It's raining this morning and would be perfect sleeping weather but i'm not sleeping. I'm watching it fall outside the garage door while spinning away with some tour of cali on the tv. Every morning i realize how bad i need a new playlist but i just haven't found anything new that's great.

Testing 1, 2, 3. I just got this hooked up to blog by texting so lets see if it works.

Thus Far

You might ask, "Hey Chad, how's your season going?" To that question, most likely I would reply, "It's going okay." What I really mean is for the most part it's been pretty disappointing. Maybe, disappointing really is too strong of a word, but it has been less than what I had hoped for.

On an individual basis, I haven't accomplished anything I hoped I would. I've crashed out twice. Once helmet shattering and the other in the State Criterium Championships. I've had two top ten finishes in mass start races all season long. Not exactly what I was hoping for.

I would say the only goal that I've accomplished so far this season was coming in under an hour on the State Time Trial Championships. It's a 40K TT and I was able to finally break the hour. I got 2nd place in the state for the CAT 3's, which earned me a silver medal. It's been a never ending process this season of dialing in my TT bike and improving my TT skills is something I'd really like to work on. It's a little more difficult for me to work on my TT'ing because it's hard for me to sit on my TT bike in the morning on the trainer for longer than about an hour. It's not the most comfortable thing to sit on and at 3 or 4 in the morning it is really not the most fun. But whatever it takes I guess.

I've got a few more races I'd like to hit this season so we'll see how those go and then we'll start looking toward next season.

I would like to congratulate, Ryan Lenhart, one of my teammates on a spectacular State Criterium Championship race. Ryan was able to bring home the CAT 3 State Jersey. He easily won the sprint across the line and brought Bicycle Alley home it's first "W" of the season. Great job Ryan!

I'm in a pretty relaxed training cycle right now and it's been really nice to just get to ride my bike to ride it. It's nice to not have a workout planned for every ride. I've even started enjoying getting up in the mornings again. I even get to decide how long I ride each day, that's pretty nice because at least I don't feel like I cheated myself by cutting a workout short. My time and mileage is actually up right now and it's only that way because I want it to be. This has also given my knee a little time to heal up. I'm not sure what exactly is wrong with it, just that I have had a little discomfort in it for the last few weeks or so. It's either from the maybe twisting it in the State Crit crash or from running with buckets of paint while doing one of our floors.

Here's a few pics to kind of add a little color to this post.

Em on her first plane ride. What a beautiful smile.

Lilly candid at Disney World. My Princess.

A couple of pics from Tulsa Tough. Da' team, Bicycle Alley Racing. Me, lost in a crowd. Thanks Taos for the great pics!

Is it State Fair Time?

Okay, so Disney World was a blast but I found that Disney World has a lot in common with Frontier City, Six Flags and our own great State Fair. You can get a killer funnel cake, turkey legs, it has rides just like the others but most importantly, the people have a lot in common. It's just a fact that no matter where you go, even going as far as "the Place Where Dreams Come True" you're going to find someone who is missing a few teeth, lacks good hygiene and has saggy boobs.

Like a lollipop!

Hammer Time

Monday night I took Addi to her very first dance class. Not to brag, but the girl has skillz, skillz that make millz. She did great. Once again she stole the show. I was shocked afterwards though, she chose a ring pop over some Freddy's Custard. Give here a few years and she'll be making her debut on "So, You Think You Can Dance."

Princesses

Okay, so obviously our trip to Disney World was centered around seeking out each and every Disney Princess. We not only got Addi's picture with each Princess but we also are now the proud owner of every Princess toy. I've undressed more princess in the last month of my life than I could of ever thought about when I was single. *Just kidding Amie & Mom...Amie is the only one, and only after we were married.

Anyway, one of the highlights of our trip for me was getting to hang our with Jasmine and Aladdin. We were on our way to ride the Pirates of the Caribbean ride but that part of the park wasn't going to open for like another thirty minutes when we spotted Jasmine and Aladdin taking pics with some other kids. We rushed Addi over there and Addi being the true princess that she is immediatly hit it off with Jasmine, or as well as a three year old can hit it off with anyone. She took some pics and talked and then we headed to our ride. After riding the POTC ride, Addi wanted to ride the Aladdins magic carpet ride, so we waited our turn and then ran to pick out the best magic carpet we could. Right after we got on, Jasmine and Aladdin spotted us and waived. Addi and I waived back and then they got up from taking pics with a line full of other kids, walked over to the ride, came through a special entrance, came up to our carpet and asked Addi if they could ride with her. Her face lit up like it was Christmas. Of course, she said yes and they got in our carpet and we flew around laughing and chatting it up. They loved watching Addi fly the carpet. As soon as the ride was over, they got out and took Addi by the hand and asked her if she would like to take some more pictures. We went back down to where they were taking pictures and they spent a few more minutes with Addi just playing and taking pics. When they finished, they gave her a big hug and they were off. That was it, they didn't take any more pictures with any other kid in line. They left all those kids to spend some time with my daughter and that made a really special memory for me.

That's why Jasmine is now my favorite princess.

I promise my next post will not be about Disney, I'll throw a racing post in there so I don't lose my huge racer following.

The Place Where Dreams Come True

Okay, I know I've slacked a little, a lot actually, on the good ole' blog. Things have been pretty crazy lately. I've been slammed at work, vacation, packing, moving, selling a house, unpacking, trying to race, training. Seeing it all written down makes it seem like even more. I'm going to try to get everyone caught up on all the things I've wanted to write about and all the new things that are going on...not all in this one post though.


Last week my whole family took a wonderful vacation to Disney World. Amie, Addi and I met my folks at the airport bright and early Sunday morning and headed south to our first stop in Houston, TX. We grabbed a bite to eat at Chili's while we waited on our next flight that would take us to Orlando, FL, more importantly Disney World. Addi was a trooper on the plane. I was pretty darn impressed with her. She made flying easy. Once our plane was safely on the ground we hustled to the bus that would take us to our resort and once we arrived at the resort we bustled straight to Magic Kingdom.

Magic Kingdom is amazing! It really is like Never Never Land. They have everything you could possibly imagine and what made it even more amazing was getting to experience all of this with Addi. To Addi, this really was the place where dreams come true. All of her friends, Cinderella, Belle, Sleeping Beauty, Arial, Snow White, and Jasmine were all there and to her, they weren't characters, they were the real deal. To see her face light up when she saw one of them was almost enough to bring a tear or two to your eyes. That was priceless and something I'll remember forever.

Coming up after the break, more vacation stories and a whole lot more.