Mass Transit

So living in CA this bridge collapse is a big deal on the news around here. Close to 200-250k cars are going to have to find a different route or take mass transit. The governator declared all mass transit free for today. Which got me thinking.. what if mass transit in urban areas were free everyday during rush hour. Would it alleviate traffic? Would it be worth it instead of building 8 and 10 lane highways all over the place? Who knows but it may be worth a try.

Happy Anniverisary

Happy Anniversary to Jen and I (it was actually on the 26th but I'm slow to blog). It's been four years now. Crazy stuff. Our anniversary's have become so common place that Jen stayed in MN instead of hanging out with me. Anyway, time is flying and we only have like 8 months left in CA and it's back to MN.

Entertaining Weekend

Not so much entertaining but rather we were entertaining Jens brother Matt and our neighbor from MN Jen. Jen took them on the standard Windcheater Mystery Manson, 17 mile drive and Monerary Bay Aquarium Thursday and Friday. Saturday it started out raining which sucked but we made the trek to San Fran just for something to do and maybe scout for Sunday. But it cleared up and they got some good views from the Golden Gate bridge and Alcatraz. We had to scamper back to Sunnyvale to make our dinner reservation. After dinner we went to a comedy club called RoosterTFeathers. The comedians there were friggen hilarious. I was really impressed with the talent for such a small establishment. I wish I had a memory so I could steal some of the jokes cuz some of them were awesome. So we found another something to do here when times are slow.

Sunday we did the usual visiting Muir Woods and San Fran. I'm getting really itchy to get out mountain biking again.

Find the Squirrel

 

LCS Terminated

I got out of a meeting today and read an email stating that the government terminated the LCS contract with Lockheed. Read I worked on LCS a few years ago so it's sad to see LM lose it. The first ship was just christened last september. The mood went from the feeling of a major success to flop in a very short time when news got out that the ship was 2X over budget. I've heard bits and pieces as to why the program got so out of control but I'll leave it out of this blog because I don't know what's accurate. I was really surprised to hear how much the programs cost had over run. I wonder why safe guards weren't in place to notify managers much sooner as to how much the program was projected to over run so something could have been done earlier. Who knows.

I'll be keeping an eye on how well General Dynamics performs on their LCS contract. Lockheed built the first LCS ship and General Dynamics started a year after. Even if they do perform on it I think they'll be able to look at the mistakes LM made and correct them so they'll look better.

Bye Bye Exploder

 

Well the time has finally come to say good bye to the Exploder. Our relationship started while an Ex and I were shopping for a truck. I was driving from Willmar to Montivideo and winter was fast approaching. I didn't think my winter beater would make it through what ended up being one of the worst winters ever. The sales person said "you should take a look at this" and he show'd me a 2 year old Explorer with low mileage. I was pretty skeptical to trade my '94 Talon for it, after all I'd be losing my chick magnet. (It's almost as bad as Ben trading his Mustang for a Suberu) I even had a car full of girls honk trying to pull me over when I had my girl friend in the car. My ex pushed hard to get me to trade it for the exploder. So a few days later I broke down and traded it. Almost immediatly I regretted it. And to make matters worse the girl packed up and moved out me two weeks later. I was pretty bitter, so bitter in fact I didn't care if the stupid Exploder really did explode. I had little patients to wash it or keep it clean. But I guess it's the end of an era of sorts. It got me through college, a couple stolen stereo's, and it plowed through a few snow banks. So in all it wasn't too bad.

Headache Rant

Since I got to Sunnyvale I've had a headache about what seems 50% of the time. I've been taking 5-10 Advil a day. I think my body is getting immune to it. The doctor says it's just the stress of having a new baby and the move out here and what not. And people wonder why the Voodoo doctors are so popular. At least an attempt at a diagnosis would be nice. Maybe it's a tumor or maybe it's the smog here, but when I got back to MN my headaches get worse. I've backed off so much soda and switched to water with no avail. It's driving me crazy. Currently I've had a headache since I got back from MN. It's mostly just a dull pain in the back of my head and it intensifies from time to time rendering my day useless. And beings I'm blogging about it now, it's starting to intensify rendering me an unproductive slob for the day.

Weekend Recap - Stinson Beach & Easter Sunday Church

I think my head is still spinning from driving about 20 miles worth of twisting turning rising and falling hills. We went to Stinson beach on Saturday, which started out as a terrible day. In Sunnyvale it was 65 and sunny, as we got closer to Stinson beach it got super foggy and cold. Driving on mountain sides with the fog was pretty slow. I was wondering if we'd ever get there. When we got there it was so bad that we decided to eat lunch and figure out what to do. Thank God the fog cleared and it warmed a bit. The view there is absolutely gorgeous with cliffs along the coast. I'm not sure how high it was but when we were leaving we could see ships way out in the ocean. It was pretty awesome. Definitely on the list of "Must Sees" if you visit Cali. The scenery is awesome.

