The hard part is done

The hard part of training for this year's Seattle to Portland 205 mile bike ride was completed as of today.  We did our third century ride of the season, our most difficult.  We know we need to ride 115 miles the first day of the STP, so wanted a ride where we would be in the saddle for a comparable amount of time.  Since the STP has long stretches with little elevation gain, we designed today's ride to give us a lot of elevation gain.  And I mean a lot.  And what that did was give us comparable saddle time.

Here is today's ride:

See the big spike at about mile 90?  That's Hell Hill.  I have done this hill many times in the past 6 years, most of the time to prepare for STPs.  But I (and we) have never done this hill at mile 90 of a ride that is already very hilly.  I and we have usually done this steep hill at about mile 20 of a ride.  So as we approached it today, we were more than a bit anxious.  But, up we went! 

Here we are at mile 62, in Coupeville.  We still felt pretty good then.

And here we are at the end of 100 miles.  I actually believe, and I'm not kidding about this, that we are the two skinniest riders out of the 10,000 who do the STP. 

Another special part of the day:  In Coupeville I saw a couple driving a 1955 Dodge.  Want to know what is cool about that?  WE had a 1955 Dodge when I was growing up.  It was our first new car ever.  I can remember how proud my parents were of it.   I even remembered that the gear shift was on the dash board.  The second photo is of me looking in it to see something I had not seen in 53 years (when we traded it in for our 1960 Dodge). 

A sad part of Life on Whidbey Island

Driving home today I hit a baby deer.

It darted right in front of me.  My attention was on the road, and I was driving under the speed limit.  I'm very glad because otherwise I would feel so guilty.  It just darted out and ran right in front of me.  I stomped on the brakes, but it was too late.

This is part of living here--there are a lot of deer, too many in fact, and no predators except for a few coyotes that can take down a baby deer if the mother isn't watching carefully.  Dead deer on the side of the road are a common sight.

And with the increase in people population, it has become more difficult for hunters to take deer, which I think is more humane and makes more sense than just having them die in car accidents.

This is hard to write.  The baby wasn't dead--it was twitching, and trying to move, but clearly its back was broken.  So, after telling Vicky to look the other way, I had to kill it.  

It felt so wrong, but what was I to do?

Marina, Stella, toys, projects, cycling...........days on Whidbey Island

We have a lot of on-going projects.  One, of course, is our training for the STP.  We took two days off after our Father's Day Century, and then did a hard 55 miles around hilly Whidbey Island with Vicky's brother Doug and his friend George.  George rides a lot with the man who has done all of the STPs, all of them in one day. 

Part of our training, of course, is to try out different biking outfits.  It was an absolute necessity to test out this year's STP jerseys.  They are very attractive.  Like Vicky's biking skirt?  

The two of us are quite color coordinated, don't you think?--her with the red headband, and me with the red shorts (which Doug had regrettably remembered used to be Vicky's, so of course I got a lot of questions from him and George about what else I might be wearing that used to belong to Vicky......NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!)

It was a great ride, and a great time.  Both of these guys are so much faster than us, but they were good sports about it, and were able to have a good time at a pace that is below what they easily could do.

I bought a new toy!  A power washer.  Now I see all kinds of things that tell me that, yes indeedy, I really did need this new toy.

I could spray our chains and sprockets with de-greaser, and get our bikes really clean, finally.  That felt good.

 And, of course, as a newly inducted member of the male macho F350 4X4 Dually crowd, I have an obligation to keep the tires on it looking really spiffy.



 But the ostensible purpose of the power washer is to clean the house because......gulp.....we have decided we will try to paint it ourselves.  That's why putting up the new gutters was a mistake--made the rest of the house look worse.

It needs painting, though.  That is just a regular part of up keep, and protects one's investment in their home.  We could probably get away with not doing it for two or three years and be OK, but we are also kind of tired of the brown color.

When I bought the house in 2006 everything in it and on it that wasn't brown was a shade of gray.  Dark and gloomy.  Over time I, with a lot of guidance from my daughter-in-law Jessica, and now we, have tried to brighten things up.  The exterior is next on the queue.

The power washer does a great job of getting the moss off of the siding, and cleaning the wood.

After this side of the house was power washed twice, I applied a couple of test colors to it.  We both clearly liked the one on the left--a sage.

Like it?  We are going to do it in this color, and keep a few accent pieces in the brown (repainted to be brighter) with a little bit of off-white trim.

We aren't going to try to get it all done this summer.  We'll just doing it as we can, one wall at a time.  There will be a lot of prep work because things like all of the telephone cords were not routed under the house but along the outside walls (huh?).    We also will not be climbing very high on ladders.  There is one section where the height is a little more than I'm comfortable with, and we will simply rent scaffolding for it (actually I have another idea which I am going to wait to describe because it feels too much like a Jeff Foxworthy joke).

