Whoa, that was a short weekend.  I think I’ve been cheated.  Let’s see… Friday we went down to the Brooksider for a little after-work winding down.  We left early and went to Hen House to buy a few briskets, and so ended Friday.

Saturday, Doni went up North to her parents house to try and get rid of some of our stuff in a garage sale.  She had some limited success; dumped a few things but no “big ticket” items went.  Namely, my old hunting bow and my golf clubs.  Oh well, back to the the basement for them.  Meanwhile, I was home working on my “practice” briskets, getting ready for the big BBQ contest next weekend.  Honestly we’re not too concerned with the competition itself, but we want some good grub for the party Friday night.  As long as we don’t come in dead last I’ll be content.  I’ve got my sights set on the top 75%, but that might be a bit too aggressive for first-timers.  Anyway, I did two briskets; one was about 10 lbs, and the other was 14+ lbs.  Tried out a new dry rub, and it was darn awesome.  Another new thing I tried was putting the briskets in a heavy styrofoam cooler after I pulled them off the smoker.  That worked out well, but I think I left them in the cooler too long.  They came out well, but they’re entirely too tender.  Personally I like my brisket fall-apart tender, but supposedly it needs just a little bit of “stretch” to it for the competition.  Freaks.

Sunday was kind of an “impromptu” party over at Joe F’s house.  Joe went to the Chiefs game and kindly left the house open so Todd and Bob could practice their secret recipes for the contest.  And, of course, being “head chef” and all, I had to go supervise.  And, of course, Doni wanted to come too.  Then Ed didn’t have anything going on, so he came over too.  All in all, we had a nice little fiesta in his absence.  We did an 8 lb. pork butt and 3 chickens, and all came out pretty well.  And, we watched the game on Joe’s nice big Sony while the smoker was doing it’s thing.  The game stunk of course, but we had fun.  The Martin’s came over after the football game, so we hung around and ate some of the product and played some cards.  I thoroughly enjoyed the day, but sure didn’t get much done.  I still have a bunch of wood to cut up, and clean my smoker, and put together my other “supplies.”  Gonna be a busy week.

Oh by the way, a few links to generic “stuff”:
I put up some pictures from the Katy Trail Ride.

And here is a link to an article in the KC Star about my Fantasy Football team.  They came to our party last week and did a little write-up, and took some pictures.

Well, the big ride is over.  I don’t believe I suffered any permanent physical damage, other than a severely bruised backside, which will hopefully heal some day.  And, I think I may have left all my knee cartilage somewhere in Jefferson City.  I will offer up a short synopsis here; pictures will have to wait until they are gathered from all sources.

DAY 1

Thursday morning we woke up bright and early in Sedalia, at the luxurious Best Western.  We were out the door by 7:30, pedaling by 8:00.  The weather was great, the birds were singing, and spirits were generally high.  We hammered along the trail at a rather brisk clip, and made good time into Boonville for our lunch break.  I had my first hint of trouble when I got off my bike… “Hey, I don’t feel too zippy.”  It occurred to me that I hadn’t eaten since lunch on Wednesday, and that perhaps this was not good planning on my part.  No biggie, I’ll chow some lunch and everything will be cool.  This was the beginning of the end for ol’ Phil.  I picked at my burger for a bit, hoping not to throw up in the middle of the restaurant.  Then we got back on the trail, and that’s when things really took a turn for the worst.  We were pedaling merrily along the trail when I got a little twinge in my right leg.  “Uh-oh, shoulda stretched out a little,” I thought.  About 30 seconds later I got an absolutely paralyzing charlie horse in my right thigh.  Through the blinding pain, I managed to stop, somehow get my foot out of the pedal, and put my weight on my left leg.  This resulted in the same cramp in my left thigh.  Man, it HURT.  Naturally, some joker comes riding up right then.  Probably one of three people we saw all day and he has to roll up just when I’m near death.  He brilliantly greets me with “Hey, how’s it going?”  Well let me see… I’m laying in the middle of a gravel trail, thrashing around like I’ve been maced, muttering incoherently.  My face is clenched in pain, and both my thighs are visibly spasming like something out of the Aliens movie.  “Oh, I’m doing great, thanks.”  By this time the other guys were 200 yards up the trail, and I could see them fumbling furiously for their cameras, so I had to struggle back to my feet and get back on my bike.  The worst part was, we were only half-way into the ride… Still had 40 stinking miles to go.  I never did recover either.  I can easily label that day “The Single Worst Bike Ride Of My Life,” if not just plain “The Single Worst Day Of My Life.”  Every time I tried to go over 12 mph, the cramps would come back, and no amount of water, food, or bad language would make it go away.  I literally hated each and every turn of the pedal.  Not to mention the other guys had to rock-paper-scissors all afternoon for who was going to hang back with my dead butt.  It was a painful and miserable experience at best, excruciatingly humiliating at worst.

