Last year, I told my friend Jim that I would join him for a bike event in Athens, GA as part of Twilight Weekend 2009. A friend from college came in town that weekend so it threw a wrench in the plans and while I got some awesome photos of the races, my bike unfortunately stayed in Atlanta.

Given that Twilight Weekend happens every year, I promised to make it this year and things ended up working out that way! A few months ago, while perusing athenstwilight.com I noticed the "Twiathlon": a 5K run, followed by a 100K bike ride, followed by a tour of the Terrapin brewery and some free beverages. Jim and I have a habit of suggesting ridiculous bike related things and then following through on them, so we signed up for the Twiathlon and Jim reserved a hotel room in Athens for Saturday evening. We also conned our friend and fellow FM:Race team member Bob into joining us (and driving us there!).

Early Saturday morning we strapped our road bikes to the top of Bob's car, hopped in, and drove through the rain to Athens. This was Not Good. The weather forecasts called for rain all day, and we discussed abort conditions as we pulled into Athens. After parking in my terrible "secret" parking place and registering, we moved to FM:Race Dan's order-of-magnitude-better "secret" parking place ~100ft from the finish line and geared up to run. The rain subsided a bit, and we stood in the drizzle and laughed as other runners tried to find cover as if they would somehow remain dry throughout the event.

At 8:30am the 5K Race began, and Jim, Bob, and I stayed together at a sub-7-minute pace as Jason Spruill sprinted off in the distance to try and win something. Jim and I were shooting for sub-25 and we told Bob that he had to do the same thing, so off we ran. Bob slowed down after the first mile but managed to come in at 24 minutes and change, and I stayed with (IRONMAN) Jim until the last little hill where he started to inch away for his 22m32s finish, a personal best for him. I came in at 22m44s which was a personal best for me because it was the first timed 5k I've done, and I thankfully didn't feel the need to quickly empty my stomach like the guy right in front of me wearing a grass skirt. Here's my watches view of the race. It was raining for most of the run, and after the finish we walked through some lighter rain to the cat-5 crit course to see our teammate Justin after he managed to stay with the pack in his first crit. Go Justin! Rumor has it our friend Jon got 4th place in what was also his first crit, but the official results aren't up yet.

Back up at the secret parking lot, we changed from wet running clothes into soon-to-bet wet bike riding clothes and assembled our crew. Me, Bob, and Jim in FM:Race kits on road bikes, Dan in a FM:Race kit on a tandem with one of his kids, and Jason along to keep us honest about keeping the pace up. We barely made the start at 10am and rolled out under cloudy but dry skies on a very very wet 100k worth of road. Our primary tactical focus was beating Dan's wife and 2 younger kids that were doing the 50k, but Jason quickly learned that he could attack on every hill and Jim would try and stay on his wheel but wasn't quite able to keep up. Bob and I had never run before biking and our legs were very confused, but we all managed to hold together as somewhat of a group for most of the ride, including pacelining at 30mph in pouring rain. Terrible, and not something that I'd willingly do in the future. Here were are at the driest point of the ride somewhere around the middle:

This event, the "Terrapin Wake N' Ride" wasn't a race (and while we beat Dan's family, they had to bail a few miles before the end and get picked up due to general terribleness of the conditions), but there are some super sweet prizes and Bob may have won something very fancy. Everyone has the option of taking a 50k or 100k route, and along the route are several checkpoints. Each checkpoint gets you a poker card (we got bonus cards for running the 5k), and at the end of the ride, they give out prizes to people with the best hands. I ended up with 2 pairs, but Bob managed to get 4 7s. Hopefully he'll get a phone call this week once they tally everything up! Here's how my watch saw things.

By the end, we had been riding in pouring rain for 45 minutes (after ~3 hours of slightly less wet riding) and were all pretty wet and miserable, but Bob and I somehow convinced Jim to let us enjoy one free beer at Terrapin in the colder but slightly less wet inside. Then it was back to Athens (riding bikes in the rain slightly buzzed with empty beer glasses in our jersey pockets) for some hot showers and learning about mining silver and copper on the History Channel. To prevent Jim from killing and eating us, we suited back up in our matching FM:Race work shirts (see Bob's), found our way to the race course, accidentally ran into our friend Kazz, and acquired some burritos. The only thing left to do was to find a place to enjoy the races from 5pm-10pm, and a $5 donation to charity got us primo seats (actual seats!) on the inside of the second section of turn 3. Given the weather and potential for beers, I left my nice camera at home but the point-n-shoot shows what our view was like for the evening:

Highlights included not seeing any crashes but seeing the coordinated look of shock from people on the other side of the turn that saw a crash outside of our field of view, having Kazz yell at us as she rode in the pace car during one of the races, and the general awesomeness of drinking beers while watching bike racing. Shortly before the end of the pro mens race, we walked back to the hotel, absolutely destroyed a few Dominos' pizzas, and slept up for the early Sunday morning drive back to Atlanta. Here's the rest of the photos. Jim had fun.

