It started out early Saturday morning with an uphill time trial (race against the clock up a mountain) up a trail called “Old Farm.”  It’s still hard for me to imagine how it’s possible to ride the 2 miles up the side of this mountain without having to get off the bike, but apparently it is.  There are huge roots and boulders with steep grade up to them and after them, that maybe someday I’ll have the guts to attempt riding up them haha. So it was partly a running race as well, and I finished middle of the pack.  Immediately following the timed uphill race is a timed downhill race back down it…but I got a flat barely into it and ruined the tire on the back, which was a bummer.  I walked back up to the top and caught a ride down with Ben W.  The next event was the dual slalom, but I skipped on it and went home to get a new tire, some tubes and see Lauren before the Short Track under the lights that night.

The short track race is a <1 mile loop for 20 minutes, with some sections of rock and tight turns out through the VT rec fields, and whoever can get the most laps in that time wins.  There were about 30 of us in the race and after a sprint to the course, this guy with a green jersey, who had won the uphill in men’s C (my category), was a little bit ahead of Jan and I.  We rode hard for what seemed like a long time, myself going back and forth with Jan in 2nd and 3rd.  Problem was that with the tight corners, it was hard to go much faster than we already were on the course, and through the whole race weren’t able to make up much time on green jersey guy.  Ben W was going to give me his sunglasses if I won…but by the end of the 20 minutes I had to settle for 2nd place after attacking Jan on the last lap.  Lauren had come out to watch the race, and I was really happy to get second with her there watching too.  Talking with Nick and John after the race got me even more excited for road season this year haha.

Number two! Look at that VT ownage

That was it for Saturday, I was super tired and just read a little bit before going to bed…lame haha but I had a race to get ready for the next day! Sunday morning I barely woke up in time to get out to the cross country (XC) race, which was a 10 mile course out in the Jefferson National Forest on the Poverty Creek Trail System.  I remembered how hard the course was last year, but for some reason thought that I was better now haha.  We started with a quarter mile on a gravel road before hitting the single track, and I put in a little effort and hit the single track with a lead on the whole field.  Into the woods on Poverty Creek was fun, it’s a hilly but not too technical trail and Matt Londrey and Jan caught up to me.  I rode hard ahead of them for a while, and we had to be getting pretty far away from everybody by the time we hit the technical stuff.  Having read “it’s not about the bike’ this summer, after I couldn’t shift into my small ring, and couldn’t clip in with my left foot….I soon realized that out in the woods on a MTB….it often is about the bike.  My left cleat came loose off of my shoe, and I had to stop to try to fix it.  By the time I got the dirt out of the screws and got the cleat back in though, everyone had caught up and passed.  Well, there went my race…I tried to ride hard for awhile, but by then trail was getting the best of me.  Prickly Pear is the name of it, and it’s rough haha.  It’s basically like trying to ride through baby head sized rocks up the side of a mountain, then back down, and again and again.  My right cleat came loose as well, this time as I stopped and tried to clip out, just the shoe turned so I fell right onto my side in a pricker bush…and was still pulling them out of my arm last night haha.  I somehow managed to finish, outsprinting a UVA guy at the finish! I was pretty let down by having mechanical failures put the nail in the coffin for my race…but that’s MTB’ing.  Turns out that I wasn’t the only one who had trouble, I didn’t even hear of a person whose bike didn’t break in some way on the stuff.

After the race, I got Stephan to give me a ride back to my car which I had parked at the top of the service road because it was so rough on my car that I just stopped and rode my MTB the four miles to the start of the race.  A bunch of us met up at Moe’s and I finally used the last of my Moe’s Money from the crew 5k freshman year haha.  The burrito I got was huge and delicious, and after endless nachos I was stuffed.  Sunday night Dave, James and I fired up the charcoal grill and grilled Filet Mignon for dinner, with steamed sweet corn as a side and it was a really good! We watched Thank You For Smoking and then played some guitar hero before I called it a night.

