Friday fun

I know it's Sunday, but Friday was a great day. Taking the day off and spending some time getting back to normal and spending time with my daughter was exactly what I needed.

I got up and got dressed at a leisurely pace and slurped my coffee in calm as I got my daughter ready for school. Once I drove her to school, I came home and took a shower and shaved the legs for the first time in 2 weeks (they were getting gross). After that, I hopped into my spandex and headed out for my first ride in 2 weeks. I got out on my fixed gear and cruised around the bay area for a little more than hour- after being off the bike for 2 weeks, spinning the fixed sure felt like a helluva work out! Still, it was a beautiful morning and it was great to spin and ride in the sun. I felt like I had done nothing but eat for the 2 weeks I was away... and my riding reflected that... ugh. But I loved every painful pedal stroke.

I got back home and showered a second time so I could head to the school to see my daughter's "play"- the PE Circus. It was essentially a series of short "skits" by the kids of things they have been doing in their PE class. Needless to say, it was pretty darned cute and had me in stitches from giggling with the other parents. Masidaughter was paired with her very best friend and they were too cute.


After the PE Circus, we hopped in the car and headed out to see Monsters vs Aliens in 3D... WOW! It was so well done- tons of good adult gags to laugh at, plenty of great 3D tricks, lots of good kid jokes... it was a very well done movie I highly recommend it. Masidaughter called it 'the best movie ever", though I wouldn't go quite that- it was still very good.

All in all, Friday was precisely the kind of day I wanted and needed. The rest of the weekend has been pretty good too- we went to the beach yesterday and today she had a playdate with another one of her classmates and I went for a 2hr ride. Not a bad weekend at all.


I hope your weekend was great too. Here's to a smooth week ahead!

Tim

In the bag!

This week is done and in the bag... finally! Just a couple little things away from being done with catalog copy 100%- just need to finish the last of the individual bullet specs. Almost done.

Now it's time to make a total change of gears and start new product development again. Got LOTS of projects on the plate for my Product Manager and I. Lots and lots of work ahead. Fwew... no rest for the wicked- ever.

Got through the week without losing my mind- which is good. Presentations went well and things looked good. I'm very excited to be getting ready to begin some video projects soon. Speaking of video...

Help me with content for videos you'd like to see. I have a bunch of my own ideas, like educational pieces on different models of bikes, or videos on why we do things the way we do- the basics. But I also want to do things like little interviews with people in the company or team riders/ sponsored athletes. I also want to do my own version of a mini tradeshow from Las Vegas- discussions about the various bikes, impromptu conversations with industry folks abd athletes. Looking forward to some fun bits too- like videos riding on the track, or out on training rides. Maybe going through some product reviews as well.

Thing is, I really want to tailor these videos to what YOU want to watch. So send me some ideas and I'll put them all together and start building a library of ideas. After all, there for your entertainment/ education... not mine. It's all about you... no really... it is. So gimme thoughts/ ideas.

Ok. It's been a long week folks. Masidaughter is now sleeping and I will be doing the same shortly. Enjoy your weekend... please.

Tim

I'm gonna keep her.

Pete Demos, our Creative Director/ Photo God/ Sticker Boy, sent me this photo from last Saturday's catalog photo shoot;


I think I'll keep her.

Thanks for the pic Pete.

Tim

Her maiden voyage...

Today, the Masidaughter was feeling much better. Her fever has been gone since about Saturday afternoon and all that time confined to being indoors with Daddy was too much for her (and Daddy), so we headed out the door and got her a new helmet and gloves from my good friends at Adams Avenue. Once home, I finally got Kate's new Adams Trail-A-Bike built and ready to ride! My good friends (and distributor of Masi in Canada) at Norco helped me acquire the new bike for my li'l punkin'.

She was happy!

And so was Daddy.

She liked going fast once she got used to the feeling of riding without training wheels... though some might state that I should still have training wheels... but those people should hush...

We rode around the neighborhood for just about an hour to help her get used to the feeling of riding with me. It is my hope that this will serve as an introduction to the sense of balance of riding on two (three, actually) wheels. Then she'll have an easier time riding her own bike without training wheels and she'll have the added benefit of having the understanding of riding among cars and won't have that as a fear... I hope.

Regardless, it was fun and it made my heart beat a little faster... and not just from the added workout of lugging her weight and the trail-a-bike weight around. My son had one when he was much younger too, so it was trip down happy memory lane.

