My Wife is My Best Friend

Pikes Peak with Puppy (Daisy)

2022-07-06T16:10:00Z

I am fortunate to work for a company (LinkedIn) that shuts down each year on the week of July 4th. We often use this as a time to get away from the Texas Summer heat. This year we headed to Colorado Springs and even though the temperatures were high for them, we were thankful to be out of the 100+ degree days. Here's our picture at the summit with Daisy, our 16-month-old mini Australian Shepherd.

Tahiti Day 4 — 5/21/18 – Embarking Day

2018-05-23T03:08:05Z

We boarded the Windstar Wind Spirit on Monday afternoon after checking out of the Hotel Sarah Nui in Pape’ete, Tahiti.

It is a nice ship and not too big. Our 140+ cyclists take it to full capacity. I will have limited network access for the next several days because I didn’t want to pay for the pricey Wi-Fi onboard the boat.

Pictures below of the ship in the Tahiti port, us participating in the mandatory security drill, and the unfurling of the sails as we left Tahiti that evening.

Tahiti Day 3 - 5/20/18 - Race Day!

2018-05-21T18:12:26Z

Sunday was Race Day for the La Ronde Tahitienne (http://www.larondetahitienne.com/). This was an official professional race, and the star participant was Thomas Voeckler (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Voeckler) a retired French professional rider.

And in our first professional race, we got “the” silver medal! And now I can say that I rode in a professional race with Thomas Voeckler “finished before him” and got “the” silver medal. But there are a few caveats. There were options to ride 110km, 55km, or 15km. We chose to ride the 55km while Thomas Voeckler and probably all of the professionals rode the 110km. “The” silver medal is in quotes because while we did get “the” silver medal, but there were over 200 silver medals. Anyone who finished in the top third of the racers got a gold, second third got a silver and everyone else got a bronze. We were just glad to finish without any incidents.

We actually averaged 15.5mph over the 32 mile course which was our best speed by far for that distance. We frequently average under 14mph. However, we have never “raced” before and likely will never “race” again... we are riders, not racers.

The first picture below is pre-race, the second shows us with our silver medals, the video shows our friends Bill & Lynne from Chicago finishing the 110km race. They had previously tried to change to the 55km race, but somehow their request did not go through so they endured the 110km ride and did great.

There was at least on accident on the course and we were thankful to have missed it. While the main peloton including the top professional riders was coming back along the course (it was an out and back course) several of them went down in a crash and spread out across the whole road. It caught one of our tandem riders on the outbound path and took them down as well. They were able to walk away from it with some pretty serious scrapes, but it looks like no broken bones. The high speed rider who was part of the collision coming toward them was not so fortunate and ended up with a broken arm. The tandem riders did have the front seat break off of their bike, but that is certainly easier to repair than an arm.

We will board the cruise ship on Monday —

https://www.windstarcruises.com/yachts/wind-spirit/overview/

Our friends Bill & Lynne (from Chicago) finishing the 110km race!

Download AB45CA9B-997D-43CC-BD06-96B2FD560DD6.TRIM.MOV

Our before and after pictures. The “after” picture with our silver medals!

Tahiti - Day 2 - Food, Bike Building, and Welcome Meeting

2018-05-20T15:41:09Z

We decided to venture out and try McDonalds for breakfast. It was an interesting outing. The food here is quite expensive. A happy meal at McDonalds is about $7. We ordered two McMuffins with Ouef, Bacon, et Fromage (Sans Ouef). I thought my French was good enough to know that “Sans Ouef” meant without egg, but figured I must just be misinterpreting and that certainly you would not make a bacon, egg and cheese English muffin without the egg... but I was wrong. It was a bacon and cheese only McMuffin :)

We spent about 2+ hours putting the bike together. Santana (the bike manufacturer and tour operator) always brings along a great bike mechanic — one who really knows their bikes inside and out. We had been having a clicking noise on our bike for almost 1 year due to an upgrade we did to the drive chain. Leland (the mechanic) was able to listen to it for about 30 seconds and pinpoint the issue. He fixed it as soon as I was able to remove the cranks (where your pedals screw in) and get them to him.

After the bike building session and making sure we had put it together right with a brief test ride, we had the gathering in the hotel lobby to get our welcome packets and our race packets. There are about 70 couples on this week of the trip. There was another trip that started last week that will end after the race, making about 140+ tandems that will be joining the race tomorrow.

We did manage to find a better meal for dinner. It seems that French Fries come with almost every meal.

Day 1 in Tahiti

2018-05-19T07:03:27Z

We arrived in Pape’ete at 5am after sleeping (or trying to sleep) most of the way on our flight from LA.

We took turns getting our “Welcome to Tahiti “ pictures with our friends Bill & Lynne from Chicago.

We saw several bikes during our bus ride from the airport to the hotel. I’ve included a blurry one showing a parent with their two small children on the back. Remember that this is around 6am in the morning.

The main goal for the rest of the day was staying awake. We walked around Pape’ete and saw the market and also walked over to a nice park along the water.

We found these new friends (the snails) on our afternoon walk after a brief shower.

Day 1 in Tahiti

2018-05-19T06:53:47Z

We arrived at 5 am in Tahiti having slept a few hours on our 8 hour flight from LA. Here are our 5am “Welcome to Tahiti” pictures along with our friends Bill & Lynne.

We spent most of the day just trying to stay awake. We walked through the market and saw lots of fish and other produce. Later in the day, after a brief shower, we found a few new friends during our afternoon walk to the park in Pape’ete.

Ready To Go!

2018-05-17T20:22:35Z

We’re at the Austin airport ready to go. We fly to LAX on Southwest Airlines, then we’ll transfer to Tahiti Airlines. Fortunately, we have over four hours to collect our luggage in LA and get it over to the international terminal and re-check them there.

Packing and luggage

2018-05-17T19:58:38Z

Here are the before And after pictures of the tandem bike. It fits in the two large (but airline approved) cases. The third picture shows all of the luggage we will be taking.

Almost on our way!

SWTR 2018 - Brenham, TX

2018-05-12T21:02:28Z

We had a great weekend in Brenham for the 2018 Tandem Rally. We even took a tour of the Bluebell Ice Cream Factory.