Can it really be?????

Can it really be possible that we are already half way through the month of August?!?!?!?!? I am shocked and bewildered at how fast our summer has gone by this year. It seems only a few days ago I was posting to say that I would get back soon with photos and more updates..... OOOOOOOPS!!! My bad, 'cause that didn't work out very well on my end.

So, here we are half way through August now, nearly the end of our official summer time already, and the start of school right around the corner!!! My favorite boy in the whole entire world will be turning 9 years old in just one week from today!!! Yet another crazy fact that has me both baffled and amazed! :-)

Well, I still have a whole lot to catch everyone up on here, but now isn't the time for me to do it, as I am at work today, and so don't have the time, nor the access to our photos to upload either. I won't make any promises just yet.... but if I can make myself stay up late a night or two this week, I just may do some more updating to get things current once again.

In the mean time, it's too nice to be inside at a computer reading peoples blogs anyway...so go on and get outside and enjoy the summer... while it is still here!!!!!! :-)

Crazy, Busy Summer...

Well, it's been a fast week and a half since STP weekend blew right on by. We have been going like crazy since our return from Portland, and we are now getting ready to turn around and head right back down again this weekend! Tour de Cure weekend has arrived!!! :-)

Evan has formed our team, Evan's Peloton, and we will be riding together in the 43 mile course, raising money to help fight and find a cure for Diabetes, a disease that is becoming more and more rampant in America. Evan, myself, Tracie, Papa, and our good friend Gene Taube, will all ride together this Saturday morning. As of this time, we have reaised $1500 towards our goal of $2500. It appears we won't meet our goal this year, but we certainly have done well just the same!!!

With sickness hitting our household since the return from STP, it has been difficult to get much done. Tracie came down with strep throat, and was down and out for nearly 4 straight days. Then I came down with a sinus and throat cold sort of thing, and have been fairly miserable since Sunday. Hopefully we can all be better by Friday, ready to go to Portland and have a good weekend. :-)

Today Faith is heading to the vet to deliver her lates litter of puppies, vis c-section. We should have her and her new pups home this afternoon, and they will be going to Portland with us this weekend.

Well, I have an awful lot to do to get ready.... shower, shave my head, get the bicycles and stuff ready, get the trailer ready, do yard work, and get all packed up as well.... since I go back to work again tomorrow morning for one more shift.

I will post puppy pictures this evening, and then Tour de Cure weekend pics when we return next week.

Adios!!!

STP 2010... AWESOME!!!

What a fantastic weekend we had for Seattle to Portland, 2010. Myself, and my two really great friends, Scott Taube and Stu Hodnot, all rode the Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic together. Each of us rode as members of the Medical Support Team, on behalf of the Cascade Bicycle Club. This was also Scott's very first ever STP ride, and it made it that much more fun for both Stu and I.

We had an incredible weekend of riding together, logging a total of just over 206 miles over the two days! It was an awesome journey, and we all three had a fantastic time together. We helped around a half a dozen or so people on Saturday, which ended up putting us in to Winlock a full 3 hours behind schedule.... but all for good reason! When we arrived, ice cold beer and hot spaghettin were waiting, so we were very happy indeed!

On Sunday, we enjoyed a nice hot breakfast and fresh coffee before hitting the road again. It must have worked, because we increased our speed average for the day, and made good time into Portland. We helped ust a few people out on day two, and spent most of the day just cruising along at a very nice clip! It was a lot of fun. Scott did absolutely wonderful, and rode very strong for his first time out. He certainly did NOT hold us back at all. :-)

We arrived in Portland around 3:15pm, with family and friends waiting our arrival. We celebrated with pictures, story telling, and a few cold beers in the beer garden. After refreshments, and some shopping from the vendors, we headed on out to my folks' place, with exception to Stu and his family, who were not able to join us this year. At my folks' place, we indulged in a most delicious farm fresh pork steak bbq, along with baked potatoes, corn on the cob, and more. Dessert came in the form of fresh raspberries over vanilla ice cream. We enjoyed the evening, shared our stories, and talked about next year..... already planning!!! :-)

What an awesome ride, fantastic weekend, with great friends!!!

WOW...What a week!!!

