Windshield

On the way home from the Bay Area, I noticed a new feature in my windshield. It seems that I now have a crack in it, on the lower right side. I'll have to get it replaced. Hopefully, my deductible is low enough to avoid too much of a hit to the pocketbook.

The good news here is that this will finally fix the other rock strike (which looks like a bug splatter--a permanent bug splatter) which has been on my windshield since the first week I owned the car.

Real Hills

Since I brought my bike down to the Bay Area with me, it's only natural that I'd want to get out and ride. One of my coworkers has tried to haul me out daily for forays into the hills. On Monday, Claus and I did what he called a "recovery" ride up Arlington Ave. into Kensington. The grade isn't too bad, and the road surface is good, so it wasn't a killer ride. But in no way did my body consider it "recovery".

On Tuesday, Claus corralled another coworker, Tim--a Cat 3 rider, to come with us for another jaunt into the hills. This time, the route was up Tunnel Road. The climb itself isn't so bad, maybe 5 or 6% for a few miles (I haven't downloaded my HR monitor data yet), but there are a few short, sharp shocks, as the Brits would call them, leading up to the climb. Claus and Tim raced away from me, as they're used to doing these sorts of climbs. And of course Tim is doing this on a single-speed, 42-17. Punk.

Once you get up there, though, you can have a bit of fun on the descent. I'm still not used to leaning into turns, afraid that I'll lose traction and bail, so I braked a bit heading into the first couple of turns on Claremont, but after it straightened out a bit, I tucked and ran, reaching 60 kph.

Sleep

Lately, I've been having a bit of trouble with sleep. It's taken a while to get to sleep, and consequently, in the morning, I end up hitting snooze a bunch of times, just trying to get to a point where I feel refreshed. And then, when I do manage to sleep relatively well, and dreams come, they're stupid ones that make me wake up. Like one where I was playing ultimate, and this guy was making up rules to suit himself. I had to wake up to find the rules online to make sure that the situation from my dream wasn't true. Silly brain.

Hills

Today I went out for a ride. In anticipation of a ride up Grizzly Peak in a couple of weeks, I intended to hit a few local hills, just to remind my body of what that's like. I rode up 32nd Ave NW over the top of the hill, and down towards Golden Gardens. Next was the Magnolia Loop. After that, I rode east up Dravus into Queen Anne. That was the killer. Would have been nice to have a triple on that one.

After a descent down 3rd Ave N (whee!), I crossed the Fremont Bridge, and rode up onto Phinney Ridge. Overall, not too bad. A few good spells spent in the high heartrate zone, and nice descents to bring it back down.

Cell Phones

Today while at lunch, I observed a bit of what I consider to be a faux pas. A couple were out to lunch together. At one point, the young lady got up to visit the facilities. The young man took this opportunity to make (or take) a call on his cell phone. When his companion returned, the guy continued to talk for approximately five more minutes while his date alternately looked bored or shot him withering gazes. When the man ended the conversation with "Alright dog, I'll catch up with you later" it was clear that this wasn't a "hold on, I've got to take this" kind of call.

Cell phones are supposed to enable communication and bring us closer together, but sometimes they just make people more insular.

Spillage

While at the store today, I bought a bag of potato chips. I wanted to try the Tim's Honey Mustard. They didn't have a small bag, though, so I had to buy a full-sized (9oz?) bag. When I got to the car, I wanted to try them, so I opened the bag and tried a couple. This would be my undoing.

When I got home, and unloaded the car, I placed the bag (containing the bag of chips) on the counter. It must have been unsettled or not level, somehow, since the next sound I heard was the bag of chips emptying itself onto the floor. All that was left was a scant handful. Guess I'm better off without the chips.

Statistics

On Sunday I was planning to take a ride over to Marymoor in order to watch some of the Potlatch frisbee tournament. From the house, Marymoor is about 60mi round trip. Knowing that such a long trip would be a lot of data for my heart rate monitor to record, I went to download it first, so that I didn't end up filling up the device, like Karl did.

When I downloaded the data for the past few rides, I saw that I had only been out on the bike five times in June! I knew I hadn't been riding much, but exactly how little was news to me. The numbers don't lie!