First some eye candy for the Katie groupies: Soulmate has a monkey puppet which Katie has fallen in love with. He appears whenever she is getting fussy (which is rare) or is losing interest in our activities (mostly because we are trying to do grown-up things instead of playing with her).Here the monkey has been stroking her cheeks with its paw, and Katie has turned her head to plant a big wet one on the monkey's nose. She has taken to kissing Soulmate the same way, but every time I get the cellphone camera out to catch it on film, she stops kissing and lunges for the phone. (I'm doomed--already demanding a cell phone at age 14 months)
On to the title topic: time trial tea for two. Charles and I are the new GrandStay secret weapon going into the Henderson TT next Saturday. We both have gimp shoulders (he broke his right collar bone in June, and I had left rotator cuff surgery in late February). Both of us have only started to do intensity workouts on the bike in the past month or so. Given the myriad of excuses we will have to explain a poor showing, we've decided to pair up for the Masters 35+ two-man category at Henderson. We figured we should practice trading places while riding on the ragged edge, so we hit county road 8 for an out and back.
After a 15 minute warm-up, we drilled it for 15 minutes or so pretty much as hard as we could go, both taking 1 to 2 minute pulls at the front. Our hardest job was to figure out how to let the guy in back know that we'd had enough and it was his turn. We tried different things, but finally settled on a turn of the head and a loud "HUP!" When I said it while redlining in front, it sounded rather like the Como Zoo seal barking ("Good boy, Sparky, have a herring!").
We did pretty well, averaging 24mph into a stiff southerly wind on the way out, and a whopping 29.5mph on the tailwind section, giving us about 26.5mph average for the effort. That's a full 2mph faster than I did the same section by myself on Wednesday. On his best form, Charles can average that for 25 miles by himself (as he did in the state TT in June before his crash). So, I'm actually just a tag-along, but at least I'm not an anchor. We'll see what happens next week.
BTW, Katie is now officially an honorary Italian-American. The honor was bestowed by Ray Cook, full-blooded I-A and owner of Mi Famiglia restaurant. Ray and Jennifer have been friends for several years, and have followed our adoption journey with great interest (and encouragement). We ate at the restaurant Thursday night, and when Ray saw Katie polishing off a large serving of Risotto with garlic, he was impressed. Her breath reeked of garlic for hours, but boy was she happy!
OK, just one freebie, but only if you like watching Gallager or blowing stuff up or launching potato guns into Lake Jessie:
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