An eventful day

Last night I arrived home from the opening meeting at BJU to find my beautiful red head in distress. Turns out Thing Three had a fever. She always feels bad when the kids get sick on a day that she has to teach. Part of it is because she doesn't want to cause me to have to miss work. However, I think another reason (a main reason) is that she is a mother and she wants to be there for the little guy.

It doesn't bother me too much. I hate to eat into my sick days, but it does allow me to get some things done around the house. With all that is going on this weekend, that is nice.

I did some work from home, cut the grass, and worked with Steve at The Greenville News to get my cycling blog set up. It is done now. I've just got to figure out how I'm going to work these two.

At 2 PM I watched the press conference for this weekend's events. The poor emcee had an awful time getting the cyclists to answer his questions. It didn't help, of course, that he was asking them "yes" or "no" questions.

Around 4 PM the wife came home and I decided to break my rest day and go for a ride. All this cycling stuff and being stuck at home was making me antsy. I was supposed to be at a reception for the cycling stuff by 6 PM. So, I hoped on and headed downtown and then looped around over Paris and then home.

I pushed early up the mountain and paid for it later toward the top. It didn't help me any as I climbed it in 14:56. The last time I climbed it I made it in 14:46. That time I paced myself. Proves that sometimes measured and easy wins the race and I felt a lot better at the top that time as well.

After a quick shower, I headed to the Wyche Pavilion for the reception. There were supposed to be some pros there. The only one that I saw during that time was Saul Raisin. Still, I met some neat people for the first time and got reacquainted with some others I hadn't seen in a while.

John from Sunshine Cycle was there with his lovely wife. Rob, a classmate of Leadership Greenville, was there. I didn't realize he rode. He was there with his wife who I learned works at Carolina Triathlon. Now, that is a nice setup! Getting shop discounts from your spouse!

After a bit I headed out to the WYFF activities. I couldn't stay long because I had to get home to the kids since my wife was going to the second meeting at school. Tomorrow night we will be all home together and I'll be glad.

I ran into Dave Shields selling his books. That was pretty cool. I ended up buying his three cycling books as well as a book he wrote called, "The Pendulum's Path." I'm not even sure what it is about... just a fiction novel. I looked around to get Saul to sign my copy of "Tour de Life", but he was gone by the time I bought it. You can look for reviews here in weeks to come.

George was there at the WYFF event, Zabriskie was there, Raisin was there, but I didn't see any other pros about. A funny part of the show was a segment with Geoff Hart riding his bike up the Furman side of Paris Mountain. I'm not sure how long he said it took him, but it was a long time! Then he had George up there later and he asked Hincapie how long it takes him - 8:30! After celebrating 14:46 the other day, I realize just how amazing these guys are.

By the way, Dave Shields had nothing buy good to say about Greenville. He said he was here last year and was excited about getting back this year. That seems to be a recurring theme. Once people can experience our great city, they keep wanting to come back.

Here are my stats for today: AM HR/WGT: 56/170.2 and PM HR/WGT: 76/170.5 I do notice that on the days that I ride, my evening resting heart rate is higher (by about 20+ beats) than on non riding days. I also learned that I lost almost the same amount of weight while riding today as I did last time - 171.6 before and 166.5 after.