I decided not to race the race in Guntersville, Mountain Lakes, in August. I didn’t feel trained up and certainly did not want to have another miserable race as I had back in June.  Team Magic just had their last triathlon for the season down at Gulf Shores, the Alabama Coastal Triathlon.  I am sure it went well.  Maybe next year I can consider that one.  I hope next summer holds more races, not only for myself, but also my daughter.  I asked her if she would be interested in doing a race with daddy as a relay, letting her do the run, and she responded with yes.  I was very happy and definitely looking forward to next summer and seeing her participate with me in a race… maybe Buster Britton will be her first.  Until then.. be safe out there…

So lets just say my training was weak at best.  I swam 3 times (total of around 2600 yards) leading up to the race (last time in the water was probably October of last year while at the beach and I don’t believe I did any swimming).  I ran  15 times and biked 23 times (all but 3 or 4 of them were on the trainer) since January began.  I could never get any consistency and none of them were very focused on anything.  I hope I do much better for the next one because my neighbor and my boss are already after me about doing more this summer.

There are some options.. plenty of them actually… some in TN, one in AL and I beleive a couple in FL.  Mountain Lakes is of course the most desired given it is such a fun race and the pool party afterwards for the kids is awesome.  I wouldn’t mind doing one down at the beach and getting a taste of that salt water… salt water races are always fun!!  Whatever I do, I sure hope I train a bit more.  Being prepared makes for a more exciting race.

Nothing wrong with being honest… thanks Google.

If I can manage to develop a short training routine and get in gear, I may just show-up at the Buster Britton Memorial Triathlon on June 11th. Wish me luck.

Regards,
“Former” Ironman Triathlete

“Get busy living, or get busy dying.”

“Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies.”

So we found out a couple of weeks back that the girls would be out on Friday (10/8) and Monday (10/11) and had a crazy idea… why not head to the beach.  After-all, we had not been down since September of 2009 and we had talked about it numerous times throughout the summer, but just never pulled the trigger on making it happen…

On the way to school on Thursday, I asked Campbell what she would like to do over the weekend since we had a long weekend with her and Caroline being out of school.  She immediately wanted to go to the lake, so that was going to be my story once we got started to the beach.  I drove on in to work and worked diligently to wrap up Q4 goals for my staff and myself, picked up lunch for Staci and Caroline on my way home, got everything loaded up into the van in record time and headed by to pickup Campbell from school (neither Caroline nor Campbell had any idea we were headed to the beach – remember the lake story).  We were on the interstate in no time and made fabulous time down to Montgomery.  From there, things slowed down, especially in dreadful Dothan.  Anyone else out there hate to drive through Dothan?  I mean the speed limit is 45 but everyone wants to drive 30 and there are traffic lights every 10 yards.  It doesn’t matter if you drive through at 10AM or 10PM, same thing every time.  By this time, both of them had asked half a dozen times if we were in Alex City yet.  Staci and I just grinned at each other as I continued to make up excuses (made a wrong turn, forgot something and had to go back home to get it, had to drive out of my way to pick something else up on the way to the lake, etc. – all of which they seemed to believe).  We made great time after getting through Dothan and landed in Port St. Joe just over 5 hours after starting the trip and Cape San Blas 20 minutes later.  We stayed the night with a couple that we had met two summers ago while vacationing in the Cape.  Since meeting them, Staci has spoken with them numerous times and has tried over and over to arrange a date that we could all be back at the beach at the same time – this time around their fall break was the week before ours, but we did manage to see them for one night.  The girls never realized where we were headed the entire trip, not even when we pointed out the ‘Welcome to Flirida’ sign.  When we finally arrived, we told them that we had a surprise and that we were at the beach.  They rang the doorbell at the condo where our friends were staying and immediately saw Spencer.  Campbell remembered her, but Caroline was only 2 at the time and had no memory of that trip.  Nonetheless, they immediately planed and had a great time while we spoke for well over an hour to her parents – Johnny and Jerri.  They are so nice and we are very thankful to them for allowing us to stay the night.  The room we stayed in had a bunk bed over the main bed, so Campbell and Spencer slept in it, while Caroline camped out with you know who.  Caroline went fast to sleep while Staci and I caught some laughs listening to the girls.  At one point Spencer was telling Campbell how to fall asleep.  She said ‘my daddy told me to count food jumping over the moon’ and she used the word ‘chow’ and explained to Campbell that chow is ‘food for the army’.

