#3 Starts Kindergarten

#1 and 2 started school last week.

Although Megan tried all kinds of ways to talk #3 out of starting kindergarten , she started today anyway. #3 has been counting down the days ever since her last day of preschool last spring.

She promised me she would not get into any fights today.

Now megan is left home with #4 and a cat, both of which go to the bathroom where they aren't supposed to.

Megans First REAL Triathlon

Megan has done a few triathlons, but they were more of the informal, neighborhood triathlons on the 4th of July where you show up in the morning and everybody decides what distance they are going to do.

Before

After

I can really only take megan's word for it if she did the olympic distance or not.

She claims she did a 1500 m swim, 40km bike and 10k run in 3:06. She looks as fresh in the after picture as the before picture. For all i know she could have taken a couple of pictures in the transition area and then went to the spa for the morning.

I wasn't there to see her. When i did my first open water swim, she came to see me and even almost got our car towed because she was afraid i was going to drown. 100 yards into the swim, the thought did cross my mind. I got my swimming merit badge when i was 13 years old, they didn't have other people hitting and kicking me during my swim. This video shows how to properly train for an open water swim.

Bunny was supposed to do this tri so megan took bunny with her.

When it rains it pours 2

What I meant to say was:
When it rains it pours, and when it pours your basement can flood.



Matt, I am sorry we were late and only stayed a few minutes at your 40th birthday/amputation party. We will make sure we stay longer next time you get something amputated and have a party.

3rd annual, 4 Canyons of Fun

Every summer i like to spend a long Saturday with friends climbing the 4 major canyons in the salt lake valley.

Last Saturday was the day for this years fun filled event.

Seven of us met at the mouth of little cottonwood canyon at 6 am.

Temperatures started out nice and cool and we started climbing.

Little cottonwood was recently repaved, so it was nice and smooth going up and really fast coming down.

Big cottonwood was fine and a guy with a broken chain at storm mountain provided a short break while we helped him get fixed and rolling again.

The second half of Millcreek was painful and demoralizing as usual. I can never tell when the canyon is actually going to end.

Emigration Canyon was just hot.

This year was slower than years past and was much more painful for several reasons.

My fitness isn't where it has been in years past. I had an 11-28 cassette and found myself looking for another gear.

As i climbed up little cottonwood canyon, i couldn't help but think about the first time i climbed little cottonwood on my bike. The Doctor dragged me up it.

I remember riding on the shoulder and in the gravel, hoping that i would get a flat so i could stop pedaling for a few minutes. I was cursing him the whole ride.

You see, the Doctor was the one that got me into cycling.

We have ridden more miles together than i care to remember. Some mornings we meet up, say "where do you want to go", ride for 90 minutes without saying another word except "goodbye" and other mornings, we would talk for the whole ride.

I have always envied his aggressive, attacking style of racing. Something that i have never been able to do. He is acting the same way with his recovery.

It will be a little while before me and the Doctor are able to ride together again.

With his attitude, i don't think it will be too long.

He is so positive and ready to get on with life and not dwell on the fact that he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer and had his leg amputated. He considers himself extremely lucky to be where he is.

Until he is able to get on a bike again, i am expecting him to follow us in a car on our group training rides passing out homemade cookies. I am a little worried since it was his right leg that was amputated, so he will need to learn to drive with his left foot. I figure i will probably get bumped from behind a few times for the first little while until he gets the hang of driving again.
Luckily he got rid of his car with a manual transmission a few months ago.

As we climbed Millcreek canyon, i hadn't thought much about it until we rounded the corner and came upon Log Haven, where Luke and Bunny had their wedding reception. The rest of the ride, I stopped thinking about the Doctor's stump, and thought about Bunny, Luke and the Girls.
I am a very shallow person that doesn't think much, but 7+ hours on a bike gives you some time to ponder a few things.

Life, death, loved ones, health, mercury in retrograde, legs, family, God, chocolate milk, pain, charity.

I couldn't help but realize that I am extremely blessed.

At the end of Emigration, instead of riding home, I headed to the Huntsman Cancer Institute to see the Doctor. He was positive and a lot more coherent than the night before. He had gotten over his urge to punch the anesthesiologist in the face because the epidural didn't work.
He ended up leaving the hospital to go home Sunday morning.

Zach just started riding a bike this year and he did all 4 canyons. That was pretty impressive. As impressive as Zach's ride was, the most impressive ride to me on Saturday was Parker.

This kid only rode the first 2 canyons but watch the video and see his sweet bike.

Post surgery

12:30 and Matt is on his way to a recovery room.
The doctor said the surgery went as well as it could have. He felt good about the whole thing.

I didn't get very far through the 88 pictures the nurse took of the surgery before stopping.
Something about a picture of my big brothers leg, detached from his body and sitting on a table makes this whole thing a lot more real.



On the bike ride up here, we were trying to think of stage names for matt once he becomes a one legged stripper. He thinks there will be a high demand for these and that nobody is currently fulfilling that demand.
If you have suggestions for his stage name or you are having a bachelorette party and need a one legged male stripper, leave a comment.

If we're not laughing we're crying.



