WTH?

       There's a race this weekend? crap. I better start riding.

       I ordered the other 3 wheels and tires on Saturday. Can't wait, they look amazing on the car. Lisa took the rest of the stuff to get powder coated today. I started putting the front end body work on. Can't wait.

Lust Level is Rising

Lisa got her Carbon Fiber!!

Not much Junk in the Trunk.

Having a wife who trains, kids, endless house projects AND a car project isn't really very smart. Luckily, Lisa is amazing and puts up with all of it and she does it all with a smile and a great attitude. I often wonder how I would have handled our life if the roles were reversed. At least when the car is done she can boil the tires on it. If the house ever gets done, all we can do is live in it!!!!!

By the way, yes I know the wheels aren't straight. It hasn't been aligned yet.

Marriage is still on

It may have been touch and go for a while. I told Lisa we could ride to Richland Center and back and it would be about 4 hrs. Well, we arrived at the Kwik Trip in 2:45, not exactly the 2 hrs I had planned. I guess the GPS I was born with didn't calculate properly. So after a bottle fill up of Dr. Pepper and a bag of BBQ potato chips we were off for home. So I says to Lisa, "We're going to be close to 100  miles today." Silence. Suffering. Mild bonking. We rolled into Denzer at 96 miles and had a decision to make. I knew what I was going to do but Lisa surprised me when she said she was good to go for finishing up with the 100. It was ugly, not real smart but in the end it was done. Not a real huge feat as far as riding goes. Some people do 100 miles all the time. I don't. Lisa don't, it was her 2nd one ever. It's really just a meaningless goal that means something to people who care about that sort of thing. Bottom line is race results, I guess. I sure don't know how I'm going to pull off that NUE race!

Trainer?

I think I've finally weaned myself from it. It's kinda' lonely riding outside as Liza isn't spinning stationary miles next to me. That's about the best thing of riding the trainer, I don't get dropped by her.

Our car got painted while we were in Texas. The picture isn't that good. Our hood is almost done and it's so bad ass you won't believe it. I never thought I would have custom anything! This has been an amazing process so far. I can't say enough about how awesome it's been to work with The Ring Brothers.

Northshore (Texas)

Our final MTB destination was pretty cool. A big loop around the park along with a few wrong turns took us about 2 hrs to do. Lots of cool trail including Lisa's first big drop. We were ripping downhill and I saw the drop coming but it didn't look different until I was over the edge. It was a little different as it was sheer cliff for about 2 feet then the slope. Lisa was right behind me and ended up rolling it as well. She didn't think it was as cool as I did, even 10 minutes later. Maybe it's a guy thing but anytime I'm with guys, after stuff like that happens we tend to get pretty pumped up after the almost dead shock wears off.
  So today we'll do a little ride and then start packing for the ride back. I promised everyone that we will never do another 7 hrs straight (Emporia, IA to Dallas, TX) like we did on the way down. How amazing was that feat? Add onto that we consisted of 1 male, 1 Female and 2 kids under the age of 8!!! We would've made it all the way to my Dad's if there hadn't been an accident and the ensuing traffic jam.

Lisa vs. Tree

This ain't nothin'. Jerry knows how to smash fingers.

My apologies

to the State of Texas. It was sunny and in the 80's for the past week and now that we're here it's only going to be in the 50's and rain. That's very typical for us when anyone from our family comes down to visit my Dad. Yesterday was decent (85 deg) but today it's cloudy, spitting rain and 51 deg. Oh well. It started raining right when we left for our ride but thankfully it stopped after 15 minutes or so. There are 2 separate trail systems within easy riding distance from my Dad's house, so we started out at Squabble Creek. It was our first ride on our new bikes and they were amazing!!! I've been fortunate in that every new bike I get seems to be better than the last. However, this years Epic absolutely blew me away! I don't know what they did different but it worked. Acceleration is so quick coming out of the corners, I was grinning ear to ear the whole time. Lisa was riding so dang fast I was working to stay with her right up to the point where she drilled a tree. We were still rippin' along pretty good after that as well but the taste of the tree (not literally) ratcheted the intensity down just a bit. We had to ride on a pretty major road to get to the other trailhead and, of course, I got us lost but we made it. Good times for sure. Hopefully it won't be our last MTB ride here this year as a few more days like this would be all kinds of awesome.