Monday, June 28, 2010

Cannondale Road Bike


I've got a road bike! Happy Anniversary to myself!

This year was our 6 year anniversary and "April's" gift to me this year was a road bike. I've been looking at bikes online for a little while as a solution to riding when the trails are closed. Remember all that rain we received back in the Spring? The powers that be kept the trails closed over and over again and we were getting frustrated. Some of my friends already had road bikes and would ride in the afternoons. Since I didn't want to be left in the dust, I decided to bite the bullet and buy a road bike. I found this one on craigslist and bought it from a guy in Alpharetta for $260. It needed some work but the bones were good and the bike fit me well. I bought new tires and a handlebar wrap and that dressed up the bike very well. There are still a few more things that I want to get for it (bike seat, new pedals, etc.)

Lately, once a week several guys from work and I have been taking to the Silver Comet trail and riding out about 15 miles and then heading back. It takes us about 1.5 hours to complete the 30 miles. We've learned to draft during these rides which helps more than you'd think. We are trying to get our endurance up because August 15th is the big day, we are heading from Smyrna all the way into Alabama! We plan on riding out 100 miles in one day and having our wives show up in Alabama to take us home. It's a pretty daunting task but I think we can do it!

Sunday, June 27, 2010

New Beginnings

Seeing as how the rayd site went down for a while, and now I'm having a little bit more of free time, I've decided to setup my own blog. I didn't go all out and order an actual domain, we'll just see how this blogspot one works out first. Hopefully I can stick with this one on a regular basis. I'm sure since I haven't had a post in a while, I'll have a flurry of posts right here at the beginning.

The news going on in the Barr Family life is the planning of our new house. I've pretty much got the floor plan to the way we want it. We've also determined the locations of the lights and ceiling fans (can't have too many ceiling fans in the south!) Now all I have to do is draw up a foundation design for the house and get an architect to finish it. I hope that doesn't cost too much, I'm guess 2-3k, what do you think? Know any good ones?

Since April has been out of the school, she's been on craigslist and going to yardsales. She's found some amazing deals and as a consequence, gave me a bunch of wood work to do! We plan on making all our vanities in the house out of pieces of furniture. For the guest bathroom she found an old dresser for $30. Now all I have to do is remove the drawers and add doors, then get a counter and sink made for it. I've also got to raise it up about 4" or so which shouldn't be bad. She also found two end tables for the living room for $2.50 each! Yesterday we went to The Dump and found a great painted finish of a piece of furniture and we're going to do that for these end tables. We went to Lowe's yesterday to get the paint. Once we're done with these projects, we'll post all the pictures.

Other furniture that we are going to build/buy in the near future.
Build from scratch: Master bath vanity, kitchen table (from an old door on our property), hall bathroom vanity, various benches and porch swings.
Buy: Living room sofa, chairs, and chaise lounge.

Hope you like the new site! I'll be updating and configuring regularly for a while.