During my copious hours of down time, last week, I watched an inordinate amount of FuelTV. I really enjoyed all of the Skateboard and Snowboard segments. I changed the channel for the bmx segments. But for some reason, the surfing segments are so infectious to me. I especially love surf films. I capped the weekend off watching a film called Sprout. Jack Johnson co-produced it, to give you an idea of the flavor. Like most surf films, it didn’t really have a coherent story line, some parts were super corny, and the footage is mindblowing. After watching so much surfing, I have a strong urge to just quit my job and move my family to HI. Sounds like de ja vu from a former life, hahahaha. The first time I really felt like this was after watching Endless Summer II. After which I did quit my job and move to Hawaii.

Since quitting everything and moving to the other side of the planet isn’t exactly feasible, I don’t know how I’m going to kill this fever. I really do want to try to get back into surfing this summer, though. I’m not exactly sure how, or when I will fit it in. But I really want to. Is that so wrong?

Dear Jake,

The other day I was looking in my Dad’s palm pilot for a phone number and I saw something titled, “after I fell off my toilet.. I drew this”. I opened it and it was a rough sketch of what looked kind of like the flux capacitor? What does this mean? I am really worried about him. Should I confront him about it?

Sincerely, Looking For Rest Homes

Answer–

What’s up Homes? So you stumbled onto your dad’s little secret did you? Did the diagram look like this—> [¥] ? If so, I think that your dad may have been the one who invented the first device known to man that can alter the space time continuum. For decades, nay, centuries, humanity and science have been searching for a way to capacitate flux. Why? To travel through time, of course. Someone even made a movie about it once. It had something do to with Mcflys and damnhands, from what I can remember. The important thing to do now is see what your father’s intentions are, for wanting to capacitate flux. If they are benign, then you should just let him keep on doing his thing, cause hey, he is a genius. But if he plans to use it to take over the world or some crap, then you should probably have him committed. If you are still unclear about what the flux capacitor is capable of, here are some informative sites that you might want to study for reference. Article 1 (about the real thing)  Article2 (about some fake imitation).

Hope that helps, Jake

Sunday night, Reagan was being all artsy, working on some stuff for Piper’s birthday. She was having so much fun cutting up paper and stuff, that I decided to get in on the action. I got this great idea to draw and cut a stencil for the grip tape on my longboard. So I pulled out the pencil and x-acto knife and went to work. This is what I came up with.

It didn’t come out exactly how I wanted it to on the longboard, so I painted one of my freestyle skates, also. I found that it was tough to get the stencil to lie correctly because of the concave in the deck. Oh well. I don’t feel like it was time wasted.

The Strokes are awesome for so many reasons, it would be impossible to list them all. Here are just a few: They are from New York; They were at the forefront of the “garage band revival” in the early 2000′s; the “garage band revival” finally moved popular rock out of the disgusting butt rock slump that the likes of Nickelback and Seether had promulgated for several miserable years; They can rock skinny jeans without feeling the need to wear eyeliner. Like I said, the list could go on all day. To date, they have put out 3 studio albums. The song that I’m sharing is off of their most recent album “First Impressions of Earth,” released in 2006. It is called “Razorblade.” Like it.

After a week off, GP was back in action racing at LeMans, this week in France. It was a crazy race, because of the wet track conditions. It was drizzling up until the warm-up lap, which caused all of the riders to start the race riding bikes shod with wet weather tires. Pedrosa, Lorenzo and Stoner got a great start. It only took a few laps for Lorenzo to jump out in front and open up a sizable gap. Rossi wormed his way up into second position, after a few short laps. It became pretty clear after 5 or 6 laps that there was a dry line forming on the track and that the riders were going to have to pit and switch to regular slick-shod bikes in order to finish the race. In a bold move, Rossi pitted first and subsequently low-sided in a wet corner, causing him to fall way back in the pack. Eventually, all of the rider’s switched bikes and finished on slicks. Lorenzo was one of the last riders to do so, after he had opened a 20 second gap. Even while he was getting his slick tires up to temperature, he maintained an impressive lead. Marco Melandri, riding a Kawasaki pulled out a second place finish. This goes to show that crazy conditions can lead to crazy results. Pedrosa was able to steal the last spot on the podium from Dovizioso on the very last lap. This shook up the world championship standings, putting Lorenzo on top. Rossi, who earned zero championship points today is now 1 point behind Lorenzo in second position. Stoner is one point behind Rossi, bringing up third position in the world championship standings. Full results here. The next race will be on the home turf of the Italian riders, at Mugello on May 31.