Watching crits in the rain isn't as fun as when it's dry, and I don't plan on riding that much in the rain again, but running in the rain was a lot less terrible than expected. The only things that would have made this better is if it didn't rain the entire time and some of our teammates were in the evening crits, but hopefully both of those will happen next year!

I was doing some computer housekeeping and stumbled across a journal I took on a family road trip in 1999, so I imported that here and you can read through what a month long family trip was like for me 10 years ago. Even though I was an angsty teenager, I only had to edit 1 sentence from the 24 days of material. It looks like I gave up towards the end of the trip and stopped writing, but you can see a pretty big list of the places we went to, and how frustrated I was with my younger brother about pretty inconsequential things.

After reading all of it, I wish I'd done a better job writing things down, and I wish that I wrote down anything on other trips! Maybe there are some pieces of paper with handwritten things somewhere hiding at my parents house... Just going back through these brief journal entries, mostly devoted to what we ate and where we went, reminded me of how cool some of the experiences I had really were. They also show how consistent I've been about some things:

• No seafood
• Lots of bacon
• Riding bikes
• Taking pictures

Read on for the links to the pages.

This morning I got up around 6:30, but I just sat in the car until about 7:15. Then I got up, packed up my things, and started to work on organizing the car. My parents and brother eventually got up, and we had pancakes and bacon for breakfast before we hit the road again. Not everything was completely dry, but we packed it up anyway, now with the icebox on its side so the water would not drip off it. We left the campground around 9:30 and drove southwest towards Harper's Ferry.

Today we were back on the road. I got up at 8:00, had eggs and toast for breakfast, and packed up my things. As soon as we were at the bottom of the driveway, my mom realized that we had left our water bottles and I ran back in to get them. By we finally left and headed southwest towards Gettysburg. We passed by my dads' office here, and went too far down US 202 and had to turn around.

One weird thing is that two days ago, we went to West Point, yesterday, Valley Forge, today, Gettysburg, and tomorrow, Harper's ferry. They are just about the four most important military points of interest in the United States, all in four days. We stopped at a Wendy's for lunch and had chicken nuggets and fries. I really do not like Wendy's, but my parents do so I have to live with it.

I washed my hands with one of those little sani-towels and pulled out my dad's computer. First, I typed for a while, but I got sidetracked finding where we were on the Rand McNally atlas program. When we finally got to Gettysburg, I directed my dad to the different campgrounds so we could find one that we liked.

We found a pretty good looking campground, but the weather looked like rain so we went ahead to the Gettysburg visitor center instead of setting up our tents. We did not look around much in the visitor center, but we did see an electric map presentation. It was a twenty-foot by twenty-foot map with light bulbs on it to show different things; the narration ran through the entire four days of battle. After that, we walked through the bookstore, stamped our passports, and got back in the car. I now have 50 stamps in my National Parks Passport!

I thought that we were going to take the driving tour with the tape, but we did not buy the tape. We just followed the route, which was on the map, and stopped at each of the marked stops along the way. There were memorials to different states and regiments everywhere, and thanks to the map presentation, I actually knew what was going on. We all got out of the van four or five times to take pictures. One time, I could not get the picture that I wanted because there was a guy in the way. It ended up with both my mom and dad mad at me.

After the tour, we drove to a different campground, Granite Hill, just to check it our, but we ended up camping there. I set up Michael and my tent, while he and my dad set up the dining fly. We had not used it yet this trip, but it had rained some already today, and it looked like more to come. Before I was finished setting up the tent, the rain came. I rushed to pull out my rain jacket and after about ten minutes in the rain, I finally finished setting up everything.

We all stood under the dining fly for a while, but I decided that I could get wet and I put on my swimsuit and got wet. When my mom started pulling out boxes from the back of the van, we noticed that they were all soaking wet. I pulled all of the dry things up to the front of the van, and they pulled all of the wet things out of the back. Apparently, water had been condensing on the big icebox for the entire trip, and it had been collecting under the mat in the back.

The dress clothes bag and the box of books were the only important things to get wet, but they all pretty much dried out and we put some of the things back in the van. I changed back out of my swimsuit and went to put my things in the tent after the rain stopped, but my side of the tent was soaking wet! So I pulled out my things and put them back in the car.

We had steaks and pasta for dinner, and after that, we hung up all of the wet things to dry now that the rain was gone. I decided to sleep in the car, and my dad did not think it was a good idea, but there was nowhere else for me to sleep so in the car I slept. I went to bed around 9:00, and it took me longer than usual to get to sleep because the seat would not tilt all the way back, but I finally got to sleep.

This morning I got up around 9:00 and had eggs, bacon, and toast for breakfast. I swam for a little while, but I had to dry off and change so that we could got to Valley Forge. All seven of us got into Scott's Jeep and off we went. I got my passport stamped at the visitor center and they also had some glue in stamps of other places that I have been, so I bought a pack of them.

