We lost Dad and Sydney in Spanish Fork Canyon

On the drive home from Scofield, Dad said he was getting tired and asked me to drive the rest of the way. He pulled over and we switched drivers. 3 minutes later, both he and Sydney were fast asleep.

Leaving at 6am and fishing all day makes you tired. When I got home I gutted the fish outside (which was very cold).

We then all got cleaned up and went to Macaroni Grill in Provo for dinner.

My new ice fishing buddy

Our whole family went ice fishing today with Grandpa Berger. This was Sydney's first time ice fishing ever. Deni and I were a little concerned about how she would handle 6+ hrs out in the cold sitting around a hole in the ice, but we decided it was time to find out. My dad went with us, as well as my Uncle Kim and cousin Chad. We left from our house about 6:15am and headed towards Scofield. When we got to Scofield, there was so much fog that you couldn't see the Lake we were parked right next to. We got the snowmobiles off the trailer and all the gear attached and took a few trips out next to the island we were going to fish next to. After getting all the gear out shuttled out, Dad and I went back for Ryan, Sydney and Deni that were staying warm in the truck.

Not even 5 minutes after getting to our fishing place with the kids, Sydney was walking through untouched snow (there was about 8 inches of it) and all of the sudden she fell down. I was really close to her, so I picked her up. Somehow she had found a previous hole that hadn't frozen over (I'm not sure how that happened, as it was well below zero and should have frozen over) and she sunk into the water up to her knee. As I pulled her up, I could see the water was dripping from her boot. Since it was so cold, we scrambled to get her back to the truck. (about a mile away) I took Sydney on one of the snowmobiles and headed back with the keys to the truck and Deni came a few minutes after me with some supplies to warm her up. Once I got the truck started, I stripped the wet clothes off of Sydney and tried to get her little leg warmed up. Deni finished getting her warmed up and somehow got her boot dry. About 45 minutes later, they rejoined us fishing out on the lake.

I found myself a new ice fishing buddy today. Despite falling in the hidden ice hole, Sydney was a great little fisherman. She loved to pick up the little ice fishing poles and reel them in. I got a fish on the line and handed it to Sydney to reel in and we got it up to the ice hole, but it got off right before it came out of the whole, so she didn't get to land her first. She sure was cute out there on the ice, though.

Ryan on the other hand complained most of the day. Ryan is a great little fisher too, IF, and that is a BIG IF, you constantly have a fish on your line. We expected Sydney to complain and Ryan to have fun, but the opposite happened.

I had a good ice fishing day. I caught 4 fish total. The 3 that I kept were about 15-16 inches and much fatter than the little ones we catch at the ponds during the spring and summer. They were good size for eating.
Deni got skunked today, but that is ok as the last time she and I came to Scofield, she caught the only fish all day. We stayed out on the ice till about 3:30pm. We then headed home (which is about 1hr away.)

Christmas Day

I woke up at 5:30am, 6:00am, 6:45am. etc. At 7:30am the kids finally woke up and came into our bedroom. I teased the kids, just like my dad used to tease me, with comments like, "Did you think Santa came?", or "I'm not sure that Santa left us any presents this year". We got up and got the cameras rolling (another thing my Dad used to make us wait for) and let them come out.

Sydney ran right past her present, which is funny as is almost as tall as her. Ryan went right to his unwrapped Santa gift.

Here is what we got:

Sydney - A "maker-thing". Translated is a kitchen with a microwave. We bought this "maker-thing" online. Deni had been telling me that we need to start putting it together just in case there were parts missing. We spent about 3 hours the night before Christmas eve, and we still weren't done. We are both glad we didn't wait till Christmas eve to put it together. Sydney also got some puzzles, books and clothes.






Ryan - Star Wars Transformer that transforms into the Millennium Falcon. Ryan also got the 20th Anniversary edition of "Transformers, the Movie". Ryan also got some books, dvd's and clothes.










Deni - I had a few surprises for Deni this year. My first surprise was her favorite picture of her and Ryan printed in a 11X14 on Canvas, along with a black frame for it to go into. I really like canvas prints, if I had the money, I would get hundreds of pictures printed on Canvas to hang in our house, but for now, we will start with her favorite picture.



