Urban Assault Ride

Monte and Newman, aka Team Spider Monkey, had a blast on Sunday participating in New Belgium Brewing Company's 1st ever Urban Assault Ride around Minneapolis. Spider Monkey finished 8th in their class with a time of 2 hours, 4 minutes and 24 seconds. Plenty of Chipotle burritoes and free Fat Tire and Skinny Dip at the end of the race to greet them!

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"The Urban Assault Ride™ is a funky bike scavenger hunt that involves street-smart riding, obstacle courses, and a huge after party. Mental muscle is just as important as bike skills as teams of 2 choose their own course to checkpoints around the city.

The event is well known for its checkpoints where zany obstacle courses must be completed before moving on. We're talking modified Big Wheels, Bike Jousting, The Keg Walk, Inflatable Slides...and much more. The first team to hit all of the checkpoints and cross the finish line wins! Then the party begins with New Belgium beer and lots more two-wheeled shenanigans! It's a Pedal-Powered Urban Adventure!"

A Day of Firsts

Yesterday was definitely a day of firsts.... Hagen's 1st mountain bike race, Newman's 1st race (as of lately) where he did not have any issues with his bike breaking down, and Monte's 1st place finish!

The final race for the MNSCS series was in St. Cloud on Saturday. Monte got out in front of the pack right at the start, which was his goal. It's definitely easier that way rather than trying to pass riders on the narrow bike trails through the woods. A bunch of us watched the race at certain points, so it was exciting to see Monte in the lead and then finish 1st in his age group and 1st overall in the sport class! He received a cool granite trophy with a disc brake rotor attached to the top and was even interviewed afterwards for the MNSCS website. Nice work, Monte!

4 Months

Ani will be 4 months old on Sunday. Here she is enjoying "tummy time". She's quite a little mover and shaker now! Gee, who's her dad? She's really fun to interact with now and is starting to actually belly laugh every so often. Best part of my day when I hear that!

Lipstick on a Pig

The subject seemed appropriate considering all that went on this past week in the crazy political world. A friend mentioned to me the other day how the media and politicians are such parasites and feed off each other, thus sometimes fabricating stories that aren't even relevant to any of the real issues they should be discussing. How true. Can't wait for this whole political B.S. to be done with so we can quit hearing about both campaigns!

Maybe it's extra irritating since I've now reverted back to being a little sleep deprived again! Ani was doing so well sleeping the whole night through for over a month up until 2 weeks ago. Now she wakes up at least once, sometimes twice, a night. That's rough when you're used to 8+ hours of solid, uninterrupted sleep! But we think she's going through a growth spurt and/or possibly teething. She will be 4 months old after this coming week. Time is FLYING with her!

I'm still on the lookout for a part-time job. My extended maternity leave has been nice though, I can't complain. I've had a few interviews - had 2 offers but one of the jobs sounded extremely boring and it was 35-40 hours a week (hello, part-time?!), and the other one sounded good, it was 2-1/2 days a week, close to the daycare we have picked out and everything - but the pay was horrible! We would have paid the daycare more per hour to watch Ani than I would be making!

Monte's got a big weekend ahead - 2 bike races. The last race for the MNSCS is in St. Cloud on Saturday and the other one is Sunday's Urban Assault Ride: "Pedal-powered teams of two hit checkpoints all over town - completing crazy obstacle courses at each stop." Monte and Newman are the twosome. Lots of biking to look forward to.

MOA

Several members of the TeStrake clan came up last weekend to visit us. Matt, Kristi and Ava drove all the way from Kansas City (fun car ride) in order to meet Ani, and my parents, sister and niece drove up from Iowa as well. It was a great weekend! Although I'm not sure the boys, meaning Monte, my dad, and brother, enjoyed the MOA much. Good people-watching can only last a couple hours... and my 11-year-old niece Meggie is a nut about clothes shopping so she was in heaven while the rest of us were ready to leave!

Here's my 3-1/2-year-old niece Ava holding "Baby Ani". And also Meggie & Ava on one of the rides in Nickelodeon Land or whatever the amusement park in the mall is called now!

Reunions

A lot of fun events have taken place this past week... first off, Ani and I went down to Iowa over Labor Day weekend to celebrate Vanessa's bridal shower and bachelorette party (well, I left Ani with Grandma for that portion of the celebration!) and also to attend my mom's Harder family reunion in Wilton. It was great to "party" with all my girls again and also to see my family. Party is in quotation marks because I only had one drink at the beginning of the night when we were still at Nessa's house and drank water once we hit the bars. One of the downfalls of breastfeeding... :) But it was still a fun time!

Secondly, Ani is about ready to roll over on her own! She tries pretty hard and gets the bottom half of her body going, but can't quite follow with the top half yet. Oh, and she likes to drool.

Lastly, we had a reunion last night with all the families from our childbirth preparation class this spring. We grilled out near the bandshell at Lake Harriet. It was SO neat to meet everyone's babies and not see all of us women pregnant! We were lucky to have a very cool group of people in our class and I know we'll keep in touch. Someone had a wonderful idea of laying all the babies down on a blanket in birth order. 

RAGBRAI - Day 7

July 26, 2008

Final day of the ride... I don't want it to end. The park is still full with campers at 6 am, but the chorus of zippers and laughter lets you know they are a stirrin'. Packing my stuff for the last time - I'm off to Le Claire with a cool breeze and less humidity... YES!

RAGBRAI - Day 6

July 25, 2008

Early start this cool and humid morning at 6:45 am. It's the last full day of RAGBRAI 2008 which is kind of bittersweet. Yes, I am tired but you get in a groove and you're used to camping and having everything wet. I stopped for a PB&J - good sandwich with pretzels. There was a church fundraiser, it was $2 for Maid-Rites and they were very good. Each town along the way had lots of food but I want more sleep. I rolled into Tipton around 1:30 pm - showered, slept, and then went to the local diner for a generous portion of spaghetti. Swing Crew tonight and MIA - could not get better. I had a few cold ones with Roti's crew.  

RAGBRAI - Day 5

July 24, 2008

It rained last night but everything of mine is dry! Rain is the word for the day. Right now it's 65 degrees and misting. I rode with my rain cape and it got hot pretty quick. When I arrived in town, I had a nice hot shower and some good coffee. Ran into John Coleman who used to run Kenwood Cyclery. He is currently homeless in Boulder, CO and riding with Western Nebraska folks. Amana Colony South was beautiful with lots of old, historic buildings. "Norman Rockwell would be proud" says Mr. Pollack look-alike.

 

I stopped for "free" beer along the side of the road - the family was taking donations for their daughter's memorial fund. Besides a breakfast burrito, I ate sweets all day - scotcharoo, chocolate chip cookie, church cookie bar, free granola. Tomorrow, I get to see Swing Crew and Mia. She plans on coming to Tipton to see Dennis & friends with me.