My brother and his wife Linda are the proud parents of two healthy baby boys. Born Wednesday night, November 26 around 9pm. Christian Blake Parham weighed in at an astounding (for a twin) 7 lbs 9 oz. Ethan Neal Parham was a more modest 5 lbs 14 oz.  They’re both feeding and sleeping fine, mom seems to be doing well too. Thank goodness they were boys. Their first child Lexie is cute as a doll, but dang she sure is a little stinkpot. Having some nephews around will bring balance to the force.  I wish the evergrowing Parham family  health, love, and happiness.

Welcome to the new website. I switched over to this publisher because they had more features and options, all still for free! Plus i like their layouts a bit better too. Over the Holiday I will have some time to update blogs since the Roller Race. Since then quite a bit has happened. Thanks for reading and check back soon.
Greg

Went out to Rocky Hill for yet another weekend of racing and adventure. Won the cyclocross race on Saturday while racing my hardtail mountain bike. Went into town to grab a bite to eat and try to catch the OU-Tx Tech game.  Got back in time to get some free beer and listen to a neat little cover band that was cranking out some good country and classic rock tunes. Hit the hay (sleeping bag) for a good night’s sleep.

Morning comes and it’s time to start my first ever duathlon. I wasn’t sure what to expect with this added element of running, especially with a 5k trail run-12 mile mountain bike-5k trail run format, and considering I’m much stronger at biking, but I was ready to give it all I had. The first 5k went well. I think I managed a top 10 run somehow, then it was on to the fun part.  With all the issues I had with bike malfunctions this year, I decided to run the bike with beefy parts-tires, gears, chain, suspension seatpost, handlebars and the like. It was a solid ride, but I definitely noticed the extra weight and rolling resistance from the tires. It was my goal to not leave much for the last run. Biking is my strength and I had to use that to my advantage. Fortunately, that went according to plan.  I had a smoking fast ride and was able to make up time to a few of the runners that had a quicker run than I did. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite leave enough for the last 5k run and got a killer stitch in my right rib cage on the way up Fat Chuch’s.  I told my diaphram it could not have picked a worse time to do such a thing to me and to suck it up and keep going, but the pain was nearly enough to collapse me. So i took some time at the top to recover, while a those darn runners passed me right back up. I slowly got going again still fighting the pain and was able to limit the damage to only being passed by 3 people for a a decent 7 out of 80 finish. It hurt knowing I could’ve been 4th and in the money, but I was pleased with the effort and result.  Now, If I can actually start to incorporate some more running and brick workouts into my regiment I might have something going for me. Thanks for reading.

Colleen and I drove up to Dallas this weekend for a few cross races at whiterock lake. We would roll in some family time too since we were staying with mom in Terrell 35 mins away. This was going to be the first TXBRA race on Rocinante, the new cyclocross steed. I did the derby earlier in the week with some success, but mostly to get a feel for it. A lot of people showed up for the largest ¾ category I’d ever raced in (44 starters). This made for a hell of start, especially since we hit the barriers about 300 yards into it. I had bad position from the start and fell behind early. After settling in, I started to fight back towards the top 10. My rear derailleur would have none of it though. This bike came equipped with a SRAM rival gruppo, and I was starting to like it, but the rear derailleur seems to have a flawed design. The cage is too wide. Hit a rough patch, and the chain is likely to jump of the pulley and get caught between the cage. This renders it about as useless as a lazy cat. I had to hop off about 4 times during the race and fix it, putting me way back. At this point I just wanted to finish the race. With one lap left, someone had ridden into and taken out some barrier fencing that established the hairpin turns each racer had to navigate. There were little survey flags left behind where the fence was. It is a natural tendency to hug the inside of the turn, but since the fencing wasn’t there, my chain found some tasty survey flags and sucked one up in the rear derailleur. What followed was a catastrophic failure in this sequence (I think): rear cage is mangled. Hanger snaps. Derailleur is throw into rear wheel breaking a spoke. Chain is FUBAR in the process. Race over. I was pissed it happened on the last lap, but glad I didn’t have to worry about the rear d messing up anymore. I brought a spare wheelset, but no spare chain or rear d. Jesse Moran, an old collegiate racing friend who lives in Dallas and was there offered to take me to a shop nearby and see if they could fix it. They didn’t have a hanger, but I decided to forego gears and try to set it up singlespeed. I bought some cassette spacers, a rear cog, and a half link .After messing around with it back in Terrell for 3 hours, I finally got something to work. Sunday comes and we head back to Flagpole Hill. I had a much better start and was having a blast on the SS moving up to the top three when the chain broke at the half link about halfway into the race. Another big blow, but I wasn’t going to let it get me down. Jesse offered to let me borrow his bike for the open race. I accepted. It was an unfamiliar bike, and I dropped the chain trying to figure out the shifting before the first dismount, but got it back on and got going. I pushed it extremely hard to try and catch back up and took a turn beyond the capability of the front tire and slid out in the grass. Another minor setback, but after that it was butter. I had another 55 minutes to catch up, and that’s what I did. I picked ‘em off one by one all the way from 23 to 13^th place. Nowhere near the podium, but a moral victory nonetheless, and a lot of fun. I think I might be hooked on cross.