So if I’ve put off my “weekend update” until after hours on a Tuesday, does it really bear typing in?  Whew, what a day.  I would love to ramble off a lengthy complaint about it, but then that would be the “Tuesday update” and I still wouldn’t have the weekend covered.  Rats.

Said weekend kicked off slightly out of the ordinary.  Instead of sauntering down the Brooksider to sit on the patio, I picked up Munkirs over at his house and we drove south to beautiful Pittsburg, KS.  We had an early-morning bicycle ride scheduled there on Saturday, so we got the drive knocked out and stayed at a hotel.  Nice little town.  We dropped our bags at the hotel, then hit all the clubs and checked out the local college scene.  We got back to the hotel just in time to grab a few hours sleep before the ride.  (Or we might have watched a little ESPN and gone to bed at 9:30.)

Saturday morning we got up and headed out to our ride, the Gorilla Century.  This was pretty much the culmination of all the summer’s riding, at least for me.  Our goal was to ride the full 100 mile route, preferably under our own power.  There are lots of century rides available throughout the summer, but we had chosen this one based on the date, the cheap entry fee, and the irresistible allure of seeing the Big Brutus coal shovel along the route.  Indeed, it did not disappoint;  That is one big shovel.  Unfortunately it was a mere 30 miles into the ride, leaving the remaining 70 miles feeling a bit anti-climactic.  Overall ride impression?  Well, given a two-day recovery time, I will say it was a good ride and I’m glad we did it.  Shortly after finishing I was ready to sell my new bike on craigslist.  Whew, it was a warm ‘un.  We sort of saw trouble in our future when it was 83 degrees at start time.  We had a relatively good ride though despite the heat, up until the 75 mile mark.  We pulled into a rest stop there, averaging a very respectable 17.4 mph.  By this time the temp had gone over 100, and the discomfort was evident in the very few riders hanging out there.  We filled up with water and took off, and both of us sort of broke down shortly there-after.  Cramps, nausea, profuse sweating…  The entire remaining 25 miles effectively consisted of pulling over under shade trees every few miles and praying for a little relief from the leg cramps.  Geez we paid money for this?  But, to our credit, we both finished the whole ride, so we can claim mission accomplished.  They said they had to haul more people back in trucks than ever before, which I would certainly believe.  We may have suffered severe dehydration and possible organ damage, but we did get some really sweet tee-shirts out of the deal.  And, I have to point out that I beat Munkirs to the finish line for the first time in any organized ride we’ve been on, fully justifying the purchase of my new bike and proving that you can’t beat the technology advantage of carbon fiber.

After the ride we limped back to KC, and after dropping Munkirs off I headed home to meet up with the Aushermans, who were in town visiting from DC.  I gotta say, while it is always good to see them, I wasn’t up to the occasion.  I did my best, but I called no joy after dinner and they had to take me home.  I was out of gas, even a 75th Street pizza couldn’t bring me around.  They pushed me out of the car in the front yard, where I think they found my inert body still laying when they returned from a wild night of partying.  Sounded like they had a good time carousing in Waldo;  Guess I’ll have to take their word for it.

Sunday and Monday I was still a bit out of sorts.  I took Teagan to the park for a few hours Sunday morning, then headed to the Brooksider to watch the baseball game.  Martin joined me down there and we hung out for a few hours, enjoying the awesome weather.  (Why couldn’t it have been that nice just one day earlier?  Just ONE DAY??!!  I’m not bitter though.)  After the game we sat on my back porch for a while and tore up a large Waldo pizza;  It was just too nice to be inside.  The girls were at the Maroon 5 and Train concert at Starlight meanwhile.  Not my favorite groups but given the 70 degree temperature it certainly didn’t sound like a bad option.  Then for the holiday on Monday, well, I just didn’t do anything.  Non-event.  Even if I did do something incredibly fun I wouldn’t tell you, because I’m tired of typing.

I am rather loath to type this up today, but I guess I am somewhat obligated.  Plus, it wasn’t all that bad a weekend, so I should recap it in some fashion.  Friday was typically non-eventful;  I went to the Brooksider for a few hours.  I suppose you could call that something of a “rut,” but I like it.  Nice evening too.  Hung out and caught up on the local gossip;  It’s amazing how much fascinating news you miss out on only going there once a week.  Makes for more subject matter.  Once the subject matter had run thin though, I bailed out and spent the rest of the evening on the couch, alternating between the Chief’s miserable loss and the Royal’s miserable loss.  The Royal’s game was definitely the more watchable of the too, for what that’s worth.  Meanwhile, Donette was at the stadium watching the football game with her sister, which she said was fun.  I haven’t even seen the remodeled stadium yet, I guess I need to get out there too.

