It has been a while since I have posted more photos or written anything of substance on my blog. We are all doing well here and I have been posting pictures regularly to my photos site but I haven’t talked about them here.

The girls started school in Sept.
First day of school gallery

In Sept. Ansley was baptized.
Ansley’s baptism gallery

In Sept. I did my last race of the season.
Cotton Patch Classic race in Greenville, TX gallery

Last week we bought a new Canon Digital SLR Camera.
First pics taken with the camera gallery

The kids playing the back yard gallery – Oct. 2008

McCall Elementary’s Fall Festival gallery

So I’m pretty sure that’s all the pics I had saved up. If i forgot some I will post them up later. Enjoy!

As the road racing season has just come to an end; I was poking around the USA Cycling website and found the following report about me:

What the report doesn’t say is how many USCF Cat 4 racers exist in my zip code (or in any of the categories for that matter). I choose to believe that there are at least 500.

Anyway, the above results are for the 2 types of races I competed in this year: Criteriums and Road Races.

I have finally posted some new photos in my photo gallery.

I had last week off from work to spend some time with the girls for the summer. Unfortunately I was sick with a nasty cold most of the time, but I did feel good enough later in the week to do a few fun things. Last Wed. I took the girls to Sandy Lake Park over in Carrollton.

They hadn’t ever been there and didn’t know where I was taking them until we arrived. We spent 4-5 hours there during the day and had a great time. It was overcast much of the time which provided some relief from the hot temps we have been seeing lately. The girls had fun riding the rides and I had fun watching them. We played a little mini golf, had some lunch and rode the train.

Here is the photo gallery.

Then on Thursday I decided to take them fishing over at the pond near my parent’s house. This little pond is great for letting kids catch fish and was one of my brother Aaron’s favorite places to fish. We had a great time fishing, pretending to catch “whoppers” (as Hailey liked to call them) and chatting about lots of different things. Ansley caught 16 fish and Hailey caught around 7 or 8. It was a great Daddy-Daughter date.

Here is the photo gallery.

Here it is, middle of the night. I awoke a few minutes ago to find my throat dry and I stumbled to the kitchen for a drink of water.

I reached out and found the empty glass I had left on the counter before bed, filled it with cool water from the fridge door, (as I have a billion times since we bought this house), and drank it down. As I got to the bottom of the glass I felt something in the water hit my mouth; kinda like a piece of ice would. At first I thought it WAS ice, since I was only half awake. Then I remembered I hadn’t put any ice in the glass. Next I thought it was probably a pretzel or goldfish cracker in the glass deposited by one of my girls but I quickly remembered that I had gotten a drink just before bed using this glass and it had been free of kid food at that time. So I walked over to the kitchen light and flipped on the switch to find a little baby gecko, about 2 inches long, in the bottom of the glass looking up at me saying “Holy cow dude, you nearly DRANK ME”!!!

I have been around geckos all my life. We have lots of them here in Texas and I have always been decidedly pro-gecko since they eat bugs and make very fashionable earrings when you catch them and get them to bite your earlobe. I’ve played with geckos as a kid, I’ve had them fall on me in the middle of the night while living in South Africa and I’ve always tried to avoid touching their tails so they don’t break off and give the little dudes a tail-baldness complex till it grows back. But in all my years around geckos I have never had this kind of reptile-human mind-meld experience. Never before has the Gecko-Michael thought process been so totally in sync.

I looked down at this little guy and he looked up at me and together – in unison – we thought, “Man am I glad Michael didn’t just drink the Gecko.”

This is how I know that when the little guy got back to his home, somewhere under my fridge, he sat down at his little Gecko-computer and posted this same story to his little Gecko-blog on the Gecko-internet.

Lessons Learned:

1. Always get a fresh glass from the cupboard when getting drinks in the middle of the night.
2. My super-hero power is the ability to communicate telepathicly with geckos.
3. Geckos have blogs and the Gecko-Internet is real and not just something made up for children’s books.

Last night was my 10th bike race. This means I became eligible to change my racing category. So after the race and after the kids were in bed I sat down and filled out the upgrade request form on the Texas Bicycle Racing Association’s website and submitted my request to go from a Cat 5 racer to a Cat 4. A few hours later it was approved!

Anyway, I just thought I would share. I’m now officially a USCF Cat 4 Racer. w00t!

To see my name in lights officially, check out www.txbra.org, scroll down and look for the Recent Upgrades section.

Update!
Here is a short writeup of how I did during the race on Tuesday.

—

I saw my teammate Craig attack about halfway through the race and a group of 5-6 guys go to chase him down. Remembering the strategies my team talked about in last month’s team meeting, I jumped in with the chase group and sat at the back catching a nice ride up to my buddy. When we finally caught him the group sat up – which told me it was now my turn to take a flyer (my first one). I went out as fast as I could for as long as I could and hoped that Craig would sit at the back of the group as they chased me down. When I was caught, I saw Craig and Barb (another teammate) both in the group. I tried to keep up but was pretty gassed so I dropped back and rode at my own pace to the finish. Craig ended up placing 3rd and Barb ended up placeing 10th. I’m so happy for both of them!

—

And here are a few photos from the race:

Waiting to start

First part of the race

Middle part of the race

Riding alone at the front (I’ve just about had enough at this point)

For all the pictures, go to this link:

http://whitley.smugmug.com/gallery/5263458_sQZPd