Altogether it was a great weekend, I realized how tough racing MTB’s can be regardless of fitness (and how expensive because they always break), managed to give back the pump and multi-tool I borrowed to their proper owners and get a tube back from the guy I gave my spare to during the race, and hopefully my ankle heals quick.  Next weekend’s race is at W&M and VCU, I think I might go!

Also thought I'd throw in this pic of my SRAM shifter completely disassembled, it came apart pretty easily haha

Driving down/day 1 (8/19)

Lauren and I made good time on our way down last Thursday, getting to my house in 9.5 hours with stops.  We had just missed Dave, but James was there to let me in and give me a key.  First walking through the house was really weird, because it was so moved in to and foreign.  The front yard was sprawled with scrap wood and the fridge was full of random food, and all that was in my room was the mattress and some of James and Daves stuff. After moving my stuff in from her car, into a pile in the corner, we went to Mike’s for dinner and then to Mary Kates for my car and things I had stored there.

My car was still stuffed full to the roof, and we put some things in Laurens car so I could make just one more trip…so much stuff! After letting my car run for a minute, it began to rev from 1k to 2k rpm in idle…not good.  I was going to try to drive it home still, worried though, and told Mary Kate that I would call her when I got home to let her know I made it.  The way home was scary, the car creaking, revving in idle, and complaining in general after a summer of neglect.  To my relief, we made it up the hill up Harding to my house, I was bummed that the car was not working though.  Lauren and I were both tired from all day driving, and I unloaded my car the remaining floorspace in my room and went to bed not long after, having bought new sheets at Target on the way there.

Friday, day 2 moving in

In the morning I went with Lauren to help her move in, and we got checked in to The Village. It was amazing how different her living situation is…its so clean and new, she had brand new carpet and all the furniture is from like target haha not the home depot scrap lumber bin. She was the first there, and after a little bit her parents got there and I helped to move all her things in. One by one the roommates were showing up and I helped moved them in as much as I could. After a little while she took me back home and I started to move stuff into my place.

Since the car was still running weird, I went to advance auto parts to pick up oil and an air filter to change those. The guy there said that he thought the car just needed to be opened up and driven. To get the last of my stuff (chair, TV, speakers) and drive the car, I headed to Mary Kates and on the way there drove the car hard across Lusters Gate Rd. After loading it up, on the way back it was no longer revving by hovering near 1100 rpm shakily. Up harding though, the check engine light came on and I thought I had killed it haha. Back at Advance, they read it with their computer and the code said I needed a new Idle Air Controller. That make perfect sense, bc the only time it was having trouble was idling. The part was $200 but I needed it, so I ordered it and it was supposed to come in on Wed. Good news was that I now knew what was wrong and driving the car wasn’t going to hurt it.

Back at the house, I unloaded the car and now all of my stuff was in my room…in piles around the mattress haha it was a mess with no desk or storage at all yet. After that I went out for dinner with Laurens roommates and her parents who treated us to Red Robin and it was really good.  Got a chili burger that I had to eat with a fork and a bottomless root beer float!

Saturday: Burke’s Garden Century and Day 3, shelf building

I got up super early in the morning and rode with Greg to a flat century that’s been going on for a few years now, about 30 minutes away as a get away from all of the campus traffic.  Long story short, I finished the century in just over 5 hours, at an average pace of 19.9 MPH! It wasn’t entirely flat, there was one climb that we did both sides of, but 80 miles were at less than 1% grade haha.  Going out, I thought that Greg and I were with the fast group when we broke away from them 20 miles in, until we got caught by Justin C and John Delong’s four hour group! They smoked by us, and I actually got caught up in their paceline and did a few pulls at 27-28MPH …and was recovering from that for the rest of the day.  With stops, I got back to my house at 2PM and showered and took a nap haha.  Then I spent the rest of day trying to get some shelves built so I could start to unpack.

For the first while I was back, I did manage to ride my bike after sleeping in till noon every day but with playing basketball with my dad and spending time with Lauren this most recent week, I’ve got a chance to spend this past week out of the saddle.  Every day it’s weird because I feel like I should be riding, and just have the urge to ride my bike all the time…adjusting to the real world where not every day is a 70 mile day haha.

