Funny: The IMPLICIT BET.....

I was at a party a couple of weeks ago, laughing it up with some great friends. My best friend, Jeff, was there. I recalled something that I devised/concocted a long time ago, too funny. I crack myself up sometimes!

Calling Jeff on the phone a long time ago:

Ev: "Hey man, what's up?"
Jeff: "Just hanging out"
Ev: "hey, you owe me 10 bucks"
Jeff: "what the hell are you talking about?"
Ev: "such and such won the game (or race, or whatever it was)"
Jeff: "you're out of your mind, I didn't bet you!"
Ev: "yeah, but you WOULD HAVE BET ME, therefore it's valid"
Jeff: "yeah, you're right"

He paid me the 10 bucks!! And so it was born, IMPLICIT BETTING!!

We just laughed like crazy about IMPLICIT BETTING! He couldn't deny that he would have taken the bet, so he DID hafta cough up the coin! Too funny!

Weekend Recap....

Man, I need a work week to recover from the weekend! I'll be making an appointment with my massage therapist in a little while!

I did go run in the forest with a good group early Sunday morning. There were probably 10 of us. Good time and a pretty quick pace, about 6.5 miles.

Then I DID go back to the track to claim the final 20 laps of my 45 lap quest. Piece of cake! Met a guy who rides a lot faster but doesn't take big chances on the BIG jumps. So he's clearing the same jumps/not hitting the big ones. And the same ones that I'm doing/not doing. Talk about a great point of reference! Nice guy, also a triathlete. He's a lot smoother/faster in the turns, the straights, and setting up for an impending corner. It's exactly where I need to be, more competent on the stuff that I am riding, but not taking big chances on the BIG jumps!

Number of times throwing a perfectly good motorcycle to the ground (crashes):2
Number of miles run: 9.6
Number of laps at MX track: 45

On Saturday, the track was tough. Hurricane Dolly wasn't quite as innocent as I'd hoped. Really deep, wet, sandy turns and straights in a couple of areas. I got stuck in a really deep rut and I was going down. But it REALLY did take several seconds (unlike a typical front end wash-out that happens quickly). Long enough that I collected my thoughts. "Oh sh*t, this is NOT going well! I'm gonna pull my leg out from under the bike...not yet, ok pretty soon........OK, pull the leg out from under the falling bike right NOW!"......Weird, it really was in slow motion! Plenty of time to figure it out!

Same thing in a deep sandy berm (a berm is banked turn). I left a BIG OLE DENT in that berm! For the rest of the ride, many laps to follow, I had to negotiate around that big ole dent! And it surely reminded me every time I saw it!

All told, GREAT time! I gotta get to work now! I need a work week to recover from the weekend!

Happy Birthday to ME!!

I'm ALIVE!! (all animated and jumping around waving arms) Oh HELL YEAH!!

Ran a great RTW 5k this morning! Everyone now knows Tessie on a first-name basis!....We ran a 23:40 not great, not shabby, either....

THEN I packed a cooler with BEER, Gatorade, and a gallon of water and went MOTOCROSSING!

45 laps didn't happen. No how, no way. It's a long track and pretty difficult this morning! I did 25 laps, 2 sets of 10 and one set of 5....Just exhausted! Chugged the whole bottle of Gatorade, dumped water on my head, all the good stuff!

Tomorrow, I'll go run in the forest with Susie's group for 1 lap (6.5 miles), then I THINK I might go scoop up the other 20 laps at the track....It could happen!...Oh HELL YEAH!


Tessie after the run...


Bike maintenance last night, cleaned air filter, clean/lube/adjust chain...


I devised a new method of counting laps, white electrical tape on the crossbar...each lap, stop, remove a tape tag from here and....


....put it here....




Me and my friend, Dave. Cool guy and rides at about the same ability level...GOOD TIMES!

Motocross Marathon? Sure....

Five years ago, I "rode my age" in laps around a motocross track in Garden Ridge, near San Antonio...It wasn't exactly on my birthday and it was blazing hot out....Tough ride, for sure!