DAY 2-3

After Thursday, I would term Friday and Saturday rousing successes.  I did have what I termed my “Malady of the Day”: Namely my back on Thursday and my knees and butt on Saturday.  Tolerable ailments though, compared to Thursday.  The weather could not have been better on any of the days, aside from pretty solid head winds.  We had a few “interesting moments,” like the bizarre Bed and Breakfast Lady the first night, and the “Bridge Dash of Death” at Hermann.  There weren’t any other major incidents though, other than Todd’s bike breaking down in Hartsburg.  The local mechanic performed the last rites on it, and gave him an awesome Pee Wee Herman rental to ride for the next two days.  This performed the dual function of 1) forcing him to ride all the way to St. Charles with us, and 2) providing us endless amusement watching him ride it.  All in all, I am pretty sure I had a good time.  The total damage was 201 miles when Doni and Dakin picked us up in St. Charles.  Three weeks from now, it could well be the best thing I’ve ever done; Get back with me when I quit hurting.  Will we do it again?  Well, that also remains to be seen.  I do feel that I am somewhat wiser for the experience, and I am now qualified to offer up these tidbits of trail wisdom:

1. Eat breakfast.  Always, always, always eat breakfast.


2. Get some skinny “Todd Tires.”


3. If you are going to ride with 20 pounds of gear, TRAIN with 20 pounds of gear.


4. Ride with your mouth closed.  This is not a breathing tip.


5. Don’t draft behind Todd, it’s not worth it.


6. Martin has to be the first one into every town.  Don’t worry about it, just let ‘im go.

Well that’s kind of a long entry so I will have to detail the rest of the weekend later.  Obviously I have skipped some detail of the trip, but “What happens on the trail, stays on the trail.”

Man, I’ve been getting just absolutely pummelled at work.  Beat down, I tell ‘ya.  All these short work-weeks are catching up with me I guess.  Sheesh.  It’s really cutting into my Internet time, I’ll tell you that much.

Anyway… Last weekend was our Chicago trip.  We flew out there bright and early Friday with the Martins and Belangers.  We headed down to Wrigley field with the Martins that afternoon and found a GREAT deal on four bleacher tickets.  (Just a tinge of sarcasm there… I have never paid that much for a sporting event in my life, and likely never will again.)  I would say it was worth it though; it was definitely an “experience”.  Plus, it was a double-header so we got two-fer-one.  By the end of the third inning, Doni was bestest friends with the entire section of course.  That girl is chatty, bless her heart.  We met some nice kids from New Orleans, St. Louis, and various other locales.  The Cubbies lost the first game, but won the second handily.  (Far as we know anyway… we didn’t actually make it to the end of the game; the team seemed to have the game under control, but Martin and I were losing control of the girls fast.)

