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Gus is now six. Hard to believe he's been a part of my life for six years now. Oh, how my life has changed during his lifetime. He came into my life during a period of unemployment. My mother thought getting a dog was not a particularly good idea at the time but came to realize that Gus gave focus to my life when I most needed it. I'll admit that I nurtured him to be somewhat of a momma's boy, he loves me and only me, tolerates everyone else, but only because I insist. He's a wonderful dog and I'm so glad he's mine.
It was a surprisingly busy week at work so I didn't really have time to get anything for Gus' birthday. Since Friday is my not working day I plan to take them both down to Three Dog Bakery and get some nummy treats for them. Then maybe we'll head out to the dog park for some good runnin' & fetchin' and sniffin' & peein' all the things dogs love to do.
Here's a photo from Gus' first birthday. He wore that party hat for at least 20 minutes, until his doggy pals arrived for the party. He was even fetching that ball while wearing the hat.
Since I'm back I think I need to not beat myself up if I don't post daily. I think a more reasonable goal may be to aim for two posts per week and if I make more than that I'll be pleased. Geez, look at the time (10:55 am) I gotta hit the shower and hit the road, off to visit a pal in the hospital recovering from surgery (he should be going home tomorrow) and then off to a birthday party for the little red-headed girl, she turns three today. Wow, three already! And I still have to wrap her present, a Curious George combo sticker book/coloring book. I hear sticker books are hot items for her age group.
I'd have had more time to write if I hadn't gotten caught up watching this video shot from an OC1 paddling down the Columbia River Gorge. I did a down wind run as well, this guy is a much better paddler than me!
Hey all, long time no post! To ease back into it I'm going to give you a little chemistry lesson. For a chemical reaction to occur a number of conditions must be met, one of which is the activation energy must be overcome. Basically that means the components of the reaction will sit together quite happily co-existing until you dump enough energy into the reaction vessel to overcome the activation energy after which the reaction will speed merrily along. And here's a picture I found on wikipedia. I know there is a lot of ugly looking math on the picture, the take home message is that you have to get over the hump for things to move along more easily.
With all the whatever going on in my life I sort of closed in on myself a bit, go paddling, go to work (still only 4 days a week), play with the dogs, not write my blog. Even though I had lots of ideas that I wanted to put down. As more time passed between postings the harder it became to sit down and write, my activation energy was growing higher and higher until it felt insurmountable (insert pity party here). This morning I finally decided that it didn't really matter what I wrote so long as I tapped out something! Activation energy overcome the posts should be flowing a bit more freely now. And I have so much to tell you!
More details on the Gorge Games race in a later post but for anyone who gets Fox Sports News (FSN) they have an outrigger segment! I haven't re-watched it in super slow-motion but I think you can see the women's crew, I know you can see one of the men's crews (seats 5 Ernie & 6 Troy) in a red and yellow, borrowed, boat. Here in Seattle the entire Gorge Games coverage will be rebroadcast on Saturday. The outrigger portion was on the 4th day/episode, approx 20 min into the 30 min show.
Apologies, it's been far too long since I've posted. I've had a fair bit going on and been spending too much time in my head rather than putting what's in my head down. Lots going on lately since Lotus (and before). During the race my camel-back hydration pack rubbed my sides raw; the wounds are nearly healed, thankfully, just in time to rub them raw this coming weekend up at Gibson's! I stitched up a new pack out of fleece and bought some 2 inch wide webbing for the belt and made a fleece sleeve for that. Ok, just realized my mind is going in about 50,000 different directions at once and if I hope to get to bed at a reasonable hour I need to focus and try to reign in some order to my thoughts.
Fourth of July rocked! It was kinda more fluid in terms of planning than I had expected but it was all good. I'd hoped to go sailing with Scotty, but it was a bit too windy for my 
little sailboat. I ended up playing mini golf at Interbay with Diane, Dave, and his two daughters. It was lots of fun, they are always fun to hang out with, and I didn't suck nearly as badly as I expected. In fact, I got the second lowest score. Who knew! Scotty and I went up to have a wonderful supper at Mark, Nancy, and little Miriam's house. Grilled salmon, grilled and steamed asparagus, grilled and steamed corn on the cob, steamed kale with balsamic dressing, mmm mmm mmm. It was all excellent but the grilled asparagus was heavenly. They needed to get Mark's mother, Wynne, to the airport (flying back to Boston) so Scotty and I went down nearer my place, Magnuson Park, to light fireworks off. We found a very nice, large, empty parking lot and we having a lovely time when a parks guy rolled up and asked us to move along, we nodded and said sure thing.
