In Oregon

Hola,
After a pretty standard flight, I got to Portland Oregon (an hour late) where my penpal picked me up at the airport. It was awesome to meet her finally...Thanks so much!!!!!! After a nice relaxing evening and a good sleep, she took me to the rental car place. Now I'm in Bend, after meeting up with CC! :-D it is awesome. We went for a hike at Smith Rocks, and saw all the nice climbs that we can't do. Tomorrow we are going to Blue River to climb there with CC's boss, who is quite experienced. I'm not sure when I'll be getting back on the internet!

Gotta go buy some TP.

GS

One more photo today...before I go to sleep

My friend's girlfriend took us (well, was followed by us) into a clothing store. The store was filled with colourful clothes like these!

A photo today

My new little nephew, whom my sister and brother-in-law call Jojo (it was a pre-birth nickname that seems to have stuck).

Psychotic Week

Packing is tiring. I have a 24 hour race this weekend, and then I leave for Oregon. Flight leaving at 8 AM....meaning that I had to have everything packed before my race. There are so many things to think about and pack, I've been running around the city all week, getting up WAY earlier than I usually do...sheesh!

Anyway, tomorrow we ride, and it should be fun. The weather looks good at least. I might make a brief post Sunday night before I leave.

Wish me luck!

Stylin

Apparently these glasses are made for dogs!

Yummy BBQ

Here is a photo of the yummy bbq place we went to just down the street. mmmmmmm....meeeaaaaat.

Today's Photo

There were lots of street vendors there in Little Italy...this one was selling grilled calamari on a bun with tomato and onion sauce. Tomorrow there'll be a photo of a more tasty vendor down the street that unfortunately we only found after we'd already eaten a crappy shishkebob.

heehee

I've never put one of these on my blog before.

Your Brain is 40% Female, 60% Male

You have a total boy brain Logical and detailed, you tend to look at the facts And while your emotions do sway you sometimes... You never like to get feelings too involved

What Gender Is Your Brain?

Taste of Little Italy

This weekend is 'Taste of Little Italy', which is a take off of the Taste of the Danforth (that is Greektown) . There seem to be Tastes of everything these days. I think the Kingsway has a taste too, and I wouldn't be surprised if we see taste of Little Portugal one of these days, if it doesn't already exist.

Anyway, the Little Italy Taste happens right near my house, and so I went with my mom and dad and eventually two friends showed up. Here are a few pictures that I took on my mom's new camera, with a bit of post-processing done. Cropping and dodging and burning....nothing that can't be done in a dark room.

Another photo tomorrow. I think I will start saving these up to put on one at a time. That way the 4 or 5 people that read this will come back next day! :-)

The little boy seems to love bubbles. Who doesn't?!

A band was jamming (really well) and this is one of the photos. It pays to go behind the band to look for alternate shots, cuz I think this one turned out nicely. Later I went to the gelato shop just behind this group, and they were packing up, so I asked for his email to send him the image. This is uncropped...only brightened a bit on the left, and the background was darkened a bit.

The statue seems to be telling a secret to this guy, and it's worrying him quite a bit. I like the towel on the statue's leg...makes him seem a bit more alive.

Nearly the same as the one before, but I tried to dodge and burn to give a different emphasis...can you tell what the shift in viewpoint is?

Sleep!

Blessed sleep! I stopped eating prosciutto at lunch, and magically I can now sleep! it is so awesome...i wake up at 8 or 9 after 8 or 9 wonderful hours of peaceful sleep. Maybe I have figured out my problem. Here is what I have done, so that I don't forget:

- no caffeine at all
- no prosciutto for lunch
- a half cup of hot chocolate before bed
- eat not too late, and if I'm eating late, eat little. If I've eaten early and I'm hungry before bed, have a small snack.
- use earplugs to sleep
- watch something mind-numbing on TV for a bit before bed. Hockey and football (i.e. soccer) seem to be good for this, while 'So you think you can dance' doesn't seem conducive to sleeping.
- no exercise within 2 or 3 hours of bedtime
- a relaxing shower just before bed is nice
- read an only somewhat interesting book just before sleep, can't be a good book because then i won't put it down.
- eat lots of yoghurt with milled flax seed to keep the tummy running properly.
- finally, just accept that some nights I might not get to sleep at all, and thus not worry about not getting to sleep.
- have very customizable blankets. e.g. my legs tend to get very warm, so only a sheet and blanket there, but with an extra blanket on my upper body and around my neck.

