I'm Down 7 Hump Days

I am down 7 hump days. I feel as if I've let my fellow widows down. I am sorry. But, I am back, and although I'm not sure I can keep up with Kyle's numerous hump day photos and such ( does the man really work??? ) , I will do my best to make up for my slacking.

And NO, I will NOT resort to posting my rear end on the blog for the male spouses of my readers like Kyle did for his female fans.

In keeping with the spirit of the Tour de France, I've selected someone who, in my opinion, is worthy of 7 consecutive humps. Yes. That is right. 7-time TDF winner Lance Armstrong.

Now, I will be the very first to admit that there are some things about Lance that I'm not thrilled with. I am not happy that he left his wife. I'm not thrilled that he's been seen around LA, Hollywood, and NYC with SEVERAL skanky celebrity womem. Some who he's almost old enough to have fathered. ( I did hear on one of those entertainment news shows that his daughter took that Olsen waif to her school for show and tell..... what? "hi class, I brought in an example of anerexia nervosa......" ewwwww. )

I, of course, don't know the details of his personal life, except those he's chosen to share via interviews and books. I will not ( or TRY not ) to judge. I simply don't know. I just know that I don't like what I've seen as of late.

That being said....I have INCREDIBLE respect for the man as an athlete, and as a philanthropist.

Athlete, philanthropist, 7 time TDF winner, Hollywood playboy --- none of these have ANYTHING to do with the fact that he just looks AMAZINGLY delicious running in this photo.

That's why he's my hump choice. 7 TIMES.

Seriously, we all know he'd have the endurance for it. :)

She Lives!!!

My apologies for disappearing from the radar for 6 weeks. As much as I'd like to come up with a grand reason for not blogging, I have none.

Unless, of course, you could count the end of the school year, 3 children's sports teams schedules, team parties, the end of MY school year and all the trivial bookkeeping/classroom cleaning-out etc that goes with it , packing and unpacking from a week-long family vacation ( more on that later ), teaching summer camp, and trying to maintain the household activities and responsibilities while husband is training/traveling/ racing as justifiable reasons to not sit down and type on the computer for hours on end.

I have however collected a great amount of material this racing season to blog about, and have plans to address all of these observations ( plus some other mundane " day in the life of Bike Widow" topics) in the coming days.

So, my fellow blogophiles, she has returned.

Happy Hump Day!

Ahhh, I can just see all the male cyclists' eyes rolling now, and hear the groans of disgust.

I just didn't think it was fair that kyle had a hump day for all the male cyclists, and the girls got left in the dust. I mean, really, just what I want to see on a Wednesday morning is a bunch of silicone-injected bimbos doing pilates half naked. Yeah, I know, all the men disagree. They hate to think that we ladies ogle just as much as they do.

As a matter of fact, just last night, as we were flipping between American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, I was commenting on how handsome and what a gorgeous bod Jason Taylor had.

Husband said, (with a look on his face like he had just stepped in a pile of dog poop) "Ugh. Change the channel. He's TOO handsome. I mean, it's like please. Put those biceps away."

Maybe it's because Husband lost all his upper body when he began biking....

I seemed to enjoy Jason's biceps immensely. And I didn't hear Husband complaining much about Jason's partner's outfit....and she danced in a bikini, getting tossed around and held up in the air with her legs splayed.

But I digress, and I don't have time to argue. I need to get on with my hump day.

DRUM ROLL.........

Patrick Dempsey, aka McDreamy gets the honor of being my first HUMP DAY choice. Not because he's handsome. ( which he is ) Not because he's a cyclist.

To me, there is nothing sexier and hotter than a man who loves his kids. And that picture of McDreamy riding with his daughter, Tahlula ( which , by the way, is a kick-ass name ) just melts my heartstrings.

I love to watch the Spousal Unit playing with our children. It makes me fall in love with him all over again.

It reminds me of a quote I once heard, " No man stands taller than when he stoops to help a child."

So, Patrick Dempsey, you get the HUMP DAY award. And it doesn't hurt that you are also McHOT, McSexy, and McDoable. Just give me 5 McMinutes with him.

