John’s Ramblings

No big events, no epic attempts at solo centuries. Just a casual, bicycle-centric weekend.

Sunday, I took Terri out for a little bit of an extended valley spin, with your’s truly deviating a couple of times to do some climbing at Cemetery Hill off Orillia Road, and the extended Macadam Loop in Tukwila. Terri is lovin’ the new bike.

Sunday I took Terri out to breakfast, then went for a short spin with “the guys”. Insert adolescent humor here:

Sunday night, we went to the Cirque du Soleil show Corteo. The show was great, as it has been the other three times we’ve been to Cirque. The “plot-line” of the show is the celebration of the life of a clown who has passed away. Not necessarily the happiest of topics, but his spirit rides into the afterlife on a bicycle. I should hope so.

Just over a week until the Ride of Silence.  I hope you all can find a local version of this ride to attend and help honor those injured or killed by collisions with automobiles.

In two weeks, I’ll be riding day three of the Century Ride of the Centuries in Pendleton.  I’m very much looking forward to this ride in Eastern Oregon, as it is always fun and very well supported.  They still have some availability for this ride, but registration will close at the end of this week, and no on-site registrations will be taken this year.  Get ‘em while they’re hot.

We hosted Thanksgiving again this year, but it ended up being a far different affair than in recent history. Usually we have various branches of the family come from the area, resulting in 16-20 folks.

This year it turned out that the other branches of the family had other dinners to go to or host. So as we sat down to dinner, we had 5… Terri and our three collective kids (now grown). Soon we were joined by the youngest member of the family, our 6 year old granddaughter.

So there wasn’t the hustle and bustle of years past, but it was a lovely Thanksgiving nonetheless. We reflected on our first Thanksgiving for our assembled family unit, 21 years ago to the day. Lots of smiles, warm thoughts, and a couple of tears shed as we reflected on how we were thankful to have each other.

Thanksgiving, indeed.

Regular readers know of the truck in the yard, a couple of weeks ago.

Our family had another close call with a truck last night. Son Brendan was driving home from work last night when a truck lost one of its wheels somewhere in front of him on Hwy 99. The car just in front of him saw the tire and swerved at the last second, but Brendan went over the top of the damn thing. He’s fine, but the undercarriage of his Focus is much the worse for wear. The car was not drivable, and it was leaking its little life-force away on the pave.

A quick search of a local news outlet confirms what my feeble memory recalls from this past summer: This story recounts 5 incidents of tires coming off trucks in the area, and one resulted in a fatality. Despite the likely loss of Kegel (Brendan named his car), we are feeling very lucky this morning.

My birthday was last Friday. The family indulged me with many cycling-related gifts and my perennial fave, german chocolate cake. Because my son is connected to the culinary arts program at South Seattle Community College, he thought to commission a cake through the college. The result, which bears the likeness of cartoon characters Wallace and Gromit, is shown here:

I was absolutely blown away by this cake. The little wedges of “cheese” on the border are marzipan. If anyone is looking to hire the pastry chef that did this work (full-time), email me and I’ll hook you up.

For those unaware of who the characters are, I’d recommend renting “Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit“. I discovered Wallace and Gromit (and their creators, Aardman Studios) via two shorter features for these two characters, “The Wrong Trousers” and “A Close Shave”.

Although I’m old, need few knick-nacks, and am generally a pain in the ass to shop for because I’ve already gotten what I want anyway, everyone did great. I received a couple of cool cycling books that will give me some good reading material on while I’m camped during RAW, and an uber-duffel bag that will easily accommodate my gear. When I return from 6 consecutive days of riding, I’ll recuperate by watching my 3 dvd set of the original 3 seasons of Ren and Stimpy.

Sunday was Father’s Day. Terri and I had scheduled a Newcomer’s Ride for the Cascade Bicycle Club. The idea was to extend the range of some of our regulars with a 100% road-ride, as opposed to the local multi-use trails. The ride was from Auburn to Flaming Geyser State Park, a 24 mile out-and-back.

My 23 year old son Brendan has been living with us for the past year as he finishes the Culinary Arts program at South Seattle Community College. He also works in the catering division at the new Seattle Art Museum, so his schedule is congested, to say the least. It worked out that he had Sunday completely free, so he joined us for his first taste of club riding.

Brendan has just gotten his road bike a month or so ago. It seems that just about everyone in the kitchen where he works commutes via bike to save gas and parking fees. Being surrounded by cyclists at work and home, it was only a matter of time before we had another convert.

