Summer Blog Over

It's official. Summer is over. This blog is over. As you can see by the recent portrait of me taken by K8's mac, enlightenment has been attained. May you and yours have a blissful fall as we transition to that wondrous season of the year - winter! Stay tuned for the winter blog.

More renovations

A few of you loyal blog followers have been clammering for a look at our newly refurbished bathroom. Here's some eye-candy to satisfy your odd cravings! Salut!

Annual Forks of Cheat Forest Triathlon

In the big scheme of things, our annual triathlon is a pretty trivial little local event. But on the personal level, I find it's really uplifting to have external motivators to keep maintaining my fitness. And there's no better time than the end of summer to hold such a motivating event. So it is that Ann and I have hosted the Forks of Cheat triathlon for five years now, and it keeps getting better! This year we had 17 participants (a record), and I think everyone had a great time. I like it especially because it fits with our little community's emphasis on wellness and living in better harmony with the environment.

The event consists of swimming across Cheat Lake (starting at our dock), running the Cheat Lake Trail down to the dam, then biking 8+ miles over varied terrain back to our house. For most people, the circuit is completed in 1 - 2 hours. Kate's friend Julian finished first this year with a time of 1 hour and 1 minute, which is phenomenal (and I think, the best ever). He probably had the fastest times swimming and running. John Souther was extremely fast on the run and bike portions, passing me early on in the bike portion - on a mountain bike! Bill Reger-Nash at age 50+ is a superstar on his road bike, and he caught me on the 2nd to last hill of the bike portion. I ended up 45 seconds behind him at the finish with a time of 1 hr, 17 minutes. I was very pleased with that and quite sure it was faster than last year. The best part was that I felt strong all the way through to the end.

We celebrated with a brunch of fruit, juices and bagels on the deck.

Now, my next motivator looms in the winter: SKI SEASON!!! I better get cracking on the weight training, lower body and core fitness, etc. as well as aerobic activities. In my usual preference for doing multiple exercises, I plan to play tennis (I miss Trevor though!), run by myself, bike with Ann, swim once in a while, and golf, as well as work in weightlifting in our basement. Life is good!

USOpen2006

A tradition in our family for 4 years now has been making a pilgrimage to Flushing Meadows each Labor Day to watch the U. S. Open. A special treat is staying with our great friend Lee Stuart, who lives in the Bronx. This year, as always, Lee was our 'Border Collie', herding us through the train/subway/streets of NYC as only a native can do.

This year, we were very fortunate to have the whole family there (ian drove in from Boston, Trevor from Charlottesville, and Kate came with us from Mo'town). On Saturday, we all went to 'Drumstruck', a cross-cultural audience-participation drumming show using bongos. It was amazing that the audience was as capable as it was in providing background rhythms for the performers on stage, who trained us. Our second row seats were ideal for marveling at the dancing and powerful drumming onstage.

Sunday was tennis-day 1. We saw a long 5-setter with Marat Safin finally defeating David Nalbandian; quite an epic match, but we didn't see too much else that day because it was so long! We did get to see Rafa Nadal play against a relative unknown and his intense energy really won over the crowd. We also caught the end of a Lindsay Davenport match which she almost lost - it was exciting because who knows when she will retire, and she had a match point against her, which she saved, only to then win in the tiebreak moments later.

On the second day, Kate and I had Arthur Ashe tix, and she wanted to see Nadal play there. We saw Justine Henin-Hardenne too, but she was just overwhelming her opponent, so we skipped out to watch Elena Dementieva play on Court 11. Those matches are always so much fun to watch because you are right next to the court. Every once in a while I think I could stay on the court and win a game or two against these top-ranked women. A quick trip to Court 11 convinces me otherwise. Dementieva simply crushes the ball on both backhands and forehands. Even her serve, a notorious 'weakness' is far better than mine. Guess I'll have to dream on...

Kate and I watched Andy Roddick play for a bit at the end of the day in Ashe. He was doing very well.

Pretty cool to see two of the eventual finalists live (Roddick, Henin-Hardenne). Though the Roddick match hasn't happened as of this posting, I suspect we saw the two eventual losers...