Long Day in the Saddle

Unfortunately the saddle I spent the day in was not a handcrafted Italian bike seat, but the driver's seat of my car. Since the temps today were cooler than they have been, Lindsay and I made the trip up to Chicago (an 8hr round trip drive. Or a "2 Monster drive" as I call it) to hang w/ my Brother and his wife and meet their new addition, Daphne. Daphne Elise was born Feb 29. She's a leap-day baby! I don't get overly excited about other people's kids but having a leap-niece is pretty cool. And today seemed like as good of a day as any to take off of riding and go visit the big windy.
I guess the focus of the visit ended up more on Ramona, our 18month old niece because Daphne, at 5days old, doesn't really do much except sleep. Ramona is all kinds of active though. After hanging out for a bit, we left the daughters w/ Evin's wife's parents (who in town as well) and went to eat. Lisa (Evin's wife) commented that this was the first time she had been w/out Daphne for almost 10months (she was born 2weeks past her due date). It was cool to be able to get her away from it all for a while. Anywho, we went to place called 3 Aces in Little Italy, but it isn't a typical Italian joint (pasta). They had a pretty eclectic menu. I got a traditional IT pizza w/ mozzarella and basil. It was good, but most noteworthy was that it was served on a tree stump.
Weird, but good.

We also went to a couple of places downtown and there's this huge Marilyn Monroe statue there right now. I was very curious to see what is under that huge dress, but we were across two streets, so I just zoomed in took this pic.

Yes, and since this a bike blog, I should tell that I had a pretty good week and I'm starting to feel pretty good. I am also feeling tired, like I could use a little rest. I'll likely plan a couple of rest days in the next week or two. I haven't been doing crazy-huge hours, but I have been putting in solid time for 6weeks straight now.
I did a couple good rides this week with a couple good sets of intervals and can feel myself coming around; good sensations.
My plan is to build for two more weeks then take a couple days off, which will put me at our TN training trip. Our trip this year is a little shorter than normal, but we'll still get at least two good days in the mountains. Usually just Josh and I go and stay with his brother Jake, but we have around 20 people from our team going this year so we're renting a few cabins in the area. Should be pretty cool; they all have hot tubs.