1. Spring? 2. Ski racing 3. Econ

Today, I went for a noon run btwn classes, and I could've swore it felt like spring out there. The clouds were breaking and sun was poking through, and we had melted off the half inch of snow from the night before. Things were looking good, at least for about an hour. It didn't take too long before heavy sleet was falling a couple hours later.

Last weekend we drove up to welches to stay overnight, and get some skiing in. They had a little 10k skate race at meadows nordic so I decided to give it a go. Why not make the first ski of the season a race? These things are not very heavily attended, but there were probably about 25 people all together. The race started out, at a pretty conservative pace, so I tried to dart off the front and get out of sight, to see exactly what I was dealing with here. Well, It was a good idea, because I got a lead, but I didn't get out of sight. I was in good form (technique wise), and not so good form (speed wise). Plan A was to ski hard and ignore my competitors about 30 yards back. Plan B was to fall back and rest, ski behind these guys, and then go for the sprint at the end. I was working hard, so I decided to stay out front. The race ended with one lap around the meadow, which would be the 3rd time through the meadow for the race. I made it to the end of the meadow where we turned around and came back to the finish and my lead was still about the same, or a little less. So I tried to punch it a little more. There was no looking back, I had the race. I was starting to experience the trill of victory, about 100 meters were left in the race. Something happened. I must have planted a pole in between my skis. I fumbled once, bounced on one foot, then bam my knees hit, and I was face first on the trail. My glasses came off my head. Should I pick them up? No you dumb ass, get up and go. But it was too late. I got passed by two old guys, and although I was still on the podium, I got a little agony of defeat. There was my wide world of sports weekend. It was awesome to be back on the snow, and it's definatly something that is worth it to make a little more time for this winter. Here's a pic of the wonderful drive home, and it was wonderful, depending at how you view winter weather.


I'm no economist, but I've read some books, and think I'm pretty reasonably educated. Today on the AM news, there was more bad news about the housing market. You'd have to assume that we would have another couple hundred point drop in the stock market, but in fact it was just the opposite. DOW was up 1.45% and S&P was up 1.76%. The screwballs on wall street think the fed will drop the rates another 1/2 point. I know I'm probably not the only one that's thought of this, but to me, this sounds like a coming mega economic disaster. How did we get into this housing 'crisis'? I might be wrong, but low borrowing rates sure didn't hurt. Why not lower rates even more, and make it even cheaper to borrow, so the whole thing starts back up again. Where do these idiots running things think this will go?

And the damn economic 'stimulous' package? How much less do the retards at the white house want the US dollar to be worth? Why not print up a few trillion dollars and give us even more money to spend. I have no solution to the mess, I guess we'll have to wait and see how things play out.

Big News

The one car household is no more!!! That's right, we submitted to the pressure of the american way, and now Lgirl and I once again, each have our very own gas powered auto. We got a rally car!!! 1990 honda civic lx, with quarter million+ miles! It's not lowered but compared the the subaru, it's like a damn indy car. So far, it runs good (knock on hard wood), and the price was right. It even came with a sweet stereo and yakima rack and a seat pad that has a heater and vibrates, so who the hell could go wrong!? Bought it for less than my SAN JOSE for goodness sakes!!!

It should do the job to get me back and forth around town when conditions are not bike weather. One could argue that all weather is bike weather, especially here in Ptown, but the night classes in the winter that get done at 10pm, don't bode well to biking home.

If the motor dies in the next couple of years or so, I'm going to find an electric motor and some batteries and wire it up to be the electric car of the future. If someone wants to donate batteries and electric motor, I will expedite the EV conversion, and begin work next summer.

In other news (and the only other news besides the fact that I'm swamped in school and work)-
I'm running more these days. Maybe getting ready for this.

bye bye '07

The year of moving. We moved twice this year, and we just moved to a new house over the holiday's and boy, was that a drag. It's still a drag because there's still alot of stuff to be put away.

Story... We were moving a few final car loads yesterday, from the old house, to the new house (that's still pretty old) and what the hell... the NEXT door neighbor's (at the old house) walked up and introduced themselves. We've only been living there over six months and on the last day we were going to be there, they finally say 'hi'. I mean we've exchanged hello in passing, but never more than a word. I guess we're partially to blame for not walking over and saying hi as well, but we were busy trying to find our way around town and find shelter from the rain. The good part of this story, is when we finally got all of our crap over the the new house we were out in the back yard with the dogs, and the new next door neighbor's at the new house, walked up and said hello, and we had a nice chat. So it was nice to meet them, and in a kinda sorta evil way, I hope the new renters at the old house are loud, messy and obnoxious. Ok, I guess not that would be bad karma.

Other news... So we were at a Christmas party with some folks from L-girls (disclaimer: Lgirl=wife=Laurie) work the other week. It was a standard household pot luck style party complete with the big cheese and crackers trays, and little jonnies in the crock pot.

Since I didn't know anyone, I got to talking geeky computer stuff w/ a husband of a guy L-girl works with. So we were talking about snow and cold weather and hockey and that kind of thing. I said, yea, back where I grew up in Minnesota it was cold... And we skated on the rinks outside. And he said, I'm from Minnesota! St. Cloud. I was like woah 'SO ARE WE!!'. A fellow Stearns county compatriot! We were most definitely 3rd cousins or something... Well maybe not. That was a pretty amazing small world moment. His last name was Sand and he moved away when he was young, but still has many family members there.

