visiting christen and tyler in the lbc, long beach, aka snoop dogg's hometown.

jon getting in some stroller time.

tyler resting in the stoller with his big blue eyes.

went for a ride in ramona, ca today. jon rode to escendido(2 hours from beach cottages on a bike) and then i drove him up to ramona to start our beautiful ride. ramona is where the us postal service cycling team used to have their winter camps. the riding was really nice, and the weather was about 70 and hardly a cloud. i wore shorts w/o tights or legwarmers for the first time in about 8 months.

jon beginning the climb up to mesa grande.

one of the biggest bunch of cacti i have seen this side of the rio grande.

me and my buddies, the cows. the cows were free range so sometimes you would see them without a fence and it made for a very attentive decent. you don't want to hit one of those things on your bike.

these cows were running along side of us so i had to snap a pic. i've never seen cows in this good of shape and running this fast. they must be training for the san diego rock n roll marathon.

jon and i above a lake, i can't remember the name of it, but it was pretty.

paul (notice the sushi shirt) and sam work on their homemade sushi. they went looking everywhere for sushi grade tuna and salmon and finally found it so they could serve us the real thing at sunset ceremony last night. i was very worried that we were all going to wake up hovering over the porcelain god, but we all made it and no one got sick. thanks for the sushi guys!

proud sister gracen holds little ryan. gracen is taking to the new baby, but apparently griffin is very protective of his mommy and hangs out next to her in the hospital a lot. jill and ryan get released today for his first trip to his home.

every evening while we are at the beach cottages in san diego we have something called a sunset ceremony. there is a lot of looking at people on the beach, talking, eating, and drinking done during this time, and it is always fun. here is everyone getting ready for the sunset.

the view everynight. the best part about this view is the view of all the wacko people walking around on the boardwalk. we have names for everyone, for example, there is the can lady, she collects cans for hours, she looks like you typical mom, not a can lady. there is slowmo, who rides his rollerblades in slowmotion and also has a book that he wrote he used to be a doctor. there is ken, who wears different g strings and rollerskates. flag guy, we haven't seen him in a while, he may be in jail or dead.

let's just say there is more to watch then just a setting sun.

went to the tide pools yesterday and i guess it was one of the lowest tides of the year and it was a saturday so we went with the rest of san diego as well. it was packed.

jane and marilyn took us, here they are walking up from the pools. we had to park illegally on u.s. naval property and never got a ticket. yeah.

jon and i at point loma tide pools waiting for jane and marilyn.

went out for a nice ride to pt. loma yesterday where we actually rode without fighting about my pedal cadence, surging, or anything else.

sam, jon's dad took us out to eat at an awesome sushi place by where we are staying in pacific beach. this place has mexican/hispanic sushi chefs and you pick what you want to eat by grabbing it off of these rotating, floating boats. it was really good, and good prices too.

jon and his dad deciding what to pick up off the rotating boats.

jon and i are an aunt and an uncle for the third time. jill and todd had a baby boy this morning at 9 a.m. his name is thomas ryan fisk. yeah...

aside from this and them shutting down the 15 in the middle of vegas at rush hour our drive to san diego was pretty uneventful.

15 shut down going both directions in las vegas. it took us 2 hours to go 2 miles. i could have walked on my hands faster than that, but my hands would have been pretty sore.

our pig friend that we met while in the traffic, pretty creepy huh?

jon and i played the slots and turned 10 dollars into 90. too bad for jon he borrowed the 10 dollar in quarters from me and i made him split half of his winnings.

at the car wash yeah...

facts from the trip.
1. we were the youngest couple staying at the casinos in primm nevada
2. on the cart for luggage somebody had a bag of depends going up to their room via the bell boy.
3. we saw 2 degrees and then 70 degrees on the car themometer.
4. san diego is way better than boulder in january.
5. we saw a lady doubling up on the slots and playing two machines at once, can you see a problem here?
6. the volvo is way faster then the explorer, and we made it in record time to s.d.

jon with his first buck mount that he shot this november in texas. the biggest issue with the mount is we can't hang it anywere upstairs, it doesn't go with my peaceful feng shui motif.

jon is hard at work trying to get everyone's training plans in order before our big training trip.

here he is thinking really hard, or squeezing his temples because i keep taking photos of him, i don't know which.

here i am coming up with some sweet ipod mixes for the big trip. it took me almost all day to update my ipod and get it kickin' with some rockin' driving tunes.

in other news sara and chris valenti came over to help rid our fridge of perishables and eat any leftovers we had. chris just got back from his trip to europe where he picked up these fine euro threads.

broncos lost, time to shave and cut the hair plummer

it was a beautiful day in colorado, however it was cold. the high was 39, and we have been spoiled with 60 degree weather lately. i am so looking forward to riding in california in one week. yeah, no more shoe covers, tights, hats under the helmet, and freezing toes.
had to ride the cyclocross bike on the snow for a couple of hours because of the snow melt and temps. here is anne dropping me on the uphills, as usual.

saw three bald eagles today

here is a close up of one, resolution is bad, but it is a cool shot.

i was out shoveling the driveway to get a little exercise when this short institution-like city bus pulled up. it was a lot like when i was a kid and the garbage men came to collect, i would run inside.

i did the same today, then i heard someone yell beth. i thought to myself, oh man, they found me, they are taking me to the institution. i couldn't figure out what i did. (except for not sticking to my training plan for the last couple of days. i didn't think that would make me crazy though.)

then i saw sara in the authoritative bus driver position (hand on door opener). since she was practicing driving it before she took it into the mountains for her job, jon and i asked to go for a ride.

the first thing jon noticed when we were coming out of the cul-de-sac was this switch. insert own joke here...

me enjoying the back of the bus where the cool kids hang out.

artsy shot of bus.
thanks sara for the highlight of our day!

picked jon up from the airport tonight (this is actually a picture of me dropping him off), he was in seattle for two days visiting ben and dea, and stayed with his good friend jeff.

the weather was awful today. it was supposed to just "flurry" a bit, but ended up dumping 3-6 in on us. no fun, i can't wait until that california weather.

happy birthday christen

this is a pic of tyler, christen and tom's 5 month old boy. they enjoy styling his hair in a mohawk just because he can pull it off so well.

we had another "girls night" at bridget's pad. attendees were, bridget, meeegan, erin, and me. (we missed crazy anne lannan)

bridget cooking up some cowboy gulosh (pronounced goo-losh) for dinner. we are texans, and that is what you call anything mixed with beef. deelish.

this is one of my favorite pictures of bridget and she has it on her fridge. anyone remember, the song from sesame street, "one of these things is not like the other", well that is the song that rings in my head when i see bridget (far left) consuming some ice cream with her siblings. apparently, she was a messy kid.

went to amante for some gelato. if you will notice in this picture to the right of bridet's head there is the really bad coffee shop sign that i visited a week ago (click here) and decided that amate is the best because of...

the flatscreen t.v.

and the euro toilets.

look, you can even do a full flush, or a half flush on the euro toilets. so very posh, i love amante.

i left the house today for three hours and when i came back i saw this...

my most perfect loaf yet!

saw this on velonews. jan ullrich and his new hair make him look a lot like the night rider himself, david hasselhoff. (for those blog readers that don't know who jan is, click here, and for those of you that don't know who david hasselhoff is, well, that's just wrong)