Happy Retirement!

• Two lawn chairs for BBQ: $45
• Two plane tickets from Portland to Syracuse: $1,000
• Two rounds of martinis at the airport for Diana, Don, Becky and me: $70
• A baby screaming for five and a half hours on the red-eye from Portland to Newark: No sleep
• Rental car to drive from Syracuse to Evans Mills: $50
• Seeing the expression on your brother's face when he discovers you've flown 3,000 miles just for his retirement party: priceless

After 21 years in the Army, Paul is finally retired. He had a BBQ in his backyard on Saturday, and since we can never pass up an excuse to party, we flew out there and suprised him. We didn't even tell his wife we were coming.

He sent out an eVite a little over a month ago, saying that he was having a BBQ and to please bring your own lawn chair, since he didn't have enough. We booked our flight, bought our lawn chairs and resisted the urge to spill the beans to anyone. We did tell his mother-in-law. She lives between Syracuse and Evans Mills, so we stopped there Saturday morning, after flying all night to freshen up before the party. Thanks Lucille!

We were not the only ones that came a long way either. One of Paul's former co-workers drove all the way from Georgia!

We drank a lot of beer. Ate a lot of food and had a great time. Here are some pics from the event:

It's been a long time since basic training!

Only a few beers so far ...

Even the puppies had some fun ...

My cousin Corky ...


6 hours and half a keg later ... and he's still got it!


Let's go for a bike ride!

Say it isn't so Bill ...

As many of you may know, my wife loves American Idol. I don't watch the show, except what I happen to see as I am drifting off to sleep.

So last night, I am resting my head on the pillow, and Becky says, "You have to see this!"
Rewind. Rewind. Rewind.

At the end of Barry Gibb's performance last night, there was a cut-away to the audience showing none other than BILL MAHER smiling and clapping! What the *$#@?

Becky said they showed him earlier in the show too. It is utterly incomprehensible to me as to why Mr. Maher would attend the show.

I have a few theories:

1. He had a young date that wanted to go to the show.
2. His date was one of the contestants.
3. He is secretly in love with Paula Abdul.
4. He is a closet Idol fan.
5. He had nothing better to do on a Wednesday night.
6. He was out of weed.
7. He smoked some really great weed and stumbled into the theatre by mistake.
8. Paula Abdul is his weed connection.
9. He has an evil identical twin that lives in an alternate universe.
10. He always wanted to be a song and dance man.
    

Hey Kids, can you spell JIHAD?

You know your jihad is in trouble when you have to turn to a cheap imitation of an American icon to enlist your children to your cause.

Al-Aqsa TV has been airing Hamas sponsored episodes with this Mickey rip-off named "Farfour" who says things like:

You and I are laying the foundation for a world led by Islamists ... We will return the Islamic community to its former greatness, and liberate Jerusalem, God willing, liberate Iraq, God willing, and liberate all the countries of the Muslims invaded by the murderers.

How great can your Islamist world be if THIS is where you are headed? I can see it now: DISNEYLAND BAGHDAD! (caution: some rides may cause severe bodily harm)

Cycling season in full swing

I've been meaning to do a cycling post for more than a month. This year's cycling season is in full swing. The spring classics are over and the grand tours are just about to start with the Giro d'Italia on May 12th.

It looks like the big news of the moment is who will NOT be riding in this year's Giro and Tour de France: Ivan Basso.

I was originally going to post about what a great move Team Discovery Channel made in the off season acquiring both Ivan Basso from team CSC and American Levi Leipheimer from Gerolsteiner. With this pair, they were sure to win or be on the podium of both the Giro and the Tour. Now, they will need to be happy with some stage wins in the Giro and pin their hopes on Leipheimer, who is in great form. More on that in a moment.

First, Ivan Basso's career is quickly falling away as he can not seem to escape implication in Operation Puerto that first broke just before last year's Tour. Basso, along with perennial Tour favorite Jan Ulrich and dozens of others, were listed as possible users of tainted blood and prevented from riding in last year's Tour.

