Waldo Lake Mtn. Biking

This past weekend Thor & I and our friend Sean went to Waldo Lake to mountain bike for the weekend with a group of people I knew through River City Bicycles. We camped at North Waldo Campground -- which was beautiful -- but POPULAR. Our friends Julia & Dean got there on Wednesday and saved us a spot and they said the campground was completely full by Thursday afternoon. We'll have to remember that in case we want to go back next year. The location was perfect because we didn't have to shuttle to any of our rides - the trailheads were right there in the campground!

Thor & Sean prepping to ride on Saturday.

A shot of the campground across the lane from ours where we spent the majority of our time drinking beer by the campfire!

Saturday we rode the Waldo Lake Trail that circumnavigates Waldo Lake. The trail is about 22 miles long and begins & ends in the campground. We rode into the 'burn section' first - there was a fire in the area about 1996 that burned one side of the lake -- here's a shot I took of the burn section from across the lake.


A shot of myself on one of Thor & I's many breaks. (Thor was very nice and rode with me the whole time - which was great because I'm just learning about shifting & things like that and was by far the slowest rider of the bunch).


Another shot of Waldo Lake on Saturday. The lake is incredibly clear -- we could see to the bottom no matter how deep the lake got -- absolutely gorgeous!


Sunday we headed out towards the Twin Peaks Trail. I say headed because only a few people actually made it there. I managed to break my chain twice on Sunday. grumble. Here's shot of the first obstacle that rallied my chain:


I swear it was worse than it looks in the picture! The resulting damage is below -- we had to take out 3 links in my chain.


About 30 minutes later we hit a long section of uphill and just as I was getting to the top -- PING! My chain blew apart again. Here's a shot of Thor & our friend Brice fixing my chain for the second time.


After this second episode (minus two MORE links from my chain) I opted to ride back on the main road so the boys could continue on towards the top of Twin Peaks. This resulted in my riding my new single speed mountain bike along 8 miles of this:


Not so much fun. Fortunately for me my friend Sage had stayed back in camp so when I got there she was ready to go hang out on the boat dock with cold beers & snacks. Yum. We also got a good amount of swimming in right in the middle of the day -- here's a pic of Sage before we started swimming for the afternoon.



It was a great weekend with good friends & excellent trails -- I think we'll definitely head back to ride there next summer too!

Anna's birthday!

Today is Anna's birthday -- and looked what bloomed in our garden this morning just in time to celebrate!!! It's a gorgeous dahlia -- a deep cherry red with bright yellow tips on the petals. It is huge - larger than a softball! I wish I could give it to Anna as a present on her big 2 - 6 (um...you are turning 26, right?) but she will just have to make do with this picture until she decides to move to Portland (shameless plug for Anna to leave Hawaii and move closer to me!)

Lil' Nick's Red Hat

I finally finished Nick's little Norwegian hat the other day. I was on pace to have it finished before he was born -- and then he showed up 6 weeks early which put a damper on my motivation to finish a hat mid-summer when it was 90 degrees every day. Here's the glamour shot of Nick with the hat on for the first time. Obviously it's still a little large for him, but that's okay since it's still pretty warm here right now. The hat should fit him perfectly by mid-winter - it will be his apres ski piece.


I used a pattern out of Dale of Norway's pattern book - Designs for Baby (#162)
The pattern is #16209 and I used Dale Baby Ull yarn in red (#4018) & cream (#0020).

Mom's First Packrafting Trip

My mom came to visit this past weekend with the goal of getting out in a packraft for the first time. Turns out she couldn't have picked a better weekend for it! On Saturday it was 103 degrees -- oof. I was originally planning on racing the Swan Island Crit on Saturday, but with the temperatures so high Thor & my Mom decided to go packrafting and threatened to leave me to battle the high temperatures with no cheering squad - so I did what any disciplined, committed bike racer would do and bailed on the crit.

We headed out towards Estacada to take my mom down the Clackamas River for her first float. We put in at Fish Creek and took out after Big Eddy. I would say the entire float took about 3 hours.

Here's a picture of my mom before she got in the boat for the first time. It was an eye opener to her how tight the boats needed to be blown up!

Mom heading down her first set of rapids. At the bottom the river took a bend to the right and she got swept into the eddy on the left hand side of the river. This gave her her first chance to ferry across the river. Fun!


Here's Thor behind mom shouting instructions as her bow is caught by the water and flipped her into the current. Mom got a lot of practice trying to ferry across this rapid to the downstream side, but in the end she was successful (without flipping her boat like Thor did) and we were able to continue on downstream.

Here's my mom in her second set of rapids - this is right above Carter Falls.

Thor shooting the left side of Carter Falls.

Me in Carter Falls.

Thor and I mid-float in a brief moment of non-rascally behavior.

And then immediately back to trying to flip each other over in our boats (sadly this is a game I am very bad at & usually ends poorly for me unless Thor takes pity and releases the stern of my boat).

Having fun on the river!

Here is the second-to-last rapid that we ran through with my mom - at this point she was pretty comfortable in the boat and ran the drops like a champ!

Mom on approach with Thor shouting encouragement & directions!

She almost lost her paddle here, but was able to hang out and bounce through with no problems! She actually hauled her boat back up on shore and hiked upstream to run this stretch again!

