The RAGBRAI 500 mile bike ride across Iowa has begun, or will begin soon. My dad and I drove about 1600 miles over the last three days and are now in Sioux Center, the starting town. The actual riding will begin tomorrow with a 60ish mile ride to the next town (We're in the public library right now, and I forget the next town, but all the info is availible at their website: http://www.ragbrai.org) I'll post more info if access is availible.

We drove around last night with the laptop computer and found 4 WiFi signals within 3 blocks, and we're out in some small farm town in the middle of nowhere! - amazing! Coundn't get internet access from them on the initial tries, but I feel if we spent more time fiddling we would have had a better chance. It was kind of suspicious, though, a dark car idling on some residential street with it's lights out...

When we arrived at the camp site last night, we were the ONLY ones there. Today there w'ill be thousands. I'm taping the whole thing and it will be a pretty funny sight.

A pretty funny thing happened on Sunday, I was just driving along and out of the blue my car started sputtering and choking and finally - kerplunk - it died. It turns out I just simply ran out of gas, but one thing bugs me - THERE WAS NO LOW GAS LIGHT! On every other jeep cherokee I lnow of there is a low gas light, and I thought I was still sittin' pretty, when I blew it. So, it may just be a bad light bulb, or maybe it doesn't even have a low gas light - I'll check it out tommorow.

Bum bum bum ba da bum bum de da de do bum....
And now for the Bavetta.com news,

The first meeting of 'Easily Distracted,' a barbershop quartet group consisting of Owen, Ben, Dick, Alex and myself - yes, that's a five person quartet - was conducted at the maestro's house.

I just called the AP people and found out I got a passing grade of a 3 (just passing) on the AP Calculus AB test that I royaly screwed up filling the answer key on - so I'm kind of supprised, I must have done pretty well on the multiple choice part. I'm planning on taking the Calc BC test next year - and I now know how NOT to fill out the essay portion of the answer key.

I found this site when cruising the web: Yatta! - Interesting....

Today is the fourth of July. That's big news to the people who didn't know that. Being in the month of July and this being the fourth consecutive day of it, that would make it the fourth of July. There have been three previous days we have encountered in this month. That is to say of this year - now there is a July in every year - and to my knowledge there has always been a fourth of July, in July, I mean.

I was in the Truckee Mountianair Barbershop singing float this morning and watched the crowds of people pass by on either side of us. It was fun. We sang the National Anthem, Happy Birthday (our worst song), Hello Mary Lou, Sitting on Top of the World, and Connie Island Baby.

I went to see my Great-Great-Aunt Agnes last Thursday and Friday - and boy is she amazing. She is 103 years old, and still takes care of the old-folks at the old-folks home. He tells jokes left and right, and is as sharp as a tack. I hope I got some of those genes somehow.

Fith day of summer today. I'm going to be working Sat/Sun throughout the summer, which I think is great - not too much, not too little. On Monday Dad and I went on a 30 mile bike ride near carson city on the tandem. I was expecting to feel sore the next day, but that never came, not even at all, strange - that's good news though, since I'm working up to do 100 mi a day next month. I'm now in the barbershop chorus that meets on Tuesdays at the high school. That's a lot of fun.

/whoops looks like I forgot to post this...

We put up the basketball hoop we took from the old LA house yesterday. I'm starting to get into basketball, and I bummed that it's the end of the basketball season. I spent a couple hours after school today shooting and dribbling. It's amazing how my skills improved over that period of time, and I really beleive that if anyone works at anything for a couple continuous hours they will get much better much faster, than working a half hour a day every day of the week. For instance, at the start of today my left hand dribbling was stinko - but by the end I was almost as confident as the right and I could also succesfully pass the ball between my legs with either hand - I'm working on jumping using the same technique, and by the end of the summer I want to be able to get over the rim - We'll see.