Cookie!

I was eating cookies after dinner and watching The Colbert Report so of course the episode when Cookie Monster made an appearance came to mind, and I thought I'd share. This segment was absolutely hilarious! I love Stephen Colbert and I love Cookie Monster. When Cookie Monster said he was like the Robert Downey Jr of cookies, I seriously lost it. It's not part of the clip, but at the very end of the show Cookie Monster does eat Stephen's Peabody Award - too funny!

Awwwwwwwww! Cute!

Last week, my summer camp group went on a trip to the Single Vision Animal Sanctuary near Gainesville. The children got to feed grapes to the lemurs through the fence, get a close-up view of tigers, and actually pet a baby leopard. I was rather impressed with the facility and I have to say the cuteness factor was really high. Don't worry - the proprietor was very good at pointing out all the reasons these animals don't make good pets. It was a fun learning experience for the children. Here are pictures - completely unedited and uncaptioned. I guess I'm getting lazy. The pics were taken with my cellphone camera so no photo criticism allowed.

I can't look at ringtailed lemurs without thinking of the movie Madagascar. This movie is too funny, and is one of my favorite movies in recent years. I have seen it a few times and always find something new to laugh at. Here is a video with clips from the movie.

Where's my ride?

Don't everyone fall over - yes, this is a new blog post. I know I've been really bad about posting. It's been almost a month since my last post, which is just ridiculous. I've started several posts including birthday posts for both June and July birthdays, and just haven't finished them. Honestly, I've been a bit down for a while and just haven't been in the mood to post. I kept hoping that the situation that's been bumming me out would have been resolved sooner and I could have written this post with a happy ending, but that is not the case.

So what's been going on? Well, on my last trip to Austin at the end of May, I had my awesome tribike shipped to Jack & Adam's. It's where I bought the bike and I thought it would be a good idea to have them give it a check up, since I'd been riding it for 4 months and it'd gone through 1 half-iron distance race. Also, Rachel had planned the Team Fantastic X Super-Sprint Tri for that weekend and I had a training ride to do so I was going to need a bike. Shipping my bike wouldn't cost much more than renting a bike for the weekend so why not. I was pretty nervous about shipping it because UPS and FEDEX aren't known for their kindness to bikes. The guys at The Bike Route here in Gainesville did an amazing job packing the bike, and the shipping guy put all kinds of "fragile" and "this end up" stickers on the box. I shipped it FEDEX and really, they would have had to drive over the box with a truck to do damage, but I was still nervous. The bike arrived just fine and the guys at Jack & Adam's put it together and gave it a nice tune-up. I had an awesome visit in Austin with some good riding - even with 2 flats and a crash that should have hurt, but didn't.

I dropped the bike off at Jack & Adam's for shipping home and that was it. That was June 2nd and it was the last time I saw my bike. When the bike didn't show up in a reasonable period of time, I called to find out what was going on. I wasn't overly concerned at this point because it's tri season and J&A's is shipping lots of bikes so it's possible that mine got shipped out later than expected. The last thing I expected to hear was that they couldn't find my bike. I was told that there was no record of it getting shipped out and that there were a few places it could be, and that they were looking for it. Okay, it didn't get shipped so it's there somewhere - they'll find it. No worries. The next day I get a phone call from Jack, the owner of Jack & Adam's. Now I start to panic because Jack is extremely busy and if he is calling then something is wrong. He tells me that he is almost certain that the bike got shipped out and that he is going through the shipping records with UPS to try to get detailed info, and that he'll keep me posted, but that I shouldn't worry because he'll take care of everything. Now for those of you that don't know anything about Jack, he is a supernice guy and all about customer service, and oh yeah, he knows a thing or two about bikes. During this whole process, I've never been concerned that I wouldn't have a bike. If he couldn't find my bike, I knew Jack would hook me up with a new one. Of course a new bike was not mine or Jack's ideal solution for various reasons, but here we are almost two months later and it looks like I'm getting a new bike. Hopefully, it'll be here this week.

I'm sure quite a few of you are wondering why this situation has me bummed out - it's not like I don't have other, quality bikes to ride, and it's not like my tribike won't be replaced eventually, and really, it's only a bike so in the grand scheme of things it's not that big a deal. Well, you would be right on all those things, and if I had just bought the tribike because I felt it was time for a newer, better bike then I wouldn't be anxious the way I am now; but I bought the bike specifically for Ironman Florida, which is this November, and it's important that I be doing my long rides on the bike I'm going to be racing on. I've been off the tribike for almost two months, and I was just getting really good at riding it before it got lost. I've got a race in a month and the first of my 6 hour rides in a few weeks, and I really need to be on the bike I'm riding for Ironman. Before this happened, I was feeling really relaxed about Ironman. My coach kept telling me not to think too far ahead, not to get obsessed about it, and I wasn't. After all, I pay a coach to be obsessive for me. Since the bike disappeared, I've been feeling more and more anxious about being prepared for the race. The fact that the humidity went through the roof in June and has seriously affected my running has just exacerbated my anxiousness. It's been storming and raining excessively almost everyday, which also means I can't swim outside as much. In general, I haven't been loving the training much the past month or so. I have moments where I find myself doubting my training, doubting my preparation, and doubting my ability to do this race. Just in case everyone thinks I'm bummed all the time - I'm not, but I'm bummed just enough that I haven't felt like writing. On a more positive note, my training seems to be getting better. I had a really solid 3.5 hour brick workout on Saturday. Maybe I'm finally adjusting to 95% humidity. Is that possible?

Just in case you are wondering, I am still a big fan of Jack & Adam's and would recommend them to anyone that happens to be in Austin.