Intermission

Appetizer course - Jalapeno poppers





Steak half-way point...






And something to tide you over - the girls Friday night camping:






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Taste of things to come

Stay tuned...

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Cancer Sucks.

Joe is recovering from surgery to remove a soft tissue spindle cell carcoma from his right front elbow. We discovered a lump on him several weeks ago on a Thursday. He was at the vet's office Friday having a needle biopsy done, results came back the next Monday confirming cancer. That Thursday he was having surgery to remove it. He had an extremely rough patch post-recovery. We weren't entirely sure he was going to make it through it, as he paced for 36 hours without laying down or resting, panting like a freight train in obvious distress. We tried several different drug protocols during that time, but nothing worked. He was even on a narcotic, but that just caused paranoid delusions and made him even worse. Tuesday morning, we had resigned ourselves to what might be our last day with Joe, as he was suffering mightily, and our hearts were breaking and we didn't know what to do for him.

He finally collapsed in the yard around 7:30 am and I got him to actually lay still on his side. I had to come to the office to open up and inform Lloyd that we would not be at work that day and handle a few things and I put a call into the vet's office to have our doc call us when she got in. I went back home, and Suzy was still out in the yard with him, and he was still resting in the same spot as I left him. We discussed what we thought we should do, and agreed to try to move him back inside to try and get him settled on a dog bed. The vet called, and I related all the troubles we had experienced and she suggested that he seemed to do the best on the pain injection they gave him during surgery, and once that wore off, his problems seemed to develop. Since Rimadyl is offered in tablet form as well as injections, she suggested we try a last ditch effort to switch him to that and see if it helped any. Off to Cornelia I went to pick up the meds.

Not expecting anything, but willing to give anything one last shot before we had to do the right thing, I gave him a tablet around 11 am. By 12:30, it had kicked in and he was finally sleeping comfortably. I am so thankful to Dr. Brooks and the staff at NEVH for not giving up on the boy and suggesting one last option, because I wasn't ready to say goodbye to Joe, but we had exhausted all of our bag of tricks to try and help him.

We've lost two wonderful greyhounds over the years to bone cancer. It's a terrible disease that robs you of dear ones before their time is up. Lily, our first greyhound was the first to succumb to this horrible disease. A beautiful brindle girl, she was the first ambassador that paved the way for all the others.

Then, there was my big goofy boy, Mallory.

Mr. Mal picked me out when we had gone down to Thomasville to a volunteer work day at NSRA, National Sighthound Rescue Association - the wonderful place where most of our greys have come from. It was supposed to just be a socialization exercise for the resident dogs - getting them used to people outside of a track setting. Walking them on leashes, petting them, interacting with them, etc. Well, I was handed Mallory's lead for a walk and I made the mistake of brushing him with a zoom groom after we were done with his walk. He and I bonded immediately, and I set about asking Suzy if we had room for another hound to add to our pack. She relented, and the rest is history. We lost Mal to bone cancer as well, way too soon.


Joe is on the road to recovery. His prognosis is not great, the type of tumor he had has a pretty high instance of reoccuring, even after surgery. The option of radiation on a 12 year old boy is not one we'd put him through, so we'll get him healed up from this surgery and just enjoy however much time left we have with him. Who knows, he might be like his cousin Maggie, who just celebrated her 15th birthday last week. I am just glad we will have a chance to spend more time with the boy.

Silly Greyhound!

Joe had to have a cancerous tumor removed from his right front elbow today, and this is what he looked like when we picked him up. Quite a sight!


-- Post From My iPhone

Is this what they meant by the Dog Days of Summer?

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STAYcation, all I ever wanted...

So, new concept here for us at Burnt Dog Lodge. What do you do when you live where you have gone for vacation the last several years? This time is traditionally a flurry of activity - pack the car, load the dogs up, load the bikes up, load our stuff on the roof of the team car Clampett style and head North. But we LIVE here now! So, what would normally be a stressful lead in to the start of vacation was a blissful non-event. We simply left the office, drove home, and vacation started! Novel concept, but I'm stoked at the possibilities. Very few firm plans, except for July 4th evening at our neighbors, but I'm sure time will fly by regardless. I'll try to keep you posted - this new iPhone Blogger app is pretty convenient for on the fly updates!