I’ve tried to take some pictures of what I’ve been up to, and played some with my new 50mm f1.8 lens as well, which I really like.  So here’s what I got:

There were 8 teams in our age group now, and it was a close finish.  My Mom ran for the second year, and did awesome with a 7:27 pace making her the second woman over 50 yrs old! It was 151st place overall, and I was even suprised to see her so early at 23 minutes, and congratulated her before taking off.

Going out of the changeover zone is always a little scary, and you have to go really slow but after I was out of the gate I hit it hard.  Accelerating in a sprint to over 30MPH into the headwind, I was trying to keep up with some guy in full aero gear on a P3.  Eventually I caught him, and stayed with him for a mile or so before we caught a Bike and Build alum!! I was super excited to see that jersey, and shouted “bike and build!!” like we always did before catching up to him.  I talked with Max for a little while, and then we got to the steeper hill and I took off again.  I had lost the cervelo guy which felt good, and was passing people by the truckload going up the gradual incline at 25MPH into that headwind.  I lost steam pretty quickly though, and hung on to 18MPH over the rest of the hill into that wind before me made our left turn.  From there, I just went head down in the aerobars and hammered.  I was still passing people but it was thinning out.

I flew by the guy I had seen before the race on a Pinarello and thought about asking him to trade with me haha.  I knew the course well, and sprinted hard up the two steep little hills before the gradual downhill to the finish.  Never leaving my big ring the whole race, I felt like I was going to throw up at the top but relaxed approaching the second and made it over, never seeing below 20MPH on either of them.  I could hardly see anyone in front of me, and figured that by now I had to be near the front.  The gradual downhill to the finish had a tailwind, and I was going over 40MPH for a while which felt sweet.  It was not too long before the end that I passed Mike’s girlfriend, who’d had a 6 minute head start on me after Mike ran a 17minute 5k.  Going into the changeover I sat up, and looked at my computer which read an averaged pace of 24.3MPH without the transitions, and that felt good on this windy and hilly course.  I was tired coming into the finish, by the time I left the changeover I felt like I should’ve gone harder…

I had a really good feeling about how I did, since I didn’t get passed at all, and looking at numbers now had passed 133 bikers on the course.  After cooling down I couldn’t find my parents and had actually missed Lindsey finishing, but found them after a long search at her car loading the kayak.  It was about an hour after the race before I finally got some water (which I hadn’t taken with me) and some food.

It took a really really long time for them to post results of the bike leg, like three hours, but after I saw that they were up, I rushed over.  Able to see over the crowd, I started scanning down from 10th place for my name but didn’t find it.  So, I started at the top where Parker’s name was.  He has won every year that I have done the race, and his family’s team I don’t think has ever lost.  But directly below his name, was mine!! I got second!!

Second place baby!

3rd place team!

I was super excited, with the continual improvement every year since I started leading up to this.  My dad had seen Parker finish and he was on a TT bike, with an aero helmet, disc rear and deep front wheel…and I (with just aero bars, no helmet or bike or wheels) had lost to him by a mere 7 seconds! With equal gear, there is no doubt I would’ve won and it felt great knowing that I was likely the strongest rider on the short course of the 394 teams.

Lindsey had a strong kayak leg, I had our best biking time yet by a full 3 minutes, and my Mom had run well, and it was our best time ever in the race! Beating 2007 by 11 seconds, 2005 by 17 seconds and 2008 by 38 seconds haha.  We were third this year in our age category, out of first by only 30 seconds…

Aquanubs 2010!!

We spent the next day exploring Portland on a tandem bike that we rented which was a lot of fun.  We also got to meet up with all the Bike and Builders again which was cool.  We went up to the Rose Garden in the hills above Portland which was nice too.

We got around so quick on the bike that we had seen pretty much all of downtown Portland we wanted to haha, and the next day drove out the scenic Columbia River Gorge and did some hiking amongst the waterfalls.  For dinner we went down to Hood River to a brewery and watched the windsurfers before heading back to catch the plane.  A nice two days, but I was ready to get home after the whole summer!

