Some things aren't meant to be understood

This is what I tell myself every time I see a mountain bike with aero bars. I guess I should just be happy that more and more people are riding bikes but, I can't help but wonder how many brain cells die when you make the decision to put aero bars on a mountain bike. It's bad enough when people put them on a road bike in such a way that they're actually an aerodynamic detriment. Oh well. They'll keep making better idiots until somebody locates, and bombs the hell out of, the idiot factory. It most certainly hasn't happened yet.

On a slightly sillier note, the internet is full of totally fun wastes of time. I present www.yearbookyourself.com and my contribution to the internet entropy:
I'm looking forward to comments about this one.

The onset of Fall

Hard to believe it's our third Fall in Moscow. Classes started on Monday and it's kind of strange having all of these people around after such a quiet Summer. The weekend was especially busy with all of the parents moving their kids into the dorms. The amount of traffic was noticeably higher than usual but, it's settled down a little bit since. During the Summer we normally didn't have to wait at crosswalks, even on the busy streets. Now, you have to give some drivers "the look" before they'll stop. Everyone has to get retrained for dealing with the increase in pedestrians. Most drivers are very courteous but, some of the new freshman don't seem to understand that Moscow is a "pedestrian priority" community. With time, they should learn.

Over the weekend, we rode over to the National Lentil Festival in Pullman. We're thinking that attending on Friday evening would have been better than going on Saturday. We didn't get to have any lentil chili but did have some lentil ice cream.

Also, if we hadn't gone on Saturday we wouldn't have gotten to see Wiley and the Wild West play. The lead singer, Wiley Gustafson, lives over in Dusty, WA, a little town we drive through on our way to Seattle. He was on A Prairie Home Companion when they broadcasted from Pullman last year. If you like old-school cowboy country music, check them out.

On the ride home, it sort of hit me how much we take for granted that we leave the state where we live so often on our road rides. Some might say that riding from Medina County into Wayne County in Ohio might be similar. I guess we moved from one border town to another going from Wadsworth to Moscow. The weather has taken a decidedly Fall-like bent the last few days. It hasn't been out of the 60's with some rain. The rain has been good in that it made the trails up on Moscow Mountain almost ideal. There was literally no dust on any of the trails we hit up last night. You couldn't say that last week. It was also cool enough that we needed base layers under our jerseys. I saw my shoe covers on the shelf when I put my cycling shoes away last night and almost shuddered at how soon those might be needed. This weekend should be a little warmer, just in time for our party on Friday. I'm hoping to exert my dominant skills at cornhole. I threw 21 points in 11 tosses the other night. I just have to shave 4 more off to be perfect.

That's all for now. The clouds have cleared a little and I need to squeeze a ride in.

A little bit of everything...

Rain. That's what's on tap right now on the Palouse. It's actually a little strange for this time of year. Hell, it was 102F on Sunday and despite the 12% humidity, that's still hot. We've even had some real thunderstorms to boot. On my ride last night I encountered quite a bit of debris on the road in the form of tree branches the wind had obviously deemed unnecessary. I think they got it a little bit worse near Pullman than we did here in Moscow. Sadly, a fallen branch here on campus contained a squirrel nest and that gust of wind resulted in four less squirrels running around. Mother Nature's fickleness exemplified.

The blog has been a little neglected over the last week as we've been really busy. Here's a little rundown of some of the quality rides we've embarked on in that time:

Thursday Night Race: There were only 6 of us that night. We stayed together for roughly the first 9 miles and then Tom and I were able to get a little bit of a gap before turning South toward Genessee. About 2/3 of the way up the first climb, Rich comes barreling past us and Tom was able to get on his wheel leaving me to chase. I kept them in sight and just when I started to gain on them, Jerry caught me. We worked together to eventually bridge up well before the turnaround point. At the turnaround, we backed it off as usual to recover for the last charge up the Lenville climb. Jerry got out ahead of Rich and I before the climb and that's pretty much how we finished; Jerry, Rich, then me. It was a great ride and I felt pretty strong.

MMM Course Pre-ride: We rode with our friend John in the morning on Saturday to avoid the heat. Lots of people out pre-riding even though the race isn't until the 7th. According to my computer, it was 17.5 miles from car-car though you have to subtract a little bit to account for the "official" start/finish location that's a little ways from the car. It was a fun ride and a way to help John learn the trails since he's still somewhat new to the area.

We didn't want to melt so we took Sunday off. Monday was supposed to be hot as well so, we did our road ride in the morning. It's funny how much longer the day feels when you ride in the morning. The rain yesterday morning helped knock down a lot of the dust on the gravel roads and made for almost ideal conditions to take the cross bike out last night. I hadn't ridden that bike for a while and it felt kind of strange at first. You adjust pretty quickly when you have to deal with things like 4-inch deep pockets of gravel that make you feel like you're on a runaway truck ramp. Those were few and far between though almost caught me off guard a couple of times. Nothing like having your front wheel turn almost 90-degrees seemingly at random. Today's ride is looking a little iffy. Eyes to the sky.

And now, a little change of gears... Lorena's looking at buying a new set of road wheels. The Easton EA-90's seem like a pretty good bang for the buck. Anybody out there in reader-land have any experience with them? I seem to recall seeing some of them (or the EA-70) on cross bikes. If they can hold up to cross, I'd hope they could hold up on the road. It looks like the useful life of Rolf Vector wheels is 8 years. The Rolfs on my cross bike are starting to get as noisy as Lorena's road wheels and they're about the same age.

We watched the Browns get beat by the Giants on Monday night. It certainly looked ugly through most of the first half. It was nice to see the Browns at least make it close toward the end. Brady Quinn filled in nicely when Anderson went out with the concussion. That Steptoe guy looks like he could be a playmaker this year. I hope they play better on Saturday.

