Oncall again last weekend, rats.  It comes in streaks I guess.  I still managed my fair share of fun though, if a bit toned-down fun.  Friday I dropped by the Brooksider, but only because it was a mandatory meeting of the TFB-BBQ team.  The American Royal is drawing near, time to start planning!  I stuck around 30 minutes or so, during which time we decided to A) Show up at the contest and B) Try to turn in our entries.  Planning is a slow process with this group.

Saturday I headed to Lee’s Summit and met Munkirs for the last Spin Pizza ride of the year.  I’m not entirely sure why they are cutting off the season so early, but whatever works.  These rides are just your typical “group” ride, similar to the Mission Farms and Brookside routes I go on nearly every week, but they put a bit more enticement into it.  They teamed up with Bike Source and occasionally raffle off gift cards, and sometimes they give away cycling socks or other cool stuff.  If you go on enough rides they will even donate to your MS-150 ride, but I ended up just a few short this year.  (I usually ride from the Main Street location if I go with them, and I don’t particularly care for that route.)  All in all, they are just good supporters of local cycling, and they got some dang good pizza too!   At any rate, for the last ride of the year, they offered a 40-mile option, which is just what we were looking for as we wind down to our “big” ride next weekend.  It was a decent route and we finished with a good time.  I sorta actually enjoyed the two trips up “The Hill,” as they called it.  That reference was to the big hill on the south side of Longview Lake that I used to ride up and down as a mere child growing up in Grandview.  Just as it was then, it’s a lot funner to go down than up;  I think the Spin team needs to consider reversing the route direction.  After that, Donette and I headed down to the P&L and had a late lunch at the recently opened Dubliner.  They were offering 100 extra points on my KC Hopps reward card for going there Saturday, and I’m always a sucker for those events.  (I wear that card out.  At one point last year they owed me over $400;  Then I decided it would break my heart if they folded and I lost all that money so I brought it down to a more reasonable level.)  This was our first trip to this restaurant since it changed over from Raglan Road.  The food was actually quite good, but being considerably out of our normal geographic dining region I doubt we hurry back any time soon.

Sunday was a low-key affair.  I watched the atrocity that was the Chief’s game for a bit, before flipping over to the Royals.  Neither game provided a whole lot of excitement.  I was pulled away from those train-wrecks around 2:00 to take Donette to the airport, as she will be working out of town all week.  After that, I pretty much sat on the couch and flipped between bad football games and bad movies.  Cinematic picks for the evening featured the Russian-language offering “Black Lightning,” which was a sappy action movie.  Eh, it passed the time.  After that I switched over to the horror genre, selecting “The Descent II.”  It was about as good as it sounds.  On a related note, we are seriously considering turning our cable back on.  I’m about 1/2-mad from watching too many low-quality movies on Netflix, and I’m tired of missing Monday night football already.