Powell's Books, in d'town Portland is a full city block and four stories tall, the largest independent bookstore in the world!!

Hhahaha

Roses!

Voodoo donuts!

In front of Haystack Rock on the beach

At low tide, all the sea life on the rock was super cool

Sea anemone!

And breakfast that morning haha, it was picture worthy I must've thought

One of the highest waterfalls in the country I think, if not the tallest

The water was covered with wind surfers and kite boarders, and I heard one of them comment how few people were out then!!

Rock Bottom Brewery sampler!

Riding the tandem

Home

I haven’t done too much since I’ve been home, my days have pretty much went like this: wake up at noon, eat some breakfast my brother made and then go for a bike ride.  Come back to dinner my Mom made for me, then a few hour nap in the hammock and reading my book before friends come over and we drink some beers around a my expert bonfires haha.  It’s the life.  My first day back, I went for a 44 mile ride and climbed every big hill in the area including Churchill road going around Otisco Lake, and it is steeper than anything we climbed this summer!  I went down Munro (and back up) to see how fast I could get, but only a disappointing 54mph… And then Friday my ride was short, with the skin suit and I just put in some TT efforts in the bars to prepare to the Great Race this Sunday.

Riding into the ocean!!

Mom and I

Bike and buuuiiiiilllllldddd!!

The ride here was again relatively uneventful, as we inched toward our goal.  We set out with different strategies on how to ride today, as I was super eager to complete the journey and arrive at the Pacific but others wanted to savor this last ride for every second.  We were going to ride into town and into the ocean as a group though, so those of us readier to get to Cannon Beach had to wait for the others who chose to take a two hour coffee break in the morning and ride real slow, which was some of the toughest waiting, but we all got there.  It was something like a 65 mile ride today, which could have been done by 10AM any other day but we didn’t arrive at the beach until 4:30PM.  After two months of working hard toward completing this one goal, I’m not sure I can say fully what it means, because it hasn’t really sank in yet entirely.  I rode Kazane clear across the country, coast to coast, mile for mile.

Tonight, after we got back and showered (warmed up) we had a picnic with other family and friends who had come to witness loved ones finish.  I was super hungry, about 8 hours after my 10AM lunch, and we had cold cut sandwhiches and tons of desserts, and good beer.  I wasn’t so much a fan of the Inversion IPA, but would definitely recommend Alaskan Amber, of which I saved a bottle cap for my bike.  We got to meet other rider’s family which was great, our leaders spoke, and then we had a fire down by the water.  My Mom and Aunt left after awhile, and I spent some more last minutes with the CUS family over beer and these really cool mini-hot-air-ballon wish things before hopping in the van to come back to church for the night.  Everyone is asleep by this point I’m sure, and I’ll be saying goodbyes tomorrow at Noah’s house in Portland…

Portland, the city of bridges

Voooooodooooooo

Cool looking coffee from Stumptown....wonder if they tried to do that

Jesse chowin down on a waffle sandwhich thing haha

Sarah C got a tandem and Jake brought it out that night, so she could ride the last day.  I spent some time getting seats and pedals switched onto it, and we were all really excited that she was going to be able to ride into Cannon Beach the next day.  Hill-master Marky Mark was going to be on the front of the Tandem pulling up the hills, and it turned out to be a very good thing, he actually got tired!

Maple bacon bar! (at voodoo)

I slept again the hammock which was excellent, I love being creative finding places to hang it.  We were so close to being done, I didn’t even sleep that well I was so excited and was ready to go in the morning.  I thought I took a picture of my hammock job, can’t find any of the campsite though, oh well haha.

Hab-e-tat (Kristen's michigan accent haha)

My group consisted of Joe, Zach, Jesse B and myself.  A power build team if there ever was one, so we thought.  We were putting up the siding, which was pain-in-the-@$$ off-brand “hardy board.”  It didn’t cut well, and we had to try quite a few times to make some pieces that fit around stuff.  By lunch, we had hung a net of 0 boards haha, as we had to take down two from the day before, but we had the hang of it by then and made some real progress by day’s end.  Lots of pictures actually!

