One down, but one up on the podium...

Tristan was still not feeling up to racing today at Birch with the KOM
crew.
But...
Jaydi flew through the U11 course to gather another first place finish
and the additional honor of series Champion!
Congratulations Jaydi!

Tristan

Wow - we've had quite a couple of days. Thursday morning I brought
Tristan to the clinic because his strep wasn't clearing up. They did
tests and sent us to Winnipeg immediately to see a pediatric
cardiologist because of the slight chance it could be rheumatic fever.
We closed our garage sale, they saw us at Children's Hospital in the
afternoon, and they booked us for a heart ultrasound for Friday (this
morning). We stayed at my folks overnight (no pyjamas or
toothbrushes). We just got home Friday 8:30pm.

Nutshell - he probably doesn't have rheumatic fever, just a nasty strep
infection. They'll treat it as if he has rheumatic until the
rheumatologist confirms or denies the diagnosis.

Thanks to God - things worked out with subs at school, finding a way to
make all this work. Many people have been praying for him.

Linc

Time for a tent.

Abe: I tested our new camper today.
Lincoln: Oh, how did it go?

Abe: It went off without a hitch.

Wanted: Orange Bike

It's Ramona here, hijacking Linc's blog in hopes that some of his biker friends can help me out.  Apparently the garage no longer has room for my disco-era purple Norco bush pilot and a new one is to take it's place.  I'm so confused as to what kind of a bike to get.  I've ruled out the cruiser bikes since I really want to be able to trail ride but have no idea what I should be looking for or how to size the frame correctly. 

Right now, my bush pilot is a 19" frame and has been adjusted to "fit" me but I sort of sit over my peddles now because the frame is too big.  I don't feel like I have great control on trails and my mozo's apparently aren't very great shocks...

I have a lot of shoulder/ neck/writs/back/hips and knee pain so I need something that is nice to my body.  My physio therapist gave me a big lecture about needing to learn to become a cyclist (and listed many reasons why this would be good and Linc says he didn't pay her) and that I won't be running again (she says she had no idea that the rest of my family are cyclists).


I want to use the bike to commute to the store/library/physio/etc but also get exercise and ride the trails.  Any ideas?  Right now we're thinking either a 29-er with front suspension or a full suspension bike.  Any thoughts or advice on that?



Anyone have anything for sale (I could even work it in so you could have my collector's bike in partial trade)

Oh- and I really would like an orange bike but will not be basing my opinion on the color like I have seen a mom and son do in a bike shop

Spaghetti Spokes?

I snapped a spoke at Grand Beach last weekend.  It took me 30 seconds to wind up around the others and continue racing, and 30 hours now to rebuild the wheel. 
Ok, I've only spent about 2 hours completely taking the wheel apart and rebuilding it.  I've got them all mildly tensioned and beautiful, ready to true (radially and laterally).  Someone is going to say, "why didn't you just replace the broken spoke?"  Well all the spokes nearest to the cogs were seriously chewed up from overshifting (3 times in races last year) so I wanted to replace all 8 of those.
Leonard Zinn has been my technical assistant.  His book "Zinn and the art of Mountain Bike Maintenance" makes it look easy and it actually seems to be working.  It's my first wheelbuild, and I'm excited.
These pics were taken before tensioning the spokes.

One year later, one more cyclist

This looks a lot like Paulos one year ago, scooting along on the tinish
(little) blue bike with no pedals. Only now it's Meski! She's suddenly
taken a real interest and is actually lifting her feet, countersteering,
and leaning into the corners.
Paulos has come full circle and is now into driving more serious vehicles.

Photos courtesy the mother, as usual.

Spring has challenged our sledding.

We had to use the accumulated snow in the front (north) of our house to
make a proper place to sled yesterday.
After that, we gave in and had our first wiener roast of the year.