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Friday, October 26, 2007

Home Improvement

I have this small room off the master bed room that I call my Library, because it has a build in book shelf and normally books in it:
For the longest time, did I want to give this room my personal touch and paint all that dark wood...

And so I did!!! No, I the wood is white and bright...

The doors are still in the "primer-stage" in the basement.

And this flower pot has the colors in it that I want to paint the walls with. A green tone. Something between sage and aqua. I still have to decide...

AND I have a desk as well:
Martin and I refinished this "expensive" piece:))
I had found it at the Goodwill store for $9 .

I will post more pics, one I have made more progress...

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Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Bike Maintenance or How Many Bikes are TOO Many

When you do this a lot (and it looks much drier than it really was), then you or someone really NICE!!!! has to clean your bike afterwards:

And while you are at it; the Roadie needed some cleaning as well....


And my Race Bike, the Intense had been neglected. Martin actually "just" cleaned the chain, because, I hate to do that and I did the rest (the same with the Cannondale)



If you look closely, you can see, my Cannondale and the Intense out for drying, plus Martins two bikes: his 29er Gary Fisher and his Road Bike...so, that makes how many bikes? I am not good at math but I know that there are more:) (Our Polo Bikes, my Blur, Martin's Stumpjumper,...)

I love all my bikes until it comes to cleaning time, than I think there are WAY too many chains to clean, pedals to scrub and frames to polish, but a well maintained bike is so grateful and it keeps them rolling for years to come....

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Sunday, October 21, 2007

385, the Second.....



After running my race kit through the washer (and dryer) and I good night sleep did I feel ready (or not) for round TWO if the Swanson Cyclo cross.
A few little changes. The course was ran backwards and the temperatures were about 25-30 F cooler, plus we had our good Nebraskan wind blowing:)
Well, I didn't mind the weather. I do like the cooler temperatures.

What I minded was the saddle on my bike....OUCH!!! That one has to go... and I could feel my tight legs from yesterday, but the loosened up after warming up a little bit.
I also decided to invest into a set of skinner tires, so can keep up with the cyclo cross bikes a bit better. Gotta do some research.
Charly (on the right)
The race went OK. I raced against Charly and I knew I couldn't reach her, so I did my best to put down a good race and I actually felt better today than I felt yesterday.

After I was done, I stayed for a little bit to watch the Cat 1,2,3 Guys race...they make it look so easy.....Sydney on her Cross Badger
Corey going STRONG
Mark powering up the hill
But the fun part about cyclo cross is that it is "easy" to watch, since those guys go around, and around, and around, so spectators have their fun as well:)

What a nice smile Ryan:)
team Fire....on FIREAnne was having fun!!
Even though, we were all a bit chilly and could have used something to warm us up.....
But it was FUN and we had lots of COW BELLS:))))))

Saturday, October 20, 2007

My FIRST Cyclo-cross Race

Today, I tried something new: a Cyclo-cross Race.

The race was at Swanson, so to say, in my neighborhood and a few people have been trying to talk me into doing one of these for a while.
Actually, I wanted to give it a try myself. I watched them race last year and it looked like fun, but tell you what, it looked much easier that it really is!!

The "weapon of choice" is a cyclo-cross bike, but I "only" have a MTB. Which works fine, but I think it is slower and gave me a bit of a disadvantage....


My good old hardtail. I love it! It is such a good bike:)
(Cannondale F800SL)


Cyclo-cross courses are set up, so you cannot ride everything. They force you to dismount your bike, carry them over or through the obstacle and then you have to mount it again. Sounds easy, doesn't it...well, it is not, because all of that is supposed to be done while in motion and it needs to be learnt.
I did practice the dismount, but I can't do the remount in motion yet and you loose a lot of time.

This course had two sand-pits that I couldn't ride through, other than that, I could ride everything, but I hadn't realized that those 30 min of racing are 30 min of 100 % power, like in a road crit. No brake, no time to take a breath nor get your heart rate down....and it was very warm today. I think it hit 80F and everybody got HOT!!!
I haven' t ridden much recently an I paid for it today...ouch!!! I came out with an average HR of 174, but I finished 2nd and I am ready to go back tomorrow for round TWO:)





Martin took all these great pictures and supported my race with lots of yelling and a big
COW BELL!! THANKS:)
Plus Mr. Whiskers was there as my Mascot as usual

My team teamFIRE had a good show and did some awesome racing!!

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2007 MOUNTAIN BIKE RACE SERIES CHAMPIONSHIPS

Last night we had our 2nd ANNUAL BIKE BASH to celebrate the
2007 Mountain and Road Racing Season.

