What I Did on My Summer Vacation

Wow,it's been a very long time since the last blog. A lot has happened in the last few months, but I guess I haven't been all that motivated to write for some reason. Work has been very stressful to say the least. I guess that's probably why I haven't blogged. I'm more inclined to write when I'm in a good mood and lately I've been comming home from work so burned out that all I want to do is...well...nothing. I'm writing now because I'm not training, due to a sore back. It usually goes away with a couple of days of inactivity and some stretching, so I'll be back at it soon enough. Anyway, here is a rundown of what I've been doing since you last heard from me.
My last post was about my first triathlon. I have since completed 3 more. I am seeing steady improvement in my times in all three disciplines. I really am enjoying the training and the actual events. There is a whole community of people that do these, and most of them are just regular people such as myself. I have met people online and have gone to some of the group training get togethers that are organized there. We get together at Island Lake recreation area and swim 1400 meters annd then do a 12 mile bike ride. I think we are done for the season with the swimming. I have also done a few running events over the summer. 2 8K's and a 5K race. I usually can be found near the back of the pack, but I am finishing, and getting faster with each event.
Tracey, Kelly and I went down to Florida the week of the 4'th of July. We went to visit Tracey's Mom, but we did manage to sneak in a day at Epcot center. Epcot is my favorite Disney park, I love the world showcase. We have a ritual of eating something from every country there. While visiting Tracey's Mom, we also got to visit her brother Howard and meet his new girlfriend Linda. I was also able to get a few things fixed around Hazels house. I even managed to get a little surf fishing in at the beach. Speaking of beach, Siesta key beach is the most awsome beach in Florida. The sand there is very white and powdery, it doesn't burn your feet at all. The water was over 90 degrees also. Florida was great.
We took a weekend to camp in Harrisville this summer and spent Labor Day weekend at my parents up north home in Reed City. That was all the fishing I got to do this summer until about 3 weeks ago. With Tracey's work schedule, and the kids all doing their own thing, if I wanted to take a week off and go camping, I had to do it myself, so that's exactly what I did. I combined my last Triathlon in Tawas, with a Salmon fishing week. The Tawas Triathlon was a cool event, we swam in the harbor there, then biked inland, and then ran along the shorline. The rain held off until my run portion, which was perfect, because the rain cooled me off. I beat my first Triathlon time, which was the same distance, by over 12 minutes. I drove from Tawas all the way to Ludington in order to get in on a fishing contest that was taking place off the pier there. The contest wound up being called due to weather. That was a longer drive than I expected, it just seemed to take forever to get there. I probably won't do that again. I wound up camping at Ludington State Park until the following Friday. Ludington State Park is now my new favorite place to camp, I highly reccomend it if you are into camping. It is situated right on Lake michigan and has over 20 miles of undeveloped beach. There are three campgrounds and 20 miles of hiking trails there. I was driving 7 miles to the pier in Ludington to fish until I saw some guys fishing in the surf right in the park. I got all the ins and outs about surf fishing from a couple of guys there and decided to give it a try. They were all using chest waders, but I didn't have any, but I did have a wet suit that I used in the triathlon. So I trotted out there in that and gave it a try. I didn't catch any that night, but I could see where it is a fun way to fish. Its a very visceral and manly way to wage war against the mighty salmon. I eventually went and got some neoprene waders like the other guys had, because the wet suit was still too cold when the wind blew hard. I learned a lot of hard lessons on how to properly dress to surf fish, but it was worth it in the end, because I managed to catch 7 of them over the week. They aren't really running strong at that time of year, so that wasn't bad. One of them was estimated to be over 16 pounds by some guys at the cleaning station. I also did a lot of hiking, snorkeling and bike riding while I was there. I like to play hard on my vacations, that's how I de-stress. I didn't spend much time at my campsite, because it was too lonely there. Overall, I liked the "by myself" vacation. I didn't have to worry about playing and not spending time with Tracey or the kids. That being said, I still prefer to vacation with my family. The toughest part of the whole trip was being at the campsite and remembering all the great times I have had with my family camping. I hope that we can camp at Ludington this summer, I'm sure they would love it.
Well, I guess that takes me up to the present time. Look for some big news regarding Heaven Sown in the near future, there is a possibility of a big gig for us that would get us some great exposure. We have one more song to record on the Shout project and then we do a full court press to try to find a permanent drummer. There are a lot of things to look forward to and do, so I'll try to be more frequent in my posts.

