Went on a nice lil’ bike ride last night, one of my last before my almost foolish endeavor this weekend.  It went pretty well, with the exception of some still-lingering back pain.  Hopefully that is from my admittedly weak trip to the gym on Monday, and not an after-effect of the ill-fated 75-miler a few weeks ago.  Anyway, last night Munkirs & I went on the Mission Hills ride.  Despite a somewhat fierce headwind I got my 17 miles in at a decent pace.  The route took exactly one hour, which by my math averages out to about…  Oh roughly 17 miles per hour.  I managed to keep up with the front of the group, at the expense of my lungs.  I just can’t seem to breathe when I ride at that pace.  I don’t really understand it either;  I’m down to one or two cigars a week and I try to eat healthy on Saturdays and Thursdays.  Just don’t make no sense.

Another 3-day weekend, excellent.  I took Friday off and drove north to Kearney to participate in the Jesse James Day BBQ with Team Triple Fat Back.  If I was going to rate the actual BBQ competition itself, I would give it a “fair to poor.”  First of all, we got stuck in a crummy spot with barely enough room for all our toys.  Even more unforgivable, (not to mention quite inexplicable,) they had a grand total of four bathrooms set up for the nearly sixty teams out there.  Oh yeah, that was convenient.  Oh well, what can you expect from a low-rent town like Kearney.  (Probably 1/2 our team hails from said town, if that gives you some idea of the place in general.)  Logistics aside, we managed a pretty fair time of it.  Our arch-rivals Bone Deep BBQ (a.k.a. Red Glove) were set up directly behind us, affording us ample opportunity to lob insults back and forth all weekend.  We also shook up the cooking teams a bit, providing some variety.  One of Brice’s friends came up and did the turkey entry, Zim took over on ribs, and I teamed up with Martin to try and collectively revive the troubled brisket entries.  (Joe & Bob still did pork, & Ballew did chicken as usual.)  The results were quite positive, particularly in our brisket experiment, where we rocketed from a consistent “embarrassing” finish to “almost nearly just-below respectable.”  And, most importantly, we handily defeated Bone Deep for approximately the 1500th time in a row.

Despite actually getting a few hours of quality sleep up at the BBQ, I was pretty beat up when I got home Saturday.  I wiped out on the couch and slept soundly into Sunday.  When I finally recovered, I joined Donette and our friend Susan up at Chelly’s Cafe for some breakfast.  We’d never been there for breakfast, and I think everybody declared it a successful venture.  (With the exception of Susan’s french fries, but let’s just not talk about that.)  The only slight snag was that the menu was a bit limited.  We picked a Mexican restaurant with the idea of ordering some Mexican-style breakfast (or at least what we consider so;) French toast or biscuits and gravy weren’t really on our mind or we’d have just gone to Sharps.  Our choices were pretty much limited to juevos con chorizo or menudo.  We all went with the chorizo;  Menudo is a little too adventurous.  Everybody agreed it was good though!  After our late breakfast it was nearly football time, so I settled in on the couch and commenced to wasting the day.  I made it through most of the afternoon game when Donette finally insisted I try and fix our stupid computer, which in all fairness has been broken for quite some time.  For over a year now it’s run just fine as long as you never turn it off.  If it was powered off it would take somewhere between 10 and 10 million tries to get it to come back on again.  The obvious solution to this was to just never turn it off, but when I quite accidentally shut it down Thursday night it decided to be extra stubborn about coming back on.  So, when we still didn’t have a computer by Sunday, I grudgingly headed out to Microcenter to start buying random parts.  As luck would have it, I hit it on the first try this time around;  A flaky power supply.  As I told Donette, if I had any confidence that would actually fix it, I’d have bought something different, as the one I picked doesn’t really fit very well.  But, I got it crammed in the case and it’s up and running now, so I doubt I ever swap it for another one.  We celebrated this monumental event with a delicious pizza up at 75th Street, and called it a weekend.

Not a bad weekend, all in all.  Didn’t accomplish everything we had planned, or even a significant part of it, but then again I don’t know why we would start now.  Friday I hit happy hour down at the Brooksider, good and early so I could see everybody.  I made the social rounds down there, then Donette picked me up for a fancy dinner out on the town.  Our high-end restaurant of choice this week was the DQ at 85th & Wornall.  (Yes, as in “Dairy Queen.”)  They do a promotion every now and then where Donette’s school gets a percentage of the proceeds from food sales, so we were obligated to do our part.  Anything for the children, that’s our motto.  It was quite good as a matter of fact.  I sorta like DQ’s, at least the once a year I go there.  Had a very tasty burger and fries, and an obligatory strawberry shake for dessert.  I didn’t want to order the biggest burger and shake on the menu, but since the children would benefit more from my gluttony I did what I had to.

