Blackjack Skiing Pictures

I promised these pictures a while ago. Eric took them, and I just remembered to remind him to send them to me the other day. Here are some action photos from the last ski trip. This is proof that chickens can fly.Here is a little daffy action for you. I bombed the top half of the hill to hit the jump hot on this run. It looks like I got decent air. You always want to check your speed going into a jump, at least I do. I have to always tell myself not to. I was once told the key to taking jumps, and more importantly landing them, is to throw you hands forward as you take off. As you can see I need to work on that a little, but I did land every jump that day.
I did pull up short on this trip. I really wanted to attempt a 360, but I guess you could say that I "chickened" out everytime as I approached the jump. What I need is for Nate to go skiing with me, because if he tries it, I can't let him out do me and I will have to try it. However, based on recent conversations with Nate, I believe it will be a while before he hits a ski hill again.

Fish Fry Proposal

This will probably come as a shock to many of you, but I got engaged while I was in town for a Fish Fry last Friday. It all happened so fast. I have known Vanessa for about 6 years now. We had been talking to each other on the phone quite a bit going into dinner. Then once we sat down to dinner things between us went really well. At the end of the night after we finished dinner I got down on one knee and I decided to propose. I had this picture taken while I was popping the question. It was pretty spontaneous, but then again so am I. We haven't set a date or anything like that. We are going to wait to iron all of that out once I move back to Milwaukee. Sorry Butch, I meant to ask your permission before hand, but as I said, it all happened so fast.

Brewer Game

Sunday I went to the Brewer Game with Jon, Julie, Nick and Ethan. It was Nick's school that had a group reserved for the game. We tailgated before the game. Screw Charlie Murphy and his Johnsonville Brats, Jon Davies is cooking butterflied porkloins. Here is Pickle acting like a punk with his friend, Griffin.
Here is Ethan with his friend, Quintin.
It just stunk that the Brewers bats were so quiet on this particular day. I am sure that their will be better games yet this year. By the way, if anyone ends up with extra tickets for a game and you are planning on tailgating, especially on a weekend, please let me know.

A Day of Bowling

Aren't you happy I didn't throw my whole weekend update into one big posting on Monday? Otherwise today you would be reading about me going to the grocery store yesterday. Back to this weekend. Saturday morning I went to Ethan's soccer game. It was too cold for me to get my camera out and take pictures. In the afternoon I scooped up my nephew, Zack, and niece, Sarah, then got my other nephew, Jared, and nieces, Lindsey and Erin, and took them all bowling. It was for Sarah, Jared and Erin's birthday. I used to take them birthday shopping for their birthday, but that has turned into a big waste of money because they just buy crap. Now I just take them out for an afternoon to do whatever they would like. While I was at my brother, Jeff's, house his son, Zack, wanted me to take pictures of him in the basement jumping off a trampoline over this bus. I thought it would be nice to get the picture, that way when he broke his leg, I could show the doctor how it happened. But Zack made the jump without injury.This coming weekend will be my niece, Sarah's, birthday party. My sister in law, Sue, would like to have the floor redone in the downstairs bathroom before the party. Here is my brother, Jeff, making the claim that the bathroom will be done by Saturday. I am sure that we will have a good time Saturday afternoon watching this video if in fact the floor is not done.

Here is my newest nephew, Joey Jeffery.

Of course I bowled with the kids as well. I won the first game with a 105. Lindsey had the top score of the kids. The kids seemed more excited to allow me to let them take pictures with my camera than to bowl. I had them taking pictures while bowling and they didn't actually get too many that were usable. Here is one that was usable.Here is Sarah while bowling. I think this is one picture that turned out that the kids took.After bowling I took the kids to McDonalds for ice cream. This was the second of three times that Erin had ice cream that day. She had three birthday parties to go to on Saturday. When I was a kid I never had a birthday party nor did I go to many birthday parties.Saturday night was the Championship match for the bowling team comprised of my sister, Deb, brother in law, Tim, Aunt Marilyn and Uncle Dave. I try to make it to at least one night of bowling with them a year. And that fact that this was for the Championship made it even better. Here is my Aunt Marilyn after one of her many strikes.Here is my sister, Deb. As my memory serves this was also a strike.The boys talked a pretty good game, but did they back it up? Maybe uncle Dave did. Here he is.Tim on the other hand started out with a 125. I nearly bettered him when I bowled with the kids, and I was screwing around the entire time. He told me that bowling is a marathon not a sprint. While I have never run a marathon, I did do a 1/2 marathon, and my first mile was my fastest. I don't know if he knows what he is talking about.But at the end of the night, Tim showed off some of his bowling talent. Maybe he should have bowled this was all night. I am not sure I mentioned it, but the last time I bowled against Tim, I beat him rather handily.

