Blessed

This post has been a long time coming and I keep putting it off but it's been on my mind a lot lately and I feel like I need to scratch it down.


Those of you who know me know where I stand when it comes to religion and know my background so this isn't just some Bible thumping post. I have my beliefs but I'm not the person to try to force them on someone else. I grew up Southern Baptist but have since became a little more liberal in my beliefs and life in general than what they try to feed you. So, no, I'm not preaching or standing on a soap box.


I wanted to talk about a few things. Maybe it's all coincidence or maybe it's something a little greater. Amie and I have been married for almost 7 years now. Over the course of that 7 years I wouldn't say we have had the best luck when it comes to finances or really anything. It always seemed like when it would rain, it would pour. I started to just expect things to come in threes. If I got a ticket in the morning on the way to work, I was going to get one when I left for lunch and then one on the way home. Not saying that we had the worst luck, it just seemed like things never really got in a groove.


Back in September, I think, we started going to Journey Church with our friends Christopher & Melissa. It's really a great church. I love the music and Clark always has a great message and to make things even better, apparently his wife is perfect. I always ask Amie, WWCWD...What Would Clark's Wife Do? Anyway, when we first started going nothing much really changed in our life, or I guess I should say my life because I'm not sure if Amie feels the same. Amie was pregnant with Emily and it wasn't the smoothest pregnancy so we had plenty of distractions from what God/or coincidence was doing in our life. After a couple of months of attending Journey I was driving to work one morning and going over our budget in my head. While I had all these visions of dollars signs dancing in my head I got this real heavy feeling in my heart and my thoughts went right to tithing. Amie and I didn't tithe, I had no intentions of tithing and honestly we couldn't fit it in our budget. I mean, I guess we could but we'd have to give up something. I tried to just put that out of my mind and go on with my business. But the thought stayed with me, for the next several weeks I kept going over our budget trying to figure out how I could tithe without taking anything away from my family. I didn't want me giving a tithe to effect my family at all. The only way I could figure out to do this was to give a little bit of my weekly allowance. That by NO means was anywhere close to the 10% you are "supposed" to give but it was 33% of my weekly allowance so it couldn't of went a long way for me. I felt like it was the right thing to do and I did it happily. That was an awesome feeling to me, I'm not one to enjoy just giving money away, but I was able to tithe and be happy about it.


I continued to tithe every week we went to church and only what I could give from my allowance. It was kind of weird after doing that for a couple of months my concerns about money and our budget slowly faded away. Don't get me wrong, I was always money conscious but I wasn't overly concerned like before with everything.

As Christmas got closer my job seemed to get worse, I had a jerk for a boss and I was debating quiting my job and finding anything just to get by. Amie was pregnant and we wanted her to be able to stay home with the girls once Em got here but with my current salary at the time that wouldn't be possible. The day before our two week Christmas break (when I had planned to go job hunting) the owner of the company asked me if it would be okay if she called me over the break to talk about a few things and of course I said sure. She called and we talked and right after break we had a little meeting and I also got a promotion and an increased salary and some other perks like vacation and sick days that I didn't have before. This increase in salary meant that we would now be able to let Amie stay home with the girls and not have to really stress about keeping the lights on.


On March 4th Emily was born and despite all the drama we had during the pregnancy she was perfect. I knew she would be all along but maybe we had a little help in getting us to this point.

About six weeks ago we decided we were going to put our house up for sale and try to find something bigger. I didn't want to use a realtor to sale because of the cost and we were a little concerned as to if we would even get anyone to look at it without really marketing our house. Within a month of having a For Sale sign in the yard we had signed a contract on it and were able to to work everything out to everyones best interests. Then the house hunting began for us. Within two weeks of looking we've found what to us seems like the perfect house. We go in Thursday evening to sign the contract on it and then I guess just cross our fingers that everything works out from here on out.

Like I said, I'm not preaching or bragging but I wanted to let everyone know that maybe, just maybe, by following your heart it can lead to good things. Maybe I had a little Heavenly help or maybe all the cards just fell right for me on this hand, I don't really know but I am thankful either way.

Now, God if you are reading this, I would really like to win at least one race this season (maybe it could come at Tulsa Tough so I could be on the jumbotron's) and a five door Mazda 3. If I can only choose one, then give me a win, any race really, I'm not too picky.

Brag

I just wanted to take a second and show off my girls one more time. I've been slammed at work and haven't had much time to blog and I apologize to all my loyal readers...I'm pretty sure I can count them all on one hand but I appreciate them wasting some time here.

