Dads

This week, David, a friend from many years ago lost his dad.  We are all getting older that this sort of thing is happening more and more. 

Also this week, my friend Brad penned another blog post that took be three days to get up the nerve to read.  He has a way of jerking moisture from around my eyes, so I have to prepare.  You can read about promises here: http://www.rapideyereality.com/archives/2011/07/25/promises/.  I didn’t cry this time, but it was still a good read.

On Friday, Dr. K and I will ride our bikes hundreds of miles in the 24 Hours of Booty charity bike ride to raise money that will defeat the bastard disease (brain cancer) that killed her dad 4 years ago.

I’ve got no point except that it is good to sit and think about all of the great dads and the great things that they do.

If you’ve got a few bucks and want to help, http://www.24hoursofbooty.org/site/TR/Bike/General?px=1069905&pg=personal&fr_id=1150

Thanks

The National Debt and Fun with Graphs

There’s a lot of talk out there about the national debt and who is to blame for creating it and who will get credit for fixing it.  We can be sure the president will take credit for fixing it.  True to form, he is blaming Bush for creating it.  You haven’t heard that?  Well take a look at this graph from Whitehouse.gov:

Even the liberal friend who pointed me to it said that it was a bit disingenuous in how it pins spending on Bush that happened during the Obama administration.  They call them lies when a Republican does it.

That got me looking around for other graphs about the national debt.  How about this one from saintpetersblog.com:

This one ties increases to the debt to presidents.  Notice that there is no mention about who is running the House of Representatives at the time.  It conveniently stops before Obama took office.

Those first two were obviously written by Democrats.  Here is one that is a little more balances in that it shows the make up of the federal government at the time and percentage changes.  It still leans Republican in that it does not use real dollars and compare the change to the S&P 500 as if that has any place in the debate.  It also includes the Obama years so far.

Here’s a funny one from democrashield.com:

This one ties the debt to the President and the Senate and completely ignores the branch of government that is in charge of spending.

Finally, I think this graph is the most balanced and the one that matters most:

That looks bad.  Now if you consider that only half of the adults in the US pay any income tax (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36226444/ns/business-personal_finance/t/half-us-pays-no-federal-income-tax/) and you can double the totals on the graph’s left to tell you how much taxpayers will have to pay back eventually.  Raising taxes (income enhancement to Democrats) isn’t going to get us close to getting this problem under control.  The balanced approach is a shame designed to help the half that do not pay income tax.

Workout Update for Q2

Just the fact that I’m still tracking my workouts 6 months into the year is a small cause for celebration.  I thought I would start skipping a few entries and then pitch the whole idea after a few months.  Not so.  I really enjoy seeing how much I have done.

Now for the downside.  I’d like to be seeing more progress.  I saw some progress in the first quarter, but I think I’ve stepped back from even those small gains.  Illness and a rough travel schedule caused a four week layoff from any meaningful workouts for the last 2 weeks of Q2 and the first 2 weeks of Q3.  Consistency was also not a high point for this quarter.  Running decreased, but biking came out of the closet and kept the workout time in each month between 7:45 and 9:30.

So here are the totals:

I ran 108.3 miles in 15 hours and 9 minutes for the quarter and 308 miles in 43 hours in the first half.

I biked 172 miles in 10 hours and 21 minutes in this quarter.

I picked my next goal which is to run the Rock ‘n’ Roll Las Vegas Half Marathon on Sunday, December 4, 2011.  It happens to be the weekend of the WPBT (aka Blogger Weekend) and several of my blogger friends also plan to participate.  It should be the capper to another great Vegas weekend.  Of course, there is also the 24 Hours of Booty charity bike ride at the end of this month and I’m still hoping that I can gather up enough fitness to do the Take Flight Tryathlon for the third year.  I’m really busting my workout volume right now.  It’s time to get going or get out of the way.

See you out on the road.