De-spoked, try then buy, still barking, race ragged

I had three stops on my way home from work on Friday.  First stop was at Sports Authority where I bought 30 additional pounds of plate weight using the $15 same as cash card I received in the mail.  The thought is this would allow me to potentially post a 345 pound dead lift at some point.

After that it was off to Sam’s Club to buy our bi-weekly bulk items and then finally to Wal-Mart.  The dead battery in the Tacoma was bought there a year ago.  I hadn’t realized that I bought the top of the line battery they sell, the Maxx, which has a three year free replacement policy.  It was a pleasant surprise to get a replacement battery for free.

While I was waiting for them to process the exchange I instantly spotted a PERFECT candidate for peopleofwalmart.com   I just wasn’t quite sure how to get her picture without her noticing. She was a very heavy black female.  She had an absolutely awful wig on that looked like a corn row version of a bee hive.  She accented her look wit a small gem in her nose, elegantly painted toe nails with a ring on almost every toe.  She definitely would have made the cut and been on the site.

I started off my Saturday very early.  I got up and went to the 6 AM club run by the beach.  Ali didn’t go since she was running the 10K on Sunday.  We had planned it out the night before that once I got back we would pack up our bikes and go ride/swim at the water park, reversing the days because of the race.  Ali said I should call her on the way back from the run.

I did a 7 mile run that went well, averaging a 9:15 pace.  I ran with someone I never met before, it just happened to turn out he is the same age as me.  He was the talkative type which works out very well for me since I usually need to be jump started into conversation.  Even with starting that early I sweated my ass off.  My t-shirt was totally soaked at the end.

So after I got in the truck I called home to let Ali know I was leaving and also to ask if she wanted me to get her ice tea from DD.  No answer.  Hmmm ok maybe she is out with the dogs or in the bathroom.  I try multiple times to call both the home number and Ali’s cell number during the drive home, no answer.  Now I was getting annoyed.  I knew that the likely cause was Ali was in the bedroom still asleep.  We have the phone ringer turned off in the bedroom and her cell phone, which is always by her side, always has the sound turned off for some weird reason.

So I walk in the house about 8:15 and see the bedroom door is closed.  Yep, she is asleep.  It was impossible for me to hide my frustration when I opened the door and told her to get up, we were supposed to be leaving in 15 minutes or so.  Ali tried to redirect the heat, saying that I didn’t turn on the house alarm and the back slider was unlocked.

I told her I find it very annoying that we talked about what we were going to do the night before and she decided to not set an alarm to make sure she was awake.  I said if she had made plans to run with her girlfriends she would make sure she was up but for some reason I don’t get that same courtesy.  It wasn’t a great way to start the day, Ali being annoyed that I was annoyed with her.

I have a very simple rule, if you tell me you are going to do something, do it. Under promise and over deliver works really well in all aspects of life.

So we hurriedly got ready to leave.  The reason behind my haste is the crowds at the water park.  We need to get our bike ride done by around the time the park opens so we have easy access to the swimming lanes. It also allows us to eat lunch before the lines get to epic length.  Makes sense to me.

I decided to take my good old Dawes road bike for this ride.  My Trek road bike while being free, lighter, possessing a much better shifter system and being all around “cooler” has one wart, it’s too small for me. My Dawes has a bigger frame and I wanted to see how it felt on a ride in comparison to the Trek.

It didn’t take long for me to feel the difference.  Despite the clunky shifting, 5 pounds of extra weight and me too looks the bike actually felt more comfortable because of it’s additional size.  My riding position felt more natural.

Ali did a nice job of keeping up with me during the ride, on the return trip I even let her lead for about a mile and a half so she could get some non-drafting experience.  She managed to keep her speed at 17-18 mph.

I then pulled back ahead to lead the rest of the way back.  Then it happened.  All of a sudden the back end of my bike started swerving like mad.  I quickly glanced down and thought I blew out a tire.  I slowed down rapidly and managed to unclip one foot so i didn’t fall into the road.  Luckily Ali was able to react quickly and not crash into the back of me which would have been a double disaster.

