Senior Olympian Sprinter

,, I would explain how I loaded this picture today, but I would be too exhausted to blog.  This shot is from umbrella 63 at the Holiday Inn Resort and Casino in Aruba in the Palm Beach area.    We are spending the week and having a very relaxing stay. This is our first trip to Aruba, and probably not our last.   The weather is very warm with very intense sun and brisk winds all day.  The wind is from your back as you look at the water and ranges from 20 to 40 mph in a rather steady manner.  You must keep your stuff nailed down or it is gone! The wind is a blessing for keeping bugs and mosquitoes away, but it annoying because you cannot leave anything lay around.  The beach is clean and well kept with blue water that is warm enough to swim and cool off.  It also an open beach so there is a steady stream of walkers and running coming by all day.  Something for everyone to watch. The resort is full of East Coast folks with families, couples...

The new dirt auger covered to keep it dry The kitchen remodel project really warmed up the last week.   I ordered a grain auger from the local coop to convey dirt from the crawl space to the yard.   I finally got it installed last weekend and ran some dirt, but it was Valentine's Day and spending it underground was not in my best interests. I does speed up the process immensely, but I still need to figure out how to load it a little slower.  I overheated the 1 HP motor a few times and it will kick out until it cools off, dirt is definitely harder to mover than animal feed.    I also made a trip to Atlanta and made a stop at IKEA to pick up half of the cabinets we need.   Now, I have way more than I can do in several months and we will start chipping away.   We also found a really neat exhaust hood for our stove.  Futuro makes a Mimosa model that is very stylist--Italian of course-that is paintable.  The ...

I keep forgetting that people like to read my blog and I have been slacking.  My bad. This 'off season' if you can call it that, I have been doing more long distance running on the treadmill and weights for the legs and upper body. I try to get in some training at least 3 days a week, but no more than 5.  Rest is very important for us old timers.   So far so good.  No real injuries from running. I did have a really sore left hip last week that was self induced.  I wrapped a rope around a very heavy piece of pipe to get it "out of the way" and I moved it OK.  But two days later the top of my hip was really mad and caused me to skip a couple of my running work outs.  Back to normal now.  I ran a mile last night at 8:34 pace on the treadmill and then did some leg weights.  So I think I am healed up. I am staying in pretty good condition and my fitness is good.   I have been slowly inching up the speed on my treadm...

I was in Mexico for 5 days this week for a Sales Meeting at an all inclusive hotel on the beach in Puerto Villarta.   Perfect weather and gorgeous scenery from the seventh floor of the hotel over looking the bay.  I did do three workouts while in town.  I had to take advantage of running in sand.  It whips your butt and makes my knees real mad, but I can burn some serious calories.  My second running workout on Wednesday used 1025 calories.  I was gassed at the end, I had burned a lot of calories.  My knees were sore the next day, but the rest of me was fine.  For that session, I ran on the beach and then returned to the hotel by the street just inland a block or two.  I was running and discovered a very nice all weather track and public activities area.  I got in a couple of laps for  fun and continued on. There was even a few kids working on starts with their blocks...great to see that.  I was out of energy at that point, low...

On Christmas morning, Mother Nature gave everything, including Santa a good wash down.   Around 4:00 AM it was raining about as hard as water could fall from the sky!!   Our idyllic little creek came up in a flash and covered our entire meadow with water.  It also took care of all the leaf residue, imagine that, the rain water washed my leaves away!   A couple hours later, the creek was back to near normal levels.   These water levels were the highest since the May 2010 mess.   I enjoyed Christmas in Brentwood with all the kids and Linda.  We were missing Betty's wife, she had to work in Milwaukee during the Christmas weekend.   But all the kids and two girlfriends also made it a house full.  We opened a lot of presents and had some yummy treats... It was a fun Christmas for me, for sure.   Linda and I did travel to Ohio the Monday and Tuesday after Christmas to hang with some friends while I...

 A cranberry bog near Vancouver with fresh snow on the mountains.  Quite a panorama. The mountains were beautiful and the skyscrapers in the foreground made for a great picture SSSS stamp--this crap is not random.     I traveled this week to Vancouver, BC Canada on business.  I want to inform the uninformed, that it is not like on TV.   I traveled on Southwest and Delta Airlines, which is a little odd , but there are reasons that I will try to explain.  On TV commercials, they show the travelers that paid for first class seats having their wine and cheese in their fancy seats and enjoying the sunset out the window of the plane.   OK, it can happen, but those people are not you and I.    By the way, Delta has only 8 747 planes, the big ones that are shown quite frequently on TV commercials, so your chance of riding in a big 747 and behaving like these people is remote.   They basically run a ...

We have been decorating away so Santa can find our house. Lights on the front porch with a couple of inflatables to add some kid attraction.  The tree is up and actually filled with presents underneath.    I am done with shopping and actually have a lot of the Christmas cards in the mail--Yes!  I still do a few cards to family and some school friends from college and high school.   During the year is very difficult to keep up with everyone and the Christmas cards let them know what my latest info is for addresses and phone numbers.   Old fashioned, but it actually works pretty well.   We have also been doing some work around the house to get ready for the kids ( all adults now) who will start arriving on the 23 rd and stay thru the 26 th and then all disappear again.  It should be a lot of fun, we try to get everyone in the same room at least one time a year and this year we get them all at our house....