Bike Trip FAQ

October 10, 2011 hannahviolin 3 Comments

I haven’t mentioned my dad’s bike trip lately, and a lot of people ask me about it. Yes, he’s still on the bike. He was in Texas for a LONG time (since September 20, according to twitter)…in fact, still is in Texas, though he is now very close to New Mexico. There he plans to visit a cousin for a few days and then continue on to Phoenix, where my sister Leslie lives. I think that might be the end of the road for him, but I’m not sure.

(Previous blog posts in case you missed them: Bike Trip, From South Carolina to Phoenix by bike, Cross Country Solo Bike Trip)

Some of my favorite tweets from him:

Other things people have asked:

Did he train for this? Well, yes. He’s been riding bike his whole life, and has been doing long trips for many years now. Before this however, his longest trip was for a week.

Where does he stay the night? He camps. He has a little tent and sleeping bag with him.

Will he ride back? No, most likely he will take a plane.

How will he get his bike back? Ship it. Or check it on the plane. Evidently there are boxes you can put a bike in.

Any other questions? Ask in the comments and I will answer, or perhaps my dad will 🙂

If he were riding this cross country there would be far more room for luggage…

Food, Running

10 miles!

October 9, 2011 hannahviolin 2 Comments

I’m exhausted. And I just scarfed down a steak burrito from Qdoba. I ran/walked 10 miles today. I was going to run more (percentage, not miles), but I was getting side stitches and having trouble and THEN I saw my friend Tony walking, so I walked around with him for awhile. It was nice to have company since Jen bailed on me this morning (it’s FINE, Jen, don’t feel super guilty). Then we saw my trainer Mike out for his run. And then we saw him again…he was going the opposite way and was going rather faster. I decided I’d better be running the next time I saw him, but I didn’t see him again. Maybe he was going too fast and was simply a blur.

Now I’m watching the Cardinals play baseball on TBS. I haven’t quite made it to the shower yet. I was thinking about making pumpkin bread, but I don’t have evaporated milk. I have two choices, make my own (it seems I can simmer milk on the stove?) or go to the store (possibly a good idea, but I am feeling super lazy right now). Has anybody ever done the stovetop method? Would I then let it cool or I suppose it doesn’t matter that much…maybe to room temperature. Hmm.

Speaking of pumpkin, I had a pumpkin pie martini last night! I should have taken a picture because the presentation was really lovely. They included a dollop of whipped cream and the spices were overdone but looked good. I don’t know if I would order the drink again, but it was tasty. I can’t wait for Thanksgiving, honestly. Lots to do before then, but still…can’t wait!

This picture reminds me I should REALLY clean my stove. It looks really good there, not so much in today’s world. And I need to practice making pie crusts. I’m not going to get better making them once or twice a year. I should really eat pie more often.

Random thoughts

Wedding Invitations

October 8, 2011 hannahviolin 5 Comments

I can’t wait any longer to tell you about my invitations! I am sure a few people still haven’t gotten theirs, but maybe they don’t read the blog anyway.

We found our invitation designer on Etsy.com. But it turned out she lived in St Louis!

She had done a similar type of invitation before, so we simply had to tweak it to our colors and exactly the way we wanted it.

I don’t know if you can tell, the purple frame is a different piece of paper and the invitation has three pieces put together.

I love them. I love the skyline at the bottom.

Ginger did a fabulous job. Though the post office doesn’t hand cancel. They laughed at me when I asked.

www.serendipitybeyonddesign.com

These were the save the dates she did, if you recall.

We’ll have a few more paper products such as menus and programs still to come. Wedding planning is fun!

Random thoughts

Chamber Project on TV again

October 7, 2011 hannahviolin 3 Comments

Yesterday I was on television with Dana from Chamber Project St Louis. We talked about the group and our upcoming season. Well, she talked. I didn’t say much…mainly I stood there trying to not freak out and figure out what to do with my hands.

Here are the links to the two segments of the interview, if you are interested. I have NOT watched them. I hate hearing myself talk!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyieqXFP04Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kryrc5HZMzM

It wasn’t the same as being on FOX2 News like in January, but it was still fun, and hopefully some people learned about the group that didn’t know before!

Food

Who knew vegetable oil could go bad?

October 6, 2011 hannahviolin Leave a comment

The other day I needed (wanted) to whip up a quick dessert to take over to our friend’s house for dessert. They had invited us to grill and I said I’d bring dessert. I had the ingredients on hand for cake batter blondies and knew they were really easy to make.

I didn’t plan on my vegetable oil being bad. I didn’t notice until I had already mixed the ingredients together. It smelled of plastic—it was the end of the bottle and I guess the container had started to break down or something. I’m not sure how old it was. So the blondies were ruined. I didn’t want to go to the store (I was sore from my half-marathon that morning) and I didn’t have enough ingredients to make it again. What to do?