After he rolled off we proceeded to continue lighting stuff! A few minutes later he came back chastising us for disregarding his request to move on. We tried to find another part of the park where we could light stuff but he cruised by as we were packing our bags. We decided a total change of venue was in order at that point. We went over to Matthew's Beach and aside from the underage drinking that was going on and occasional fireworks lit amongst the trees it seemed like the perfect location. We went down to the water and had an excellent little show. The drunken youth even cheered! We scooted when a guy started lighting stuff behind us and it was falling over shooting firey balls in the direction of people. In all an excellent time! By the way, taking photos of fireworks is harder than you'd expect, but you can tell we had some fun!
We finally have sorted out our Gibson's crew for next weekend.
Sabine from Seattle Outrigger will be stroking for us, we practiced with her last Saturday and I think it's going to be an awesome crew for the race. Anyway, following Sabine will be Lianne, Minnie, me, Chantelle, and Kristen will be steering. Our practice last Saturday was a 16 miler down nearly to the eastern span of the I-90 bridge. It was an excellent practice, a bit drizzley but perfect conditions otherwise. I need to get some sort of headband to keep the sweat out of my eyes. Sweat drips into my eyes and the burning was quite blinding. The new fleece hydration pack worked out just fine. I think it could use a few slight refinements but it should do me just fine this weekend.
Sabine and I will be carpooling up. Leaving around 9 am Friday, crossing the border (I finally get to use my new Nexus pass) and then up to the ferry at Horseshoe Bay leaving at 2:15. The boats will be on the 6:45 ferry so we will have a few hours to settle in and get some supper before we have to rig the boats. My neighbor Kyle will be looking after the dog boyz, thankfully. It's such a relief knowing she can take care of them and they will be in good hands.
The rest of Saturday was quite busy. I went down to Olympia to go through the last of the photos with Uncle Leonard and then a BBQ at Craig's house, a former co-worker. 16 miles is a very long way combined with lots of visiting and driving, I was pooped once I finally made it home.
Sunday I went for a nice easy paddle on my OC1 to try and loose
n things from that long paddle. Finally got Steve out on his OC1, too. After the paddle we went down to Agua Verde for some lunch. One day I still want to try and paddle down there for lunch, it may happen.
Today was a day of emotional ups and downs. An offer was finally made on the Mother's house which has been on the market since last September. My brother made a counter offer which was accepted today! They want to fast track the deal and if all goes well the deal will close on July 25. Thank goodness. On the other hand things have been very slow at work for a lot longer than I have ever seen before, that anyone has ever seen before. The president of the company called a meeting for this afternoon which threw everyone into a dither, she never calls meetings and we
have our regular staff meetings on Wednesdays. Until further notice we are having our hours (and pay) reduced by 20%. Projections are promising for September and October, but July and August are still looking very grim. I guess a 20% reduction is much better than 100% but it's going to be tough considering I pretty much live paycheck to paycheck. Well, please think good economic thoughts in my general direction and if you have any data that needs quality third party validation please let me know, we have a full staff ready to do quality validation work to suite your needs!
We took three crews up to Lotus Iron Saturday. We didn't have enough women available to field a full women's crew so we had a mixed crew of Minnie, Rives, Melissa, Will, Todd, and Lianne steered her first race. Our men's blue team was Alan, Eric, Jesse, Clem, Kevin and Tom steering, the men's white team was Frank, Ernie, Patrick, Ed, Jason, and Troy steering. It was the latest race start I've ever had before, scheduled for 2 pm. In Canada the women's crews race together and afterwards the men's and mixed crews race together.
The race
course was leaving in front of the Lotus Clubhouse across the Burrard Inlet north in to the Indian Arm, turn around Raccoon Island, then south towards Cates Park, then west back into Burrard Inlet to a turn around McBarge, and then a final eastward run back towards the Clubhouse. The race distance was posted as 17 km which converts 10.56 miles. I think it was actually closer to 19 km because my GPS read 12.1 miles at the end of the race and we really didn't do that much zigging and zagging around.
Two boats huli'd within 3 minutes of the start line. The wake across Burrard Inlet was substantial, there is a lot of big (huge) boat traffic along the Inlet. We may have been a little cautious but I'd rather be cautious and not huli during a race. Will and I worked out a system where Lianne would call out "Protect the ama!" and whoever was on the right side would switch over to the ama side, I kept calling the changes so the others wouldn't become too fatigued staying on one side too long and when things had calmed down Will or I would switch to the side we should be on. Once we were further up Indian Arm it was less bad but there were still moments of some pretty big wake. As we came upon Raccoon Island I saw a couple sunbathing, I'm not sure if they were completely naked but they definitely were from the waist up! I didn't call it out to the rest of the boat, didn't want to distract the guys (lol). On the other side of Raccoon Island there was a boat full of partying youth, I didn't see them but heard afterwards there were two topless girls, I just heard the guy hollar that we were dead last; not true there was another boat behind us! However, they did pass us once we were back into Burrard Inlet. We were getting tired by this time and had nothing left to try and fend them off. On our way to McBarge one of the chase boats was hanging nearby us and the crew which had just passed us. It was both endearing and a wee bit annoying that the guy was calling out to pull and twist, general pep-talking kind of thing. One part of me just wanted him to bed quiet, while another part of me actually pulled a bit better for the encouragement!