Saturday, for reasons I’m not entirely clear on or particularly interested in asking about, I hosted a Fantasy Football draft for Martin’s league.  They were going to grab some tables at the Brooksider, but decided it was going to be too crowded.  I’m not actually in their league, but I guess since I have the house closest to the place they were going, it made sense to somebody.  Hey, whatever, it was fun.  I got to see everybody in one place, without ever having to leave my own yard.  We even Skype’d in Schmidt from Australia, which worked out quite nicely.  Donette opted out of the event though, and headed for a girl’s-night-out with a few friends.

Sunday Munkirs came over and picked me up bright and early at 6:00 for a bike ride out at Longview Lake.  I chose this event to break the news to him that I’d picked up a new bike, which I’d somehow managed to keep secret over the last three weeks I’d been working on the deal.  He was appropriately angered, further justifying my purchase.  Matter of fact, he even referred to me with the exact same derogatory phrase Martin had when I showed him the night before.  This made the ride a success before we even started in my mind.  We went on this ride last year too, and it was an unmitigated disaster.  This year was smooth sailing though, I’m sure due to my new bicycle.  The fact that we only rode half as far might have played into things also, but I’m going with the new bike.  By the time I got home, Donette was at her first official training session for the 1/2-marathon she is planning on running this winter.  (The event is in Las Vegas;  Should be nice and warm.)  She said it went well;  She ran two miles, got some new running gear, and met some new people.  Since we had both done our exercise for the day, we decided we’d earned a dinner out.  We mulled over several fancy options, eventually deciding on the same ol’ 75th Street.  Boring choice perhaps, but tasty as always.

Pic of the new bicycle; The name has been removed from the down-tube to hide my shame at getting such an extravagance.

For our weekend entertainment, we took a few days off  and traveled to Cincinnati to visit our friends Ed and Kim, and their young son who I hadn’t seen yet.  Whew, good times, but I”m beat down.  We took off driving that direction Wednesday night after work, and made it as far as St. Louis, where we stayed with Donette’s sister and brother-in-law.  I wasn’t sure I was even going to make it that far, I could hardly keep my eyes open driving.  We finally got there though, and visited for about 5 minutes before I fell asleep.

Thursday we got up and hit the road again.  It was a generally horrible drive the rest of the way to their house, not that there is such a thing as a good drive.  We hit some brutal construction along the way, and spent a fair amount of time at a standstill on I-70.    We trudged through it though, and got there right about dinner time.  We toured their new  house, then took a walk around the corner and ate some grub  at a nice local diner.

Friday Ed had to work, so Kim was  left home  to entertain us.  We slept in a bit, then loaded up the car and headed down for a little  exercise at a nearby state park.  We parked at the Avoca trailhead, which is part of the Little Miami Trail.  It’s rather similar to the Katy Trail in that it is an old converted railway, but it is much longer and asphalt-paved.  Luckily I’d hauled my bicycle with me, and I got in a quick 25-mile ride along the flat smooth path.  Donette and Kim did some jogging with the baby meanwhile, and somehow or another we finished up at the same time.  After that we went out for lunch at a nearby Mexican restaurant, then back to the house.  After a bit, Ed showed up from work, with a big bag of assorted sausages from their Whole Foods Market.  He grilled those up for dinner, then some friends of theirs came over and we all sat in the back yard and enjoyed the weather.

Saturday Ed and I got up early-ish and headed out to his parent’s house for the big Pigfest party.  We pitched in a little and helped set up all the various events, such as the wiffle-ball fields, the cornhole tournament, etc.  I spent no small amount of time standing around admiring the new pig roaster they had for this year’s event too.  For many years they’ve done the pig over an open pit, which while certainly functional isn’t necessarily too efficient and involves quite a bit of work.  The rig they borrowed this year was an enclosed cooker, with several well-thought-out features that made the job a little easier.  The crowd started trickling in around noon, and by 3:00 the party was in full force.  I couldn’t even guess how big the crowd got, but to give you some idea they had a 200 lb. pig and there wasn’t much left over.  After dinner MER put on a good show for us all, and then the evening degraded into the traditional revelry.  I posted a few carefully screened photos here.

