A good father's day weekend

Hey, all. Not a lot of new medical information to report so instead I'll just share the highlights of a really nice Father's Day weekend. Took Friday off and Kyle, Caitlyn and I watched the US/Slovenia soccer game (virtually) together. Kyle and I were in L-town and Caitlyn was in Bozeman. We got video skype going between our two casas and screamed at our respective TVs throughout the entire match. A fun game but WTF on that third goal?

After that Kyle and I went to a 10:20 am showing of the A-team. What fun - a completely empty theater to watch a great man-movie. Here's a picture of Kyle in the theater:

After the movie we chowed down on some lunch time sushi. Seemed like a great idea at the time but the old GI tract wasn't too happy later in the day. Sadly, looks like sushi may end up on the no-fly list, at least for the week immediately following an infusion.

Friday afternoon Susan came home from DC so it was AWESOME to have her back in town. Saturday we did chores in the morning and then went to celebrate a friend's 40th birthday. Amazingly, Ed looked pretty mobile without the walker or wheel chair. Still pretty chipper for such an old guy :)

Today we got a new bike seat on Susan's bike and then had another strange lesson in patience given to me by the universe. Through a series of problems, I ended up changing out inner tubes on both my road bike wheels SIX times in a period of two and a half hours. This involved trips to 4 different bike stores. Wow. This was the kind of silliness that you would never script in a story. Bike stores closed, pinch flats, valves too short for rims, etc, etc.

Finally got out on a tough 25 miler doing hill work on the Morgul Bismarck route and in Louisville. I sun-blocked up and wore a sleeveless jersey and it felt way better than wearing a long sleeve shirt last weekend. One of the nice things about being on chemo is you never have to apologize for wheel sucking your bike partners. Here's a picture of Susan towing me along 128 just after we climbed "The Wall" on MB:

Still got a whole lot of work to do to be ready for the Copper Triangle. In all honesty, I'm not sure I'll be able to do it. Although I'm still active, each dose of the wonder drugs does seem to notch me down  a bit lower in terms of what I can do physically. I guess if it's just completely obvious that I'm not ready for that I'll go up to Copper for the weekend and do a mellow ride on my own while all the other folks do the CT. We're going to Crested Butte for a good part of next week and I'm going to try to get in a lot of both road and mountain bike miles and see if I respond with any increase in fitness or if my body is just not able to get fitter while I'm going through the chemo.

After I got done the bike ride and hung out for a while I kicked the soccer ball around just to honor the World Cup. And wow, that was pretty gruesome. My physical dexterity seems ok (can juggle the ball ok, pass, kick, etc.) but running, especially after the bike ride, just totally gassed me. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to play on my men's team for the last 1/2 of their season so today was my first training session with that goal in mind! And it was pretty gruesome. Hopefully there's no way to go but up (famous last words, right ?)

After the kick around, Kyle, Susan and I went to a new favorite restaurant of ours in Boulder, Leaf. The service is typically pretty "mellow" (Boulder code word for slow and bad) but the food is uniformly good. Perhaps another lesson in patience for yours truly? Anyway, it was a really nice meal. After that we drove up to  the amphitheater on Flagstaff and took in the late afternoon light over Boulder. I've ridden my bike up that road a bunch of times over the last few years but I think it's probably been 15 years since I've actually walked down into the amphitheater. Definitely a nice place to be as the sun sets over Boulder.

Tomorrow I'm into the cancer center for a quick check on my blood work and to get Pablo cleaned. Nothing much else to report so that's it for now. 9 weeks from tomorrow I'll have my last chemo if everything stays on track.  For this week, just concentrating on being healthy - eating well, lots of good sleep, fun, exercise and good company in CB.