I didn't do much road racing but I did my fair share of MTB racing.

One Race Series a raced in was the
PSYCOWPATH NEBRASKA MTB SERIES
and last night they awarded the winners...


I won the Beginner Women's Class:


Congratulations to all my fellow racers out there to a great season.

Thanks to everybody who helped putting up all those wonderful races!

And THANKS to Marc for all his help with the training and coaching. You were a HUGE help!!

And finally I want to thank MARTIN:
I could have not done this without you! Your help, love and support means the world to me!!

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Thursday, October 18, 2007

to my beloved Walnuts

All of you reading this blog, know my "love" for walnuts and I am happy to report that the trees are slowing down....well, there aren't any nuts left on them.

A scary fact is, that Martin actually counted the trees and we have 16 of these #%***# trees!!!

No wonder, we have so many darn walnuts....

Anyways, I have a sitemeter on my blog, that counts, how many people view my blog. But they tell you more facts, like where those people are from or which pages they got referred from.
So today, I got one of these reports and I look through them and I see that someone did a Google search, so I clicked on it and I had to laugh: it was on COLLECTING WALNUTS.
And not just any kind of walnuts, no, MY kind of walnuts.

Even an article from an university was in there and recipes and ......

Well, Maybe I print it out and put it on the pile of walnuts that we made in the woods for the critters. Then, they learn a thing or two about walnuts and how to make them into delicious meals.....

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Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Cross-training

Instead of biking did I go for a brisk walk today. For a good hour at a FAST pace.
Tell you what. That is a good work-out...

Other than that there isn't much going on. Still on the job-hunt...it's getting frustrating:(

Oh, and painting my room. So far the wood, like shelves and such. Being "artsy", I am using a darker primer and try to paint white over it to destress afterwards, so the primer comes out just a little bit...
I am not sure yet, if it is going to work out. I will post some pictures.

Hope you are having fun despite the fall-weather!!

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Monday, October 15, 2007

Blog Action Day for the ENVIRONMENT

I have been reading this really interesting blog zen habits and he was talking about the
BLOG ACTION DAY.

So I had to go and check it out and I found out that today, the 15th of October is Blog Action Day.

This day and this site is dedicated to the environment and how to safe it or what we do or can do to safe it...

Well, so I am sitting here and since I have signed my blog up I "need" to write something related to it.

So, what am I doing to safe help the environment?

1) recycle
2) trying to use less electricity (turn off lights, turn down the AC,...)
3) trying to use less water (turn off the faucet while I brush my teeth, didn't water the yard and my plants every day this summer, bought a washer, that does small loads of laundry)
3) cut back on driving the car (combine errands, walk more)
4) try not to use plastic products
5) ride my bike
6) plant trees and flowers
7) clean up trash that others throw away
8) set the heater and AC on a timer and at lower/higher temps (safes a lot of energy)
9) I used to buy recycled paper in Germany. (Don't know, where to get it here!?)

Well, I am sure there are a few more things that I could come up with. I know there are a lot of things that I SHOULD do or WANT to do, but I am to lazy or to cheap...

So, what are you doing to help the environment???????

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Tom is turning 60!!!

Tom, the guy in the middle of the picture is turning 60 tomorrow and we all went for a BIRTHDAY RIDE yesterday followed by food and cake..yummy!!!
We wanted to ride at Lake Manawa but the rain forced us to roll on pavement so we did 25miles and Tom did the pace making...most peeps couldn't hang with him and turned around earlier.

Take that young folks!!!!!

Tom comes out to all the races and most of the wonderful race pictures you see on my blog are shot by him.
He is also VERY active with THOR and we are all happy to have him on board:)

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Friday, October 12, 2007

Holy Purging!!!!

Don't worry, this is not my latest Ebay order....this is actually stuff, that I have sold on Ebay!!

I am renovating my room, painting, redecorating, etc. and for that, I had to EMPTY it out.
I threw a lot away, A LOT got donated but a whole bunch is being auctioned off...and it makes a bit of money:)
It is actually fun, to get rid of stuff. Very freeing....
But it sure keeps me busy.
Today, after, prepping the wood (saning it own), I applied a coat of tinted primer. Yes TINTED primer. It is a turquoise color. I will paint white over it and will try to de-stress it, so the green will "peep" out again...I will post some pics.

I also gave Martin some moral support. He put a new re-route n at Swanson. Very Nice job Martin !!!!