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Don't Call it a Comeback X2

Suzy was released to ride her road bike several weeks ago after 9 weeks of physical therapy and rehab from her dislocated shoulder. She hasn't officially been cleared to get back on the mountain bike, but we tackled a forest service road assault up Unicoi Gap. 23 miles later, her first successful ride was in the bank. It was brutally hot here today, but we sucked it up and got the job done. Congrats, Team Captain, glad to have you back in the saddle.
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Friday night Grilling and Chilling

So, I got the results back from CT Scan, and they were negative. That called for a little celebration, so we fired up the grill. Ribeye for me, shrimp for Suzy, grilled yellow squash, hot crash potatoes and a few beers. Sat outside on the deck listening to tunes and enjoying the evening.



























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Chicken Little, or why can't the chicken cross the road?

Recently, on one of our many trips to area mountain biking trails, we were headed down HWY 365 and I saw what looked like white feathers sticking up from some roadkill. Having just caught it in my peripherial vision, I dismissed it. That is until the next greasy spot DEFINITELY had white feathers - a dead chicken. Gainesville is a large poultry processing destination for the many surrounding chicken houses scattered across the countryside up here. We continued on down the road towards Gainesville, and counted 13 dead carcasses on the pavement. I guess taking a chance on death by speeding car is better than surefire death at the processing plant.

I was on the same road last night on my way to do a SORBA sactioned night ride at Chicopee Trails in Oakwood, just south of Gainesville when I noticed what looked like a feather drifting across my windshield. I came around a bend, and there was a flatbed trailer, loaded down with wire cages full of chickens, trailing a trail of white feathers. I remembered our previous encounters with their not so fortunate kin and made sure I was in the left lane and gave the team car a bit more gas to get around the truck - I didn't want to meet a chicken with my windshield!

Clean Mountain Living!

Over New Year's weekend, Tiffanie, Vonnie, Suzy and I rode mountain bikes up a forest service road that started out along the Chattahoochee River, then started climbing up, up, up, until we finally seemed to have topped out onto a ridgeline that we followed until it reached a big clearing that the Forest Service had cleared and marked as a wildlife feed plot. We turned around and descended back to the cars, since it was getting late. Later, we looked at the map and figured that the road we were on dumped into State Highway 17/75 that leads up and over Unicoi Gap, where the Appalachian Trail crosses. We figured that we must have been close to this when we turned around. That was about 4.5 miles of riding to get to that point.

Suzy's brother Len came up last weekend, and he brought his bike, so we decided to tackle the same route and continue on until we hit pavement. We figured it would be a nice short ride to start to get our legs back under us for the season to come. Well, the 4.5 mile mark came and went, then we continued on until we came to a gate across the road closing it to motorized traffic. Len uttered, "What would Tom Ritchey do?" and we set off scampering around the gate and continuing on. We continued on, climbing and descending ridge lines and admiring the views, and occasionally stopping to catch our collective breaths from the climbs. We eventually came to another gate, which we crossed and rejoined a road that was markedly more travelled, but it presented a conundrum - a fork in the road. Right was a continual gradual uphill path, and left was an inviting LONG downhill that stretched out of sight around a bend. My instincts said Right, even though I eyed the downhill longingly. As we set off to the right, we passed a minivan with 3 kids hanging off the bumper having fun, and I shouted to them as they passed if there was a paved road the way they had just come - they replied, "Yes - WAY back there!".

At least I felt good knowing that my instincts were correct. We continued on, and eventually came to the pavement, 500 yards below the summit of Unicoi Gap. We chose to turn left, ascend the summit, take a few pictures and pause to suit back up for the downhill run back to town. 1.5 hours of bike time climbing the 10 miles of Forest Service roads, 20 minutes for the downhill 7.5 mile run back to town = one hell of an epic ride for January.