Saturday was sort of a bust.  Disappointing because I was looking forward to it, too.  We kicked off the day judging a BBQ competition out in Blue Springs.  We showed up at the judging tent at 10:30, got settled in and commenced to feeding.  We did this event last year too, and it was so good we were both looking forward to it again.  This year was pretty much a let-down I would say.  But for one lonely pork entry, everything I tried was, to put it nicely, “not good.”  Donette reported her table was no better.  I don’t know what the deal was, maybe the rain storms Friday night gave everybody trouble?  I have never (in my admittedly limited judging experience) given out scores that low.  Blech.  It wasn’t just us either, all the people at our tables were under-whelmed.  We were out there until about 2:30.  After that we were going to head down to the Power & Light, where the Flying Saucer was putting on a big outdoor festival.  Alas, the twenty servings of sketchy bbq had left us both feeling somewhat less than festive.  We rolled back home to try and nap it off, but never recovered enough to even consider going out again.  Blech, it’s making me a bit queasy thinking about it still.

Sunday I woke up feeling marginally recovered, and headed out on a bike ride with Munkirs.  He had the admittedly novel idea of combining our Tuesday night and Thursday night routes, which worked out very nicely.  We left from my house and wound out kind of southwest, and as luck would have it we were very near his house at the half-way point.  We stopped by his house to get some water, and Janine had made us some hot pancakes and PBJ sandwiches.    (Or maybe it was just the water…  I can’t remember.)  From there we headed back to my house, ending up right at 40 miles.  Good route, I hope we can remember it for future rides.  After the cycling Donette and I walked around the corner to our newly opened local breakfast place.  I can’t even remember the name of it.  Somebody or another’s Diner.  Mixed review on that place.  The food, when we finally got it, was actually very good.  I am going to guess conservatively we waited 45 minutes from ordering for it to show up though.  It was pretty apparent that everybody in the place was in the same situation too.  There’s only 15 tables in the whole place;  I never really figured out what the issues were.  For amusement while we waited, we watched the waitresses running around.  Nobody was getting any service, but it certainly wasn’t for a lack of motion.  All the staff was running around like crazy, they just didn’t really seem to be getting anything done.  By the time we finally got done eating breakfast, it was time for the football games.  Given the outstanding weather, I headed down to the Brooksider to watch the TV’s out on the back deck.  Had a good time of it, I stayed through the 3:00 games too.  By the time I got home Donette had headed out to Starlight with Kelly to watch Rain.  That left me to lay on the couch and watch the last football game of the day;  Fine ending to the weekend.

So there are tropical storms forecast for today?  Hmmm.  That must mean I am in the tropics.  Yep, I might as well be sitting on the beach right now.  It certainly feels just like it.

I meant to post a blurb yesterday;  Guess I forgot.  Or maybe I was just too busy.  Yeah, I forgot.  Had a good bike ride Tuesday night at any rate.  I met Munkirs out at Mission Farms for the Tuesday night JCBC ride.  We’d done it once before and liked it pretty well.  And, since “tropical storms” are on the radar for this evening, we figured it might be our only chance to ride this week.  It’s a great route, I would say even better than our Thursday night ride.  And, even better, they don’t stop, where as the Thursday night group feels the need for two rest stops.  Two stops on a 15 – 17 mile ride?  Seriously?  A good rule of thumb is, “If Phil doesn’t need to rest, nobody needs to rest,” as I’m quite sure that regardless of age I am in the poorest shape of the bunch.  Stop they do though.  Maybe we should just leave 30 minutes before everybody else on that one and do our own thing…  Anyway, back to the Tuesday ride, it was a rather briskly paced group, and we actually made it back to the cars before dark.  I was pleased we kept up with the front of the group so easily.  It was one of those rides that made me think, “Hey, maybe I can ride the MS-150.”  But, as I have mentioned before, 17 miles is long ways from 100 miles.  Roughly 83 miles by my math.

Had a bit of fun last night too.  After a quick glance at the balance (or lack thereof) of our checking account, we probably should have stayed home and watched TV, but we decided to run up to 75th Street for some dinner.  Hey, we had a coupon.  We managed to loiter there for quite a while, enjoying the nice weather out on their new deck.  Had a quite tasty plate of shrimp pasta, then split an obscene serving of bread pudding for dessert.  After that we headed home and crafted a unique fantasy football league.  The entire league consists of us.  Head to head, a show down of football wits.  Oh, this should be interesting.  As we quickly discovered, the league minimum was four teams, so each of us is managing two teams.  Add together the points of each person’s two teams, and the highest total each week wins.  Our draft started at 9:45, and we completed all four teams in just under 30 minutes.  Much more efficient than any other draft I’ve been to.  The grand prize?  Well, we were in a hurry, haven’t gotten that far yet.  Money?  Doubtful.  Bragging rights?  Possible, if boring.  Hmmm, have to cipher on that.

