Riding, Riding and Riding

Wed night.
Mountain bike ride, of course I have not ridden true off road in about 3 years, so this is gonna be fun. The day was dry, I borrowed a Yakima Team Bike - Kona King ($3000 full suspension, lightweight bike). Loaded up the bikes on the car, drove to the woods, where you are not allowed to ride bikes, waited till nightfall so no one would catch us - Headlights on. Of course 5 mins before starting to ride, it starts to rain, and it's been rainy the past few days... hence lots of mud.
We rode for about 3 hours, 2 1/2 in the dark, going only by electronic headlights...kinda scary when you are riding narrow trail through woods, really fast!

Kona - "The King"
Sweet Bike with post ride dirt!

As you can see - Pretty Dirty!
The Team Yak

Thursday
Lunch ride, road. Dry all morning, roll out, team ride, fast pace for an hour, several hills, then oh guess what, it starts raining for a minute, the hail, we climbed about 1000ft and the hail was in your face on the descents... not awesome.

Other than that, everything else is

Found a place

So after a while of hunting, calling, trolling craigslist and spending many days looking at crappy places (the rental market is slow here) I finally decided on a place.
Turns out it was the first place a looked at. I got this lead from a friend for someone looking for a housemate / flatemate.
The location is perfect, good neighborhood access to a lot of things. It's basically a small house and I have 3 rooms upstairs to myself, share a bathroom, share a kitchen. The place gets good light, has North and South facing windows. The guy has washer and dryer in basement with storage space. There is also a grassy backyard with a gas grill... nice!

The house is about 16miles from where I work... thus it's gonna be a long and hilly morning cycle to work! Turns out he works about 4 miles from me, so some days we can ride share.
I spoke with the house owner for a long time and he's a few years older than me, maybe 35, but he seems very normal, rational and he's big into climbing.

Now I just have to arrange to get all my stuff moved from Chicago!

Life in the Beaverton

Well i'm still here, in an extended stay hotel in Beaverton. I was going to take some pictures to post here, but if you google the words "Beaverton Suburb Strip Mall Boring" you will get a whole host of true images. I guess people with families and single people wanting cheap rent far from the city live here. It's not bad, it's just like any suburb, no character and you have to drive everywhere.Apartment complexes and large single family houses. the open roads are good to ride on though!

Apartment searching is poor, not a lot of things are interesting me at the moment. I have seen a few places so most don't fit. I'm really thinking of living in the Hawthorn area, its pretty popular and a little grungy, has a lot of character. Most ofthe propertys are homes which are small single family or small homes which have been split into 2 or 3 apartments, very residential, urban, neigbourhood. There is an opportunity of a house share just off of 40th and Hawthorne, which is a cool area near the Bagdad Theatre and Pub (shown below) ...link here

Work is going well, 2nd week , just getting used to the routine and getting back into the world of meetings and companys, much different than working for yourself for sure. My legs have been so tired this week from so much riding and not being used to riding hills and longer distances. But if I live over on the East side it's going to be a 38mile a day bike ride round trip! should keep me fit.

Enough for now.

day 4 at Yakima

Well day 4 at Yakima.
- I'm working on some cool design projects , with decent people.
- Theres 3 training rides per week , one on the weekend so today Group ride at lunch (everyone is fast here - read Cat 1/2 riders) - lots of hills and nice decents a good 1 1/2hr ride in the middle of the day followed up by some tex mex suburbia food!
- Getting to know more people in the company, it is much smaller than I thought, I am guessing around 50 people a nice size. I have been having get to know sessions with all the top brass.
- Looks like i'm gonna be attending some cool events / tradeshows / races with Yakima, feels like I will be heading to the Sea Otter Classic http://www.seaotterclassic.com/ I will have to race in some events to represent Yakima.
- Got a new widescreen computer monitor today... nice about 21" wide by 12" tall, makes CAD and graphics so much more enjoyable.
- Apartment hunting is slow, cannot find too much, I found a few but people are not returning calls. I would like to live in the Pearl district, because it is in the middle, between the East side (where friends live) and the West Side (good riding and where Yakima is) but the rents in the Pearl District start at $1600 per month, which is pretty much double what I want to pay.
- Still getting some weird looks over my new dress code, the company is very casual and most people are wearing relaxed outdoor gear, cargo pants, jeans , fleece tops, cycling stuff. Where as I am wearing tighter jeans, dress shirt and some funky color tie just to be different, topped off with some Adidas old skool Sambas. Anyway we will see how long it lasts till I revert to the first thing I find on the floor near my bed in the morning!
- Not much else, i'm pretty happy, designing and riding :) it's a good thing.