Depending on what happens with the rain that this hurricane is bringing, I'm going riding this Saturday after the Run The Woodlands 5k race. Only this time, it'll be 45 laps on a much longer track, much more difficult track. No guarantees, that's a lot of MX! And it surely won't be continuous....It'll be a good time!

The Weekend in Review, Let's Recap...

Man, I live for the weekend! Since moving here in November, I've been saying, "I'm going to take back my weekends!" Friends said it wouldn't happen. Well, I'm doing pretty well with it!

Let's break it down by the numbers:

Number of parties attended: 1
Number of miles run: 0
Number of miles on bicycle: 0
Number of miles swimming: 0
Number of days going to the motocross track: 2
Number of days that ZZ TOP was playing as I entered the MX track: 1
Number of days that Jazz music was playing as I entered the MX track: 1
Number of perfectly good motorcycles thrown to the ground (crashes): 0
Number of riders passing me at the track: plenty
Number of riders passed: 6
Number of naps taken: 2
Number of battles waged on the internet at a motorcycling message board: 2

I had intended to go running in the forest with Susie's group (Luke's), but overslept. So I worked in my shop until the track opened. I've got a couple of regular buddies who show up at the track on Saturday mornings, rode with them. I usually stay at the track for anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours, depending on track condition, how I feel (on an "off day", it's easy to roll onto the trailer and drive right out the front gate).

It's a strange deal, I'm pretty sure I'm competitive. At the track, I get fired up and ride harder and more accurately when I encounter actual traffic. Specifically, riders of about the same ability. All of a sudden, I just go like crazy! It was getting a tad mundane on an empty track until others joined. It changes the whole equation, I jump into 'battle mode' and IT'S ON! So I guess I'm competitive.

What in the world is up with the 'fortune' that was in my fortune cookie?? This isn't what I would call a fortune, at all! And besides, what if my version of romance involves a cell phone? What is up with this:

My Athlinks Profile....Hmm, I thought the results were long gone...

I was recently made aware of "Athlinks" and entered my name in the "search for athletes" box. WOW! I thought these results were long gone! Granted I've probably run 100 races, or so it seems, since 1998. But there are some GREAT memories in the results that are shown! What a hoot!

They did miss a couple of good races; My 1st marathon, San Antonio 1999, ran a 3:39! And in 2000, I laid down a stellar 1:32:30 for the 3M half marathon in Austin. They did list a couple of near-death experiences, too; San Diego and Boston in 2002.

It was too funny in Boston, 2002 (not 2001, when I THUNDERED in Boston!, EDIT, grinning) when I peeled off of the course and went and hung out at a keg party! The partiers were saying, "you can't do that! You've gotta get back out there!(pointing to the race)" I replied, "NO I DON'T!", and turned my back to the race. I drank a beer with them. It's true I was in a hurry and did kinda storm in and was pretty faaking DIRECT, "hey, you think I could TAP THAT KEG? I'm DYING OVER HERE!" How could they possibly deny me?? They quickly obliged, MY FRIENDS! And took pics with them (gave 'em my email addy so I could email the pics...cool folks!)....then I went back out...VERY HOT and Humid! Bleeding nipples (that's a 1st) and soaking wet socks...ARGH!

1st pic,Pre-race preparations, shoulda seen the whole pic, MANY (prolly 50-60) watering the bushes
2nd pic,Looking fine before the race
3rd pic, After things got really bad (the wheels FELL OFF), I stopped by to have a beer (notice race in full swing in the background)...Here are my brand new friends who's keg party I crashed:




Great memories in those Athlinks results! :):):)

Well, I guess I'm getting back into running...

Thanks to my friends Coach Bill and tiny frog, I'm enrolled in the Houston Half Marathon for 2009. They both put notes on their blogs when the event was about to sell out. Knowing that it would soon fill to capacity, I wasted no time in entering! WooHoo! I'm actually going to train for this and probably run the San Antonio Half Marathon, too! If I can actually train a little bit, I'd like to get tuned up for a 1:40-1:45 run.

Great weekend! Late post, AGAIN....

