ChrisCowan.us

I just got back from an amazing day at the hospital, if you haven’t already heard Cate was born today. Once we got to the hospital they hooked Amanda up to the meds and she started having mild contractions that got increasingly stronger over the next several hours.

Once she got to 5 cm the anesthesiologist gave her the epi, she was pretty thankful to see him.

By around 4 pm she was about 7 cm and the contractions got extremely strong and Amanda was feeling a lot of pressure. About the fifth or sixth one in to the really strong ones we thought, “hum maybe we should call the nurse cause something seems to be happening.” The nurse came in and told Amanda to try and breath though these ones and try to resist pushing while they called her doctor. That worked for about 30 seconds until Cate’s head started poking out. She then called for the staff doctor to come in. By the time she got there Cate was already born. I think it only took two pushes and out she popped. It was pretty amazing to see.

She weighed 8 pounds 7 ounces and is 21 inches long.

Amanda and the baby are doing absolutely wonderful. She didn’t have any tears (ouch!). Everyone in the room was pretty impressed at how quick it happened. We joked that if we have another baby (which is not going to happen) I should get training on how to deliver a baby, just in case.

This went a lot smoother then the first one. I think it helped that we got a good night sleep and went into it without too much anxiety. It was surreal to be in the hospital having a baby and not being nervous about it. When I left tonight Amanda was pretty happy and relaxed. This was a stark contrast from our first experience.

Welcome to the family Cate…

The doctor call this morning to see if we could push up the induction to today. Since we are both ripe with anticipation we both thought today would be just as good as any day. Wish us luck!

Last night I mounted up my new rim and tuned up the rear derailleur. I practiced my switch backs by making tight turns in our driveway so that I could turn 180 degrees only using half of the driveway. Everything was running tip top again. I cleaned up my tools and closed up shop for the night.

I went to bed with the images of pristine morning single track to comfort my thoughts in to a deep slumber. Amanda and her Mom went out to Santa Cruz for dinner and Coco went fucking nuts when they got home waking me up. I though, “YOU FUCKING DUMB FUCK OF A DOG!” and then I yelled, “SHUT THE FUCK UP COCO!” Then Amanda came to bed and Coco started whining and pacing around like she had to go to the bathroom (the second time is two hours). I finally said fuck this and took Coco downstairs to put her in her crate in the Garage. I didn’t want to spend the entire night before my ride getting up every two hours to let the fucking dog out.

As soon as I shut the gate an climbed up the stairs she started going ape shit. I ran back downstairs and hit her cage and yelled “NO!”. Then went back upstairs and laid back down. Since I was worked up it took me a bit to calm down and as soon as I did someone started snoring like a lumberjack. Totally not her fault. I mean what kind of asshole would get pissed at a 9 month pregnant woman for snoring. So I just poked her a few times and she quieted down. Then Coco freaked out again. So I ran back down stairs and repeated the whole “hit-the-cage-and-yell-NO” move again. After that she shut up for the night. It took me another hour to calm down and go to sleep.

4:40 am… beep beep… beep beep.. my morning ride alarm woke me up, I slid out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom to take my morning shit and read some Mountain Bike Action. I then dragged my ass down stairs to get a bite to eat and catch up on my email and morning RSS Feeds. The whole time I was still pissed off about the dog bullshit. I packed my bike stuff up and meet Tony at REI at 6:00 am.

As we drove up to the Gap I bitched and moaned the whole way there about the night before and some other bullshit that’s been on my mind lately. I was totally expecting this ride to turn to shit because of all the negative energy I was covered in from the night before. Plus it was kind of gloomy out. As we drove up we noticed the cloud cover was only on the bottom half of the mountain. The top of the mountain was Sunny and beautiful.

We got to the top unpacked our gear and hit the trail. Immediately my attitude turned from shit to shinola. My bike rode like a dream. I think it’s the first time I rode it where nothing was acting up or irritating me… no squeaks… no loose parts… no crappy shifting… just a smooth ride. I forgot about the bike all together and relaxed into my ride. I kept a lazy pace and just savored this ride. By the first switch back I must have had a look on my face of complete satisfaction. I was in nirvana.

I know this isn’t news worthy but I wanted to post my excitement somewhere! I’m going to break-it in tomorrow at the Gap. Hopefully it will withstand my RETARD MONKEY STRENGTH on the climbs this time.

I sent some emails out on Sunday night to Hope and Universal Cycles with a copy of the video of my defective wheel. I got a phone call and email from both on Monday. They both offered to replace the defective part immediately. I decided to just let Universal Cycles deal with it since they offered to rebuild the wheel and ship the replacement ASAP. I got an email this morning letting me know my new wheel shipped this morning and they would be sending me the docs for returning the defective wheel.

I’m extremely pleased with Universal Cycles customer service on this issue. They are a model of how an online retailer should respond to a defective product. Not only are they replacing the wheel but they are sending out before they receive the defective wheel back. That’s faster turnaround then I’ve had with most brick and mortar stores.

I’ve always been a little wary about dealing with online bike shops because I felt if something went wrong I could be easily left out to dry. Universal Cycles has completely restored my confidence and I plan on using them for all my purchases in the future.