Tuesday

My evening got messed up with a band of thunderstorms that rolled through town at six o'clock. It didn't get done until after seven, so my evening ride was literally a washout.

Big day for 2 tomorrow. She closes on her new house at noon. We did a final walk-through with her after work this evening in anticipation of taking possession after lunch.

My pal Roy is on an airplane to Ireland tonight. He's going over for just a few days to attend the wedding of another friend. He has a tough life. He does turn 65 next week, so he may be running away from his reality.

The Great Mississippi Valley Fair opened today in Davenport. Its the equivalent of the Scott County Fair, but carries the other name. It has all the things associated with a local fair (rides, exhibits, and displays), but it also features big name grandstand shows. Usually country. They open with Sugarland tonight, and have Alan Jackson later this week (along with some lesser stars). They sell a "Fun Pass" for something like $35 which allows entry to all shows all week. A pretty good deal. If you don't mind crowds.

Another restaurant chain, Bennigan's, bit the dust. The franchise owned stores stayed open, but look for them to also close soon or to change brands. The restaurant business is tough, and if you can't find your market, you hear crickets.

The countdown is now down to two days. Start your checklists!

BCOT

Monday

I am officially dubbing this "Tahoe Week". As I write this, I calculate "wheels up" in 82 hours. Not that I am counting or anything.

I acknowledge 2's semi-compliment from yesterday's entry. But the comparative is a very low standard. As I said, the guy is a hack.

I took tonight off from training. I generally don't like riding more than three consecutive days, particularly after longer weekend rides. I figure I'll get the DCC route in three more times before take-off.

The former ND football player, Jeff Smardzija, who signed the big baseball contract with the Cubs two or three years ago, and whom my friend/client in DM wanted me to see last week in a game over there, got the save with the big league club yesterday. Heady stuff. It looks like he may have a future if he can stay healthy. His heater has late movement, and he showed a nasty splitter.

Cycling is one of those sports that has an annual world stage in the Tour de France, and annual world championships, so what is the value of the Olympics to a rider? Arguably, most of the guys who show up on 8-8-08 will either be second stringers, or out of gas from three weeks of chasing Carlos Sastre.

Speaking of cycling, a friend who races age-group stuff in the region just bought a set of wheels for his race bike at, get this, a little over $1000 per wheel! And speaking of cycling economics, I was in the bike shop this afternoon considering an upgrade to my bike computer (they make them with wireless technology now), and managed to easily say "no" to a GPS model that was priced at $695.

For the record, 4 gets a GPS for Hoopdrm before anybody else in the fam (in this area code) gets that service.

Congrats to 2 for making the number she needed on her GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test). She had to put in some preparation time, and was a little nervous. Good for her. She can now get formal acceptance into the Iowa MBA program.

I think that the test I had to take way back when for my MBA classes was called the GRE, the Graduate Record Examination. I have no clue on when I took it, or where, or my score. It must have been in Delaware since I started taking MBA courses when I was stationed at Dover with the USAF.

Have a great week.

BCOT

Sunday Night

I got way ahead of myself on that link to the Wundram column. When I went to add another paragraph, I couldn't get rid of the underline function. Blogger is handy, but every once in a while, I can't get done (or undone, as in this case) what I want done (or undone).

Another loose end on Blogger is the use of the Google email account sign-in protocol. Sometimes I will want to go to my gmail account while in the middle of the blog, and since I changed my Gmail data for some Blogger update, I have a different Google User Name for mail, and if I try to publish while that Gmail window is open, the system hick-ups. Strange.

When I went to get SB's coffee around 9:30 this morning, the shop had sold out of it's supply of the local Sunday paper (probably because of Bix) I bought the NYT. The newsstand price of $5 is hard to swallow. After making my way through the paper for 20 minutes or so, I was reminded as to why I grew tired of that particular paper last Winter when I received it as a gift. Way too much slant in every section. Last time I checked, we elect in this country, not anoint.

Busy week in anticipation of Tahoe. My assistant is out on vacation too, so I'll have more stuff to take care of myself. There are those in the audience who might wonder if I'm up to that task. We'll see.

Hope everyone has a great week.

BCOT

Sunday

I made a brief appearance on RAGBRAI yesterday. After my normal weekend ride to DeWitt for breakfast, I returned on one of my regular routes that just happened to be part of the RAGBRAI route...for five miles. I was on that segment around 9:30 AM, and it was thick with riders then, even though that location placed the riders within 10 miles of the end of the ride. The stipulated distance for the day was 53 miles, so those folks go up early to get done early.

