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My mountain bike builder James Bleakley is "THE MAN"!! I noticed that after my last mountain bike ride my fat ass bent my seat post. I pulled it out and sure enough it was bent and how! It bent right at the seat post collar close to the frame. So I took a picture or two and emailed it off to James at Black Sheep Bicycles knowing that James does not frequently check his email.

I just wanted to let him know it had happened fully not expecting anything to happen. About week later I received an email from James stating that the post was ok to ride bent, but he would have a new seat post in the mail the next day! How cool is that!! No extra charge he just fully backed up his work 100%!!! Made in America still has a backbone! I talked with James the next day and he said that he had not only gotten a great deal, $$, on some 0.30 gauge Ti tubing but that he is continuously trying new types of materials to improve his products!! He said that I should be riding a 0.39 or 0.40 gauge seat post and that not only would he have a new one on the way, but he would include a new pair of Black Sheep Bikes logo socks!!! Stylin'!!! Thanks James you have a customer for life!!!

Next weekend I am going down to San Jose to visit with my best friend Julian Chocholak
and attend the North American Handmade Bicycle show. We are going to go mountain biking for the first time together in a long time!! I am taking my Black Sheep with me (the whole reason I went for the $1000 S&S coupler up charge) so we can ride. It is truly a handmade work of art!! I wish that James and Black Sheep was going to be attending the show, oh well next year!!

This quarters grades and a tribute to my Grandpa...

So far we are about half way through the quarter and I am some how pulling low A's in all three of my classes! I recieved a 92.76% on my last anatomy exam, a 92.5% on my last Math exam, and a 92.4% on my last Chemistry exam. As long as I don't totally take a crap on anyone of my classes I should be able to pull this quarter off with a 3. 5 to 3.7ish!!!! I have two major exams left in A&P the next of which is solely dedicated to the Brain and the nervous system, it is a major piece of work!!

On a sad note I found out that my Grandfather passed away Friday morning in CA. We were not as close as I would have liked to have been, but in the past few years M.C. (as he was known) did make some great strides towards being a grandpa. He was alway concerned about my my leg and how I was healing. I would get random out-of-the-blue phone calls from him just checking to see if I was doing alright. My one and only regret is not having talked to him lately... I wanted to tell him that we are expecting another baby and regardless of the baby's sex we are going to give the baby the middle name Campbell which was his mother's maiden name. My grandpa's middle name was Campbell, my dad's middle name is Campbell, and my middle name is Campbell. My dad grew up a Jr. tortured with the first name Merdith (note only one "E"). Hence he goes by Cam from Campbell and my Grandpa went by M.C. from his initials. One of the names Christie and I have talked about if we have a girl is to name her MerEdith Campbell Lockwood after her Great Grandfather... Right now it's just a thought but it seems fitting. Grandpa M.C. put more effort into being a grandpa to his great grand kids than he did his grand kids or his own boys. I guess old dogs do start to learn new tricks... God bless his soul, he is now getting ALL of his questions and doubts answer by the Almighty!


The single most thing I am so utterly proud of my grandfather for was his service and dedication to the Military. My grandpa join the Air Force when it was just the Army Air Corp. and was in the Pacific Theater during WWII. Grandpa acheived the top rank of Senior Master Sergeant in the Air Force retiring after almost thirty years in-service. In our family of all the people that have served in the military grandpa and I are the only two enlisted guys so I really take pride in that!
RIP Clyde 1919-2007

It's been awhile huh...

So it was brought to my attention that it has been quite awhile since I have blogged. I have been up past my eyeballs since the new year!! Let me see if I can give you all a small taste of what I have been up to.... School consists of classes 5 days a week from 10 am till almost 3pm to include the second half of Anatomy & Physiology 214, Intermediate College Algebra 098, and Inorganic Chemistry 101 two of which are lab sciences!!! I have returned to King County Fire District 20 Skyway Vol. Fire Dept., but in doing so I have to go back through the ENTIRE 6 month recruit training academy all over again the meet every Thursday night 7-10pm and every Saturday from 8am till 5pm. I take Abigael, my wonderfully crazy 2 1/2 year old, to her "school" with me everyday. On Sundays I try to take a few hours for my sanity and participate in the Sunday morning Soul Session mountain bike ride, but that is only if the physical exertion from the day before in recruit school has not totally kicked my ass!! I also try to get some homework done on Sundays???

About the second week into this quarter one of my very close friends called me from jail at 5:30am on Monday morning. He had gotten into a scuffle with some of his roommates "friends" and he paid the legal price. So he had no where to go and Christie told me before I asked that he could stay with us as long as he needed. He just started a great new job as a customer service rep for a very big international bicycle manufacturer. So PJ has been crashing on our couch for a about two months. His mental state of mind is fragile and he takes alot of counseling, his wife divorced him and he is not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I am hoping that he will be able to get his own place come the first of March! He has his big court date on Tuesday....

Christie is pregnant again, YEAH!!! But in turn she has been sick as a sick dog for the past 5 or 6 weeks. Nauseous, viral respiratory infection (walking pneumonia), always tired, and very busy with work. I have been trying to take on as much as I can so she just has to worry about work and stabilizing her stomach... We have had two ultrasounds so far and everything looks GREAT so far!! We have talked about a few names and we definitely have our boy name, it's what Abigael was going to be named before we found out she was a girl. As far as a girl name we have one really good name thought of so far and I am very happy with it but we'll see... Oh we don't find out the sex of our babies till they pop their little rumps outta mommy!! So you all can take up a pool, we thought Abigael was going to be a boy for sure?!

I am also still working at Fleet Foot Messenger service but only on a VERY part time basis... I basically only order parts for the riders and then prepare the billing for ordered parts. Most of the boys have figured out how to wrench on their own bikes and since I am so busy I just don't have the time to "hang out" at Flatty and clean up after the kids... I am also still managing the apartment building as well. only on a part time as needed basis but when things need to be done it is usually very time intensive...

Let's see what else... I am sure there is something else but it seems like I don't have a minute anymore. I ache and hurt all of the time. I had an Ortho Dr.'s appointment a few weeks ago and the X-Rays looked about the same, maybe a little bit more density but pretty much the same. Dr. Taitsman has discussed with her colleagues about adjusting the healing time period for an open Tib-Fib non-union fracture from a year to TWO AND A HALF YEARS OR MORE!!!! There was one other guy that came into Harborview with a injury very similar to my break and he is having a long rough healing process as well. Between the two of us she is convinced that a non-union such as ours takes a stink'n long time to heal!!

I went to the annual Bike Swap here in Seattle today and I only bought one small part for $10 and exercised a great amount of self control. Mainly I did not see anything that I needed or wanted. I did get the chance to bump into a bunch of friend from the bicycling community and catch up. I hung out at Jonny Sundt's booth with Matt Bianchi and Matt Case and drank Guinness and heckled the hipsters trying to build up their "totally stylin' fixies".