Next I got her a iPod shuffle - 1gb. It is amazing how small and lightweight the shuffle is. I had it about 2 weeks before Christmas, where I kept it at work and made sure it worked (aka -charged it up and played with it). It is a really cool MP3 player, perfect for working out, riding a bike or running. It will hold 240 songs.




Brett - This year was "year of the bike-Christmas". First of all, I got a Cookie Monster bike Jersey. I first saw these up in Park City and told Deni I was going to get her the one with Oscar the Grouch on it for her. Deni took the kids with her to buy this and this is the one they picked out for me. I also got a pair of bike gloves and thanks to Sydney, a pair of Sesame Street bike socks. I also got some Race Lite bike tires that have a Kevlar piece embedded into them so I won't get flat tires. When I was riding my bike to work I was getting at least 1 flat tire a week, which was beginning to get expensive. The new tires are kinda expensive ($30.00 a tire), but should keep me from getting flats, which will be nice, especially during races.

We all had a great Christmas this year.

Santa came

Christmas eve is finally here.

We had 1 hour of church today (instead of 3). Deni sang in the choir. They sang a beautiful version of Away in a Manager. I like that song. The sacrament program was a spoken word/choir ensemble where all the organizations sang a song. So when it was my turn, I went up with the YM/YW and sang.

After church we (Ryan) painstakingly waited for noon to come around. At noon we drove Ryan up to the MTC in Provo to each lunch with my parents. My dad is serving at the MTC as a Branch President. My parents have been taking the grandkids one by one up to the MTC, so they have a little MTC experience. It was finally Ryans turn. Ryan got to eat lunch with them and then attended church at the MTC, in mom and dad's Japanese MTC Branch. Ryan was so excited to go. He was telling people that he was going to learn Japanese while he was there. From the sounds of it, he enjoyed the day very much, as did the missionaries.

After the MTC, we had invited my parents over for dinner at our house, so they brought Ryan home.

At 6pm, Ryan was ready to go to bed so that Santa could come. You would have thought that we had fed Ryan pure sugar. I've never seen someone so excited about something.

We read the Christmas story from the Bible and let the kids open their one present of pajamas and then got them ready for bed. Mom and Dad left about 7pm. Mom and Dad gave us a new book that we opened called "The Three Trees". Deni read it to us as we all laid down in bed. Because the Christmas tree is in the upstairs Family room and the kids beds are downstairs, we temporarily moved the kids to the upstairs guest bedroom to sleep, or at least tried to.

After about 15 -20 minutes of both kids coming out and telling us that so and so is touching me or is bothering me, we split them up. I went into the guest bedroom with Sydney and Deni took Ryan down to his bedroom. What felt like 10 minutes later, Deni came in and woke me up. When I got up, I told Deni that it was time to get everything out. That's when she said that Santa had already came. Apparently, it had been about an hour. What??? I missed it. It appears that Santa was in a hurry this year and didn't need my help. Well Santa left one present that he needed help putting together, so Deni and I finished putting Sydney's Santa gift together. It was about 9:30pm when we got finished.

By that time, Ryan was asleep. We moved him back upstairs to the guest bedroom and barricaded the hallway off, just in case they got up in the middle of the night.

Busy, the secret present - 2 weeks left

I thought Sunday was a day of rest. I had meetings, home teaching, etc, etc. I finally got home at about 5pm only to have Deni leave for a meeting at 7pm. So much for family time today.

I was told that we are only have 1 hr of meetings on Christmas eve. I find that very odd. Of all the times you would want to be in church celebrating the life of Chirst, we cut 2 hrs off our meetings.

We usually try to sit down as a family and watch Funniest Home Videos. Ryan loves the show and it is very fun to watch him laugh at things. I love to hear my kids laughing.

At bed time, I got the kids ready for bed. As always, Sydney didn't want to go to bed, so I sat in her room for a little bit and talked to her. She told me that I was her "best daddy" and that when she got married that she was going to kiss her husband on the lips.

If only she would stay this size and not grow up.

2 weeks left till Christmas. I need to complete Deni's secret present. She gave me a list of things she wanted, however I tell her that I'm working on a secret project for her. She thinks I'm blowing smoke. Guess she will have to wait for another 2 weeks to see if that is true or not. Either way, it is very fun to keep her guessing.

Turn off the sun

This morning Sydney was laying on our bed watching cartoons. The sun had come up and was starting to come in the windows. She had her eyes covered when I walked into the room. Sydney said "Dad, turn off the light" I said, "Sydney, that's not the light, its the sun." Her reply was "Turn off the sun."

