Mortgages - why fill my brain?

So the past week or so has made me realize that I know a lot more about mortgages and finance than I ever really wanted to. I would have rather allocated this space to design thinking, but oh well, i guess being financial aware is part of being 34!. So the mortgage thing is getting done, pretty good interest rates at the moment and the inspection of the house went well, with only minor and cosmetic things needed to be addressed.

It's been a strange week weather wise, some days it's been in the high40's low 50's and raining and other days it's been close to freezing. I have rode to work all this week, the roads are still pretty yukky to ride due to the gravel, dirt and old leaves in the bike lanes. A lot of this gravel is sharp and can cause flat tyres easily, I try and ride in the rode to avoid this, sorta annoys drivers, but it's not them who are changing my flat tyres every 2 mins. I have about 180miles on the bike and another 50 or so miles to ride on Sunday, so thats not bad for a week in January.
Work has been interesting, we are just about to make a public announcement on the 19th which has high potential to make the company a chunk of money in 09 and the future.

I have a few fog filled tree pictures from my commute on the colder mornings.

Cross Crusade #2

gotta make a silly face for the camera, yeah.

Sunday - Cyclocross race #2 - , this was in a dirt construction site in Wilsonville (25 mins south of Portland). The morning started off cold at 40 degrees, no rain, I was up at 6:30 am and throwing stuff in the car. My race was at 9:50am, in the C's. It warmed up a little but not much by the time I had to race.
For some reason people line up at the startline to get a good position, trouble is they line up 30mins prior to the race and stand there and freeze! My start position was behind maybe 60people back. The course was garbage, it was crappy, rutty and not really fun to ride, but whatever it was a cross course (perhaps), this week I managed not to break anything, thankful Felt had sent me a new fork after last weeks incident, that arrived last Wed, so my bike was good to go. I still managed to flip over the handlebars at one point in the course, but no damage done, myself and the bike was ok.

I placed 15th out of 139 riders, not too shabby, the bummer was that when I was coming in across the finish line on my final lap, I thought I had 1 lap to go, so well before the finish line, I sat up and slowed down for a breather, then 3 guys sprinted around me to the line. Oh well, I could have been 12th if I had been a little more aware - next time I guess. Also leaving it all on the racetrack is a good thing, yet something that I find hard to do.

Dave one of our riders had an open house since he lives near by and had nice warm chilli and showers to get clean. Dave Condon cleaned up the C's taking a first, he did a great job and deserved the win, after having won last week as well.
There were lot's of guys from our team out there.

Dave C - C's - 1st.
Jeff - C's - 22nd,
Tony -B's, 23rd
Nick A's - 64th
Corndog in the SS...not sure.
Joe P in the B+ - 103rd (chain snap)
Sautter A+ - 24th



In the meantime check out this t shirt - yeah you got it, naked bird and a cross bike. Let me know if you want one, I know a white van man who can.