Getting ready to drive down to Phoenix next week. We plan to leave Tuesday evening and travel most of the night to get to Phoenix. Brett will be traveling with us, so he can help with the driving. It has now been almost 12 years since I have been to Phoenix.
My brother's wedding will be next Friday on the 29th. While we are down there, I am hoping to look up a bunch of old friends and say hi to them - see how they are doing. And in about a week we will return to Salt Lake City.
Its a road trip!
Went to the 2008 Frozen Hog this year. In previous years, there wasn't a lot of snow, so it became a slosh through the mud - cold but rideable.
This year we got storm after storm and ended up with 2-3 feet of fresh snow right before the race. It quickly disintegrated from a bike race into a stroll in the snow, oh and i just happen to have a bicycle along. It was a 3 mile loop that we rode twice. After the first loop, I had to wonder if I should just quit, but decided that if I started this race, I am gonna finish it. It is stubbornness like this that gets idiots killed, I know. It also helps the idiot finish the race.
I wore some of my snowboarding pants to keep the spray from completely soaking the backside of my, hm... backside. But because I didn't want to get the pants caught in the chain, I rolled them up and then added the knee pads that I wear when going on downhill slopes. It left the bottom of my calves bare to the elements. Like a moose, I figured that by churning my feet enthusiastically I would keep blood running down the length of my legs and thus keep pumping warmth down there.
This would have worked if it were not for the fact that it was quite easy to fall in the snow. Which I did. Over and over again. Going down hill was possible in the trail cut by riders before me, but also easy to veer off into the side of the snowbank, halting your front tire's forward progress and sometimes twisting the wheel. Which means that you go over the handle bar, around the frame of the bike, and sometimes don't actually disentangle yourself from the bike you are trying to ride - directly into the 3 foot bank of snow exactly 20 inches on either side of the trail you are currently sliding down. My last count was 3 major crashes (where I was lying full length in the snow) and 17 minor ones where I was just standing in the snowbank with my toes growing numb while other cyclist rode pass.
It was a blast. I can't wait till next years race.
Last fall, Jon showed me an ouchie he had on his foot. It looked like a common wart to me, and since kids are somewhat susceptible to warts, I didn't think much about it. We got some wart medicine, the fast acting kind and applied it diligently to his wart.
It didn't go away. So after a couple of weeks, we took him to a podiatrist who told us that was not a wart after all but a cyst. Because his is still pretty young and has small feet, he recommended that we go to a plastic surgeon. We contacted one and got him scheduled to remove the cyst.
Last week he had the surgery. Laura went in with him as I had a big project at work and really couldn't miss any time away. Right after the operation, the doctor told us that it was in fact not a cyst at all. But rather a tumor. Of course, that made us both very anxious. The surgeon doesn't think it is malignant, nor has spread but really didn't know what caused it or where it came from.
Laura got confused between malignancy and benign and started worrying more as time passed and Jon has been home, resting and recuperating. He is has happy as a clam, and as long as he doesn't bump his toe on anything, is pretty unbothered by it. The hardest part has been to keep him resting. He wants to go run {read hop about like a frantic lovesick kangaroo} about, while Laura keeps trying to have him lie back and elevate his foot.
I had to reminder Laura that benign tumors are the lesser of the two and in all other respects Jon is a healthy, if not stubborn 7 year old. This week he gets his bandages taken off and can get his feet wet again. I know he will be happy about that.
Well, we had the pinewood derby this past weekend. I think it was fun for all. One of the tiger cubs (of which I am the leader in our den) won the derby, with the ever classic- long, thin, flat design. We had a number of the tigers (4 I believe) get to the finals so that was exciting.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, Jonathan and I both did our own cars. His was in a corvette fashion, and my car was modeled after my little green jeep. Jon's car did okay, taking a couple of second places and a third but not good enough to make it to the finals. My jeep, just like my jeep in real life, didn't really go fast. It always came in last place. But I had a number of people tell me that they liked the design.