Sunday we got talked into going to church with Janel and Jon. Jen babysits their son, Mason. We got to church at 9 and found out the service was changed to 10 for Easter Sunday. Thankfully they had a playground for the kids. The service ended up being 1.5 hours long. Hayley was getting major antsy towards the end. I think church should have a rule, all services have to be under an hour. But it was a Lutheran church and after attending it there's no way I'd switch to Catholic. I'm rooted in the Lutheran faith I guess. When I get back to Minny maybe I'll think about getting confirmed.

I Need More BLOG BELL

So I've been dropping the ball blogging. I don't know that anyone can keep up to Ben, the Tech King, over at Studio711. I have so many ideas for blogging and putting stuff on the web but I just don't have the time to put it together. I'm contemplating starting a mountain biking video podcast of the different trails around here but my video editing skills are not quite up for the task. Unless one has a log of experience with video editing one can spend many of hours for a few minutes of video and with my slooowww pc rendering would be horrendous. Maybe it's time for an upgrade. But I'm getting way off track.

Last weekend the fam and I flew back to MN for my brothers 40th surprise B-Day party. We didn't tell anyone we were coming so I think we added to the surprise a bit. It was a blast to hang out with everyone and to talk to some of my brothers old buddy's too. The only problem with a weekend trip is the short amount of time to hang out with everyone. I also got a headache from the flying that lasted two days. I seriously can't stand these headaches.

Anyway, I would've blogged sooner but I keep waiting for the pics from the party so I can use them on my blog. But I seemed to misplaced my camera. If anyone finds it please return it.

Bombing the Hills

Now that we're getting passed the beginners level and into the intermediate level of mountain biking we're spending most of our biking up hill. The first time we were on the trials we rode the breaks hard not knowing what was coming. Now we're almost full speed bombing down the mountain. I'll try and throw a jump in here and there but I still have visions of face planting when I was a kid so I chicken out most of the time. Jumping can get hairy cuz the trails are only 4 feet across and any mistake means a big fall down the side of the hill. The aggressive factor goes way down after having kids but it's still a blast. Except for the 30 minute climb at the end of the ride to get back to the top. Even in the lowest gear this climb is brutal. Our goal was to climb this hill without stopping or having our feet touch the ground by the end of the year. We both did last weekend so that was our big accomplishment.

Early Bird

The last few weeks I've been working many hours and working late which cuts into Family time. So I'm going to try and change my schedule and start working at 4am - 3pm-ish. We'll see how it goes. Getting up is pretty hard these last couple days. Getting home and seeing Hayley for an hour before she goes to bed sucks. But it's almost as bad being home and super tired also so it's a fine balance between sleep and Hayley time. I've also slacked a bit on working out the last week but I did fit in a 9 mile run on Saturday. So far that's been my longest run in one shot. I'm going to attempt a helf marathon this spring and again in the fall to see if I improve on my time. Annnd I'm way off topic so this getting into work early is already showing it's effects.

Happy B-Day Mom, Ginger, Mike ...

So yesterday it would've been my moms birthday. One thing she didn't do was forget peoples birthdays. Me on the other hand, it's my specialty. I make a News Years resolution every year to remember peoples birthdays and to send them cards. So when Jen said it was moms birthday yesterday it hit me that I missed my sisters birthday earlier this month. CRAP!!

I have a plan from this point on not to forget. I'm going to enter all events on my Google Calendar and have it email me a week before. We'll see how it goes the rest of the year.

It's Wednesday!!

What happened to Monday and Tuesday. The week is flying by. The weather here is the best it's been since we got here. Daylight savings time is awesome. The extra hour of sunlight means I can do a lot more with Hayley outdoors when I get home. Hayley runs for the door as soon as I get home. I don't think she likes our apartment that much. She'd much rather hang out outside. If her shoes aren't on she'll run around the apartment trying to find them and she doesn't give up. After she finds her shoes and gets them on she'll bring my shoes to me if I don't already have them on. I've even got her trained as to which shoes to grab. I'll even switch it up on her to see if she understands. I'm amazed at how smart she is at this age. Although when I start thinking she's standing out we'll hit the park and see other kids her age doing the same things. So she's not standing out so much but she's a lot of fun to be around.

