Kick Ass Wednesday

I'm feeling way way behind on so many fronts. I've deemed today to be Kick Ass Wednesday -- that's what Boot Camp Kenny calls our Wednesday workouts and I'm stealing his theme for my day today. Time to get caught up.

Perspective

A friend spent the past four months or so not feeling right. Mostly some gastrointestinal issues. He started going to the doctor and they couldn't find anything. They scheduled a colonoscopy. Even though he started to feel better, the doc wanted to do the test anyway. The result? Colon cancer.

My friend is 39 years old with a four month old baby at home.

His prognosis is good.

I can't help but to think what he and his family have gone through in the past few weeks. It really puts everything else in life into perspective . . . the job loss, the day-to-day bs that we all deal with, the bs that you're going to read below. Just can't imagine.

Our thoughts and prayers are with him.

Old Friends

A couple of weeks ago I was walking through Trader Joe's and I ran into an old friend. We'll call him Greg. (No, not protecting his anonymity, that's his actual name.) I turned a corner and there he was. Greg and I went to college for a few years together and were good friends after college. In the last few years, we haven't seen each other or spoken, but I've always considered him a friend, even though our paths had diverged a bit.

Anyway, back to the story, "Hi, Greg" I said. I get this stare back. . . "I know you but I don't know who you are," I'm sure he's thinking. He throws out a name -- not mine. "Nope, it's Jeff," I said. Don't think Greg's chin could have dropped any lower.

Through this whole body changing adventure, this is the first reaction I've had like this. In the past year I haven't lost a whole lot, so I'm starting to accept what I look like and forget what I used to look like. This was a great reminder of how things have changed. I don't ever want to forget where I've been.

About the Bike

Okay, let me talk about my love/hate relationship with my bike. I love riding my bike, really I do. Unfortunately, I had no clue how much maintenance might be required. I was up for some maintenance, but I'm a low maintenance kinda guy. (I've thought about paving my lawn to avoid lawn work, to give you an idea what I'm talking about.)


The weather two weekend's ago was absolutely perfect, so I finally got around to truing up my wheels. My neighbor's truing stand had been in my garage for four months. An hour later, it was done. Sunday I went to ride.


Apparently, with the wheel issues, my gears were out of alignment. I was stuck in the middle front chain ring, which gives me nine gears. That's okay, though, I can handle the hills on the easier gears. That is, until I go into the easier gears -- bike is not happy about either the easiest or toughest gears. Oy! I'm down to just 5 or 6 working ears out of 27.


I get through the ride and head over to Kirk's Bike Shop. Never heard of Kirk's? Well, he's my neighbor and between Kirk and George, next door, they've got just about every tool made and have been invaluable in keeping me on the road. In about 5 minutes, Kirk has my gears working -- all 27 of them. Then he spend 10 minutes explaining the 4 hour overhaul I ought to do to clean the bike up. Needless to say, my head was spinning. Nobody told me about all the maintenance required. Guess I'll just have to get a new bike every six months or so.

Half to Go

Just three days until the National Half Marathon. Weather report is darn near perfect -- in the 40's, light winds and DRY! Goal for the day is to break 2:15. Will be tough, but using the Tampa barometer from a few weeks ago, I think it's there for the taking.

Speaking of Tampa -- got confirmation of my time from the race and apparently, I got 27 seconds faster in my sleep. The confirmation was 2:22:48 vs the initial 2:23:15. I knew I was getting faster, but I sure do like getting faster this way!

That's it for now. Next post will be after Saturday's half. It's back to Kick Ass Wednesday.

L'Chaim!