Riders on the storm...

...that never quite materialized... yet. We decided to wait until it cooled down a little this evening (to 91F) before heading out on a road ride to the East. They forecasted isolated storms this evening but, it never really "storms" out here. As we crested one of hills at our furthest point East and looked to the South, Mother Nature was throwing down in the valley along the Clearwater and looked to be heading North, right for us, albeit very slowly. As we bombed down into Troy, I swear I felt a few sprinkles. Then again, cottonwood trees like to "rain" on you as you go under them though, I don't recall being able to discern what kinds of trees were alongside the road while going 45mph. We decided to forego a little extension of our loop to keep from getting rained on and headed back to Moscow. The sky to the South kept looking more and more ominous and you could see various places where it was raining somewhat close to where we were. We made it back without getting wet but not by too much. As soon as we got home and pulled up the radar, the areas over by Troy where we'd been riding were all under green and Moscow was right on the edge. Not long after, the rain did start falling here intermittently. I heard a little bit of thunder but, we haven't officially had a storm yet. It just keeps trying to skirt around us.

Whatever funk my legs were in appears to be over. We had a great road ride on Friday and then rode up on Moscow Mountain on Saturday. We did a little exploring on some trails we'd never ridden and think we made a wrong turn somewhere that did eventually get us back to a place we recognized. My legs didn't have the fatigue they'd had earlier in the week so, I think the few days off did the trick. Sunday was oppressively hot, even in the morning, so we decided to just try and stay cool. I got a little work done including finishing up my sister Whitney's portfolio website. I highly recommend everyone go check it out (Using Firefox, Safari, or IE7) and give her some business. Better yet, offer her a job. She's highly capable.

Whitney Huck Photography

If anybody needs any website work done, let me know. I'm getting better at it and a little freelance work wouldn't hurt.

Nothing much...

... has been going on this week riding-wise. Lorena's out of town on a field collecting trip and I've decided to take a few days off the bike. Last week's Thursday night race was horrible for me. I had ZERO power and just suffered after the first attack. The lungs were willing but, the legs had other ideas. It was really strange to ride so poorly after riding so strong on a mountain bike ride just two days prior. Since Thursday, my legs, especially the bottom of my quads, have felt strange. I don't know if I injured something or if I overworked myself at some point. Just keeping an eye on it right now.

At any rate, it's been not-so-fun staying away from the bike with the weather being as nice as it's been lately. I'm sure it will be for the best. I'll probably ease back in with a low-intensity road ride tomorrow to see how things are feeling. So this is what's like to be over 30.....

We did have a good trail building day on Saturday. Nine of us got another 0.15 miles built on the new Gemini trail. I guess there's about that much more to go until we have the first section complete. Naturally, this next 0.15 miles will probably require the most work. It certainly feels good to leave your mark by helping to build/maintain trail. From what I can gather, it appears as though Vulture's Knob has undergone a little Renaissance? If so, I'm looking forward to trying it out. All in good time.

Speaking of time... time to go fire up the grill. Keep it rubber side down.

And a little saga comes to an end...

I just finished reading the Harry Potter series. Literally. Like, 15 minutes ago. I started the series right before Christmas and I'm glad I read them. Sure, the first few books are more directed at a younger audience but, the last three are pretty involved and hit on topics I'm not sure a lot of kids are necessarily ready to deal with. It will certainly be interesting to see how they do the movies for the last two books. I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed them and recommend them to anyone looking for a great story.

What to read next....? Not that we don't have a wealth of unread books in our personal library, I'm still open to suggestions. My sister Lori recommended "Stuff on My Cat: The Book". I'm contemplating "French Revolutions" and "The Perks of Being a Wallflower". I've also got a couple issues of Dwell magazine that I haven't gotten through yet. Decisions, decisions...

Just what the doctor ordered...

It's a little hard to believe that a week ago it was snowing considering it's still 68F at nearly 8pm. In fact, it's been quite lovely here on the Palouse since about last Thursday. That evening marked the second of a series of training races started by Matt Morra in an effort to get some hard efforts a little closer to Moscow. There's a training race series in Spokane but that's almost a two-hour drive one way. These races can best be likened to an Orrville Cycling Club A-ride. It's hard to describe just how much those OCC rides prepare you for racing. Oddly enough, Matt has ridden a lot of Wayne/Holmes county roads when he lived in Wooster in the 80's. He knows what we've been missing.

Last Thursday's ride brought out about 12 riders. We rolled out of town as a group and headed out Lenville Rd. At the bottom of the big climb on Lenville I decided to take off and see how the legs were going to feel. Turns out, that attack didn't last long and was quickly covered... and then Matt and I were chasing 3 riders who crested the climb first. We were in time-trial mode for the next 8 miles or so and eventually caught the leaders at the turn-around. We regrouped for a few miles and then the pace started to ramp up gradually. Eventually, it was down to a group of 5 riders as we headed back up and over the Lenville climb. I was sitting in 5th position after taking a pull when the guy in 4th started to drop back a little. I moved up and no more than 20 pedal strokes later, he launches an attack from the back that left us somewhat standing still. We all tried cover it and, once again, Matt and I were chasing a group of 3. Down the other side at 45mph and heading toward our finishing road, we did get within 1/4-mile right before the sprint but too little, too late. Despite getting gapped a few times, it was totally fun and I'm looking forward to this Thursday's edition.