The year end picture. They ended up finishing in second for the season. The team they played against had some serious rollers on their team. One guy had a 750 series against them.

Friday Fish Fry

Yes, I have been a slacker lately. I just don't have much going on during the week. I am going to break down my weekend into a couple of days so that I have new postings every day. Friday night I headed back home in the pouring rain. It was the first time I can recall seeing people pull over on the side of the road because it was raining so hard. I have seen that with snow before, but not with rain. Anyhow Friday night I went out for a Fish Fry at the Eagle Springs Pub with Chris, Rebecca and company. All went well. After dinner, Vanessa, was telling stories about her ability to drink beer. She was talking a very good game, but I doubted that she could back it up. She claimed to have beaten me in a beer slamming contest when we were in Mexico. Well there is no time like the present to prove such a claim, and we had a little beer slamming contest at the bar Friday night.
Here was Vanessa's first attempt.

She then recruited her sister, Angela to join in the contest and it was more the same.

The third attempt was much closer.

A General Story

I don't know if I have enlightened you with this story about The General. If I have, you are going to read about it again. This goes back 8 or 9 years. I was living in Milwaukee. The General was living in Texas...I think. He was back in town for his buddy, Matt's, bachelor party. The General was the best man and was throwing the party. The General invited me, but I wasn't able to show up right away for dinner at the Rock Bottom Brewery downtown. I got there just as people were finishing up their meals. It was a group of about 10 - 12 guys. And I knew most of them as they were all friends from their college days at Oshkosh. We decided we were going to hang around at the Rock Bottom for a while and have a couple drinks. Schmidty, who I have known for a while, turned to me and said "Do you have any drinking games we can play?" I thought about it for a second or two, and said "Yep, The next person who talks to The General has to buy a round of shots." Everyone but The General agreed. So the game was on. As we were at Rock Bottom and their were 10-12 of us, talking to The General would cost any party goer well over $30, and most of us were just getting out of college and didn't have much extra money. So for the remainder of the night, no one talked to The General. It was actually pretty funny after a while, because The General would come up next to someone in the bachelor party and start up a conversation like, "So this wedding should be fun, what hotel are you going to stay at?" And whomever he was talking to would absolutely ignore him turn and walk away. Here is the most perplexing thing about this story, all of these guys were much better friends with The General than me, plus The General was only in town for a couple of days so you would think they would want to talk to him. So why they agreed to that game I don't know why. But as I said, no one talked to him the entire night and no one ended up buying shots. Weird.

Brewer Game

Sunday night on my drive back up to Appleton, my old roommate, Mark, who lives in Appleton called me up. He asked if I wanted to go to the Brewer Game Monday night. I was only planning on watching the game on TV, so I said sure. Nate got us hooked up with seats, ( Thanks buddy, I owe you Crawdaddys) and off to the game we went. It was a decent game, but they did lose. Here are some pictures.

This is the Stegall, I mean, Sausage Race.

Here is Prince Fielder getting walked.In other Rickie Davies news, yesterday I sent in my registration for the Twin Cities Marathon. No real turning back now.