We were finally into the home stretch, tired and needing to make it that last bit, Lianne dipped the her steering blade in for a slight correction and the current ripped it out of her hands! Todd gave her his paddle and went for the spare paddle taped to the iako. We started to turn back for the blade when the guy in the chase boat offered to 
get it for us! We kept on towards the finish line and he passed off the blade to Lianne. With the exception of the start of the turn to go back those of us in the front would never have known there was anything different happening! Way to go Lianne! I was (and I think most of our crew was) thinking that the finish horn would happen a minute or so before it finally went off, but we had to keep paddling until we heard the horn. So tired, so tired, but finished!
Our men's blue team finished first overall/first open men's, at 1:24:17, the men's white team finished 11th overall, eighth open men's, at 1:39:00, and our mixed crew finished 19th overall at 1:57:40. I was in line for the BBQ plate lunch when I heard one of the race officials asking around for one of the SSP mixed crew paddlers. I called him over, he wanted to confirm that we had registered master category (35 and over). Yup, we were all over 35, we were masters. He then said we'd taken first place! Seems we were the only crew to register master mixed. HA! We went from last to first in a heartbeat!
Between the late start, long race, lunch, awards, and loading the boats we weren't on our way home until 6:45 pm. Talk about a long day. I finally got home at nearly 10 pm. Thanks to my neighbors for taking the dog boyz out for a few potty breaks today and feeding supper, too.
As you may remember I was planning to paddle to Red Hook Brewery via the Sammamish River on Sunday. I heard enough negative feedback that I decided to scrap the idea and I believe I've come up with a much better idea. I/we can paddle to Agua Verde in Lake Union via Lake Washington and the Montlake Cut! I am totally down for margaritas and mexican food. I think the only place that has better rice and beans is Wahoo's Fish Taco and the only time I get that is when I'm visiting the Bro in CO (or SoCA, where I travel far less frequently than CO). Anyhoo.. I went to neither Red Hook or Agua Verde, saving it for another time. Anyone want to come along?
I did meet Lianne and her son, Kyle, to go for a nice out and back paddle from SSP. We headed north at a modest pace. We didn't want Kyle to fall too far behind and he wasn't feeling too motivated to paddle. He wanted to surf the wake left by passing boats.
I ultimately decided to paddle hard 10 minutes out and catch up with them on my way back. At my turn around point there were two people in kayaks out having a nice Sunday paddle. The guy decided he wanted to keep even with me. HA! As if my (not so thinly veiled) competitive nature would allow that!?! I dug in and pushed a little harder, but actually not that much more, and completely dropped him. I had brought my camera along in the waterproof housing so I stopped to shoot a couple snaps. As I was finishing he came up alongside me commenting on how my boat really moves. 'Damned right it does', I thought to myself. "Yup", I said to him. We chatted a moment and then I picked up the pace for the remaining 1.5 miles back to the beach, where I finally caught up with Lianne and Kyle. Turns out they headed back straightaway and surfed their way in. I'll post a pic once I get them downloaded.
We had ideal weather conditions for our Saturday morning paddle, warming but not hot and partly sunny but not too much. Since you should be paddling reasonably hard you really don't need the sun beating down on you, too. Our crew started out with Kristen stroking, then Meilee, Nancy, me, Rives and Lianne steering to get practice for Lotus Iron coming up on June 28. Can I just say 'I love following Kristen at stroke!' Her pace is comfortable, her reach is long, and her stroke is powerful. She is so easy to follow, she is also an awesome steerer. Too bad we can't clone her to have her sitting both ends of the boat! Minnie and Lianne are doing a fine job stroking, but they are still quite new in those positions. Over time I have no doubt they will really grow into those positions. Lianne is already showing a lot of potential at steering, too.
So, we paddled south past the 520 bridge and onward towards the I-90 bridge. We hit the 7 mile mark off the marina at Leschi. No chance of seeing our dragon boating team members, they were all up north in Vancouver for a huge weekend of racing. We took a nice easy turn and then stopped to swap people around. Lianne to stroke, then Rives, Nancy and I kept our places, followed by Meilee, and a somewhat tired Kristen to steer. Kristen hasn't sat anywhere but steering much at all this summer and that is a very different type of fitness.
The last mile or so were tough. We went 14.2 miles total and it felt like it. It was a good workout and it helped bring us another step closer to being ready for Gibson's.
After we got back to SSP Clem and I documented dings and wear spots on the three OC6s. We're hoping to get some rough time and cost estimates from the guy who is repairing our ama so we can figure out when to pull the boats for maintenance.