Yes, my last post was back on July 4th, Independance Day!!! Since then, I have logged 117 miles on the bike, attended 7 of 8 baseball games Evan has played, put up over 1100 bales of hay in the barn, gone to work at the BFD, got our online banking and bill paying done, and worked on getting ready for this upcoming weekend.......

The Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic!!! :-)

I admit that I have not stayed updated here during this time. It has been a schedule of up early, go all day, get to bed, and repeat... for the past week. I am at work today once again at the BFD, and have a few minutes to quickly give an update.

When we return from STP weekend, I will finally sit down and post with more details, as well as photos from all of the happenings that have been happening around LBF during the month of July! :-)

Until then.... please stay tuned! ;-)

Happy 4th of July (Independance Day)

As unimaginable as it may be, today is the 4th of July!!! Absolutely crazy, and nearly impossible for me to grasp. Especially as I look at the pictures from last year on this very day!!! You can see from this picture that the weather was very much different last year at this time. The kids were outside playing and having a grand time in the water.... and it felt like summer!!!

This year I am still waiting for June to arrive, and yet the calendar says today is July 4th...... doesn't make any sense at all. I actually just fired up the pellet stove to heat up the living room, so we can all sit around and watch television and do nothing, while it remains cloudy and cold, with the wind picking up more and more as the afternoon moves on. n fact, it is starting to look like a chance of rain may visit today as well.

Well, I guess we will just have to wait until tomorrow, see if summer might decide to show up on July 5th this year?!?!?!?!?!?!

Be safe you all, and enjoy the holiday :-)

Update!!!

Hello there.... jus wanted anyone and everyone who follows my blog to know that I haen't gone missing, or forgotten to keep up with my blog! Just want to remind you all that I am away on vacation with my family, down in southern California, enjoying Disneyland and California Adventure this week. :-)

We will fly back to Portland onSunday night, and then rive home on Monday, to get home in time for Evan to make it to his baseball game at 6pm. I then work on Tuesday.... so hopefully on Wednesday I can get back here to update and blog all about our vacation!!!

Take care for now.......

The Petal Pedal, 2010

OK, just let me start out by saying... WOW!!! What an awesome day this was!!! This day was all about bicycle riding and re-connecting with an incredibly great friend from my past.... and I am here to tell you all, the day did NOT disappoint! :-)

First, about my friend, Scott Taube. Scott and I first met back in 1990, when we both entered into the Chemeketa Community College Fire Science program. We hit it off really well back then and became great friends. We had many things in common, including both being two of the older students in the program (we were all of 22 and 24 years old!), and both having come from several years of college previously. Scott and I spent a lot of our time together during our first year at Chemeketa. We studied together, drank coffee together, worked out together, and played a LOT of racquetball together!

Bittersweet for me as it was, at the end of our first year in the program, I was lucky enough to get hired with the Bellingham Fire Department. Scott stayed behind to continue as a second year student, wile I left school behind and moved nearly 300 miles north to become a professional firefighter. Sad and true, our lives became separated by the distance for the next 18 years. We kept in touch through Christmas cards and letters, and occasionally through my mother-in-law, Kathy, who would see Scott on occasion at Starbucks. Other than that, we both had our lives, our careers, and time just raced on by.

However, last year, for some reason or another, it was meant to be that Scott and I would finally re-connect in person, and that we would start to catch up with one another, and start to grow our friendship and firefighter brotherhood connection once again after all of those years gone by. Scott is an awesome guy! A fantastic friend! I am proud to call him one of my very close and personal friends, and I feel blessed to be starting a new chapter in our lives together. :-)

With that all said, here's how we wound up riding the 2010 Petal Pedal century ride together.....

I talked with Scott about my love for cycling, and how it has helped me get a new lease on life through fitness and weight loss. I talked with him about the rides I have done, and how much fun I had riding Seattle to Portland last year with another close personal friend, Stu Hodnot, another firefighter and friendship from my OSU days that finally came back together the year before. Through mush discussion, I managed to convince Scott that he could, and should, ride the Seattle to Portland ride with us this year! He bought it, and signed up.

I talked with Scott about the need for training rides, and told him I had found a great ride for us to do together. This ride would be a great test for Scott, and let him know just where he is at one month prior to STP. This would also be Scotts very first ever century ride!!!! :-) So, we signed up and made all the plans for the Petal Pedal ride, in Silverton, OR.