This picture brought a tear to my eye. My little girl is growing up. She looks like a big girl here.

Em with her big beautiful blue eyes.

Big Sister, Little Sister. Addi is so proud.

Two of the three reasons I love going home.

Andy, here in a couple of months it will be family portrait time. I need your A game, make sure you get a full nights sleep because you haven't met an Addi yet!

A.C. - Andrew Chasteen not Slater

I just want to take a second and point out the Cycling Picture of the YEAR!

This photograph is killer. The perspective and composition are perfect. The blues are beautiful. I've looked at this pic over and over again since the first time I saw it. The main subject is my teammate Ryan and I'm guessing, if Ryan is anything like me, this picture is going to be blown up as big as he can get it and hung proudly somewhere at his house.

Andrew amazes me everytime I see his new stuff. His photos were already great but it seems like he is constantly developing as a photographer and things just keep getting better.

I was just telling Amie last night about my buddy Andy and how if there was anyone I was ever jealous of it would be him. The guy is an amazing photographer, a cyclist, a marathon runner, an ultra marathon runner, a rock climber, a successful business man and who knows what else he is good at but damn it he has a hot tub on his roof and I don't. Andy is a guy who is experiencing life and it's awesome to experience a little bit of his life through his blog and website. If you don't know Andy, get to know him. Check out his blog or if you're interested in letting him capture a little bit of your life from behind the lense check out his website.

No, I don't have a man crush!

Saturday

This is none of the posts I promised to write about in my last blog entry. I promise those are still to come.

The past few days have been great and I wanted to write a little about them before I forgot.

Let's start out with Saturday morning. This past weekend was a big weekend of racing, either in Texas or in Kansas. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to go but I was able to hook up with one of my teammates, Ryan Lenhart, on his way to work at Bicycle Alley. I had a great ride with Ryan. I've known of Ryan for the last couple of years and this year I have the opportunity to race along side him. Despite us being on the same team I really haven't had a lot of time to get to know Ryan besides talking with him at the shop and what little time we have before our races. So, getting to spend an hour with him on the road and just talk about life was really awesome. I really enjoy riding with my new teammates so any opportunity I have to get to know them a little better is great.

After my ride, my beautiful wife and I actually had the chance to spend some quality time together. Quality time for just the two of us is a hard thing to come by now days. We were able to knock out some spring shopping for Amie and enjoy a nice quiet lunch. It's been a while since we've went to see a movie so we decided to go see the movie "Obsessed." The funny thing is that anytime we are North side and go see a movie Amie always wants to go to Tinseltown. I'm not a huge fan of Tinseltown, because that's the first place I ever got stood up on a date, but Amie likes it. So, we pull into the parking lot and notice that there are a lot of non-caucasians in the parking lot. Just trying to be funny I told Amie that they were all there to see Obsessed because it has Beyonce in it and they all want to support a Sista. Well, that little remark came back to haunt us as soon as we walked into the theater. By the time the movie started, and it was almost sold out, there were like six tanless people there, including us. It definitely made the movie more interesting, especially at about half way through the movie as all kinds of shouting erupted from up front in what sounded like a fight about to start. No one in the theater had a problem hollering back at them and telling them to be quiet, it was like one giant family reunion or something. Right after the movie, apparently those people yelling at each other had some unfinished business and the cops swarmed the theater as a fight broke out. This just might be our last Tinseltown experience.

We then had the privilege of having dinner with Zach (my other teammate) and his wife Kelly. We all met up at the Cheesecake Factory and had a great time. Thanks to the wind and our waitress Zach got some kind of Gin shower but took it way better than I probably would have. It was great to just chill with some friends, have a couple drinks and share some laughs. Some great things have been happening in Zach & Kelly's lives lately. Zach recently landed a great job and they just closed and moved into their new house. It's awesome to see good things happening in their lives. Zach has been a great friend to me and I couldn't be happier for them. I can't wait to check out their new crib, try some of the delicious grub he can cook up and maybe even become a fan of good wine.

Later that evening, we retired at the Hampton Inn and it was a great ending to the perfect day.

That's Saturday in a nutshell.

Scratch Test Dummy

After spending the weekend sulking and feeling sorry for myself about my less than acceptable result at the Fire Hill Criterium I decided I needed to do something about it. First thing Monday morning I called the Oklahoma Allergy & Asthma Clinic and was hoping they would be able to get me in sometime within the next couple of weeks. As fate would have it, they just had just received a cancellation for 9:45 that morning and I was more than happy to fill it.