Now on to 2008, where there will be lots of School, some work, and hopefully lots of kick ass competition to keep hope alive!

Peace out and see you on the other side.

bike sticker

I saw a sticker on a fender of a fellow bike commuter on the way to work today that read: "Live Free or Drive"

Gotta love it. Sounds like a good motto for 2008.

If you want to get tough, move to Portland and bike commute all winter. You won't think it's so bad going out riding when it's in the 30s and rainy. Before the past few weeks, that kind of riding sucked pretty good. I would probably opt to not ride. But with some good equipment (rain wear and fenders), after a few weeks of pretty shitty weather, it's no big deal. That is if you can handle the depression that goes along with the endless winter here (no snow, cloudy all the time, super short days). And when it did snow here on Christmas day, people were literally dancing in the streets. I'm not even talking about accumulating snow. Just the wet crappy snow that melts when it hits the ground. And on the local nightly news, we got today classified as a white Christmas. KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD!

Here comes the rain again...

It's been a busy time after the cx season ended, first with finals, and now moving. That's right, moving. How are you spending your christmas vacation? No vacation here.

Aside from the big storm that caused all the problems on the coast a few weeks ago, it's been pretty decent weather-wise, until this week. I guess it's not even too bad, considering what the bike commute might be like if it would be 10 degrees cooler with the same winds and precip. 40F and gusting wind driven rain isn't bad compared to 30 with wind and snow. Of course if it was snowing like that here I think the city shuts down. But the cascade mountains are getting snow now, finally, as the skiing reports that I've heard so far have been pretty ugly. The skiing in the midwest however, is awesome this year, for the first time in 8 or so years according to my brother. Speaking of my Brother, he's engaged to Danielle now... Congratulations!

So next week we are going to move most of our stuff from Sellwood to Westmoreland (next to sellwood). By 2008 we should have everything moved. The bad news is, moving sucks no matter what. The good news is it's still a very walkable neighborhood and we'll have ample room for a basement bike shop / renewable energy laboratory, and a huge back yard for the greyhounds to do their racing (even though they're retired-they still like to go at it every once in a while).

More updates as necessary.

Phone number

We canceled a phone number. Do not call 503-327-8643 any more, but instead roll back to the 541 phone number (610-9679). That number has not changed and it's not new.

Right now, it's 36 degrees and raining at 40 feet elevation. You'd think it was about to snow if you knew better. But I don't think it is going to yet anyway. Based on the temperature, and the precipitation, which is not all water when it hits the car windshield but then immediatly melts (you know it has that slushy look to it when it hits the window and then the wiper blade swipes it away.) So it may be snowing in the PDX at some point this winter, since we still have just under a month to the solstice.

In other news, 2 finals next week, one the week after.

Coming soon, a demonstration of a solar powered robot that we built in circuits class.

sscxwc

The first ever experience cx (cyclocross) was a race I watched at riverside park in St. Cloud, MN, my hometown. The weather was cold and windy, and the race looked really hard. There was a bunch of beer and pork chops. There was a few people there but most were racing. There were no crowds.

So up here in Portland cx I've got into it a bit more, doing some of the races in the cross crusade series. They know how to throw down a cross race out here. There is a Halloween edition in astoria (that I missed), but you'll see costumes in each of the 7 weekly races. There are huge crowds every weekend. Last weekend was the official un-official world championships of single speed cyclocross. Estacada has a pretty good venue watching and racing. We're talking costumes. A tequila shortcut, dodge ball zone, lady in a bikini cheering all day, tons of intoxicated people yelling at all the riders. Here are a few picks I caught of the action...







Here's the leaders going through the tequila shortcut. It was a rowdy bunch.

the lead pack.

So I did not race in the world championships. I didn't attend the qualifier on Saturday, because of other stuff I had to get done. It was a spectacle, that's for sure. I did race the regular singlespeed race for the regular cross crusade, so that was just fine. I placed better than I have before getting top 20, so that was cool, but I got outsprinted again!!! Second week in a row. This time it was after the muddy run up with the crowd, and I was ahead of this guy by a bike length. Then we both had to get off the bike, and run up, only I pushed my bike instead of shouldering it, like a good cx boy. Well, I couldn't run fast enough to stay ahead of him and by the time I realized I should have picked up my bike it was too late. oh well. I'm learning.

State championships is this weekend at Hillsboro stadium. The only thing that might keep me away is electric circuit's homework and a chemistry test on Tuesday. After this weekend you can still race for 2 more weekends in Portland if you want to, a psuedo cross race on the 25th and the grand prix of cyclocross on Dec. 1st and 2nd.

So this time of year I've usually had the bike hung up. This year I've been biking to work every day (4 days / week) and I only drove the car to school a few times. And cross racing. So that's all. We are staying in Portland for Thanksgiving going over to Laurie's brothers house.

Oil Record High, Dollar Record Low

Up on yahoo fiinance this morning (oil record high, dollar record low)... another day another dollar... or is it? What it is, is a broken record.

School is keeping me too busy, and work is keeping me entertained. Cyclocross is keeping me alive.

I did not improve my placings this weekend at Barton Park (Cross Crusade #5), but I did finish, and I did crash, got up, and then sprinted (unsuccessfully) for 29th place. Next weekend is the World Championships. Rumor is that trebon, cameron, craig, decker, etc are all going to be there. Just qualifying for the finals on sunday will be admirable. It's looking to be muddy, for once. We've had amazingly dry weather for the past few weeks.