Sunday brought the inevitable drive home.  We had a little better luck with the construction, and honestly it wasn’t that bad.  We broke things up a bit by stopping by her sister’s again, and also in Columbia to see her niece at MU.  We got back home around 10:00 or so, and promptly crashed out.  Today we both had the day off, so we could get reoriented a little bit before heading back to work.  Donette’s parents were nice enough to take care of the 50-lb. wiggle-bomb while we were gone, so we drove up and got her, and now I think I shall take a nap…

After the last several consecutive blazing-hot weekends, that one was a nice respite.  I kicked it off, of course, down at the Brooksider.  Just too nice out not to.  The rest of the boys had been out playing golf all day, so they were worn out.  We hung out a few hours and then everybody called it a day early.  Donette’s family came over later for a visit, despite the relatively unkempt condition of the house.  Had a nice time though.  They all headed out for some Foo’s Frozen Custard later, but I took a pass on that.  Dieting and all, you know.

Saturday my friend Dennis (that used to live across the street) picked me up at 6:00 for an early morning bike ride.  There was an MS-150 training ride leaving from the Subaru dealership out in Lee’s Summit.  The route was based on the Tour de Lakes organized ride from earlier this year, just with a different starting point.  The big plus here was the whole ride was free, save for a few stops along the way at convenience stores for water.  On the downside, it was a quite hilly route, and windy too.  And, we missed the turn-off for our intended 45 mile route and ended up on the 63 mile ride.  Eh, it was all good.  It was a nice ride, and can’t beat the price.  Not to mention, when we got back to the dealership they had catered in a big BBQ lunch for everybody!  After eating lunch and driving back home, it was well into afternoon couch-time.  We did head down to the Brooksider again for little bit;  Who knows how long this weather will last.

Sunday was Donette’s turn at exercise.  She got up early and headed out with a few friends for the big “Race for the Cure” event.  And I do mean “big”;  There were 25,000 people in it.  That’s quite a big larger than the bike ride I went on Saturday morning.  Sounds like they had a good time of it.  After the fact, I wished I would have taken the dog down there and snapped a few pictures, but at the time the couch sounded like a better option.  I did meet up with them down at Sharp’s for breakfast though.  I’ve been kind of down of Sharp’s lately, but it was very good this time.  I splurged for the chicken fried steak and eggs, maybe it’s another case of needing to order the right thing.  After breakfast, I took Teagan down to the dog park for some exercise.  And exercise she did, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her so worn out.  She didn’t play with the other dogs too much, which was sort of odd, but she played fetch until she couldn’t run anymore.  Actually she kept playing even after that, I finally had to hide the ball from her because I was getting a bit worried she was going to overheat.  That pretty much ended our day.  We were supposed to go to a BBQ over at a friend’s house, but Donette ended up not feeling well so we called it a day.  Sat on the couch and watched movies the rest of the night, none of which really merited a review.

The scourge of blog pages these days seems to be comment spam.  Well, besides the actual content of said blogs, but that’s another topic.  I can count on two or three junk comments coming in every day, and sometimes bursts of like fifty or so.  Anyway, WordPress has a nice add-in to catch all this crap.  Akismet checks the comments that are posted, and if it determines it’s a spam moves it to a folder instead of posting it.  It’s good at it too, I think I’ve only had it miss one or two since installing it a long time ago.  I don’t even check the contents of the folder any more generally, I just empty it out and move on.  The other day though, out of sheer boredom, I found myself scanning through the contents to see what was there.  A few of them caught my eye.  Several of them were in Russian, and my browser (Chrome, as it happens,) automagically detected this and offered to translate them for me.  How cool is that?  Pretty sweet technology there, at least I thought so.  Another handful of them were offering to sell “bulk Facebook fans, likes, and friends.”  Now that’s just sad.  What is the world coming to?  I went ahead and picked up a few hundred new friends though.

Hopefully we are in something of a respite from the heat wave.  I got in a short, easy bike ride last night and it was quite pleasant.  As an added bonus, when I got back home, I found Farmer Brice had left a nice basket of fresh tomatoes on my front porch, my first of the year.  (Not counting the ones I bought at the O.P. Farmers Market, which I’m not convinced were from a garden.  These were infinitely better at any rate.)  I sliced them up with some mozzarella I had in the ‘fridge, added some fresh basil and balsamic, and they made for a delicious dinner.