Rogue Wolves Home of the Wolfman

After chickening out two previous years this year I'm determined to enter in the MS Bike to the Beach. It's a grueling 150 mile two day ride that starts at Columbia SC and ends at beautiful Myrtle Beach.

National MS Society Website:

Join 2,500 cyclists from across the region as they ride the southeast’s premier cycling event, the annual Start to Finish MS Breakaway to the Beach Bike Ride. This year, we are excited to announce a new, two-day, 150 mile course that begins and ends in beautiful Myrtle Beach, SC! This new and improved rally route offers cyclists the option of riding a 35 and 75 mile course each day, and a 100 mile course on Saturday. Fully supported rest stops are located every 6-10 miles, including food, drink and restrooms. This ride is fully supported by bike mechanics, mechanics, medical personnel, support wagons, police, route marshals, massage therapists and dedicated volunteers.

Since I'm serious about doing this event I've started training and have suckered in a friend of mine. He mistakenly agreed to doing the ride while drunk one evening and little did he know I would hold him to it! Seriously, he's excited to do the ride and we are a good pair because we push each other. Our training so far is one hour of biking and one hour of running every tuesday through friday. Damn I'm hurting. It's week two so I'm starting to get in the groove but the last few days we've really stepped things up.

Another good thing about doing this ride is that it's raising money for MS research. I have to get people to sponsor my ride so I might ask for donations closer to the event. You have been warned! I've got six months to train which should be lots of time to turn myself into Lance Armstrong...okay maybe not Lance...but someone that can actually attempt this ride. I see two major challenges ahead:

1. Staying Motivated
2. Learning to bike in intense heat/humidity

When I say intense heat I'm not kidding. The bike ride is in late September when temperatures here are still in the low to mid 30's. That's the main reason I've chickened out in the past. I thought the heat would kill me. It's now closing in on three years we've been here (wow) and I think I may finally start to be climatized (well as much as a Northerner can anyways) to the point where I can survive the ordeal. Here's to hoping anyways.

I'll keep you posted on our progress. Wish me luck!

Okay this is too creepy not to share. I was playing with the dogs in the yard today when I saw this spider in one of our bushes. It's a bit hard to tell in the photo's but that thing is about the size of my palm!

Yes I ran away gibbering. However, I did come back to take some pictures and give it a nice RAID bath. Then I ran away gibbering again...

After some google foo, I think it's a Gold Silk Spider. This one is not poisonous but there are a lot that are in the South. Click on the image for more creepy pics.

Looks like the Hurricane season has officially began for us. First up: Tropical Storm Alberto. Last night we were hit with some massive rains that flooded the streets here. Don't worry our house wasn't flooded. The water level didn't get that high and hopefully never does! There was also a pretty amazing thunder and lightening storm. It sounded like mortars going off all around us. Boom! Boom! Boom! There was even hail...

When it slowed down a bit we went for a walk (swim) around the neighborhood. I took a few pics but they turned out pretty dark. You can see the yards are completely flooded right up to the houses.

This is supposed to be a pretty intense Hurricane season like last year. Hopefully we will be as lucky as we were last year where all the major storms barely hit us.

I knew I should have bought a Kayak...

We had a dilema recently. Should we get a kayak or should we get a new bike for Robbi. It was a tough choice but in the end we figured the bike was the best bet since Robbi's old bike wasn't doing so well. Maybe we will get kayak's next year.

After much research she ended up getting a sweet Gary Fisher Marlin GS. She wasn't sure how she liked the women's version since she's used to riding men's bikes but after a few rides she was sold...

Just a quick post to let everyone know that Huricane Katrina was far from us.   It turned into a huge and nasty storm and we may feel some outlying effects from it such as thunder storms but that's about it.

Here's the current track of Katrina as it loses steam:

Unfortunately, there will be more storms to come as we move into the worst part of the hurricane season.