Thanksgiving Weekend!

For the Thanksgiving weekend Thor & I headed up to the Tacoma/Seattle area to visit with my Grammi and other family. It was a really nice, relaxing weekend - with a lot of Chicken Feet(dominoes) played and an epic James Bond marathon on Thanksgiving day (I don't think I've ever watched over 3 James Bonds in a row before!)

Here's Thor carving the turkey!

Mmm. Delicious!

Grammi, waiting patiently for the feast to begin. She almost single handedly killed our stuffing supply - I think she had three full servings!

William & Grammi before dinner.

William & I.

The day after Thanksgiving we went on a nice hike up at Tiger Mtn. (near Seattle) with Kathryn and the dogs. We lucked out with some sun up at the top of the climb.

Relaxing with Laea in the living room.

Friday night Anna flew into town (yay!), and on Saturday we trundled up I-5 for brunch with the Cunningham/Garner crew. We ate at this fabulous little place called The Boat Street Cafe, and I was sorry I didn't have room to eat seconds! This will definitely be on our list of 'must visits' the next time we head back to Seattle.


Sunday morning we had time for breakfast and a trip to the dog park before Thor, Anna & I hit the road for Portland. Here's a nice shot of all of us before we left Grammi's house.

Kruger Cross '09 - Final Cx of the Year!

Two weekends ago (yes, I'm late with my posting!) was my final cyclocross race of the year. Sniff. My mom was in town - so I have plenty of good pics to post (and also a few that came from other's Facebook collections). Sunday morning the wind was howling and it was pouring rain, and I was seriously questioning whether or not racing sounded like a good idea. But then my friends Michelle & Stacy called to see if I would be racing and I said "yes" - so I figured showing up was a good idea if they were hauling themselves out to Sauvie's Island to cheer.

The race was SO hard - definitely the hardest of the year, but I ended up in 3rd place! The course itself was not hard, but it had been raining for 2 days straight and the course was about 5-inches deep in thick, peanut-buttery, mud that gummed up your bike like crazy! By my last lap my tires had actually stopped rolling, but my bike was too heavy with mud to pick up - so I actually had to stop and clean mud out of my brakes and gears by hand before I could get it moving again. Enjoy these last pics of the season!

Pre-race bib pinning at the car.

Warming up in the grass near the start-line.

Running through the tree-section on the first lap.

A shot of the mud.Approaching a barrier on the course.
Splashing into a puddle on the other side of a barrier.
A great shot of the pumpkin fields we were riding through - it was really beautiful!

Riding through the tree section on lap 2.

I'm sort of small in this picture - but I'd like to point out my friend, Michelle, running along the course with Jr. Cheer Squad member, Lowe (purple blob), on her front (also notice beer clutched expertly in right hand while running - nice work!)

Pushing my bike through the dang mud on my way out of the corn-maze portion of the course.

The only non-muddy section of the course - it was such a relief to get here for a brief rest each lap!

Somehow I'm still smiling....

More running with my bike when the mud was too thick to keep the wheels moving.

Look of death I gave my mom as she heckled me post-race. I was NOT in the mood.

But I recovered quickly once I'd had a moment to catch my breath and get a drink of water! =)Overall it was a really fun day - the weather cleared up for the race and it was quite pleasant!

Grammi's Birthday Gauntlets

I finished my Grammi's birthday gauntlet gloves the other day! Her birthday is this Saturday, November 28, but I have no fear of spoiling the surprise since I know she doesn't read this blog. They are knit out of Lamb's Pride worsted weight wool in a dusky rose color. My grammi thinks fingerless gloves are silly, but my mom tells me her hands have been getting rather chilly at dialysis when she wants to read - so maybe she'll reconsider their potential practicality this year!

I found the pattern online, and usually when I do that I'm good about noting the website or designer - but I must have completely spaced that this time because I can't for the life of me figure out where I pulled the pattern from. I scanned it in though, and you can click here to see the pattern I used. It's 'easy' - but not at the same time. There is nothing hard about what the pattern is asking you to do, but at the end when it says "knit left gauntlet basically the same as the right" what you actually are supposed to do is reverse the pattern on your own - I would recommend just writing out the pattern for the left gauntlet before you start knitting - it's too easy to get mixed up trying to just reverse everything in your head!

Annie & Laea

Mom came to visit this past weekend - and Laea & Annie got to spend a little bit of quality time together. We caught them both on Annie's dog bed on Saturday morning - a rare sight! Maybe they like each other more than they want us to think!

Cx #8 - Barton Park

This past weekend was the final race in the 2009 Cross Crusade series. Sniff. The Barton course was hard - lots (too much!) of flat, non-technical riding that allowed people to really open up. The pace was much faster than any of the other races this year. I rode well in the muddy sections that there were, but I definitely could have used a different gear on my SS for the flats - I just couldn't spin fast enough to keep up with the ladies who were able to gear down. The race was really fun though - and in the end I placed 10th!