Ran the RTW 5k on Saturday, had a great time, quite the social event, too....my friend Diana ran, as did Christy from Luke's (she usually works the race, 1st time I've run with her). Diana met some folks and a guy with whom she works, Gary Van Kuiken, who's run marathons in all 50 states. Christy's pretty fast! Tessie and I did about 23-and-a-half minutes....

Went motocrossing both Saturday and Sunday mornings! Good time, but there was thrown, a "wrench into the spokes"....the track operators changed up the track. They added a couple of "doubles". These are double-jumps where you really need to jump a good ways (landing on the backside of the second "mound of dirt") to land in a very smooth zone....coming up way short (not attempting to jump it, rolling over it, or jumping only a little) is no problem...the problem is if you come up a little short or a good-bit short, very hard landing. I ended up "going for it" on the lesser of the 2 and it felt GREAT! Landing a dirt bike jump WELL is right on up there with the most pleasurable experiences imaginable, um yeah, even SEX!! And the longer jump's not going to be a problem....just a bit unsettling that they pushed dirt around in a lot of places and made the track a WHOLE lot more "interesting"!...

It's REALLY strange the different perspective looking at the jumps on the track from the sidelines, versus riding up on them and jumping them...I was talking with other riders who, like me, had stopped on their bikes off to the side to survey the new terrain and watch various riders dealing with the new track changes. About half the people were rolling over them, the other half were jumping. So our trepidation was surely shared. Standing next to the terrain it seems SO tame, no big deal where you land. On the bike, OMG!! Eyes wide open! Really strange how different the 2 perspectives are! Carry on...

Oh the IRONY!

I found it ironic that I was listening to jazz music as I drove into the race track this morning. Is that even legal? Would I have been roughed up by the dirt-biking community if they had known I was listening to anything other than Metallica, Pantera or some other death-metal band?

I had it cranked pretty loud, does that worsen or lessen the offense? Does listening to the Rippingtons loudly while entering the track further reinforce and explain why I'm so slow at the track?

OK, I'm back.....Great weekend!....

I had a great 4th of July holiday weekend! My next door neighbors had an enormous cache of fireworks, grilling supplies, food, beer and plenty of their hell raising Harley biker friends amassed for the 4th. They invited me. It was funny, I was probably the only one who wasn't sporting 'ink' (tattoos) or wearing a Harley tee shirt. They're totally cool, hard working folks, great neighbors! In fact I had a polo shirt on (where's my 'embarrassed' emoticon?)....

The dogs were truly freaked by the whole thing until I got them corralled into my closet, deep within the house. And the fireworks weren't just next door. All around my house sounded like a war zone. Fun time, nobody got arrested or had to go to the hospital/morgue.


























Saturday, I invited my friends(Click on aforementioned "friends" link to see her blog) to join me at 3 Palms Extreme Sports Park for a day of motorcycle riding. CLICK on the photos for full size, great pics, thanks!

Typically when I ride alone, I show up early in the day (before the rowdy FAST kids show up) and ride for 45 minutes to an hour. That's plenty of workout, trust me! Saturday, we stayed for 5 hours. I taught their kids how to ride and also gave the lady a ride on the front of my brutal red Honda. Out in a field, I nailed the throttle and wheelied a good bit. I did this a number of times, but kept asking her, "are we cool?"....she never screamed to stop, so I showed her the fantastic acceleration of a modern motocross bike. (where's my 'freaked out' emoticon?). And the acceleration is even much harder with only one person on the bike.


My friends brought a wealthy bounty of delicious fix'ins, the grill, cooler, charcoal, the works! When I was performing maintenance on the 4 bikes prior, I thought, "man, this is a lot of effort"....my friends certainly matched my effort with the healthy and delicious grub! Thanks!

As Elisharose explained in her blog (funny account of the day's fun, CLICK on the link to see her rendition of the event, funny), I taught her daughter to ride. I also gave her daughter a ride on the Red Thunder to demonstrate what it's like on the big bike. Then I proceeded to teach her how to ride the little Honda Z-50. (Coincidentally, the very first bike I ever rode was a Honda Z-50 MiniTrail, back in 1968) She has her very own Pink helmet and was styling! She didn't want to get off of the bike! Too funny! Too cute!