Idiot Car Drivers #2 - the right hook

The right hook

Urban high pedestrian area. im in a bike lane going 18mph. Car comes up behind me toots horn then immediately passes me and turns to the right just yards in front of me to get on a side street. I slam on the brakes, near T bone into car, almost over the handlebars.

Idiot car drivers #1

this is gonna happen soon

Getting fed up with idiot car drivers. This last week has had quite a few incidents. This am for example riding to work. Turned onto the small narrow country road with a few blind corners, speed limit 25, I'm riding 28,29 slight downhill, car comes up behind me, lays on the horn, passes me on a blind curve at I would guess about 40.

Work Update

I want to share my excitement with you. It's totally work related, yeah yeah, yawn right. so click away now if that bothers you.

England Trip 2011

The UK trip. 
A few days at my mums in Leeds, some at my sisters in Brighton and couple in swanky London. Pumping a bit of cash into the British economy by spending a ton on rail tickets and hoping to lower the unemployment rate. A little family time, a little travel and some sightseeing for Cassie.

We had planned for rain and some cold and packed accordingly, turns out it was not to be had . Unexpected top notch weather came in, unexpected especially for the UK at this time of the year when arrived in some freakish warm weather and pretty much didn't use any of our cold wet gear. Hope you like the pictures.

Seven Sisters

the London Eye at night

yeah you know what this royal biz is about

Brighton, mental!

Evil big ben

eggs on welsh rarebit, sorted

idiots

More pictures here:

England2011

Mountain Bike Oregon

Wow 2 months almost ticks by since my last post. Yep it turned summer and since I get so sick of the rain, every weekend gets consumed lickity split by a million activities.

Mountain Bike Oregon
This year I was fortunate to sign up for Mountain Bike Oregon (MBO), every year MBO is booked up well before the dates of the event. MBO happens in August and is a small outdoor vacation for you an your mountain bike in Oakridge Oregon. This year I went with some friends from work, so we had a little fun group. We rode about 100 miles totals.

MBO takes place just outside of Eugene Oregon, Oakridge is becomeing a mecca for excellent mountain bike trails.last for 4nights, 3 days in which you get a meal each breakfast and dinner,  tent camping facilities, and organized shuttles to trailheads which you sign up for in advance. The majority of trails you sign up for have guides, local volunteers that know the area, can ride at any pace and will assist you should you get lost or hurt. Showering facilities are provided by a local high school (shuttle bus from the campground).

The good.
- A choice of a lot of Sweet trails to choose from, long short, freeride, xc, downhill ish.
- Organized shuttles too trail heads
- Solid 3 days of riding. It's easy to do 6+hrs of riding each day.
- Friday and Sat night events - bike toss, mini bike race in the beer garden.

- free beer from local sponsors.

- Major bike manufacturers are there Santa Cruz, Cannondale, Felt, Pivot, Titus to loan out bikes for test rides.

The bad.
- $400 to play for 3 days. ($450 for extra bonus trail). You decide if this is good or bad, my viewpoint... overpriced.
- crappy breakfast, ok dinner
- the sign up sheet for the good trails get signed up for fast, so there is an archaic waiting line scramble which really doesn't go hand in hand with the $450 you plunked down. Pre register anyone?
- the bus to and from the showering facilities gets a little annoying, but so does the sub par food.

Trails we rode - Larison Rock, ATC (Alpine, Tire Mountain and CloverLeaf), Larison Creek (all downhill) and Middle Fork (the whole of it 5hr+)

Check out my pics here. Please note, most of my time is riding, so the good stuff does get captured with two hands on the handlebars!

Oh yeah, one of the driver blokes also rolled a shuttle van! luckily no one was hurt and the bikes all flipped off the top and were ok. my bike was in the pile also.

Whats new June?

At the lake, fancy a swim?
or a sock monkey, cute init, my 37th b day card from Cassie.