I like to imagine in this photo that McHotness is thinking to himself, " Only one more mile to go to get to BikeWidow's house."

Even Lance .....

Got Jersey?

I am amazed to see the response to this silly blog in just the last 2 days! It is nice to know that others can relate to my stories...

One story , though, that I hope I NEVER have to relate to is the story of a man by the name of Eldon Nelson and his wife, Susan. Eldon is a cyclist in Utah and a father of 4.

I came across his blog, Fatcyclist , around Christmas time when I was perusing the internet for bike-related Christmas gifts for Husband. I have since followed his blog, and was heartbroken 2 weeks ago to read his entry, http://www.fatcyclist.com/2008/05/01/like-dandelion-seeds/and then, Has It Only Been One Day?

As a mom, my heart went out to his wife, Susan. As a daughter, my belly knotted as I recalled getting the news last year that my father had cancer.

As a spouse, I could not imagine having to face life without Husband.

Eldon, in conjunction with TwinSix, has designed and produced Fat Cyclist jerseys. They go on sale today. You can get them in Orange and Black, and Pink and Black. He is dedicating each and every penny from the sale of these jerseys to offsetting the cost of travel for family to spend time with Susan, medical expenses, and to buy Susan whatever she wants.

I read Stormyworld's blog last night, and scrolled down through the posts. I was so happy to see that he also had heard about Fat Cyclist.

It makes me want to to do something more than buy a jersey. ( In fact, I'm buying 2 ...one for me, one for our oldest spawn...we are entering a sprint tri this summer and are going to do it in honor of Susan. )

The shirts go on sale today...GO GET ONE. And as Stormyworld says, if you can't affort the 70 dollars for the jersey, there is a button on Fat Cyclist's site where you can donate what you wish via paypal.

Maybe it would be cool to make up some humorous Bike Widow t-shirts and sell them...with proceeds going to the Lance Armstrong Foundation to help aid in fight against Cancer....and to find a cure for that nasty disease.

What do you think? If there is interest, I'll do it.

I put a poll up ....vote!

The Bike

I was very glad to see my husband doing something other than work. He has a high pressure job. He needed some release. He had no friends, except co workers. He needed friends outside of work.

So, when our neighbor , an avid cyclist from San Diego, suggested he go on a ride for the first time with him, I was happy. Genuinely pleased and excited for Husband.

Our neighbor's wife, as we watched the two men roll down the drive and ride off into the distance, turned to me and said, "I'm sorry. "

I must've had a quizzical look on my face, because she repeated it and added, " You'll understand in a month or so."

Well...she knew what she was talking about.

Coming home from that ride, Husband was sweaty. Husband was tired. Husband was dirty. Husband was excited. Husband was.......

HOOKED.

I would find him online googling different brands of bikes. All he had was a mountain bike ( purchased for that lovely PIE trip ) and it was "old." It wouldn't do.

Ok. I understood that. He needed a bike.

My thought was he could "make do" with the one he had until we could save up enough money to buy the bike he wanted. After all, that is what we had to do for our bedroom furniture, the deck, my laptop.....

So, as I watched the weeks progress, I noticed little things showing up in our garage.

A bunch of rubber tubes. Bontrager something or other, I don't know.

A pump.

Pedals.

Plastic water bottles.

Some cranky looking thingy.

A small toolbox.

WD-40. A lot of it. ????

Shimano clippy things.

Elf shoes. They must be elf TAP shoes, because he clicked when he walked in them.

Then came the bike shorts. A few pairs.

Socks.

Gloves.

Cool glasses.

A new helmet.

Bike jerseys.

And that was all ok with me. He told me he "NEEDED" that stuff to ride properly. I understood that. After all, as a scrapbooker, I realized in order to do things correctly and easily, I needed tools to help me do so. Understandable. Totally.

But we needed new living room furniture. I was desperate for it. It was a topic of conversation every night. And every night, I was informed it was just not in the budget.

Ok. I'd wait.

One Saturday not long after one of these furniture conversations, we were doing some yard work.

Husband came to me and told me he was running in to Home Depot to pick up some mulch and would be back shortly.