Sunday, we topped off the bike ride experience with a hike to the top of our subdivision and showed Len the summit of Sal Mountain, which is privately owned, but undeveloped - so technically we were trespassing, but we didn't get busted by the man.

Times, How They Are a Changing...

Wow. I admit I have been a bit lax in posting, and a LOT has happened since my last post detailing our Vegas trip. We lost my long-time companion, Ri, the lone Brittany Spaniel in our pack of greyhounds, a few months ago. She was a faithful companion who had been with me a LONG time - since I picked her out of a double litter of 21 pups back in the early Summer of 1994 when she was 5 weeks old. She came to live with me about 2 weeks after that day, after she was fully weened. I still look for her, and miss her like crazy, but, she gave me 14.5 years of happiness and constant companionship, right up til the day we had to say goodbye.

We also have moved to Burnt Dog Lodge full time - for those of you that don't know, Burnt Dog Lodge was our vacation home in Sautee, GA, in the North Georgia mountains just outside of Helen. We relocated here December 19, and we also moved our business to Cleveland, GA at the same time and had the doors open and hit the ground running the following Monday 12/22. Talk about hectic times! Suzy & I had lived in our house in Albany pretty much our whole married life, and 12 years is a LONG time to accumulate "stuff". We managed to get most of it on the moving truck and relocated up here. Thank goodness we have a generous basement to hold all of the overflow.

Our good friends from Albany, The McClungs, came up over the long weekend between Christmas and Nw Year's, and The Julians also came up and camped at Unicoi State Park with their kids. We had everyone over for a traditional good luck meal of smoked wild hog from Longpond Plantation (my parent's home). I put the boneless shoulder on the smoker early New Year's day, and we had pulled pork for dinner. Suzy made some off the hook black-eyed peas and collard greens - traditional Southern fare for good luck. We rode mountain bikes several times, hiked a bit and just relaxed and enjoyed good food, good views and great friends over the long weekend.

I'll try to make it a point to post more often in this new year, we'll see how well I do. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and look forward to a prosperous new year!

Molto Mario - Vegas Style!

Vegetarians, I apologize in advance for this post. This one is for the carnivores out there...

So, I hit the big 4-0 this year, and Suzy, being the wonderul wife that she is, hooked us up with a killer trip to Las Vegas over Labor Day weekend. Having seen Vegas on the Travel Channel and many of the restaurants on Food Network, we set about studying the list of places we'd like to eat, if we could. The famous chefs have multiple venues here, and on our short list were one of the big steakhouses. Emeril had Delmonico, Wolfgang had Cut, but Mario, hugely excessive Molto Mario had his newest - Carnevino. Just the name did it for us - I mean how much better could a restaurant named "meat and wine" be for us? After looking over the menus posted outside the various restaurants, we liked what we saw at Carnevino the best, so we made reservations for 2 for 6:30pm Saturday night.

We had decided early on that the bone in ribeye for 2 was the protein of choice for us, and as this comes a la carte (if you can believe that), we inqured about sides and chose the special for the night - hollowed out pattypan squash stuffed with cheese and tomato confit and baked off in the oven, and potato and cheese zepoles - basically a fried mixture of potato and cheeses formed into little hushpuppy shaped dough and deep fried. The extensive wine list overwhelmed our modest knowledge, so with recommendations from our server, Chad, we picked an Italian wine that was just ok, in my opinion. Once we ordered, they brought us out the usual basket of bread, but since we were in Mario's house, there was a twist.

On the butter plate, there were two containers. A small crock of butter, and a small crock of lardo. Yes, lardo - pig fat, salt and pepper, served at room temperature, that was so decadent, I felt sorry for the butter sitting there practically untouched. Then the star of the evening, the ribeye appeared. They wheeled it out on a cart with a cutting board and Chad carved it up expertly, using a sharp carving knife and a spoon. Yes, a spoon. He pressed down gently on the surface of the steak with the back of the spoon so as not to pierce the steak while carving it. He portioned off all the major areas of the steak, from the tip, then on to the filet portion, then the flavorful tail that surrounds the filet. He plated it up, giving each of us bits of all the different regions, then sprinkled sea salt and drizzled just a hint of olive oil on the meat. No garnish, no salad, nothing else on the plate, except perfectly cooked and presented steak. The acidity from the tomato confit from the squash was a perfect complement to the richness of the beef, but the zepoles were just average.