So, yesterday was our big day!!! And my, oh my, what an awesome day it was for us both!!! Scott completed his very first every century (100 miles) ride..... and he did it very well :-)

Scott and I met up at around 6:30am in Beaverton, where I loaded up into his truck, and off we went down the road towards Silverton..... or so we thought! A few miles down the road we got into a "rolling slow down" where we moved along with traffic at about 5mph for the next 40 minutes..... talk about frustrating, and putting us behind schedule!!!! We never did find out what the slow down was all about, but just as quickly as it happened, it also ended.... and back up to speed we were again, finally getting to I5 southbound. The trip went smoothly after that, but the weather didn't look too promising, and both of us were just a little more than concerned that it was going to be a long day of riding in the rain.

We arrived at the Oregon Garden in Silverton, OR. What an absolutely beautiful place!!! We got parked and headed up to the check-in station. We were quite a bit behind schedule at this point, especially since the 100 mile route was opened at 6:30am, and it was suggested riders leave no later than 8am for the 100 mile ride.... OOOPS!!! It is already 8am now!!! Of course, we weren't all that worried, since there were so many other cyclists there also getting checked in, and people still pulling in as we went back to gear up for our day..... of course, they were all heading out for the 68 mile loop, NOT the 100 mile loop!!!

Oh well, we weren't going to be discouraged... we made the decision to do 100 miles, and we were sticking to it. So, at 8:30am, we hit the road and allowed our adventure to begin!!! :-) The weather was absolutely wonderful. Cloudy, but no rain, no wind, and temperature in the upper 50's to start out. We never got rained on the entire day, and it actually got nicer as the day went on, with sun breaks and warmer temps.... perfect for a century ride!!!

The first 40 miles of this ride are absolutely, incredibly beautiful.... and all uphill...... YES, hill climbing for the majority of the first 40 miles of our day!!! Elevation gains of over 4000 feet!!! This was a true test for Scott, and he did absolutely fantastic!

We had an incredible day of riding together..... we had awesome time riding side by side, talking about life, about family, about firefighting, about fitness, about cycling, and about the absolute beauty that this ride was allowing us to enjoy. I believe I can speak for the both of us when I say that we had an awesome day of riding together!!! :-)

At around mile 70 or so, Scott began to fatigue a bit, and his legs started having discussions with him. But Scott is an absolute stud, and he pushed through it all, kept on plugging along, and managed to finish his very first ever century ride, and finished it strong!!!

100.37 miles in 6 hours 29 minutes, with an overall average speed for the day of 15.45mph!!!

I was so happy for Scott, and also quite proud of him. You see, Scott has only been cycling for a short time now. He hasn't logged nearly as much time or miles on the bike as he would have liked prior to this day. In addition, Scott doesn't yet own a road bike. He rode this ride on a hybrid style mountain bike, geared up for the road as much as possible, but still painfully heavy and with gearing that makes the ride much more difficult. Scott, however, made it work, and he made it work well :-)

We got back to the Oregon Gardens and the finish line at 4:30pm. This means we killed an hour and a half throughout the day at the rest stops. Not too bad, since we stopped at 5 rest stops throughout the entire day. Once at the finish line, we smiled, we hugged, we took pictures and uploaded them to Facebook... and then we headed inside for the celebration!!! BBQ salmon and chicken dinner, with pasta salad, green salad, fresh bread, treats.... Oh, and BEER!!! Yes, free beer from the local brewery, Hopsworks!!! It all was delicious. We sat and ate and drank, and talked all about our day. It was good!!! :-)

I do believe that it was finally around 6pm when we were all changed out of our riding gear, everything loaded into the truck, and back on the road again, this time heading back home. Scott was nice enough to drive me all the way up to Grammy & Papa's place, where he was able to meet the family and shoot the breeze for a few before heading home himself to a nice, hot shower!!!

So, the Petal Pedal was a huge success! The ride was awesome! The company was awesome! The food and beverage were awesome! And the memories I am taking away from this adventure are awesome! What a great day, and what a great ride, and what a great friend!

Congratulations to Scott Taube for completing his very first century ride!!! :-)

Ahhhhh, yes.... I can hardly wait for STP.....