-- Post From My iPhone

The doctor pre surgery

We dropped the doctor off via bike at hunstman cancer just before 2:00






He has been sitting up there waiting for a surgery room for the last few hours.
Surgery is now scheduled for 7 pm
And should last around 2.5 hours

They finally got him back at around 8 which means he will be done around 10:30 and off the drugs and with it enough to see anyone around midnight

Why is this whole cancer thing not working around my schedule?

-- Post From My iPhone

Cat:Part 2

About 18 hours after taking the cat home, i was on a mountain bike ride and got a phone call from home. Megan rarely calls me on my bike rides unless i am a couple hours late and i knew i wasn't late yet, so i thought it was weird.

It was #1 and this was our conversation:

hello

*sniff* dad *sniff*

yea?

*sniff**sniff* can you make some lost cat posters?*sniff*

yes.......why?

*sniff*the cat is gone*sniff*

I can make them when i get home, but i won't be home for a couple of hours.

*sniff* okay, thanks *sniff*

I love you, i'm sorry, i will see you in a little while.

bye*sniff*

I couldn't help but think about THIS

I finished my ride and loaded up the bike and drove home.

As we were pulling into my street, we ran into #1 who apparently couldn't wait for me to come home and make the posters. She was hanging her own lost cat sign on the light post at the end of the street. We hadn't had the cat long enough to have pictures so it was mostly just a poster with text, a description, and a phone number.

We did have the little piece of paper that was on the outside of the cage at the humane society that had a small black and white picture of the cat with the sex, age, description etc.

The girls ended up taking that to about 100 houses in our neighborhood, knocking doors and asking if they had seen the cat.

Since it was going to be an outside cat, we kept the cat in the garage, but somehow it had escaped.

Not more than 18 hours after we brought it home, we already lost our cat.

I talked to Lil bills dad to see if the cat showed up at their house, looking for her sister.

He told me with his infinite wisdom of having given up his masculinity years ago to open a can of tuna fish and put it by the garage door. It has a strong odor and cats like it.

30 seconds after opening the can, the kids could hear meows. #3 came running in and told me that they could hear the cat but couldn't find her. I walked out in the garage and she was sitting under my table saw.

Apparently she never ran away at all but had been hiding for the last 4 hours out of fear of being loved to death.

Her sister cat may die of a similar fate.

On sunday afternoon, we went to my parents for dinner and took the cat up to see her sister. As we were leaving, the cat ran and hid behind some boxes and wouldn't come out. I guess Megan is going to be going to Costco and buying Tuna in bulk.

I have ordered the Tabby Tote, but it won't be in for a few days.

Hopefully this will make it easier to not lose the cat.

Cat:Part 1

I had dogs growing up and even went and got one against my mothers wishes when i was 16. A few years later the doctor got one too. Then we got some more and had a dogsled team for a while.

I eventually put my first dog down because he had diabetes. It got to the point where he was blind and couldn't move. It was hard explaining to my daughters that i was taking the dog to heaven. They had been taught about heaven in church and when i left with the dog in the car, it confused them that i could drive to heaven.

Megan and i agreed to wait a while before getting a new dog. That while turned out to be about 2 weeks. Megan got obsessed and ended up doing lots of research on what breed would best suit our family. It turned out that a labrador retriever was best suited for what we wanted in a dog. The only drawback with a lab is that there are so many of them that sometimes the breeding can be compromised. We found a reputable breeder that had both the mother and the father so we could see both of them and then had its hips and eyes checked. We bought a puppy and took him home and went through all of the highs and lows of having a puppy.

He grew up big and had lots of puppy energy even at the age of almost 4.

Right as we moved into our current house, he started having seizures and we found out he had epilepsy. We got him on medication but within a few months we ended up having to put him down as well. Megan never really had a chance to have a calm dog curl up at her feet and look up at her adoringly while she read a book that she was so looking forward to. I have offered to do that for her but she just thinks it's creepy when i do it.

We again agreed to wait a while before getting another dog. Megan wasn't ready to do the puppy thing with me being at work all day, and i was okay not shoveling poop for a while.

We had various rodents and fish, as well as fish that were accidentally fed to the rodents. The life expectancy of rodents is not long so it is hard to get overly attached to a mouse. Especially since we set mouse traps in the garage.

Megan recently became obsessed again.

This time she figured that the girls have too much love to keep bottled up and they need to give some of that love back to one of Gods creations. This time she decided that the recipient of all of that love was going to be an outside cat. They live longer than a year, they bury their own poop and when you go out of town, you just dump a bunch of food in a bowl and they are fine. It's not like a dog where you have to board it or pay some neighbor kid to come over and take care of it. I have been telling the girls for years that i was allergic to cats, but if it was going to be an outside cat that i didn't have to touch, i would deal with my allergies.

I figured we could just wait until we saw someone giving them away at the grocery store and pick one up for free.

Megan talked to lil bill's dad who had their cat run away a while back and it was decided to go to the humane society and get litter mates together. Lil' Bill stole the kitten that we wanted and we had to settle for the second best kitten there.

We filled out an extensive application and then gave urine and blood samples and had a psychiatric evaluation, we were finally able to take the cat home.

I have officially given away any small piece of masculinity i had left.

When it Rains, it Pours