Earlier this year, Jan Ulrich's DNA was matched with 9 bags of blood found in the suspected Doctor's supplies. Ulrich has since retired. For some reason, they do not have a DNA sample from Basso, and he has, so far, refused to offer a sample so it could be tested against the found blood. Team Discovery dropped Basso on Monday and he has said that he will not ride either the Giro d'Italia or the Tour de France.

Mean time, last year's ... err ... umm ... winner of the Tour de France Floyd Landis has a final hearing May 14th to try to dispell the test results that he used testosterone to win last year's race. If he is found guilty, again, he will face a two year ban and be stripped of his title. American Tyler Hamilton is back on the circuit this year after serving a two year ban for testing positive after the Olympics and Vuelta a Espana.

I'm beginning to see a trend here ...

On to the good news ... or at least to news about riders that haven't been using, or at least haven't yet tested positive for, performance enhancing drugs.

Levi Leipheimer is in great form, winning this year's Tour of California, as well as two stages of The Tour of Georgia, including the Time Trial (finishing almost 45 second ahead of the nearest competitor,) and the difficult Mountain Stage up Brasstown Bald. Leipheimer has finished no better than 6th in the Tour de France, but if he is going to do it, this will be the year.

On a side note, I noticed that the Tour of Georgia is now calling itself the Tour de Georgia. I didn't notice this last year. All I have to say about it is ... stupid! Since when is Georgia known for being French???

At the beginning of April, my man, Jens Voigt won the Criterium International for the third time. Voigt is such a hard working cyclist who always seems to be in the thick of it, pulling hard for his team. Nice to see him win sometimes. Voigt knows his limitations and how to take advantage of what he has. As I watched the coverage of the race, Voigt said afterward, "Me and the mountains will never be friends." Meaning he will never win an overall grand tour, and will never win a bunch sprint, but sometimes, he can pull away from the pack and hold them off to get a solo win. Nicely done.

I was also happy to see Alexander Vinokourov found a team this year as well: Team Astana. He will finally have some good riders to help him win the Tour de France. Team Astana picked up Andreas Kloden, 2nd in the Tour de France in 2004 and 3rd in 2006 (which might be 2nd if Landis is ousted,) as well as Matthias Kessler. This should finaly give Vinokourov the support he needs to make his bid for the Tour title. Of course if Kloden is in good form, he could also win.

With the Giro d'Italia just over a week away, and the defending champion, Basso, out, my prediction is that Danilo di Luca will come up with the win. Most people are probably betting that Damiano Cunego, Paolo Savoldelli, or Gilberto Simone will win again (all having won before,) but I like the way di Luca is riding. He rode away from the field this past week to win Liege-Bastogne-Liege.

Turning the TV back on ...

So. We survived a week without television. Really. We are still alive. Still here. Still breathing.

The house is clean, the laundry done, all of us well rested. Happy even.

We spent the week much as we normally do, but we played a few more games together and spent just that much more time together. Becky's school had prom on Friday night, so the girls and I played charades! That's right. Good ol' fashion charades. It was Hailey's idea and we had a blast trying to figure out what Zakiya was doing when she was pretending to be a dog.

That all said, we were all quite excited to turn the TV back on yesterday.

And here is where I start to question the benefit of TV turnoff week, or at least TV turnoff week for TiVo users. I spent the better part of yesterday, sitting in front of the television catching up on all the shows I missed. I had three bicycle races, Bill Maher, Bull Shit!, Survivor, The Amazing Race, Myth Busters, This American Life, two episodes ofBill Moyer's Journal, Four episodes of Charlie Rose, and a few movies waiting for me in the now playing list, and I spent almost as much time in front of the television in one day as I do all week!

I sat on my couch, watching my shows and consumed an entire bag of circus animal cookies! Any benefit I may have gained from the television being turned off for the week was wasted in less than one day!

Perhaps we should just keep doing what we are doing, leading a balanced life ... this TV turnoff stuff is exhausting.