This is William's namesake, my grandfather and his great-grandfather, Ned Bair Miner.
8.20.2006
Another Picture
This is William's namesake, my grandfather and his great-grandfather, Ned Bair Miner.
8.17.2006
William Bair Miner
This morning, at 8:18 a.m., our son William Bair Miner made his appearance onto this grand stage called life. Let me just say first here as I'm sure that there are questions on the middle name. Bair is a family name on my side. It is my grandfather's middle name along with my great-grandmothers maiden name. As I'm finally sitting down to write this thing at 10:00 at night, please note that I've only had about one hour of sleep since Tuesday, so I apologize in advance if I start not making sense at some point during this post. William is our second son so you can say that if my goal was to produce boys, I'm batting 1000 right now. That's a much better batting average than any MLB hitter. Of course, our hopes were only for a happy, healthy baby and that's what we've been blessed with.
The story of how he entered this world is fairly straightforward and for the sake of not being too graphic I'll give you the condensed version. Having a hunch that this baby would follow in the footsteps of his older brother, we weren't too surprised by having to go to the E.R. today at 1:00 in the morning, almost 3 weeks prior to his official due date. Of course I'm thinking why are all of my kids refusing to be born in the evening, allowing me a great nights sleep prior to the delivery? Actually what I should have been thinking was allowing Jen a decent nights sleep prior to delivery as she's the one doing all the work, I'm only a mediocre coach at best. After a bad experience in the first delivery with a bad epidural, Jen decided to try and go au' natural on this one. I was a little worried as I've seen those movies where women are screaming at their husbands, threatening their lives while pulling the hair out of their heads in the midst of delivery and I didn't want to be in that guy. Fortunately, Jen is awesome and even when she's feeling her absolute worst; she is still a remarkable woman to be around. I'm very lucky to have found her.
After some rough contractions and a few moments of pushing, William graced us with his presence. It turns out that being three weeks early isn't the only thing he has in common with Nicholas. They both weighed exactly the same, 7 lbs., 14 oz. and their length was similar as well with William coming in at 21 inches long. Both Jen and William are doing great, tired but great.
I'd like to say thank you to the nurses in the labor department at Akron City Hospital. Our nurses, Chris and Linda were absolutely amazing professionals. I don't know what the hospital is paying them, but it's not nearly enough. I only wish that everyone was as dedicated, knowledgeable and enthusiastic about their job as these two ladies are. I can say without a doubt that with their help, it made the experience much easier on Jennifer and me.
brian
The story of how he entered this world is fairly straightforward and for the sake of not being too graphic I'll give you the condensed version. Having a hunch that this baby would follow in the footsteps of his older brother, we weren't too surprised by having to go to the E.R. today at 1:00 in the morning, almost 3 weeks prior to his official due date. Of course I'm thinking why are all of my kids refusing to be born in the evening, allowing me a great nights sleep prior to the delivery? Actually what I should have been thinking was allowing Jen a decent nights sleep prior to delivery as she's the one doing all the work, I'm only a mediocre coach at best. After a bad experience in the first delivery with a bad epidural, Jen decided to try and go au' natural on this one. I was a little worried as I've seen those movies where women are screaming at their husbands, threatening their lives while pulling the hair out of their heads in the midst of delivery and I didn't want to be in that guy. Fortunately, Jen is awesome and even when she's feeling her absolute worst; she is still a remarkable woman to be around. I'm very lucky to have found her.
After some rough contractions and a few moments of pushing, William graced us with his presence. It turns out that being three weeks early isn't the only thing he has in common with Nicholas. They both weighed exactly the same, 7 lbs., 14 oz. and their length was similar as well with William coming in at 21 inches long. Both Jen and William are doing great, tired but great.
I'd like to say thank you to the nurses in the labor department at Akron City Hospital. Our nurses, Chris and Linda were absolutely amazing professionals. I don't know what the hospital is paying them, but it's not nearly enough. I only wish that everyone was as dedicated, knowledgeable and enthusiastic about their job as these two ladies are. I can say without a doubt that with their help, it made the experience much easier on Jennifer and me.
brian
8.14.2006
Orrville Milk Race
It was nice to see some friendly faces at this morning’s Orrville Milk Race. The 8 friendly faces of my teammates who would line up with me in the Cat 4 field were; Mike Schiltz, Scott Brunner, Don Bunker, Jim Flesher, Tim House, Marshall Leininger, Erik Lesco, Carl Peshoff. I had originally sworn this race off last year when it was a combined cat 4/5 field but when I saw it was broken out into separate fields, I had to take another stab at it. Hats off to the Orrville cycling club for a well run event. Easy registration, plenty of marshals on all the road intersections, nice smooth roads and a police escort have all the makings for a good event.
Being officially on baby watch (I didn’t have my cell phone on me during the race, but I did give it to Jim’s wife Vicki) I was hoping I would make it through the race without getting ‘the call.’ This race was three laps long and the race can be described fairly generically lap by lap:
Lap 1: Fast with several attacks. Our own Jim Flesher led a move that looked good except that one of the three teams with significant numbers racing, Allied Decals wasn’t present. I didn’t think they could do it, but between their efforts and the riders off the front beginning to tire, the break was brought back right before the start/finish line. That was a bummer because I was looking to get off the front at the start line once they were back to try and grab one of the primes but with the high speed and pseudo mass confusion usually present by overtaking riders, I didn’t go for it. I was also suffering too much at this point to try and elevate the already high pace and I was just looking to conserve some energy to finish the remainder of the race. It was also at that point that I began thinking that maybe it would be nice if I did indeed get ‘the call.’ Not being waved down from Vicki, I decided to stick it out for at least one more lap.