Here I am about to drop into the same section.

You almost can't see Thor here - he ran the rapid at far river left - but he's there - hidden behind the wave.

Cyclocross: A Tutorial

Some of you asked earlier this spring, "What is Cyclocross?" Here is a video from a Cyclocross race that my friend Abby & I went to watch last year. It gives you a good idea of race conditions during the rainy season in Portland.

Oakridge Mtn. Biking!

This past weekend we went to Oakridge, OR for a great weekend of mountain biking and camping with a group of our friends. Our group consisted of our friends Sean, Tom, Shana, Becky, Josh, Megan, Sarah, Thor & myself. We left mid-afternoon on Friday and camped at Black Canyon Campground just outside of Oakridge. Our plan was to ride the Alpine Trail on Saturday and the Middle Fork of the Willamette on Sunday. Here's a video of the Alpine Trail taken by a local rider via his helmet cam:



Here's a shot of us getting ready to leave the Subaru for the shuttle on our way to ride the Alpine trail

Becky, Sarah, Megan & Josh at the parking lot before the ride.

The crew trying to fix Sarah's brake. Her lever decided to start sticking mid-ride.

At the beginning of the ride we were disappointed to end up in the rain! Fortunately it cleared up before we started riding downhill, but here is a shot of Megan & I riding across a meadow in the mist.

One of the many overlooks on our trail showing off how much farther we had to descend.

Somehow I managed to load my pics all out of order and I can't figure out how to re-arrange them now that they're posted. hmph. So these shots of Josh are actually from Sunday at the top of Moon Point - the trail we road before dropping down onto the Middle Fork.






These shots are of myself, Sarah & Becky before the ride on Saturday at the Alpine Trail.












Here is a pic of me looking really sad after I tried to do a track stand on my bike and ended up crashing while still clipped in instead. Oops!

Becky & Josh out on Moon Point at the beginning of our ride on Sunday.

Thor & I in the same spot!

Here's the group. From the left: Sean, Megan, Becky, Thor, Josh & squinty Sarah!

Sarah & Megan in their matching outfits. Aren't they just the cutest?

Luna Triathlon

This past Saturday was the Luna triathlon out in Fairview, OR (not far at all from Portland). Kathryn & Aunt Susanna came down from Seattle to race in the individual race, and I did the triathlon as a team event with my friends Tashiana & Katie. We were team TaSaKa (TAshiana, SArah, KAtie -- clever, eh? um, no. but it was the best we could come up with). Katie & Tashiana came to pick Kathryn & I up at 6:45 on Saturday morning. Check out the bright, eager faces I was met with when they showed up:

Enthusiasm was not high (perhaps not enough coffee?) -- so Kathryn tried to lift the mood by showing everyone her lucky elephant statue that she was bringing to the race for good luck. Things could only go up from here.


Tashiana & Katie had both perked up a bit by the time we got to the race site - we hadn't exactly left a ton of time before the start of the race, but it was enough to make it though the restroom line and get a quick shot of the team before we ran off to our respective start areas. (Quick side note: Tashiana had to show the poor man how to use our camera. He was attempting to take the picture with the lense facing him. Ah well - the picture came out well). For those of you who have not met Tashiana & Katie - Katie is on the left, I am the middle & Tashiana is on the right.

Here is Aunt Susanna - smiling gleefully at the thought of plunging into the water at 8:15 am!

Tashiana - scoping the competition before her swim leg. (Her suit was awesome - it made her so easy to spot!)

Kathryn's new Facebook picture. By this point she has forgiven me for not racing the entire triathlon. There were some tense moments at dinner the night before when it came out that I would not, in fact, be braving the lake water in my bathing suit.

This is my friend Becky - she raced the entire triathlon and it was her first one!

Becky, Aunt Susanna, Kathryn & Tashiana before the start of the first wave.

Me getting my bike shoes on in a mini panic as I realize Tashiana's 'pink' wave is finishing faster than I thought they would!

Tashiana - powering in at the end of her swimming leg.

Katie - getting ready to do her part by zipping through the running portion of the tri!

Me - attempting to gasp out Katie's name as I am coming into the tag zone. She & Tashiana didn't recognize me with my long hair!

It may not look like it here - but I am barely able to catch my breath! There was such a headwind on the first half of the bike - I was almost 4 mph faster on the way back!

Kathryn in her uber hot TwinSix jersey racking her bike before the run portion.

Heading out on the course.

Katie powering into a strong finish for our team. We were the second team overall!

Tashiana with our team medal. We made Tashiana keep the medal because it was her first race ever. First. Race. Not first triathlon - the girl has never even done a community 5K. Way to go Tashiana!!!!! Best quote of the day: "I think I've got 'The Bug' guys! Can we do another one?"


Kathryn finishing her race. She promptly comes over to me and announces she's going to go and run another 3 miles. (I should mention here that she's training for a marathon...the girl is committed!)


Becky - still smiling at the end of her race. I even got a high five from her as she rounded the corner into the finish!

Aunt Susanna at the end of the 5K run with Kathryn escorting her on in along the lake.

After a job well done Katie & Tashiana were happy to relax in the warm grass.