It's been a while since I posted, I'm thinking that larger breaks between posts will mean , more interesting stuff, instead of blar blar, ride bike, blar blar ride bike. But it turns out it might still all be blar blar bikes blar blar. yes.
The sun has come out! that is the main news! - Yes.
after months and months of stupid rain, rain and more rain into June and early July... it finally broke, right around the 5th of July... no more rain, all sun. then of recent it's been very hot with a few days that hit 39deg C.
Around the house:
So straight from rain to heat means all the weeds in the garden are growing fast and I have to do a lot of watering to stop my trees from dying on the hot days. I had to do a bit of gardening, right, you know, green finger James, not.A lot of stuff was overgrown and messy, so I had to break out the clippers and trim some crap. I also still have a lot of weed pulling to do! gawd I dislike gardening! not being able to tell plants from weeds means I throw a lot of plants away!
Since Jordan moved out I have been on the hunt for a flatmate. I had interviewed a ton of strange strange kookie nutjob people after I put an advert on
craigslist (free online classified). So in the end I got a new flatmate, Shin, he's Korean, he's in Portland temporarily doing a work placement at a design company. He's pretty nice guy and designer like so clean and what not. He works fairly locally and is renting from me till the end of September. After that I will have to get a new flat mate.
Whats been going on in cycling world I hear you say.
The tour de france has come and gone and we watched Cavendish cry on the podium, blar blar, now onto real stuff.
Mount Tabor races
June / July
been and gone (mount tabor is one that ruth and mum walked round). It's a circuit race, with some good climbing and a fast decent, really gets the heart going. It was a series of 6 races. I managed to do 3 races and get 7th, 4 and 1st place. The last race was double points, i.e. my 1st place, and it just so worked out that I won the whole series by barely a few points! ha how fluke is that! Still it's a win and i'll take it. Amongst the road racing it's been track season.
Team Beer Track Race,
Its avelodrome race held by my team, we organise it, we find prizes for races and we set it up. I have aquired some bike racks from Yakima and some cycling jerseys from Chrome to add to the prizes. Fun times were had hitting some big track racing!
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| thats me mum! |
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| The team looking mean and rolling out |
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| some other nutters |
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| on the rollers warming up. Smiling not flipping off anyone! |
August 14th Saturday in Hell
Rapha Gentlemens Race
Here we go.... 101 deg F! 39deg C! just in time for the August 14th - Rapha Gentlemens Race - this past weekend. The Gentlemens Race is a bike race that has been held for the past 3 years, I rode the first year, I did not get to ride last year. This year i'm on Team Beer! for the unsanctioned and unsupported 132mile team race. Each team has six people and all have to finish the route to qualify.
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| At the start of the race |
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| Rapha Gentlemens race, taking a break. |
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| Sometimes a hotdog after 132 miles is not enough! |
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| The crew after 132 miles and 8hr 20mins in the saddle. |
This year was much much different from previous years....EPIC and Bollocks are words that come to mind.. Lots and lots of climbing, lots of riding in deep sharp gravel for miles and miles causing many teams multiple punctures. For us it was - 101F 39C and 8hr 20mins of riding. 12 flat tyres, one replacement tyre purchased. .
Over 12 water bottles consumed, 8 electrolyte tables, 1 fried burrito, 4 Lara Bars, 3 packets of Cliff Shot blocks, 1 packet of gel, 1 pack of peanut m&M's, 1 peanut butter and chocolate sandwich.
And overall
7th place! (20 teams did not finish, they quit or lost members of their team to mechanicals or the heat). this was by far the hardest race I have ever done, a lot of it was a mental game with the climbs and the nasty conditions.
Here are some great pictures.
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Rahpah
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On the design front:
The National Industrial Designers conference is in Portland this year, and luckily enough my work agreeded to send me. This is held by the IDSA (Industrial design society of America) and it has some famous speakers and events. This was Aug 4-7th, it was a good event well attended.
Next week I get to travel to Seattle for some computer software training which is well needed and well overdue!
On the travel front:
I get to go to Seattle next week for some software training, i'm gonna throw my bike on the train and go up there (3.5hr on train) then just ride around the city till I am sick of riding and software training. then in September, i' off to Interbike in Vegas, a big arse bike industry show.
On the work front:
Yakima has been busy, I have been involved with some traveling to some other cities for consumer research in the US, but cannot say more than this for web privacy reasons. Of recent months I have been very unmotivated... the projects I am working on are not very interesting from a design perspective and i'm not passionate about my work for the last 3 or 4 months, hard to keep my motivation up because of what I feel are bad business decision, but I know things will change, it's largely project based and my projects have been really really boring and not truly innovative.
