Things that might be decidedly odd…

Vacations

Today I was looking at the Excel spreadsheet I made up to keep track of my vacation over the next 10 months or so. I realized that for the first time in a while that I actually have more vacation time than I know what to do with. That even includes days for 4th of July weekend this summer, the Monday after STP for recovery, Europe in November, an extra day for Christmas, and a cruise next year. Whew!

All in all, it’s about 4 days extra, more if my vacation plans for more distant trips like Europe or the cruise change. Maybe I’ll treat myself to a three day weekend or two this summer to sop up some of those extra days. Or of course I could just sit on them even though they are burning a hole in my pocket.

Historic Billboard Charts

I can’t decide how disturbed I should be that the #1 hit on the charts the day I was born was “My Sharona” by The Knack. Eek.

I guess it could be worse. The day my brother Dan was born, the #1 hit was “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” by Starship. Eew!

Try it yourself and be mortified!

Gasworks to Seward Park

A skeleton crew (Jeff, Ben and I) of our STP team met up for the Different Spokes ride from Gasworks Park to Seward Park. Ken also went on the ride, but he’s fairly active with DS already. We rode straight down there, stopped in Seward Park to rest in the sun for a bit, rode some more back, stopped for lunch in Leschi then continued on back to Gasworks.

Seward Park was amazing today with the sunny (albeit still a bit chilly) weather. Here’s Jeff, Ben and I kicking it at the park:

And here’s my bike resting in the daisies, which I just thought looked kind of cool:

I showed up about 40 minutes early so that I’d have time to adjust my new clipless pedals and do some practice riding on them around the parking lot. Just like the guy at the bike shop yesterday said, I did fall once but after that I was pretty motivated not to again. I was in the parking lot practicing when I came to a stop without disconnecting, then tipped over. Ya, ya–classic newbie mistake I’m sure.

The ride was mostly on city streets (except for part of the Burke-Gilman trail and trails inside Seward Park) and about 25 miles round trip. It was definitely shorter than last week’s ride, but it was a good length for a first ride on the new bike. I think the cleats on the bottom of my shoes need to be adjusted some more since the placement directly over the pedals differs between my two feet. One foot got numb a few times, which I’m sure isn’t good. The seat definitely needs to be changed out, but I expected that. My butt isn’t actually very sore right now, but when I’m sitting on the bike it’s rather uncomfortable. I also need to invest in a pair of riding gloves. On my hybrid, the posture is upright enough that little weight was resting on my hands and wrists, but on this one it’s a totally different story.

Overall though, it was much, much better riding the road bike than my hybrid. For one thing, I was actually coasting for significant portions of the ride! The hybrid only coasts if I’m really going downhill. For a lot of the ride, I was going at a fairly relaxed pace and just felt like my legs could go forever. With some more adjustments and some more riding accessories, I should have a really great setup.

Photo Safari

I spent most of the afternoon and basically all evening taking part in the third annual photo safari put on my Daniel Brown. Basically, you drive/walk around Seattle in a small team for several hours snapping pictures of things on a list. Some of the stuff is generic (a fountain of your choice), but most of it is specific places, pieces of public art, people or other items around Seattle. We didn’t get everything, but managed not to come in last place (yeah!).

Check out the pictures from my team (Ken and Jeff R.) here.

New Bike

This morning I got up early and headed over to Montlake Cycle to do some test rides. Robert and I had dropped by there the other week while shopping for bikes, but it was busy and we weren’t able to find a salesperson. First I rode a nice Cannondale (Aluminum frame, Carbon fork, Tiagra components) that was nice. It was $1150 though and it didn’t seem all that special for the price.

Next, the sales guy brought out an ‘05 Bianchi Imola. It’s actually one of their rentals, but they were willing to sell it to me. I loved the bike and bought it! It has the nicer Shimano 105 components along with a steel frame and carbon fork. The ride is smooth and it’s definitely a higher end bike than most of what I’ve been looking at. Two years ago new, the MSRP is $1400, but since it was used and older, I got it for $930. The bike shop said it was just recently added to their rental fleet and has only been rented out twice. It’s definitely been broken in and already has some dirt and wear on it, but it seemed like a good compromise to exchange shiny, brand new for something a bit higher end. All told, it was $1167 out the door after I added on clipless pedals (none were included), shoes and sales tax.

Equipment-wise, I’m mostly ready for STP now. I still need to get some more clothes like cool bike jerseys (UNC or Cal) for example. New hobbies are expensive, but fun!

Here’s some quick pictures I took with my cell phone:

Rent Increase

Looks like my landlord is raising my rent effective June 1st. While it’s only a modest increase ($30/mo), I’m convinced I’m already paying over market, so it does annoy me somewhat. Still, the staff do take care of the place and have always been responsive to any problems I’ve had. I can’t say I didn’t expect it either. Rents have been flat for years in Seattle. With all the condo conversions going on and a good economy it was only a matter of time.

I’ve been thinking more over the past couple months about moving into a shared housing situation to save money. This only gives me more of a reason to do that I think.

