I haven’t posted in a while because i’ve been busy and just haven’t gotten around to it. So here’s what’s been going on:

The weekend before last we spent the weekend with Rachel’s uncles up in Willits (Mendocino County) getting some work done on the acreage that the family owns and uses as their family camp ground. The property (known as ‘Willitswald’) lost a big tree over the winter right next to the kitchen, so breaking down the tree into fire wood with a chainsaw and a few bow saws, then re-organizing the leaning firewood pile took the better part of a day. The rest of the time was spent clearing trails, spraying for poison oak (P-O Patrol), fixing some plumbing that froze over the winter, building a bar, and cooking some really good food (10lbs of pork butt went by really quick), as both of Rachel’s uncles are also foodies.

We spent the weekend that just wrapped down in LA for a wedding of some of Rachel’s family friends (and now mine too). Rachel’s folks flew in from OK, and her brother, Tyler flew in from WY to be a groomsman, so it was great to have a little weekend family reunion and see people we wish we got to see a whole lot more of. The wedding wasn’t until Saturday night, so we got to spend Friday night (Rachel and i took half a day off work on friday so that we could drive down and arrive in time for dinner), and most of Saturday cruising around LA and doing whatever we wanted. The wedding was a nice ceremony in the back yard of the groom’s parents that was chalk full of little personal tweaks that represented the bride and groom. The ceremony was followed by great food, quite a bit of beer and red wine, and lots of dancing. Rachel and i realized that in our two and a half years of dating, it was the first time we’d had an opportunity to dance together. Weird, but we tried to make up for lost time and had one hell of a good night. Before we knew it, midnight had come and gone, and it was time to make our way back to the hotel. The next morning the bride and groom hosted a casual BBQ for all of the out of town guests. Everyone in attendance was much more subdued after the late night, but we did our best to finish off the desserts and booze from the previous night, as well as put a dent into the 150+ pounds of meat that had been grilled for the occasion.

Is that an elephant in the room?

For those of you who may be wondering, the question of us getting married is not an ‘if’ but a ‘when’. It’s something we talk about more and more often as we find ourselves at weddings of our friends. Basically, since we’re going to be paying for our wedding ourselves, we’d like to wait until we can afford to have the ceremony we want (small, casual, outside, great music) in the place we want (Texas Hill County) with the people we want (family and close friends). It won’t be next year, but it will be sometime in the next few years. Rachel doesn’t have a ring yet, believe me, you will know when she does. So just sit tight, relax, and worry about something else. We’ll get around to it eventually, and it will be awesome when we do.

Rachel and i officially withdrew our offer for the house we’ve been negotiating on since February. Basically, the guys at WaMu, who gave the woman who owned the house a loan for the down payment, found out that she had some money in a retirement account and refused to sell us the house until she coughed it up. At one point they were even trying to get her to put $10,000 on a credit card. Rachel and i finally got tired of dealing with them and decided that we’d rather not buy a house than do so in that fashion. And you wonder why those guys are in so much trouble. Screw them. So right now we’re back at square one, looking at places in the area, putting together a few offers, hoping something breaks. It’s stressful and i can’t wait until it’s over.

This Sunday i have my next bike race, a crit new Santa Rosa. In my last few races i’ve been noticing that i tend to feel better the day after a race than i do on race day. So this week i’ll be taking a different approach and going to the Velodrome in San Jose on Saturday morning for a track work out. I’ve never ridden on the track before, but i think i’d be pretty good at it, so i’m going to give it a shot at a beginner track work out. Hopefully it will open my legs up without making them too tired and help me do a little bit better in the race on Sunday. Maybe not, i guess we’ll see. Until then, have fun out there.