I looked through the cupboards, and looked through my cookbooks. I settled on peanut butter bars. The recipe is from a cookbook my grandmother gave me years ago that was made for a fundraiser for the M.O.P.S. (mothers of preschoolers) of West Clinton Mennonite Church in Wauseon, OH. The cookbook is called “All our favorites” and is filled with easy recipes to make.

The recipe was easy, and turned out to be really good! Next time I might make it in a smaller container for a taller treat, but that would likely affect the baking time. I’d had to experiment. We had the bars with Edy’s Butterfingers Ice Cream on top and they were delicious. They were also really good the next few days.

Recipe:

Chewy Peanut Butter Bars

1/2 cup butter OR margarine (I had margarine on hand to use up, so that’s what I used.)

1/2 cup creamy peanut butter

1 1/2 cup sugar

1 cup all purpose flour

2 eggs, beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large saucepan, melt the butter and peanut butter. Remove from the heat; add sugar and flour. Stir in the eggs and vanilla. Spread into greased 9 x 13 inch pan. Bake for 28 to 32 minutes or until golden and edges pull away from pan.

Yield: 2 dozen.

Running

MO’ Cowbell Half Marathon Recap

October 6, 2011 hannahviolin 5 Comments

Sunday I ran the MO’ Cowbell Half Marathon. It was the first year of the race, which was replacing the Lewis and Clark Marathon (which was bought out by the Rock and Roll Series). I couldn’t resist running a race that involved cowbell! The race took place in St Charles and was a nice looking 13.1 mile loop. It was advertised as flat and fast, and the map seemed to just have a few hills towards the end.

Packet pickup was at the Ameristar Casino on Friday or Saturday. I was busy Saturday so I trekked out there on Friday. I was amused that the packet pickup for a race was at a casino…in any case, it was very easy.

I got my number, a little cowbell, and a nice long sleeved technical shirt.

We were instructed to bring our cowbells with us to try to set a world record for the most people ringing cowbells at one time.

Sunday morning I got up around 6:00 and headed out the door by 6:30 am. It was pretty cold so I wore layers—shorts and tank top under a long sleeve shirt. The race didn’t start until 8:30 am but I wanted to make sure I would find decent parking.

It was really easy to get parking and I ended up in the lot right by the race. I arrived around 7 am so I read for about 45 minutes before decided to set off in search of a bathroom. There were about a dozen porta potties set up and the lines were pretty long—luckily I got in line before they got really bad.

It was a beautiful day, and we were right down by the Missouri River.

I wandered around and tried to stay in the sun to keep warmer. Finally it was time to line up for the start.

We rang our cowbells like crazy people! And then the race started.

My goal for this race was to run nice and easy and not overdo it. I wanted to try to be as steady as possible and had decided that shooting for 12 minutes miles would be a good plan. The first mile I kept checking my watch and seeing how I needed to slow down—it’s HARD to run that slow with a bunch of adrenaline rushing through you, but I knew if I didn’t start slow I’d never make it through.

I had checked the map and it looked like there would be ample water stops so I just brought a couple gu with me. The first water stop was oddly right past mile 1, but then there wasn’t another one until around mile 6, from my recollection. That was a little strange. I also kept thinking I’d have to stop to pee but never wanted to enough to bother with out. I kept pretty even until around mile 7, when I realized my hip was starting to hurt. I stretched it out and kept going. As regular readers know, the past two months of running haven’t gone exactly the way I wanted, and my longest daily mileage leading up to this race was 9 miles, with my longest single run being 7.5 miles. I knew I could finish, but I didn’t know how I would feel.

After I hit mile 8 I stretched as well. We had just run through “New Town” which is this odd and creepy (to me) area of St. Charles that was built to be a community within itself. I find it creepy just because it seems like a bunch of people are trying to “return” to a time in America that never truly existed, but it was actually really nice to run through. Many people were outside of their houses cheering us on, and the only annoying and dangerous thing was that the course wasn’t closed to traffic and there was QUITE a lot of traffic.

My 4 mile split was around 48 minutes and my 8 mile split was 1 hour 38 minutes, so you can tell I was slowing down. (From a snail’s pace to begin with, hah!) After 8 miles I kept having to walk a bit and stretch out the hip. We hit a hill after that and I just kept going. Mile 11 was finally done with hills and we were getting towards the end. I knew I could finish strong enough at this point, and then I started running more and picking people off. I’ll tell you, nothing felt better than passing people as I was heading towards the finish! It was funny to me how much harder it was to keep a 12 minute pace at the end—I kept feeling like I was running SO fast, and then I’d look and I was running 13:30 miles.

At the finish line! Oh, what’s that? When you have your phone in your belt and it gets sweaty the lens gets cloudy?

Finish: 2:41:22.

Not a pr, but that’s not what I was going for. A good race, felt good afterwards, felt good DURING, except for my darned hip.

Some race photos—unfortunately I was trying to pause my watch. I’m just not dealing with that next time (and wouldn’t if I’d known that’s where the picture was!)