Weekend Recap

It was a good weekend for me. Friday night I headed down back home. But first I stopped in Neenah where my sister and her family was staying for a wedding that weekend. We hung around the pool for a couple hours but I left my camera in my truck and didn't get any pictures. Saturday I had Rebecca cut my hair. Thanks again Rebecca. I owe you a fish fry this coming Friday. Saturday late morning was Ethan's soccer game. Here are some pictures.Here is Ethan being a complete punk and not paying attention to his coach at halftime. Saturday evening was Ethan's First Communion. This is a picture I snapped after Ethan had some wine. It looks like Ethan will probably grow up to be a beer drinker.
Ethan's godparents weren't in attendance. Nancy and I stepped in for the photo ops.
Here is my newest nephew Joey Jeffery. He is getting his trademark Davies cheeks that his brother and sister had.
Abby and Sarah showing off their choppers. I am not paying for those braces. Ethan reading his cards.Sunday was a day I was really looking for. I finally was able to play sheepshead with the boys. And it was nearly my ultimate sheepshead table. All that was missing was TT. I would like to say that I had fun playing cards, but the biggest problem was that everyone else at the table really sucked at cards. I took all of their money. And in fact I left money on the table. This won't mean much to people that don't play sheepshead, but for those that do, I am going to recap the turning point of the afternoon. I had picked twice in a row on marginal hands. In the first game I didn't get a trick, and my partner got our only trick the next game. After which The General decided that he would be cracking me every time I picked before even looking at his own hand. We were playing for dollars and I picked on a doubler. The General cracked without looking at his hand. I had 6 trump and 5 of the top 6 cards. The General had the 10 of diamonds. I cracked back. I ended up taking all of the tricks. That is $1, a doubler is $2, no tricker is $6, crack is $12, re-crack is $24 a person. Roman, Mick and Tree were also in on that hand. I could feel the steam coming out of Tree's ears. So being the generous person that I am, I had those three only pay $6, and made The General pay $24. Out of the goodness of my heart I left $54 on the table. I am sure this personal charity will not be repaid in the future. Here is The General after digging into the pockets for more money. He is quite possibly the worst card player I have ever played against. You can also see in the pictures that Justus has quite a stack of chips in front of him. Here is a sure sign that the apocalypse is upon us, Roman was borrowing money for Justus. Again just one request for my friends before the next time we play, take some lessons.

1/2 Marathon Results

I know, a new posting is far overdue. I just got my laptop back yesterday afternoon. Let me give you my recap of my 1/2 marathon. It sucked. The night before the race, I had this sort of sick feeling in my stomach. I assume that if some day I get sentenced to be executed, I will have that same feeling again. I woke up early the morning of the race and looked out the window. What a joke, the sleet / snow was coming down in a hard diagonal direction. As I drove the 20 minutes to Oshkosh for the race, I went by a number of banks that had signs that displayed the time and temperature. 32 degrees. I got to the registration area and as I was walking around to get my bib number and timing chip, I stepped off the sidewalk and onto the grass which was highly saturated with cold water and both of my shoes were soaked. On to the race. Things started out fine with the race, except that my toes were pretty numb for the first mile. But my first mile was right at 8 minutes. Shortly after the first mile, I got a good side cramp which lasted for the next 3 miles. My 3 mile time was 24 minutes 30 seconds. I was on a great pace, and that got me to thinking that if I had just signed up for the 5K, I would be done. From that point on my mile times continued to decline. And as my mile times declined, my inability to feel my fingers increased. Let me preface this next part of this recap as not being an excuse for my time, but it did happen. At mile 8 there was a train crossing. The race organizers had police in place to hold up all trains for the duration of the race. But after a while, the engineer of the train decided he didn't want to wait for the runners to cross the road and finally just went across anyhow. If I had been 20 seconds faster at the point, I would have beat the train and it wouldn't have been an issue. But as it turns out, I got held up by the train and had to wait about 3 minutes for the train to pass before I could continue my run. I ended up crossing the finish line in 2 hours, 1 minute and 20 seconds. I really wanted to finish in under 2 hours. In the end, I will call it a pretty negative experience. But I am planning on doing another 1/2 marathon. There is one in Oconomowoc in August. And I had told myself that if things went alright that I would do the Twin Cities Marathon in October. I think that the Twin Cities Marathon will be my first and last full marathon. Here is a link to some pictures from the race.

Storch

Wednesday night I got together with my college roommates. Mark and Suzanne live in Appleton. They are my only friends here in Appleton. Storch had talked me into working with him at Applebees my second year of college. I decided to take that job so we would be able to hang out together more often, but as it turned out we almost never worked the same shifts. My third year of college I lived with Mark and Storch. I lived with them for only one semester. The second semester that year, I ran out of money and ended up commuting from my parent's house. Storch ended up marrying, Heidi, a girl that we worked with at Applebees. They now lives in Atlanta and have two boys. This was only the third time I have seen Storch since we graduated from college. I was a bit surreal to me to see Storch with kids. In college, Storch was one of the goofiest guys I knew. He was yelling at his boys for pushing Mark's daughter to high on the swing. That was just so different from the Storch I used to know. Like nearly all of my friends, Storch has matured quite a bit more than myself.

Here is Heidi, Brody, Jackson and Storch.

Add in Suzanne, Mark, Elly and Cat.Mark, Storch and myself.Tomorrow is my big race. The weather is going to suck and I am pretty sure I am going to walk away from it as a negative experience. This afternoon I have to take my computer in for a software upgrade, so I may be computerless for up to a week. I.E. I will be without internet access and won't be able to make any postings until I get my computer back.