2's Saturday night bachelorette party was an apparent success. I was drafted to man the grill, and concluded after-the-fact that I actually needed a second grill. My results were OK, just not up to my standards. It made me think of those monster-grills at Lowes or The Home Depot that are the equivalent of a full kitchen for the patio. I like to grill, but if I had one of those things, it would sit idle most of the time. I mean, I live by myself!

The Tour ended today. A Spaniard on the CSC team won. American Christian Vande Veld finished 5th.

Speaking of Spaniards, and Americans, is there a rule of grammar that stipulates whether a native of a particular state or country is an "iard, ian, man, or er"? An Englishman. A Canadian. A New Yorker. A Floridian. A Frenchman. A Dane. A Swede. Some nerd has probably written his thesis on the topic.

Before I am strung up as a sexist, I offer that the same question applies to natives of the female gender. Although does that point even come into play except where the designation is "man"?

See this link to a local hack who is several years behind on ideas:

http://www.qctimes.com/articles/2008/07/27/opinion/columnists/bill_wundram/doc48895408bcf90962488212.txt

Thursday

This has become a little perplexing to me as I find my enthusiasm for The Blog waning a bit on these long Summer Days. Part of the reality is that my training time is probably taking time directly away from 4KDays. When I was speaking with a biking friend last weekend about my schedule, he did a quick calculation and concluded that I was doing 10-12 hours a week on the bike. Which is a lot of time.

Then there is the additional reality that I have slipped into a more "current family history" type of topic-matter, and let's face it, we're not that interesting! Just kidding. But with 1 and 3 in the middle of job changes, 2 buying a house, and 4 juggling two internships and prep for senior year, my musings on this or that pale in comparison.

And we all spend more time outside and running around than in the cooler months. Even with the occasional hot day.

Whatever. I'll try to do better. I've got an idea or two for Tahoe.

Chicago today for a conference. It was a 24 hour trip that I began last night so as to avoid the morning rush. It also allowed me to get a ride in before departure. The conference was at the same facility as last Fall when I ran a photo of 1's birth hospital in Arlington Heights. Typically boring topic.

The storm that came through the QCA early Monday morning left a lot of people on the Illinois side without power. They say that winds got up to almost 100mph. Many, many trees uprooted or blown down. The PGA tournament course took a big hit. If the tournament had been this week, they would have had problems.

Anyone catch the WNBA brawl Tuesday night? The female columnist in USA Today (Brennan) was almost gloating about how women can now be as nasty as guys. Great logic.

This picture is of le Alpe Duez which was the climb a couple of days ago. Great stories.

I may have mentioned here that the traffic or weather gal on the WGN morning drive radio program is Mary Van de Velde, whose brother is the team leader for the Team Columbia team in the TdF. Monday was a rest day for the Tour, and the host of the radio show had Christian on the phone from France, live, talking about the prior day's stage! Very cool. (The host, Spike O'Dell, was a former QCA star who made the leap 15 years ago to C-town.)

More later.

BCOT

Sunday

Happy Anniversary to 1 and 1.1!!!

I'll get a "couples" picture up first thing in the morning from my desktop. For some reason, I can't upload the picture of the two of them that I want to for the occasion.

Here's a repeat of their photo from the July 4th weekend.

Busy weekend here. Great trip over to Des Moines. And plenty of riding to keep the schedule on training.

3 was in for an overnight visit too. She's got a full plate for the next month as she makes the move to Beantown.

Hope everyone has a great week.

BCOT

Saturday

2 and I are in DM for the game.

More later.

BCOT

Thursday

Another hot one here. Feels like Summer.

The golf outing with Roy was fun. The golf itself was marginal. I sprayed it around like one of those cartoon fire hoses that no one can control. I saw a lot of the course.

Two weeks to Tahoe. In case anyone is counting.

Very discouraging news out of The Tour. One of the hot shots tested positive for doping. He won a stage earlier, and finished second in May in the Giro d' Italia. He was the third rider kicked out of this year's race. Hard to believe that they can't control the renegades. The sport is imploding. Unfortunately, the various governing organizations are fighting among themselves and there's no leadership capable of taking charge.

LeClaire , Iowa (just a few minutes up river from Bettendorf) is the end point of this year's RAGBRAI. The ride begins on the western border of the state this Sunday. LeClaire is having a kick-off party tomorrow directed at people who are coming to town, parking their cars, and getting a bus ride Saturday to the western starting point. Not a bad idea. They've set up a stage and a big tent for a beer garden.

Personally, I think that the finish city is not all that big of a deal. Riders who have been on the road for a week mostly want to go home for a shower. Another beer party doesn't have the same ring after 450 miles, air mattresses, weather, hills, and the crowd. My bet is that LeClaire will be a ghost town by mid-afternoon a week from Saturday. Unless the traffic is so bad that people just can't get out of town.