Chemex Coffee Maker
This is a birthday gift from cassie, just looks like some type of

carafe yeah, but no , it's a drip style coffee maker, glass so you can warm
up on a gas cooker. Makes great coffee.

in action

Muji London, 

yes, London sent from England, recreated in bloody small scale in Portland, Oregon

Right, haircut time, why? why not.

From This

To this

^my mum says I look like a criminal

After a month of trying to find the right teak finish

Heres the deal .it's not teak oil per sey, it's a combo of oil and chemicals,

but not a topcoat, it gets absorbed into the wood. Dries hard, not sticky.
I think it's pretty good.

nice eh

still drying, the finish will get a bit lighter

Mt. Tabor Crit Series.

Wed nights are the Tabor races, its a short loop with a good bit of climbing.

just to be clear, this is for 9th place btw.

yeah! leading the pack out

oh yeah - just chilling. while all around me are too serious to be fun.
shame my gloves are black here,

Monday Nights Short Track
It's a circuit mountain bike race in Portland, your heart is pretty much maxed out for 40mins.
I also am very poor at this.

short track mtb

Test of Endurance 50
South West Oregon, near Corvallis.
This is right at the finish of a 6 1/2hr MTB race, 50 miles and 8000ft (2500m) of climbing

don't look like a happy bunny do I, yeah, you wouldn't either

start of the race here, this is when I felt the best, by the way.

Reach the Beach 2011

Ride to the beach! Raise some money for Lung Disease. This year I took it a little more seriously, planned ahead and did some more canvasing for support. Thanks to your help I managed to raise $650 in donations. Brilliant.

I rode "Reach the Beach" with my cycling team, Team Beer! Reach Beach is not a race, it's a fundraiser. A few years back one of the members of Beer! passed away from a lung related disease, so this ride is very close to heart with Team Beer!

In my small world of cycling, commuting and racing it's easy to forget the overall perspective of heath and cycling. The Reach The Beach ride is a an organized ride with thousands of riders who are supporting a good cause, it's not a race and it's a really encouraging and even a milestone event for normal non racer type people. Think about joe average riding 100miles.. pretty amazing... encouraging bike advocacy, fitness and raising money.

• Three thousand cyclists participated in this year’s Reach The Beach.  The event sold out two weeks before the ride this year.  We anticipate this trend continuing as people find out what a great day of riding Reach The Beach can be!
  
• The event raised more than $600,000 in sponsorships, donations, merchandising and registrations.  This was another fundraising record for the event with almost all of the money coming in from $10, $25 and $100 donations.

We set off at around 6am in Portland where we jumped on the train over to Beaverton where the start was. We started about 8am and rode 104miles with many rest stop sand pee breaks in between to eventually arrive at Pacific City at the seaside at around 4:30pm.

The team rented a house at Pacific City at the seaside so we could stay overnight. The next day I rode back to Portland the next day with Clint an ex teammate, slightly different route but for a total of 217miles! whoot whoot..

Lot's of ride photos here

^dork^

Thanks for everyones help. Sincerely James

Teak is IT! The PDX Ronde 2011 is not it!

Teak is it! (Plantation teak of course!)
- about bloody time for a dining room table!

more furniture coming soon, as Cassie is making me buy stuff!

PDX Ronde April 17th 2011
A year seems to have rolled by quick, I can still remember the pain from the 2010 PDX Ronde. The annual unsanctioned bike ride which climbs the steepest hills in Portland on a 50mile course.

There are two climbs which are very steep, the rest is just long and grueling. The first is Brynwood which is ony 0.3 miles long but very steep grade, most people cannot ride it. You are stood up on the pedals almost falling over the handlebars leaning forward, moving at less than 4mph.
The second climb is College which is a bit longer and not quite as steep as Brynwood but the same thing, turning the pedals so slow, leaning right over the bars to stop you from falling back, yet trying to have some weight on the back wheel to make you go.