50 miles!

As of today’s swim, I have now swum 50 miles (50.77, actually) since I started with the Master Swim program at the beginning of August.

I really need to enter some triathlons next year. I did a few mini-triathlons a few years ago, but have only really done biking events for the last few years. Of course, I’ll need to get more serious about my running if I plan to do more triathlons.

Speaking of biking, Marci and I did the Wurst Ride this past weekend:

For this ride, we usually have my parents bring our kids down to Wurst Fest after the ride and get a ride back to the start with them. This year, however, we had other plans for the evening so we needed an alternate way back to the truck. I eventually realized that the short portion of the ride that we were doing was short enough that riding back to the truck was only a small stretch for me and I decided to do it. Marci rode back part of the way and I picked her up at the last/first rest stop. It worked out well.

I did another ride back at the beginning of October with Travis and his son:

Now it’s becoming winter, so nothing more ’til spring, probably.

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Seventeen Wonderful Years!

Wurst Ride and Wurstfest

Last Saturday Marci, Travis and I participated in the Wurst Ride, a 100K ride from south Austin to New Braunfels. New Braunfels is the location of the annual Oktoberfest celebration, Wurstfest. For Marci and me, this was the third consecutive year to participate in this ride and it is one of my favorites.

Last year there was a bit of a headwind, but this year the weather was great, including some nice cloud cover for the first couple of hours. We are currently experiencing an extended period of perfect weather in Austin. It happens most years in both spring and fall, but varies greatly in length. This fall’s nice weather has been wonderful and I hope it continues for a few weeks, at least.

The cost of the Wurst Ride includes tickets to Wurstfest, so we headed there after enjoying the post ride amenities (beer and brauts). Additionally, my parents had driven down, with my kids and grandmother, to join us at Wurstfest and to provide transportation home. We didn’t stay as late as we have some years, but the kids still got in plenty of carnival rides.

Now, for the first time in months, I don’t have an organized bike ride to anticipate. I guess I should see about finding one….

Please Look Right Here…

The studio shots from Avitaween are now available.

Flashback Friday: Action, No Action

Because I’m having trouble coming up with a topic, and in honor of the fact that we’re doing the Wurst Ride again tomorrow (third year in a row!), here’s my post from after the ride last year. Again this year we’ve been pretty bad about training for it, though at least we managed a ride last weekend. Marci in particular hasn’t been riding much, so she’s going to do the 42K route again this year, though she’s not accompanying anyone and so is likely going to wait for us to get to her starting point.

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As I mentioned previously, this weekend I participated in the Wurst Ride, a 100 kilometer bike ride from Austin to Wurst Fest in New Braunfels. I did this ride last year as well, and I must say that it was more difficult this year. I attribute this primarily to the fact that I hadn’t ridden at all since the Outlaw Trail three weeks prior, though I think the wind may have been less favorable this year as well.

Marci was originally going to do the full 100K with us (as she did last year, which may be her longest ride), but a friend of ours decided to join us for her first bike ride so Marci did the 42K route with her instead. After the ride, my mother brought our kids down and we hung out at Wurst Fest for several hours, including spending some time with some friends that we hadn’t seen in quite some time. Lots of food, lots of people, lots of fun.

Not surprisingly, our Sunday was spent sleeping and veg’ing in front of the TV. I really need to make a better effort of at least kicking my kids outside for a while even if I’m not joining them. The weather was so nice this weekend that I’m now feeling guilty that we didn’t take advantage of it better on Sunday.

Avitaween Costumes

It occurs to me that I should have included an image and/or description of the costumes that Marci and I wore to the party.

Thanks to eBay for the Neuralizer and Noisy Cricket and thanks to Karen for the picutre!

T-shirt Quilts

Quilt supplies: T-shirts

Finn‘s recent post about clothing with sentimental value had me commenting about the quilts that Marci is planning to make out of our old T-shirts. Originally, she was just going to make a quilt for each of the kids with their old T-shirts that they had outgrown. She recently finished a pair quilts for each of them where they each helped select the material. I should post some pictures of those.

Recently, we were going through our clothes to select what we didn’t want to keep anymore. During this process — or perhaps before, for all I know — Marci decided to make a third quilt with our old T-shirts. As the process continued, however, she determined that the number of shirts really warranted a quilt for each of us. As I mentioned in my comment on Finn’s blog, I think this probably makes more sense for sentimental value anyway.

I’m not a big quilt user, but it seems a better use for the T-shirts than just sitting on a shelf or hanging in the closet. While some of these T-shirts do have sentimental value as is, many are just reminders of times gone by that do not really reach the level of sentiment. But put together in the mosaic of a quilt, I think the whole is likely to be greater than the sum of its parts.

I wonder how long it’s going to take her to make all four quilts — particularly since she travels for work so much and usually works long hours when she’s at home as well. It seems like the previous pair of quilts took many months — years perhaps? — and were definitely done in bursts. Perhaps the girls will do more of the work with these. She’s probably already thinking of that, but I’ll be sure and mention it to her.