What has been going on????

It has been a long time since I have posted to the site. I have been very busy and very lazy at the same time. I pretty much stopped cycling about 1 month ago. I feel that I had gotten myself into some awesome shape but I had put some of my priorities in the wrong place. For one, my enthusiasm for work dropped very sharply as I was cutting out of work to ensure I could get on the bike. I have a very demanding job and a normal day is 6am to 4:30-5:00pm with several weekends mixed in, this is not a conducive schedule for cycling and I had been cutting corners to get home and on the bike. I had not been giving work its due and it was getting noticed. With the turn to warm weather I got back to my other hobby which is gardening and I have been spending 2-3 afternoons a week on keeping my many gardens, trees and shrubs in due form. Jennifer has also returned from Austin TX and is usually here especially on weekends so I have made sure that chores and errands are done during the week to make sure we could make the most of our weekends together. I have also been spending more time with long time friends and my family (who aren't cyclist) since I put alot of them off during the last few months. It has been very nice just to come home and veg out lately, but I pass my bikes every day in the garage and they are calling me back. I have decided to start cycling again in the next week, I have planned to mainly ride the mountain bike which is my biggest love in cycling and doing it recreationally. I don't plan any racing in the near future. With gas prices the way they are I will most likely just ride from my house to the new trails that were built in Stocksdale Park here in Liberty. I do have one long term goal for now and that is to make cyclocross a priority this fall. I FEEL (caps because I am not sure) that this could be the sport for me, I was once a good 5k -10k runner in my early years with PRs of 15:45 and 34:20ish, I ended my competitive running due to a stress fracture in my hip at 21. I think the relatively short and furious cyclocross efforts will suit me also due to the more intense and shorter workouts, I can balance my training time more with other goings on in my life. So I apologize to all my team mates for my hiatus, but I hope you understand, I just saw Chris' post on the Bump n' Grind next year on the Cowtown blog and I plan on that race the video looked awesome.

a long overdue update...

So I returned to MO mid-May and have been super busy ever since. My time in Austin ended abruptly with several still active Golden-cheeked Warbler nests. I ended up with 31 total and I stopped even trying in early May knowing I would not be able to monitor them. All in all a very successful field season!


I then raced back to KC to spend a couple days with Randy before I was off to the Ozarks to begin my next project - point counts for Cerulean Warblers, plus a fwe other bird species. This is my first 'break' of the season, and I have a couple more weeks to go yet!!! Then I am back to the home office to begin lots of projects for this summer.

Randy and I floated much of the Current River last week as part of the Cerulean Warbler project (we do road-based and river-based surveys, and these were river-based). We camped on gravel bars for 5 days. We got super lucky with the weather, with very little rain and none of it doing our counts. Randy got several lifers (new bird species) and we got good looks at a few Ceruleans! Some pics of our trip are below...