Anyway, that is my recipe for good sleep. There are probably other things I'm forgetting. I hope that it I can keep sleeping the way I am now!

New Blog

I have created a new blog for myself just for bike rides, so that I dont' have to put boring ride info on this blog. The address is

http://bigsmokebikerrides.blogspot.com

Anyone who happens to read this blog will probably find that other blog boring; i'm just going to use it for logging my rides and keeping a count of how many kms I'm doing total.

On another note, I think I've passed the 1000 km for this summer mark.

Less interesting news

not quite as exciting as the birth of a baby in the family is my ride this afternoon.

Distance: 46.59km
Time: 1:27:47
Average Speed: 32.51 km/h

my friend T-Rock was taking some massive pulls....I am quite happy to have him on my 24 hour race team! :-D

I also got my Newmarket Eagles Membership. Hopefully tomorrow I can go and use it for the first time.

NEWS!!!!

I am an uncle! 7 lbs 3 ounces, at 5:29 PM! Name undecided.

Pictures to come.

This, that, and the other, bis

Since I'll be going for a somewhat longer ride this evening, I am going to record this morning and yesterday's rides to work now.

Distance: 58.25 km
Time: 2:12:23
Average Speed: 26.99 km/h

Not very quick I know, but I was very tired yesterday. I think the prosciutto that I've been eating at work for lunch has been difficult to digest, so that my stomach has been somewhat upset and I've been unable to sleep well. I finished it off yesterday, so hopefully my stomach won't be so unhappy tonight!

In other news, my sister is having her baby today! Her contractions began yesterday afternoon, and she went to the hospital last night at 10ish. As of this morning at 8:30 though, the baby hadn't popped out yet, which is a bit worrisome. I haven't heard from then since. Perhaps the baby is born by now.

Missing CC

It's been about 1.5 or 2 weeks since I've been able to speak to CC on the phone, or even by email. She is in such a remote location where there is no electricity, hence no internet, and also there's no phone coverage. What a pain! I wish she had picked a location that was not quite so remote....it might not have been as good of a bird-watching experience, but still...

Anyway, I've written her two letters already! It seems a bit silly....but when I miss her I just want to write something! And it's not very hard, you write and then go to the post office. Doesn't take too long. I don't know when she'll get to the post office though. Hopefully she picked up the first letter already. I sent a couple of photos with that one!

missing cc...... :-(

A most successful visit

Recently I've been having problems getting money from the U of T. First of all, they forgot to pay me a large portion of my stipend in January, and so they decided to add that onto my May payment. This meant that I couldn't pay my tuition on time (by the end of April) so they charged me $55 of service fees for being late. Then on top of all that, they still haven't paid me the rest of my money (May's payment, and January's payment). Finally yesterday I got a cheque in the mail, but for only a very small portion of the money I was expecting, so I decided to go and see them at the financial services office. After about 2 minutes of chatting to the lady behind the desk, I found out what was going on. Since my tuition payment was late, they took my tuition out of my stipend, which left me with the amount in the cheque I received yesterday. But then I paid them my tuition separately, meaning that all of a sudden I had a big credit, and they hadn't sent that cheque yet. So instead of sending me the money, the girl said that I could just go and pick it up tomorrow. Awesome! And on top of that, I told her about the service fee and why I didn't pay on time, and she removed it!

It's amazing what a little walk to talk to those with a little power can do!

One More

So much choice!

Seen on the streets

Today I was going to the post office, sending a letter to CC, when i saw a native looking dude outside Tim Horton's carving something. So after mailing the letter, I went back and had a chat. He is a guy from Manitoba, an artist that makes cedar carvings, and nice paintings. He's also apparently an actor and a screenwriter. His paintings looked awesome, if they are actually his; he only had small photos of the actual paintings. He also said that his art sells for way more money in Vancouver and in the US than in Toronto. Anyway, he was pretty cool, and I had my camera with me, so I took some photos of him doing his work! I hope some of them turn out, then maybe I will take a copy to him.