My First Triathlon

I'm sure most of you who have had any contact at all with me for the last 6 months or so were well aware that I was going to run a triathlon. This was done to make sure that I wouldn't punk out and not do it. Well, I actually managed to finish it yesterday, so now you all get a blow by blow description of how I did.
Let me start by telling you how I planned for it to go and how I imagined it going in my mind. The plan was to start with a swim that I could do in a low heart rate zone. I have been very successfully training long distance swims without getting too worn out. I was then going to work a little harder on the bike leg, but save plenty of energy for the run, which is my weakest event. I was going to go out easy on the run and really save the real hard push for the last half of the run. I just wanted to make sure I could finish the triathlon standing up, with a smile on my face. That was my plan, yea.
Here's what actually occurred. Kathy (my 16 year old daughter) and I arrived on sight about 6:15. AM When we got there there were people with bikes everywhere. We got in line and got our race numbers, chips and body marked. I'm told they mark your body with Sharpies so they can identify the body if you don't survive the swim portion. (just kidding) Kathy's age group started the swim long enough before mine that I could watch her coming out of the water before mine started. I was relieved that she made it out, because she hadn't done a lot of training in the pool before the race. Next it was my groups turn to start, and that's when things started to go horribly wrong. As soon as my face hit the water, my swimming goggles immediately started to fill with water. I had to stop several times to try and get my goggles to seal, while the pack slowly swam away from me, after first swimming over the top of me. I never could get my goggles to seal, so I just gave up and swam the whole race with a side stroke. Side stroke takes way more energy and is way slower than the crawl. I did manage to beat about half a dozen other floundering souls out of the water, but that's it. This was supposed to be my best leg of the race, so as you can imagine, I was quite disheartened at this time. Not only that, I was darn near exhausted already and I still had to do the bike and run. I stumbled out of the water and kind of walked and half jogged to where my bike was. At this point, I wasn't at all worried about a transition time, so I casually put on my socks, bike shoes and race number. The good news was that it wasn't difficult to find my bike on the rack, because most of them were already gone.
I took it easy on the first part of the bike leg in an attempt to get my breathing back to something resembling normal. After I started feeling better, I started to hammer the pedals a little. I was going up a hill past a lady on a mountain bike and said to her "just think how nice this will be to go down on the way back" to which she replied " you haven't seen the next hill have you?" Actually, there was no problem at all going up the next hill, but it was a real ride going down. I bet I didn't have to pedal at all for at least a half a mile. Did I mention that this was a down and back bike course? I think you get the picture. The rest of the way to the turn around was a great ride, and I went faster than I usually manage in training. I always worry when it seems so easy, and my instincts were correct. As soon as I hit the turn around I found out why it was so easy on the way here, I had a tail wind, which of course was now a head wind. I down shifted and gave up any hopes of a really nailing the bike leg of the course. Meanwhile, all the guys with the triathlon bikes and zero percent body fat were passing me like I wasn't moving at all. They were on the longer race which was twice as long as the race I was doing, talk about a buzz kill. I trucked along pretty steady until I got about two miles from the end of the bike leg. Then I got to the hill. The hill that was so much fun to race down at warp speed was now a soul crushing monster. I was determined to stay on the bike all the way up. It probably would have been a smarter strategy to just walk it, but my brain was hurting for oxygen at that point and my ego outweighed my good sense. I ran out of gears about two thirds of the way up the hill and was mentally refitting my bike with a smaller front sprocket the rest of the way up the hill. I did manage to make it to the top, but my legs were on fire and I actually had to put my lungs back into my chest cavity so as not to gross the rest of the racers out. Luckily, the rest of the bike race was down hill and it gave me a chance to get my lungs to function again. Again, at that point I could have cared less how long it took me to change shoes and rack my bike, I just wanted to finish the race.
As soon as I started running, I knew I was in for three point one miles of torture. My legs felt like I had already run five miles. I know this because I had just completed my first 8K run the week before and I felt exactly the same at this point as I did coming down the stretch of that run. It was up hill all the way out of the park. I started to walk a little when this little girl that was walking up the trail said "Don't quit now, you can do it" ashamed, I thought quickly and said "I'm not quitting, I was just giving that guy up there a little more of a head start". She laughed, never the less, I began running again. As I was coming out of the park, I could hear Kathy's boyfriend Steve yelling at the top of his lungs "You look great Mr. Drouillard, you're almost to the first mile mark" Steve is a great kid, and apparently a pretty good liar, that worries me some. I kept plugging along, I think I saw some of the race officials driving some stakes to check my progress. Once I got to the turn around, I actually started feeling better. Most of the way back was downhill. Once I got back to where Steve was I was starting to realize that I was most likely going to actually finish the race. He took pictures that I struck a pose for,we exchanged high fives and I was off to finish the race. As I was getting into the park, a guy passed me and told me I was first guy he had passed the whole race. I said "ha ha, I'm not in your age group" I guess it's the small victories. Once I got in sight of the finish line, I gave everything I had left, which wasn't much faster than I was already going. It's hard to describe the feeling of crossing the finish line, with everyone, including your little girl, cheering for you. I had been visualizing that moment for the last 8 months, and lets just say a lot of emotion came boiling out of me as I crossed the line.
Even though the race didn't go the way I had hoped, I take a lot of pride in the fact that I kept going despite the obstacles. You might ask why anyone would want to subject himself to something like that, and I use to wonder the same thing. The best answer I can come up with is that, besides all the health benefits, it's a great way to see what you can accomplish, once you decide to do it. Right now, because I conquered this small thing, I have faith that with God's help, I can do even bigger things that before this, I would never have believed.