And finally... I know it's "yet one more thing online" but, I've found that Twitter is a pretty cool service. Almost a micro-blog/IM site. You may have noticed that I've added my Twitter posts to the sidebar of the blog. Check it out if you want to and then you can keep up on all of the nuggets of wisdom that emanate from North Idaho.

That's all for now. Time to go grab some lunch.

Sources of inspiration

One thing I forgot to mention in the last post is that prior to Tuesday's road ride, I was a little on the fence as to whether or not I even wanted to ride. It was probably the fact that I'd been on my feet most of the day running errands and so my legs were a little tired. Cry me a river, right?

Well, just before we left for the ride I was reading the article on Velonews.com regarding the Leadville 100. Aside from the fact that Dave Wiens has won it 6 times in a row, he rode it in 6hr 45min! Friggin' 13 minutes faster than last year's record breaking time. Amazing. That, to me, is the result of sucking up a lot of pain and putting in the miles. I guess that's how I approached Tuesday's ride. Not that I'm going to go out and try to beat Dave Wiens or race at Leadville, it's just that inspiration to get on the bike and ride hard sometimes comes when your not expecting it.

Ran into a whole lotta people we know while riding on Moscow Mountain this evening. Jeremy Pinto was scouting the Moscow Mountain Madness race course. He says it's only 16 miles. Bummer, we were going for 18. If only Cave Trail was included.... The Madness is coming up soon. Then, a few weeks after that is cyclocross season already with Starcrossed over in Seattle. Oh how we love that race.

That's all for now. Before I hit the sack, I'll leave you with one of the greatest quotes of the week:

"To sell more grossly overpowered diesel trucks, your suburban GM dealer has waived their tiny penis requirement. It's "August Junk MADNESS!"" ~Merlin Mann

A little Tuesday Night Throwdown

That's what our ride was tonight. We didn't let up at all the entire 43 miles. The weather couldn't have been more perfect either. Hardly any wind (a rarity for the Palouse). Sun behind the clouds the entire time and temps in the low 80s. The aphids are seriously active right now along with a lot of other insects as the wheat harvest begins. I had quite a few winged creatures hitchhiking on my arms along the way. In fact, one lone aphid is a little confused by my computer screen at the moment.

We're getting back into our normal riding schedule which was adjusted a little last week with Lorena's mom and aunt in town. We still got some rides in but, as the last post shows, we were a little busy with some other activities as well. The time off from riding did help my ribs heal and now I hardly feel any pain. I've even been mountain biking a couple of times since the crash and, while I was a little bit timid at times, they didn't bother me.

As Lorena said, we did have a ton of fun last week. The rafting trip on the Salmon River was especially cool. Even more wild was going back "up" the river in the jet boat. Those things have some insane power and the guy driving it certainly loved his job.

Though I've been inhaling bugs a little too often lately, they don't pack much in the way of calories. Better go partake in some tastier caloric intake.

In the network... and other stuff

It has been a long time since y'all have heard from me, so I thought I would drop a line or too. Mostly, because it is just so hard to get back into the swing of work after I've been running around playing with the family for awhile.

I have now joined the Facebook network, so if you're there also and haven't already added me as a friend, stop on by and do so. Just one more way to spend more time than necessary on the computer. Mom is even on Facebook now, too!

We had a good visit with Mom and Aunt Judy in town. We kept them busy and they kept us busy, too. Before they came, I wrote a list with ideas of potential things to do. We didn't get to them all, but we did repeat one thing, going to the thrift store, several times! The Salvation Army thrift store is a mere three blocks from the house and the first day we were there, I think the employees were just about ready to kick us out. I think we spent almost two hours browsing through the entire place (and it's not that big)! The thrift store offers a punch card where you get a punch for every $10 you spend and after 10 punches you get $20 off your next purchase. Well, Mom and Aunt Judy filled more than half the card for me, but it will likely take me a long time to get the last three punches. When I do, I guess I will have to invite them back out to help me spend my $20!

Other things we did include the following:
Moscow's Farmer's Market
Outdoor play
Palouse Falls and wine tasting in Walla Walla, WA
Garnet digging at Emerald Creek Recreation Area near Clarkia, ID
White water rafting in Riggins, ID
eating out perhaps a little too much, checking out the local shops and the usual vacation things to do
and on their last day, we went to Coeur d'Alene, ID to check out the lake, walked the world's longest floating boardwalk, dipped our toes in the water, and, of course, shopped some more.

I got yet another wrap skirt at the same little shop in Coeur d'Alene where Mom bought me one last year (she bought me this one, too). And I got some pink things at the thrift store while they were in town. Hmmm, I must be in a girlie phase? Shouldn't last long.

A quick update

Lorena's mom and aunt Judy are in town for about 9 days. They arrived on Thursday and we've been running around doing various things since. Last night we went to the Idaho Repertory Theater performance of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night". It was an outdoor performance and was hysterical. A rather non-traditional take on the play in that it was seemingly set in the 1980's. Silk shirts, white loafers, big sunglasses, and all. Certainly not what we were expecting.

Yesterday morning, we had another MAMBA trail workday. According to one of the people, we cleared 415 feet of trail. There were a LOT of stumps and buried dead cedars we had to dig out and that slowed us down a bit. I went up to help with the trail while the rest went to the Moscow Farmer's Market.

Today had us off to Palouse Falls and Walla Walla, WA for a little wine tasting. We only made it to a couple of wineries before most of them were closed for the day. It was a good time though 2.5 hours is a long way to drive just for wine. It's a good thing we went to Palouse Falls too.

After 300+ miles of driving, I'm a little tired. I should have pictures from the trip up on Flickr tomorrow.