First Nice Ride

Today I managed to get a nice ride in. I headed out and started seeing alot of other riders. It took me a little while to figure out that I was riding the same route as the Fiesta century. Unfortunately I didn't have the legs or the time to do the entire 100 miles but I did get a nice quarter century in. The riding here is a little different than Hawaii. The scenery is alot different and there is a heck of a lot less traffic. The roads are a mixture of semi-smooth to rough chip seal. I did find an interesting creek.

Getting back in shape

A year ago I was in the best shape of my life. That is me in the middle of the picture. Unfortunately, this year the run of Holiday and Promotion Parties followed by the move and resulting month of fast food eating, added about 20 lbs back on as well as made me lose the fitness that lead to two state cycling champainships. Now that we are starting to get settled in our new house, I am going to try to get back in shape.

The last couple of weeks we started back on a variation of the South Beach Diet. Unfortunately, I was in a class this week that offered cookies on our breaks which I didn't do a very good job avoiding. I also had pizza and beer tonight. Tomorrow though I am going to tighten up the diet, give up beer for at least a week and start cycling again. I will try to keep this updated as I go through this journey.

New Job, new state, new house, maybe it is time for a blog update

Since the advent of my facebook account, I have been very delinquent on updating my Blog. I am not sure if there are any readers out there who happen still to follow the blog, but alot has gone on in my life since my last entry. In November, I found out that I did make Chief.

Since then there has been a whirlwind of activity. The promotion put me in the unique situation of being an overage in the Air Force's eyes so I had to find a new job. The list of options came out towards the end of November. My choices were Minot or Grand Forks North Dakota, Colorado Springs, Fort Walton Beach Florida and San Antonio. I applied for the positions in San Antonio and Colorado Springs. Both the position and location appealed to me for SA and the CS offered the best location. I lucked out and got my first choice with an original report date of 11 Feb 10 which I was able to move back to mid March.

Heather made it to Hawaii for one last visit for Christmas. We had our final Christmas Beach visit. We completed the Holiday with my promotion/New Years Party. January flew by. I attended a week long Chief's Orientation Course where I learned about everything from how to tell which water glass is yours at a formal dinner to how to manage your assignments. My parents, sisters, nieces, and Stephanie all flew out for the Chief Induction Ceremony. This was probably the coolest military ceremony I have had the privilege to attend.

February's activities focused on tying loose ends at work and getting ready for our move. We started March with the packing out of all our worldly possessions and cleaning our our house before turning it back over to the housing office. I was able to squeeze in a few rounds of golf and a bike ride or two. We left Hawaii, on the 12th and landed in LA where we rented a car and drove to Oakland to visit my sister Gina and pick up the Escape for our drive to SA.



We spent the first week looking for a house before I started the job. We purchased our first new construction home out side of Cibolo. Courtney wanted us to move to Cibolo so she could go to the High School "Steele High School" due to the name of course and their outstanding band. Right now we have moved into the house but are living with out furniture except for a few folding lawn chairs and air matrices.

I can't believe how fast these last months have flown by. I am really looking forward to the challenges of the new job and enjoying living here. I made it out for my first ride and can't wait to get back into riding. Hopefully I can be better about updating this blog.

Summer 2009

It has been a long time since I updated this thing. I am sure the few of you who read it are suprised that I am updating it now. I am flying to San Antonio Texas and can't sleep so I Am using my iPhone to type this up then I will transfer it to the blog. 

My last post was in may so I guess I should cover the summer. Heather graduated in may so we all flew home to illinois. It is hard to believe I have two done with college. While we were home we traveled to Missouri to attend a dedication of the ROTC lounge at Rolla to my brother Josh. 

June was also a busy month. One weekend chris and I were on the big
Island for a bike race while Courtney was on Maui with the girls scouts. The race was a stage race made up of 3 seperate races.  I ended up with a first second and third taking the overall first for my catagory. Later in the month chris and I went to San Antonio for a conference while Courtney went to ca to visit my sister Gina. San Antonio was great we got to spend time with our friends Rose and Tony.

Heather came home for a visit in July. We always have a lot of fun at the beach and on the bikes. We even trieD paddle surfing. I also won the cat 4/5 state crit for the masters division. 