New Blog

After about six weeks, I guess it's time for another installment of my blog.


I guess if I had to describe this year with one phrase it would be "the year outside my comfort zone" I have done and dealt with a lot of new things this year, some voluntary, some were thrust upon me. In my previous blogs I have mentioned that I was musical director of the Monroe Community Players production of Disney's High School Musical. That ended two weeks ago, thank you God. I probably experienced more stress in one small stretch of time than I have in a very long time. I had an idea of what I was getting myself into when I agreed to do it, yet I did it anyway. I guess me with my big ego couldn't pass up the chance to be in charge of something of that magnitude. I really got myself in a bit over my head, but I had some help, and it went off quite well, despite my lack of experience. I don't think I will take on so much with musicals again, until I have been in a few more as an actor or in a pit orchestra. Overall, it was a great experience, the kids were a lot of fun, and some of them are really talented. I can take credit for putting together a great band. It wasn't hard, I got Dan and Willy of course. I also got Jeremiah Werstein (Kelly's ex) on Keyboard and Jackson Baugh on drums. Jackson is the drummer for Kindred Nation, an awesome Christian band. I could write pages about my experience doing this play, but suffice it to say that it went well enough that they are thinking about doing HSM II in the near future. I would be glad to play bass in the band, but I don't think I want to put in the time as music director again. I guess we broke attendance records for MCP plays, so they are solvent for a while.
Shout is still working on a recording. We have all of the cover songs recorded and now we are working on arranging and recording some originals. We are on track to have it finished by early August, we want it ready for the Faithfest, which is the first weekend in August. We will be at it twice a week for the month of June and half of July in order to meet our self imposed deadline. The Faithfest was our first gig, so we want to release the CD there.
My first triathlon is 3 weeks away now. I think I should be OK to finish it, but I wish I could keep a more consistent training schedule. What I do get to do seems to be working. I am down 20 pounds from my heaviest weight and I can actually run over 4 miles without stopping. I will be hitting it hard for the next 2 weeks and then tapering off a week before in order to let my body recover before the actual event. I went and bought a triathlon suit that you can swim bike and run in. The suit is very tight and doesn't cover much that's for sure. I thought I was starting to look pretty good until I put that darn thing on. Oh well, my vanity ship sailed a long time ago.
This coming weekend I will be at what we call "man camp" Dan and his pastor put this together a couple years ago and it's an annual thing. We have it up at my parents cottage near Reed City. It's a real blast. We do a lot of fishing and other manly pursuits. We also do praise singing and worship. There are bible studies and a lot of discussion of our roles as men in society and especially in our families. It's a real awesome time of fellowship and I'm really looking forward to it.
Hope all is well with everyone that reads this. I invite all of you to write a blog, it's a good way of keeping up. If any of you want to be taken off my list, I won't be offended......much.

Dave

Being Sued

Last week sucked. A couple years ago Kelly was on her way to school and was involved in an accident. She didn't see an oncoming car and turned into it. At the time we thought both her and the lady driving the other car only recieved minor injuries. Fast forward 2 years and we find ourselves in court on the recieving end of a lawsuit. The plaintiff (I won't name names) was claiming that she suffered a closed head injury, and that her life has now been permanently altered because of the accident. In Michigan there is a "no fault" law that says that regardless of who's at fault in the accident, your insurance has to cover all medical expenses if you are injured in an accident. If you recieve permanent damage that goes above and beyond what medical expenses would help you with, you can sue the person at fault in the accident, and in our case, the owners of the car are held liable also. I have never been on such an emotional rollercoaster ride in my life. Having your entire financial future in jeopardy simply because you gave a set of car keys to your daughter to drive to school is hardly what I would call justice or even fair. I could see suing someone if they were drunk driving, or were simply driving very recklessly, or had malicios intent when they injured you. That wasn't the case with Kelly, she wasn't on her cell phone and she came to a complete stop at the sign. She simply didn't take that second look to make sure nobody was coming before she pulled out. Anyway, what angered me the most about this trial is that things were said by their lawyer about Kelly and even us that were not even remotely accurate. He was trying to assert that Kelly didn't care about hurting this lady, and that she has gone on to college and "forgotten all about" this accident. Without boring you with the details of the trial, despite all the doctors they hired to convince the jury that she was permanently injured, the jury didn't buy it and came back with no money at all for her. It was lucky for them that on Tuesday, both parties agreed to a high/low agreement that says regardless of the outcome from the jury, our insurance company agreed to pay a certain minimum amount if they agreed to cap what they would recieve to the amount to which my policy would cover. Although in one way I regret that the deal was made, it sure made me feel better at the time, because I knew then that I would'nt be losing everything I have worked for. Also, with a high/low agreement there is no possibility of appeal. As much as I want to believe that she was just being a gold digger and wasn't really hurt bad, there is no way to be 100% sure. Despite what their lawyer was claiming, we really aren't heartless bastards that go around causing injury to people and then jump for joy when we win our case. Unfortunately, he did a good job of convincing his own clients of that. When I tried to wish her well after the trial, I was strongly rebuffed. I guess I could have chosen a better moment to try and make amends. I hope in time they see that we aren't the devil spawn that their lawyer made us out to be and can let go of their hatred. All in all, I think justice was served. I guess the only glee I felt when the verdict was read was that their lawyer totally got his butt whipped in this trial, cause he's a real a**hole, and I mean that in a good Christian way, of course.

