Father's Day

I had a great Father's Day. I went for a ride, cooled off with a swim, opened some presents, then went out to lunch. It was a wonderful treat of a day.

Let me brag on the gifts. Vic and the kids bought me a waffle iron with removeable griddle plates. Like a lot of Dads, I have a signature breakfast dish, which is waffles. My Dad made S.O.S.; i.e. sausage meat and cream gravy over biscuits; i.e. Sh** on a shingle. But I make waffles -- that's my gig. About every other weekend, I wake up and make waffles for breakfast, usually while everyone else tries to get a little more sleep. But when finished, I hate cleaning the waffle iron, because you can neither submerge it nor remove the dirty parts for cleaning. The removeable plates on the new iron take care of this and make life easier. And Vic also bought me an armband case for my iPod, which will be a huge improvement over my homemade case that only works with my old iPod. Here's me and the kids after the lavishing of gifts:

Perhaps you remember the 2nd sentence of the post where I mentioned that I started the day with a ride? Of course you do. I started turning cranks at 5:45a and finished 50 miles later. I felt really strong. Since I'm running 3-4 days a week, I could feel the increased power in my quads. I also remembered to take a photo of something that I've ridden past dozens of times:

If you ride, you probably know exactly what this is. For the rest of you, it's a sewer access cover; i.e. manhole. But not just any old manhole. These are tire-flattening, hand-jarring, rim-taco-ing manholes. The reason is that the road has been resurfaced, adding 5-6 inches of asphalt and recessing the manhole. If you hit this on a bike, you just might ruin your whole day. And at 5:45a, they're a little hard to see. In conclusion, and in honor of my father -- Be careful, as it's a jungle out there.