Ride on!

Tim

Catalog photo shoot day

Since I was out of the office almost the entire week with a sick Princess (she's feeling much better today, thank you), we had to do one of our catalog shoots today.

We walked to a local cafe near my home, St. Tropez Bakery & Bistro, and shot some nice, simple "lifestyle" pics. Our Creative Director, Pete Demos, did the photo work and his lovely better-half, Amber, accompanied me in the photos. The Princess came along for the shoot and managed to ham her way into the day (of course)... but I'm not complaining.

More sneak peek images for you later... promise.

Tim

Poor little thing...

The Princess was home sick today, with her mother, and is now with me. She began to feel a little less than perfect over the weekend and is now fighting off a fever. As is the custom this time of year, it seems as though all the kids in her school are sick as well. T'is the season...



So I'll be working from home tomorrow... the poor little thing.

Tim

Taiwan time...

I'm debating whether or not to even go to bed tonight, since I have to get up for my flight around 3:00- 3:30 tomorrow morning. If I just stay up, then by the time I board the flight from San Francisco to Taipei, I'll be so exhausted I'll have to be able to sleep on the plane (I can barely ever get any sleep on a plane). It might help me to reset my internal clock as well so that the jetlag is not as bad. BUT... if it doesn't work and I still don't sleep, I'm going to be one whacked-out nutjob by the time I get to Taiwan. Plus... my eyes are already crossing because my insomnia was raging last night and I got almost no sleep. As I'm already in a sleep deficit, I don't want to send myself into a coma or some kind of walking narcoleptic episode.

Had a great day with my daughter today. Her school was still closed this week for holiday break. I took the day off to spend some more time with her before I head off for a week. We didn't do much, but we just hung out. Played some cards (she loves Go Fish), went to the YMCA (one last workout for the week), did a little shopping, had some lunch and then wrapped it up with dinner for two at a local Chinese restaurant... how ironic. It was a great day and I'm glad I wasn't able to find her a sitter for the day after all... it was the perfect way to get ready for a week away from home.

Probably won't hear from me again until I get to Taiwan- unless I can get a decent wireless signal in the airport for a change. I promise I'll do my best to get good pictures, a bit of video and do some podcasting and whatnot. Promise.

Tim

Special Day

Today was a special day for The Princess...

My Christmas present to my daughter was a special "date" with Daddy. Yesterday we went and got haircuts together and then today we went to a matinee performance of the Nutcracker by the San Diego Ballet company. That was followed up by dinner at her favorite restaurant... where she ate macaroni and cheese (of all things).

Both of us got "dolled up" in our finest and headed out for our grand day out.


The ballet was wonderfully done! Great sets, great music and great dancing... even Daddy had a good time. The ballet was a little longer than a 6 year old can comfortably sit through, but she still had a great time and came out of the theater chirping like a bird.

She loves the Nutcracker music, but only really knows it from the movie Fantasia. She loves the movie and has always liked classical music, but the ballet is NOT Fantasia. But, she loves dance/ dancing... LOVES it. So she was enthralled by the ballet- between fits of twitchiness and boredom.

All told though, it was a very special day... for The Princess and Daddy both.

Tim

Good music...

The Princess and I did what we usually do; had dinner and listened to music (she's as much of a music nut as I am) and then played cards and continued listening to music. She's a big, big fan of Pinback and The White Stripes, among others. She prefers "rocken roll", but will tolerate my bouts with classical jazz (Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, Dexter Gordon, Charlie Parker, Horace Silver, Art Blakey, etc). She has a soft spot for a bit of classical, preferring Tchaikovsky (just like me). Mostly I just plug the iPod in to the stereo and we just listen to it do its magical shuffling. It's such a joy to me to watch her suddenly break into a wiggle because she can not ignore a rhythm. To quote a song from years ago, "the rhythm is the master and I'm just a slave to the rhythm". If there is any one thing I hope that the two of us can share, I hope that music will always be it (though she is becoming quite the writer already at 6 years old).

My favorite memory of her and music is from when she was less than two years old and I was a full-time stay home dad (I stayed home when she was 1 until she was 2). We were driving to the YMCA and the then-new White Stripes song Seven Nation Army came on the radio. That really great bass line was playing and I happened to look in the rear view mirror in time to see her bobbing her head in perfect sync with the beat. I asked her, with a half giggle, "you rocking out baby?" In her tiny voice, without missing a beat (or the rhythm) she said, "yeah daddy, I'm rocking out!" She still calls that song her "rocken roll" song. Smiling at the memory of it now...