Cables, Cables, Cables

I spent most of the day at Teresa's new house today finishing up on the phone and cable installation. A while back, I pulled about 2000 feet of Cat 5e cable and about 1200 feet of cable throughout her new house.

When I did it, I was very careful to mark each end, so that it would be very easy to finish up the job. Or so I thought.

Well the sheetrockers came in and cut the markings off all my cables in the rooms. And to make matters worse, my dad did the same thing on the other end.

So probably $70 bucks or so later, Dad owns a new cable toner and what should have taken me about an hour, took me 6 hrs.

Going on a date...10 bucks

A co-worker of mine asked me about 4pm today what I was doing for the weekend. I said I was going on a date. He looked at me kinda perplexed and said, "With Deni, right?" I laughed and said "Of course with Deni."

We then talked about the days prior to kids an how "going on a date" was a common thing. Only those with kids understand what it means when you get a few hours away to just spend time with your spouse on a date.

On our date, we went out to eat at a Barbeque place in Provo that Deni had eaten at before.

Before I tell the rest of the story, I have to refer back to the TV show "Ed" that Deni and I watched. On the TV show, there were 2 friends (Ed and Mike) and they would "bet" each other to do stupid things for $10. The bets were usually odd things that only the 2 of them would think was funny.

Here are a few examples:
Mike challenges Ed to meow loud enough to make a guy sitting on a bench turn around.
Mike bets Ed that he cannot drink an entire bottle of pancake syrup.

Here is a complete list.

Now armed with that tidbit of knowledge about a cancelled TV show Deni and I used to watch, we are standing near the counter trying to decide what to order, when I notice the girl taking the order had all black hair, except for a section in the back of her head that was bright pink.

I leaned over to Deni and said, "10 bucks, if when you order, you ask the order girl if she knows she has a little section of pink hair on the back of her head." Deni looked at me, laughed and then said no, but we laughed together about it. Then all of the sudden we were ordering and Deni said "Excuse me, but did you know you had a section of pink hair on the back of your head."

I was shocked that she went through with it. Of course, I thought it was great entertainment, however after Deni asked her, she felt back and told the girl she was just teasing her and hoped that she didn't hate our guts.

I'm just hoping she didn't spit in our food.

After we left, we went to see a movie called "Stranger than Fiction". As we got to the movie theater, we realized that we left Deni's purse back at the Barbeque place. So I had to drive back and ask Mrs Pink Hair if she had found a purse. Of course, she had it.

The movie was great and we had a fun time. All in all, it was a great date.

Dear Santa Love, Ryan

Ryan wrote the following letter to Santa today. I told him I would put it on my blog. Santa started checking blogs a few years ago.



(translated text)

Dear Santa Sydney is being nody (naughty)Today and I am Being nice and I want for Christmas RC Monster Truck and a spy car and a Transformer Love Ryan.

Click, Click... time for a new computer

Last night in the middle of the night I woke up because of a clicking sound. It happened about every 2 minutes. It sounded like it was coming from the laptop, so I got up and decided to shut it off. As I was going through that process, I thought, if I shut this down now, I won't be able to turn it back on in the morning, however I ignored the thought and shut it down.

Guess what, it wouldn't boot in the morning. Gave me an error that the hard drive was not recognized. I broke the news to Deni, who didn't have some of here things backed up on the computer. She was bummed.

I took Sydney to my parents again and took Ryan to school.

Work went by very quickly. too quickly. I'm not going into work tomorrow, so needed to get a few things done today, however I didn't finish them, so I guess that means I am going to work from home tomorrow and finish them up.

Good news at work. I got a new laptop. A Dell Latitude D620. It only has 3 gigs of RAM (memory) and a 100 gb hard drive. (ha.) Support guys get nice beefy laptops so we can run VmWare. I'm sure this laptop is way better than any of the developers at Novell. Go figure. No complaining here, I like the laptop. It has a widescreen, which I'm getting used to but is very cool.

When I got home, Deni had gotten our home laptop to turn on and had backed up all her files to our server. Something is wrong with the Hard drive and I don't expect it to be working for too much longer.