Friday and Sunday saw us on Moscow Mountain with Sunday being a nice 18-mile loop. I did an easy road spin last night and then we both headed back up to the Mountain again today. This time, we rode the gravel roads over to the Headwaters trailhead where we each started our own routes. I rode up Headwaters to the intersection with Southside. Southside to Switchblade and up to Upper Moose Marbles. Quickly down to Wagon Trail around Paradise Point and then out the road to North Contour. Down North Contour to Cave Trail and up Cave Connector to Lower Tusk. Then I brought Moscow Mountain Road back home. It should be somewhere on the order of 30 miles round trip with a lot of singletrack and no repeats. If I only had a computer on my mountain bike... one more thing to the to-do list. I was feeling great today and it took right on 2.5 hours. Some days you just feel "on". Perhaps the planets are lined up juuuussst right.

Speaking of planet alignment and good omens, the last week has been good on the computer front. From Lorena's LeapPod post, I'm totally enjoying my new iPod Touch. It's a truly awesome piece of technology. Internet and so much more in your pocket. I think it lives up to the hype. On Monday and two days early, I received my new MacBook Pro laptop from which I'm typing this post. Also a great piece of hardware. The only hiccup I've had is with a Bluetooth mouse I bought to go with it. Apparently it was incompatible and so I have to send it back. Oh well. I'm blaming Pluto because it's just a dwarf planet and its gravity is just a nuisance to the others.

I'll leave you with a remix of the trailer for a certain famous 80's movie that we all know and love. Enjoy.

(via kottke.org)

LeapPod

Several years ago, Chris was extolling the virtues of MP3 players, though I was not whole heartedly convinced that we needed one, to say the least. Well, he surprised me by purchasing one for me, a 4gb Creative Zen Micro. I think he got it for me, so I could see how cool it was and tell him to get one for himself. Well, I did indeed enjoy my Zen; I used it mostly for listening to audiobooks and the PRI radio show Living on Earth and it was also occasionally used while traveling. I continued to used it during tedious labwork and poor Chris was stuck listening to shows and music through his computer, definitely not as portable. So, about a year or so ago, we got a 4gb iPod Nano, 2nd generation, for Chris.

Chris began using iTunes to download podcasts of various programs to his iPod and would often share the stories with me. And the way he got them to his iPod sounded so much easier than what I had to do to get Living on Earth to my Zen. I had to download each individual show, which took several minutes a piece, and then transfer them over one-by-one. Not only that, but since I had to actually think about it, I was often several shows behind and had to create an Excel file to keep track of where I was. Needless to say, I was a little jealous of Chris's new iPod and felt that he had one upped me in the player department.

This winter, my trusty Zen began to die. The phone jack now had just one "sweet spot" where the sound would come through clearly. This was fine for listening to music, but not-so-fine for listening to audiobooks as it would often cause me to miss something. Shortly after that, some of the pixels in the screen died. I used it with the phone jack on the fritz for a couple of months but really got frustrated as the jack seemed to get worse. We looked into replacing the jack/ fixing the Zen, but it would have been at least $50. Instead, we decided that it was time to replace it with a better model. So, for my birthday (a little early) Chris bought me a 4gb iPod Nano, 3rd generation.

With the third generation iPod Nano, I had video capabilities, something that Chris did not have on his Nano. So, this time around, I one upped him. However, I found with the ease of the podcast downloads and the ability to add the video podcasts, I quickly filled my 4gb and mentioned that if, and when, Chris decides to get a new iPod, he might want 8gb. That is exactly what happened.

Chris has been saving up for a Mac Book Pro and shortly before he bought it, Apple announced that students or education staff purchasing a new Mac Book would receive a free 8gb iPod Touch. So, once again, Chris has one upped me and he now has an 8gb iPod Touch. I don't know if there is much further up to go unless I get a 16gb iPhone.

June-uary

All of our friends and family seem to think that North Idaho must be a cold and snowy place because it is further north than Northern Ohio. Well, today, the past few weeks really, they are right. Today is the 10th day of June and it has been snowing for at least the past two hours. We are now seeing accumulation on the grass, trees and even rooftops. "June-uary" was a term repeated by Thom Kokenge on Northwest Public Radio the other day and it certainly seems to fit.

UPDATE:

Here's a video posted on YouTube by a person in Moscow.

June?

I'm looking at the current conditions and it's 48F at nearly 2pm on June 7th. That, and it's raining. Isn't it supposed to be practically Summer? The rain I dealt with in Seattle over the last two days was understandable because it's Seattle. Then again, this year has been full of the unexpected from a weather standpoint in Moscow. I can say this, whatever thoughts I had about wanting to live in Seattle were pretty much washed away while we visited Boeing on Thursday and Friday. There's a reason it's the Emerald City and I don't remember seeing The Wizard.

There was a break in the weather on Wednesday so I decided to do a "long" mountain bike ride up on Moscow Mountain. I figured the trails would be too wet to ride but, there are logging roads up there that I could take and still have some fun. This basically amounted to riding out Moscow Mountain Road and climbing up to the Four Corners area. It's 8 miles to the base of the climb on a mix of paved and gravel roads. Then, you gain 1000 feet of elevation in 2.5 miles. Turn West and it's mostly flat for the next 1.5 miles. I decided to ride up to the radio towers because I'd never been up there and I just couldn't get enough climbing. My final elevation was 4468 ft after starting at 2560 in Moscow. All in 12.5 miles. There was still a little bit of snow up by the towers and the view was pretty cool despite being overcast. Speaking of cool... it was around 55F when I left the house but it didn't feel like that up by the towers. From there, it was mostly a descent back off the mountain and I got rather chilled on the way down. The logging road was still kind of wet from the rain the day before and so the dampness didn't help me warm up. Once I got back to the gravel roads and actually had to climb again, I no longer felt under-dressed. Still, should I have to wear arm and knee warmers in June? Sheesh. All told, the ride was 25 miles and took two hours. Considering the climbs I had to contend with, I didn't think it was too bad. If only it had been drier, I wouldn't have had to ride past singletrack entrances along the logging road that would have had a lot more fun.

Back to waiting for the radar to clear up....