Weekend Update

A long time in the works, you never thought it would happen, yet here it is. A blog post that isn't about biking! Well unless you count the fact that I am talking about not talking about biking.

Over the weekend Ky and I packed up Boatie, grabbed some friends and headed out to what has to be one of the most beautiful lakes in the Northwest. Yes that is a huge claim, there are a lot of beautiful lakes up here, but Detroit Lake is pretty incredible. Located up high on the Santiam River, at the foot of Mt Jefferson, the water is crystal and the views are breath taking.

On a beautiful summer weekend with temps in the mid eighties and the shrinkage factor of the water was set to minimal, the lake had somewhat of a party atmosphere. Boats and jet skis were crusin, fish were jumping, children were screaming, music was blasting, oregon was alive.

While it was a great break from the daily grind, it was not without a hitch. Friday afternoon traffic was murder and speaking of murder there are several children fortunate to be alive this Munday morning. While vibing out on the dock Ky was invited by screaming children to play life guard, she declined and the children continued to scream and run around her until she cracked. At this point I was notified that if I didn't come pick her up with the boat in the next 5 minutes, there would be murders. I was quick to respond and return to the dock, thanks to idiot parents, the children were swimming in the docking area and I was forced to try and turn my boat around in shallow water with a bad cross wind.

Guess what, I ran my stern drive into the ground. Not too much damage, just a really ugly looking propeller. Boatie tells me that she is not exactly happy and to punish me, her gas gauge is now malfunctioning. With a malfunctioning gas gauge we ran out of gas in the middle of the lake the next morning. Fortunately a fellow boater towed us back to shore (giving us a very evil sounding laugh while doing so), everything turned out fine.

Aside from some heavy traffic due to construction in Wilsonville, nothing exciting on the way home. Kona was pleased to see us and his house/dog sitter seemed to be at ease. Although he was drinking a beer and he quickly got in his car and left once we returned, maybe we need to ask Kona some questions.

Good Times!

Humpday Update

Happy Wednesday, or for seven Wednesdays of the year, Tabor Race day. Yes the Mt Tabor race is absolutely my favorite bike race, even though it is absolutely not suited for me. Since you already know this, there is no update here.

The update is as follows:

The boat sold and then 24 hrs later was unsold. During those 24 hrs Ky and I experienced some serious sellers remorse, I didn't even know that was possible. So, when the buyer backed out of the deal, we shrugged our collective shoulder and said we would wait to re-post the ad. "Boatie" will continue to occupy my budget and driveway. Kona wagged his tail in appreciation, I think he is the biggest boater of the household.

I am still job hunting, I have put in a few applications with a couple high-techs and the corps of engineers, unfortunately with no real engineering or supervisory experience I am in a bit of a job limbo. In today's market place it's hard to find a perspective employer to take a chance on you when there are so many over qualified candidates looking for work. Good news is that I still have a job and Frontier is acting like thy are going to take care of us. If only I could take their word at face value and trust that everything will be kittens and puppies. So if you know of anyone that is looking to hire a 1st level manager for a technical lead let me know.


There seems to be some interpretation for this banner, it is from a job fair in Germany courtesy of ' jobsintown.de ' a German website similar to jobdango. If you can't read the caption it says, "There are better ways to make career."

Elkhorn: Job Done!

Happy Father's Day!


That being said, I am home from the battle fields of Eastern Oregon, more specifically Baker City. There were no bakeries to be found, so I imagine that the city must be named after some dude named Baker. The 8th annual Elkhorn stage race is complete and I feel quite proud of how I did. Looking at the official results you might get the impression that I am really bad at bike racing, that is an accurate impression, but I still did better than expected.

Most importantly, I had the best criterum (crit for short) results that I have ever had. I took 45 out of 62 races, but most importantly I had held onto the field until almost the end. I was close enough that I wasn't pulled out of the race early. Had I avoided the pile-up a few riders in front of me on four laps remaining I would have finished in the field and score the same time as the top 43 riders. In a crit during a stage race, the only thing that matters is that you finish with the main group, so 43rd was just as good as 1st.


