Snow Stories

     Winter is making itself known right now. The majority of the country is in the same mess. I have enjoyed the snow so far. Tennessee snow rarely lasts more than a day, but this snow has been on the ground all week and has shown no signs of leaving anytime soon. We got around five inches of sleet and ice to start things off, followed a few days later by three inches of powdery snow. When the snow fell, it was as close to a blizzard as we will ever see here. The snow came down hard and fast, and brought along 30+ mph winds. It was awesome!

     I really love snow days. It brings beauty and peacefulness to the dull winter landscape. But better than that is the snow day antics of others, mainly coworkers, that never fails to entertain us. I love the anticipation of a bad forecast. There's always a that person who calls and talks smack the night before the storm. "Are you coming in tomorrow? Because I am coming no matter what!!" Then the morning comes and they call again, this time talking fast and using the words "dangerous" and "Hell" often. It always entertains me. It's annoying, but entertaining. The only kind of story that can be more extravagant than a fish story is a snow story. Snow is like a magic fairy-dust that makes adults revert back to children. A little snow falling suddenly looks like a great reason not to go to work.

     Our roads were covered with deep snow, but it was drive-able and far from what I would call "too dangerous to go to work." Still, most patients decided to forego therapy, which caused me to get called off for most of my work. I took advantage of the extra time to ride and work out more. Only the main roads are clear. Monday was President's Day and I think that the road workers took the day off as well. Only the interstate got cleaned the first day. Most of the week has been a write-off as far as work goes. Shannon can count on both hands the number of people she has treated this whole week.

We don't get to see snow plows here very often

Snowset on the farm

     My riding continues to improve. I'm logging those slow base miles and finally riding some hills. I'm not much of a believer in the long, slow miles unless you really need them. I had a poor base last season and after my break for the injury, I do need the base miles. I've been spending most of my time on the trainer since the weather has been terrible. It has been boring, but not as bad as in the past. I'm still just happy to be able to ride and I'm very motivated. The early-season bike races have started in the warmer parts of the world so I have used the Tour Down Under and the various tours across the deserts to keep me interested while I build my aerobic base. I've knocked out two three-hour rides on the trainer this week. If nothing else, my bum will be ready for road miles come Spring.

     I've been trying to do more rides before breakfast for what is referred to as "anti-bonk" training. When done at a low intensity, it teaches the body to become more efficient at using it's glycogen stores and also in using fat as a fuel. You have 90 minutes worth of glycogen stored up. After you use that, you should eat to keep`from breaking down muscle for fuel. These kind of workouts have allowed me to have breakfast on the bike a few days. And they are great at getting the metabolism cranked up.

     The leg is doing well. I've had one problem since my last post and that came yesterday with a slight "pinching" feeling in the original problem area. It's not consistent and doesn't happen on the bike, so I'm not too worried about it. We have stopped massaging so often and I think maybe I still need it during this build-up cycle. The gastroc is still a little weak and the training does stress it quite a bit. In addition to riding, I'm still doing my therapy-type strength workout and even doing a few light weights now. I had a slight cold last week, which snapped my streak of almost one full year since my last illness. The streak is over, but the severity of the cold was not as bad as usual, so I lost no training time because of it.

     With some of my spare time, I have been working on a few projects. I built a set of hurdles out of PVC for me to train with during my therapy to help my return to running. I also hope to use them for training other athletes in the future.

     I also built a kicker ramp. I needed a new challenge and a new spark for the freeride trails at home. I built it light so I can move it to different areas. Maybe in the summer I will use it for the pond jump I have wanted to construct since the day I moved onto the Clark Farm.

It's a 4 ft. tall kicker that can attach to my flat ladder for a proper run-in

I got to use my new drill set plenty on this project

My car was a bit full when I bought my supplies. I somehow managed to get seven pieces of 10-foot PVC and eight 8-foot 2x4s into my car. Man, I need a truck.

     Here's a few random pictures from the last few weeks. We had an explosion across the street one morning. There was a fire in an RV that was being stored. The fire ignited a few propane tanks and made some nice fireworks. Nobody was hurt thankfully. Also, there's a few pictures of some nice fish I caught out of the pond. I pulled out a decent bass and the biggest shellcracker I have ever seen in this pond. He was as big as my boot!

Smoke that black is never good...

Bass

Shellcracker

     That last house-buying opportunity I wrote about in the last post started much better than I expected. We were presented with a reasonable price and the house looked much better than both of us expected. It was across the street from my parents. Having them close can be good and bad. It would be nice to see them often, but it is scary to think how much time my Dad would spend at my house if we were within walking distance. Though it would be nice to have them close when we have kids. Convenient babysitters!

     One positive to this house was that our backyard trail runs through the property. I could finally own part of my trail! The owners offered to pay the taxes for this year as the house would not be available until May. They inherited the house from a parent. The house was fully paid off so they were able to present us with a payment plan to where we could just pay them every month. They even offered us a low interest rate. The price was just outside of what I wanted us to give for a home, but with their payment plan it would work. Everything was falling into place and it seemed this was meant to be. 

     Then it wasn't. At our next meeting, the owners presented us with a horrible five-year balloon plan with an astronomically high interest rate. It was a complete 180 from the previous meeting. Then they started talking about prorating the taxes. At this point, I was over it. One thing house hunting has taught me is patience. I am one to just say "forget it" when people try to weasel around. But I know with a house that sometimes you have to play the game. So, instead of telling them to shove it like I wanted to, we made a low offer down to the point where I felt we needed to be with conventional financing. They didn't take it, but at least we tried. The whole process has just been irritating so far. Multiple people have treated us like ignorant children just because we have not bought a house before. We may be first-time home buyers, but we are not dumb. I can inspect a house well enough to see what things need to be fixed and I know my budget. It doesn't take a genius to see that a house with a 17-year-old roof will need a new roof soon. And that new roofs aren't free.

     The only other interesting thing going on in life right now is that we are surrounded by baby-crazy individuals. It seems everyone we know is pregnant or just had a baby. By the way, congratulations to Jeremy and Joy Chambers on the birth of their new baby boy. Shannon has to hear about babies at work all day, I hear about them most of my days at work and now we hear about them at church. We are now nursery workers at church. I was NOT excited to be going to nursery when we were first asked, but now I actually like it. I can communicate better with the slobbering one-year-olds than I ever could with the teenage boys when I taught that class. And they cry about the same amount as the boys. Everybody thinks this is some sort of "sign" that we need to have kids. While it is good for preparation, we are not having any yet. It's not time, so don't ask.

     I will end with a quick story about some baby-crazy family members of ours. Shannon recently had a birthday and I bought her an ice cream maker. It was one of those we-all-win gifts. I gave her hints two weeks before her birthday. My hints were that we would both like it, it would make her fat and everyone would love the product. Leave it to Eber and Renee to come up with baby as an answer to my hints. I guess that does fit, but that was not what I planned for Shannon's birthday. Maybe in a few years...