Bloggo Immedioso

Two posts in one day!?! You'll just have to call me crazy. I got home somewhat early because a deadline was postponed so I took to the task of seeing what was up with Macintosh HD. Alas, Startup Disk came to the rescue and made all appropriate repairs. Didn't charge me a dime and looked good doing it.

Earlier in the day, there was potential Catholic Church festival in the works, but my boy blew me off and left me to my own devices. After a good run and a so-so shower, I took off on the Trek... due east.

Community Fest, or ComFest, is this weekend at Goodale Park. I road my bike over last year on a Sunday and didn't see what the hype was all about. The grass was filled with people that drank and smoked way too much over the weekend and even the trees smelled like bratwurst. But I decided that it would be a nice night for a bike ride. I'm not really sure what ComFest is all about. They're trying hard to be this uber-liberal hippie festival. There's a bunch of tents selling crap, a bunch of tents selling beer and three or four stages selling propaganda and bad music. Sound interesting? It isn't. Hollister was getting drunk and talking on his cell phone next to the anti-Christ who was getting drunk and talking on his cell phone. I saw hipster couples in arguments over the same things that non-hipster couples argue about... ie: "Why are you ignoring me?"

But I was glad I went. It was fun to ride through the throngs of people. The most interesting part of the night was getting a beer. It was the "buy tokens at this booth, get beer at a completely different booth" system which I knew nothing about and I'm terrible at reading explanations. So I take my two tokens ($8) and head over to the appropriate tent. After waiting several minutes behind the entire freshman class of OSU, I get up to the front, hand the man my tokens and tell him to get me whatever two tokens will buy. So he brings me two plastic cups... one full and the other about a third full. I have my bike alongside, so there's no way I'm getting out of there with two cups. He seemed like a nice guy, so I tell him the second cup is his... cheers. We toasted, drank and I got the hell out of there.

And here I finish out the night on the front porch. Nothing much going on. Some SUV just backed into a parked car and then sped off. There was something not good about the sound that Xterra made when hitting that pothole. And you can hear cats either fighting or having sex in the alley. Bon noir!!

Pounded

This hasn't been my best week as far as luck is concerned. One might advise oneself to stay away from casinos et al when you've put together a run like I have since getting back from Florida. Where to begin this pity party... hmmm...

My car's broke. Don't know if it's the alternator or a dead battery. If it ran... I'd take it somewhere to find out. As it turns out, it doesn't. The cord on my laptop's battery pack broke. No power to the laptop means no work getting done. No car means no Apple store, no Apple store means no battery, no battery means... well, you get it. Now my computer is eating disk space at an alarming rate and for reasons I'm not sure of. Disk Utility has clued me in on the fact that it needs repaired. No shit? I'm behind as all hell at work. I've been poured on twice riding my bike home and my stupid ass has me in a pickle with the misses.

I need a kick in the ass or a change of fortunes quickly. I feel it's a lot like mountain biking or anything I'm sure. I'm going to use the analogy of mountain biking because it's still fresh in my mind. I can't say I'm at all comfortable on a bike. Add trails, trees, creek crossings, etc... and it's nerve-wracking for me. But I've taken two tips to heart and they've helped me immensely: 1) where your eyes go, your bike will follow, and 2) when going down a steep hill, stick the seat between your knees and hold on. It's that focus that gets me through most ventures, but there are inevitably encounters where focus shifts from being on the trail to doing anything and everything not to fall down. It's in these situations that trouble strikes... and it's often because I'm doing anything and everything to stay on the bike, that some other obstacle pops up and records the kill. I'm vulnerable. My attention is diverted and the stump becomes a perilous hazard... only because I ran into it. Had I been focused, it wouldn't have even been worth a glance.

So I've been a little more than off this past week. Above was Wednesday night. Around midnight, the tornado sirens started screaming. I was down on the couch and pulled up the radar. Sure enough, there's a classic "hook" formation bearing down on Grandview. This is usually the telltale sign of tornadic activity due to the heavy rotation. So Erica comes downstairs and after hanging out on the back porch for the initial brunt of the storm, we retreat to the basement just in case things got hairy. They never really did, but the lightning and the rain was unreal, so I sat out on the front porch and took some pictures and watched the rain.

Ends and Beginnings

To every beginning there is an end... and vicey versa. Our Florida Getaway officially ended around 5 a.m. Friday morning. We watched the sunset Thursday and by the time we saw it again, we were well into our 18+ hour trek. The return trip contained the drive from Cincinnati to Columbus which we'd eliminated on the way down by making a pit stop at Erica's parents. This was Gigi at 4:30 a.m. attempting to eat. The thing about Gigi is that she's blind and deaf but constantly on the move... it makes for a great deal of entertainment.

And in the end, we made it... exhausted, but in one piece. Then it was back at it Saturday to prepare for a night and day down in southern Ohio at Great Seal State Park. Myself and my two good friends, Nick and Andy, were all signed up for an 8-hour "adventure race" as Team Trail Trash. I really couldn't think of anything else. Luckily, we were the only trail trash on this jaunt. Pictured above was the start. We all gathered 'round for final details before setting out on the first of five disciplines... trail running, canoeing, orienteering, mountain biking and rogaining (Rugged Outdoor Group Activity Involving Navigation and Endurance). We handed in the last card at the 8:13:00 mark. And aside from bailing on the last three controls of the rogaining section due to the lack of time and some decent wrecks on the bikes, we did really well... especially for this only being our second race. You learn with each one, so I'm already looking forward to the next.

