Category: Erin

Ride 2 Recovery 2014

Erin & me at the rest stop

Erin and I rode the Ride 2 Recovery Honor Ride this morning.  You can read all about it over on their website, but essentially, the ride is about supporting wounded veterans, which is appropriate on Memorial Day weekend.  It is also a good reminder that as we celebrate those who gave their lives in defense of our country, there are many who made it home, but not necessarily all in one piece and not all those wounds are visible.  Remember, in 2012 (I haven’t seen the statistics for 2013) more active duty members of the military died due to suicide than died in combat.  I still thank God daily that Shane made it back from his two tours with no visible scars.  It turned out to be a beautiful day to ride, temp 60.8-84.2°F during the ride itself, though it was only about 50°F as we were putting the bikes on the car.  Winds were light.  Because Erin was with me (and because, with the lousy weather the last couple of weeks, I’d ridden a grand total of once in the last 2 weeks), I decided to ride the 35 miler rather than the 70 miler.  If you click through the widget below, you’ll notice several very slow miles in there, mostly on the hills shortly after the rest stop.  I obviously had some issues with some of the hills (and the fact that my weight was actually the highest today that it has been in over a month due to eating out several times this week and no exercise to speak of), though overall, I did still average 15.3mph, 36.24mi in 2:22:28 (I spent the 45 minutes at the rest stop waiting for and then sitting with Erin).  I raised a little money for the cause and the website remains open, so perhaps I can reach or beat my goal, please consider helping out at http://www.active.com/donate/columbus2014/JClausing.

Flight Log 2010-06-29, etc.

Tuesday was a very busy day, but one of the results was a successfully completed flight review. My hour of ground was actually kind of fun. Harold had a couple of quizzes for me that I did pretty well on and we reviewed some of the FAR/AIM that I haven’t looked at recently. Then we went out for some air work. Temp was 22°C, altimeter 30.03, wind at the surface was reported as 070@06, but was closer to a 90° crosswind as we got going and about 100 feet up it was probably closer to 20 knots. We did the GPS27 approach and circle to land on runway 9, then actually ended up spending most of the hour on crosswind landings (which is not a bad way to spend an hour). One thing I discovered is that I’m much more comfortable landing (or taking off) with a crosswind from the right than I am with one from the left, so it was good practice with this one coming from the left. Ended up with exactly the required 1.0 on the Hobbs, so I’ve jumped through that hoop for the FAA and I’m good for another two years.

Tuesday was also Erin’s 22nd birthday and my parents had called the previous week to say they were bringing my nephew up to visit Cincinnati, so we all went to see the Reds play at Great American Ballpark. It was a pretty good game, but not the outcome I would have preferred. Joey Votto hit a 3-run homer in the bottom of the 9th to tie the game, but then Arthur Rhodes had his first bad outing really of the season and gave up 3 runs without retiring a batter in the top of the 10th, so the Reds lost to the Phillies (I suppose my baby sister was probably happy about that). Oh, well. So, all-in-all, a mostly enjoyable day. We did the traditional birthday meal at a (new) Japanese steakhouse on Wednesday instead and that was also nice.

On Wednesday, I finally (after 6 years) got my online logbook working the way I had envisioned it from the beginning, so it now pulls from the database dynamically rather than just showing static pages that I had to manually update everytime I updated the database. Unfortunately, I haven’t configured the widget at the left here to do so yet, maybe next year.

The ORCC All-Star softball game

Sunday afternoon, the ORCC All-Star softball game was held at the VA Memorial Stadium in Chillicothe.  Team 2 was made up of players from the OU branches (Chillicothe, Lancaster, and Zanesville) and team 1 was made up of players from OSU-Newark, Miami University-Middletown, and UC-Clermont.  Erin got to play in the game and played well.  She entered the game batting in the top of the 3rd(4th?) inning and doubled in the first two (tying) runs for the OU team, but got stranded at 3rd base.  She then played the rest of the game in right field where she ended up making 2 plays.  The first one was chasing a ball that got by the first baseman and skidded on the artificial turf off the wall and back toward the corner.  She picked it up and threw to third to hold the runner.  The other play was a fly ball after the other team had retaken the lead, where she didn’t get a good break and made it look like she was going to miss it, but she did catch the ball to end the inning and kept the lead from getting any larger.  In her final at-bat, Erin was called out on a pitch that was about at her ankles.  Sigh… Team 1 beat team 2 by a score of 4-3.  Still, the girls had fun.

Congrats, OU-L Softball team


Even though they were missing a few players due to illness and other previous family commitments, the #2 seeded OU-L Cougars came to play on Saturday in their matchup with UC-Clermont. With the grey skies and the threat of rain hanging over them, they played a tough team from southwest Ohio. UC-Clermont took a 1-0 lead in the 3rd inning. In the 5th inning, Steph and Erin started off the inning reaching on bunt singles, then were sacrificed over to 2nd and 3rd before being stranded. By the way, Erin hustled on that (remember I said bunt) single despite the ankle, but told me later that they ankle was killing her the rest of the game (she started and played all 9 innings in right field, going 1-for-3 at the plate). UC-Clermont stretched their lead to 2-0 before OU-L came back to tie it at 2 in the bottom of the 6th on back-to-back hits by Courtney and Christine and Christine’s aggressive base running. The game ended up going into extra innings with neither team really threatening in the 8th. In the bottom of the 9th, Heather led off with a double that nearly left the park in left center and the next batter, Liz, ended it with a home run to left to give the Cougars a 4-2 win and the ORCC Conference Tournament Championship (in addition to being regular season co-champs with Newark) when Newark failed to show up and forfeited the rematch.

Erin’s Softball Season, so far

With rain outs (not entirely unexpected in March/April), the season is starting slowly, but with the potential to pick up in a hurry. Out of the first 4 series, only 1 could be played and the OU-L 2008 team performed well enough. Their second opportunity took place on a day that I already felt a little guilty about because we (Sherry and I) had ticket to see the Reds at Great American BallPark. Okay, so they weren’t great seats, but they were okay and we paid less than $40 for the 2 of us. So, although (as I said) I already felt a little guilty at blowing off Erin’s softball games, I didn’t let it become debilitating. Late in the game in Cincinnati I get a call from Erin who is at one of the Miami University branches (Hamilton or Middletown, it clearly doesn’t matter too me much). It turns out without us parents there, she became reacquainted with her batting stroke including a double off the wall (that she swears should have been a home run). Late in the second game, Erin was coming around to score and what happened next is lost in mists of pain and pain relievers. As close as I can tell, Erin reached the plate (scored!), then possibly slid across the plate or digs in the soft earth at the end, resulting in Erin’s ankle attempting to move in ways that are completely in opposition to the laws of nature. In other words, she tore something. Several days of trying to get members of the medical profession to speak English has resulted in the doctor stating he believes something is torn, but that it can’t be made any better in the near term by surgery or whatever and that no more significant damage is likely, so she’d like to soldier on through the games against OU-Chillicothe on Sat (3 May), and Southern State on Sun (4 May), leading up to the actual ORCC tournaments (which the doctors have already verbally agreed to). It turns out, these OU-L Cougars may have a legit shot at the Conference Championship after splitting a double header today with OSU-Newark. The score was 4-3 on tie breakers in the first game (OU-L win) and 7-6 in the second (OSU-N won). The teams look to be well matched so whatever edge one team can get (like a powerhitting left-handed catcher getting back in the lineup) could be all the difference. She is moving more and more daily with relatively little discomfort (there will be some discomfort for a while, but she’ll deal with that after the season). We shall wait and see.