They are closing three Starbucks stores here. They expanded in a big rush, and verteran coffee shop guys could have predicted slow sales at those locations.

2 and I are headed over to DM for an Iowa Cubs game on Saturday. My friend/client Dr. D. invited us. The DM Cubs have that Notre Dame football player on their roster. Back Sunday.

The neighbor's garden has started to come in. He brought over some cucumbers and sweet peppers tonight. I'm pretty confident that my tomatoes will be ripe while I'm in Tahoe.

All for now.

Have a great Friday

BCOT

Tuesday

I guess that the consensus for the t-shirts is the Coors Light mountains motif. I don't recall 4's comments on the 4th, and I had made a comment to 2 this morning before reading 1's entry on the blog. I guess the genes may be working.

4 and I spent some time on the driving range at Pebble Creek tonight. I have an outing tomorrow, and I needed to get my radar adjusted before my tee time. My back can take only so much. 4 is just trying to get comfortable.

My pal Roy and I had lunch at Sports' Fans today. That place does a good lunch business. From all walks of life. There really aren't that many of the non-chain places that we can go for lunch. I get tired of 1.1's favorite place, Gov's.

I'm headed to bed early so I can do the route in the morning. With the golf outing, I won't be able to get out tomorrow night.

Have a great Wednesday.

BCOT

Monday

Here's to 3. She's Daughter of the Day. Her life is getting a little more complicated. She's accepted a new position in Boston beginning in August. Right after Tahoe.

2 is in the middle of the events to lead up to the closing on her new house. There may be a problem with the garage. It has a wall that may need some work. Its never easy.

I did a little 16+ ride tonight just to stretch the legs. Lots of riders out. Over the last seven days, my mileage has exceeded 150 miles. Which is getting me closer to where I need to be to make it up Mt. Rose.

The market has continued it's drift downward. Banks have been killed, as sellers are just abandoning the sector. Balance sheets may not matter as much as the business that you are in. Pretty hard to make investment choices. Cash is king. The shorts continue to rule.

For the record, in my circle of men friends, Pete's wide body is legendary.

Anyone have any thoughts on the term, "false front"? While Hollywood has it's definition, mine comes from golf and cycling. In golf, they will sometimes carve the front of a green in such a way that shots that might look good from the fairway, roll back off the front of the green and into a collection area that requires a delicate chip to get close to the hole.

In cycling, a false front is actually a false "flat" which is the last part of a climb where the hill flattens out from the steeper grade below, but that still requires effort to cross. In assents on the higher mountains, you can actually have sections that visually look to be going down, but actually still have gravity pulling you backwards. Mt. Rose has one of these near the top of the pass at the entry to the Rim Trail.

In architecture, and crosswords, a false front is called a facade. And in turn, in describing a person's public personna in perhaps difficult situations, an individual might put on a "good facade."

I'm sure that if a I kept going on this that I could come up with a baseball usage as well. Aren't our presumptive candidates now out there "pitching" to the various interest groups with their efforts to convince the electorate that they are each ready to "play ball" and save the world?

Is there anyone out there less interested in Brett Favre than me? I don't think so.

2 needs to order the shirts this week. Please give her some comments.

Hope everyone has a good evening.

BCOT

Sunday

I'm guessing that we all have such busy lives that 4000 Days can't match the real world.

This has been a picture perfect mid-Summer day. A little breezy,but not much humidity. Great day to finish the PGA tournament here this week, the John Deere Classic. While they didn't get many of the big names on the tour, the area really supports the tournament, so the crowds have been good regardless of the leaderboard. My pal Pete and I checked out the post-golf party tent last night. We were home by 9:30, which speaks either for the lack of sizzle there or the reality of our ages.

The big news here this week has been 2's entry into the housing market. She has had her offer on a nice place in eastern Davenport accepted by the seller. Closing is scheduled for July 30th. We are all excited for her. Now she'll have the enjoyment of dealing with all of the thrills of home ownership: plumbing, snow shoveling, carpenter ants, and crab grass among other realities.

Since we leave for Tahoe early on the 1st, she won't have much time to get moved in beforehand. But once we get back, she'll be full time getting herself organized in her new digs. I'll let her file her own report on the event.

Pete and I have been riding quite a bit together. The way I see it, I'm running out of Mt. Rose training days. Pete is a stronger rider, and I use his wide body for drafting. I definitely feel stronger than I have been, probably since my last assault at Tahoe. 50+ this AM on my own for breakfast in DeWitt. Great ride.

I have a golf outing one day this week, so I went over to Duck Creek this afternoon to checkout the status of my game. It sucked. I joined a twosome at the first tee, but pealed away after five holes. The guys were jerks. One of them got into a shouting match with a dad behind us when his high school age son hit too soon before we had cleared the fifth green. The confrontation was totally uncalled for, as my two partners were playing like it was the US Open. And slow besides. (I was planning on playing only 13 holes anyway to save my back for the outing. I played three random holes on the way in, and called it a day.)

