ooh new toys...

kale got a new toy in the mail today... his handlebars/aerobars are here. they look pretty damn nifty... nice cross-section for aerodynamics as well.

i'm sure it's no surprise, but he couldn't wait till he got home to break into the box.. he was already ripping the packaging open on the way home.. ah.. boys and their toys.. =P




The new toy...



All assembled

New Balance Corporate Triathlon

Kale's take:

I'm not much of a complainer, but I'll do my best to line up a few 'questions for the management.'

1. Noon? I know I've asked this before, but why? Why do you start a race at 12 given that we're on the Equator?? Dude.....

2. Closed course/Open course? Why is the course closed for practice before the race, yet open to traffic during the race? Please, explain, I'm not following.

Last one....

3. Noooooon?

Anyway, the race was good. Or, as good as 800m of swimming, 20km of cycling and 5km of running in the (did i mention noon) hot hot sun. Since there were 1000 or so joes lined up we had 5 separate waves go off. At 30 minute intervals. Fortunately i was off in the first one, but due to the size my category (Men's Open) was split into two.

Came out of the water about 25 and managed to reel in quite a few on my trusty bike. Got off the bike in 4th and managed to somehow hold that for a suffering cramp-filled jog. Since the category was split I won't know where I landed until tomorrow or the next day but right now I'm happy with where i ended up. Further reinforces my belief that I should actually train for these things....hmmm. stupid work.

Special thanks to the wife for coming out to give a few cheers for the beer-belly husband. She certainly didn't have to and by the look on her face she probably would have been much happier in someplace with a wee bit of air conditioning....hell, some shade and a decent breeze would have been ample.

Til next time, enjoy the pictures,
the husband.


Kale, Darren, Vincent & Sharon - 4 out of the 78 HP employees that took part

Us at the start of the race

In the swim start area

The swim

Heading for shore

Emerging out of the water

Coming in from the bike leg

Coming in for the finish

The Finish!

After the race

blogger

damn, it took me 3 tries to get the damn title of this blog changed from "whitebait and kale" which was my original attempt at a more long-term title for this blog to "Male'ana" which would at least tie in with the url of this website. had almost thought i would be stuck with whitebait and kale for eternity. =(

reason behind all these title changes - kale pointed out that the old title was a little out o' date with the date of the wedding and all. hence, the search for a more enduring title.

in other news.. kale's thinking of getting a new bike. not to jinx it or anything... but he may be getting a good bike for an even better price since his friend is looking to get rid of his after only a couple of weeks. makes you wonder why he purchased it in the first place! the paint job is "unique" and i'll leave it to the man to describe it, or better yet, include pictures.. and it's not very "kale".. but i guess for the price, it shall be an acquired taste!

planning, planning

so the planning has begun yet again... we've nailed down the photographer for the dec wedding. for those at the charleston wedding, we're using the same guy. we figured we had enough rave reviews about the "forks" picture that we'd try him again (even if he's costing us more than double the original guy we were going to use). We figured we only get married once in our lives (ok, in our case, perhaps twice) so it was worth the money to capture moments.

i've just printed out some of the pics from the wedding for the parents, and even tho digital pics are nice and all in that they're easy to share, there's something to be said for hard copy pictures. i have to say that flipping through the pictures really brought the day back to life.. the people, the moments, the food.. (yes, i'm hungry).

so right, back to my original trend of thought - planning.. get the invitations printed out this weekend (all 300 of them, yes, 300!)... and then visit the florist. oh yes, that reminds me.. need to call the music ppl too. hmm.

wow, project after project.. this has to go down as the busiest year of my life. all this while trying to juggle 2 massive projects at work.. grrr... one which hopefully will launch smoothly come monday.. but one can only hope!

Action Asia

So today was a busy day at the races... it was the weekend of the Action Asia race. For those unfamiliar with the series, it's a series of adventure races that makes its way around Asia - Hong Kong, Malaysia, etc.

It promised to be quite the race - rapelling, kayaking, swimming, biking... and from what I saw and from what Kale told me, it sure looks like it delivered on its promise.

I'll let Kale come up with the detailed race report later... since I wasn't able to follow him around on the whole race. Only caught the start and the end... took his team just slightly over 6 hours to complete... phew!

Have attached some of the pics that I did manage to get... I managed to catch the cool parts - the abseiling off the Sheares bridge and ziplining off the "durian". Not many people can say they've done that!

Kale's Race Report:

My back hurts.

Denise says her back hurts as well, but the difference is that her back hurt after chasing us around for the race where as I felt quite good during and right after. I suppose the difference is adrenaline.

