labor day weekend

friday night i did a night ride with beth. it was nice to be out especially when i couldn't hit the group ride on saturday. i had a lot of errands to do anyway (on saturday) that i would have kicked myself later for not doing because i would have blown them off to ride.
saturday night my cousin lisa had a killer labor day weekend party. dj and everything. she has the perfect yard for that sort of thing. it'll be more fun for us when zoe is older. but no rush.
sunday late morning i headed out to palos to do a loop. i didn't have time for anything else and i needed to do something! i lost my smith sliders out there somewhere so i'm kinda bummed. i'd like to get a pair of glasses before this weekend.
sunday night was marie's wedding. marie and i grew up together. we lived directly across the street from each other for over 13 years. we don't hang out or talk much anymore, our interests aren't very close at all, but we will always be great friends. i'm very happy for her to finally have found her man.
i really don't like getting dressed up. i don't mind the dress so much as the shoes. i hate dress shoes. there aren't really any dress shoes that i think are cute really, nor any that i find comfortable. they just aren't me. looking around at the majority of the chicks at the wedding receptions sunday night- why do we even bother? more than half of the chicks were running around shoeless!
we didn't get home too late so that was cool.
the wedding was okay. i was sort of bummed my sister couldn't make it. reese sunday exhibited signs of an asthma attack. she's allergic to cats and lisa had cats. steph and eric decided to take her to urgent care because they were getting a little nervous. they figured she'd be given a nebulizer treatment and be on their way. not so. apparently reese has full blown pneumonia in both lungs! poor kid. she's still in the hospital but is crazed with energy ready to get out. i'm confident she'll be released tomorrow.
monday we had a group ride planned at palos. a bunch of peeps from wisconsin headed down to pre-ride the course and enjoy many of the other trails palos has to offer. we had a good group- jeremey, jerry, lori, regina, her husband bill, bob, john, brad, chris, paul and myself. there was one other dude who tagged along but i don't know who he was. we rode a hair under 20 miles in about 2 and half hours. not bad for 14 people and stopping many times to make sure we were all good (one being a long stop where john fixed his hanger and everyone else peed and got food). i had a really good time (although i really missed my smiths (and gloves), it was dusty out there!). i hope everyone else did as well. i wanted to ride longer and to my surprise i still felt like i had a ton of life in me. i really wanted john to say let's go out for some more, but in reality i was sort of relieved he was done. a little guilt was starting to set in and i wanted to get the kids a bit before on time for a change. amazing that it was my first big group ride since october of 2005.
with all the mountainbike rides going on and pre-riding happening there were a few bumps n bruises. palos is two way traffic. i've never had a problem out there. but with the race going in the opposite direction of how most people ride out there, there was bound to be some trouble. nothing serious thankfully but john had a pretty good one. on saturday while out pre-riding the course he happened upon 2 other riders all going pretty fast. john and another rider hit head on riding one day trail. john was ejected and landed underneath the second rider's chainring. the picture doesn't do it justice really.



back to work tomorrow. i usually don't care but i have so much work backed up that i'm sort of dreading it. hopefully i'll be able to get some mtb time in. the mesa needs some recon. i'd like to get in there and clean it up a bit.