Anyway, one of my all-time favorite Elvis Costello songs played while we were in the midst of a heated round of Go Fish. Deep Dark Truthful Mirror, from the Spike album. She didn't understand the lyrics, obviously, as she just smiled while I sang (poorly) along. She said that it made her feel happy- bless her heart.

Just for your clarification, here are the lyrics;

One day you're going to have to face
A deep dark truthful mirror
And it's going to tell you things that I still love you too much to say
The sky was just a purple bruise, the ground was iron
And you fell all around the town until you looked the same
Chorus:
The same eyes, the same lips, the same lie from
your tongue trips
Deep dark, deep dark truthful mirror
Deep dark, deep dark truthful mirror
Now the flagstone streets where the newspaper shouts ring to the boots of roustabouts
But you're never in any doubt, there's something happening somewhere
You chase down the road 'til your fingers bleed
On a fiberglass tumbleweed
You can blow around the town, but it all shuts down the same
Chorus
So you bay for the boy in the tiger-skin trunks
They set him up, set him up on the stool
He falls down, falls down like a drunk
And you drink 'til you drool
And it's his story you'll flatter
You'll stretch him out like a saint
But the canvas that he splattered will be the
picture that you never paint
Chorus
A stripping puppet on a liquid stick gets into it pretty thick
A butterfly drinks a turtle's tears, but how do you know he really needs it?
'Cos a butterfly feeds on a dead monkey's hand,
Jesus wept he felt abandoned
You're spellbound baby there's no doubting that
Did you ever see a stare like a Persian cat?

Not exactly cheery, but still an awesome song. "One day you're going to have to face a deep dark truthful mirror and it's going to tell you things that I still love you too much to say"... one of the very best lines of lyric ever penned!

Hope you all spend your weekends "rocken out"!

Tim

Saturday is Princess Day

Tim

Yeah, that's right

Today has been one of those beautiful and warm SoCal autumn days- 72 degrees and sunny... though we did get a little morning fog from the bay that kept the air a cooler 68. Burrrrr......

Since it is mid-October, Katie did spend a little time decorating her Halloween punkin'.

She's already asked if we can make pumpkin pie out of it (thought you'd wanna know, Donna).

Once done with the punkin', we headed off to the beach to hunt in the water's edge for sand dollars- one of our shared favorite past times.

The hunting wasn't so great, so we only found a few broken ones. But the weather was great and the beach beauty was happy as could be in her natural element.

Afterwards, on the way to the car, we stopped and she spent a little time being 6 years old.

It was a good day.


Tim

Katie was here...

She's got an artistic sensibility- to say the least.

Tim

The reason why;

Yep...

Tim

Memorial (Daddy) Day

Today was a special day for me, not just because I had the day off on a Monday (yippee), but because I got to go for a ride with my daughter. The Princess really likes riding in the trailer with me- though she's not far from being too tall to ride in it for much longer. (Next will be a Trail-a-Bike for her, I guess.)

Here we are getting ready to head down the street.

You can see she has enough headroom, but not by too much. This might be her last year in the trailer.

Here, she's making sure Daddy remembered to put her snacks and water bottle in the side pocket where she can get to them easily while Daddy suffers to drag her around.

It's like a Daily Drive... only you can't actually see her.

She's in there, beneath the vinyl windscreen- she got cold because Daddy was going "too fast"... her words, not mine.
First with the eyes closed...

... then with the her eyes open. Notice Rainbow Bear clutched under her arm. He/ she/ it goes everywhere with her... even on bike rides with Daddy. Ever since she was just a year old, Rainbow has been on every ride in the trailer she's ever been on.

I know the bike isn't quite her size, but she does like Daddy's bikes. Notice the aircraft carrier in the background. It is one of the many stationed here in San Diego. The men and women on these ships have helped to keep it possible for me to ride my bike freely with my daughter. I never lose sight of that reality. Thank you, to all who have served- especially those who have paid the ultimate price. To them and their families, I say thank you.


Katie took this one- not bad for her first ever picture. Note- I have one of those cameras that adds 20... no, 50 pounds.
In spite of towing 45 lbs of daughter and another 40+ lbs of trailer and goodies, Daddy had a damned good time (as well as one of helluva workout).

Tim