I spent the next four hours of my day undergoing asthma and allergy tests. For the first time, in probably my life, I was happy to spend some time with a doctor. I have known for the last two years that I have asthma but here lately it has been really bad. Probably due to the fact that my allergies have been worse than usual. I don't have any problems on just a normal day to day basis but any time I'm under exertion it's like someone is strangling me and I'm left gasping for air. It doesn't matter if it's jogging, climbing stairs, or riding my bike if it's a hard effort I'm at a loss and usually waiting several minutes to recover. This is not a good thing in a criterium race when a majority of the race is spent jumping, accelerating out of corners, and pretty much red lining the entire race. I knew at Fire Hill my race was over before we hit the hill the first time. For those of you who weren't at Fire Hill or know the course, there's about a 200 meter straight to a sharp right hand turn up a hill, so in those short 200 m's I was toast. The jump off the line left me "breathless" so to speak. It didn't matter how hard I tried I couldn't get my breathing under control. It sucked. I don't think I have felt more disappointed in myself in a race than that day. I spent the whole drive home thinking and being pissed off at everyone. I hate failure, failure at anything not just on a bike. I love racing but for the rest of Saturday and some of Sunday I really considered just giving it all up and forgetting about it. If I was going to have to race with a limitation like this, it wasn't worth it to me. I'm not going to race and just hope to finish, I'm racing with the hope of winning or helping one of my teammates win. I wasn't even able to help them in that race, they did excellent and I wish I was part of that.

Then, I guess I don't know what happened but I stopped looking at it in such a bad way and started thinking maybe I could fix this. Maybe if I went to a specialist who knew what I was talking about something could be done. I started feeling motivated again, this is just something new to overcome. This is like it's own race. So, Monday morning at 8 a.m. I dialed up the Clinic and BAM they had an opening for me. Call me crazy, but I think God wants me to race my bike. Maybe it was just luck or coincidence or maybe it was someone saying, "don't give up on yourself just yet."

I'm pretty behind in my posting, so stay tuned. I've got some great pics of Addi's birthday, our trip to the zoo and a post I've been meaning to write for the last month about some great things that have happened in my life.

Definition

When I define myself as a person, I think of myself as these three things. Husband, Amie and I have married for almost 7 years now. Father, I have two beautiful daughters, Addi will be three years old in just a few days and Emily who just passed the six weeks mark. Cyclist, but I think of myself as more than just a cyclist, I race bikes. Apparently I have been trying my best to be my best at all three and have fallen short at all of them. I am not the person who is content with doing something 99%, it's all or nothing. I don't want to be the second best husband, father or cyclist...I want to be my best and right now that's not the case. I don't even have the words for exactly how I feel. I don't want/need anyones sympathy, I feel sorry enough for myself without anyone elses help.

For the last three years I have raced bikes. I've had some moderate success, I was by no means the best but I was competitive. That's gone. Where did it go, I don't know. I still get up crazy ass early and spend my mornings on my trainer and for the most part complete all my workouts as specified. But come race day it's just not there. I'm getting dropped by people that I could of easily kept up with last season. It is very demoralizing. I have been very fortunate this season to get some great sponsors, a brand new team and some great teammates. I had all these ideas, hopes, goals for myself and my team. Well my team is doing great, unfortunately I haven't been a part of that success. I'm not the person that will show up to a race only to fall off the back. I do have a little pride. I'm also not the person to become the washed up racer. I'll hang all my shit up before I let that happen. I don't want to ride a bike, I want to race my bike.

To be honest I really don't know what my problem is. I don't get a lot of rest, but I never have. So, I don't think that's my problem. I'm sure it has it's place in the equation but it's not the cause. I'm having a little bit of problem with my breathing. I find myself short of breath after the first few initial jumps and by the time I recover from that it's too late. Maybe I need to go harder in my warm up and get things more opened up. Maybe I need to get to the doctor and see what is going on. I have a great coach, so I know fitness and being ready for my races isn't an issue. It's something other than that.

Giving your best is all anyone can ask out of you, what I hate is that right now I'm not able to give my best. I've had a lot of crap going through my head over the last couple of weeks and maybe it's all just eating away at me.

HAPPY EASTER!

Have a Happy Easter.

Artwork provided by Addison Lynlee Hodges.