If you are wondering how the rest of the stages went, I survived and did good enough to maintain my bottom of the pack finish. Most importantly, I finished. Now that I am back in Portland and extremely tired, I think I will have a little snack and head to an early bed. Photos can be found here.

Let it Begin

Tuesday: PIR circuit race
Wednesday: Mt Tabor circuit race
Thursday: Rest
Friday: Oregon Trail Road Race
Saturday: Pleasant Valley Time Trial & Gold Rush Criterium
Sunday: Dooley Mountain Road Race

Estimate for the week: 245 miles / 15,500 ft of climbing
Around 14 hrs of riding time


Welcome to my 'Pain Cave', I'll let you know if we will be having a pity party later.

A Sad Day: Boat For Sale

FOR SALE

Fail! Fail! Fail!!!!

Not much to say about the initial Tabor race, my legs felt good and strong, the competition was stiff, and I dropped my chain 3 times. So, I finished at the bottom of the results.

372 Days and Rain!?!

I have been waiting 372 days for today (1 year + 1 week, late start) and it's raining! Booo, oh well maybe this means that fewer people will show up and I will have a better chance of surviving without self inflicting a cardiac episode. Oh if you don't know what I am talking about, it is the annual "Velo on the Volcano" circuit race series.

Last night I blew up my legs at PIR and got shelled, wish me luck tonight!

21, a Lucky Number?

Can you believe I have already written 21 blog entries (counting this one)? I doubt that my reader list is 21 people long, if half of that. So how is it going? Do you enjoy? Surf or skip the writings and just look at the pictures? Let me know, feed back, it's a wondrous thing.

Another lucky thing, Ky, Kona, and I are still alive. In our Thursday/Friday weekend we decided to head out to the Mount Hood Wilderness for an a quick backpacking trip to Ramona Falls, one of Oregon's best waterfalls.

After a beautiful hike along the Sandy River Gorge with sunny skies and warm temperatures we took our time eating lunch, setting camp, photographing the waterfall and deciding if we needed the rain fly. Later in the afternoon the sky changed shade and we decided that maybe a rain fly would be worthwhile, in case it started to rain in our sleep. No sooner than we finished staking the fly, did a wicked wind pick up and rain commence. Shortly thereafter Ky, Kona and I jumped into the tent and began to pray for a shift in wind as a lightning and thunderstorm erupted over our head. Being a good 90 minutes from the safety of our car we decided it was best to ride out the storm in our tent. Kona slept while Ky and I watched lightning strikes light up the thin walls of our tent and count the delay before the thunder crash. While the sound was near deafening, the delay never came inside of 5ish seconds, which urban forecasting says is 5ish miles.

I have been through many many thunderstorms, much larger ones, but nothing compares to riding one out in a tent under fir trees. Although, I must say a night in a single wide trailer on top of a bare hill in Alabama came in close second, literally rolling thunder. Here Ky waits patiently for our dinner to finish re-hydrating. The dinner was a scrumptious backpacker rendition of "Tamale Pie." Not until I started eating did I realize it was a vegetarian dish, some chicken would have been a nice touch, maybe some cheese and sour cream too. As you can see in the photo is more a soup than a pie, apparently when you pour soup on top of stale tortilla chips it makes it pie.

The next morning we awoke to cold and damp weather with the promise of rain, so the pre-hike oatmeal was abandoned in favor of a little bit of trail mix and a quick breakdown of camp. An otherwise uneventful hike brought us back to the car and down the road for a much deserved Sharis feast. After breakfast back to the house for rest and recouporation, I don't think I've seen Kona sleep so hard. As always more pictures can be found on flickr. Enjoy!

Back to PIR

Well, it has happened, I have returned to my roots and begun racing back at PIR (Portland International Raceway). Racing is a broad term, I don't know how many of my competitors last night would have classified my efforts as racing.

