It's the Way You Ride the Trail That Counts, Here's a Happy One for You.

Thanks to Rob Ryan for the photo.

Well, Kids. I hope your New Year's Eve was fine. Ours was great and perfect for old people. We went down to the Dublin for the Irish New Year at 6. It's great, because you can see a ton of people in a short amount of time and then be home by 7. We ordered a pizza and watched a movie and were in bed by 9:30. I love being old and not feeling like I have to hang out in a bar all night on New Year's Eve with the cool kids.

New Year's Day was nice too. Since we are leaving for Austin early tomorrow morning, we decided to spend the day getting some things ready for the trip, taking the tree down and John worked on the bikes a bit. I got a nice, easy run in and later in the day, John and I went to the Johnson County Fairgrounds and rode the trails left by the courses from Jingle Cross. It was a lot of fun, and pretty important for me to get some time in on my CX bike.

The Austin trip is kind of overwhelming me..In a good way. I am really looking forward to it, but we just finished Christmas and then New Year's Day and now we're going to do a ton of stuff for the next week too. We are trying to do so much while we're there, that John said we should all pick a couple of things a piece that are the most important to us. My two choices are 1.) Go to Peter Pan miniature golf place and 2.) Go to the pinball arcade that has over 100 different pinball and video games. Poor John is dating a 49 year old woman with the brain and maturity of a ten year old boy. Coadster wants to do karaoke at a super cool looking place. John said he would go with us, as long as we don't expect him to sing. Works for me! John hasn't decided the things he wants to do (he's not great with decisions in general). I'm sure he's mostly just happy to race his bike and watch all of the other people racing their bikes. I also looked up cool places to run in Austin and there are a plethora. I'm sure he'll be happy about that.

I am also excited to get to hang out with my friend, A. and her boys when we're there. A. has dealt with living with me while I was pregnant with Coadster, lived across the hall from me during Coadster's first year and even drove me to the hospital when I was in labor with Stinky. I probably owe her a drink...Or 500.

Stinky and her boyfriend are house sitting and cat sitting while we're gone. Heidi won't be thrilled about it, but Archie will love having tons of attention from different people and best of all, they both get to free feed on dry cat food and so they can totally eat their feline feelings if they're missing us too much.

And so tonight, I will get off work, run to the store for a few things, get a nice run in and make our last home cooked dinner of baked salmon, baked potatoes and steamed asparagus and finish our packing and get to bed early, so we can wake up by 4 am and head South.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to blog while we're gone, but I will try to figure it out. If not, happy trails!