No racing, but busy all the same

Lindsay w/ a Tucan bird at the petting zoo in Frankfort. He didn't like her standing close to his food.

Since last post I've been busy, but not with weekend racing.
Thursday of last week, a couple of strong guys and I went out for a rather hilly ride and smashed it. This-in-and-of itself seems insignificant, but it was one of (my) better rides of the year I feel. When Fred from our a.m. group is on, he's really on. And he was on that day. And when he has an on day he's hard to hold onto, but I was able to hold onto him for the most part. I felt good and it was a noteworthy ride. (hence the note about it :)
Friday I took it easy, as usual, but felt a little run down from Thursday; not big deal, as I take Saturdays off in favour of all day work.
Sunday Lindsay and I were headed north (of Indy) for a maternal family reunion. I got up early and went out to Griffey lake to bust out some hill intervals, short:, but hard. I felt really good during this session too. Really strong. At the Griffey Lake boathouse (where I rest between ints) there was a relay exchange for a "Red Eye Relay" running race. Basically I gathered it's a ~110mile running race done by a team. There was a lot going on there, where normally before 8am I'd have the entire road/lake to myself. It was cool having people around though, because they were so hyped on their thing they were cheering me on my intervals (which is probably why I felt so good).
The Reunion was nice. I saw several people I haven't seen in several years, and several people I kind of just figured I'd never see again. I'm not a real big "family person," but it was nice to see all of those people. Plus Lindsay and I played on the equipment at the park (which led us to the conclusion that kids are bad-assed since after about 5 minutes we were too tired and sore to go on) ate hella reunion food and checked the petting zoo where I petted (what I think was) a pygmy reindeer, a sheep (which feels like a dirty wool sweater), and a goat while Lindsay petted many of the same animals, but also pissed off that Tucan bird.
In follow up news, I reported a few weeks ago that my Ipod died. I bought a shuffle to replace it. I thought a shuffle would fit my usage criteria well, as I usually just play shit at random anyway while working out or mowing our yard. I got it in metallic pee color (just like the wagon queen family truckster). I like it so far. And I'll say that thus far it has played a disproportionally high amount of Ratt. Which totally rules.
I'm going to race a 40k TT this weekend, despite two (2) MTB races happening also. There are precious few 40k's I can do this year and I believe I can go under 55minutes. Hopefully it works out for me this Sunday.