(Title goes here)

Timing feels right for a Bloggy post- one of those stream of consciousness ones that is tough to title.

Sammy's cast comes off on Friday. This is a good thing, he's starting to smell a bit. There's only so much cleaning you can do with that cast, and Rebekah and I are REALLY looking forward to setting him free. He goes back to school this week, we got him a little kids wheelchair and everything. We got it from a friend of a friend whose daughter has had 9 surgeries for hip displasia, and still is having issues... very sad! Her case is a lot worst than Sam's.

Training has been going pretty well. In the first 16 days of February I've logged somewhere around 45 miles of running to go along with 190 miles on the bike, and a half dozen swims of varied length. We'll see where I'm at this saturday at the first triathlon of the year, the "honukane" (Turtle Man, I guess) triathlon that the Coast Guard is putting on. It was a coast-guard only race, but at the last minute opened it up to others with military ties/base access.

Making its debut will be the 2009 race machine:
Man, that thing looks fast. Then again slap Zipps on a galapogos tortoise and he'd look fast.

It's a sprint race with a swim advertised at 400m, and all on Hickam on roads that I ride and run about a jillion miles a week, so although i won't taper, I'll expect to do well.

My 21 yr-old cousin Ian is a supremely fast collegiate runner and swimmer, a downright good kid and is going to spend the summer with us here in Hawaii! He wants to run some races and get a summer job, I look forward to accomodating. Anybody got a summer job for a hard working mainland kid?

I hear my sons in the other room giggling uncontrollably, and I investigate. They are watching Madagascar 2, and rewinding over the part where the Hippo's butt is shaking, and unable to stop themeslves. They've done it 37 times now. Ah, to be 5 again and be endlessly entertained by underpants.

Saturday we did the kid's aloha run- Nicholas had another great performance. We took our lessons learned from the last run- don't sprint out the gate and don't cry. He did fine, finishing faster than any of the other 5 year olds that we saw.

Sunday, I went for an early ride out and around west oahu. Down Ft Weaver, out to "the Waterfront" (The new jazzed up name for Iroquios Point), back up Ft Weaver, and then took a left through the endless homes of ocean pointe... I ran into the new ernie els golf course and kept going on. I hit a dead end somewhere in between some new construction houses and turned around to find a little security dude flagging me down in his little security dude car.
"Canjoo reebda sign?" says he.
"is the sign written in english?" i ask.
"wash?"
"Is the SIGN written in ENGLISH" i ask
"jesh"
"then yes, i would imagine I can read it."
"joor treshpashin"
"Ok, I'll leave."
and i left. I don't really care for security guards, or for Ernie Els' new golf course. Bad timing Ernie, a private golf course at the far end of the worst traffic road on this entire hemisphere in the middle of the least desirable most overbuilt area on the island... in the middle of a slumping economy and housing market. I give it 18 months before that puppy is a public golf course.

Anyway, my ride continued on. Somewhere around mile 30 I realized that i didn't bring my tube/Co2 kit. For the first time in at least 9 months, I was on a ride without a tube/Co2. Crap. Well, fortunately I hadn't taken a flat in forever either. So I'd just finish up this here ride and take it as a lesson learned. All i had left was the climb up Makakilo and the dash back over farrington. 10 miles, tops.

Well, you know what happens next... as I'm coming down Makakilo hill, my back tire starts "duguuta-dugguta-dugguta"... crap. Bekah had to load the troops into the pathfinder and come save me. Security guard put a hex on me for my jackasstic nature.

Finally, ran the Great Aloha Run today. I was running late because I suffer from an undesirable combination of impatience and a feeling that I can outsmart everybody and find some magic method of parking for an event that is attended by 20,000+ people. I couldn't, and ended up just racing downtown and parking in the first place I knew I could, which turned out to be about a mile and a half from the start line. So, I jogged down and made it with 7 minutes to spare, and tried as well as I could to get closer to the start line. The gun went off, and it was a full five minutes before I could get across the start mats, which also meant that a full 5 minutes worth of largely slower runners were clogging the width of Nimitz. I was able to hit my ideal pace for about 80% of the time, and felt really good for pretty much the whole run. I wanted to finish in an hour, and ended up running in 1:01 and some change... so not too shabby. Then I had to make it back to the car so Bekah could go to work, ao after the return shuttle bus I had to run the mile and a half back to the car from Aloha tower.