The General's Request

The General and I go way back. I have known him since my senior year of high school. If you do a little math, that is 17 excruciating years. I stood up as the best man in his wedding. And I have to reluctantly admit that he is one of my best friends. This morning I got an email from The General asking me to poll my readers, asking them if my readers want him to post the occasional update on my blog. I told him not a chance. I already have a link to his blog. In fact here it is: One Sweet World. I also have a link to it on my blog under Pinko Commy Rag. You can go there now and read about his fantasy football draft from the fall of 2006. If he wants, I will be happy to add a link to my postings when he updates his. But I am not going to let his political views, and editorials about law and the military, infect and corrupt my readers. This is not the first time that The General has tried to weasel his way on to my blog. Please see this posting from September 2005. The title of my blog is "The Life of Rickie" not "The Life of Rickie and the Occasional Update Once Every Other Month From His Stupid Friend, The General".

1/2 Marathon

I am only days away from my first 1/2 marathon this coming weekend in Oshkosh. Tuesday night I pushed it a little bit. 4 miles in 32 minutes. I got a side cramp with a mile to go and struggled through the last mile. Probably not a good sign. I also bought some new running shoes a week ago but they aren't broke in yet and I got blisters on my heals. Another bad sign. I have no doubts that I will be able to finish the race. I am just worried about my time. I would like to average somewhere around 8 to 8:30 minute miles. Finishing in a time of 1:45 to 1:50. I am also concerned a bit about the weather. The forecast for Saturday is as follows: Chance of a few snow showers. High 38, Low 29. Winds out of the North North East at up to 15 miles per hour. Looking up last year's results the overall winner came in with a time of 1:07:50. And last year's the winner of the Clydesdale Division (+200lbs) came in at a time of 1:21:46. I entered the Clydesdale Division hoping to place high, but I doubt that is going to happen. I also doubt that by race time I will be up to 200 lbs.

What will my time be in my 1/2 marathon on Saturday?
	You won't show up
	You won't finish.
	1 hour 44 minutes ( 8 minute miles)
	1 hour 50 minute ( 8.5 minute miles)
	1 hour 57 minutes ( 9 minute miles)
	2 hours 3 minutes (9.5 minute miles)
	2 hour 10 minutes (10 minute miles)
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Hypocrite

I truely love when topics come up on my blog, especially from comments, that morf into postings of themselves. For one, it promotes chatter on my blog, which is normally exciting for me to read. And secondly it gives me something to write about.

Here is the situation. I would say, Borky don't take this the wrong way, but I really don't care. Borky take this the wrong way if you want. You are a big boy and if you make a valid argument the other way, you may just change my opinion. I doubt it, but you can try. And Borky if I do leave out any details, please feel free to make the approriate adjustments. Saturday morning I went out to brunch with Borky and Mrs. Borky. Our friend Heidi was going to maybe meet us. She suggested that we go to the "Talk Town Diner". As it turns out the "Talk Town Diner" doesn't open until 10 on Saturdays. We showed up at 9:45. Borky called and left Heidi voice mail giving her a hard time, I told him to ask her "If there were any other places she would like us to go and check out that were closed?" Eventually they opened and we went in and sat down. While we were sitting down Borky mentioned to me how Heidi always cancels on plans. So much so that he had sort of nicknamed her "The Canceller". Just then Mrs. Borky's phone rang. It was Heidi and she was on her way. Once Heidi got there I mentioned how Borky called her "The Canceller" and we all gave Heidi a bit of grief. As you would imagine, if you know Borky at all, he wasn't shy about giving Heidi a few shots himself. The plan for me on Saturday night was to go and see this Johnny Cash cover band. I was meeting a number of different people coming from different areas all at this bar. While I was out to dinner with my friend, K.O., I got the following text message from Borky: "Im staying in to watch a movie w liz 2night. Sorry buddy. Tired." I am fine with Borky staying in. I have been tired and pulled up short on meeting people out. It is rare but it happens. I had spent Friday night and all day Saturday with Borky and frankly I was a bit sick of him, so I was happy that he texted me and "cancelled". Do see the irony here? He was judging Heidi earlier on Saturday because she was cancels on plans, but then he turns around in less than 12 hours and cancels himself.

I left a comment on my blog stating:
"Borky, First you are a hypocrite. I think you need to appologize to Horn. You make a big deal and call her "The Canceller" at brunch Saturday morning and then turn around and do the same thing Saturday night."

Borky has retaliated with the following comment:
"1st of all, I am not a hippocrite. I don't do it all of the time. Only once in a great while. Second of all, I was tired, and wanted to spend some time w/ my lovely bride. Is that so bad? I think not."

According to Dictionary.com
Hypocrite, noun.
1. a person who pretends to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that he or she does not actually possess, esp. a person whose actions belie stated beliefs.
2.a person who feigns some desirable or publicly approved attitude, esp. one whose private life, opinions, or statements belie his or her public statements.

I my own mind, I find Borky guilty of being a hypocrite. But as always with my blog I have an open free and democratic forum. All voting is anonymous and any comments that you may deem necessary can be anonymous if you so choose. Here is the poll:

Is Borky a hyocrite?
	No, he just critizes one person's actions and then performs those same actions. What is the problem?
	Yes, because he critizes one person's actions and then perfroms those same actions.
	I still don't know what hypocrite means.
Free polls from Pollhost.com

NCAA Pool Results

Well the Final Four is over. I always have my pool and the results are in. 20 people entered the pool. As you can see from the picture below, Doggie won.Doggie your $85 check will go out in the mail today. Reluctantly, I have to announce that The General took home second place. The General was constantly complaining to me and also late with his payment. General, I will get your $15 check out to you whenever I feel like it. As for the remainder of the standings, they are as follows:
1st Doggie (163)
2nd The General (141)
3rd Liquid (102)
4th Rickie (92)
5th Tim's Friend (89)
6th Tom Brady (88)
6th Dan (88)
8th Bubs (87)
9th Bob (85)
10th Krum (85)
11th Sherman (82)
12th Timmy (79)
13th M.K.A. (76)
14th Pocahontas (75)
15th Michel (73)
16th Tubbs (71)
17th Tree (70)
18th Borky (68)
19th Deb (67)
20th Heather (64)

Congratulations to Roman and not to The General. Fair warning for next year, money will have to be in before the tournaments starts. No exceptions. While I am on the topic of entry fees, most of my fantasy football league reads my blog. Two additions, payment is required by the day of the draft or you lose your first round draft pick, and entry fee is getting raise to $52 to cover for the engraving of the trophies.

Minnesota Weekend Recap

Wow what a weekend. Spring is finally here. I was in Minnesota. 60s the entire weekend. I had to go back to my Prescott Bridge project for a meeting. It was a quick discussion about the bridge and then we raised the bridge to make sure things were working fine. Friday evening we grilled out in the Borky garage and played some ping pong. Then we went bowling. It was Borky, Mrs. Borky, Doug, Liquid, TJ, Kelly, Craig and myself. Bowling was fun. It was a small corner bowling alley with only 10 lanes only 3 blocks from Borky's house. We pretty much had the whole place to ourselves. I didn't even break 100 in either of my games. There wasn't enough oil on the lanes and my ball was hooking too much. Here is Doug bowling. TJ showing that he has got form.
Always look eye.
Liquid pretending that she is the St. Pauly girl.
Here is Borky very comfortable with himself as he bowls.
Saturday morning, I managed to force myself out of bed and went for a run around Lake Nokomis. 6 days until my race. Although I don't think you will find drinking and bowling a week before a race as part of your race preparation in many racing books. Speaking of race preparation, here is something the definitely isn't recommended in any racing book. Last week we finally moved my bridge. It was the first time that the bridge had moved in 3 or 4 years. And while it was moved using a crane it still moved. I had told two of my foremen that the day we move the bridge, I will buy them and all of their workers beer. Well that day has been pushed back to this coming Friday, the day before my race. What a fabulous idea. Drinking 12 hours before running 13 miles. But that is another story that you will hear about in a week. Back to Minnesota. I got in a run Saturday morning, then I went out to brunch with Borky, Mrs. Borky and Heidi. We returned around noon and Borky and I were trying to decide what to do. I said that I sort of wanted to watch the Brewer game. We went to a local sports bar in Minneapolis. But they didn't have the Brewer game on. I called my brother to make sure that the game was on TV and it was. With that, Borky said "Why don't we just drive to Wisconsin and watch the game there?" I had no problem with that, so we drove to Hudson. We went to two bars and neither of them could get the Brewer game either. Apparently Hudson gets their cable from Minnesota as well. We were told by the bartender that we needed to go another 15-20 minutes into Wisconsin to find a bar that would have the Brewer game on. We decided to just go back to Minneapolis. Here is proof that Borky and I were in Hudson. Dick's bar in Hudson, if you look close, in the background you can see a sign that says "Hudson, WI".
We wasted away the rest of the afternoon going to see "National Treasure". None of us were even remotely impressed by the movie. A city of gold under Mount Rushmore? Sure that seems logical. I probably won't do a movie review on that one. Saturday evening I met up with my friend, K.O. We went and grabbed some dinner then stopped back at her place before heading to Whiskey Junction to see a Johnny Cash cover band. Here is K.O. riding her fixed gear bike around her apartment. And it looked like so much fun that I took the bike for a spin around the apartment.
Here is the Johnny Cash cover band at Whiskey Junction. I thought they were pretty good. And the lead singer looked sort of like Johnny Cash until you got close to him. Then again, doesn't everyone look like Johnny Cash if they are wearing all black? I don't know.

