2007 Inland Empire Century

Saturday, May 12 was the date for the 2007 edition of the Inland Empire Century, a supported bike ride put on by the Tri-City Bicycle Club. I had done this ride in 2005 with two friends and enjoyed the route. It's a great chance to get in a 100-mile ride early in the season.

Coincidentally, Richland happens to be Carol's hometown so doing this ride also means we get to visit Carol's parents. All the grandparents are back in their northwest homes after wintering in their southwest homes. So on Friday Audrey and Charlotte got to see all four of their grandparents on the same day, albeit with a 200 mile drive in between.

Those same friends from 2005 originally said they were going to do the ride this year as well, plus a couple more. But they all bailed over the past couple of weeks, leaving little ol' me to do it all by myself. That diminished my motivation a little, but I really wanted those miles. Last year I got in a lot of miles early in the season and it gave me a base for the best biking season I've had in many years. I plan to repeat the experience from now on.

I made it to the start by 7:15 and started riding at 7:30 sharp. Within a couple of miles I found myself riding with another guy about my age, from Pendleton, OR. We rode side by side along the river path on the Pasco side of the river, but when I got a front flat at about mile 12 I told him to ride on without me. Fortunately, that flat was obvious and easy to fix by just pulling out a few inches of the tube and patching it.

The ride has 25, 50, 75 and 100-mile routes. They all share the beginning portion, so I was always around other riders. But once the 25 mile route split off and the rest headed for Benton City, riders became a lot more sparse. At the first food stop at 22 miles I saw a group of about 9 fast riders go by without stopping. They were apparently a local club because the food stop volunteers yelled to them. That was the only paceline I saw all day long. I wish I had been riding when they passed me, I could have jumped on (after asking, of course).

The winds were hard to figure out all day. Sometimes I'd feel like I was fighting a headwind, but I'd look at my computer and see 23mph. I can't do that pace into a headwind, so obviously it wasn't. Other times I'd feel the same resistance and I'd be going 17mph - obvious headwind. Hmmm.

I endured the most boring part of the ride, a long straight stretch along a frontage road to Benton City, refueled, and headed for the big climb of the ride - up Weber Canyon to the high plateau of Horse Heaven Hills. At the bottom of the climb, though, I got my second flat - on the rear this time. This ride is famous for flats, mostly caused by tackweek (aka goat's head or "bendies"). This time I found a tackweed thorn in my tire. I contemplated putting in protective tire strips before the ride but didn't because I had just installed new tires that are supposed to have a puncture-resistant layer. I guess it doesn't resist tackweed.

My legs were mixed all day, switching back and forth from tired to strong. Little rollers would bring me to a crawl, but big climbs would feel good. Very weird. Weber Canyon actually felt pretty good and I sustained a 10mph pace. I passed a few people and was only passed by one rider almost at the top. Fortunately, after leaving the water stop at the top the winds were cross to tail for the long straight due-west stretch across Horse Heaven Hills. I felt pretty good the whole way and kept up a steady 21-22mph. Even for the little climb before the big drop down to Prosser I felt pretty good. The descent is a couple of miles of 6% grade that are fun but a little scary with gusty crosswinds. My top speed was 43mph.

From Prosser at 64 miles the route follows the Old Inland Empire Highway back to Benton City at 82 miles. I found myself practically staring at the odometer wishing the miles would go by. But it was purely mental because physically I was doing fine. In fact, the winds were obviously at my back because I was doing long stretches at 24mph again. I made a quick stop at the food stop at Benton City, but when I went to leave my rear tire was flat again. OK, my third flat repair of the day. But then when I went to leave again, my front tire was flat. Sheesh! Fortunately right then a sag vehicle pulled in with a floor pump so I didn't have to make my arm fall off trying to get 110 lbs. into the tires with my hand pump.

OK, only 18 miles to go. A few mixed winds along the way, but overall not too bad. No big hills. At 2:30 I rode into the start/finish area. 102 miles in 5:45 (riding time) for a 17.7mph average. Given that I didn't draft for an inch the whole ride, I'm pretty happy with that pace.

I downed my traditional polish sausage at the finish and rested for a couple of minutes, then grabbed my bike to ride 2 miles back to Carol's parents' house. I had another front flat! There was no way I was going to repair another one, so I just pumped it up as far as I felt like and rode it home. I made it. 5 flats in one day is a new record for me.

Back at the in-law's house I pretty much collapsed for the rest of the day. I rallied to walk the kids to the playground with Carol, but mercifully a storm started brewing so we headed back to the house and the sofa. I was pretty hammered.

The sponsoring club's web site now says that 279 people ended up registering for the ride and 155 of those signed up for 100 miles. It sure felt like fewer riders than that were on the road. I had long stretches of seeing no one. Other than the tackweed, this is a great ride. I think they should market it more to people like me from the west side of the mountains. The weather was perfect and the scenery is beautiful. Even the drivers are nice - only one driver passed me unsafely all day long.