Today was a busy day for us. We spent the majority of it running all over the tri-state area to get Piper’s stuff moved. When we arrived at Blythedale will all of her stuff, she was snoozing away. It didn’t take her long to wake up though, and tangle herself up in some funky position in her crib. I think that she was pretty stoked to see that her mirror and favorite toys were back, when she woke up from her nap. She seems to be feeling better. She is still very congested, and on antibiotics. She is also on contact isolation again! Booooooooo. This especially sucks given that her birthday is this week and we are going to have family in town for the event. Wearing those obnoxious gowns the whole time we are there is a nightmare. All of that crap is worth it though, to have Piper looking and feeling so much better. She seems to be continuing on the up and up. Fingers crossed.

[Reagan, in front of the great lawn, before the race]

I thought it was great that the benefit for today’s race was for kidney health. Reagan and I were joking the entire time about that scene from 30 Rock this week, where Dr. Spogemen talks about how kidney transplantation is no laughing matter. Today was a weird race. First of all, we normally drive down to these things. But the last couple of times, we have had kind of close calls when it comes to parking. So we decided to take the train down today. As usual, the A line is doing it’s normal weekend shenanigans, so we took the 1 train. I wasn’t sure how much time to allow, so we ended up getting there totally early. It was kind of cool. There were really low clouds. In fact, where the 1 is above ground at 125th, we couldn’t even see half way across the Hudson. We met up with our friend Mike and one of his friends before the race and chatted it up until about 10 minutes before gun time. It was so foggy, I thought that there was no way it would rain. Whoops. As soon as the race started, so did the rain. By mile 3 it was a full on down pour. Then, suddenly, it stopped. So, the last half of the race was like running in a sauna. Everyone was steaming, there was steam coming off of the ground, etc. I am still feeling a bit under the weather, so I was really struggling with breathing on the hills. Of course my Ipod died again, as soon as it became waterlogged. On top of it all, my timing chip died, so my finish wasn’t recorded. Luckily I was wearing my pedometer, so that I could report my time, later. Taking the 1 train home, we saw these guys singing on the train. Reagan took this picture, then danced. Hahahaha

These little guys have been doing great. They are eating twice a day, now. I moved the mama back to the large tank, so she could be back with her homies, and resist the urge to cannibalize any of her young. This week some of them have started to develop their little convict stripes.

We got Piper all moved in back at Blythedale and everything, today. I’m feeling pretty good about the way this week is coming to an end. Reagan had a girls night tonight, with one of our friends who is moving away. It gave me a chance to get out and skate a bit. It was really nice to just unwind. This time I thought ahead and wore 2 pairs of socks on my pushing foot, to avoid blisters. I didn’t take any pictures of skating, but there was a pretty dramatic sunset while I was skating down Riverside, to get to CP. These shots are on the early side, but you can image how it just got better and better.

I also ran into this little guy. I see raccoons all of the time when we are down skating in the park, but generally they are just hustling across the road and I can’t get the camera out in time. This guy, however, was up for a full on photo shoot. Standing up on the hind legs and everything.

Other kind of awesome stuff about this week/weekend:

1. The Beastie Boys (minus MCA) were on 30 Rock, last night.
2. Reagan and I are running a 10k in the morning for Kidney something or other. We will see our friend Cuomo there, for the first time since he moved back to CT.
3. Stake Conference this weekend which means that church is later and shorter than normal.
4. If I had to make an estimate, I would say that Piper is feeling probably close to 90% herself again.
5. My brother Pete’s birthday is today.
6. My first post for my new paid blogger gig was published this week.

Lining the bottom of the cage this week.

As a side note, it looks like the little guys (and girls) have been busy. Look what’s going on in the nest: