Thor rocks the Alpine Super-D!

Thor raced in his first super-D this past weekend - and won his category! I was holding off on posting this because a friend of ours thought she had a picture of Thor up on the podium, but she's having trouble downloading the picture so I'm just going to post without it. Unfortunately I wasn't able to watch Thor's race. I was doing Hood to Coast this past weekend (but that's another post!)

Look at his little dust trail! Go Thor, Go!

Hood to Coast 2010!

This past weekend I participated in the Hood to Coast road running relay with a group of our friends from Portland (and a few from Seattle). I am not a naturally gifted runner, and am pretty pleased with myself when I'm able to maintain sub 10-minute miles (which I did successfully on all three of my legs. Phew!). Our team was just out for fun though, and we had a great time!

Teams are made up of 12-runners split into two Vans. Each runner runs three legs as the team travels from Mt.Hood all the way out to Seaside, OR on the coast. Our team's start time was at 6:30 a.m. last Friday, but since I was in Van 2 we didn't have to be ready to run until our first six runners had finished their legs - which was at around 11:30 a.m. (I think).

Yet again, I have managed to butcher uploading my photos to the blog so they are hopelessly out of order. You'll get the idea though!

Here I am finishing my third leg (leg #35) - don't I look tired? That's because I absolutely ruined myself trying to catch another team that we were trying to beat (Team Mexico!). I almost couldn't walk later that day because I had so much lactic acid in my legs!

This is Michaelene, our Van 2 driver, who was amazing and managed to stay awake and friendly for over 24-hours while she shuttled us along the race course. We were so lucky to have her drive!

We had the passenger's side window labeled as the 'Master Navigator' - we snuck this shot of Pat as he was snoozing and totally slacking on the navigator duties! (it was about 3 a.m. though - so you can hardly blame him!)
Almost our entire team at the hand-off between Van 1 and Van 2 on the second leg. Top Row: Jen, Stacy, Katy, Me, Michaelene, Pat, Danika, Ryan & Amy. Bottom squatters: Ben & Sam. (We're missing Amber, Melissa & Ivo here - not sure where they were off to)

Here's the entirety of Van 2 before we started our first leg: Danika, Michaelene, Katy, Me, Ryan, Amber, Pat (& Lily - Amber & Ryan's 2 year old who did not come in the van with us!)
The back of our decorated Van 2. Our team name was Unethical Time Travelers. I'm not really sure where the name came from...some inside joke of someone's, I think.

Katy -- sending me off on my first leg with a nice slap on the a$$! (Did I mention that Katy is about 5 months pregnant? Amazing! She ran all three of her legs too - very impressive!)

About 400 yards into my first leg: still smiling.

Finishing my first leg (leg #11).

Overall I had a great time - and a ton of fun with the people in my van. I don't think this would be an every year event for me, but I could certainly see doing it again in a couple of years!

Mountain Bike Oregon

Last weekend Thor and I went down to Oakridge for Mountain Bike Oregon - a three day camp for grownups to race around single track on their mountain bikes - tons of fun! We headed down a day early with our friends Laurie & Colleen so we could ride the Waldo Lake trail which is about 45 minutes outside of Oakridge. Here are a few pictures from our weekend!

Laurie riding the single track through the burn area on the Waldo Lake trail.

Thor & I on the edge of Waldo Lake - the trail around the lake is smooth, rolling and really fast!

Riding up at Lawler trail.

Thor, Laurie & I

At the end of each day we'd go back to camp and drink free beer at the beer garden - lovely! One night there was a race on mini-bicycles; here is a video of the mini-bike race in the beer garden - you can see me go by at about 1:19 - in the blue shirt:

Anna's First Packrafting Trip!

This past weekend was hot, hot, hot - and to cool off we headed to the Clackamas on Sunday afternoon to go packrafting - Anna's first time out!

Getting in the water at the put-in at Fish Creek

Laea - riding at the front of the boat.

Me - coming down some waves.

Becky - showing off her 'guns'!

Thor and our happy (not really) dog. I'm not sure boating is Laea's favorite activity - but she's really good about staying in the boat if you tell her too!

There was a big log half way down that we stopped to jump off of - here's Becky!

And Mom - puttin' some style into it!

And me- half-way through my full twist!

oregon short track state champs

This past weekend Thor and I raced in the OBRA Short Track Mountain Biking state championships - and we each got third in our respective categories! Mom came and cheered - which was a real treat - and she has some fun pics on her phone that I'll post at a later date.

Thor and I might have been a bit crazy to race - as it was probably over 100 degrees at race time, but Thor's team (Tireless Velo) was hosting the event - so we were out there anyways to volunteer and figured we might as well race too!

Thor heading out of the start (this is unfortunately the only picture of Thor that I was able to dig up)

Me at the start - there were only 4 women in my category.

Grinding up a hill somewhere on the course. I was soooo hot!

On the 'podium' after with Sue & Colleen. Sue (1st place) is a pro rider - and I can pretty much guarantee this is the only time the two of us will ever appear on a podium together!

Potato Harvesting

Back in March (seriously, March?!?! - I can't believe it was that long ago!) Thor and I planted some La Ratte fingerling potatoes in our garden. The vines started dying back in late July, so we let the little guys hang out in the soil for a couple weeks long to try and get the skin to toughen up, or "set", so they'd last a little longer once we harvested them.

Last night I dug up about half our potato patch - and got just over a half gallon bucket filled with tasty looking fingerling potatoes!

Here's how they potatoes look under the ground - they're connected to the vine with these thin white roots, and then the potato itself balloons off the end. Really neat! I'd never seen how a potato grows before!

The final harvest, post-wash, in our kitchen sink.

Overall I think our potato trial went really well! I don't think we hilled the plants as much as they would have liked, but that's because I didn't plan ahead very well and we ran out of room to pile the soil up without it spilling over the top of the raised bed. Next year I think I will dig out the beds about half way down and plant the potatoes at a lower level so we have more room to hill the plants throughout the season. I am wondering if the hilling will produce a greater potato yield per plant... Also - we don't have a very good way to store the potatoes...Not even our basement stays cool enough to store them long term (optimum temp for this is 36-40 degrees). I guess we'll just have to eat them all now!