Shoes

Running five miles a day is killing my legs so I bought what I thought was a good pair of Nike running shoes. After a couple weeks running in them my feet were killing worse then before. I tried to tough it out thinking they just needed to be broken in but my feet got worse. They even hurt when I walked in them. So I went back to my rag tag shoes I was using before. The rag tags were getting to the point that they were falling apart so I decided to try again and buy a new pair. I went Sports Basement across the street. At first I figured they'd be way over priced but I gave them a try. I start checking out the shoes and a kid asked if I needed help. I told him I needed running shoes and I told him the Nike's I was wearing were killing my feet. He kind of laughed at the Nike's, apparently Nike's are bad shoes unless you get into the big money shoes.

He first had me take off my shoes and walk down this track. Then he had me try and a couple different kinds of shoes and run down the track with them. He made the comment that he couldn't see me running for more then a half mile with my stride. I guess I didn't realize there's a technique to running. So on top of selling me shoes he gave me a lesson in running. Apparently he was a big Cross Country runner and now he runs marathons. I bought the shoes for $80 and my feet felt a hundred times better after wearing them for a few hours.

So if you're ever in the market I highly recommend the Sports Basement. I'll be using them for all my sporting needs. It's a great store. Read some reviews for yourself.

Trails

Just some photos from last weekend.

http://picasaweb.google.com/chadwick1p/MtnBike

Delayed Weekend Update

Last weekend Jens mom was here so we spent the time doing touristy things. We had a short period of time to go mountain biking on Saturday and about 10 minutes into the ride I got a flat tire, and of course I have no clue where my pump went. This really put a damper on the day, so I had to walk back to where Jen and her mom were walking the trails. I changed my tire and proceeded to wait for Chad to come with his pump from his car. The flat tire cost us a good 30 minutes of riding. The trails were dryer then last time and it was warmer out. I'm getting braver going down the steep hills and I'm starting to throw in a jump or two. I keep envisioning landing on my face as happened when I was growing up. (which explains a lot)

After mountain biking we went to San Fran to see the Golden Gate bridge. After getting lost in San Fran all I could think about was "Why don't we have a GPS, they're so worth it" but eventually we found it by driving in one direction until we found some signs.

Sunday we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium which was pretty cool. There's a bunch of buildings that used to be a canning companies that have been turned into a big tourists area. The area is called The Canning District. It was pretty interesting to see and it would be fun to see it back in the day.

Let is snow

Heee Haw. I'm not in MN dealing with all the snow they're getting. Al and Kathy are in FL and they're huge snowmobilers. Talk about ironic. But I can't brag that much cuz it's a rain fest here. Rain rain rain all day and night. It's driving me crazy. I want 70-80 degrees with lots of sun. Someday I'll move back to FL so I can experience it.

Hitting the trails

We got a late start mountain biking but when we eventually got there it was awesome. The view is phenomenal. I took these pictures with my phone, one of these days I'll have to bring my camera. Most of my pics ended up blurry. The trails were a little slick and wet from the rain and snow we got yesterday. (haha it snowed in the mountains and we saw some snow on the trails) Here's a pic of me wearing what else, my Oakley's. Oakley's on the trail is actually bad idea. It gets so hot that they steam up the entire time.

Here's the best pic of the trail I got. Like I said the rest were to blurry. The trail narrows quite a bit in some spots also. It makes one think twice before gaining to much speed downhill. Tumbling down the side wouldn't be much fun.


The day came to an upbrupt end when Chad broke his peddle when we were just about to hit the down hill slope on the way back to the car. He ended up running up the hills and riding the bike down. Funny stuff cuz he was running up the hills faster then I was biking. I'm a little out of shape when it comes to biking.

Weight Struggles

So a while back I made a bet with Green-O as to who can lose the most weight. I started out of the gate fast losing 50lbs. Since I've moved to Sunnyvale I haven't been able to lose another pound. I've been working out pretty steady but I think my food intake has probably increased a bit. When I started this weight loss drive I didn't diet that much other then cutting out ice cream and not eating after 6pm. My body has caught on to me here. I run for a hour 4-5 times a week. I could use the excuse that I've just put on muscle and I'm still losing fat but the waist line doesn't lie. So I'm going to start trying to diet a little and cut my portions down. We'll see if that helps.

My current stats 195lbs with about 4-6 inches off the waist line.

An eye on the weather

Accuweather has been a popular site as of late. This weekend Jen heads back to MN so I'm looking forward to a full weekend of mountain biking. We've had so much rain of late the trails are probably a muddy mess but that's alright I'm totally up for getting dirty. So far this weekend is looking dry but it's supposed to rain on Thursday. I'll be disappointed if it carries over into the weekend.

I've also been watching Orlando, FL since my Brother and Sister with their families are heading there for vacation. So far it's looking pretty good for them. I'm a little jealous I'm not vacationing there this year.