So, now it is sleeping time. I can't wait to "slap" on the white paint tomorrow and see how that technic works. Apparently, you use some steel wool and take some of the white paint off, so the green will show up again....

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Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Nite Ride or how to kill an Opossum

It is Fall and the days are getting shorter. Even though Martin and I both are not working right now, did we go out to meet some friends last night to ride after 7pm, in the dark.
Riding in the dark, is a whole new experience and I love to do it.
Well, you need a good light system. Either a helmet-light or a light on your handlebar.
I have a helmet light and it is a pretty good one.
What I like about riding at night is, that it forces you to keep your head up and look ahead and where you want to go, as you should always....because, if you don't it will get DARK:)

Yesterday was a bit of a challenge for me, because I hadn't planned on riding and had gone to the gym in the morning and worked all those riding muscles pretty hard... I felt it in the evening:)

Lots of fun in the Fall is, that we can take Mr. Whiskers along. He LOVES to run with us and now it is finally cool enough. He is a good riding buddy!!
Unfortunately, did we have to learn that he doesn't like Opossums. We ran into one. He saw it and killed it DEAD in a matter of a few seconds. I know that he is a hunting dog, but I still have a hard time with that.

So, if you are out there riding at night and you run into us, be sure to announce yourself, so we know, that you are not an opossum, squirrel or something like that....
He looks sweet, but he will kill!!!!

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Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Fallicious!!




What a gorgeous day we had today here in Nebraska. Little bit chilly in the morning, around 43F but SUUUUNNNYYY all day.




Martin, Mr. Whiskers and I did a Swanson-Patrol-Walk.
Martin marked some areas, where we want to put some re-routes in and we just checked on things. It was still a little wet this morning, but I am sure by tonight it was in EPIC condition:)

After a quick snack, I did a long overdue garden walk and took some pictures of my mums:



Then after a little break, I went for a bike ride. I had to do intervals and did them into the head wind. All was fine, only that I had problems with my calves. I might have come from doing weight exercises on Monday or the "raking" we did today at Swanson: We cleared the upper trail from glass clipping by pushing them off with our feet...
My poor calves got so tight and I can't stretch them out:(
But, I still got a good ride in.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

What are you doing in FALL?



Do you like fall? Or are you of the ones that see the natures "dying"?

I am not. I have 100 bulbs sitting in the garage that need to be planted. Those are always my bulbs of hope. Yes, winter will come, but after that, the spring will bring my bulbs back out and make them bloom:)

I like the fall temperatures and the rain. That's the German for you. I wanted to take Mr. Whiskers for a walk in the rain, but the sun was back and, oh well, we never complain about sunshine!!



The only thing I didn't like about the rain today was, that it rained down more WALNUTS....
But I choose to ignore them. Maybe the squirrels will have some wild walnut orgies and consume most of them in one sitting////\\\\

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Monday, October 1, 2007

A Sign Of Life....

Yes, I am still alive! I haven't been buried by my walnuts, nor haven't I fallen off mt bike, well I have, but not badly enough to not being able to write...
I just have been busy.
I started going to the gym twice a week with a friend of mine and that takes up some extra time. Martin and I have finally finished the garage. All the shelves are stocked and functional and it is cool to have a potting bench:) I had to try it out today and re-potted some of my snake plants.

Well, then there are my beloved walnuts. Today, I broke a record, by filling THREE wheelbarrows...and I planted more Mums, God I love these plants with all there gorgeous colors


And then, I have been working hard on my room/office/library. I had to clean it(=empty) out totally because I want to paint all the wood and the walls in there. While I was emptying, I did a lot of purging and sorting (and still do...).
I also have to go through my closet, because my weight-loss finally shoes up everywhere and I start to look funny in a lot of my stuff. I know that is a good thing, but not when you don't want to spent a lot of money on clothes....and I am still going "down", so I am literally buying a pair of jeans this week and in 2 weeks, they might not fit!?!?!?!

Oh, then there is the JOB-SEARCH...not very successful, but I have to keep looking!!!!
And I have been putting stuff on Ebay. Men, that takes a chunk of time out of your day, until you get all that stuff posted. I did that for the whole weekend. Hopefully, I will find some buyers. I need the $$

Oh, and I do bike in between all that, walk the dog, clean the house and what not...

So, that's why I was busy, but I promise to be better. I have two posts already in mind for my diet tips and I have some pictures to show you. Hopefully, did they turn out.

Well, I better go to sleep now. Morning is just around the corner and it is Mr. Whiskers preferred hunting time....

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