Ya know, sometimes family isn’t just the people you’re related to. Sometimes it’s the people closest to you in your daily walk.

Today, Mary and John baptized their son, Anthony. Normally, this is a family and friends kinda of event, so I wasn’t real surprised to get an invitation to the event and the celebration afterwards. What surprised me though, was that Beck and I, and Kelly and Curt, were the only non-family there.

Mary’s comment to Beck was something to the effect that she knows that we four will be in Anthony’s life for a long, long time, and that makes us just like family.

Now that’s a high compliment!

The day was a wonderful celebration of Mary and John’s devotion to their son, and their commitment to raise him in the church. That’s a great thing, and it was wonderful to be a part of their special day.

15.0mi

Our little cycling clutch took off for its weekly ride tonight: Greens Bottom [MM 45.7] to St. Charles [MM 39.5]. This is a short ride, pleasant with no big hills, and plenty of cool, shady areas along the trail. We didn’t have to pick up one of our partners atop the Page Extension Bridge tonight, so no big climbing there either.

We took off, and I was amazed at how well I was keeping up with my pair of ridemates. Ordinarily, it’s me bringing up the rear — albeit less far behind than I used to be! — but tonight I was able to lead a bit, and was able to keep to a pretty fast pace for me. We fought a horrible headwind coming around the Family Arena, but unlike my last big headwind, I was able to keep a decent pace — 11 or 12mph. A quick thirty minutes after we left Greens Bottom, we were in old town St. Charles.

I’ve been to St. Charles a ton, but never on a bike. It’s a sleepy, bricked, main street town, with loads of shoppes and lots of folks wandering around shopping for this and that. Susan knew of an ice cream parlor, so we pedalled up to the storefronts, and had a cone of ice cream before heading back to the trailhead. Now that’s high living!

About two miles shy of the trailhead, I crossed 400 miles in my quest for the Katy Trail Challenge. Susan was nearby, and she and I geekily high fived as we rode together before I zoomed off in my exhuberant, triumphant run to the trailhead. To say I was thrilled is an understatement!

So, just over 400 miles in two months of riding — 90mi of that has been in the last week. As we sat on the bench last night outside the ice cream parlor, we counted about twelve weeks left of good riding weather. With that much time, I might have an outside chance at crossing 1000mi this year. That’d be amazing, especially for my first full season cycling.

My cycling clutch told me that when I cross 450mi next week, I had to bring the beer to celebrate after Wednesday’s ride. Sounds like a deal to me! 🙂

Today was nice and quiet and peaceful — a perfect Father’s Day!

Beck started out the morning with a nice big breakfast spread, with more than enough food for the three of us and a couple of drop-ins. As always, her culinary skills were up to the task — delicious! Sio gave me a nice, silly card — obviously, she has inherited her father and grandparents’ odd sense of humor in the card department! — and a huge coffee mug. She knows how I love my decaf on the weekends, and this cup’ll help keep me in coffee.

Sio and I then went out on the deck to practice photographing the flowers. I picked up an old, used Olympus E-10 DSLR at work last week, primarily for her to practice with when she’s at the house. (I expect I’ll also use it when I’m cycling.) She really wants to learn what little photography I can teach her, so we started in this morning. Focus, composition, squeezing the shutter release, depth of field… we walked all around Beck’s flowers on the deck, and shot and shot. Once her card was full, we went downstairs, popped her images up on the Mac, and walked through what was good and what needed some improvement. She’s figuring it out, but she I both realize she needs more practice. It’ll come.

My girls took me to Pasta House for Father’s Day lunch. The folks there were super, each and every one we encountered wishing me a Happy Father’s Day. It was just a tad overwhelming to me. I mean, I know I’m a father, but to have that acknowledged by others is sometimes a touching thing to me. A plate of spaghetti and a slice of strawberry cheesecake, and this dad was a happy camper!

Later in the evening, Beck and I went to Silky’s for a little custard. Silky’s was packed, with folks capping off their Father’s day with a little sweet stuff. We leaned against the back of the truck, eating our custard, and being silly. We talked about how many big things had happened this month — truck hitting a deer, new glasses for me, new cellphone for me — and linked all that to Father’s Day. I then whispered under my breath “a new bike”, and that’s when she dropped a bombshell.

She would match me dollar for dollar for a new bike.

After thanking her for such a generous offer, I dropped my bombshell.

I was ready to do that now.

Then she invoked Superman’s name, bade him fly ’round the earth, making time go backward, and eliminating her deal from our conversation. 🙂 Now that was silly! We talked though, and she was serious. That’s an incredibly generous offer, and was a great capper to Father’s Day for me.

Yup, this afternoon I picked up the truck from ELCO. Woo-hoo! After some quick turns of the wrench (bike rack), and some reassembly of the cockpit electronics (XM, GPS), I was open for business.

Ya know, even though I wasn’t exactly trapped — we still had Beck’s car available to me — but there sure is a sense of independence that comes with having a set of wheels at the ready in the driveway. And of course, with the truck back, I can get my bike to the trail again!

Tomorrow is typically tennis night, but I wanna ride so bad! It’s been over a week since I’ve been on the trail. I may try to tackle both tomorrow night — maybe a ten mile ride, and then tennis for an hour or so. That’d be about the same amount of time as one of my 20-mile rides, and would get my legs moving and ready for a longer ride Saturday morning.

I’ve been thinking about moving down the trail for Saturday. The only bad thing is that I’ve gotta figure out in advance how tired I’ll be at some midway point so I can make sure I can get back to the truck. If only I could ride one way, and get carried back to the truck. I know there are some places that’ll carry folks back, but I haven’t looked into that. Sounds like I’ve some planning to do!

