Time for a season change.

Hard to believe it's already March and soon to be April, wow. 2009 is just ticking on by! It's certainly past time for me to get my butt into shape for the busy upcoming summer. The past few months I've turned into a complete snowholic and have been practically living on the slopes. I love it!

Honestly, I don't know how I survived Seattle winters before snowboarding. It makes the winter pass so much faster and every time I hit the slopes I feel like a kid about to burst with happiness. SAD? What's that? All the night trips to Snoqualmie this year certainly paid off because my snowboarding skills have come a long way since my first venture up before XMas. I think I crashed at least 50 times that night and couldn't turn or carve to save my soul. Now I can truck through waist-deep powder, survive most black diamond runs, and even carve some trenches. Woo!

I spent Tuesday at Baker enjoying what may have been the last big powder day of the season. I guess we'll see how the weather cooperates. There's just nothing quite like the feeling of floating over tons of untracked pow, so at least if the season is over, I ended it with a bang.

Now I need to shift gears and get back on the bike. This year I'll be racing for the uBRDO Team Project and I'm excited about the team and the races we'll be doing. I did an early-season BuDu race a few weekends ago at Soaring Eagle and quickly found out just how out of shape I am. Time to get that turned around.

I'll probably start hitting Pacific Raceways next week for some mid-week intensity. That'll get my butt turned around pretty quick. The Indie Series kicks off in April and then in June I head to Fernie for an 8-day mountain bike camp vacation through Sacred Rides. I'm stoked about that one!

Probably the biggest event of the summer for me will be the Cascade Cream Puff, a 100-mile mountain bike race in Oregon in July. I wouldn't be true to form unless I got myself into something way over my head, right? I have a feeling July is going to come along way too fast...

Baker or bust

Well, I certainly picked a great weekend to head to Baker. They've had 45" of new snow since Sunday and 9" in the last 24 hours.

I'm not so sure about the North Shore race tomorrow because of weather, but we'll see. I liked the course so much last year that I'll probably get out there in the freezing, pouring rain anyway. Hey, I've got tons of toasty clothes and a rain jacket, right? I'll just pack some toe and hand warmers and I'll be set.

Here's to an upcoming weekend of racing, boarding, and snowshoeing. Woo!

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....

The Baker Hill Climb

After the Zoka "Meet the Team" ride on Saturday I headed to Mt Baker for another tandem adventure with the Z-Dog. But, let's first rewind to Friday so I can tell this tale appropriately.

I decided Friday would be a great day to get started with my weight training routine at Headquarters again. I had Joe run me through an "easy" leg workout. I had no idea that a little jump roping and some calf raises would cause me so much weekend grief. I woke up Saturday completely unable to use my calves. I suffered through the entire team ride thinking for sure I'd be better by Sunday for the hill climb. As soon as Z found out what I did he yelled at me all weekend. Yeah, it was not a bright idea.

Once in Glacier we met Todd, who rode his bike 100+ miles from Seattle to Glacier and showed up looking like a rock star. (See pic of Todd at left). We also rendezvoused with Rick and his friend Brett, who both raced the Bellingham cross race that day.

One of my co-workers was kind enough to let us use his cabin for the weekend, so once we had some grub we all checked in for a Euchre match and some foosball. Party! The funniest part of the whole evening was walking into the cabin and encountering a bat flying around. Rick and JoAnne nearly had a heart attack and were cowering in the corner while we tried to shoo the bat out the door. JoAnne even had her hoodie on so it wouldn't fly in her hair. Too funny! Z has the funny pics of this incident....

The next morning I woke up and was dismayed to find my calves were in even worse shape than the day before. I seriously couldn't even put my heel on the floor when walking. Really great job with the gym thing eh? Z and I lined up for the 8:30 tandem start with three other tandems and then realized about a 1/2 mile after the start when we got dropped that we probably should have warmed up a tad :)

The weather couldn't have been better so we rode a steady pace and enjoyed the scenery. Near the top some of our teammates finally caught us, which was a bit of a bummer since we started 30 mins earlier. We finished with a time of 2:04:59. Not fabulous, but hey, I was just happy to get to ride, enjoy the views, and listen to some tunes. True to form, Z brought the iPod speakers and we rocked out the whole way up the mountain.

We took a partial team photo at the top but missed JoAnne, who was still finishing up the climb. Sorry JoAnne!!

The best part of the whole day was the descent back down. Boy was that fun! A little ways down there was a long, gently curvy stretch of road where we let the bike go and hit 40mph+. Todd had to do an all-out sprint just to catch us.

Overall, the weekend was a blast! We had a great time on the ride and had some teammates get some great finishes. I think I'd like to try this ride on my single bike to see what kind of time I could do, but being on the tandem was fun. At least you can support each other and keep the motivation going. (And the tunes definitely help!)

More pics...