Pain pills

Last night I got Deni situated and medicated about 9:30pm. Pain meds can be taken every 4 hours. I got up and got her medicine about 1:30am and then 6:30am this morning. I woke up at 5:30am, but she was sleeping and thought if she was sleeping, she wasn't feeling any pain.

I got Ryan ready for school and took him to school this morning.

Sydney is at my parents today, so Deni can rest.

I got to work and didn't have my laptop. Was so busy this morning trying to get Ryan out the door I spaced it and forgot my laptop. I have another computer at work but it is always wierd to not have all your favorite bookmarks, etc. I survived work, probably not as productive as with my laptop, but I guess that happens.

Living Happily Ever After

Deni had surgery today on both her knees. She's been having pain when running for quite some time. After trying everything she could, she finally ran out of options and her Dr said he could scope her knees to see what the problem was. The Dr was going to scope both her knees and fix that he could while he was in there, but if there were big problems in both knees, he would only do one knee.

We got to the surgical center about 2:45pm and they took her back about 4:00pm. At 4:15pm they took her into surgery. Deni was out about an hour later. When they let me come back, Deni was shaking like she was freezing, however she had 4 blankets on her.

The Dr Kimball found a problem with the cartilage behind both her knee caps.

car‧ti‧lage  [kahr-tl-ij,
1. a firm, elastic, flexible type of connective tissue of a translucent whitish or yellowish color; gristle.
2. a part or structure composed of cartilage.

Dr. Kimball said that it wasn't due to any injury, but most likely it was hereditary. However, Dr. Kimball said with him cleaning up the cartilage problems and some exercises he will teach her that she will "live happily ever after."

For the next 2 days, Deni is to stay down with her feet elevated and every 2 hours while she is awake, she is to get up and walk for 5 minutes around the house.

The big problem with hereditary issues is Deni's biological father is dead, as well as her biological grandfather, so we only really know about half of her hereditary issues (from her mom).

We stopped on the way home to get pain pills and asprin. We also stopped in Springville to picke up Ryan from my parent. (Sydney is staying the night with my parents).

Will it blend....

So I was watching TV last night and heard about this new blender. Apparently, Youtube has made them pretty popular overnight.



The blender sells for about $400.00 - Watch the video before you say, "What, $400 bucks?"

Pretty cool blender

Vistors

Today was a busy day.

After church, we had my parents and my cousin (Shannon Crowley) over for dinner (about 5pm). It's been a while since we have had Mom and Dad over. Things have been crazy the last week weeks. It was nice to have them come out and visit with them.

After dinner, Sydney raced Grandpa Berger in putting puzzles together. She is a whiz with puzzles and took us all. She was able to beat Grandpa putting puzzles together.

After puzzles, we sat around and played Pass the Pigs. Ryan loves to play this game (and it's fun to watch him, roll the pigs).I had a Priesthood Preview at Church from 7pm till about 7:45pm that I had to run off to, so I left them playing Pass the Pigs.

Everyone was still there when I got back. We visited a little bit, until they had to go.

Roundtable

Tonight was the first time I had attended Rountable in Spanish Fork. Roundtable is a once a month meeting for all Scout leaders to attend to get ideas and training for Scouting.

Since I'm now over the Teachers quorum (Varsity age boys)(I thought I'd better know what I'm doing.

They taught us an easy indoor game that can be played.

1. Use any straight line on the floor.
2. Divide into 2 teams
3. Without crossing the line, attempt to pull each other across the line to the other side.

There were about 30 or so grown men (ages 25-50) playing and it was amazing how fast everyone was having fun and getting into it. Easy to do and very fun.

Back swimming

Last week I was sick all week, so I stopped swimming. I started swimming again today. It was wierd to not swim last week.

As usual, I swam 1 mile (1600 meters). My time today was 29:45. I had to really push my last 2 laps to make it under 30 minutes.

I also started walking on the treadmill at our house. I walked for 5k while watching Lost. Other than having to turn the TV up really loud, it was quite enjoyable to watch TV and exercise at the same time.

Grandma Bowers and Deni

We've been blessed to have Deni's grandma, Clovis Bowers, here for the past few days. I figured I would get a picture with Deni and Grandma Bowers.

Upside down puzzles

I brought Sydney home from church today as she has a runny nose. Her favorite past-time is putting puzzles together. She is very speedy putting puzzles together.