To start the night off Ironclad lead the first two laps in single file line at a light pace, a sort of moment of silence and reflection, for our fallen teammate Kristin McCarthy (Kmac). In case you haven't heard she was in a bad bike/concrete tango at a Monday night PIR that has left her in the hospital with some head trauma and broken bones (and a trashed bike). It was kind of the 3/4 group to allow us to lead the two laps, it meant something special to a lot of people.

Once the two laps were over the fun began in earnest and the pace jumped to light speed. Not 1k into the race pace a Beaverton Bike Club racer experienced a full tubular tire blow out sending his ass to the pavement and several other racers (not asses) to the grass. Amongst the illustrous group was none other that Brian Barker, my nemesis. Just kidding Brian, you haven't earned the title nemesis, yet.

A few laps later I started to experience a bad combination of things, boredom for the back of the pack and the realization that I didn't have what it took to actually compete when the race came down to the line. Also I didn't want to be, that guy, and sprint for a 35th place finish. So as the group came down the home stretch things began to slow down and bunch up, as they always do, so I made my break. The field was busy looking to the right at Dave as he made the same jump as I was making on the left side of the track, so I got away completely free. We met in the middle of the track, inverted and then I shot off the front to give him a wheel, for a better break. You can see me looking to my right making sure that I wasn't about to take both of us out as we were heading for inversion, I didn't want to zig if he was going to zag. Shortly there after Dave fell off and someone from the Shower's Pass team joined on. I didn't last long, as I knew I wouldn't, and shortly there after I was dropped from the race and I retired to the sidelines.

Dropping was fine, I knew it would happen, unfortunately my master plan of getting 4 or 5 people to jump with me and stretch the field was also a grand failure. Either the field wasn't paying attention or they just knew I didn't have a snowball's...

Oh well, as long as I learned, even though I didn't like what I learned.


A sampling of the nights participants. Thanks Eryn for the great photos.

Weekend Update

The splendiferous weather continues, so Ky and I threw Kona in the car and headed up to Puyallup for a weekend of packed full of activity. Friday night after a mellow drive we were welcomed to Hotel Bennett with fabulous meal and a comfy bed, much rest was going to be needed for the two upcoming days.

Saturday morning Ky and her rents headed out to Bainbridge Island for Golf and Mimosas (I'll let you guess who did what). As usual I hoped on my two wheeled steed and headed for the mountain. Mt Rainier to be exact, after a bit more than 4100 ft of climbing, 75 miles, a bit of gravel, and a couple close calls, I was back at the residence getting ready for the next activity of the day.

After a shower and lunch, I fed Kona and started up the Xterra and pointed north, destination Seattle. A Chinese dinner and Major League Soccer (MLS) game was on the book. Here Ky and I pose outside Qwest Field/Xbox Pitch (yes they named the "grass" and the stadium separately), notice the matching scarfs. Apparently team scarfs are mandatory accessory at Sounders games, even in June, I didn't believe it until I was in the stadium and literally everyone had one. I am not sure if this is a soccer thing (since I have a UP one, but never took it to a game) or if it is an MLS thing or a Sounders FC thing. The stadium was packed, the crowd was rowdy, the game was a tie. After the game back home and straight to bed.

Sunday morning was greeted with coffee and eggs, calories were needed because it was back to the mountains for a hike up to the Green Lakes (think emerald not split pea). Kona decided early in the hike, he didn't care how frigid snow melt is, he is a Labrador and Labradors swim. His first venture was a bit unexpected and fortunately into an eddy, the river was definitely running stronger than his legs could swim. From their on out Kona was on tether and it definitely was put to use. Timid does not describe how Kona now leaps into the ragging river, I smell a Dock Dog.

After a few harrowing river crossings (narrow bridges over incredible rapids) a quick snack more swimming and a picnic lunch it was back to Puyallup for one dinner and then back to Portland, one of us had to be up at 5am for work on Monday (hint: It wasn't Ky and Kona is a freeloader).

More photos on flickr.


Kona had a blast!