I laid the bike down and tried to figure out what exactly happened.  As I looked at the rear wheel I saw several spokes hanging.  Evidently at least one spoke broke and caused a chain reaction where about a half dozen more snapped.  When the spokes left loose it changed the geometry of the wheel and actually allowed it to get pressed hard against the frame of the bike.  The wheel was pretty much locked in place.

Not ever having this happen before I came up with a plan of action.  I used our bike tools to remove the hanging spoke segments, thinking that I may possibly be able to ride the bike back slowly.  Well removing the broken spokes did nothing to straighten the wheel, something I should have realized right away.  So I told Ali to ride back to the park, get the truck and come pick me up.  I told her I would start walking that direction with bike in hand.

With the rear wheel locked up I literally had to carry the bike the entire way.  With my bike shoes on the only manageable option was to walk on the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the road.  There were a number of bikers that came up on me as I lugged my broken mount forward.  Without fail every single group asked if I needed help.  As soon as I told them my spokes broke they knew I was f’d.  I thanked them for stopping and that help was on the way.

I was happy to see Ali pull up with the truck maybe 20 minute later.  Walking while carrying a bike is not exactly fun.

We headed back to the park and were greeted by a HUGE line to get in even though it was only slightly after 10 am.  Once again our family pass card saved the day.  We flashed it and were able to instantly skip a line that had at least 60-70 people in it, pretty damn sweet.

So the swim was the last leg of my 3 sport brick for the day.  I pushed my total swim to 1600 meters, averaging 8:15 to 8:30 for 400 meter segments.  I was quite pooped by the end of it. We didn’t waste any time grabbing lunch since I had a bunch of stuff to still get done at home plus we had another stop on the way back.   Ali had asked if we could stop at the bike shop so I could see the bike she was interested in.

The shop was pretty busy at the time.  Ali took me over to the rack and showed me the potential purchase.  It looked like a nice bike.  We talked to one of the employees there.  I told him my concerns that with Ali being a novice bike rider, I feared she could have issues riding in the forward position on the tri bars where stability is more difficult.

He suggested that maybe we should rent a tri bike so she can test it out.  Hey, that is a great idea.  A try before you buy strategy makes solid sense here.  So while they got the rental bike ready we walked around.

Ali pointed to one of the bikes on the rack and said something like “Wow, this one has two gears down low.  I wonder what the point of that is?”  What she was referring to were the two small gears on a derailleur, something all bikes that can be shifted possess.  I could not help but make a joke about Ali’s comment.  It struck me as ironically funny that Ali has filled her head with all of this detail about the tiny difference in angles and bike geometry but she had no idea what a derailleur looks like.

Well Ali didn’t like my joking about her bike ignorance and started to get angry.  I guess in retrospect I understand her anger but at the time I growled back that we were at the bike store to appease her and her giving me shit about a joke was not good as I walked away.

So we got the bike home and Ali soon get geared up and took it out for a spin.  At first we had her just do laps around the neighbors circular driveway to make sure she got the hang of where everything was.  When she felt ok she headed up our street to the end and back, about a 4 mile round trip.  She returned saying she felt good on the bike except for the seat, it was very uncomfortable and borderline painful.

I took the Bontrager seat off Ali’s Dawes and put it on the tri bike.  She went out for another 4 mile loop and said it felt MUCH better.  Later on that evening I went out with her to the end of the road and back to see how she was doing.  She did a nice job of keeping her speed up although she was doing a lot of veering when she was down on the tri bars.  I would expect this to get better with experience.

I at least felt somewhat better about Ali  being able to use a tri bike with more practice.  She reported that the riding position felt very comfortable.  The next step I charged her with is seeing if the bike shop owners that she is friendly with are willing to “help” us a little more on the price.  Seeing the price tags on some of the bikes in there makes me think they can afford to move a little  bit more.

Saturday night was consumed mostly by race prep.  This was going to be a large race with a lot of moving parts.