Our service and dining experience were every thing we had hoped it would be. It was a wonderful Birthday splurge - the only regret was not being able to pick up the bone and gnaw on it or at least have it shipped home to Chloe!

Vacation - Revisited

As I posted earlier this summer, we had some biking in mind for our vacation to North Georgia this summer. We had big plans of riding our own modified 3 Gap ride, which I posted details about here on the blog. We also had plans to meet up with Vonnie & Tiffanie to do some riding. Vonnie kept trying to coax me into assaulting Brasstown Bald with him. I knew Vonnie's prediliction towards suffering, as I saw him ascend Brasstown last year, and heard about his own personal journey through the pain cave. I have a healthy respect for Brasstown, as I have hiked up it's face several times to watch the mountaintop finish of the Tour de Georgia. I knew the effort required just to hike it was large, and was not relishing the attempt, but Vonnie is both persuasive and relentless. He wore me down with his enthusiasm, so I reluctantly said ,"OK.".

Brasstown is not terribly long, it is just steep and fairly relentless in the climb. Vonnie & I started out from their campsite at Trackrock and rode up the back side of Jack's Gap to the base of Brasstown. Suzy, Tiffanie, Cadie Bug & LuLu were our sag support, meeting us at the entrance to Brasstown in Vonnie's truck. The ride over started out innocently enough, but I should have read the omens when we saw a hawk swoop down and snatch a squirrel up and fly off with it in its talons.


















I was admiring the beauty of the scenery, and not minding the rolling terrain until we hit the base of Jack's Gap and started the climb in earnest. All the idle chit chat subsided and we started concentrating on the climb - going into that place in our minds and settling in for the effort required. I thought I was familiar with Jack's Gap, having ridden the other side of the Gap last year with what I thought to be relatively moderate effort. The back face is a totally different animal, though. The pavement is much rougher, and the climbs are more steep. Once we reached the entrance to Brasstown where our crew was waiting, I was starting to seriously doubt my ability to tackle the big hill on this outing. Vonnie wisely left me to my own devices, allowing me to recover and regain my composure and let my heart rate return to some semblance of normal. After about 10 minutes or so, I had resolved myself to at least attempting the climb. Vonnie was already set and after a round of good lucks and knuckle taps, he was off, with me not far behind. I had no illusions of attempting to keep pace with him, rather I set about trying to set a tempo that was sustainable for me.

Not far up the first ascent, there were road crews mowing the shoulders with weed wackers and a tractor with a mower attached to an articulated arm, followed by a large dump truck. This was the first obstacle to get around. I had to stop periodically to regain my composure and allow my heart rate to subside. My legs never really felt like they couldn't handle the grade, but my heart rate would get elevated and I'd have to stop to let it calm down. After about half of the climb, I started tacking across the grade rather than attempting to ride straight up hill, and this helped somewhat, allowing me to go further between rest breaks.

After what seemed like an eternity, I reached the Team Vehicle and they told me that I was almost done, I just had to make it to the second power pole, then it was around the corner, and another more gentle ascent to the finishing area - the parking lot at the base of the final ascent, which we could not ride due to park regulations. Vonnie had already finished his ascent, recovered, and ridden back down to check on me and he regrouped with me for the final climb back to the parking lot. I was glad to have him helping me set a tempo and just having another person present somehow made me dig in and finish the last section without stopping. I even found enough energy to zip up my jersey before Suzy took my finishing shot, arm raised in the air in triumph.

Brasstown is a monster. I am not sure I will attempt it again, but if Vonnie is around, I am sure he'll be prodding me for a repeat. It was something I had on my big "TO DO" life list, and to cross it off before I hit 40 was icing on the cake. We didn't get any other rides in on vacation, but we did have loads of fun, and it just reminded us that our decision to buy property up here was the right thing to do for us. Trout fishing in some of the many streams and creeks up here, night hikes to view the fireflies and foxfire, tubing down the 'Hooch, good food, good friends and good times... Doesn't get much better than this!