The following three race pics are from Brujo. I am not really sure who this is, but he was nice enough to share his pictures with the PDX bike community up on Flickr!

Me, waiting at the start line for the gun to go off. Teammate, Fletch is to my right.

Carrying my bike uphill.
On another run-up.

Extra Cx #7 Pics!

Thanks to Michelle for these extra shots from last weekend's race out at PIR! I forgot to mention the best news from this race in my last post - which is that I got 5th place in the B Category!!! That's a great finish for me - normally I'm back in the 18-20th range. They did upgrade a bunch of people from my category, which helped, but I still had a really good race.

Me - expressing pre-race jitters at the start line.

Post-race muddy backside.

Mud-shot from the front! (Smiling after rinsing all the dirt out of my contacts. Ouch.)

Part of my cheering squad! We also had a big group of friends come out to watch and cheer and it was so fun to see them all out there on the course!

Cross Crusade #7 - P.I.R.

Last week on Sunday was the second to last race in the Cross Crusade series for 2009. The event was held up at PIR - and the weather was perfect. By perfect I mean it rained for about 5 days before the event - and the POURED during the women's race, so the course, was slippery, technical, and covered in mud. Perfect.

A shot to give you an idea of how deep the mud was covering most of the course - it was like riding through peanut butter.

Photo from PDX Cross

Towards the beginning of my race - when I'm not totally covered in mud yet.

Photo by OregonVelo

Running uphill carrying my bike.

Photo by Jenn Levo

A shot back down the hill so you can see the mud, water, and barriers!

Photo by Jenn Levo

Getting ready to re-mount my bike.

Photo by Jenn Levo

Running over the top of a concrete bunker that was on the course.

Photo by OregonVelo

Lowe's Sweater!

Last week I finally finished the sweater for my friend, Michelle's, daughter Lowe. I say finally - because I had the darn thing completely knitted in July - and then I stalled out on sewing all the pieces together. Lowe has been getting bigger & bigger recently - and I started to get worried she'd get bigger than the sweater - so that made me motivated to finish up. Here's a shot of little Lowe-bug in her sweater, and also an adorable pair of ruffle pants that Michelle just whipped up last week. Michelle is a sewing genius!

I knit the sweater using a Blue Moon Fiber Arts pattern called "Baby Yours" - the yarn is also Blue Moon Fiber Arts - Socks That Rock, lightweight, in Sunstone.

Extra Halloween Shot!

Not sure why I forgot to post this one yesterday - but here's a great one of me pretending to eat my friend's baby, Lowe! (as a side note - Lowe was about the most ADORABLE lil' pumpkin you've ever seen - and she slept so soundly! Even as the undead were coming to get her!)

Halloween 2009

This Halloween Thor and I went out as zombies for the evening. Our friends, Will & Becky, are big-time zombie fans and we borrowed the outfits from them. Here we are at Becky & Will's Halloween party:

Me, Thor, Jess, Will & Matt (as Edward Cullen)

Thor and I rocking some vampire fangs we picked up from Michelle during the evening.

Thor giving his best 'scary' face.

Me, giving mine (and yes, I realize I do look legitimately disturbing!)

Cx #5 - Astoria

This past weekend Thor and I rolled out to the coast on Friday night to hang out with our friends, Annie & Andrew, and then do the Cross Crusade race #5 in Astoria on Saturday. We rolled into the race in just the nick of time - I had about 45 minutes to register, warm-up, and get to the start line.

My race started out really well. The five minutes prior to the start of the ladies race it absolutely POURED rain on us (like 1/2" in 5 minutes) so the course was incredibly muddy & slick. This favored riders with decent handling skills, and I think all the mountain biking I did this summer really paid off! I found myself right behind some ladies who typically finish in the top 5 (normally I never see these riders once the race has started). I began getting excited and then all of a sudden: fwhup, fwhup, fwhup, fwhup. My rear wheel was flat. Nooooo! Sigh...so I had to run a full lap carrying my bike until I got back around to the pit where I could swap my rear wheel out. At that point I was beyond last in my category....sigh...I managed to claw my way back a bit - but I think I ended up finishing about 33rd out of 38. Ouch. Oh well - it was still my favorite race of the season so far because of all the mud and tricky handling sections!
Here are a few pictures of the race!

I'm not actually in this shot - but it shows you the six-pack of barriers we had to run over.

Me - running with my bike shortly after my flat tire.

More running. Meh.

Back on the bike - finally!

This shot is funny because I actually look like I'm not moving! But you can see Thor in the background pointing me out to Laea (my dedicated cheering squad!)

After the race - showing off my mud while waiting in line to rinse off my bike.