Momentary lapse of reason

I just signed up for the Big Climb for Leukemia on March 16th. I have no idea what the hell I'm thinking. I'm so not trained for this, but what the hell. 1,311 steps over 69 floors shouldn't be that bad, right?

I need to raise some funds, so if you're interested, please donate to the Big Climb for Leukemia, Catastrophic Collapse for Me. You'll probably find me at the Eastlake stairs for the next few weeks....

The weekend wrapup

I started the weekend with another Friday night run to Alpental. Since this is my first season boarding, I don't really have much to compare the conditions to, but now I understand the difference between good snow and bad snow. Friday was bad. Most of the runs were icy and the thought of eating shit on that kind of stuff really didn't make for a fun night. I took a few videos, the funniest being Eric's Snowboard Jump Gone Bad. I'm just glad he was ok, because I felt really bad that you can hear me laughing at the end of the clip. That was brutal. Somehow he caught the front edge of his board right before going off a 4-5 ft jump onto pretty much solid ice. Ouch. We pretty much called it a night after that.

Believe it or not, I actually broke out the Ruby for the first time in about 3 months and did a road ride Saturday! The weather was beautiful so I couldn't resist. I only rode about 20 miles, but managed over 2500 ft of climbing, so that was fun. Surprisingly, I wasn't nearly as out of shape as I thought and was climbing pretty well. My cardio definitely needs some work, but maybe boarding kept me in better shape than I anticipated. I need to get with the program, start commuting to work, and see how much fitness I can build in the next month. I'm planning to kick off my limited road season this year at North Shore.

Sunday I took another few laps on Tapeworm and definitely saw improvement. I managed to ride over some roots and logs I couldn't last weekend and even accidentally landed a 2-3' jump. If I had known it was coming, I would have crashed, but I just rolled right off and didn't kill myself. Awesome.

At least I didn't beat myself up as badly as last weekend. I might have jammed my shoulder a bit crashing into a log and re-irritated my busted rib, but mostly I'm in one piece. I just need to remember to flip my heel back down on the snowboard binding when getting off the lift. First time off I ate shit and fell RIGHT on it. I might be able to sit down normally today.

Saturday night I took a party bus from Bothell to Tacoma to watch cage fighting at the Tacoma Dome. Yeah. I'll put up a separate post on that one...

I'm battered

I did a good job battering myself to a pulp over the weekend. I kicked off the weekend with Friday night's Alpental excursion and a trip to the gym for the first time in weeks. Saturday morning I couldn't move my upper body at all and my legs were hammered from boarding. Didn't stop me from packing up the Kona and hitting the Tapeworm for her maiden voyage. The Kona rocks! It's awesome to have a mountain bike that actually fits!

I rode tapeworm better than I normally do and I attribute it to the bike. We hit the Parasite, then Tapeworm, then took a break and did it all again. My skills were better the second time, but I have a lot of room for improvement. Of course, I had a few nice crashes that left a couple of new bruises and some embedded blackberry thorns.

This morning I cruised to Black Diamond with a teammate to race my first mountain bike race ever. It did not go well! I ended up last by like 8 minutes or something. Wow, that sucks! I had no idea what to expect and the course turned out much more technical than I thought it would be. At 8:30 this morning there was also a nice layer of frost on the ground, which made every root, rock, and corner slick as hell.

The first part of the course contained a rock garden of baby heads. I could not ride over those damn things to save my soul and crashed three times in about 10 feet. On the second lap I did a little better but got stuck on one rock, had my front wheel turned at a 90, and had a split second to think, "Oh shit" before I fell over hard. Lost my chain, killed my knee, but managed to finally get up and finish the race.

So...I suck at mountain biking! But, it's fun as hell. If I batter myself every weekend at Philip Arnold and the Colonnade, I have to get better, right?

Boarding rocks again

Finally made it to Alpental tonight and it was awesome. At first we were pretty worried since it was raining most of the way, but once we got there it turned to snow and the conditions weren't too bad at all. I think the rain scared people away because the slopes were practically empty.

For a while I got pretty frustrated tonight. There's only so many times I can do the same beginner run over and over before it gets dull. I kept struggling with toe-side turns, so after getting some instruction from Eric I finally started to get it. He then convinced me to do the BIG run there. I'm not sure if it's a black diamond run or a blue run, but it's by far the biggest, steepest, longest run I've done yet.

I nearly had a heart attack going up the lift, but it turned out not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I even nailed a pretty sweet heel to toe transition turn at the end - woo! I found out what it feels like to slide on your ass for about 20 seconds, but I survived. I can't believe how badly that run hammered my legs! It was really fun though and I'll definitely be hitting it next time. No more St Bernard beginner's run for me!

I'm off to bed so I can hit Philip Arnold in the AM with the brand new Kona. Can't wait!

New baby!

That's right! It's a (drumroll please) Kona!

I get to pick up my new kickin' Kona Lisa mountain bike tonight from Center Cycle. Woo! That means I'll be hitting the dirt for my first ever mountain bike race on Sunday in Black Diamond. I'm also slated to take her for a spin on the Tapeworm Saturday. There couldn't be a better trail to break in a new mountain bike.

Last Sunday I ventured up to Denny Creek on snowshoes and took some funny video of Jake.
Jake in the Snow 1
Jake in the Snow 2

The snow was so deep he had to practically swim his way through. After over an hour of chasing snowballs and snow wading, he was so tired he barely made it back to the car. Once in the car he was fast asleep. I haven't seen him that tired in a long, long time!

Whew...take a breath!

Wow. I feel like months have gone by since my last blog post. I started my new job as a Flash Manager at Intava on the 28th and I love it. I didn't realize how truly bored I was at Classmates until I started working here. My job in a nutshell is to manage a small team of Flash devs, aid in project management, improve development issues, and interview and hire at least one more Flash dev, all while remaining an individual contributor. Fun! I've been up to my eyeballs in work and learning lots of new things, but the crew at Intava are a great group and really fun to work with. I'm starting a Flash project and I'm excited to dive back in.

Aside from that, I went to Baker Saturday to snowboard and the weather couldn't have been better. Blue skies and awesome snow! The drive was a bit long, so next time I think I'll make a weekend out of it, but it was really a good time. I'm getting a little frustrated because I feel like I should be able to carve down tons of runs, but I'm still stumbling with toe-side turns. I have to keep reminding myself that I've really only been out 5 times.

I haven't spent much time on the bike at all. I'm just not motivated to ride 50+ miles. I am; however, thinking of going to Center Cycle and finally getting my Kona so I can jump into Sunday's mountain bike race at South Seatac. Mountain biking I can do. Road, not so much. I think my road season will be pretty limited to Walla Walla and a handful of crits, but we'll see what happens. I'm much more interested in dirt this year! :)

I'm off to catch up on season 3 of Lost so I can start watching this season....