Dave with the kitten

And Sarah G

Kitten!

Christina

is

a

model

The roofs before we began

Jen loves her coffee haha...it's gross

He's also ready for a day of building!

Zach hammerin nails

Look at the concentration by Joe

Jesse must've got the short straw, he pick axed the hard ground all day haha

Noah's building at home

Caroline model shot haha

Marky Mark, he got a sweet tool belt somewhere

Finished roof!

It was a long day for the dog too haha

And here is my group’s work:

Start

Finish

The dinner was at Green Dragon Brewery, and I got have two excellent local beers, an amber and a stout.  They had door prizes, and as I was leaving I snagged a t-shirt haha.  I caught a ride and navigated with Debbie, Jen’s Mom up to Alberta Street where there was this HUGE street fair goin on.  It’s called Last Thursday, and the last thursday of every month people come out to sell homemade stuff, play really awesome music all over the place, make food, and hang out.  It was about 20 blocks long, and the streets were full of people for every one of those!  At the end of the night I got a ride back in the B&B van so I didn’t have to take the bus.  The concentration of hipsters was crazy, soooo many bikes and bike art and fixies…and I felt like I fit right in with the mohawk haha.

Joe enjoying the hammock in Gresham that night

Mt. Hood! We came pretty close to it

That title is actually quite misleading though, as the pass over Hood was dissappointly easy and I have yet to be in Portland, we’re staying in the suburb of Gresham.  The ride was great up next to the mountain, and coming way back down to good ol sea level.  Dinner was miraculous, with ice cream and apple juice, can’t beat that!  A special thanks to Noah’s parents for supplying the chocolate cake and fruit salad as well.

I started the morning with a slow packing of my bin, since I had taken it all apart to organize and clean.  Sleeping the night in the hammock (picture of that setup from last post) worked great, and it packs up in 2 minutes, quicker than rolling and deflating the thermarest!  Our awesome awesome hosts in Maupin had a wonderful spread of breakfast for us, and I ate lotsss for what had been hyped to be a challenging day.  I filled my camelbak for the first time in awhile, and am glad I did.

After our route meeting, and 20 seconds of dancing to no music that I time every morning, and our chant to Paige, I took off with Mark and Dave.  Jesse forwent riding with Alyson and was looking to ride fast for the first time in weeks, so he caught up with us.  On the climb out of the valley, we lost Dave unfortunately to a mechanical I think, and passed just about the whole group up the climb.  Its fun to start at the back and be able to feel the progress passing people haha.  If the trip lasted another few months though…who knows and I might be the one getting passed, the improvement of other riders has been awesome to watch.

After getting out of the valley it was pretty much flat as we approached the foothills.  Into the pine forest and we went up, gradually for a little while.  All the time we were wondering when the climb would start.  To our suprise, we saw a sign desisnating that we had ascending a pass of 4000ft…I didn’t notice that much uphill.  And then we went down, and lunch was early at 37 miles.  Zach had missed lunch so Mark and I went after him with a bunch of food, but after only a little bit more climbing…we went back down.  Signs for a 5 mile downgrade of 6% and the fact we were right at the side of the mtn meant we were done climbing, and that was anticlimatic.  But the descent was awwwesome, we went down forever!

I thought we’d went down below sea level haha so was suprised to see we were still at 1500ft, and we kept going down.  Eventually we made it to Sandy, and made a stop at the very famous Joe’s Donuts.  Two of the best glazed donuts I’ve ever had melted in my mouth and I got a root beer float for $1!

It was rolling from there, and it must be the low elevation cuz we pretty easily cruised, without tailwind, at 24mph up and down the hills all the way here.

At our host in Gresham, we got spoiled again with lots of great food, soda and such when we got here.  And yeah dinner was good, and now were gonna go out in Gresham.  I’m on a hot streak with hammock, check out todays spot haha.  (I think the pictures go at the top from the phone though).