Random jabber

Wow, another big snow storm this year. Too bad about all this global warming. I’ve been recording bass parts for the High School Musical rehearsal tapes all day. I volunteered to do this to help the cast get used to singing with a band instead of rehearsing with a piano. I should have known what I was getting myself in for, and the rest of the band for that matter. Oh well, I think it will be worth it in the end, it’s just a bit of a pain now. With all this stuff I’ve been doing, I’ve had to miss some triathlon training. I should still be OK for the race anyway. I sang a solo at church with a piano accompaniment. I’m 44 years old and that was the first time I ever did that, if you can believe that. I was pretty nervous but I did pretty good if I do say so myself. I’m sure if I watched a video of it I would pick it to pieces. I quit watching videos of my performances a long time ago for just that reason. Shout had a good rehearsel. Art wrote a cool new song for us. It starts with a bunch of different sounds and noises. It’s a song about taking quiet time with God. If only I would practice what I sing.

I’m starting to get the fishing bug. I haven’t been out since last September. The last time I was trout fishing, I was almost drowned when they started generating power at the dam. You are supposed to check the release schedule before you go fishing. I assumed that because the weather was so dry and the lake was so low that they wouldn’t be releasing that day. I guess that’s not something you want to take a chance on. Anyway, I won’t be making that mistake again. Also the last time I was out on the Detroit river my motor died, and I barely made it in on my troller. So I had kind of lost my entheusiam for fishing. Anybody that knows me knows that could only be a very temporary situation with me. I think I’ll solve both problems by selling my boat and buying one of those cool pontoon rafts for floating down rivers, no motor to die, and It won’t matter how high the river gets.

Well, time for bed,

Dave

Current Happenings

United Brass is slow right now due to the general economy and especially the poor housing market. We have had to make some tough decisions regarding work hours and staffing needs. We have a lot of improvement plans in the works that should enhance our efficiency. Ten years from now I will have a staff that is 90% different from what it is now. Most of the people where hired in around the same time and will mostly be retiring in the next ten years or so. This is going to present a few challenges, but also some oppurtunities to aquire people that are more comfortable with the latest technologies. If we can survive this economy, I see great things for our future.
Heaven Sown is in the middle of recording the long awaited Shout project. We have all the cover songs done now and we are now writing and recording some originals. Our goal is to have it ready for the Faithfest (early August). It's going to be tough because I have Dan and Willy involved in the band for Monroe Community Players production of High School Musical. How is that for Segway?
I am the musical director for the above mentioned play. Yesterday was the audition. I was there from 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM. Poor Mirjam was stuck with me the whole day. I guess for those reading this that don't know yet, Mirjam is an exchange student from Switzerland that is staying with us this year. She is being cast as one of the brainiaks, she did a great job with her audition. We have a pretty good cast, the leads are very good. We need more guys for the basketball team and various other male roles. I'm really looking forward to this production, it should be a blast.
My Triathlon training is going OK I guess. I am a lot more fit than I was when I started. I'm not really progressing like I hoped I would. I finally got to where I can run 3 miles without stopping, you just have to drive stakes to keep track of my progress. My swimming will probably be my best event. I will probably be out of he water in the middle of the pack somewhere. After that, who knows. My first goal is to finish the race without stopping. It would be nice to be able to compete in my age group some day, but only time will tell if that can happen. For sure I would need a more consistant training schedule for that to happen. One of these days I may learn to say no to people instead of getting involved with so many things. I wouldn't bet on it, there are just so many interesting things to do in one lifetime.

I have no idea how regular I will be with this blog, I didn't include all the family happenings in this one because they have their own myspace pages to keep you up to date on what they are doing. I will tell you that they are going to leave me here by myself for a few day next week and go to Florida. So...party at my house!!

to be continued

Dave