Tour de Cure

Jackie and I are going to be riding in the Tour de Cure with our friends Curt and Noelle on June 14th at Island Lake Recreation area. Its a organized charity ride to benefit the American Diabetes Association. Curt has been a type 1 diabetic for a while now so it will be great to come out and ride with him. Jackie did it with them a couple years ago and really enjoyed it.

If you're interested in donating to us you can do so online, Jackie or Jason. Thanks.

Unfortunately it is the same day as the Ruby race, but I'm not exactly in racing shape anyways so no big deal.

No Lumberjack for me

Well, my Lumberjack disappointment is coming early this year. I've decided to throw in the towel on the race as I'm nowhere close to being ready and simply don't have the time to prepare for a 100 miler right now. That's due to a number of things, but nothing bad. The past few months have been very busy with work, lots of travel and long hours here. Apparently the hard work is paying off though as I recently received a promotion. I basically knew it was coming, just wasn't sure exactly how or when it would. Now I'm fully responsible for all of our marketing activities, report directly to the president of the company. Right now my job won't change a lot, just more accountability, but as we grow I will hopefully be adding some staff which will definitely transform the department.

We also have a lot of projects going on at home right now. Last year we finally finished the deck (thanks mostly to Lee and Sergio) and some landscaping around it. This year Jackie really wants to start a vegetable garden. The past couple years she has had a couple tomato plants and some basil planted along the house, but we decided to due something bigger this year. Since I need to cut all the sod out for the garden I figured I might as well rent a sod cutter and finish up the landscape beds around the yard too. Jackie and Jill picked it up yesterday after work, hoping to get everything done last night since the weather forecast wasn't looking the best. Well, before I could even finish cutting the lawn it poured rain, harder and harder. The yard was actually flooded in spots, but once it stopped for a while I decided to give it a shot to see if it would be too muddy. It cut really well and the wetness didn't seem to be a factor. The sod cutter was amazing. I ended up cutting out the garden and areas for a bunch of landscape beds in about 15-20 minutes. It would have easily taken me a full day with a shovel, if not longer. Today it's rainy, but hopefully I can still get some work done. Still lots to do, finish the garden, put in the plants in the landscape beds, put in some type of edging around the beds, groundcover. Then, when that's all done we're planning to put in a shed. So, like I mentioned above, not a lot of time for riding now.

More Hiking

Thursday we wanted to get some more hiking in. After our experience the other day we wanted to make sure we chose something a little easier. We ended up heading to the Alum Bluffs Cave trail. This was the second time Jackie and I had done this together and my third time. Like the horseback riding, my dad and I hiked this trail about 20 years ago. Its amazing how I remembered stuff from it. We didn't mind hiking it again, its a beautiful trail, challenging but not overly difficult. The trail eventually goes all the way to the top of Mount LeConte, one of the higher points in the park, but we only hiked about half way, to the Alum Cave bluffs. Once we got to the half way point I really wanted to go all the way to the top. Nobody else wanted to go with me though. They did offer to wait for me, and I think I could have moved pretty good on my own, but it was a little late in the afternoon so I decided to head back with everyone. Hopefully next time we're down here. At the top there are some cabins that you can hike to and stay overnight. I think that would be a great way to introduce Jackie to overnight backpacking without having to carry so much.

Here are some pictures from the day.

































































































Today is our last day here. Curt and I were planning to head over to North Carolina to ride Tsali, but we woke up to some dark clouds. A quick check of the weather revealed a large weather front moving through with rain expected all morning. Shortly after it started pouring. So looks like no riding. Hopefully the weather clears up a little and we can maybe get out for a short hike or something before heading home tomorrow.