Saturday, June 17, 2006

Flying Wheels Summer Century

Cascade Bicycle Club's "Flying Wheels Summer Century" was today and I rode with a bunch of folks from my Saturday riding group. I had a great time. I discovered that my fitness is quite a bit better this year than last. I was comfortable and strong all day with never any threat of bonking. In fact, it was the best I've ever felt in the final quarter of a century and at the finish. I topped the last big hill with the lead group. I could have ridden a bunch more miles easily. That is a very pleasant development.

It was misleadingly advertised since the "century" route was only 96.4 miles. Sheesh, you'd think the organizers could find a couple of more turns that would make it go over 100. Actually, come to think of it it was probably short because there was a brief re-route (from the normal route) due to a closed road. We had 5:10 riding time and just under 19mph average.

Two legs of the ride were on W. Snoqualmie Valley Rd., which the 7 Hills of Kirkland century also used. That's a really nice road for cycling. Hardly any traffic and just gentle rollers. We had a bitching paceline going on it in both directions.

One guy we nicknamed Tube Socks kept leapfrogging us. It was pretty funny because of his outfit (old style cotton gym shorts, t-shirt and namesake white socks pulled all the way up) and because he was on a wal-mart bike with the seat all the way down. He looked about 55 or so. One wanted to make fun of the guy, but he was cruising. He basically kept the same overall pace as us for the first 50 miles. Our group has a habit of riding really fast but then taking longer breaks, apparently, than most people. So on a long ride we pass a lot of people multiple times.

At one point I got ahead of the group, just before we dropped down into the valley bottom a few miles before Snohomish. The group passed me at very high speed. I hammerred as hard as I could and just barely got back on but then blew up from the effort and immediately fell off. We were doing about 33 on those flats (long after the momentum from the hill was gone). That is damn fast.

Overall, it was a nice route. And they had great food at the stops - better than STP. They had a huge selection of cookies and fruit and bagels with PB&J and granola bars and pretzels. Although the label on the 2-pack of choc chip cookies indicated there were 35g of fat in the package! I passed.

After finding that I'm in better shape than last year, I'm now definitely planning to join the group for STP in one day again. Of course, it could just be the pasta I had for lunch AND dinner yesterday.

My recovery meal was Keilbasa and a big Coke. And I watched a little of the comical track relay races they were doing after the ride at the Velodrome. The race I watched had teams named Gilligan's Island (MaryAnn was a babe), Irresponsible Parents (carrying (fake) babies that were falling out of backpacks and infant carriers, and with 12-packs in their kid backpacks), White Trash Picnic, Pretty in Pink (one guy was wearing all pink that had been professionally printed all over with "Hoorray for Boobies"), Zoom and Superheroes (all wearing red underwear on the outside). Superheroes won. The Superheroes had a coaster bike with a front basket that several of the team members would use as aero-bars. It looked pretty fun.

That bike commuting I do every day seems to be providing some conditioning benefits. I've been taking a very steep hill home, and although it's short it has really helped my climbing strength. I think all that digging in the back yard for the garage also increased my core strength.

I didn't bring a camera so there are no photos.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Garage: Phase 1 Complete!

We reached a major milestone today when the concrete was completed for the new garage. It was a big push at the end. The foundation was poured Monday and the slab and sidewalk were scheduled for today. I planned to take Wednesday off to backfill, grade and spread crushed rock. But that ended up taking me two long days of about 12-13 hours each. I shoveled several tons of rock and dirt. I was pretty damn exhausted when I finished the last rock spreading and digging at 10:00pm Thursday night. But I made it and the slab pour went off without a hitch today.

Now it's time to think about actually building the garage. Brother-in-law Frank has been kind enough to prepare the materials list from the plans. Now I have to get quotes for lumber and order the roof trusses. We'll probably frame the building in about 2-3 weeks.

Charlotte Eats Food

Charlotte is six months old now and can eat "solid" food. That really means watery oatmeal or rice cereal. But she was obviolusly ready because she gobbles it down. She never took to a bottle, so now Dad can finally take care of Charlotte's hunger instead of Mom being tied to her every 2-3 hours. Charlotte is also sitting up better all the time. Today she sat in the grass with a bare foot while we were waiting to put her footprint in the fresh concrete. She was fascinated with the feel of the grass. And she didn't even eat any.

Audrey is cute as ever and has been having a great time helping Dad dig in the back yard doing the ground work for the garage. She has her own shovel. Audrey has taken ownership of the phrase "I need...". "I need playground!" "I need Grandma!" "I need juice!" Or sometimes just, loudly, "I need, I need, I need!" Actually, it's wonderful that she can now tell us what she needs or wants.

Carol and my fifth wedding anniversary was yesterday. We've been so busy with the garage that we both forgot. Carol got a "Congratulations" card from her mother and had to think for a minute what it was for, then she came and told me. I pointed to the back yard and said, "Happy Anniversary!" At least we both forget, so no one has to feel guilty.

Thursday, June 1, 2006

Here Comes the Flood

Through a combination of life being pretty busy and broken software, I haven't been able to post photos to methot.net for a long time. I finally found a different way to get the images up, so here are five new photo albums for your viewing pleasure.

First, the family photos:
Audrey is talking more clearly every day. She's starting to put together some four- and five-word sentences that are even grammatically correct. Her vocabulary is huge and continues to surprise us. The other day she was in the yard with me when she heard an aircraft. First she said "airplane", which was one of her first words. But then she looked again and said, quite clearly, "No, helicopter!" I didn't even know she knew that word.


We enjoyed a very pleasant evening at Alki Beach a mile from our house. It's becoming a tradition that we go to our favorite pizza place (Pegasus Pizza) on Alki every Friday when I get home from work.










May has gone by in a flash. My parents have returned from their winter home in California and Carol's from their winter home in Tucson. It's nice to see them again, and the girls get to spend time with their grandparents again. This morning Carol was going to drop Audrey off at my parents while she took Charlotte for her 6-month checkup. Audrey was marching around the house shouting, "I need Grandma's house!"

We also had a surprise visit from my old friend Philip Keller, with whom I worked at Boeing way back in 1983-1986. Phil is a dual US-Swiss citizen and has lived in Lausanne, Switzerland for the past ten years. So we don't get to see much of him and his wife Lysiane. But Phil was in town for a conference so we had him over to the house for breakfast. Then we got to see Lysiane briefly when they were on their way out of town. It's always wonderful to see them.

And some miscellaneous stuff:

The garage project is under way in a major way. On May 9th, my brother-in-law Frank hauled his excavator up to Seattle and tore up the old slab and dug the trenches for the foundation and utility conduits. So now our back yard is a big dirt pile. But since then the conduit has been installed, the sewer and water pipes have been installed and buried and the plumbing in the house (for the water supply) is complete. The foundation forms are also in place and awaiting inspection tomorrow. The current plan is to pour the foundation on Monday, then I'll take the day off Wednesday and drive a Bobcat all day backfilling the foundation and grading the site for the garage slab and sidewalks and the slab should be poured next Saturday.

Phase 1, mentally for me at least, is to get the new foundation and slab all in place and the back yard into some semblance of normalcy. Then I'll worry about Phase 2, which is actually building the garage. Frank and Tricia think we can frame it in a weekend if everything is here. I'll keep you posted.

I currently work as a subcontractor to a consulting company named POWTEC, for Prince of Wales Technology Enterprise Consortium. The company is owned by two small Alaskan native tribes. On Mother's Day weekend the company flew all the employees (about 30 of us) to their "headquarters" in Craig, Alaska - a town of about 1500 people. It was a very enjoyable and educational trip.