Ahhh, another Monday.  The thrill of another exciting week staring me in the face.  Mmmm-hmmmm.  And it’s raining to boot.  Nothing better to start a week off right than a morning with the bus-crazies.  Guess it was about time for a little precipitation;  At least I got my grass seed down yesterday.  As for the weekend?  Ehhh.  Friday passed without incident.  I did have a pretty good lunch that day I guess.  Mostly out of boredom, I wandered down to Winslows in the City Market.  I hadn’t been there for a long time, if ever.  Seems like I was there once many moon ago.  At any rate, I was out enjoying the weather and decided to stop in for lunch on their patio.  Granted, I was starving, but I thought it was pretty good.  I had the rib plate with fries and slaw.  Way too much food, but I guess that’s BBQ in KC.  The ribs were good;  Very smoky (which I like) and I liked the rub on them.  The downside was they were off the long end (to be expected for the lunch special I suppose) and they weren’t trimmed.  Pet peeve I think;  It’s not like anybody is going to eat all that nasty gristly stuff, cut it off for pete’s sake.  I’ll probably go back in a few weeks and try a sandwich and see how that goes.  When I got home Donette was up the street at Cantina del Ray with Susan, doing a little light happy-hour-slash-dinner.  When she got home she dug some homemade tamales out of the freezer and heated them up, and then made a good green chile sauce to go with them.  We’ll have to save the green chile recipe, it was a keeper.  After that we split up to our respective TV’s.  Not sure what she watched but I fired up some good horror movies.  Halloween is just around the corner you know.

Saturday we did a little light work outside.  The front yard went south on us towards the end of the summer…  I think it burned up while we were out of town.  Forgot to leave the sprinklers on, whoops.  I raked a few tons of thatch out of it and then threw some seed on it.  Not that it will grow this late in the year, but I can say I tried.  After that we headed over to our friends Troy & Laura’s house for a cookout.  Eight-seven stoplights and an hour later we were in Lenexa, right on time to catch the burgers coming off the grill.  We hung out there for the rest of the night, with half an eye on the MU game and the other half on some s’mores.

Sunday morning I got up relatively early and headed down to Brookside for a group bicycle ride.  First time I’d gotten back on the bike since the MS-150 a few weeks ago.  I’d never been on the Sunday morning ride and given the perfect weather it seemed as good a plan as any.  Munkirs met me down there and we headed out on a very… err…  “leisurely” 16 mile ride.  Geez they took the “no rider left behind” philosophy to a whole new level.  I guess it’s just supposed to be a Sunday morning stroll and it definitely fit that category.  When we (finally) arrived down at the City Market everybody headed to Happy Gillis for breakfast.  Munkirs & I decided it was time to get the day started so we skipped breakfast and headed back towards Brookside.  Suffice to say we made better time on the return trip.  Hey, it was a great morning outside though, overall it was an enjoyable ride and I wasn’t looking to break any land-speed records anyway.  I was mostly just interested in the route they took to get downtown, and it turned out to be a rather serviceable route indeed.  After the ride I headed down to the Brooksider to sit outside on the patio and watch the Chiefs game.  It was predictably packed, and rather festive, even after the disappointing outcome.  I stayed through that game, and part of the late afternoon game, then headed back home.  Donette fixed some great stuffed pork chops for dinner, then I finished out the weekend with a good round of Wii games.

Wait until after you’ve eaten the can of vienna sausages to read the ingredients.

Can the Cheez-Its EVER come out of the machine with just one dollar?  EVER??!!!! Ridiculous.  One more item on the list of evil plots designed to ruin my day(s).  The Gardettos are much more reliable, they have never gotten hung up.  But I don’t want Gardettos.  I want Cheez-Its.

