It's All Her Fault

Here I am, minding my own business, having insecurity issues about this lame ass blog when ThomP has to go out and be all brilliant with his "Being Kimbo Slice" (I put that in there so that I might "accidentally" get a few google search hits!) post last week. I have a hard time putting even the most basic caption with a picture and here he is, out there having inspired diarrhea of the mouth. Maybe Miriam is the key to his success, what with her being the catalyst of the post after all. I guess it's time for Marcy to pick up her game. So there you have it, if this blog is lame, it's Marcy's fault. Damn her.

I was getting ready to do my yearly shave/wax (two different links there) my legs post but am now thinking that it's much too subdued. The bar is too high. Maybe if I use a chain saw for the initial clipping than I might be onto something. I'll have to give that some thought.

Over the weekend, I dragged my parents and brother out for another ride. My youngest brother is getting a bit rotund so I figure it's my civic duty to drag them out as much as possible to whup them into shape. Last week, I took them on a much too hard trail so this week I dialed the difficulty back and took them to the Schmid Preserve instead. It's still plenty technical in places and fun for all but not so difficult that inexperienced riders constantly feel like they're on the verge of death. I think I made a good choice.

Darren is making the transition to clipless pedals quite nicely. This was his third time out on them and he didn't have a single unclipping, slow motion fall mishap. (which is actually kind of sad) In fact, he cleared some pretty technical sections that I didn't even expect him to attempt. Very nice.

My dad, on the other hand, is having a bit more trouble acclimating. Maybe it's like introducing old farts to computers, the technology is just too advanced. In this case, the technological difference between using toe straps and clipless pedals is that you twist your foot to get out instead of pulling back. Yes, that is a pretty daunting task indeed. The good thing about this is that it gives me ample opportunity to have fun at his expense. It's a family tradition to be assholes to each other on every possible occasion so who am I to break tradition.

This was the first of many falls for my dad. In this case he ran straight into that small tree. Thankfully he landed between two pointy rocks. No hip replacements required.

Then, a bit later on, while preparing to dismount, he unclipped his left foot and instead of putting it down he decided to be creative and fall to his right instead. It was super funny at first but thankfully I followed the "make sure they aren't hurt before laughing at them" rule and held off laughing because he had fallen on a 4" diameter stump that left a nice contusion on his right thigh. Of course, once I realized it didn't puncture a lung or sever any arteries he was fair game for ridicule.

Oh wait, based on this picture, Darren did have one unclipping issue. There is a section near the house where you have to cross a stone wall in the middle of a 90 degree turn. It's difficulty is increased because there are a couple of ill placed trees at the apex of the turn (I need to cut them). Darren made it half way into the turn but stalled and teetered over onto a big rock. Once again, I yelled to see if he was ok. When he said yes I immediately yelled to not move because I needed to take a picture. It didn't look like a comfortable position to be in but photo ops come first, family second.