4 hours later, he returned.

"Where have you been? I tried to call your cell phone.... Were they out of the mulch we wanted and you had to drive somewhere else?"

" I had to run some other errands."

" OH? Like what?"

Husband has selective hearing. He didn't answer me.

THEN IT HIT ME.

" You did NOT go buy a bike, did you?!"

" Well, yeah. I stopped in, and it was a good price."

Did you ever see the cartoons where the cartoon character gets angry and you see the red boiling up thier body until it hits thier head and steam flies out of thier ears?

That's how I felt. I'm sure that's how I looked, because our children and the dogs all fled the immediate area.

"Give me the receipt."

He handed it over to me. I looked at it, and saw the financial carnage. It was a lot. And I couldn't even tell you what the hell kind of bike it was now, it was so many bikes ago. But it was A LOT.

Then I yelled. I stomped. I threw the dishrag.

I was pissed.

" Where the hell is the mulch!?!?" I spoke through gritted teeth.

" Oh. Yeah, I forgot to get it."Husband said as he quickly turned the corner and left the garage.

I followed. " You forgot the #($%*#@ mulch?!?!"

Into the house we went and his tongue lashing continued. I can't ever remember being so pissed.

Wait. Yes I can.The time we went to Home Depot to get glass doors and returned without the doors, but driving a new SUV. ("But YOU can drive it, hon." )

(note to self at this point.....NEVER let Husband go to Home Depot without a chaperone. )

" I don't understand why you are so upset, Wife. I told you I have been looking at bikes."

I could not believe it. ( "He's your's by choice, girlfriend," I reminded myself )

" Ok, Husband. Let me put this into perspective for you. In a simple way that even you can understand: I am going to go to the grocery store and come home with new living room furniture."

" But that is different."

" HOW!?!?"

" We don't need living room furniture. We have perfectly good couches already in there. "

"AND YOU HAVE A PERFECTLY GOOD BIKE IN THE GARAGE!" I shouted back.

" But I need a better one."

This is where I deadpan to the camera.

Sometimes, talking sense to a man who bikes is like nailing jell-0 to a tree.

After that,
The new rule at Chateau Bike Widow became: If Husband purchases expensive bike paraphanalia without discussing or informing Wife beforehand, Wife has FULL permission to respond in kind by purchasing something of equal or greater value....and Husband can say nothing about it.

PS. I got my living room furniture about 2 weeks later.

It All Began....

So I was telling Husband that I was about to post my first commentary on the life of a wife of a cyclist.

Husband said, " What are you going to say? " ( with a very frightened look, I may add.... )

"I'm going to write about the time you bought your bike."

" No. That wasn't your first experience with biking, hon."

" Oh?"

"No. Did you forget our trip to Prince Edward Island?"

Oh LORD. How could I forget that? Yes. I DID. Or, possibly I blocked it from my memory. But he was right. I had forgotten all about it.

I better start from the beginning.

Rewind.

It was about this time 14 years ago that we discovered that we were going to be parents. Considering that this was our first baby, and the first grandchild on both sides of our family, you can imagine how excited we all were.

" Your life as you know it will change forever", everyone told us.

So, we decided to make the most of our last summer alone and take a nice long vacation. My inlaws were going to help us out, considering we were still young and didnt have much in the lines of a "vacation fund."

What I didnt realize in my youth was the "help us out" meant "plan the vacation". Before I knew it, my father in law had booked reservations and secured a tour of Prince Edward Island for 10 days.

ON A BIKE.

http://www.pedalandseaadventures.com/pei-bike-tours.html

Now, I'm all for the beauty of nature. I'm all for the great outdoors. I'm all for fun family bike rides. But when I found out that I'd have to plant my pregnant ass on a bike seat for 40 miles a day for 10 solid days, I wasn't so sure I was into this "vacation".

Mind you, at this point I didn't even have a bicycle.

I was assured it would be ok. I was assured that there would be a car that I could ride in. I was assured that it would be leisurely and easy riding.

So, I said OK.

