I’ve been getting a lot more bicycling in lately — Xenia, just up the road from Dayton, claims to be the bicycle capital of the world. I have no idea what that means, but they really do have a fantastic collection of bike-friendly trails that meet in their downtown area. On this particular Saturday, we started there, and headed towards Springfield — one of the four directions from Xenia Station. It was a perfect day for a ride — gorgeous weather, shady trees, mostly-friendly passers-by, and film-worthy scenes involving boston terriers chasing kids on bikes.

Mostly, though, there was an old bridge that we hit five miles in…

See how pretty that is? Right. 12 miles or so past that, turn around, come back, get to the car and do a loop around the parking lot to hit an even 35 miles. On mountain bikes and in bad shape, that’s the longest workout I’ve had since the half-marathon. Got home, relaxed, felt lots of pain and then realized I had no idea where my camera was. Right. The little Canon SD1100 that I got to replace the little Canon SD1000 that I got to replace the little Canon SD800 that I got a really long time ago. It’s always on my hip, except when I don’t wear a belt, and I strap it to my bike’s handlebars. Nope, not there either.

Now, see, I HAVE a picture of the bride up there a paragraph or so. So you’d think that means I found my camera, right? No. After driving back out to look for it, I came BACK to my house to pick up my bike and did the 5 miles BACK to the bridge (the last place I knew I had it — at least I took pictures coming and going so I knew it wasn’t farther along the path). No dice. At this point I’ve done over 45 miles on the bike and I’m in absolutely no shape for that. No camera. If anyone finds it, send it my way. The last few pics should look something like the one above, which I took with my camera just a couple of hours ago.

Nighty-night.

—Chip

Ah, the Kentucky Derby Infield. One of these days I’ll get the $1000 seats, and hit the Barnstable-Brown party the night before, but until then, the crazy people are still tons of fun. Thanks Ma and Pa for ferrying us around and hooking us up with a few meals!

Hope everyone had a good time… I stole pics from Catrina and put them up with the ones from my and mom’s camera’s. If anyone has any I missed, lemme know!

Yay!

OK, I’ll update this with derby pics as soon as I get ‘em updated, but in the mean time you HAVE to see these pics of Joslyn and Vicki at the Kentucky Derby Marathon (yep, Vicki ran the whole 26). Congrats Joslyn on beating Vicki! Those are by far the cutest running photos I’ve ever seen.

I don’t look completely idiotic in my pics and neither does Joe. Mike, Butch, Jessica, and Emily all have pics up too. I think there are pics from the Country Music Marathon, too, but I can’t find them just now.

Update: The brightroom people keep changing the way they track the photos, so if you clicked a link and there were only stock pictures of the finish, it’s not my fault. I think I have it fixed, but if they change it again, let me know and I’ll fix it again!

Cut my hair. Donated it to Locks of Love. Somewhere there are some pictures of Ana chopping it all off… I still scare myself in the mirror every morning. Fortunately my bird managed to recognize me after only a quick moment of hesitation.

Also, I actually did manage to finish the KY Derby Mini Marathon, with my brother Joe. Our results are up here… we finished in 3 hours, 35 minutes which, considering the longest I’d run prior to that was a 5k the week before, and I’d only ever gone that far four or five times, I think that’s pretty good! Congrats to Jennifer who did the half-marathon in Nashville at the same time, and John, Vicki, Mike, Butch, Cathy, and anyone else that was walking/running that day!

One of the key indicators of my general direction in life is undoubtedly how much TV I watch. In the last few months I’ve actually watched precious little, relatively. But there are a few important TV events worth mentioning:

First, Battlestar Galactica ended. I was about 12 episodes behind when this happened, so I spent the last few days catching up, and when I finally hit the end, I was pretty pleased. Was it a perfect series? No… but it was probably the most finely crafted complete science fiction series ever. I say “complete” because I think Firefly could have been better, if it wasn’t pulled early, and I can’t compare it to things like Dr. Who, Star Trek (well maybe Voyager), or any of the shows that don’t ever really end.

Speaking of which, Firefly competes in my heart with the show Cupid, for the best TV ever that was brutally cut short by vapid TV execs. I saw it years ago, fell in love with it and, of course, it went away for no readily apparent reason. The basic premise is thus: a guy claims he’s cupid, sent to earth to live as a mortal until he can cause 100 couples to fall in love. With the anti-comic relief of his psychiatrist (because you have to have one of those if you think you’re a god), he pretty much just goes about the task.

Great show. and it’s BACK! I DVR’ed the first one tonight (couldn’t watch it), but I highly recommend that the four people that read this post should immediately A) find a way to watch the new remake and B) find a way to watch the old show. I can help with both, just lemme know.

Unfortunately, though, while setting the DVR I did notice the end of the Dancing with the Stars episode that was on just before it. I thought a shout-out to my personal hero Steve Wozniak was in order, since he got booted from the show tonight. [warning: that last sentence may have been a spoiler] I may hate reality TV, Steve, but you’re my hero, so I watched almost three minutes of it for you! Better luck at Segway Polo!