Thanks for reading, tomorrow we got to Portland proper to build and brewery!

So these are the towns I need to write about…but I only got to tonight’s really.  If I’m feeling ambitious maybe ill write later, but enjoy anyway ha.

Unity

John Day

Dayville and my 21st!

I slept up in the sanctuary and they didn’t find me to wake me up right before breakfast which was nice.  When I woke up, the first thing I told Aileen was how mature I felt now that I was 21 years old.  It was a really short day on the bike, which I rode how they had decorated it, although it got really hot and stayed unbearably so inside at the host.  in town, I exercized my newfound rights, by the river and it was a lot of fun.

I slept in the kitchen which was cooler and so got a refreshingly good nights sleep.

Fossil

One sentence: beautiful desert valley, huge awesome melting climb, music at dinner, and sleeping in a real bed!

Maupin

Today we started out a tad later, waking at 6 and I won the rock paper scissors face-off to drive to the church.  It was only like 5 blocks, but still the first time behind a wheel in two months.  Really wasn’t that exciting though.  The best part was that when we turned on Tim’s radio we got to jam to “Dancing Queen” for that minute and a half! Breakfast was pancakes and scrambled eggs, everything I could ask for.

Leaving town we hit the first climb within a mile, and although I was already with the lead group, I felt great and took off.  Flying up the hill, I was adapting “I’ll Fly Away” in my head to I’ll Climb Away and my legs didn’t tire all the way up.  At one point it switched back to where I could see people below me and I shouted to them haha.  At the top was one of the ladies I had talked to the night before who did international relief work and had Kristen and Alyson for the night, taking pictures.  I stopped and chatted with her for awhile more, and waited for the others.  They got there and then down the hill we went together, and it was a sweet dowhill.  By the bottom it was just Will G and I, before long though we were going up again.  The second climb seemed to last forever, and after awhile Tio got a flat.  I waited with him, and took the tiny villanous sharp rock out of his tire.  Mark passed us outta nowhere, then Joe and Aileen and then Noah and Emily waited with us.

After he got it changed we all took off and I started cruisin, then it was just Noah and I.  It felt good flying up again, I could feel the first climb though.  Eventually we passed Joe and Aileen back, but knew Mark was long gone.  After what seemed to be like 12 miles of climbing, we reached a summit and stopped to stretch and wait for ppl.  When Aileen pulled up, she looked to horizon and out of the desert we could see giant Mt Hood rising above.  It was awesome and I don’t know how we didn’t notice.  The mountain appeared so huge and was all snow covered, out of the desert that as other caught up and we pointed, Tio most memorably just screamed “Good lord!!” haha.

Another sweet descent took us into the tiny town of Antelope and to lunch, where we had brown bag lunches complete with cold cuts from our hosts in Fossil!  I took off with Mark and Dave, and right out of lunch, up we went.  It ended up being just Mark and I, and at mile 40 we made the turn onto the Bake Oven.  From here, we could clearly see three giant white mountains…and couldn’t tell which was Hood.  The Bake Oven was hot but downhill and tolerable.  We had heard of a massive climb at the end of the day, but as we grew closer the only mountain was that giant one, presumably Hood, and were going downhill still.  We approached the Descheutes River and its massive gorge, and before long took an incredible descent down to the river level and to Maupin.  The town was on the other side of the bridge and up the other side of the gorge a little, which I guess was the climb there but it was nothing, lame.  When we hit the steep descent, the hot air hit us literally like an open oven in the face.  It was suuper hot in town, and we debated ice cream but went to the host first.  Good thing we did, cuz they had root beer floats ready!! And tons of other snacks and goodies, and ac…heaven.  Dave was right behind us and before too long others started rollin in.

Tonight I then got to hammock, read, talk to Lauren, sort my bin for the final time and now blog wirelessly from the hammocl before bed! I don’t feel much like doing the other posts on this little thumb keyboard right now tho haha, its finally cooled off and I’m gonna catch some shut eye before our big day tomorrow over the mtn and into Gresham (portland)!