This is why public courses get old real quick. Say what you want about the cost of country club membership, but if you're a golfer, you don't want to deal with the all-comers at the muni course.

I need to get to the store to get ready for a little BBQ with 2. I'll add more later.

BCOT

Monday

July 4th weekend 2008.

BCOT

Sunday

The Tour started yesterday. This year they begin in the Northwest section of the country and journey counter clockwise around the country, ending as always in Paris. The first week is basically for the sprinters, the mountains coming in the second and third weeks. Where the overall favorites will go at one another on the big hills.

Saturday was another great day of FFF. We got 4 out onto the golf course for the first time ever. She did ok, and had some pretty good shots on the last couple of holes. 3 showed a little rust.

Saturday evening was spent at the River Bandits baseball game. Really not a bad game, although the seventh inning got long, long, long. Ryne Sandberg is the manager of the Peoria team. He seemed very detached from the game. I never saw him speak the entire game. Not even to his own players. Including the time he went to the mound to replace pitchers. I suppose that he has developed some thick skin from all the solicitations that he gets when he might seem available to the public. That and the general joyous experience of minor league baseball.

Our out-of-town guests headed back to their homes this AM. 3 and James on Amtrak out of Princeton, Illinois. 1 and 1.1 and their canine by car to the TC.

Pictures from the weekend should be available tomorrow.

Summer hit with some high around 90 today. It is July. Just 26 days to Tahoe.

Hope everyone has a great week.

BCOT

Saturday

Lots of FFF over the last couple of days. Figge on Thursday night for fireworks. (2 was the event director for the museum that night and she did a great job.) BBQ at my place on Friday night: another smashing success. And it looks like today will have a full dance-card as well.

Hard to believe, but my yard needs rain. I've been watering my potted annuals all along, and they need it at least every-other-day now.

34+ early this AM for a little breakfast at Hardee's in Eldridge. Just enough wind to make the trip home a little work.

Worst service ever at Gov's yesterday for our FFF lunch. If that place had just a little competition in the immediate area, it would have trouble staying afloat. It was one of those days where the staff lost touch with reality. Kind of like the Lakers in game six of the recent NBA finals. They didn't show up.

I've been dealing with a small, but irksome situation with carpenter ants in my kitchen. I've always had a few bugs in my basement, spiders, megapods, etc., and I'll spray occasionally and they're gone. These ants have been a little more hearty. It seems that they come in through the bottom of my back door frame, and I've sprayed several times. None now for a couple days. Stubborn little creatures.

Female swimmer Dara Torres has qualified for her fifth Olympics. At age 41. I thought that this was a great story, and in searching for a current picture, I came across an ESPN column that essentially said, "She's gotta be doping." And the comments after the article were hot and cold on the writer. No in between. I choose to believe in her.

Off to the golf course with 3 and 4.

Have a great day.

BCOT

Wednesday

This has been a funny week. I've had to deal with a variety of challenges at work, and the place where I take Margret in for service managed to damage her rear passenger-side quarter panel in a very unfortunate accident in the shop. I've tried to take my pal Roy's advice and ratchet the tension down a few notches. Not working all that well at this point.

I've compared this incident with Margret as the automotive equivalent of going to the hospital for treatment, only to contract another disease while there. You could also relate it to the IT guy coming in for maintenance on the system, and then you not being able to run routine programs once he's gone.

3 is in NYC for the day chasing a job. She gets back tomorrow afternoon. In time for FFF at the museum, including 1 and 1.1.

Uncle Phil had a "small" heart attack over the weekend. Can any heart attack be small? I spoke with him today and he sounds pretty good. His drill will be to watch what he eats, and take a few more drugs. His diet will consist of mostly things that don't taste good. Lots better than the alternatives.

I've conducted a very unscientific survey and have concluded that 70% of pick-up trucks on rural Scott County roads are either black, white or red in color. (Someone may want to argue as to whether black and white are colors, but that's another discussion.) And red trucks usually pass you while going faster and closer to the cyclist than the black and white trucks.

I've continued to bike quite a bit. I did the Marycrest hill a couple of times on Saturday. It tilts at like 20 degrees near the top, much more steep than anything on Mt. Rose. Of course, its only an eighth of a mile or so in length. My pal Pete and I are doing an early run in the AM.

June was the worst June in the stock market since 1930. July has continued the slide. The argument is that stock are now "on sale" at reduced prices. The rub is that "reduced prices" does not necessarily mean that stocks are cheap. To be continued.

Reports on FFF to follow soon.

BCOT