Putting puzzles together with the pictures up (as all normal people do) is getting boring for her. Within the last month or so, she has started flipping the puzzles over and putting them together without any pictures (Shown below)



Sydney finding the right pieces


As you can see (partially) in this picture she did all 12 puzzles this way today.


This was taken today, as well. She looked really cute (minus the marker on her face.)

Released from the Young Men's

Today I was released as the secretary from the Young Men's Presidency at church. I was then immediately put back in the Young Men's presidency as the 1st Counselor. I'm now over the Teachers Quorum (14-16 yr olds). There are only 4 boys in this group, however it's a good group and I'm glad to be working with them.

I'll get to know the Varsity Program (Boy Scouts), which is what the 14-16 yr olds do in the church for weeknight (Wed) activities.

Take 2, Take 3, Take 4

Today I stayed at home and watched the kids while Deni and Grandma Bowers went to a family baptism. Of course, I got called from work and had to juggle kids and getting the customer back up and working. (The customer was large national hardware store and their website was down.)

While I was watching the kids, Ryan did something to Sydney and they both came running to "tell on" each other. The funny thing was I asked Sydney to tell her side of the story. Then I asked her to tell it again, and again and again. Each time her story got shorter and a whole louder. It was funny. Then I had Ryan tell his side, then had Sydney tell hers and then Ryan, etc. The stories change a few times and by the end of it, both kids were laughing and had forgotten that they were coming to tell on each other.

My book arrived: "Adrift: 76 days at Sea"

Got my book from my "1 click Amazon purchase." See Beware: 1-Click buy on Amazon.com on Oct 27, 2006.

So far it looks like a really good book.

Work: Microsoft backs Novell's Linux platform

Never thought I would see this happen in my lifetime, however Microsoft announced that they back Novell's Linux platform.

Novell's stock jumped 20% today on this news. Good for me.

From Businessweek:

NOV. 2 8:32 P.M. ET Microsoft Corp. has embraced Novell Inc.'s open-source software platform, forming a technological truce between two longtime antagonists who want to make it easier for the still-dominant Windows operating system and the increasingly popular Linux system to work together.

Can you hear me know....

I was driving home tonight and Deni and I were discussing what was for dinner. She asked me to make a decision and I pretended that the cell phone was cutting out and that she would need to make the decision. I said a few time, "What, you are cutting out, can you stay that again." Repeating this a few times. I was just teasing her and I thought she could tell, however she was down in the basement, where cell coverage is sometimes spotty and she walked all the way upstairs to see if she could get better coverage.

Teasing or not, she made the decision. ha.

Daylight Savings

I hate Daylight Savings.

Spanish Fork Halloween

Spanish Fork City Main street held their Trick or Treating today. We got the kids dressed up and went to brave the long lines. It was a beautiful day, probably in upper 50's and perfect weather.

Deni got some great costumes for this year. Ryan is Stitch and Sydney is JoJo, from JoJo's Circus (Disney Cartoon). We didn't see anyone with these costumes all day. Lots of people commented, "There's Stitch" or "Look, it's JoJo" so it was fun.



Ryan loves this costume. He wanted to show me how Stitch jumps. Here are 2 pics of him being "stitch"






JoJO getting candy from a store on Main street



Finally after all the festivities we went to Roberts, a local craft store for the kids to make crafts and then have a parade around the store.



The Hat on Sydney's costume really made the difference. She was so cute with the hat on. All in all, the kids got lots of candy a few days BEFORE Halloween. They had a great time.

Beware: 1-Click buy on Amazon.com

A few days ago, I purchased a watch from Amazon.com. Today when I was unable to find a book I was looking for at the local library, I searched Amazon.com to see if they had it and how expensive it was. This was when I saw the 1-Click buy icon.


Being curious, I did what any normal curious person would do, I clicked on the 1-Click buy icon.

Immediately after clicking on the icon, a message appeared on the screen, thanking me for my order. WHAT??? My order??? I didn't order anything, did I?

So I started looking at Amazon.com help to see what 1-Click buy really was.

From Amazon.com help page:

1-Click ordering is turned on immediately after you place your first order, provided you've paid for that order with a credit card or directly from your bank account. You can place an order to any address you've shipped to before by clicking just one button. We will automatically reference your account for shipping and billing information."