Moose Hollow

Here's a little You Tube Video of our new rental cabin - Moose Hollow. Suzy & I went up last weekend to survey the place and do a few projects and see what needed to be added to bring it up to our standards. It is a cute one bedroom cabin that was fully furnished.

Vacation Planning

One of the things I THINK I want to do while on vacation is our own version of 3 Gap. Covering Hogpen Gap, Jack's Gap and Unicoi Gap, it's an out and back loop from the cabin that's roughly 50 miles long. The only issue with this route, is there are no stores or sag stops once you start the climbs. You go through downtown Helen, but it is too early to need a fueling stop, and once you commit to Hogpen, you are on your own til you descend Unicoi back into Helen. It's a pretty tough route, but we'll see if we are up to the challenge!

Karma is a Bitch...

OK, so most of you have read Suzy's blog posting about her first foray into the strange trip that is mountain bike racing. If you haven't, I encourage you to hit the left sidebar and check out her blog - no, go do it right now, we'll wait on you to get caught up...

Now that you've read her first encounter with the sport, I'll bombard your senses with my spin on it, but first a little backstory...

I first got the hankering to try mountain bike racing after spending one too many nights hanging with the guys that dominate the local road riding scene, and who have had experiences with 6(!) hour mountain bike endurance races. After a few beers, most anything sounds reasonable, so I found myself cautiously mentioning that I might be up for a go at one of the races. After not hearing any huge outbreaks of laughter or worse, the sound of beer being expelled through nostrils, I got a bit bolder in my assertations.

"I WILL race in a 6 hour race!" I clamored. Yet again, no derisive snorts, only sparse words of encouragement were forthcoming. Fast forward til March, and it was time to go to my first race. It was just South of Athens, GA during one of the worst weather weekends our state has seen in a while. Friday night, tornadoes ripped through Atlanta, just to our West. Saturday morning, rain and awful lightning bursts punctuated the morning. Yet, somehow, come race time, the clouds parted and the weather lulled us all into a false sense of security, just long enough to start the event. What we encountered was nothing short of the hardest mountain bike trails I had ever encountered - and I had the pleasure of riding the course as many times as I could withstand over the course of the next 6 hours. After finishing 11th out of 23 total in my category, I was glad to be done with the day.

Fast forward a few weeks, and I found myself mumbling about trying a XC, or cross country mountain bike race in Columbus, GA. I figured if I had survived successfully in my 6 hour attempt, I could easily show up and turn in the effort required for a XC race (which, incidentally was only one 10.5 mile lap).

We decided to arrive early enough to get our camp set up at a nearby campground and then go pre-ride the course on Saturday. The race was on the following day. On the recon lap, Vonnie, Suzy and I set out to see what was in store for us the following day. After watching Vonnie fall very hard onto a large boulder in the first 3 miles of the course, and trying to negotiate a new section that was, to quote an unnamed source, "slick as owl shit", our spirits were flagging. Then, after having ridden the worst part of the course, and enjoying the flow of the rest, our pre-ride came to a grinding halt when my bike emitted a terribly loud "SCREEEE" noise, that was accompanied by a complete loss of pedal movement. Yes, I had broken my chain. So, 7 miles into the 10.5 mile course, I was dead in the water. Kaput. Finished. We turned around, and headed to the pavement and Vonnie managed to somehow wrap his crash damaged arm around me and propel me along back to the car. After asking around, and looking in vain for neutral support, I was having slim hopes of being able to actually start tomorrow's race due to a mechnical failure that no one seemed to have any parts to fix.

