in the P Land

got into PDX... flight sorta was bunk, cramped united flight... 6pm..still warm... 56 degrees... big difference from the freezing of Chicago. Got my rental car, drove to Nathans, staring at grass and trees. Went & had a catchup dinner.... local pub... good beers, .... I forgot that there are a million beers here, micro brews and what not. I was supposed to drive out to the other side of town (20 miles away) where my hotel is, but I think i'm gonna crash at Nathans. tomorrow... apartment hunting.... i'll try the craigslist and see where that takes me. After a crazy week in chicago, things are gonna be so much different back here.

this week

sorting
arranging
packing
procrastinating
packing bikes
worrying
arrrggggg.

ramble

today it has dawned on me that I am moving across country- again. I have so much to be thankful for. Because I so badly wanted to move West Coast again at some point, I remember thinking that even if I did not have a job lined up, I would just pick up and just move, land somewhere and work things out. Fortunately Yakima came through and offered me a job, perfect, and not just a job, something that i'm very excited about getting into, a job where I can design for snowboards, watersports and bikes. I'm looking forward to the smaller city, the varied terrain with lots of hills and the environmentally pro attitude that comes with the north westerners.
thats all, enough rambling.

this snow is killing me

So the day before yesterday -20 degrees F, then yesterday snow, then today snow all day, not fun snow, crappy wet snow, slushy and sludgy snow over the top of frozen ice snow. This snow is not fun, it snowed all day and accumulated a couple of inches, since my car has not moved in weeks and weeks, it's sorta buried again right. It's also not fun to cycle in this snow, why, coz you have to take the whole lane then drivers get mad and do erratic moves. Any, I hate this weather, it is poop.

A week, a week of snow and arangements.

So i'm pretty excited to be moving to Portland and going to work for Yakima. I have spoke with the HR bloke a few times for making arrangements. Since I have driven across the US twice, I really don't wnt to drive across in the middle of winter, so I have been making arrangements to have my car transported, now this sounds fancy but when I worked it out, financially it costs less than having me drive, if you figure gas, food and hotels. So i'm going to schedule to get my car picked up the week before I fly. I have also spoke with the bloke I will be working for , Chris. At the moment they are setting up a mid week ride / team at Yakima and he wanted to make sure I was on the squad..... heck yeah riding at work, why wouldn't I ? He also told em they had a lot of projects in the pipeline and at the starting gates that they needed help on as soon as I get on board.

Guess what, it started snowing again, yep wet fat snow all night - froze over, wed am the roads were icy, then all day wed, wet fat snow.... great. So great for cycling to work in. There is absolutly no way I will drive, I will have to dig my car out of the last snowfall, it's stuck in a patch on the street about 12" deep., surrounding the car by a fair margin.

What else? got a haircut and had a shave. I was feeeling a little under the weather last night so I had a shave. Yeah I know ... right like having a shave would make me feel better.
Well i've been sick now for a few days and when I say sick I just mean head cold, but I loose my appetite and it's not like me to be unwell. It's Sat PM now and my headcold is starting to go away, thank goodness it did not move down into my chest. What is the right way to deal with colds? liquids no solids and lots of sleep? or lots of solid food and regular sleep? I'm not sure, but I have been sleeping a lot more over the last few days. I also have not had the energy to workout.

In PDX... its the NAHBS (North american Handmade Bicycle Show) this weekend. With some very sexy stuff. Check it out here
Hopefully my friend Nathan will actually go to this, as there is some gorgeous hand crafted stuff.

But wait - theres more, check this one out.

Yep that's right Dairy Milk a whopping 1Kg of it - wicked. This is courtesy of my friend Nicola from the UK (North London), who was visiting Chicago and stopped by the bike store today to give me this massive slab of chocolate goodness! plus a few real Mars bars, non of the Hershey's crap chocolate.

Tonight I went to a Skyline Chili party. And for those of you who don't know Skyline chili is a tradition of Cincinnati's. anyway the Chilli was good and it was followed up with a nice serving of Graters icecream!

Tomorrow - Sunday - a day of going to the Laundromat, trying to do my taxes and cracking out some sketches for a medical device project that I am working on.

laters.. have a fun weekend.

Inner City Snow....

Thursday night / Friday Chicago was hit by Snow. My car stays in the same spot since i cycle in sun or snow. I was going out last night and snapped a couple of pics on my car from my cell phone. The center of the rear wheel is about 12" off the ground, so you can see the snow is pretty deep.