Shortly thereafter, I received an email stating:

Dear Brett,

We're writing to confirm your purchase of the following Amazon Marketplace
item from xxxxxx@yahoo.com:

1 of Adrift: Seventy Six Days Lost at Sea by Callahan, Steven

Apparently I did place an order. I'm glad I clicked on the cheapest copy of the book. The shipping was reasonable, so it wasn't that big of a deal, however it could have been had I not really wanted to buy the item or I had selected some collectors edition that was worth a bundle. I guess you live and learn.

I have since turned off the 1-Click buy on Amazon.com. I'm afraid that I, or one of my children will accidently purchase something we don't want.

Update: He's alive

Last weekend I took a trip down to Goblin Valley State Park. This is my third time there. It was a quick trip (gone for about 28 hrs). I enjoy it each time. This is the first time I've been down there and seen so much water. I was unable to camp where I normally do (in a dry riverbottom) as it wasn't dry this time. I really need to take my family down there. The kids would love to run around the goblins and hike up Little Wild Horse Slot Canyon.

Here is a picture of me jumping from Goblin to Goblin.


I also took some scenic pictures of Little Wild Horse Canyon. I use this one as my backdrop on my computer now.


Work, church and family have been extremely busy the last little while, plus my hands have been hurting me again, so when I get home, I don't like looking or touching my computer.

On a personal note, I've been swimming one mile, 3 times a week, since Sept 18th. I leave from work during lunch. I have been able to consistenly swim a mile barely under 30 minutes now. When I say barely under, I mean seconds under. However under 30 minutes is under 30 minutes. Monday, Wed and Friday I come home smelling like Chlorine. I shower after I swim but still smell of chlorine when I get home.

Managmement changes

The management of this blog (myberger.com) has decided to provide spotty, infrequent and less than timely updates. All complaints will be forwarded to our complaint department which will sell your email address to some nasty spammer.

- the management

Ryan's First tooth came out

Ryan has had a loose tooth for quite a while, however he really didn't want to wiggle it. Last night I noticed that his tooth was coming up behind it, so I told him that it was time to get the loose tooth out.

We tied a string around it a few times, but the string kept breaking everytime a hard pull was made. Ryan wasn't quite sure he wanted to pull it out, so we started encouraging him.

We even called Uncle Shane the dentist for advice, but only got his Voicemail. So we went to plan 2, which was offering him money.

I told him I would give him $3 dollars, Deni said she had a dollar for him. Ryan's Gramdma Bigler and Aunt Katie were here too and that sweetened the pot as well. Grandma Bigler offered Ryan $5 and Katie offered him $1. But the catch was the tooth had to come out tonight to get all that money. The deal was $10 dollars today or $1 dollar later.

After a few tries, it popped out. Actually it came out so good, we spent a few minutes looking for it on the carpet.

Here's Ryan right after it came out.



Ryan got an envelope and wrote, "My first tooth" and took it to bed with him. I emailed the Tooth Fairy to tell her this was ryan's first tooth and it was special, so she could bring a little extra money.

You can see Ryan's new tooth coming up way behind where it should. I'm not looking forward to getting Braces for him.

Deni - Yuba 2006

The Swim:



The Bike:



The Run:





The Finish:













Finally done:

Brett - Yuba 2006

Deni has wanted me to train and participate with her in a Triathlon since the first time she decided to try one. I've always gave her a firm "NO" when questioned.

When I saw Deni do the Salem Tri in 2005, I really enjoyed watching her and also enjoyed capturing pictures of her as she came by on the bike. The more and more she worked out and trained for the Triathlons, the more and more I wanted to do it with her. I liked the idea of being in the race, but not swimming well and hating to run worried me quite a bit. However I finally said yes to her about 3 months ago. Within a few minutes of me saying yes, she had paid the $35 entrance fee into the Yuba Triathlon for the both of us. I was committed.

Yuba - My first Triathlon.

Since the numbers of this triathon were smaller than usual, they decided to have only 2 start times and split all the racers into two groups. Those doing the Olympic distance and those doing the Sprint Distance. I did the Sprint Distances which is:

1. 1/2 mile swim
2. 12.4 mile bike (20k)
3. 3.1 mile run (5k)

The Olympic distance is double everything from the Sprint.