Eleven years ago today, I came to The Lou, and began my career with my employer. As with any relationship stretched over eleven years, the landscape has changed, I’ve had good times and bad, and neither the company nor I are the same as we were in ’95 when I started.

I wouldn’t change a thing though. Being here has been an amazing opportunity, and I’ve been afforded the chance to watch a medium sized company grow to be an industry dominator. We collectively smiled through the tough times of the dot-com bust, and supported each other during the uncertain times following 9/11. And here, eleven years after its beginning, I still see a career path before me with the company. That’s an incredible thing, as there aren’t too many places a guy can land for a decade or so, and still see a rewarding, well-paved road stretching in front of him.

I’m a lucky, lucky fella.

Last night, Beck and I attended Casey and Emily’s wedding. What a beautiful affair! The ceremony was at MoBoT in the Japanese Garden. Emily’s grandfather officiated — I know how meaningful it is to have a family member perform the ceremony, and I’m sure this was a blessing for them.

After escaping the heat of the outdoor ceremony, we moved indoors to the James S. McDonnell Planetarium at the St. Louis Science Center for the reception. Now that was cool! As we learned later in the evening, the dusk-like sky portrayed on the ceiling above us was the sky of the night of August 12th last year, when they were engaged. After dinner, the planetarium did a sky-show, pointing out all the interesting things in the sky the night of their engagement, right down to the Perseid meteor shower.

That was one whale of a neat ceremony, and I’m honored to have been invited!

Ever think about quitting your high-paying job, selling your home and possessions, and “just doing something else?”

With that, jesseslife.com begins, detailing one man’s journey through all the US National Parks. My gosh, what an incredible dream for me that would be! And, the site design is gorgeous, to boot.

My goodness, what a trip that would be, and what an incredible opportunity to explore our nation, and see so many things. This site has a ton of terrific photography, and great stories. It’s really inspiring to me, and is probably one crazy vision of something I could see myself doing one day.

This morning, Beck and I, along with Katie, Matt and Anna, went to the early church service at First Baptist Church of Ellisville.  We’ve been going there since we moved into Ellisville, and I really like the place.  Nice people, good message, and quite reminiscent of the churches I attended in the South.

Anyway, being the Sunday before Memorial Day, much of the service and hymns focused on honoring our veterans.  One by one, the pastor mentioned groups of vets, and had them stand:  WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf Wars.  And when he was done, I was still sitting.  I served during none of those conflicts.  I wasn’t offended, as this oversight is frequently and easily made, especially with the nation focused on the war in Iraq, but there’s a big chunk of folks that served between the end of the Vietnam Conflict through the beginning of the first Gulf War that held the fort for 28 years of relative peace.  I figured I’d drop him an e-mail later, not to complain, but just to remind him that there are others that served during relative peacetime.

While the pastor thanked them for their service and what they sacrificed, Becky explained to the Colorado Days that I was a vet too, having served during the Cold War.

So with all these vets standing, he encouraged us to find vets close by, lay our hands on them, while he led us in a prayer for them and those that didn’t return.  As we sat there, heads bowed, my arm around Becky, I felt the most wonderful thing:  hands on mine.

You see, Katie, Matt and Anna reached over and prayed for me, presumably in thanksgiving of the service I’d had in our nation’s armed forces.  I was moved so deeply and profoundly… there’s no way for me to even try to explain it.

Shortly into the service, the pastor realized that he’d left out my group, the peacetime volunteers, and he publicly recognized that, and asked us to stand.  Both of us.

There was no need for an e-mail, and there was really no need for any kind of recognition, but I felt good that this omission had been fixed.  I wasn’t looking for glory by any means, but I’ll take all the prayers I can get!  🙂

This morning, I got up and was pawing through some stuff lying dormant on the hard drive, and found an old page I’d written to monitor various ham radio propagation pages. When I took a look at it, I saw that there’d been a bunch of band openings overnight, and there was still some activity going on.

Not having any radio gear, I did the next best thing, and sat myself and my camera up in front of the Sony upstairs, watching for anything out of the ordinary. As it ends up, there must’ve been a tropo duct between here and Kansas City and slightly beyond, as well as as little bit of enhancement to the east. This is first time I’d been able to watch stations from KC, and they were booming in. In fact, the local channel 9 was really torn up by channel 9 in KC. That was fun to see.

Alas, it didn’t last long for me — maybe an hour or two — but there was plenty to see:

• WSEC-DT, Jacksonville IL (76 mi)
• WPSD-DT, Paducah KY (153 mi)
• KCWE, Kansas City MO (210 mi)
• KRCG-DT, Jefferson City MO (78 mi)
• KCTV-DT, Kansas City MO (214 mi)
• WDAF-DT, Kansas City MO (214 mi)
• KMCI, Kansas City MO (210 mi)
• KMIZ, Columbia MO (103 mi)

The downside was that I couldn’t just tune to a digital channel on the Sony — I had to let it find the DT stations, and then I had to figure out what it had found. Not too cool, but still, it was a fun event, and fun to play with. There were other stations that I had suspicions about, but didn’t see ID slides for. I’ll catch them some other time.

The bummer is that in a few years, the fun and ease of chasing analog broadcasters will be done, as everyone will be required to be DT. I think the signal level needed at my antenna to pull a DT out of the mud is much higher than that of the analogs, and I fear that this kind of signal chasing will long be gone.

Tonight, I’ve designed my business card for the show coming up in August:

Not too shabby, methinks!