Next big ride: The 7 Hills of Kirkland on Memorial Day. My loser friends assure me they'll actually ride that one with me.

Spring Fun

Spring Fun

This is somewhat of an experiment. I'm in the process of transitioning the infrastructure I use to manage this blog and related photo albums. I still have a lot of work to do to transfer all the existing content, but I can't keep you waiting forever for new photos! But the image link in this post may or may not work the way I hope.

The new photo album system (Picasa Web Albums) has several advantages. The main ones are the nice slideshow, and the fact that it scales the photos to whatever screen resolution you are using to view them. I know some of you use smaller screen resolutions - with the new albums you will never need to scroll to see an entire photo.

In family news, everybody is doing fine. Audrey is talkative as ever. She can entertain herself for long periods making up skits for her little fairy dolls. She also makes up her own languages. Charlotte continues to communicate better all the time. She comprehends many, many words and can answer a lot of questions with vigorous head nodding or shaking. She's starting to vocalize more and sometimes even strings sounds together with something resembling sentence cadence.

Carol is in the process of creating her third annual hand-painted children's furniture for the Co-op Preschool auction. We'll be sure to post photos when it's complete. And we now realize that after she finishes she has to paint a table and chairs for our own kids! Carol's been hitting the gym more and is enjoying that.

My contract at Rosetta Inpharmatics has been extended through the end of 2007. I still hope to get hired full time by then. I'm enjoying the rich scientific environment immensely. I continue to commute to work by bike almost every day, rain or shine. A little more shine these days, thankfully. Bike season is gearing up. I did a 70-mile ride a couple of weeks ago and a 62-mile organized ride last Sunday. I'm schedule to do my first century (100-mile ride) of the season on May 12 in Richland, WA (and spend Mother's Day with Carol's parents). The goal every year now is to get in plenty of miles before July when I do the Seattle to Portland ride with a bunch of friends: 204 miles in one day. I'm well on track this year.

For the technically curious, the current blog is managed using Wordpress and the photo albums using Gallery2. Both require maintenance (by me) to keep up with security patches and new features. I learned a lot doing it that way, but now I'd rather spend my time on other things. So I'm switching to Blogger for the postings and Picasa Web Albums for the photo albums. Both are Google products and all the infrastructure is managed by them, not me.

My Mother the Car

I came home from work today to this happy scene:



If you don't see a video player above this paragraph, you'll have to follow this link.

I'm grooving on this video thing now. It's a much better way to let you see video than the ambitious super deluxe DVD project I've been planning for three years but have never worked on.

Video Stars

My friend Alex, a younger version of myself (i.e. a real geek!), is always dragging me along into new technical frontiers. Lately he's been posting non-public videos of his daughter on the web for friends and family. I finally decided I have to keep up with him. So here, for your enjoyment, is our first (public, by nature of being linked here) video of Audrey and Charlotte.



Hope you enjoy it!

The Binkie Fairy Cometh

Audrey has a great fondness for her binkie(s). Over time we have purchased about 20 of them, growing in size as she did. Recently she has developed a few favorites, the "squeaky binkies", or as she says it, "squinky binkies." They are large binkies that have developed a leak so they squeak when she sucks on them.

Our pediatrician recommended that we get rid of pacifiers long ago, but we figured she'd give up the habit when she was ready. Lately, however, she has just seemed too old for it, and Carol was getting concerned that Audrey's teeth were being affected (alignment-wise). So, we decided it was time for a plan.

Carol had read previously about parents using the story of the "binkie fairy". We started preparing Audrey a few weeks ahead of time. Carol cut lots of photos of babies out of magazines and covered a cardboard box with them. Every once in a while, we would encourage Audrey to donate an old disfavored binkie to "the babies" by depositing it in the box. Then we told her that one day the binkie fairy would come and take all of the binkies - even the squeaky ones - and leave something under Audrey's pillow in return. Audrey decided that "thing" should be Disney fairy dolls that are connected to a new Tinkerbell movie that is coming out (her first instance of being influenced by advertising). Fair enough.

Last Friday the binkie fairy finally came. I managed to get the binkie out of Audrey's mouth in the middle of the night without disturbing her, and left the new fairy toys next to her pillow. At about 6:30am she showed up in our room with them and was very excited.

Audrey did pretty well all day. We usually keep pretty busy on weekends. Saturday night she was sad to go to bed without her binkie, but she did alright. Sunday, when she was upset about something and would normally use her binkie to calm herself, she complained, "I want the binkie fairy to come back and bring back my squinky binkie!" Poor thing.

She mentioned it a few more times over the next two days or so. But now it's been a week since we've heard a word about binkies. Carol and I always visit Audrey's room to admire her before we go to bed. We enjoy the fact that now we can see her whole face.

Another milestone passed!