OOH EDMONTON JUST SCORED!!! WOOOOHOOOO!

Today's Ride

Just to work and back today, with a strong wind from the north.

Distance: 38.78 km
Average Speed: 29.81 km/h
Ride Time: 1:19:21

With the help of the tailwind coming home I raised the average speed from this morning by about 3 km/h! I was cooking! I even pushed it to 55 km/h at my favourite sprint spot, on Spadina south of St. Clair. The guy in the huge SUV behind me must have been surprised. I just did a quick calculation, and I think my average speed on the way home was about 34 km/h, give or take a half km/h.

Countdown To see CC in Oregon

T-14 days

Downtown

My mom got a brand new camera last weekend, and to thoroughly test it out I took it on a walk downtown. Here are some of the results. It is a sony DSC-H2. CRAZY zoom lens on it, with great optics (it's a Carl Zeiss). 6MP.

This guy really didn't want to have his photo taken. He was trying to move out of the side of the frame, but I caught him!

'What the hell are these?!?' says my dad.

MUAH!

Automatic what?!

Blue bike/pink bike

Today's Ride

Today I went on my first Donut Ride, so called not because it goes in a big loop, but because it starts at a spot where there once was, many many years ago, a donut shop. I thought until now that I was a pretty quick cyclist....apparently I'm not that fast! There are some pretty fast riders that go on this ride! The other thing is, it takes a lot of getting used to to ride in a peloton, without getting yelled at! Anyway, the ride was:

~ 104 km
at
~ 29 km/h

It was VERY windy...especially going north. I think I might have been able to keep up if it hadn't been that windy, but then again maybe not. The people would have just been going faster I guess!

UPDATE:
exact data:
distance: 105.13 km
ride time: 3:38:46
average speed: 29.31 km/h

Weekend Report

Last weekend was pretty packed. Friday I had to finish fixing my bike...it was in dire need of some serious TLC. The rear wheel was out of true, the rear derailleur was not working properly, the chain was too short, the cables needed a change, the bottom bracket was (and still is) creaking, the seat was creaking, I had new shifters and front brakes to put on, and then I got an XT rear cassette to add too! So that took about two hours, then I went shopping for groceries for the evening's dinner for my dad's birthday, then when I got home I made the dinner. When my dad got home, we blindfolded him to drive him somewhere, as is the usual tradition when we go out for dinner, only this time we ended up at the LCBO! :-P He was still pretty happy and made a beeline for the expensive scotches, which was part of our birthday present to him. Then we ate dinner once we got back.

Saturday I went to Hardwood Hills to pre-ride the race course for sunday, and it was a horrible rainy muddy mess, although still fun. Sunday, I went to the race venue thinking that my race time was 9:30...only to realize when I got there at 8:30 that it was at 1:30!! argh....i wasted the whole day sitting around waiting for my time. Anyway, the race went ok, but most importantly I had a lot of fun! It was the most fun I've had at that venue ever I think.

Then once I got home I made that thing that I posted about yesterday!

Overall not a bad weekend.

Now I'm off to watch the end of the oilers game!

Subway Sightings

The satisfied smile and chuckle when you race for the doors and make it.

Today's Recipe

I made something really good today for dinner. The recipe can be found here:

http://www.puffpastry.com/recipedetail.aspx?recipeID=23989&rc=5

It was really good. Instead of the Pepperidge Farm puff pastry I used my own. It was all nice and fluffy. YUM!

On the road...

Today driving to Hardwood Hills I saw an Ace Bakery Smart car and said 'hey, let's roll them for their dough!'

muahahahahah!

Two-day total

Distance: 82.97 km
Average Speed: 31.03
Ride Time: 2:46:26

Sensations: Tired this morning, but an extra weak coffee once I got to work helped. Lots of wind, headwind to work, tailwind back. Did 55 km/h on that spot I mentioned yesterday! :-D