You'll never get a better night's sleep as you will after busting your tail through the woods for eight hours. I went to bed Sunday night and I didn't even open an eye until 10 full hours had slipped by. And that was that. I'm ready to get back to a normal state of affairs.

Beached and Loving It

So I thought I'd be better at keeping up on this and providing all four of you with breathtaking scenery from the Gulf Coast. But two factors have contributed to the lack of blog... vacation and old people. I'm going to assume that Florida is full of them. It's a fairly universal stereotype. And we all know that the old folks be hatin' the internet... because for most of them, it's completely incomprehensible. Maybe I'm going too far, and then maybe I'm not.

In Ohio, there's WiFi everywhere. You can get pizza for carryout and check your email while you're waiting. In Florida, hot spots are few and far between. So I'm going to break code slightly and post a bunch of pictures at once. Don't ask why I chose the ones I did. Mostly because it sums up what we've enjoyed the most. The dock at night, our trip to Sanibel compliments of my mom and dad, the beach, the sunsets... and the list goes on and on. So hopefully it does our trip justice... if not, I'll try and give a better summary on return to the land of 24/7 interweb.

Erica gets photo credit on the one of me.

A Study in Contrast

It's been a tumultuous week. A night out in Cincinnati Friday, a wedding Saturday, cooking all night Saturday and then again Sunday morning, graduation at the Horseshoe in 90+ degree weather with a relentless sun, a subsequent party and cleanup followed by the two hour drive to Cincinnati at 11pm, only to wake up at 5:30am on Monday morning and drive 990 miles to Nokomis, Florida.

And as much as I would like to be in a complete state of relaxation, this will more than likely not happen as I still have to get things done for work. Erica's graduation just had to coincide with Phil's wedding and, of course, the honeymoon. So here I sit at Panera in Venice, while boatmen talk about extra chum and an elderly couple play a board game... Sequence. Never heard of it.

Luckily, I won't be here much longer. I have to get a new air mattress as ours sprung a leak last night... which really sucked. And it was on a seam so the patching was to no avail. Time to get back to the beach... maybe get a run in beforehand. Adios.

Preparations

For every journey, there is a time of preparation... mental and physical. Here, Erica is demonstrating a required physical preparation for our two-week vacation to Florida... CD organizing.

Before all of this, her CD collection was a "steaming, greasy plate of enchiladas" (REK, The Front Porch). Say, for instance, you were in a doldrums of a mood and wanted to listen to Counting Crows... good luck. There were two small cases in the car along with stacks of single CDs in the glove compartment... not to mention the stacks inside the house. So she took to the task of making sense of it all and I'm happy to say that she did a damn fine job of it and we're all set for the drive.

So that just leaves a wedding, packing, laundry, graduating, graduation party preparation, graduation partying and a modest 16-hour drive to the south land before night falls on Monday. At least we've got CDs.

Rainy Dayz

Wow. I gots rained on real bad last night... and then again this morning. I knew it was going to rain yesterday. Everyone did... but I rode my bike anyhow. I thought that I'd at least have a window of opportunity to get up to the bus stop and take the 5 home. Hell No! Just about the time I was going to head out, the big man upstairs brought the pain in the form of a rain blanket. So I sat in the parking garage patiently waiting for an opportunity to head to the stop as now even my chance to catch a later bus was getting squeezed. So I probably jumped the gun a bit and I paid dearly. The lull in the action was just that... it poured while I desperately sought shelter but with nary a overhang in sight, I chose the backside of a windblown block building. At this point I was pissed and cursing the gods... and that's usually when I like to let them know they'll never get the best of me. I cinched up my pack and headed northwest along the river in a driving rain. It ended up being a good ride, but the bike did feel loose with all the water. I had to make sure I didn't lose it with a bunch of cars around. But I made it and so did all of my sensitive equipment. Get a Crumpler. But it was so wet that in the middle of the bike bath there was a monster of a snapping turtle waiting for a runner or a cyclist to slip up. Not this time turtle.

And then it rained even harder for my run this morning. I thought the shower at 7 am would be all she wrote... so I took off and didn't give much thought to the menacing clouds to the west. It didn't take long for them to let loose. The worst part was the lightning, and I know they tell you to stay away from trees, but you couldn't have towed me from those tree-lined streets. Maybe not the best move but all's well that ends well.

And go to Sticky Steve's blog and check out his clip of Oscar swimming. It backs up my account of him climbing ladders.

Front Porch

After 5+ years without any kind of porch, patio or deck, I can tell you that life is dead and gone and won't be lived again. We moved into this new apartment in the fall of last year, and weren't able to take full advantage of the front porch it had to offer... but summer is here and we're ready to shed our pretentious skins for the trashier side of life.

We basically spent the entire weekend out here after it was decided that camping at Lake Hope was out of the question. So I'm sad to see the weekend come to an end but can't imagine a better way of sending it off. I set up the tripod and everything for this shot. Erica was thoroughly embarrassed. I should be too. I'm a pasty gem... and with the Florida trip being a week away, this will not do. Maybe I could hold off on the tone compensation.