Well this past weekend was an enjoyable time, after clocking in a short work week last week. I put in some serious time in the office, 7 hours and 53 minutes in the saddle on Saturday, and some more great time moving my parents to their new home. The Holland Hundred this past weekend was an enjoyable ride, but unfortunately I had to take the ride alone for a third year in a row. I have now had my riding partner pass me by for 2 years in a row, but at least I didn’t post my worst time on the ride either. I would really like to find a riding partner up here in this area, rather than having to rely on a friend from Chicago to come and join me. After this year and my 2 biking events out of the way, I would definately like to pick up some more events to enjoy, possibly even a few fund raising opportunities. I would also like to pick up a group of people to enjoy biking with and a big plus would always be finding an attractive girl to join me on some of this. There were so many attractive females riding the LATE ride, and surprisingly a few riding the Holland Hundred, though I believe that they were just doing the 67 mile option. I would bet there were even more taking the 33 mile route, which didn’t parallel the longer routes for too long.

After the ride, I was a lot less sore than I have been in past years, I will attribute that to the shorts, since I have not been training this year at all. Just the 25 mile LATE ride warmup. Some dinner and discussion of business plans with Tod at Hooters on Saturday night, then the long night of sleep. A nice continuation of the nap on Sunday at work, and the trip to help my parents continue packing and get ready for the movers to show up on Monday morning. Some nice dinner at the Northwoods Lodge, followed by a trip out with Al, Tiny and Laura to celebrate her 21st birthday.

Monday was mostly just spent watching the movers move things and some gathering the rest of the loose stuff in boxes and helping out wherever possible. By 5:00 all of the stuff that the movers had packed up into their truck was unloaded into the approximate rooms that they belonged in. Some time spent moving things to the appropriate areas and then some dinner. After dinner, we got the last remnants of stuff from the old house and did some final reminiscing about the times we enjoyed back there. I only got slightly misty eyed, maybe I already dealt witht he fact that the house was disappearing, and everybody else was just ignoring the fact. After that was done I headed back for home and had to stop at a rest stop for an hour and a half nap before going the rest of the way to work. After surviving the day at work, I was able to get home and flipped on the TV and then crashed out.

Today was nothing too terribly exciting, I was able to watch le Tour de France and see the individual time trial, and watch Lance in the yellow take his advantage over the rest of the field even father, taking the stage by 61 seconds. I believe I found the EGR valve in my car, though I was not able to figure out how to take it apart to clean the valve of the carbon deposits. I would like to just replace the valve but, I do not really want to spend that much money on it right now. $154 for the new part just seems to be a bit excessive, and if that was indeed the EGR valve, I have no idea why it would have cost $75 in labor to install the part. Just a plug and 2 bolts, don’t have to take anything else off or move anything to get to the part. In any case time to end this post. I will need to post some pictures soon from the weekend.