Bridges, cliffs, buildings....go up em? Sure. Jump off them, huh? The tally for the day was 2 bridges (to jump off), 1 quarry (to jump into), 1 very high bridge (to rapel from, then jump from), 1 cliff (to rapel from), and 1 very pointy building (to scream down on a zipline for a spectacular sea plane landing). Very fun indeed.

All together they said we did something like 59km. In 6 hours it is a pretty casual pace but there were certainly more than just a few things that 'slowed' us down a notch. Aside from the normal biking, and hiking, we swam, jumped, kayaked, hiked, rapelled, hiked some more, and then climbed a few stairs.

My teammate and I knew that we weren't really in the running for the win, but we did want to go fast. Trouble was, his knee started to act up about 2 hours in so we pretty much just paced it easy from there... I wish we could have turned it up a few but the experience was well worth the trouble and I would do this again in a heartbeat.

Dave, if you're reading, get your gear cause sooner or later we're doing one of these things together. I have intentions of winning, it is more than just 'doable.'



Starting point of race - bright and early, before the sun came out!

From L-R: CJ, Kale, Vincent and Cherng Linn aka the Botak Gang

Us before the start of the race (proof that I actually got up bright and early as well to be the dutiful supporter!)

The start of the race - at the Merlion

Nervous anticipation

Kale in the middle of the first swim (of many)


Jumping off the esplanade bridge

Coming out of water from the 2nd bridge jump at Sentosa

Rapelling off the Benjamin Sheares Bridge (one of the main highways in Singapore)

Rapelling down the side of the esplanade

Riding the zipline down to the water! Weeeeeeeeee

Climbing out of the water after the zipline

The "after" shot

And us again after the race

busy weekend ahead

We just got back from salsa class... and Kale's getting ready to go from one hot, sweaty activity to another. It's a busy weekend ahead for the recreational athlete! Tomorrow he's got a triathlon "clinic" which he's hosting for the rookie triathletes from his company in preparation for the corporate tri next weekend(his colleagues have sorta crowned him the company triathlon guru). Impressive eh? (He'd probably kill me for that last statement...)

Then it's a break for lunch.. and then it's on to the race briefing for the Action Asia adventure race he's doing on Sunday. That'll pretty much take up the whole afternoon, what with race briefings, equipment checks and all.

We'll hopefully be able to squeeze in a nice peaceful dinner and a good night's sleep before he's off bright and early Sunday morning for the actual adventure race. Him and his team mate are getting up at some unearthly hour and biking over to the start near the Merlion. I'm going to get up and take a leisurely bus ride down to see if I can catch some good pics of him jumping off bridges, swimming in the Singapore river and doing other random crazy stuff. The race takes him all over Singapore, and I'll try my best to get as many pics as I can from as many of the stations as I'm physically able to follow him to. Watch this space for action shots.

For now though, it's a shower and then bed time.. aaaahhhh..
=)

More pics of family and friends

Me and my secret service guy (aka Josh).. heh heh

The mafia

The girls

My parents with their trusty video cam

The CMU gang

The Stanford gang

Elek sneaking treats..

Dave and Lisa

Alysha, David and Wesley

More friends - Kyle, Lindsey, Craig before the wedding

Dawn before the ceremony

Bridal party on way to beach

More pics after the wedding and at the reception

The new family

The entire wedding party!

Outside one of the houses on the Battery

First dance

Bouquet toss

The recipient of the bouquet - Kristen!

Some wedding pics from the church

Ok, so we will definitely put the photos on a proper photo site (like ofoto or something) so that we can share most of the pics with everyone. But here's a teaser of some pics from the church.
Walking down the aisle with Carissa and Dawn ahead of me

The vows

The happy couple!

The bridal party ||

Race in Malaysia

So we drove up to Putrajaya last weekend for Kale's last race of the cycling season. Since it was the weekend right after we got married, and the first trip we took away since the wedding, I guess you could consider it our pseudo honeymoon?

The race went ok, the team managed what they set out to achieve and managed to walk (or ride) away with some mullah for the next season. I, surprisingly had fun.. the hotel was really nice compared to their usual accomodation choices, so that left me in a better mood than normal (some of the places we had stayed in before had no a/c and no toilet paper.. euuuww). And the race was actually pretty fun. Only problem was that it was soooo damn hot! You should see Kale's farmer's tan now!

Anyhow, here are some pics from the trip:

The cycleworx team outside the hotel

A smiley Kale on the way to the race start

Us just before the race start, me togged out in the official race support gear

Round and round we go

Action shot

The aftermath of the race