Sugar Cookies

Maggie wants to make sugar cookies for Santa.

This is one of Jess's favorite recipes.

1/3 cup Butter
1/3 cup shortening
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg
1 teaspoon almond extract
2 cups flour

Beat sugar, shortening, sugar, baking powder and dash of salt.
Beat in egg and almond extract.
beat ing flour til barely mixed.
Wrap in saran wrap and chill in fridge for 3 hours.
Roll half at a time, 1/8 in thick.
Cut out.
Place on ungreased cookie sheet
Bake 375 7-8 min, until edges are firm and bottoms are lightly browned

Pumpkin Patch

We took the girls to the pumpkin patch. Claire is cute. She gets so excited around the animals.

Spudman 2011, Olympic Distance Triathalon

0.9 mile swim

25 mile bike

6 mile run

I had ambitions of spending time in the pool. I got a faculty locker at the UNM gym. It is $25 a year, and the faculty locker is beautiful. But life is crazy busy. The main thing is I finished the swim. The swim coarse is swimming downstream the snake river. So, if the river is 3 mph, you could float and still finish the swim.

The bike was easy. I bike to work several times a week. I trade 15-20 min in the car for 30-35 minutes on my bike. If I did not do that, I would only work out a couple times a month. I passed quite a few people on the bike. Only a handful of people passed me. Just folks on $5k time trial bikes, like the Cervelo P3, etc. I think I was averaging 23 mph.

Well, I did follow through with the running training. I did a few bricks. If I got home early enough from work, I would put on my running shoes and put Maggie in the jogger. Once I put both girls in our Chariot.

I just ran in my bike shorts. I looked dorky, but I wanted to make sure it would not cause major chaffing.

When I got passed by the Kenyan types, some 100 pound guy that you see running marathons, I did not mind. And when I got chicked, I can deal with that. (Chicked is getting passed by a girl.) But when the fat guy passed me, that was too much. I got passed a bunch on the run.

My overall time was 2:31 (1st was 1:49, the top time is just for reference.)

Swim 22:11 I got passed by the wave behind me. (12:38)

Transition 3 minutes

Bike 1:07 (58)

Transition 2

Run 56:58 (34) I had ambition of running 8 min miles. My faulty reasoning is, "If I can run 9 min miles pushing 50 lbs of kids, I should be able to do 8 min miles".

So I finished 526 of the 1623 finishers. Daren signed me up in the Elite group. I finished 29th of 46 Elite men. I bet Daren had a great big smile when he was thinking, "what group should I put Krynn into? ... Elite." There was only two of us in the Elite swim wave not wearing a $200+ triathlon wetsuit.

It was fun to do a triathlon. The snake river valley was beautiful. Being surrounded by farmland, brought back fond memories. We passed sugar beat and potato fields.

It was fun to race my Chelsey and Crishelle. They finished strong. I hope someday I can do a triathlon with Maggie and Claire. I hope they will still want to do stuff with their dad. And I hope I can still run.

Radiology Conference, where cars go to die.

Once in a while I get a wild hair idea. Like: "It would be fun to drive to DC. There is a lot of country between here and there that I would love to see." 28 hours, 1900 miles. Our diesel VW used to get 49 mpg. (The past tense is foreshadowing.)

And if I drove, I could bring my bike. It was only 8 miles from the place I was renting to the mall.

I biked down to the mall a couple evenings that first week.

After church the first Sunday, we (Randy, one of the other residents in his program and I) went to to Gettysburg. At least they got to spend time with the VW on the last day of its life.

The trunk on the VW stopped latching, so I was driving to the dealership to get it fixed. I am glad that the crash happened before and not after I got it fixed.

I will miss 49 mpg. I will miss going over Colorado passes in 5th gear. The diesel never even felt like it was working hard.

Smithsonian castle.

Randy drove us (Huckleberry, my coresidents, and me) to Mt Vernon, George Washington's home. This is the view from the back porch.

Then after church we went to Manassas. The north calls these the first and second battles of Bull Run. The north named the battles after nearby rivers or creeks and the south named them for nearby intersections or settlements. It is hard to wrap your head around that many people dieing is that short a time.

Stonewall Jackson got his nickname here at the first battle of Manassas. Trying to rally his troops, another commander said, "There is Jackson standing like a stone wall".

The natural history museum was open until 7:30 one evening so I rode down. Steg and Steg.

I found a Suby wagon the last week of the conference. Now I had a chance to get on the water. The Potomac runs right between DC and Virginia. Killing the car reminds me of my own mortality. So, I am still a little gun shy. Consequently I picked easy class II-II runs.

Saturday I drove up to the Youghiogheny. Pennsylvania is beautiful. It was nice to get out on open roads away from all the crazy drivers. I found a couple locals boaters willing to let me tag along. The rain brought the river up over the last couple days. It was a fun class III. Good play. Mostly one hit wonder waves, but a few waves with eddie access. 3.9 ft on the scale, probably 2k cfs.

On the way back, I stopped at Antietam. The bloodiest battle of the civil war. 23,000 killed. It is just unfathomable.

At Gettysburg they had a graph comparing the number casualties in the civil and world wars. There were more people killed in the civil war than WWII. But the total population of the country at the time of the civil war was much smaller. Comparing the WWII to the civil war is like comparing a recession to a depression. In a recession you know someone who is out of work. In a depression someone in your family is out of work.

In WWII you know someone who died. In the civil war, someone in your family died.

Sunday, Randy and I went to Arlington and saw the changing of the guard.

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The Air and Space Museum at the Dulles airport is huge. This is the gliding training shuttle. In a couple months, one of the real shuttles will reside here.

P-40 Flying Tiger

Corsair

SR-71. Randy and I were like kids in a candy store.

Second to last day of the conference.

By the way, my case won best of neuroradiology. It was a case of primary spinal melanoma.

Mt Taylor Quadrathalon

Start 6,500 feet. Summit 11,300 feet. 44 miles. 6 hours 32 minutes. 6760 cal.

So, I dropped 30 minutes off last years time. http://superstegelmeier.blogspot.com/2010/02/mt-taylor-quadrathalon.html

The winner's time 3:33.

Charlie Pluto, one of my co-residents and biking buddy, was 47 out of 140 male soloists, 5:51

He finished the bike portion with me.

Adam Delu, one of the interventional radiology attendings, was 54th, 6:05

I finished 73rd, 6:32. I finished 18 out of 26 in the 35-40 age division.

It was fun. I met people from all over west. I met more Denverities than New Mexicans. Nearly everybody was an engineer or something in Medicine (MD, RN, or paramedic). I did most of the run up with an infectious disease doc from Denver. He asked, "you are a resident, how did you find time to train?" There was a couple that flew out from California. An anesthesiologist that placed 7th flew back from Massachusetts. He used to race when he lived here, and did not want to miss it.

Bike up 1:09 (49-1:32)

Run up 1:10 (40-1:37)

Ski up 51 (28-59)

Snowshoe up 36 (17-46)

Total time up 3:47 (2:18-4:56)

Snowshoe down 17 (7-22)

Ski down 32 (13-33)

Run down 1:07 (32-1:11) I really hate running down hill. I mostly walked.

Bike down 48 (31-58)

Total down 2:45 (1:21-3:33)

The Rollercoaster

I am amazed at how entertaining the "rollercoaster" was. Also for how long.