Had a nice weekend

We had our somewhat-annual St Patrick's Day open house, and lots of folks showed up. I spent a lot of it taking folks out to the garage to see the new bike. My dad thought I should just have set it up in the living room :-)

The kids came home for the weekend (they are both away at college), and it was wonderful to see them. The younger will be here for most of the week; it is his spring break.

It was also my birthday, so I slept in, had a lazy bagel and coffee, visited with my sister-in-law who dropped off some birthday chocolates (she makes them, and they are wonderful), then my brother came by later with their youngest so she could sell me some plants for her Girl Scout fundraiser (off to My Chalet this summer), THEN we took Rebecca to the airport, then came home and invited my parents and cousin Phillip over for dinner. I'm now prepared to ride in downpours (not that I didn't before); I got a Showers Pass Elite jacket for my birthday!

Brian gave me a hysterical card - it has a picture of an, um, older woman with baggy jeans, sneakers, a tshirt, sunglasses and a sideways baseball cap, holding a skateboard, with the caption "Maturity Rocks". I'm also now older, wiser, and much cooler. That one gets tacked up outside my cube at work.

Then we got out for a bike ride. Fitz didn't want to commit to riding any further than Sylvan, but we got there and he felt ok, so we summitted Council Crest, and he STILL felt ok, so we did the Fairmount Loop and came home. 15.71 miles, NICE day; lots of other cyclists and runners had the same idea!

I'm really enjoying the ride of the Bleriot. Still need to kill that rattle in the sliding fender bridge, but I'll get around to it one of these days. The tires (Nifty Swifties) make that nice ripping-off-Scotch-tape sound.

At that point, it was 20 minutes until dinner, so we pulled out all the leftovers from last night and set the table. Hey, the house was still clean.

The Birkie Brevet is this weekend. Hope I'm up to the 126.1 miles. I keep telling myself it is just Seattle to Winlock, but the 3 week break in my riding is a bit disturbing. The right knee (the one that had the outstanding bruise) is still tender - it doesn't hurt when I run or ride, but it complains afterward. And my ribs are still a bit tight on the left side. So, if you have a moment, think positive thoughts for me!