On Friday we found ourselves in no time wishing our friends off.  They had to begin their journey back to Kentucky early in the morning as it was a 12-13 hour drive and Johnny had to work the following day, so there was no kicking back and talking a bit more before they left.  We helped them as much as they would allow and wished them well.  It was sad to see them go after only seeing them for such a short while and not seeing them for over 2 years.  We hope to see them again soon… maybe summer 2011!  We cleaned up things a bit and then locked up and headed in to Port St. Joe for grocery shopping time.  This is about a 20-25 minute drive as there is not a lot out on the Cape other than a couple of stores – ‘The Tradin Post’ and ‘Scallop Cove’ as well as ‘Cone Heads’ restaurant, which was closed for the season.. we were upset to say the least.  After a run to the grocery store, we were quickly headed back to the Cape.  We swung by and picked up our keys and were at Sea Cliffs a few minutes later.  The three other times we have been here, we have stayed in unit 25D.  This time around we had to settle for another unit due to our favorite unit being booked.  We were upset at first, but the unit we were in this time around was closer to the beach and we had an ocean view.  I have to admit though, aside from the view, I still prefer the other unit that we have stayed in.  We unpacked our things, got things situated and wasted no time getting down to the beach.  We spent the next few hours playing in the surf.  Staci’s mom and dad had left Alex City around lunch time and were headed down to the Cape to stay a few days with us, so we were anticipating their arrival.  After some beach time, we took the girls up and all of us got cleaned up right about the time her parents arrived.  The sunset was absolutely wonderful and we snapped a few shots – I have them posted on my facebook photos page under ‘Cape San Blas 2010′.  We had pizza that night from the Trading Post.  We didn’t do any crabin that night because we did not have crab nets.  We found ourselves in bed later that night and I believe all of us were like rocks once we hit the bed.

I got up fairly early on Saturday and did my normal routine – get on the road and ride!!  I road out to my normal turn around at 30A.  Talk about peaceful… I may have seen 15 cars in an hours time on the road.  This may be the biggest reason I love ‘The Cape’…. ride and ride without concern of cars, getting flipped off, being run off the road or yelled at.  Not many places I have ridden at this point in nearly 11 years of riding road bikes can I say that about.  After the ride, I went ahead and setup my laptop in the back of the van and matt on the ground to do my P90X - shoulders and arms.  I rushed through it in about 45 minutes, skipping the warmup and cooldown and the breaks.  Talk about the perfect way to start the day – bike ride with P90X thrown in there.  Afterwards, I ran down to the beach where Nana, Staci and the girls were.  They had gone out about the time I started P90X to look for shells and such.  We stayed down a short while longer and then headed back up to get ready to go over to stump hole  – one of our favorite places to go while at CSB.  We all went and spent about an hour or so there exploring – no snakes were discovered this time, but we did see the Osprey again this year that we saw last September.

In doing a search for pictures of ‘stump hole’, I ran across this image – water over the road.  We were there during this and saw this going on – there was a hurricane miles away out in the gulf – talk about something amazing!  Thought I would share that picture.  This rock wall has, since that time, been heavily repaired with steel and extremely large boulders.

When we got back from stump hole, we all had showers and went out for dinner at Indian Pass Raw Bar.  We had not eaten there, but had heard great things.  After a 30 or so minute wait, we found ourselves inside and discovered the menu was quite small – like seriously… shrimp, stuffed shrimp, oysters or crab legs.  The menu for kids was longer!  Regardless, the food was really good and Campbell found a love for crab legs… she could not get enough!  The place was a little lively – sports bar really, so you can imagine what it was like on a Saturday night.  Caroline just did manage to get her corn dog eaten before she fell asleep in her chair.  Staci and I found ourselves laughing almost uncontrollably because her eyes were almost shut, but she was making good progress on the corn dog.  It was cute!  We went crabin when we got back – you know Campbell… she was not going to let us get by without going – the child loves it!  We were not able to catch much that night.  We finally got in and it was fairly late before we were in bed.