No one suggested that we possibly build up to riding 40 miles a day. Just that we buy a good bike. ( I got a pretty blue Cannondale mountain bike....to match my "outfits", of course... one must look good. )

No one told me about the 13 hour drive to the tip of Maine.

No one told me, either, about the ferry ride across the sound that I still get queasy thinking about.

And whoever mapped the damn trip out didnt know how to read a map. Prince Edward Island has LOTS of steep hills. "Leisurely" my ass.

And that was the beginning of the trip.

Now, I must say that Husband had never been around a pregnant woman. He had no idea what to expect. And, quite frankly , neither did I.

I never thought to school him on the fact that I could possibly become instantly and violently sick at the smell of seafood. Did you know that is almost all they eat on Prince Edward Island?

And I didn't think to tell him that pregnant girls need to eat WHEN THEY ARE HUNGRY.... or risk barfing up the last 6 meals in that beautiful field of lupines we are passing.

I didn't tell him that sweating and riding 40 miles a day ( for 10 days, mind you ) while pregnant makes a girl INCREDIBLY tired, and a tad bit cranky.

" Yes, sweetheart. You just rode 4o miles and you are tired. Give me a BREAK!!. You think you are tired???? I rode the same 40 miles and MADE A LUNG at the same time...don't freakin talk to ME about being tired! And to tell you the truth, NO. I don't care if I miss the house of Anne of Green Gables. I want a frickin hamburger. NOW!!!!"

I also recall a moment on this not-so-private getaway when I was feeling particularly ill. We were touring some little town, and all I wanted to do was go back to our bed and breakfast nearby and lie down for the afternoon. I told him, through the kind of tears a child gets when they have been throwing up for an hour, that I just could not go on any more and could he please take me back to our room.

I believe his exact words were, "Suck it up."

Ahh, my first lesson in endurance, perserverance, and 'working through the pain'.

Let me tell ya, Mr. Suck It Up learned right fast HIS first lesson in husband sensitivity. You don't tell a pregnant woman who has just seen her lunch from 2 hours prior displayed all over the beautiful cobblestones of Cavendish to "Suck It Up."

He finally got it.

Once I came to the realization that my mother in law had forgotten what it felt like to be pregnant ( which makes me question even more if Husband wasn't actually hatched or dropped here from Mars - that IS where men are from, you know ) and that 23 year old men and 60 year old men, or men in general, for that matter cannot empathize with a pregnant woman, and that as said pregnant woman, I could ask for ANYTHING I wanted and pretty much get it, the rest of the week went rather smoothly. Everyone stopped when I wanted to. We ate when I was hungry. We even carried food in the car for me...to satisfy my odd cravings.

I got home and talked about the uncomfortable-ness and the sickness. But now, as I look back on that trip, I can only remember the fun we had.

One of my very all time favorite pictures of the two of us is in front of a lighthouse on Prince Edward Island. I'm sitting on his lap, and he's wearing a bandana and his bike shorts...I'm in my biking bibs ...

I'd be happy to post it, but it would totally give away my identity. Which is a bummer because I look hot. ( as most girls do before giving birth multiple times......) And I like to revisit those days when I was younger, thinner, and, well, a babe. You know what I mean, ladies.

We look so happy in that picture. Little did I freakin know. I look at the photo and it is evident that I have no idea that the seed of biking has already been planted in Husband's soul and will lie dormant for another 10 years , until it rears its head and wreaks havoc on my mental well being and our marital bliss.

So, there you go. That was the beginning of the end for me. Ride the bike, puke in the lupines.

Here's my advice:
1. Don't go on vacation with your inlaws. ( that's all I'm sayin)
2. Educate your husband on what happens to her when a girl gets pregnant.
3. Get a SOFT seat if you are going to ride a bike while pregnant.
4. FLY to Prince Edward Island
5. Skip Anne of Green Gables and go eat a bacon double cheeseburger instead.
6. You will always look back after 13 years and think you look younger, skinnier, and hotter. In fact, you won't recognize the girl in the pictures with your husband. Nor will your kids.
7. You'll look at that pictures and not be able to remember what your life was like before you had children. Even if you try hard.
8. When you marry, remember that not only do you marry the man, but you marry all his crazy addictions as well.