I’ve been back in Kansas for just a full day now.  I seemed to have brought the Colorado weather back with me because it isn’t the “normal” August temperatures here.  It is approaching cool at night, which is great.

The thick air seems just that.  It has been raining on and off and the my nose appreciates the humidity.  I was getting tired of blowing crusty blood out of my nose every morning in Colorado.

I’ve ridden twice since back.  The first time it was about 5 minutes after driving 7 hours and I felt pretty good.  Yesterday I rode 3 hours and didn’t feel that great.  Go figure.  Think I might just need a little decompression.

It never really browned up this year in Kansas.  It has continually been raining, so everything stayed green, which isn’t normal.  It will probably be a great sunflower fall.  Whenever there is a ton of rain, sunflowers always come in droves along fence lines and ditches.  I guess that is why Kansas is called the Sunflower State.

I’m trying to catch up with stuff here.  The van turned over 300K miles, so I changed the oil and filter.  It takes  15 quarts of oil, so using synthetic oil, it costs over $100, with the filter, for a change doing it myself.  Kind of expensive.  Diesel fuel is finally inverted again, in price, compared to gasoline.  It has been a few years since it was cheaper for diesel than gas.  Right now it is about 10-20% less, depending on where you get it.  It should get a little more as the summer goes on, I hope.

I’m not really concerned about training.  I’m riding, of course, but hope to user the Labor Day races in St. Louis, the Gateway Cup, as speed work, and hopefully come out of that with some resemblance of a jump.  I know it sounds weird, 4 days of racing to get a jump, but it can come that fast, normally.

Okay, I like Sundays.  I’m watching the end of Tour of Spain right now and enjoying a cup of tea.  There is a ride from my house at 12:30, so I have a couple leisurely hours ahead.  I’ll probably start a project, but that is fine, what Sunday’s are all about when I’m not racing.

We installed a headset in my new frame at Vincent’s before I left Colorado.

There was new asphalt on I-70 in Kansas. Some infant or completely inept person, put the temporary lines on the road. This wasn’t even the worst of it. It was like this for miles upon miles.

The van turned over 300,000 miles driving back from Arvada on Friday.

An oil change takes 4 gallons of oil. Ouch.

We’ve had this green pepper plant for 4 years now. We used to plant it back outside in the garden, but now just leave it in its pot and move it back inside in the winter. It still produces peppers. Weird.

This volunteer pumpkin plant started underneath the bird feeder and I guess Kris decided to let it grow. It has a few pumkins on it, so it will be fun seeing if there is enough time for them to grow fully.

We walked the two blocks to the Walberg’s house to catch up. We’d already eaten, so we just had wine. Trudi brought dessert. Catherine’s mom was over, so that is always entertaining.

What is going on with hotel prices? I used to be able to get a 3.5 or 4 star room over Labor Day in St. Louis for less than $50. Seems like travel is staying expensive. I read that the average plane ticket this year is $497 roundtrip. Crazy when you add luggage fees, etc.