I decided to take a break from getting up early, so I slept in a little while on Sunday.  We had a great breakfast.  We made another short trip over to stump hole after breakfast and then back home for a snack and shower.  Afterwards, we headed to Apalachicola for some shopping and dinner.  Staci and Nana did some shopping while the girls took a nap.  I caught some awesome quiet time there by the fishing doc in front of Gradys Market.  The weather was wonderful… in the high 70′s with a breeze.  Stella hung out there with me while I read news feeds on my Droid.  After 30-45 minutes I woke the girls up and we took a stroll a few blocks up the street to one of our normal stops, where we had some ice cream.  That was nice… since we have been there so many times in the last 3 years, we have just become so familiar with the locations of the stores and it is quite relaxing.  Afterwards we visited a few more stores and spoke to John Lee who we had met during a previous trip.  He is very interesting and has an enormous amount of knowledge about Apalachicola and other subjects.  He and Staci have some interests in common – antique stuff.  We somehow managed to leave his store – Southern Sage – without purchasing anything… .  We had dinner at Boss Oyster – really good food and a popular place for tourists, but from what I gather is not one of the favorites among locals.

Once we made it back from Apalachicola, we headed out to the beach for a camp fire and crabin.  Talk about crazy… try starting a fire on the beach… let me know how challenging it is… LOL.  Next time around, I will no doubt have a starting log to get things off to a better start.  Long story short, we finally got it burning and had us some Smores that were yummy!  This was also the first time I had every experienced complete darkness on the beach.  There was not a single person anywhere in site on the entire beach except for us.  The stars were unbelievable and the night breeze was great.  Everyone headed back up after some time around the campfire while Campbell and I stayed  behind and put out the fire and did some crabin.  We caught over 30 crabs that night and stayed out past 11:00.  We had a wonderful time together.

Monday morning came quickly and we all scrambled to get things packed up while also taking a few minutes to get out to the beach one last time.  We spent some time at a new park on the bay side of the Cape that had just opened up in August… watching some blue crabs and pulling a few shells out of the water here and there.  We left out of Port St. Joe really late in the afternoon and had a long trip back home, arriving back around 10:00 on Monday night.  It was a short trip this time around, but was certainly full of some great enjoyable times.

Classifieds  
   These classifieds actually ran in a Minneapolis newspapers – a few smiles for your day…

FREE YORKSHIRE TERRIER .
8-years old. Hateful little bastard. Bites!

FREE PUPPIES:
1/2 Cocker Spaniel, 1/2 sneaky neighbor’s dog.

FREE PUPPIES..
Mother, AKC German Shepherd.
Father, Super Dog..able to leap tall fences in a single bound.

FOUND DIRTY WHITE DOG.
Looks like a rat. Been out awhile..
Better be a big reward.

COWS, CALVES: NEVER BRED.
Also 1 gay bull for sale.

NORDIC TRACK
$300 Hardly used, call Chubby.

GEORGIA PEACHES
California grown – 89 cents/lb.

JOINING NUDIST COLONY!
Must sell washer and dryer $300.

WEDDING DRESS FOR SALE .
Worn once by mistake. Call Stephanie.

And finally:

FOR SALE BY OWNER:
Complete set of Encyclopedia Britannica, 45 volumes. Excellent condition. $1,000 or best offer. No longer needed, Got married last month. Wife knows everything.  

******
Maxine sums up the health care bill

Let me get this straight. We’re going to be gifted with a health care plan written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn’t read it but exempts themselves from it, to be signed by a president who also hasn’t read it and who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that’s broke.

What the hell could possibly go wrong?

Larry David Blasted for ‘Curb’ Episode Where He Urinates on Jesus Painting – FOXNews.com

I pray that the Lord would be glorified during these challenging times.

Thomas, Staci and the girls…