Lap 2: Things seemed to slow down on this race as everyone was probably suffering as much as I was. I don’t remember any moves at all going on this lap until we got close to the second prime, which was won by Mike. No ‘call’ waiting for me so why not finish this thing out!
Lap 3: This lap picked up momentum once again as the official tour guide, Marshall pulled the field around the course. On the last time up the climb, a small group got off the front containing Don, Steve from Orrville and one rider I wasn’t familiar with. This turned out to be the move as Stark and Orrville became effective at shutting things down, as there were a lot of attempts at guys trying to get across the gap. It was nice to see all the teams racing strategically for a change. That’s not typically what you see in Cat 4 races which have been stereotyped as ‘sit and sprints.’ With the break safely up the road it would come down to the bunch sprint for scraps in the main field. I didn’t have great position in the field so I decided that since the payout was the same whether I placed 8th or 20th, I’d take it easy and not contest it. Better to finish with both wheels upright.
For all those wondering, I’m still waiting for ‘the call’ from my wife. I’ll keep you posted.
Here are the numbers for the day. Much tougher race than I thought while racing it. (Note, I was suffering but I thought it was just because I haven’t been able to log in quality miles.)
Duration: 1:15:36
Work: 988 kJ
TSS: 112.2 (intensity factor 0.944)
Norm Power: 283
Distance: 30.094 mi
Min Max Avg
Power: 0 979 218 watts
Heart Rate: 50 185 164 bpm
Cadence: 29 141 96 rpm
Speed: 2.7 40.9 23.9 mph
Torque: 0 342 65 lb-in
Being officially on baby watch (I didn’t have my cell phone on me during the race, but I did give it to Jim’s wife Vicki) I was hoping I would make it through the race without getting ‘the call.’ This race was three laps long and the race can be described fairly generically lap by lap:
Lap 1: Fast with several attacks. Our own Jim Flesher led a move that looked good except that one of the three teams with significant numbers racing, Allied Decals wasn’t present. I didn’t think they could do it, but between their efforts and the riders off the front beginning to tire, the break was brought back right before the start/finish line. That was a bummer because I was looking to get off the front at the start line once they were back to try and grab one of the primes but with the high speed and pseudo mass confusion usually present by overtaking riders, I didn’t go for it. I was also suffering too much at this point to try and elevate the already high pace and I was just looking to conserve some energy to finish the remainder of the race. It was also at that point that I began thinking that maybe it would be nice if I did indeed get ‘the call.’ Not being waved down from Vicki, I decided to stick it out for at least one more lap.
Lap 2: Things seemed to slow down on this race as everyone was probably suffering as much as I was. I don’t remember any moves at all going on this lap until we got close to the second prime, which was won by Mike. No ‘call’ waiting for me so why not finish this thing out!
Lap 3: This lap picked up momentum once again as the official tour guide, Marshall pulled the field around the course. On the last time up the climb, a small group got off the front containing Don, Steve from Orrville and one rider I wasn’t familiar with. This turned out to be the move as Stark and Orrville became effective at shutting things down, as there were a lot of attempts at guys trying to get across the gap. It was nice to see all the teams racing strategically for a change. That’s not typically what you see in Cat 4 races which have been stereotyped as ‘sit and sprints.’ With the break safely up the road it would come down to the bunch sprint for scraps in the main field. I didn’t have great position in the field so I decided that since the payout was the same whether I placed 8th or 20th, I’d take it easy and not contest it. Better to finish with both wheels upright.
For all those wondering, I’m still waiting for ‘the call’ from my wife. I’ll keep you posted.
Here are the numbers for the day. Much tougher race than I thought while racing it. (Note, I was suffering but I thought it was just because I haven’t been able to log in quality miles.)
Duration: 1:15:36
Work: 988 kJ
TSS: 112.2 (intensity factor 0.944)
Norm Power: 283
Distance: 30.094 mi
Min Max Avg
Power: 0 979 218 watts
Heart Rate: 50 185 164 bpm
Cadence: 29 141 96 rpm
Speed: 2.7 40.9 23.9 mph
Torque: 0 342 65 lb-in
8.03.2006
2026 Tour preparations start
I never thought riding along at 6 mph would seem fast and dangerous. That was before I began following Nicholas around the neighborhood. We purchased him his first two-wheeler a few weeks ago and much to my delight, it's been almost nonstop riding for him ever since. I'm sad to say however that at first glance, it appears as though he's taking after me in his riding strengths and weaknesses. I determined this when he was looking for a friendly push up the small 'hills' in our neighborhood. Our favorite loop right now is riding down to Chestnut Blvd. and back which offers just over 2 1/2 miles worth of riding. I was extremely impressed the first time we did it and he wanted to keep going. I quickly talked him into going in the house for a bowl of ice cream however as that first ride took us about one hour to complete. Fortunately as he is getting more and more comfortable on the bike, the ride time has been getting reduced while we've begun to increase our distances.
As a guy who typically rides on roads the majority of the time and is always searching to find the 'smoothest' line, it was a nice reminder on how much fun it is to actually go out of your way to go through puddles, ride over manhole covers or to find every rise in concrete.
brian
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