Derby Hat Racing

So here we are again the end of the weekend and still I cannot come up with a great topic for my blog series.  I know that I promised the next few posts would be a series but it isn't coming together in my head.  I will get to it, promise.

In the meantime, school officially end for my kids on Friday.  They were so ready to be done with school.  I am not sure I am ready, though.  When your a parent you come to rely on school as a daily diversion for your kids.  We build our lives around school for nine months of the year.  Then three of those months school districts throw a monkey wrench at you or in my case four monkey wrenches.  In the end, kids look forward to it parents mostly dread the summer vacation. 

Try and imagine how my oldest son feels about this change.  Remember, my oldest boy is highly functioning autistic.  He has had a great year at school.  He listened to his teachers, learned a lot of new skills, and gets a lot of support from the school staff.  For the vast majority of children, the idea of not having to listen to teachers or do homework is great.  My son doesn't share this feeling with his peers.  I don't think I could explain to anyone who has not had some kind of experience with an autistic child.  Don't misunderstand me.  I know many other people have there own problems during the summer.  The best way to describe it to anyone is to say that my son's been furloughed from his job without warning.  Imagine how you would feel if your boss told you tomorrow that your going to have to leave for three months without pay.  Your not being fired.  You get to come back to your job.  But for the next three months your on your own.  Three months is barely enough time to get used to not having a job let alone find something else to do. 

People might ask me.  Doesn't your son know schools ending.  Yes, he's known about the end of school coming up.  My oldest boy doesn't fully comprehend it till it happens.  The very last day of school he was a train wreck.  Yelling and screaming were just the start of his bad day. 

I see all this and experienced with it before.  I still struggle having to remind myself that my son has a legitimate reason for freaking out.  It takes a lot to keep my cool and give my son the slack he needs to make as smooth a transition as possible.  Lucky, the school district does give us support.  They started enrolling my son in summer school not as a punishment for poor performance but to help keep him from losing all the skills he's gained. 

I am looking forward to the next three months hoping like always that this will be a great summer.  It's all about perspective.  My son once asked me, "What's a Derby?"  I told him it was a race.  He then replied, "Isn't it also a hat?"  I instantly pictured jockeys riding their horses in the funny little black hats.  Yes, I told my son it's a hat as well.  Perspective, it's all about how you see it.  I just need to see it as a great summer.

My wife is calling me to her side so that's about all I have to say about that.  Please comment and subscribe.  If you think you have an idea for my blog series please also leave a comment about it.  Thanks.

Coming Soon

I am going to try something new with the next couple posts.  I want to do a series of post on one topic.  I will be working on this for the next few weeks.  If I am lucky I will get it down this week, but if your reading this I am still working on this series.  You'll hear from my soon.  Please subscribe and comment.

Ride of the Week - Green Moutain 04/04/11

This was it.  The first official ride of the season.  I mark the beginning of the season here in Colorado when Daylight Savings hits.  Only then do I have enough daylight to get in an afternoon ride.  Today, I had taken the day off work because of the long night schedule that I had to work over spring break.  I spent most of the day relaxing at the house.  The kids were back in school so it was just me and my wife.  She went to meet a friend in the morning, but during lunch we rested in front of a movie.

Around 2:00 PM, I got ever thing packed up in the "Ranch Hero" and drove out to Green Mountain.  I thought this would be a great place to start my season.  I'd lost a lot of my muscle over this winter which became painfully clear to me during the prior week when I attended Patrol bicycle training.  I was sucking wind all day and had to be pushed up the hill during our lunch ride (one of the older guys literally rode up behind me and grabbed my belt to give me a boost up the hill).

Green Mountain is a trail that I know well but have never finished the whole loop.  It's a great trail for working on endurance.  It's got great climbs but little to no technical spots (that I have found).  I knew that I needed to work out my body so this was the way to start.

I rode up the trail to a junction that I usually take to the south around the mountain, but this time I took it north.  I thought that I was going to make it that far, and if I found a way to loop back to parking lot in a short amount of time that would be great.  I was already sucking wind.  I was also a little cold.  When I left my house the sun was warming everything up.  Green Mountain was sunny but the wind was coming out of the northwest pretty hard making it feel a lot colder.  I made it up to a small rock out crop where I took this picture of me.  I also found the remains of something tucked in between three rocks.  Coyotes got something rather large.  It wasn't a cat maybe a medium sized dog or another similar sized animal.

I kept going till I looped back toward the parking lot.  I was glad I took the shorter loop.  I didn't think I had much more energy in me.  I decide though at the last minute to ride up the fire road to see how far it went.  I thought I would not have any problems but I was wrong.  I was still not in good shape so after climbing around a few turns I decided I was cold and tired enough to call it a day.  I coasted down to the car.  I was not really breaking a sweat and my arms looked sun burnt due to the cold wind.  I loaded up and headed for home.  I was rather pleased that I'd been able to ride that much with out walking the bike.  I hope to hit Green Mountain again this week but I also want to try out the Golden Bike Park.  I will given you a report on either trip later.

Happy Trails!!