More Soreness

I woke up to my alarm clock at 8:15am this (Saturday) morning with the plan to meet everybody over at Gasworks for a bike ride at 9am. Of course, I ended up running about 10 minutes late but it was nearly 9:40am by the time everybody had arrived. From there we rode the Burke-Gilman/Sammamish River Trail to Redmond Town Center, which is about 26 miles each way. It’s sort of bizarre to think I rode most of the way from home to work, largely along Lake Union, Lake Washington and the trails that connect them along with Lake Sammamish. In Redmond, we stopped and had lunch at some middling fast food Italian place in the mall then did some shopping at REI where I bought a multi-tool for my bike.

After a 52 mile bike ride, I was pretty sore. I feel considerably more sore than after the 40 mile ride I did two weekends ago, but this ride went more smoothly as my endurance and pacing were better. Unlike last time, I didn’t feel like I could hardly ride anymore when I was done. Hopefully, I’ll get a new bike this week and this will be the last of the tougher rides on my existing bike. Also, I hope all the suffering I’ve done on the hybrid will result in some extra training that will make rides on the new bike seem much easier.

Coming back home after the ride, I jumped in the shower then took a nap before heading over to Robert’s for what ended up becoming a large group dinner. Afterwards, a few of us stuck around to sober up and watch Mean Girls. It’s been a while since I’ve last seen that movie. I’d forgotten how much I like it and how generally entertaining it is.

Although I certainly didn’t run with such a crowd, I imagine something roughly like it must have existed in my high school. Any movie that portrays high school as an extreme microcosm in a negative light is ok by me. I remember when people used to say things like “high school is the best years of your life!” back then. I didn’t believe it then and I certainly don’t believe it now, having had many better years in college, graduate school and after.

Bike Shopping

After work yesterday, Robert and I went bike shopping. We’re both looking to buy road bikes for riding STP this summer and we’ve both been riding our heavier bikes in the mean time (him a mountain bike, me my hybrid).

We hit up Velo (test rode some nice Bianchi bikes), Montlake Cycle (nobody helped us and they didn’t seem to have much more than Velo anyways), Recycled Cycles (test rode some Raleigh bikes) and then Gregg’s Greenlake (test rode some Specialized bikes). In particular, I really liked the Specialized Sequoia and Specialized Allez each of us rode at Gregg’s. The Allez Elite was nice, but I think I liked the posture of the Sequoia a bit better. Even with test rides, I’m finding it uncomfortable to crane my neck so much on the more traditional frames. Unfortunately, they only had the Sequoia in the standard in my size, so I ended up putting down a $20 deposit for them to order the Elite model (higher end components, more carbon in the frame). When it comes in a few weeks from now, I’ll go back over there for a test ride and make my decision on what to get. I’m still not sure if the differences warrant $300 for the higher-end bike, but I’ll just have to see later.

Dance in Fremont, Theater in F-Dub

For the past couple days, my friend Lisa has been in town on tour with Ultragypsy, a belly dance troop from San Francisco. Last night I saw their performance at ToST in Fremont, which was fun and a nice change from the usual stuff. She crashed on my futon last night and we got up this morning to grab brunch with her friend Nick over at the Bluwater in Leschi.

Afterwards, I met up with Bryan to see a matinée presentation of a musical called Robin Hood Continued at the Knutzen Family Theatre in Federal Way. Apparently, it’s a new show written by the creators of Annie. Basically, it’s a musical about Robin Hood’s hypothetical role in the signing of the Magna Carta (ya, it’s a pretty weird premis). Our mutual friend Chris was playing keyboard for the show, so he had a couple free tickets for us to use and this was the last show of the run. When we arrived and parked, I noticed a Porsche parked across two parking spaces:

I imagine the driver did this as a way to avoid getting his doors dinged, but it so aptly captured the stereotype of a red Porsche owner as a total asshole that I couldn’t help but take a picture.

The performance itself was corny but enjoyable. The show seemed to start out slow, but picked up especially towards the middle with regard to the music and story line. About a third of the way through, at least two dozen people lead by a couple nuns walked out of the show in the middle of a scene. It was so bizarre that I could hardly believe what was happening. For a while, it seemed like the entire theater was going to file out of the place. The play had some possibly lightly offensive material concerning gender roles (Robin Hood’s daughter pretends to be a man so that she can lead her own group of merry men) and religion (Friar Tuck is said to have had a son by giving into temptation once–per week with a woman).

After the show was over, Bryan’s car wouldn’t start due to a dead battery. Eventually, we got it started with a jump from Chris, then drove to Costco in Seattle to buy a new battery. After all of that, we were pretty hungry and grabbed some dinner up at Jamjuree on 15th. Whew, what a day!

Soulforce in Seattle

Last night, I grabbed a late dinner with Kade and some his friends at Broadway Grill. It was fun to meet some of his friends and of course hang out with him again as well. He knew all the other guys except for one from Utah. Two of them are riders (Michael and Emil) on the Soulforce Equality Ride (West). They’re in Seattle to do demonstrations/dialog at Seattle Pacific University and Northwest University in Kirkland because of the anti-gay policies at those schools. We actually didn’t talk too much about the ride, although it came up a few times. Still, I continued to be impressed with this group and the work they’re doing.

I’m certainly not the biggest supporter of activism in general. Perhaps, living in Berkeley for five years jaded me too much to what I perceived as counterproductive, ineffective activism. However, what these folks are doing seems so important. The views regarding homosexuality held by the religious right are far more damaging to those glbt people trapped within that world than those of us on the outside (despite lots of political action for things like a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage).