Holy shit it's windy

Regardless of the wind, I had to get yardwork done today. Slacked it yesterday to go for a ride. Had to take the long way to work to pick up my truck from Friday. Left it there to ride home friday night rather than deal with traffic. Not that it was that bad but my bike was in the back of my truck and well, any excuse to go for a ride. Had kid duty yesterday afternoon and then a wedding to go to last night. One I was in attendance to very briefly due to the girls acting like complete shitheads. Y'all know I love them dearly, but I think all parents need to just stand up and say "my kids are being shitheads" when their kids are being shitheads. We all know all kids are shitheads once in a while, but I don't think we all know that all parents can acknowledge when their kids are being shitheads. If you're wondering what I'm talking about, go to Walmart... anytime.

Today I tackled the yardwork with a little help from Stacey and a lot of help from Grampa and Gramma Schwartz. They were in town for the wedding and took care of the kids while we got some work done. Luckily, the kids were NOT being shitheads today. Stacey had a big ol' batch of kick ass chili made up for lunch. Perfect day for it.

After lunch I want out to the MTB trails at Beverly and did some work getting ready to build a new trail. (Thanks Stacey) Got home around 5pm and just put Mara to bed a few minutes ago. Just sat around and relaxed tonight.

Decorah here I come

Heading to Decorah on Saturday for what will probably my last MTB ride outside of the Cedar Rapids area for the year. Bummer, but Decorah is a cool town.

Stacey went to Mara's preschool parent teacher conference today. Mara's doing great and she really, really likes school. She's becoming my little buddy around the house. Nice to have someone on my side even if it is a 3 year old.

Ellen is taking on some of her mother's qualities. She's been impossible lately. She's into everything and has become very defiant. I wish she'd just relax and behave like her Daddy always has.

Josey (the dog) is recovering from an attack by a Rottweiler and a German Sheppard a couple weeks ago. Stacey the great bravely fought off the attackers with some helpful bystanders.

I'm looking foward to some garage time tonight to finish up some details on my 1x9 I'm putting back together after cannibalizing it for another bike earlier this year. It'll be both my play-around-in-the campground bike, and it'll probably end up as my winter bike since I already have spiked tires for it.

Stacey is doing great too and will be back in her office after it being flooded in June very soon. Our favorite time of year is upon us, so everybody's pretty happy in the Kehrt household.

Weekend in Cheeseland

Stacey and I took the girls to Wisconsin over the weekend. This weekend has been on the event calendar for a LONG time and Stacey was very much looking forward to seeing her best friend Becky. The weather was fantastic and coming across the Mississippi was a spetacular display of fall colors. I threw the Karate Monkey on the bike ride for the trip. No way was I getting within an hour of Southern Kettle and not ride it. So Friday I had a free pass to go get dirty. Stacey, the girls, and Becky and her kids had a full day planned of wife and kid crap, and Becky's husband had to work, so everything worked out well. I met a couple of old riding buddies that happened to have taken the day off and we went for a casual ride. Good ol' Gary dropped a cooler in the middle of the trail where it crosses a road for some mid ride refreshments. We rode for about 3 hours, and then hit the LaGrange general store for some lunch and a New Glarus beer. Scrumptious. I headed back to Becky's where the whole clan was getting ready to dive in to dinner. The ladies had plans to help Mark and I get the kids to bed and then head out for a couple drinks. Mark and I sat around and had a few drinks, but ultimately laid pretty low. The ladies came home surprisingly early, and I called it a night.

Saturday was awesome. We took the kids to a pumpkin patch. The girls had a great time, but Mara was a little scared of the train. We had a picnic lunch and then headed home. The kids took short naps and spent pretty much the rest of the day playing outside while we kept watch. Nice thing about small towns, traffic isn't such a problem and Mark and Becky's yard is huge. We grilled brats and I was knocking bag the New Glarus like it was going out of style. After the kids went to bed, it was the guy's turn to go out for the evening. We were not as wise as the ladies and made it a pretty late night. Started off at a bar, then hit a neighborhood Octoberfest party down the street from Mark and Becky's house. We came home around 1am, and I am quite sure that was a good decision. Luckily, I don't suffer from hangovers very often, and this would be a Sunday that I was spared. Mark however was not so lucky.

We hit the road after a tearful goodbye between Stacey and Becky. The ride home was luckily uneventful, and the fall colors were beautiful. The girls were very well behaved the whole weekend, which is a nice change. Usually one of them melts down sooner or later, but they played so hard with Logan and Rylan that they were just plain pooped.

A great weekend indeed. Got to ride, drink good beer, eat Becky's cooking, and spend a lot of time with the kids. I love Wisconsin, except for their football team of course.

You Don't Ever Want to Hear This

So I'm not feeling all that well last week. My neck hurts, but my whole body hurt after that race I did on the 21st. I feel a little pain on my left side, but don't think too much of it. I figure I might have some gland swelling or something. No biggie. Then I'm in Des Moines for business on Wednesday night and stay at Brian and Jen's house (bro and sis-in-law). We have dinner and I strangely don't have much of an appetite. We have a few beers, listen to a band, and hit the hay. I'm a little feverish and in the morning I start to get concerned. I go to my meeting at John Deere and as soon as I'm on the road home, I call my doc. I ask if I can get in that day and they squeeze me in. By the time I get home from Des Moines, I can tell I have a pretty good fever going. Go to the doc and he says I have a big nasty infection called a Tonsoloris absess. Gives me some drugs and asks me to call him if the drugs give me the shits. I'm on them through the weekend, the pain and the obvious absess start to retreat and everything seems to be cool.

Then the next Wednesday comes. I spend a pretty good part of my morning doing shitter sprints, so I call the doc and let him know. He wants to see me that afternoon and I agree. I let him know I'd be there but I don't have time to sit in the waiting room for 30 minutes. They "yeah, yeah" me and I go. The doc gets to me right away. He starts feeling the absess, which is definitely smaller but not gone. This surprises him and he says the following, which will probably be engrained in my phsyce forever: "I don't like the progress I'm seeing with the infection. We should be seeing more improvement than this. We're going to do a chest X-Ray, some blood testing, and we're going to set up a CT scan." He continues whilst I am completely bewildered. "I am looking for a mass. I'm talking about cancer. Could be some type of Lymphoma."

I'm almost speechless, except for one word. And that word was............."Fuck."
He says, "Yep, so I'll get the Xray and bloodwork done here, but the CT scan will take a couple days to set up."

Now, my wife can attest that my mind is all over the place all the time, I can never seem focus on any one thing ever, but this man had my complete undivided attention. We whisked through the Chest X-ray and the lab did the blood work. The chest Xray looked good and the blood work as I later found out did too.

Fast forward through a couple nervous days to my CT scan this morning. I'm there on time, and of course even though I'm the first appointment in the morning, they're running behind. I finally get through the whole thing and the technicians tell me to call my doctor later that day to find out the results. I'm on the phone before I'm out of the parking lot. Not that I expected them to have the results yet, but I want to set the tone. The receptionist tells me if I haven't heard anything by 4pm to call them. I tell her that if I haven't heard anything by 10am, I'm calling them. I'm not sitting on the sideline the whole weekend to find out if I have lymphoma.

I take my time getting back to work, but when I do I try to put my mind to my work so I'm not dwelling. Just as I get settled in at work, I get the call. Everything looks normal. The remaining lump appears to be inflammation, and not a mass of any kind. I am to continue with the antibiotics I am on and check back towards the end of next week.

Phewwww.