Saturday I can’t really recall what we did all morning… not much I don’t imagine.  We hit the Lincoln Park zoo for a bit early in the afternoon, and then met up with Belanger down at the Pier later.  Listened to some tunes and “crowd watched” down there for a while, and then went and met Liz and some friends of hers for dinner.  We went to “Bin36” and it was pretty cool.  A little on the foo-foo side, but we had a blast.  Ate a bunch of wacky appetizers, and had some wine that our “interesting but nice” waiter suggested for us.  All in all, I’ll rate is as “inexpensive, fun… Two thumbs up”.  After that, for some reason I wasn’t really in the loop on, we went back to Lincoln Park and began a mission to visit every establishment that ended with “apostrophe S.”  For example, “Durkin’s” or “Kelly’s”.  Gotta have a theme I guess.  This little project ended badly.  Very badly.  That’s all I got to say about that.

Sunday we went and checked out the rest of the zoo… Pretty cool zoo overall, if a bit small-ish.  There was also some kind of false advertising on the hippos, which are of course a significant attraction of any self-respecting zoo.  The sign listing the animals clearly stated “HIPPOS”, but all we could find was one lonely pygmy hippo.  Difference of roughly 1400 pounds there I would guess.  This mild disappointment was offset by a very cool polar bear display though, so it all worked out.  After that, the Martin’s had to go catch their plane, so me and Doni hung out and watched the football games all day.  We went back to one of the “apostrophe s” places, and found it to be quite possibly the single best place to watch football in the entire world.  A bold statement, sure, but I feel an accurate one.  They had the NFL Sunday Ticket package, and little 15″ Plasma TV’s all over the place so you could watch whatever the heck you wanted only your own little personal TV.  Man it was awesome.

Well, hopefully everyone had a good holiday.  I’m still relatively beat down from the whole Washington DC thing.  It was a good class, and I suppose I learned a lot, but I definitely have a very finite amount of storage in my old age.  By Thursday or so, I was having to dump everything I learned earlier in the week in order to make room for the new stuff.  Bad news man.  There were also several quirky things about the “attendees” that kept bothering me.  For one thing, 1800 nerds in one building is just a somewhat unnerving experience.  I’m talking hard-core nerds too, not just your garden variety low-level geeks.  And then you realize “hey… wait a minute… I don’t exactly stand out in this crowd.”  It’s a little hard on the self esteem.  And then there was the whole “chick factor”.  There were probably 100 good-looking females running around the building at any given time during the week.  Now, granted, out of 1800 people that is a pretty low percentile.  At a technical conference, however, it is totally unheard of.  Nothing short of groundbreaking, actually.  I never really got an adequate explanation on that one.  Near as I can figure, the conference sponsors rented them all out for the week to make themselves look better.  Only possible explanation, really.

As far as the weekend goes, my enjoyment was severely curtailed by being oncall.  What a drag man.  We did get to go spend all day Saturday up on Smithville lake, riding around on the Martin boat.  Good stuff… quite relaxing actually.  Then we went back to the Martin residence and tossed some cards.  (While we’re on that subject, I might throw out that the “MEN” were the victors… the “WOMEN” actually called no joy during the second game.  Up and quit, right in the middle of a hand.  Sad, really.)

Training continues for the Katy Trail ride… two weeks and counting.  We’ve also got a long weekend planned in Chicago this coming weekend.  Busy busy.  I’ve also got a few pictures from DC that I’m working on getting posted… not very interesting pictures, mind you, but “content” all the same.  If this has been rambling a bit, it’s because I’m distracted.  I don’t like being oncall.  Can’t “focus”.

Well, I’m in Washington D.C. this week.  There’s a conference for OpNet going on, and I got lucky enough to attend.  I say “lucky” with about the half the usual sarcasm; I wasn’t overly excited to go out of town, but the product is cool and I’m enjoying the classes.  Plus, the sight of 1800 geeks milling about a Conference Center is truly something to behold.  We are at the Ronald Reagan Center right in the middle of D.C.  It’s a huge building luckily, because that many people need a lot of space.  We’re clearly an annoyance to the other daily workers in the center, which also provides me no end of amusement.  That’s about all I have to say for the moment… Class starts soon and I have a pretty good hike to get there.  Yeah, I could take the bus or a cab, but public transportation frightens me.