My bike commuting is still going strong, and i’m loving it! Two days this week I set new overall speed records on my way home. I’m up to a moving average of 17.9mph, and a best total time of under 16 minutes! And if you’re wondering, my top peak speed is over 30mph. If you’re a geek like me and you like numbers, check out my stats table on the bicycle page. Since my last post, and thanks to andrew’s employee discount, i’ve pimped my ride with a rear rack and a Topeak MTX DXP trunk bag. The bag is expandable and fits all the various clothes, bike tools, gps batteries, U-lock, disc golf discs, ups packages, or whatever else I end up carrying around. The airflow is also much better than with the backpack and I don’t get nearly as bad sweaty shoulders and back. I also replaced the second set of pedals I broke with a solid set of used platform pedals from Andrew. I decided to try em a few days without the clips and that turned into weeks. It feels much safer, and I still have plenty of power. To round things out, I got a frame mount air pump, and a nice shop grade Specialized tire pump with pressure gauge (I’m running at about 60psi), and a spoke wrench. I also overhauled my front hub with “phils bearing grease.” I’ll have to update the gps plots with my latest speed data. On another note, this morning the cool temperatures were enough that I wore an extra tshirt under my bright yellow drivers-please-dont-run-me-over biking jersey. I didn’t really warm up until after the second mile. It had me wondering what the fall will bring weather wise, and what kind of new bike friendly clothes I’ll want to check out. If you made it this far through my ramblings, thank you for listening, and congratulations on your focus!
Twins and Nightstands
This morning I made eggs for breakfast, scrambled for me and “egg hole toast” for Tony. I cracked an egg into a bowl and saw that it was twins!!
In an effort to finish off the blue room I have been in search of a nightstand. And when I say I’ve been in search I mean I started looking yesterday and I found something yesterday :) I didn’t want to spend too much money, maybe $20-30 tops. Here is what I found:
Two TV tables from a garage sale…
…primed…
…and painted black.
And the total cost…. $1.50 for both!! That isn’t counting the painting supplies because I already had everything I needed from the dresser project. Here is how it looks in the room:
Not too bad for $0.75! I’ll be taking out the picture of Tony and putting in a more guest-room-appropriate picture. He is extremely good looking, but I think I should be the only one who gets to roll over in the morning and see his handsome face :)
Now I just need to be brave enough to put some pictures and shelves on the wall and the room will be complete!
Looking Back
Three years ago today Tony asked me to be his wife :) He asked my dad for his permission on a Wednesday (quick side note: when Tony told me that he asked my dad for permission we were sitting by a lighthouse at Silver Lake and both got pooped on by a seagull- ha!), we shopped for rings on Thursday, and the week that followed is what we consider our “engagement week.” We knew that it would be official soon and we were both beaming with excitement all week. Tony made plans to have a hot date every night after we picked out my ring so that I wouldn’t know when it was coming.
We planned on going to South Haven on the Thursday of that week, but canceled our plans that morning because the weather was kind of overcast. Tony came over and decided “last minute” that we should just head out there anyway since we didn’t have anything else to do. I told him he couldn’t propose because I my nails hadn’t been done yet and he said no problem, he hadn’t ordered the ring yet.
We walked down the pier and took some pictures (because Tony knew I would want some pictures of the night!), ate dinner at Clementine’s, the restaurant where we had our first real date, then drove down to beach to watch the sunset. Tony took a blanket out of the trunk of my car and to my surprise pulled out his guitar as well.
We found a nice spot on the beach, laid out the blanket, and hung out for a while before Tony told me he had something for me. He took out his guitar and began to play, singing a song he had written just for me and this night. I was trying to soak in every second and listen to every word, but I also couldn’t help but think that if tonight isn’t the night this is a very mean trick!! It turned out it was, as the last few lines of the song said, “Alison will you please wear my ring?” Then he stood me up, got down on his knee with a beautiful sparkling ring, and asked me again to marry him. We hugged, kissed, stared at my ring, prayed, and spent some time on the beach just the two of us before we headed back home to start sharing the news.
We quickly set the date for January 7, 2006 and began planning our wedding day!
Oh Deer!
When Scott was here for Ellee’s birthday he bought us a salt block to put in our back yard for our deer friends to snack on. Last week I looked out the window and saw this on two different occasions!
We’re so thankful for our beautiful backyard!
Flat tires are not fun.
On Tuesday about about a quarter mile from home I got a flat tire… bummer. Especially since last week I had broken my cheap tire pump. I tried to go to a gas station and pump it up and then swap the tube, but the station closed at 11pm while I was there and I didn’t have enough change to run the $0.75 air pump again… oh well… Wednesday morning was rainy and I had some things to mail so I drove… Wednesday night my tire still felt like it was holding air so this morning I was pretty bummed when I was all geared up and hopping on my bike to find they tire was flat again. Oh well. I had been doing pretty well, riding all last week and monday tuesday of this week. I actually miss it now and driving seems boring. I’m excited to get a new trunk bag, rack, and tire pump from my brother in law, Andrew, this weekend! I’ve still been updating my commute times/speeds on the biking page..
