Dog sitting again

Since we are planning on being around for the long weekend we decided we could help another friend out with dog sitting. In this case we are sitting a new dog "Ozzie" and he is a Labradoodle. A Labradoodle is a crossbred or hybrid dog created by crossing the Labrador Retriever and the Standard or Miniature Poodle.It is a somewhat strange looking (in a good way) breed of dog.

Ozzie is almost 2 and he is a really great dog. He is hypoallergenic which means Melissa (who is allergic to animal dander) can pet him. He is very good with the kids, letting them play, wrestle, tug, scream, run, chase, through the ball etc. for him seemingly endlessly.

He does shed a bit but other than that he is a pretty awesome dog!

Here are a few photos.

Long rides and a hard lesson

This week I've had my two longest bike rides I have ever completed. Wednesday I went with a group from the Mark Logic User Conference for a breath taking 27 mile ride over the Golden Gate Bridge and back.

I was very pleased to see that my regular training mates had scheduled a 35 mile bike ride for today. This ride took us all over the south Bay from Santa Clara to Mountain View to Milpitas and back. This was great and I am I getting used to spending more time in the saddle.

Here is a link to the ride - you may need to zoom out to see the entire route.

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2819669

I also had a hard lesson regarding riding and following. On Wednesday about 2 miles into the ride a rider in front of me drifted into my front wheel and knocked me down off of the bike. I suffered some road rash and some bruises all of which felt much worse the next day.

The one thing I was thinking as we started off today was that it would sure hurt to fall again since I was still a bit sore and still had scabs on my road rash from Wednesday. Unfortunately there was a near repeat incident at about mile 17 along a particularly fast stretch of the ride. Richard the guy I was following stood up and stopped peddling causing him to slow down as I was motoring along. The result was the same. I hit his back tire at nearly full speed and was again slammed down on the pavement at about 15mph. The really unfortunate thing was that it was the same side of my body as Wednesday so I not only created new wounds but opened up my existing scrapes. I must say the pain was significantly more acute this time because of the tenderness of my knee, hip and elbow all of which took the brunt of the fall and there was a lot more blood. The result was not pretty, blood running down my my elbow and leg in multiple places.

After walking off the pain and checking my bike we determined that both of us (the other rider fell hard too in this case) were OK. The initial reaction was to cut our ride short and head home as we happened to be at a place in the course that brought us close to home. After riding about 1/2 mile though we decided that since there was no serious damage we might as well finish the ride and that is what we did. So the majority of the ride I had a now very sore elbow and knee but otherwise did fine for the remaining 18 miles.

The hard lesson in this case was to give myself another 1ft following distance when riding. I think in both cases that would have been enough to avoid the crashes.

I am sure I am going to be VERY sore tomorrow.

Cool Company Video

The marketing team at Mark Logic created a cool new video as an opener for our annual user conference this year and it has been getting rave reviews from everyone who sees it.

Check it out!

Great Bike Ride

At our annual user conference there is always an unofficial bike ride on one of the mornings. This year was no different and since I've been riding some I decided to go knowing that they get pretty aggressive. It turns out we had 8 riders and 1 of them is training for an iron man triathlon!

We started in downtown San Francisco with the goal of riding over the Golden Gate Bridge and into the Marin Headlands and back. Unfortunately on the way out there was a mishap and a rider in front of me cut me off and I fell hard to the pavement. I had some road rash and some bruises but the bike was ok and I was ok so we continued.

The ride across the golden gate was awesome, the sun was just rising in the east and air was perfectly clear. On the other side there were a couple of hill climbs which were a challenge for me but I made it the entire way.

The total ride was 27 miles and I had a great time. It was simply stunning to see the city and the coast that way. I highly recommend it!