I started august by traveling to japan.  This time I went to Okinawa and I didn't see any snow but I did sweat a lot. My buddy curt came out for a week.  The last weekend of the month my buddy john and i were riding on the windward side when a truck crossed in front of us. John wasn't able to stop and ran into the side of the truck breaking his collarbone, 3 ribs, and 3 vertabre.  He will be off the bike for 3 months. 

The highlight for Labor say weekend was the dick Evans round the island race. One of my goals for this year was a top 20 finish.  I didn't think I had a shot but some how I pulled off a 17th place finish. 

I also tested for chief on 10 sept. I had deci ded this would be the last time. If I don't make I will retire next summer. I felt pretty good about the test  I just have to wait until November to find out.

Finally I decided to purchase a new car.   I had planned on buying a vette then a mustang convertible but I ended up buying a ford escape....four cylinder.  A little bit of a diversion from the powerful cars I started looking at. I think. My buddy Ron was a bit disappointed but I decided to go with something more practical that could hall Ginger and the bikes. It does have a 5-speed manual transmission so it is fun to drive and it gets good mileage.  Maybe the muscle cars will come when we get back to the mainland.    

First time mtn biking after 6 months Time to get a new Helmet

Sunday I decided to go for a nice mtn bike ride at Royal Summit. I was suprised when I got there because there were a ton of riders. Come to find out, there was a race. I would have liked to have done race but I had to get back by 1200 to pick up Courtney and I didn't have $10 on me. I had a nice ride to the top then road around for a while before stopping to watch the racers. The course was kind of cool. It started at the top and went down the singletrack then carved back up the hill on more single track. After watching for a while I decided to give the singletrack climb a try. I made it up pretty until I attempted to adjust the volume on my IPOD. The next think I knew I was planting my forhead into the ground. Another Rudy Project helmet bit the dust leaving a nice mark on my forhead.

After I got home, I cleaned up the garage.

Hiking Up Biking Up

Last Sunday, Courtney and I joined my wife's cousin Paul for a hike. We started out hiking the Judd Trail which is a nice easy trail just off the Pali Hwy in Honolulu. The hike is very popular as well as having areas that were used during the filming of the series "LOST", http://www.lostvirtualtour.com/lost/filming_locations/juddtrail/index.html As we hiked we intersected the Nuuana trial which headed up the ridge.

We decided to take the high road and climb. The trail switchbacked up until it intersected Tantalus Drive at the top. We kept climbing until we were on top then stopped to rest and take in the great views of Honolulu and the pacific ocean.

On the way down we stopped at a very popular swimming hole. The water was a little murky and it was kind of chili so we just relaxed abit and didn't take a dip.

This morning I finally made it up to Scholfield for the Saturday HACC ride.
We had a very good turn out and for the first time I remember, we all wore the same HACC Jersey. Today was a climbers ride as we climbed Koli Koli, Pupakea and Pinneapple twice. I felt very strong and managed to be the first to the top of each hill.

Tonight I finished the day with a great Steak, Sweet Potato and corn.






Tomorrow I am going to give mtn biking a try.

North Shore Beach

This morning I overslept so I missed the HACC North Shore ride. Instead, I settled for 40 miles of intervals on Hickam. Not a great trade off but pretty good training. After I got home, I woke Courtney up for some homemade Blueberry Banana Pancakes. This weekend and next, it is just the two of us as the rest of the family are in Iowa watching Heather Play softball and enjoying that fine Midwest Spring weather, temps in the 50's and thunderstorms. After we finished our Brunch we took the cans and bottles to the recycle place then I drove to the bike shop on Dillingham. The shop catered mainly to the beach cruiser and singlespeed crowd but it did have 3 tandem bikes that were very reasonable.
When I finished at the shop, Courtney and I headed up to Wiamea Bay. It was kind of late when we got there but the parking lot was still full so I had to park at the botanical garden on the other side of the Kam. The park closed at 5 pm so we had to cut our time at the beach a little short. The water was not to bad but the air temp was starting to cool so you got pretty cold quickly after getting out of the water.

After we finished at the beach we headed to Halewa for shaved ice and ice cream.

We stopped and picked up an order Chris made from JC Pennys that had a new dress for Courtney. She really looked nice in it.