Yakima 1st day

Well i'm stoked, today was a fast / slow day. I rode my bike to work in shirt and tie and jeans, it was only about 4 miles from my hotel. When i walked in everyone in the office looked at me a little funny especially with a cycle cap and shirt /tie, since most people there dress kinda outdoorsy..ha.
Anyway I had a few meetings with key people from different departments, everyone was nice and kinda chill. Most of the stuff was procedure, finance, supply chain and what not. I have to say its strange to be back working in an office environment, strange in a familiar good way. It seems like 50% of the people at Yakima are bike nuts, my boss is a bike nut and a lot of the people I have to work with day to day are also. My boss Chris seems like a very good guy, sensible head with an understanding of design and what it takes / needs to be successful.
The group I work in is the advanced design group, where were the advanced aspect is that we come up with new ideas /products and develop them to a certain point before handing off to a more traditional engineering group, its basically a subset who's focus is on new product and not on maintaining existing product designs.
So after a morning of paperwork and networking, the afternoon brought a design review on a new product they are developing, the teams are organic and lighthearted, not like when I worked at GE! So overall a great day, plus as I bonus I found out that I can still get Pro Deals on a lot of cycle stuff, including Burton and Snowboards!!! awesome!

amazing

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY - MUM.
and like every good son who forgets to send a card to the UK, may as well say it on the web!

Just as a preface: my hotel is in Beaverton area on the west side and about a 25min car drive from Portland.

Today well.... Ecstatic..I don't know any other-way to describe this , than amazing. Today was awesome, I have been itching to ride my bike after 2 days of driving everywhere... ugg..cars.. so I met my boss at Yakima (4 miles from my hotel), I unpackaged my cross bike that I had sent there, built it up left my car at Yakima office then rode. I rode from Yakima to the Zoo, met Nathan and Sarah at the zoo, then I rode downtown to the Pearl (west dowtown). I think about 16 or 17 miles total with a few steep climbs...I forgot how amazing it is to ride round here, hills, hills, green, tress, tress, nice cars, trees, green hills..awesome..so happy so free. All I had on was a T shirt and a cycle jersey, tights, chrome knickers and msngr bag filled with ulocks, laptop, rainjacket, tools and blar. I met up with Nathan in the Pearl, he wanted to buy some shoes so we checked out the boutique stores, Adidas, puma and Diesel, then we went up to REI. Then i rode another 17miles home at 6pm, all the way bike lanes in the dark, crazy hills, cold but sweating. The cars are so nice here, on my way to the Zoo I totally ran a red at the bottom of a hill - flying down hanging a tight left, BMW in the rear, shoulder glance to see what clemence i had to the the BMW - it had stopped - perhaps in amazement, I guess cyclists don't roll red's here... ha ha... all good though, guess I'll have to loose the Chicago style riding. Riding here is so great, hills are amazing, makes me feel weak after 14months without hills!

Sat - I managed to check out a few areas, just scoping to see what i like and dislike, my biggest dilemma is West side or East side, i will be working west side and sometimes the commute between the sides can add up. basically west side is hilly, beautifully, more suburban and not hip. East side, flatters, more urban, more hip, more culture. i looked at a house share, where I would have the top floor of a bungalow, 3 rooms, 1 small, the others good. Anyway, i'm rambling now!

I'm gonna be very happy here. All I need to do is find a sweet place to live.

So tomorrow - first day of work. I'm excited but my boss (Chris) had already prepared me today and told me I had a lot of administrative meetings about blar and company and blar. Tuesday i'm gonna meet with the CEO, he's pro design because he has seen the sales numbers increase, so thats good that i'm not fully figting an uphill battle.

Anyway, I'm pumped, i basically got into the hotel, threw my bile in the door and started writing this......

Now feebie is IM'ing me..... I'll tell her to read the blog.