Mullets deck

where some delightful ladies were asking Trivial Pursuit questions!! If you missed the question, you had to pay in pennies to get a second question. If you answered correctly, you could go race!

It was brilliant.

What's almost as exciting? The free beerverages, giveaways and socializing at the end!!!

Ben guards the beer and melts hearts :

And that is how/why we still ride bikes in winter in Iowa. Can you possibly imagine a better way to spend a Saturday? Also... this is 2/2 Mullet win... if we see a 3/3... a Mullet might be in the works for Someone.

Cheers!

Christmas Tree

We put our Christmas tree up over Thanksgiving break:

I almost put my back out as I grabbed it from Ben's room (no, that is a lie...) where it had been up all year! We are not too into the holiday decorating. I suppose it isn't that we don't Want to... we mostly just do not make the time - we spend it on baking edible Christmas things which makes Much more sense to me.

You may recall last years Mario-Log:

but we get by in Jared and Kim fashion. Presents look like this when Jared gets put in charge:

Those aren't diapers in there...Cris will be SO confused! ...What a cute little nephew!

Ben will be confused too i'm sure.... I can't imagine why though, everything in his life makes perfect sense...

(...leave it to Jared...)


Also... it supposedly "blizzard"ed here last night. Unfortunately it was not a Dairy Queen blizzard....mmmm strawberry cheeeeesecaaaake........ instead it was a few inches of crap and wind. I suppose I should be greatful that it swirled around us so we did not get as much as many but... if it is going to "blizzard" ...BLIZZARD then!

Wake up alarm

This morning, as the sun was barely awake and the house had just a hint of light coming in. Jared shakes me a bit to wake me up.

I grunt "what"

Soon I hear the /swish/swish/swish/swish/ sound of Benjamin's pants and glance over Jared to spy the little mop head of hair roaming around our room.

Jared is trying to hold in his laughter and I join him in this endeavor.

It becomes increasingly difficult as the /swish/swish/swish/er leaves and comes back with his monster truck in tow. He even pushes the buttons to make it growl and shake or ....whatever it does.

We grin and at that moment I think we're both wishing we knew what the hell went on in our child's head.

The /swish/swish/swish/er leaves and comes back. Kicks Luda out of Luda's bed and from the sounds we can only guess he takes over the bed.

But only for a moment as he of course has to go get his cup.

Upon his return, Jared cannot handle the hiding too much more. Reaches his hand slowly out over the bed and as ben walks by..... GRRRRRRR!!!!

Spooks ben with excitement.

------

For now...this is a far better way to wake up than someone screaming or yelling at you from another room.

Affliction

I type this as I lay awake in bed, waiting for the benadryl to kick in. My phone alarm went off to inform me that I need to dose up again. The only thing that gets me through my days anymore is tylenol. My throat is sore, my body aches, my intestines don't function properly, my eyes are watery, and my nose is full of some kind of strange mucus that, no matter how much I blow, seems to be caught in some strange, unreachable cranny in one of my sinuses. I can sometimes clear it out by snorting through my nose, but then I have to swallow, which, I tell you, I might as well be swallowing knives. Well, I'm sure that didn't disgust you. In any case, the point I'm trying to make is that drugs are good.

Mmmmkay?

For me, it all started Friday evening, judging testing, where I had conjunctivitis - highly unpleasant (at least that has mostly cleared up). I was fine on Saturday and most of Sunday, but Sunday night, I felt a little bit tired - more tired than usual, aaaaaand then this crap happened. I turned into a walking nightmare, shortly followed by Kim's transformation. And that's the worst part. Kim is normally the most positive, chipper, happideedoo person, and now she's also turned into the same kind of tired, sore, infected, mucosal ass factory that I have. Well...maybe it's not that bad.



Well...where was I....kind of lost my train of thought here. Oh yeah! I guess the whole point I'm trying to make is, I HATE GERMS!!!!!! That's all I'm really trying to say. And if you happen to find yourself in the same kind of ill loathing, feverish, sack of nasty that we have, just remember, there's always a little drug called acetaminophen. I'm going to sleep.

They're trying to kill me! It kind of upsets me.

Goodnight. I hope all the germs in our bodies suffer horrible, gruesome deaths at the hands of our immune systems.