RIley's first day in a pool, and I develop wings

Over the weekend, the wife and I had a wedding Saturday night.  It was our first big event since Riley was born.  What was nice was that it was the wife and I, my parents, and my sister in from Toronto for the wedding.  I have to be honest and say the wife and I didn't have a great time.  I'm not sure if we were looking forward to it or not, or we were just so tired from Riley, or who knows.  But we got there and we just knew we weren't going to have a great time.  Let me say that the wedding was really nice, the venue was awesome, the ceremony was special, the food was really good, and the band was incredible.  We really wanted to have fun.  But for some reason, the wife and I just couldn't enjoy ourselves.  Maybe it was because my sister was there with us and we didn't want to leave her and go dance, or that we didn't want to just sit there with her because that would be preventing her from dancing.  Who knows.  All we know is that we were exhausted and wanted to leave pretty early.  It was pretty upsetting because we were both looking forward to having a good time.

Because we were at the wedding, this meant that the wife's parents had Riley for a sleepover.  I'm never too fond of this because they never listen to our "rules" and this messes up Riley's schedule and he becomes a terror the next day (which did happen by the way).  So Sunday morning after the wedding, the wife and I drove to grandma and grandpa's house.  I ended up bringing my bike in case I could get a long ride in that morning.  It turned out that the wife didn't feel well and wanted to lay down at her parents for a while and also wanted to sit in the sun to get some color.  Because of this, I was able to get a little more than a 40 mile bike ride in.  It was awesome.  The parkway closes on Sundays for bikers and runners, so I was able to put down some nice miles and splits.  It was also a chance to have a nice long hot day to get some more testing with HoneyMaxx and how much I want to concentrate my drink mix for my Olympic Triathlon later this month.  I was very happy with my ride and really excited I got to do it.  It was an unexpected surprise.  Kind of like finding money in a pair of pants you haven't worn in a while. 

However, it was hot.  As in scorching hot.  There was a 3 day heat wave in New York and the temperatures were hovering around 90-plus for the weekend.  My Garmin actually said it averaged 91 degrees and got up to 102 at some point.  I was wearing a race top since I wanted it to be able to breathe, have pockets, and I like race tops better than regular cycling jerseys.  I knew I had to put sunscreen on, so I asked the wife to apply a lot on my back before I headed out.  But after 2 hours on the bike in the direct heat and sun, my back was nice and toasty.  Once I was able to get home, take my top off and hop in the shower, I looked at my back and saw this:

These aint no Red Bull wings.  These hurt

Yes, that's right. I developed red wings on my back.  Nice hot, burning to the touch, can't lay on my back wings.  Very funny picture, but it looks like I have to invest in some higher SPF for days like this


Well, when that was done, we wanted to get Riley acclimated to being in a pool.  The wife has big plans for Riley this summer and having him come to a lot of pools and beaches so we want to get him comfortable going in the pool.  Grandma and Grandpa bought one of those backyard pools that you can just fill up with water, so of course it was daddy who had to bring him in the pool.  I wasn't complaining after a nice long, hot bike ride.  So after filling up the pool with water, it was time to get Riley wet.  Riley loves the bath so we didn't think this would be a big problem.  We figured he would assume it's just one big bath.

It took a few minutes but ultimately Riley loved playing in the pool with daddy. 
















Over the course of the summer, we'll introduce him into bigger pools, and ones with more people, but for now, Riley's learning how to play in the water.  Next up is teaching him how to sight the race buoys.  I'm not sure they make a baby race wetsuit, so we have a few years for that one.

One happy little swimmer