OK - too funny not to post. Enjoy!!

Making Strides

My wife and daughter are going to be walking in the 'Making Strides Against Breast Cancer' walk on October 10. This is an awesome fundraiser for a really good cause. If you can support them in their endeavor, please do so!

Here is her link:

The American Cancer Society:

Literal Video Versions!

OK - had to post this one. They take a song and put words that match what they are seeing in the video. Really funny. Totally cracked me up!! Enjoy!

Magic Show

Found this one a long time ago and never put it on the rant. Enjoy!!

Fluteboxing

Thanks to a friend from church for this one.  It is 18 minutes long, and if you don't feel like watching the whole thing, make sure you skip to the middle and start watching where 'Beardyman' comes on. Enjoy!!

Earth Expedition

I ran across this today and thought is was worth the rant. This guy is walking 18,000 miles to raise money and awareness for a massive percentage of the global population that does not have access to clean drinking water. Through an organization call Blood:Water mission ( which was founded by the band 'Jars of Clay'), $1.00 can provide water for 1 person for a whole year! Anyway, it moved me. Enjoy!!

The Earth Expedition from Daren Wendell on Vimeo.

Food Inc.

This new movie is coming out to theatres in bigger markets called 'Food, Inc.'. Every time I see some sort of documentary about this topic, I do a little 'hanging my head in shame' that I am still eating like I am and allowing my family to do the same. In a round about way this led me to a 'TED' presentation by a guy named Mark Brittman on the same subject. Check it out:




Then when you are finished watching this - check out the trailer for the Food, Inc. movie.

Custers Last Stand - Triathlon

OK - thought I would give an update on my first Triathlon. I finished! How about that. Here are the details.

The fun started on Friday morning when Gazelle sports and Team Active had Conrad Stoltz out to speak the the Sherman Lake YMCA. I didn't have anything going on and decided that it would be worth the trip. Conrad is a professional triathlete that is slated to win the XTERRA World Championships this year. He also won last year. It was cool to hear his story and how he trains. Pretty inspiring, although his comments about Michigan being 'flat as a pancake' left me wondering...

Saturday evening Christine and I went back out to Team Active to pick up my packet. That was exciting. It was great to be hanging around with everyone as they were getting ready. I felt like I was an out-of-shape old guy for sure!! We went over to the BC Bistro for dinner. I recommend the tuna, it was great! After that I spend some time double-checking all of my stuff to make sure I had everything. Bike - check, wetsuit - check, race numbers -check, etc.

Sunday morning I woke up around 5:30am and had my classic oatmeal smoothie (milk, oatmeal, whey protein, yogurt - all blended together), put my bags in the car, strapped the bike on top and went off to pick up Mike. Oh yeah, it was 33 degrees outside. A little chilly...

We ended up getting out to Ft. Custer around 7:00am, picked up our chip and went to the transition area to rack out bikes, get our stuff laid out and get our numbers drawn on us (I was 313). By this time I am starting to think about this 500m swim I have ahead of me and the fact that it is now a balmy 40 degrees and the water is actually warmer than the air. Around 8:00am the pros and the folks who were doing the longer race started. It was amazing to watch the pros swim. They swam 1000m and made it out of the transition on their bikes in less than 15 minutes. Crazy... We got our wetsuits on and kind of waited around until 9:30, hoping for a miraculous crack in the earths core to warm up the lake. It didn't. At 9:30 the horn went off and we were in the water. Holy crap was it COLD!!!

Even though I had gotten in and swam around for a bit, it was still 'take-your breath-away' cold on my face. Mental games are starting to happen. 'It's not that cold, I can keep going'. That lasted about 100m, and I started to really lose my breath. 'OK Doug, just relax, calm down, put your head back down and it will be OK'. Yeah right, every time I put my head down, my heart would take off and my breath would leave. Looks like I am going to finish this part doing the breath stroke. So, the swim took me around 20 minutes. The whole time I am telling myself that a few minutes won't matter because I will catch up on the ride. That was good until I came out of the water and it felt like my legs were frozen!! Wow, I felt like I could hardly move.