Another American Royal BBQ has come and gone.  Aside from a less-than-favorable spot in the final standings, I’d rank it as one of my favorite years.  I got down to the site on Thursday afternoon nice and early.  I hadn’t planned on going until Friday but I guess I was ready to get things started so I took the day off and got the event under way.  On the downside, I was about 1/2-sick all weekend.  I had a pretty good cold going and never did quite shake it.  (I’m no medical doctor but maybe spending three nights outdoors wearing shorts in 30 and 40 degree weather isn’t a good plan for getting well?)  Thursday was spent getting the spot all laid out and set up for the weekend.  For dinner we grilled up some cheeseburgers with good cigars for dessert.  (Again with the questionable cold-treatment methods…)  Friday we got up to find some great weather.  We spent the day getting ready for the big party;  Finalizing the booth setup, getting all the food ready, etc.  Not my favorite night of the event, but it was a good time all the same.  Saturday everybody got up and decided to take a short break.  We all left the site for a few hours to get some actual sleep and much-needed showers.  By about 1:00 we were all back and feeling refreshed, and it was time to get going on the actual competition.  Beans got turned in at 3:30, then we enjoyed some bbq’d frozen pizzas and it was time to get the longest night of the weekend started.  I was a little concerned about not being prepared for the first frost of the season that was being forecast.  I had a light jacket and a stocking cap with me, and that was about it for my cold-weather preparation.  Turned out to not be a factor.  Kevin had brought down a huge trailor, and we set up a TV in it and watched movies all night.  Still spent the whole night in a lawn-chair, but at least it was warm.  Sunday was the usual blur of activity;  Getting all the BBQ finished and turned in while cleaning up the site and trying to get out before the long lines started.  I must say, I was a bit disappointed in our showing.  It’s not like we expect to win, but come on, it was better than that!  Oh well, I think an event that big is just a crap-shoot anyway.  Our usual goal of not coming in last was met, anything above that is a bonus.

So that was the weekend of my big bike ride.  My entire summer of rather lackadaisical training, come to an end.  I spent the better part of last week convincing myself I would most likely not even finish the 80-mile route, much less my ultimate goal of the 100-mile “century.”  I even went out and started reading up on suggested training plans for 100-mile rides, as if there was anything I could do about it with one week left.  Friday night finally came, and we went out to dinner with the Munkirs.  James and I sat on one side of the table, shoveling pasta and discussing our ride strategy, while Janene & Donette sat across from us and compared insurance benefits.

Saturday morning we met up out in Peculiar at about 6:00 to find an already huge crowd gathered.  I knew it was a pretty big event but was still a little surprised by the number of people.  Turns out there were 2,000 riders registered for it;  I had no idea it was that big.  They even had a DJ set up playing music.  (Bet the neighbors really love that every year…)  The ride was supposed to start at 7:00, but teams and “VIP’S” got to start first, so by the time we finally took off it was close to 8:00.  Our “plan,” such as it was, was to just ride rest stop to rest stop until we ran out of gas.  I think the biggest fault with our training was that 80% of our rides were only 15 – 20 miles long.  That only takes about an hour, so we never really had to think about pacing ourselves;  By the time you start getting tired on a 20 mile ride you’re done.  Our longest ride of the year was 75 miles several weeks ago, and it was an epic disaster.  Although it had been a while since that ride, the pain I was in at the end of it was still pretty fresh in my mind and I wasn’t looking forward to it again.  Anyway, we rode our “plan,” and the next thing we knew we were east of Warrensburg at the lunch stop, about 50 miles into the ride.  Our plan here was to eat lunch and maybe even take a little nap.  As it turned out the food line was crazy-long, and hot dogs didn’t really sound that tasty anyway, so we ended up stretching for about 10 minutes and taking off again.  Soon enough, we were at the 70-mile mark, where you had to decide whether to keep going straight for an 80 mile finish or turn off for the optional 100 mile route.  It really wasn’t even that hard of a decision.  Aside from my stomach being all jacked up on ibuprofen and 5-hour energy shots, we both felt pretty solid.  So, we headed out on the bonus loop, and 6.5 hours after we left Peculiar we were in Sedalia with our first “century ride” under our belts.  It’s really a two-day ride, but we never had any illusions of riding back so Janene picked us up at the finish and we headed back to KC.

Sunday I took for a “recovery” day, didn’t really do much.  Donette signed me up for a massage at the gym so I headed up there and enjoyed that little treat.  Never had a massage before;  It was nice and definitely helped my aching back.  Other than a mild back-ache I felt surprisingly good.  Don’t get me wrong, I was well aware I’d been on a long bike ride.  My legs were pretty sore and I’m still suffering some discomfort in my…  Well…  Errrr…  Let’s just say I sat on a bike seat for 6.5 hours.  Other than that though I think I’m gonna live to ride another day, although that day likely will not be this week.  Two-day ride next year?  We shall see.