Training - Another Break

The last couple weeks have been good for the bike. I've been riding pretty frequently - I get out for a nice ride the mornings I feel fresh (or it's dry). The tired days I skip riding and play games (BF2 is my rediscovered new favorite game) or write or read or look at house stuff online.

The last bit, the house stuff, will be absorbing a lot of time and energy in the next month. A young couple whose wife visited the house really like it and gave us an offer that we accepted. They got an appraisal done as well as an inspection. The latter went well as the inspector could find virtually nothing wrong with the house - just a couple cracks in the concrete around the top of the chimney. So now they have to do some other stuff - title search, the actual mortgage, I don't know what else - and then we can close on the house at the end of the month.

One problem.

We don't have a place to move to at the end of the month.

With that in mind, we went house hunting Saturday, praying that the third trip up north (fourth if you count an open house we attended) would let us find something. We hope we can make something work out but we're also preparing to rent a small apartment for a short time - 6 months or something - enough to give us some time to look at every house out there. You know, drive our agent nuts.

Fiscally I'd call us conservative. Actually I'd call us aggressively conservative. We're looking for a house that's much lower than what we are supposed to be able to afford. It's more important for us to live in a slightly less extravagant house which would still let us do "fun" things. "Fun" things would include, say, bike racing (!), doing bike stuff (tandem riding, trips, etc.), car stuff, house stuff, and things like buying quirky t-shirts when I see one. The future missus also has her things and we don't want to forgo too much of that.

However this means that any chance of buying an SRM will go flying out the proverbial window. Or a third set of deep carbon wheels. Or that Ultra Torque Record crankset I've been eying. My TT bike will be my spare bike with TT bars on it and TriSpokes under it, if I ever get my TT bars, not some aero tubed TT specific killer frameset. And thoughts of a swoopy custom carbon frame, well, that's on hold until further notice.

But I hope that our move will pay some dividends other than the actual house and the fact that the future missus will commute 22 miles a day, not 170.

First off we'll be moving close to the Tokeneke Road Race course. It has something like a three mile climb on it - maybe not as steep as that one at the base of Palomar Mountain but it's still a three mile climb. I'll have more time to ride. And I'll be in a great riding area. There's a good training race in the area as well as a lot of group rides. They don't have Thursday Night Downtown Sprints but perhaps for the future...

Regardless, I figure though that if I have good miles, the sprinting will follow.

For now though, except for an interruption for helping promote the CT Coast Criterium, I'll be focusing on the whole House Thing.

Right after the house thing will be another Big Thing, the whole Wedding Thing.

All these Things means that in the next two months I'll have less time and energy for riding and related activities. This is okay - it'll be my typical end of summer rest period. Then I'll start training for 2008. Heck, I might even check out a 'cross race.

Oh wait, I don't have a 'cross bike.

Never mind.

And yes, this means the blog might quiet down a bit. I have a lot of ideas simmering and even a few entries virtually done but you won't see too many race reports or an entry on my new set of wheels. More editorials, maybe a how-to or three, and a couple of my favorite stories.

I hope to be able to offer the readers a treat or two so that keeps it fun for me.

Now for a trainer session while the future missus is at class.