Locals will remember that Sunday was overcast and cool. It wasn’t the greatest day for a ride, but I had a great time. For most of the ride out to the park, I “swept” the group with Brendan just ahead of me. I watched him ride and gave out a few tips, all whilst “minding my station” with the occasional “Car Back!” call.

I’ve ridden Green Valley many, many times. I know every pothole, gravelly driveway, narrow bridge and turn on this road. The scenery is lovely, and I love watching the young animals this time of year stretching their legs. It is relaxing, but also familiar. On this day, however, it was a little slice of life, a “dad” moment that I will cherish for years to come. I am a lucky man.

He’s been kinda busy, on several fronts:

Cycling: I’ve had two rides, Tuesday the 2nd I did 25 miles with the Use It or Lose It gang. The weather was crappy before and after the ride, but it was warm and no rain fell on our little out-and-back trip to Sumner. I skipped Thursday as I was in the throes of a headcold, and did not want to exacerbate matters with a ride in 40 degree temps. Saturday I went out solo, and did 19 miles in the valley to shake out the cobwebs a bit.

Rim Failure: I’ve been riding my fair-weather bike, as my new wheels have not been finished by the boys at Ti-Cycles. I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to fetch them tomorrow before the night ride. It looks like it’s going to be a wet ride, so I’d much rather be riding my winter bike with the fenders.

Bent Car: My car ended up staying at the auto body place for the weekend, as they had not quite gotten it done on Friday. In the meantime, I drove around in a Ford Focus Hatchback, which was roomy enough to stash my bike in the back, but has seats that were designed by the Bishops during the Spanish Inquisition. I picked the car up this afternoon, and it looks perfect. All the repairs and the car rental were direct-billed to the insurance company of the person that backed into my car. Thank you, Kirmac Auto Body. Nice job!

Gauntlet: Today is Terri’s birthday, but we celebrated on Sunday with dinner at Salty’s. I’m halfway through The Gauntlet with the end in sight.

College Bike: Also on Sunday, I got in touch with my ex-mother-in-law. About 25 years ago, when I was not cycling but owned a bike I had bought in college and ridden up until about 1980. My ex’s younger brother wanted to borrow my bicycle for a while. Rumor has it he never even rode the thing, but it has been hanging in his mom’s garage ever since. I had no recollection about what brand it was or even the color, but Sunday morning we went by and picked it up. It’s a Centurion (predecessor to Diamondback), vintage approx. 1975, 10 speeds. It is pretty well preserved, and not too badly rusted. The tires are shot, as are the brake pads. I may replace those, give it a quick lube, and try it out on the trail. If it is anywhere close to fitting me, I may convert it to a fixed gear bike to do some training and playing on.

Spin Class: I did the spin thing tonight. Class was packed with all the new year’s resolution people, but I got a trainer and class was o.k. Music was so-so tonight, but I tuned it out and got a good workout. He actually played Celine Dion. In Spin class. What is the world coming to?

Advocacy: I had written to King County and the City of Auburn in an attempt to get some sort of fix put in for the Interurban Trail near my house. The trail floods with any moderate rainfall, forcing a detour through truck traffic. The King County Trail folks have inspected this section, and they believe that the flooding may be the result of a clogged culvert. Now the challenge is to see who has jurisdiction over the culvert, the City of Auburn or Union Pacific Railroad. The county folks have promised to track that down, however, so I’m hopeful we can get this problem fixed.

A whopping 44 miles, ytd.

Every year on the day after Thanksgiving, they come out of hiding. Staring, always staring at you. Terri used to insist on having them inside the house. They sat on a big shelf in the family room, behind the couch. They were directly behind you as you sat watching television, unblinking eyes boring a hole in the back of your head.

This year I made a strong suggestion that we put them outside the front door. I bought the box of uber-ornaments at Costco a couple of weeks ago, and incorporated them into a whole icicle light extravaganza in the front entryway. It’s no Maurice Sendak Nutcracker scene, but we live at the end of a dead-end street, and there’s only 5-10 people that will see it anyway. The snow people are going to hang out on the front porch, watching anyone that approaches.

Tomorrow I’m scheduled to lead the Turkey Jerky ride from Auburn to Black Diamond at 9:30 in the morning. At present, it looks like the weather will allow a ride, but it will be touch-and-go depending on how things develop overnight. There appears to be some weather factors converging that could result in snow by Saturday afternoon or evening. If it comes sooner, or if the temperatures are below freezing, I may have to pull the plug. I had one fellow call me today, stating with certainty that “it won’t snow tomorrow, I’ll see you at the start”. I didn’t recognize his name as one of our trusty meteorologists, but he can’t be much more inaccurate than they are.

If you are coming to the ride, bundle up!