Next morning, Bill managed to scrounge me a replacement chain from one of his friendly competitors. I joyfully repaired my ride and set about preparing for my 11:30 am departure. Start time came, and I found myself on the line with 11 others in my category. Once we were released, I promptly got relegated to the back of the group, as I was close to last within the first mile of the course. As soon as the going got technical, I started regaining ground. I passed 4 people in short order, then I passed 3 more. I was steadily reeling in stragglers and was feeling really good about my chances for a high finish when all of the sudden, on a gradual climb, I lost all pedaling power. I looked down in disgust to confirm my worst fears - I had once again broken my chain, only 3 miles into my 10.5 mile distance for the day. Having no other choice, I shouldered my bike, picked up my broken chain, and walked the 1.5 miles back to the truck.

Now, with the second of our three 6 hour series looming, I look forward to the next round of adventure and adversity. The old saying goes, "what doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger..."

Heritage Park 6 Hour Race Pictures

Burnt Dog Lodge gets a new grill!

Let's see if this video linkage does the trick...

New Year's Resolutions accomplished...

Way back in January, while celebrating the New Year at Burnt Dog Lodge, the conversation eventually came around to New Year's Resolutions. Now, I'm not a big fan of making impossible statements about life changes or claims, but as folks talked about what they wanted to accomplish in the new year, I made a pretty bold statement - "Before the year is over, I will make it to the top of the subdivision on my bike."

Now, for those of you who have not been to Burnt Dog Lodge, our cabin is the second house in a subdivsion that goes up to the top of a mountain. It is only .8 of a mile to the top, but it is almost all up hill, at very steep grades, I'd estimate around 18-20% in places. I tried, unsuccessfully back in July on my road bike. I made it about 1/3 of the way up the first climb before I felt like I was going to puke and my heart explode from my heaving chest.

This time, on our Christmas trip up, I packed a different weapon - my mountain bike. It is geared differently than my road bike, more suited for climbing. Well, after laying around most of the day on Christmas Eve, it was time for an attempt. I got dressed, Suzy did as well. We hopped on, rode one of the side roads to get a little warmed up, and off we went. It was not to be Suzy's day, as she needs more warm up than I, and she stopped about where we did in July. I gave her the keys to the cabin, telling her I was going to attempt it solo. After catching my breath, and realizing I could not ride straight up the climbs without my heart exploding, I modified my plan of attack and started zig zagging up the climbs. I would stop and rest periodically to get my heart rate back under control, but I continued on until I rounded the last corner and saw the crest of the road. After I rested enough to start looking for a suitable place to take a self portrait, I saw a welcome sight - here came Suzy walking up the road! She had gone back home, put up her bike and gotten out her running shoes and her ipod and come on up after me.

It was a nice sense of acomplishment, and a heck of a fun ride back down the hill. I don't yet know what I will make as my resolution this year, but it feels good to have accomplished what goals I set for myself this year.

Merry Christmas everyone, and it's not too early to start planning that Resolution for 2008!

My butt looks better than yours!

Well boys and girls, it's that time of year again, the month of Birthdays around here. Suzy's was first, mine is around the corner, and here at Regency, we have a tradition where we have a celebratory lunch for the special Birthday person. We usually get take out from somewhere, or occasionally we cook something. This year, Suzy asked me what I wanted for my special lunch treat, and I surprised her by saying that I wanted to cook my lunch myself - usually the guest of honor just requests what he/she would like and the others take care of it. But, we have been in the mood for good bar-b-que around here lately, and I have been wanting to try my hand at pulled pork, so I fired up my Google-fu powers and dove headfirst into making something totally new to me - pulled pork from a Boston Butt. I made a rub for the outside, and injected the inside of the meat with a marinade, and let it get happy in the fridge for the morning, then I fired up the grill low and slow on one side only and proceeded to cook it, and cook it, and cook it and cook it, well you get the idea. I put it on at 4:30pm, the gas tank ran out around 10pm, I swapped tanks and started everything back up again, it started raining around 11pm, so into the oven it went. And it cooked, and it cooked, and it cooked... It FINALLY came to the proper internal temperature right before the normal alarm clock would go off this morning. It cooked for 15 hours total, then I wrapped it in foil for an hour to let the juices redistribute and then I pulled it. I can't wait for the sandwiches tomorrow, but right now, all I want is a nap...