Birthdays....

So I've always liked my birthday. It doesn't matter that this was my 43rd, and that I have more wrinkles and age spots than when I was 34- I like my birthday. It's the one time I can coerce 40 people to ride 40 miles up hill and back for a piece of cake!

When I was a kid, my sister Josie would throw these great birthday parties for me. She always had great prizes for pin the tail on the donkey, or twister or whatever. She'd wrap them and attach long strands curling ribbon to them, put them in a box with the ribbon hanging out and if you won one of the games, you got to pull a ribbon and a prize would be attached to the end of it. I always thought that was so cool- its really the only thing I vividly remember about my birthdays. That, and we always got our cake from Aki's bakery in San Jose.

I had my 2nd annual birthday ride on the 27th of August. It was a 38 mile ride to the Cheese Factory and back. This years cake was from Debbie Does Dessert in San Anselmo. Her cakes run a close second to Aki's.

Bike Against the Odds

Each year since they began the ride I have taken part in The Breast Cancer Fund's "Bike Against the Odds" with my cycling club The Velo Girls. There are two fundraising rides I do each year, AIDS Lifecycle and this one. Not only is it a great route (I usually do the 65 mile route, but this year may do less) but it is the one time that I get to actually meet the other members of Velo Girls in person. We are an all women's cycling club based out of the SF Peninsula.

Every year, the Oakland Yellowjackets try to beat us in fundraising and each year they have come in second. Something tells me that this year may be different. I mean their highest fundraiser so far is Ron Marshall, a great guy I met while training for my first AIDS Lifecycle, whose wife is a breast cancer survivor. Since I know a number of Yellowjackets, its fun to tease them in the days up to the ride, to get them to try and raise even more money than VG (if they can)... this year will be no different.

If you want to check us out you can do so by going to The Breast Cancer Fund's "Bike Against the Odds" page and make a donation....the link is:

http://breastcancerfund.kintera.org/faf/home/default.asp?ievent=104407

Imaginary Friends and the magic white chair...

The white chair/imaginary friend magic photo started back in the spring of this year. As a joke, our friend Rowdy took a picture of Shance (the eternal bachelor) in our white chair with his arm around his invisible future partner. Lo and behold, 2 months later Shance really does have a girlfriend, so we made him pose with her for a picture in the white chair. Every one of our single cycling friends now believes that chair has magic powers so a few of them decided to pose in the chair the same way Shance did with his imaginary friend that came to life... heck what's not to believe?

So here is Shance with his imaginary friend, who became Michelle.
Then Donald, Yoichi and Patrick who hope that magic rubs off on them too!

Stay tuned, I'm sure there will be many more "imaginary friend in the white chair" pictures to come.

My Best Friend...

That would be my husband, Mike Brown- but you knew that.

I met Mike at the Towson Town Center mall in Towson Maryland in July of 2000. We were both traveling for work that year. I had been separated- mostly divorced- from my ex husband since '97 and had resigned myself to having this great simple, single life, forever. That decision was reversed on Christmas Eve 2001 when Mike Brown became my husband...

I call him McGyver because he can pretty much make do with any common household item. He can fix anything, likes to stay physically active and is a damn good cook. I think my Gay friends are only my friends because they all like Mike so much... that's ok, I'll take the credit anyhow.

It's nice to have a best friend who knows your mood swings (and man, I have many!), will tell you the truth if your clothes don't look good on you (in the nicest way possible), will listen to you no matter how much you ramble on, and on, and on... tells you he misses you even though he just saw you two hours ago, makes you eat healthy and will refuse to fight with you, recognizing that your only being a bitch because you really just need to eat. :-)

Mike is a Sr. Construction Project Manager with a major retailer located in the SF Bay Area. He travels lots- and I only really see him 4 nights a week... but since we met while traveling, we are used to not being around each other which makes our time together incredibly fun.

I couldn't ask for a better best friend.