Here I am with Liquid at Whiskey Junction.
Here is Flo at Whiskey Junction. Flo had just got back from Mexico the day before. She broke her arm Friday morning as she was leaving her hotel to go to the airport. Poor Flo, she had to suffer the entire plane ride and didn't get medical treatment until she was back to Minneapolis. But she was in a much better mood Saturday night. Krum and K.O.
As we were leaving Whiskey Junction, there was a conflict going on involved with the police. I was riding with K.O. and made her pull over so I could get some pictures, but I think you can see that the police were winning. As we drove by the police had their guns drawn. There had to be at least 8 cops and 4 squad cars on site. K.O. was yelling at me as I jumped out of the car to get pictures. But I had to get the picture.
Saturday night Krum mentioned to me that he was going on a run with a group Sunday morning. Needing to get in a long run, I woke up at 7 Sunday morning and drove over to meet Krum. Krum and I met his running group at this park. We started our run and it was alright. Suddenly we started going up hill, then we came upon a small glacier of snow, reaching the top of the glacier I found that we running up the back side of an actual ski hill. Once we were up and down and away from the ski hill, the rest of the run wasn't too bad. It was a 7.5 mile loop with many hills. At the completion of the first loop, I said that I had had enough. But the rest of them went on for another loop. They are crazy if you ask me. After breakfast later with Krum I flew back to Green Bay. A.J. Hawk from the Packers was on my flight back to Green Bay, but I didn't bother him for a picture or anything. Upon getting back to my condo in Appleton, I hit the couch and watched the Brewer game. Around 4:30 I decided to take a quick nap and then go grocery shopping. My quick nap lasted until 11:00 p.m. I figured it was a little too late for the grocery store and just went back to bed. 13.5 hours of sleep can really make you feel like new.

Mr. Fitness

Over the last couple of years I have made some changes to become more healthy and get into better shape. There was a time, the summer before I moved to Minnesota that I was tipping the scale at 235lbs. Once I moved up to Minnesota, I had a surplus of time on my hands and I was living 100 yards from a health club. This led me to getting into some decent shape. But I still ate like I had the same metabolism as I did in my 20s. But I didn't. Upon moving to Appleton, I stepped up my work out regiment a bit. I started doing push ups and sit ups almost every morning. I also adjusted what I was eating. It isn't a diet, it is a lifestyle change. I watch what I eat during the week, but allow myself to eat whatever I would like on the weekends. I also look at ingredients when I go grocery shopping. If it has High Fructose Corn Syrup in it, I don't buy it. Try it some time, it is pretty hard to find food that doesn't have HFCS in it, and when you go to the check out line you can look in your cart and find only healthy food in there. Now that I am training for a 1/2 marathon, which is now a week and a half away, I am running as much as I ever have. All of these changes and adjustments have put me into pretty good physical shape. But all of that is nothing compared to my buddy, Krum.

Krum just sent me an update of the Ford Ironman Oceanside 70.3 Triathlon (half Ironman distance) (1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, and 13.1 mile run) he ran this past weekend. I won't post his update, since it is 3 pages long. But I will tell you that Krum finished 206 out of 1958 competitors. He averaged 20 miles per hour on the bike, however I heard it was a hilly course, and after that swim and bike Krum averaged 7:18 minute miles for 13 miles. This blows my mind. Remember I am in pretty good shape and next weekend I am going to do a 13.1 mile run. I will be no where near 7:18 minute miles. I will be lucky to come in averaging 9 minute miles. And I won't be swimming or biking before the race. Krum finished the entire race in 5 hours and 15 seconds. He said his goal was 5 hours flat. Krum is an inspiration and a machine. All of that being said, Krum is still a deadbeat and owes me $5 for my NCAA pool.

Here is Krum on the run, looking fit. I don't know about the one piece outfit though.

By the way, Tree, Heather and Preston are also deadbeats.