I am the father of a three year old boy, my only son, my pride and joy, MY BOY. He is great, he's my little buddy, I call him my "Boo Boo."  I'm not sure were that came from, was never into Yogi Bear but there is the possibility.  He is great he is just a ball full of energy.  He bounces of the walls, he loves getting dirty but not crazy about bugs.  I'm working on it.  He loves to wrestle, rough house, play with his cars, he loves to head butt, and loves football.  I swear he travels at lightening speed, and he moves with such stealth.  I turn around for a second and poof he is gone. 
    I went to the bike shop the other day to get a new bike helmet, so we get in the store I said " Boo Boo, stay right with me and don't touch anything."  He nods his head, I turn my head to look at a helmet with .25 seconds elapsed, and all I hear is crash bang boom.  I turn around, and were is Boo Boo on the other side of the store staring horrified at a mannequin laying on the floor in four pieces.  He looked up at me waiting to be yelled at but I didn't have time to yell at him, I had to put this thing back together before management came over.  Couldn't figure it out quick enough though.  The manager comes over I have an arm between my legs, a torso under one arm and trying to set up the things legs with my the other arm while the head was staring at us.  I looked at Boo Boo like really, Bud.  Come on.
   The whole way home I was thinking about what happened and how fast he can get away.  The more I thought about I started analyzing his running form.  He's got the classic high knees that come close to hitting his chest and a high elbow swing with his triceps never falling past parallel with the ground.  The high elbows is one thing but he has a way of making it look like he is about to take off.  I guess he needs the high elbows so they don't bang into his high knees.  I don't want him to bang his knees all up.  I wondered how he can be so stealthy with that kind of form.  So my predicament is this do I try and straighten this out or just let it go. 
    After much deliberation I decided to let him just go with what feels natural to him.  I didn't want to explain everything he needs to correct and him to look at me like I have two heads.  Also I don't want him to become even faster and even more stealthy because that would make it harder for me to detect his spastic movements.  At least now I can catch him out of the corner of my eye with arms flapping in the wind and knees a blazing.  He is fun and I just have to snicker when I see him running.  I know if they have to do a stair climb in preschool all the other kids will be going down.  He'll figure it someday.  We've got time.

HAHAHA!!!

HE WILL GROW INTO HIS FORM RIGHT!?    

I want to know why it is so tempting  for motorists to feel the need to honk their horns, yell obscenities while hanging out of the car window and try and hold a conversation with us while we are out there riding.
HONKING THE HORN:  I understand that about 10% of the honkers have good intentions, they honk from farther away and its a quick toot toot.  I like this, very courteous, and always gets a thank you wave as they drive by.  Then there's the honk when they are right up on you and HONK for about 5sec.  Is this because they think we are hard of hearing, they think they are better than us because they have a horn and we don't, or because they like to toot there own horn? 

YELLING OBSCENITIES:  Let me first say I don't understand this concept in general hanging out of a car window or not.  These people are hanging out of there car windows yelling at us telling us to get off the road while this nimrod is dangling out of a car.  Who is the unsafe one?  Maybe next time I'll offer this guy my bike helmet just to protect him in case he gets side swiped by a tree branch.  Hey.  I'm not wishing that upon him but...   

CONVERSATION GUY:  This guy is a little different than our yeller,  he will drive next to us to tell us how dangerous it is to be riding on the rode.  This is all happening while he is leaning into the passenger seat, with one hand on the wheel and eyes on us with a glance at the road every 10 seconds or so.  What is wrong with this guy?  Besides the fact that he could run us of f the road, oh yeah and get in a head-on collision which would probably take us out also.  Everything is wrong with this guy: he insults our intelligence, could potentially take us out in the process, and he is being so reckless.  I guess he is trying to make us aware that there are vehicles on the roads, so be careful.  So, if this is the case the thought is in the right place but the timing is way off. 

Ride safe everyone and follow all rules of the rode and do not get distracted!!  

Alright, I was talking with my really good friend this morning at the pool, Mandy Lovett, a fellow Triathlete, about music.  She told me that her husband made her a mix tape of songs for her workouts.  So I said jokingly to her "what did he put them on a cassette for so you could play it on your "walkman."  We both laughed but as I started my next set I was like, man, those things were the bomb and I believe until this past year they were still being made.  But anyway, I think the technology for our portable music "boxes" must of been engineered by perhaps, need I say it, a triathlete.  Just think about: 
    It first started with portable transistor radio and I bet Mr. "T"riathlete was like lets hook up some wires to this thing and put mini speakers right next to our ears.  We have have to cut down on drag and weight so we can't use the big earmuff type headphones.  So Mr. "T" came up with mini speakers covered in an abrasive foam material connected by a thin piece of steel, probably cutting both drag and weight from its predecessor by about 100 percent.  The only problem was that when your clothing moved it would sometime change the station from 80's rock, to country, to gospel to static.  
    Next came the cassette tape so Mr. "T" thought wow that looks pretty aerodynamically sound if I use that I won't have to listen to static, commercials and really bad songs during crucial parts of my workouts.  So he came up with the ever popular "Walkman."  He also added the bright yellow Sony Walkman probably for night time running so you could be seen more easily.  I thought of it all. 
    There was a small design flaw though, the athletes would have to carry their walkman.  "We can't have this on our long workout days, we can't waste any energy on holding the walkman, we need all of our energy going toward our workout," he thought.  So the ingenious Mr. "T" came up with the velcro arm band.  GENIUS!!!
    After years of dominating the market the walkman was shown the exit door but didn't leave without a fight in true triathlete style.  The Portable CD Player came on the scene.  This was super sleek looking - the CD was reflective like the moon blankets you get after a cold race.  This is perfect.  Mr. "T"'s plan was to incorporate the velcro arm band or incorporate huge pockets in training gear to help hold this contraption.  Mr. "T" then put on the CD player a song time window that could double as a stop watch if one was inclined to do the math in order to pass the monotony of a long run.   One glich though - when you bounced the CD skipped.  Not to mention the weight of these things were pretty heavy, a major no no for training long distances.  It was probably the 6 AA batteries you needed to operate the high piece of technology.  One upgrade Mr. "T" did make was the strapless headphones.  He took out the steel connector piece attached to the speaker, did away with the abrasive foam covers and made the speakers even smaller to fit into your ears, all weight and aerodynamic upgrades, for sure.  They probably were 50/50 with the walkman for use in workouts.  
    Next came the I-pod and this revolutionized the portable music industry.  Mr."T" clever design combined electronic technology and light weight materials to come up with a music box that was smaller than a pack of gum and weighed even less.  You could store hundreds of songs and never listen to the same song twice.  Awesome.  It even passes the aerodynamic test of being paper thin and the weight test (can't be more than a few ounces).  Mr. "T" has come up with the perfect music box for working out. 
    Wait hold the Phone what if Mr."T" could add GPS to it or maybe a Heart Rate Monitor.  I think we might be on to something...
So this all started with the cassette mix tape, Mandy and I were talking about and it turned into all this. 
Special Thanks to Mr. "T" for making my workouts so much easier with all the innovations to the "Music Box."