water, water, everywhere and not a drop to drink

It has been 11 days since my last blog post.  That is the longest "silence" that I have had since I began this several months ago.  For the three of you who love my blog - I apologize for my absence.  I was on vacation, and then came home to disaster.  Disaster is a funny thing (that would be "funny" in the "peculiar" sense as opposed to the "ha ha" sense).  It seldom comes comes in single doses.  Its effects are complicated.  Spiderweb-like.  We had several disasters of varying degrees of severity hit us.  Some of them are easy to fix - but costly.  Some are hard to fix - but cheap.  Some are - well - complicated.  Like the problem of my hip.

It is fractured again. (if you did not know it was fractured - get caught up by clicking here)  That sucks so badly that it almost requires the invention of a new swear word.  I did it by going running every day after the Keuka Triathlon.  Where I got 43rd out of 44 (read about it here if you have not).  Because I had not run for 12 weeks.  Because I had a stress fracture in my hip.  I had thought that I would do better... I even shot my mouth off about it some.  So when I did crap (43 of 44) I thought "well at least my hip made through just fine so I can run again" and off I went.  I guess I had not given much thought to the weeks of drinking more than usual, eating WAY more than usual, and exercising less than usual.  What I did not consider was the other lurking disaster.  Twenty pounds.  Three steps forward.  One step back.  Since I started trying to be a super-hero I have lost 60 pounds (27.2 kg).  Maybe that should be "had" lost - because I regained about 20 pounds over three weeks on vacation.  Instead of running on my hip at 186 with a view toward hitting 175ish... I was pounding 206 on a barely healed stress fracture.  Guess what happened?

I have it under control now.  Not nearly as bad a break as before.  No more running (other than during a triathlon or xterra event) until I tip the scales at 180.  Hip should be healed by then and able to stand up to that level of pounding/poundage.  The challenge in the whole thing is keeping up the effort that it takes to lose   enough to step up onto the starting blocks at 180 in Omaha, Nebraska at the US Masters Swimming Nationals on 6 July.  The effort it will take to undo the damage done by vacation is herculean.  Today, for example, I went on a 12 mile mtn bike ride in 96 degree (38 centigrade) heat, then on a 14 mile road bike ride when the heat climbed to 100 degrees (40 centigrade), then swam 2000 meters, then did a mile of stair-climber, and then lifted weights.  I know what some of you are thinking.  Yes. I can sustain that level for nearly every day til Omaha.  I have to.  My only hope of doing anything of note there is if there is quite a bit less of me than now.

So if that disaster was not enough... we came home to a ruin of a house.  While we were away the supply line to our ice-maker sprung a leak.  Water ran onto the floor of the kitchen for three weeks and destroyed our kitchen cupboards and floor.  Also ruining a great deal of drywall and insulation.

It continued on into the dinning where it ruined a persian rug I bought in Pakistan many years ago.  It also destroyed the floor in there as well.

Finally, the water stopped in the living room where the bulk of the furniture and carpets were spared, but the flooring was not.

Basically our dream home was rendered uninhabitable.  Grim.  The last disaster was the realization that going pro was going to be more expensive than we had thought.  Indeed, more than we have.  More on this to follow.