The start of the race was very interesting for me. I had never swam with a bunch of people in a race format. And when I did do open water swimming, it was usually by myself. There were about 120 people in my starting group. When the horn went off, all 120 of them, including myself, started swimming. However, it didn't take long to either kick someone or be kicked by someone else. Somehow I was able to get out in front of a bigger section of the group, which helped me when I got to the first buoy. I knew I couldn't freestyle swim the whole way, but getting in front of a large section of the group was helpful. I was able to keep up with the majority of those around me by swimming on my back as I needed. I would freestyle swim until I got tired then swim on my back.

By the time I rounded the 3rd buoy, I felt like I had been swimming for at least 45 minutes (or longer). I was winded and tired. I was glad when I got to the end of the boat docs as I knew I didn't have much further to go.

I ended up having a 20 to 21 minute 1/2 mile swim, which isn't too bad for my first open water race. After coming out of the water, I had to run up the steep boat doc to the bike transition area 150 meters away. I got my wetsuit off, shirt and shoes on. About that time Deni came up and started getting her bike stuff on. She was really close on my tail.



The bike ride went quite well. About 7 miles into the ride, however, my right calf began to cramp and "Charlie Horse". I had to slow down to about 10 miles an hour while I stretched my leg and prayed that I could make it back the other 5 miles. After about 1-2 minutes of stretching it, I was able to continue on. To this point, only one other rider had passed me. While having leg issues, I had about 3 riders pass me. I was able to catch up to and pass these 3 riders once my leg issues over. My bike ride was just under 40 minutes, which isn't my best time for a 20k. I felt really good when I came into the transition area to transition to the run.



When I came into the transition area, all I had to do was take off my helmet and run. Running after riding your bike any long distance is a really odd feeling. I started out slow and about 200 meters into the run, both my legs began to cramp and "Charlie Horse" again. I again had to stop for 1-2 minutes and stretch so I could continue. At this point I was in quite a bit of pain but new I only had just over 3 miles to go and I would be done. I didn't train for the run at all. I ran 3 times total for a grand total of 7 miles. I simply wasn't prepared for the run.







The finish:

My total run was about 29 minutes for the 3.1 miles, which isn't too bad seeing that I had to walk part of the run because of my legs. At the half-way mark there was an aid station. It was beginning to get warm, so as I ran up, I asked if the drink was water. They said yes, so I took 2 cups. The first one went on my head. The second I drank. As soon as I put the drink in my mouth, I knew that what I had just poured on my head was NOT water. It was some type of flavoring or sports water but at that point, it was too late. Next time I'll drink first, pour second.

The last 50 meters I pushed hard to the finish. It was a good feeling coming across the finish line.

The official time from the race directors was 1 hr 32 minutes and 34 seconds.

Pre-race Yuba Triathlon

I didn't sleep well last night. We slept in Dad's trailer, however it was warm when we went to bed, so we opened all the windows. Also, I'm used to sleeping with a fan and when I don't have one, I have a really hard time falling asleep. Not quite sure when I actually fell asleep, however we started the whole process about 11pm. We fought Sydney for at least 30 minutes, so I'd be surprised if I fell asleep before midnight.

Around 4am, I woke up freezing, but by that time it was too late for me to get warm. I only had a sheet, so I got my jacket and tried to stay warm. Deni had abandon me in the middle of the night to sleep with Sydney in her warm sleeping bag. I never got back to sleep, so at 5:30 am, my alarm finally went off.

I was tired, but ready for this race.

We cooked some oatmeal and ate bannanas for breakfast. Then by 6:15am we were headed up to go set up our bikes in the transition area. Overnight it had gotten into the low 50's, so it was quite cold without the sun being up. I wore my jacket so that I could keep warm.

As we walked up with all our gear, we got the first look at the smimming course. 1/2 mile looks alot longer than it does in a swimming pool. Plus I knew the water was freezing.

Deni's family, along with my dad, brought the kids up to the race about 7:30 am. The race was supposed to start at 7:30 am, however they were running a little late.



We got our wetsuits on, while trying to talk ourselves into the fact that the water will be warm.



This is a great picture of Deni and Ryan. It's fun to have our kids at events like these and let them participate as much as possible.



We got into the water a few minutes early to help with the shock of the colder water. There were people there without wetsuits. I'm not sure how they did it. When you get in, there is a little bit of water that seaps through the zipper up your back. The hardest thing for me was getting my face used to the water so that I could swim with my head in the water.



Just about ready for the race to begin.