We bought the audio tour tape and took the 45-minute drive. On the tour, we got out a few times, but most things cost extra so we did not go into any of the buildings, but we did see quite a few deer from the car. On the way out, my dad took a picture of the sign, and we drove back to Shambala, their house, which means something like peace and harmony for all living things. We swam some more, and had hot dogs and chips for lunch.

Scott has rather cheap long distance, so I got to do something that I have been needing to do this whole trip, check my e-mail and upload the most recent version of my page. Over the course of three weeks, I got 85 e-mails! About five of them were unsolicited ads, 15 were newsletters of some sort, but the rest I actually had to read and try to respond to! I could not give many long responses, but I left all the ones that I could not reply to in my mailbox so I can reply to them when I get back to Atlanta.

After that, I swam some more. There was a bunch of girls having a party next door, and they were playing the Backsteet Boys really loud, but thanks to Scott's stereo, I was not able to hear it. Thank goodness for outdoor speakers! We had veal and lobster tails for dinner, but I only had the veal. It was very good, just the same quality as last night.

For desert, we went out to a dairy farm and had home made ice cream. They had banana-flavored ice cream, my favorite, so I got a double scoop of it. It was not quite enough, but it sure was good. At this dairy farm lives the world's fattest pig, Wilbur, who weighs 1,100 pounds. There were four or five chickens asleep on top of him, but I was told that he never moved so those chickens could stay there for hours.

When we got back, I was going to watch the X-Files, but it was one that I had already seen twice so I watched the MTV Movie awards for a while. 'There's Something About Mary' won best move! That is sick sick sick. It was picked over 'Armageddon,' 'Shakespeare and Love,' and 'Saving Private Ryan'; that is just wrong, but that is definitely MTV for you.

After that award, I changed the channel to Stars and watched 'Six Days, Seven Nights.' It was good, although I did not see the very beginning. The same thing happened as last night with Scott on the couch with Jesse, but Michael and I went to bed around 12:00 instead of 1:00. I took a quick shower before I went to bed, and I pretty much went right to sleep.

We were supposed to get up at 6:30 this morning, but My brother and I got up around 8:00, packed up our stuff, and I loaded the van. Because of the movie, Michael did not get enough sleep and he was somewhat moody, but I really do not need that much sleep. We got in the van, and stopped by the office to return keys and so that my parents could get their complementary coffee. We left the Sagamore and drove south through New York.

We hit a McDonald's for breakfast and it took forever. Usually it is a 90-second king of thing, but this guy, who could have only been 15, took fifteen minutes. Nevertheless, we finally got back on the road towards my dad's friend's house. We stopped at west Point Academy and looked around some, reading plaques and taking a few pictures. I got a great picture of the river valley, a monument, and a mother and baby deer. The baby still had its spots.

At 3:30 we got to Scott's house and unloaded. He was not there, but the music was on and the front door open, so we went on in. The house was amazing. It was huge, but not showy, and there were lots of pets and a very high quality sound system.

I got one of the two bedrooms upstairs, and my brother got Jessica's room, Scott's four-year-old daughter. She always sleeps in her parents' room anyway, but her things were all over the room. I explored the house for a while, and the TV, phone, and doorbells are all attached to the sound system through the tuner and three three channel amplifiers. My favorite part is the 200-disc CD changer, and the remote that goes with each channel on the amplifiers.

When Scott, Lisa, and Jessica got back, my dad and Scott went to buy seafood for dinner and the rest of us put on our swimsuits and headed for the pool. I jumped on the trampoline for a while, and slightly messed up my back, so I got in the pool. It was a while before Jesse got in, she was somewhat shy, but she finally did. I liked this pool a lot because it was eight feet deep so I could dive. Most hotel pools these days do not allow diving, for liability, and some do not even allow jumping!

We had chips and dip for a snack around five, Scott and my dad were still buying seafood, but we were still in and out of the pool all day until around 8:00 when we finally had dinner. I had tuna and some pork roast because I do not really like fishy fish, but there were about five different kinds of fish, all cooked perfectly, so I was told.

During the day, I thought the pool was too hot at its 92 degrees, but at nigh when the air was a lot cooler, it felt great. My brother invented a 'sport' called Gator Popping that involved making a big plastic alligator pop up into the air. It was stupid, but it could keep him occupied for hours. Around 10:30, we all went inside, and my mom and dad and Jesse's mom went to bed, but Scott, Jesse, Michael, and I stayed up and watched a movie. We watched 'Paulie,' which is about a talking parrot. It is the movie that they got the Pepsi Girl from.

Scott quickly fell asleep, and he snores almost as loud as my dad does! My brother and I went to sleep when the movie was over, around 1:00, but Jessica stayed up for a while, finally going to sleep next to her daddy on the couch. The cats would probably curl up with them too, but when they were younger, Jesse turned them upside down and shook them so they are afraid of most people now.