We arrived on site Sunday morning at around 5:30 am and the fun started right away.  It seemed like there was a lot of confusion right off the bat.  Once everything was set up the confusion didn’t end.  This race was one of those where there are walkers and runners. The walkers aren’t timed.  Even so some of them got timing chips that were assigned to runners which lead to problems of course.  We had a myriad of issues coming in at the registration tables although with a larger race, you expect to see more issues.

Despite being asked to fix problems pretty much non-stop we managed to keep a pleasant demeanor through out.  After all, in most situations if a runner comes up with a problem it normally isn’t because they screwed up, somebody else did.

I had to scramble to the start line to get things going.  I had the megaphone in hand, expecting to hand it off to either the race director or the club president who starts a lot of the events. Well the club president was busy trying to video the start and the race director was kind of short circuiting due to sleep deprivation because he was up all night setting up the course.  He was kind of freaking out that we HAD to start the race but we were only 20 seconds past the official 7:30 start time.

I was surprised he didn’t want to say a few words, you know, thanks for coming, great turn out, have fun.  He just wanted to say “go” basically.  I told him he was getting delirious so I did something I never did before, I started the race. I held up the megaphone and said very simply “Ok we are getting ready to start the race……. on your mark, get set, GO!” unleashing the mob of humanity down the street.  It was bizarre how that came to be.

Timing the race went relatively well but once results started getting posted more human error was showing it’s self.  I had men that were in the system as women, people with incorrect bib numbers and even a never before seen problem where the system assigned the same bib number to two different runners.  Unfortunately one of them finished in 4th place overall.  There was a mad scramble by me to fix that right before the award ceremony started.

As I mentioned Ali ran the 10K.  She had said before the race her goal was to complete the distance in under an hour, something she never did before.  I was excited for her as she crossed the line in 59 minutes and change setting a new PR for that distance.  The conditions for the run were not easy with bright sun and high humidity.

Despite the multiple issues I had, the good news is the participants themselves seemed to all love the event which is all that matters in the big picture.

It took a long time until we got off the race site. By the time we got home it was close to 11.  I was tied up doing post race stuff until mid-afternoon, it was annoying.  Much of the time was spent trying to troubleshoot some issues I was having exporting data for use by 3rd parties.

It looks like my sonic, bark inhibiting bird house is a fail.  The chihuahuas seem to be barking about as much as ever.  I went down to the fence where the birdhouse is hanging to do some testing.  The little runts were squawking away as they normally do but the unit was not firing off any bark disrupting noise.  So I stood to the side of it and said “woof”.  Bang, the red led flashes and the birdhouse sends out the sound.  I could tell the dogs heard it as they stopped barking and had a confused look.

When they started barking again I would WOOF into the house again to send another shot of silent noise.  My theory is the designers of the sonic birdhouse did not tune it to detect the high pitched squeal of a miniature chihuahua.  After all, most normal people would not keep this type of dog outside.  So for now I guess I can try to manually fire off the box when the dogs are going nuts but of course this does nothing to make me feel better about the situation.

The 3 dogs were left outside the ENTIRE weekend.  Late on Sunday I was out in the side yard doing something and my neighbor was actually outside, you don’t see her outside much.  On cue the dogs started barking at me and she actually came around to the side and called out the nosiest one’s name.  I guess that is her effort at training it.

I saw this as a rare opportunity and I yelled across the fence that it looks like the bark stopper isn’t working at all. The dogs are still barking.  She says in a surprised tone, “The dogs are STILL barking?’  This instantly angered the piss out of me.  Unless my neighbor is partially deaf she knows damn well that the dogs are still barking.  She also obviously dismissed her promises to “work” on the problem and even possibly put up a visible barrier on the fence to address the problem.  She has done nothing and if anything leaves the dogs outside more than ever.

I shot back at her in a tone that had absolutely zero shards of friendliness in it “YES they are still barking. They bark ALL the time whenever anyone is outside, ALL the time..”  I turned around and walked inside without saying anything else.  There should be no doubt left in her mind just how much the situation is bothering me after that exchange.