Fall approacheth

It's been a while, certainly the longest "pause" of posting for many months. I'm still alive.

Fall is approaching. You can see it in the cottonwood leaves that are turning yellow, hear it in the neighborhood as the kids are going to bed at a decent hour again instead of staying up and running around the streets in the dark hours.

I did my annual triathlon this past Saturday, kind of a season closer and yearly check-up. I turned in a time that was only 15 seconds off what I posted last year, though there was another old guy that snuck in ahead of me in the closing miles, so I was 2nd in my age group, and 9th overall.

The off-season blues haven't set in yet, maybe because the weather is still great.

I've been building up an old bike frame, and it's near completion -- just a few more pieces to finish it out. A pair of used wheels I bought had some issues that are being sorted out -- an axle that was damaged in shipping on the front wheel, and the rear being badly out of true, which revealed a rounded nipple, which revealed damaged threads on the spoke, so that needs to be replaced. They were cheap, so I shouldn't complain.

My wife asked me a couple days ago if she could hijack my blog for the month of September, kind of a vacation from posting, if you will. She's got some things bumping around in her head. She did the tri this past Saturday as well. So she will likely introduce herself soon, my first guest-poster.

Yesterday evening my wife and I went to my daughter's school for their meet-the-teachers night. After running around to all the classrooms and introducing ourselves, gathering the information from each, and signing their parent-information sheets, we stopped in the office to turn in our volunteer background-check forms (yes, they screen every volunteer with the state patrol to make sure we're not convicted sex offenders). And in the office was the principal's Specialized road bike. He'd made quite a point of talking about how he is very committed to the health and well-being of the students of this middle school, and that he himself rides his bike or walks the three miles each way to the school EVERY day. So I took a look at the bike, very well equipped for potential dark commutes.

He came in just as we were about to leave, and we talked much about his journey of losing over 100 lbs through riding and walking, his progress to longer distances, which has led to his (and his family's) participation in the Seattle-to-Portland ride, and his first triathlon just a couple weeks ago (where we were volunteering). We talked about how he is wanting to start a triathlon club at the school, with an event that the kids can take part in... Does this just seem fortuitous? We gave him a Lucky Cause Sports business card, talked about what we do as promoters, and offered anything we can do to help out.

I see good things coming out of this.