I do enjoy three day weekends.  That one was definitely tempered by the fact that I was oncall, but I enjoyed it all the same.  Perhaps to a lesser degree, but that’s probably good for me anyway.  Things started off strong on Friday with a happy hour down at Harry’s Country Club in the River Market.  I’m still not quite sure about ol’ Harry’s.  I try to like it;  I think that’s about the third or fourth time I’ve been there.  They’ve got a great deck too, which was definitely a plus on one of the nicest afternoons of the summer.  Their service is a little spotty though, and the food a little so-so.  Both of these could be easily overlooked (by me anyway) if the prices were a bit lower…  But they aren’t.  It was still a good time, and that weather was not to be missed.  After a few hours, I left there and headed down to the P&L to meet up with Donette and our friend Lisa.  Alas, I was denied entry, a victim of their harsh dress code.  (I had my Camelbak with me;  Stupid motorcycle, what can ya’ do.)  Maybe I will write an incendiary letter to the KC Star.  Or, maybe I will just happily go elsewhere.  We decided on Grinders, and headed a few blocks south.  Alas, there we found an absolute mob scene;  We’d forgotten about “First Fridays” and the associated crowd.  Not so big a deal, but we didn’t feel like finding a parking place, so we meandered west a bit to La Bodega.  Donette has been there several times with “the girls” but I’ve never been.  As it turns out, this was due to the fact that it is a girls only restaurant.  Don’t ask me exactly what gives it that qualifier;  I haven’t narrowed it down yet.  They might as well put the sign on the door, though:  “Women Only.”  Could be the very small portions, coupled with the extremely high price tag.  Could be the metered serving pace, geared towards sitting around and chatting for a few hours.  At any rate, the food was very very good, (if a bit sparse…) but I think it’s checked off my list.  Not my kinda place.

I had to work late Saturday night so I took it easy all day, preparing for my night of trying to stay awake on the couch.  I headed over to Brice’s house to keep myself occupied for the afternoon, where he had a cooker full of pork working.  He was tuning his competition butt recipe for the upcoming stretch of ‘ques, and had a slab of spare ribs on for good measure.  I didn’t stick around for the pulled pork, but the ribs came out excellent.  We watched the smoker for several hours, listened to the MU game on the radio, then I headed to the couch for the inevitable.  Wasn’t so bad, and it’s over with for a few more weeks.

Sunday I slept in a bit, then about 10:30 decided to head out for bicycle ride.  I took a nice route through Leawood, and then down through the City Market to the river and back;  Ended up just under 35 miles.  I wanted to see if everything was still in working order after last week’s debacle.  I’d say it went OK, if a bit inconclusive.  I didn’t have any trouble riding that far;  But then again 35 miles is a long ways from 75.  After that rather half-hearted attempt at exercise, we rolled down to the ‘Sider to enjoy the sun.  Turned out the better part of the city had the same idea, it was pretty packed.  There was enough room for us though, so we pulled up to a table and hung out for a while.  The usual suspects were all in attendance, and then a co-worker even dropped by to socialize.  Donette had her fill of deck time after a bit, and went down to Jalapenos for dinner with the girls.  I stayed on the deck to foul the air with a cigar and hang out with the men-folk.

Monday was a relaxing day off.  I was still oncall so we kept things low-key, but had some fun all the same.  By the time we got around in the morning it was nearly lunch time, so we wiped the cobwebs off the motorcycle and thought about a destination.  We ended up deciding on Weston;  As good a place to go as any.  We took a nice back-road route up there, and had a good lunch at O’Malley’s.  Luckily we got there around noon;  By the time we left it was packed and there was an hour wait for a table.  Tons of bikes too, it seems like a popular destination for a ride.  The ride home was a bit dicey, my bike is bit light to cruise through a 30 mph wind.  Matter of fact, we were both pretty beat up by the trip;  The rest of the day was wasted resting up.  Watched the Royals take their daily thrashing, and then watched maybe the biggest cinematic disaster of all time.  I found it under the “action/adventure” section on Netflix, cleverly titled “Beer For My Horses.”  I will take a small amount of blame for watching it even after I saw Toby Keith was the main character, and a bit more blame for actually sitting through the entire movie.  The largest share of culpability rests with Mr. Keith for ever creating that disaster though;  I consider myself an innocent victim for the most part.  It was bed time when it mercifully ended, but I had to stay up for another hour and a half watching Undisputed III in an attempt to erase the previous nightmare from my mind.