Check out the pictures from the ride taken by one of the guys on the ride.

http://picasaweb.google.com/danny.sokolsky/MLUC09UnofficialBikeRide02?authkey=Gv1sRgCMzzxOy5i8a-vwE&feat=directlink

Flag on the play

(late one night while the parents - the defense - slept)

ref: "tweeeeet" (whistle blows)
fan1: "It's about time ref!"
fan2: "Yeah these late night intrusions have been going on for weeks!"
fan1: "ok, here's the call"

ref: "at 4:30am - encroachment, #3 on the offense"

fan1: "YES, FINALLY"
fan2: "I didn't think we were gonna get the call..'

ref: "a 1.5 hour no sleep penalty will be.."

fan1: "good, he deserves it"

ref: "assessed on the defense.."

fan2: "WHAT! on the DEFENSE?!"
fan1: "are you kidding me! That's TOTALLY not fair!"
fan2: "are you blind ref? They were just laying there?"
fan2: "they didn't wake anybody!"
fan1: "I can't believe the call went against the defense again!"

fan2: "Yeah, that is going to set them back all day long."
fan1: "I know, how are they supposed to perform after being woken up at 4:30?"
fan2: "Oh and that's just great."
fan1: "what now?"
fan2: "look, #3 on the offense is already back asleep"
fan1: "figures, I'm not sure he was ever awake on that play"
fan2: "I think you are right, slept through the entire thing, totally not fair, totally messes up the defense"
fan1: "no kidding, totally not fair"
fan2: "this game is so hard to watch sometimes, the calls often don't go your way"
fan1: "i know, i know"
fan2: (getting up)
fan1: "hey can you grab me another coffee while you are in the kitchen? Looks like it will be a long day"
fan2: "sure, no problem"

Down for the count - back up now

Wow I just had a very bad 24 hours, in fact the worst I've had in quite some time. Tuesday night (or really early Wednesday morning) at 2pm I woke up with sever stomach cramps and what appears to have been a stomach flu. I then proceeded to have to go to the bathroom every 20-30 minutes for the next couple of hours. I also began to feel achy all over and had a fever and headaches. Not Good!!

This all left me incredibly drained of course and when morning came I could not eat nor did I have the energy. Melissa gave me water and Gatorade to keep my electrolytes up.

I had so little energy that I was barely able to make it down the stairs to the couch. Once there I was only able to lay down. My intestinal problems continued throughout the day interrupting my sleep but much less frequently thankfully.

By the end of the day I started to feel a little better and was able to have some dinner with Melissa and the kids although I still didn't feel great.

I went to bed still feeling about 60% of my normal self but fortunately not like I did all day which was like I had been stepped on by a giant. Then miraculously I woke up at 2am last night and it was all gone, my headache, fever and the aches. Gone, finished, vanished, fin. This morning I feel human, I am going to eat breakfast and head into work. Amazing.

This little 24 hour take down occurred on one of the worst possible weeks. This is the week before our largest event in company history our annual user conference and to which I am a major contributor so I had to re-schedule multiple meetings and still had to take several phone calls yesterday just because things I knew were on the critical path for the event.

I am sure it will all be fine and I am just glad I feel better. I hope this isn't something that is going around and we certainly did everything we could here to limit the exposure of the kids to it.

Now back to the regularly scheduled program!

Measuring yourself

We've been doing some pretty strenuous workouts lately including 4 miles of hills during the week, a 21 mile bike ride + 30 minute run and 5.5 miles of aggressive hills near Stanford this morning.

Each time I'm coming up at the end of the group for these workouts but I can feel my fitness improving slowly (heck just finishing this morning was a win!)

I have since found out that all of the people I work out with are younger (sometimes almost 10 years younger) so I now think I am doing pretty well!

Hurray For Lea

Last week Lea was awarded the Tolerance award at her school! Once a month the school awards one child per class for a different award and this month it was our Lea. Melissa was able to atend the ceremony and said she got all choked up, I wish I could have been there.

She accepted a certificate in front of the entire school, got to shake the principals hand and we are of course very proud of her.

Way to go Lea!