I actually made it through the transition area pretty good (2.5 minutes) and moved on to the bike. Man, it was strange riding with my legs numb. It took about 5 miles to wear off and in the mean time we had to cross 2 knee deep patches of water. Man is this crazy or what. Eventually though I did start catching up with a few people and passed about 10 folks. Crashed a few times too. I made it back to the transition area and left for the run. Finally my feet were warming up, but I felt bad! I ended up walking a lot of the run and a few of the folks that I passed, passed me (Including Craig from Craig Tri's, good to meet you in person!).

Overall my time was about 2:07, a little longer than I wanted, but now I have something to beat! Special thanks to Christine for be so totally supportive through-out this adventure. It means a whole lot to me.

Also thanks to my training bud, Mike, always a riot!! And to Kate and Andy and family who came out to watch. As well as Al Balko and Dennis Bauer, it really made the whole day a lot of fun! So, the question you may want to know is, will you do another one? Of course! Hopefully a couple more this summer, gotta keep it going! Until later - have fun!

Time Lapse Across China

I ran across this video today and thought it worthy of the rant. It is about this guy that walks across China and take a picture everyday. Pretty cool indeed...

First Open Water Swim!

Mike and I rented some wetsuits from Gazelle Sports for the week.  We figured it would probably be a good idea to try a swim in the open water (as opposed to the pool) before the actual race.  Good Idea.  At first I was thought it was awesome, but then the pressure from the suit, the cold water on my face, and not being able to breathe very well got to me and I had a tiny anxiety attack.  So, needless to say, I will be going back out over the next few days to try and get used to swimming in the open water with a wetsuit on.  It did feel great being a little higher in the water though!!  4 more days!  Choi...

Triathlon

So, it has been a few months since I even posted out here. I was thinking about starting a new blog dedicated to my recent triathlon training. After slight consideration and even creating a new blog, I decided that it would be too much to have two blogs. So, this blog will change a little. It is going to become a little more personal. Hope you don't mind.

Since December I have been on a weight loss campaign. I woke up one day and decided that I was too heavy and very unhealthy. Started working out and then in January started following 'The Abs Diet'. To date I have gone from a whopping 244lbs down to around 215 right now. I would really like to get to 190. In February I decided that maybe a Triathlon would be a cool thing to try. So I signed up for Gazelle sports 'Y not Tri' program and began swimming, biking and running. The swimming scared me the most and I can now swim confidently enough to finish my first Tri which is this coming Sunday (Xterra's Last Stand). Anyway, I am looking forward to this and hopefully a few more over the summer. I will post more information regarding my Triathlons experiences soon!

New Sport?

So, I ran across this today and it really made me laugh. I had to post it on the rant. The japanese sure do come up with creative games. Enjoy - dv

Stuff White People Like - Macs

My friend Dave pointed me to this blog and I had to rant on it! Especially the one about Macs. As a white person who uses a MacBook Pro (dual-booting with Vista 64 and Leopard, and drives a VW Jetta) I think this is totally hilarious and all to true! I have often thought the same thing. I see people hanging out in coffee shops, checking their emails, looking at their pictures and surfing the web. All on a machine that costs at least $500 more than a PC laptop that could do the exact same thing (especially when the email is gmail). I have come to the conclusion that having a Mac is a status symbol more than anything else. I bet that 90% of the people who own Macs use them for the three things I just mentioned and not a whole lot else. Steve Jobs is a genius in the fact that he has created a brand that sells based on the guise that it is 'more intuitive to use' and gets away with charging 50% more. Anyway, check out the blog...

Adoption Story

I ran across an interesting article today that caught my interest enough that I thought I would rant on it. Since adoption is near and dear to my heart any time I see a story like this I pause and read it. This is truely incredible what these people have done. A small church of 200 or so adopted 72 'of the most abused and neglected foster children in Texas'. Talk about walking the walk. Although they are having hardships, those kids are way better off than what they would have been, due to the sacrifice of a church. Amazing... Yet another confirmation of what I need to be focusing on. Quite simply 'not me'.

Hurricane Video

I met a new guy at work last week. His name is Darren Howard and he entered this video in the 'Jimmy Needham Cover Contest'. I thought it was pretty cool and really enjoyed the fact that he did most of it by himself. Anway, check it out....




Oh yeah - he won....