It will be fun.  And it will really lighten up the house.  The color is close to that of the trees, which feels right.

What else is happening these days?  Well, it is the Invasion of the Caterpillars.  This year we have had these caterpillars all over the place.  It's impossible to cycle without crushing a lot of them, which we don't like but can't avoid.  It would be nice if they all produced beautiful butterflies, but I suspect we'll just get a bunch of pesky moths.  The birds must be happy, though.

Anybody know what this is?

Yesterday afternoon we had Stella and Marina out to the house once again.  We've been trying to see them once a week or so, which we usually can unless they are out of town.  They are fun.

This is Marina playing the old Marx toy of mine, a one-man band.  And Stella patiently (?) waiting her turn.

Marina making Silly Putty sandwiches:

Stella loves the stuffed owl.  Wanted it to be her face:

Stella helping grandma make dinner.  With supervision, she did a great job of cutting up vegetables--repeating to herself to keep the knife lower than her hand.  She likes to be useful--a good quality.

This is something that Marina often does that is so cool.  She likes to make different kinds of concoctions with her baked potato.  She scoops the potato out of the peel, and eats the inside.  Then, she adds whatever she can find--this time it was corn she cut from the cob, tomatoes, gravy, and avocado and makes a potato sandwich of sorts.

No matter what she puts into her creation, she always gobbles the whole thing down:

Marina found out she had missed grandma's birthday, so headed for the construction paper, and didn't stop until she had produced a card for her grandma.  That was so sweet.

And doesn't it look nice?  It will be a refrigerator decoration:

Stella looks like she's climbing into the bird bath, but not really.  We were just taking a walk in the lower 40:

We have a camping trip date planned with them now.  We now have dates for Ian, Adam, Soren, Stella, and Marina.




That's our Life on Whidbey Island for the past two days.  Not too bad, huh?

Father's Day Century

Jules, Vicky, and I did a century ride yesterday as our father's day celebration.  We are all doing the STP again this year, and so used it as a training experience as well as a Father's Day one.

We did this ride last year--actually it was Vicky's first century ride (i.e., 100 miles).  We leave from their home in Northgate, ride to the Burke-Gilman Trail, follow it to the Sammamish River Trail, and then travel 20 miles around Lake  Sammamish twice.  The ride is safe, has enough hills to be good training (but not so many as to hurt our knees), and is pretty.

The ride was great, for the first 75 miles.  But then we had to head back home against a headwind.  That's very tiring under any circumstance, but after 75 miles it's really tiring. 

Then, the biggie:  We have to get from Lake Washington (elevation 0) to Northgate (elevation 400) in about two miles.  It's an uphill "slog" (as Jules calls it).   We just grit it out, keep pedaling, and eventually get there. 

(I feel silly wearing bright red biking shorts, but they are really visible.  And since I always ride behind Vicky, it helps keep both of us visible.)

Of course, I got a flat:

We had lunch at the 50-mile mark:

Jules did a metric double-century (124 miles).  He's so much faster than us that at various times he'd ride ahead, then double back to add some miles.  It was his longest ride ever. 

We all felt good at the end.  A little sore, hungry, thirsty, but the idea of riding 100 miles on your bike in one day is still one that, despite how many times I have now done it, I can't quite wrap my brain around.  One hundred miles is a LONG way.  It's a long way to drive! 

We are ready for the STP.  We still have some miles we will put on our legs in the next month--we will do a couple more centuries and some smaller rides.   But we are ready for it.   We are getting excited.

Bambi X 2

I guess our little Bambi isn't an only child.  We saw his/her little brother/sister.

 

Nursing:

We figured out why mom is so fertile--she's been eating our bird seed:

That's too expensive so bought an extension pole.  Sorry, mom.

We continue to enjoy our birds.  This year the Evening Grosbeaks (a beautiful bird, and one of our favorites) have stayed around a lot longer:

 

With the number of birds around, it is not surprising that we have been visited more by hawks than in the past--hoping to get a meal too.

 

Many sightings of the Pileated Woodpecker:

Gutter project

 Our gutters suck.  They look awful, don't drain well, are rusty, smell, look ugly (in addition to awful), always need cleaning, and leak.

Ergo....this summer's house project.  We try to identify one project each summer, and do it.  Next year's will either be new external doors or screens for the whole house.  We are trying to delay the inevitable--repainting--as long as possible.  We will probably make that a three or four year project.

First step was being sick of the current gutters.  That was the easiest step.

 

 
 The next step was to remove these gutters that actually were sieves.  To do this meant a lot of slow, careful work.  They were held in by nails, but also by screws of various shapes and sizes.

I did all of the removal--Vicky held the ladder for me.

We have a very healthy respect for ladders.  In fact, if you notice, we are wearing our bicycle helmets when we are on the stepladders, even though Vicky held them for me the entire way around the house.  Bicycle helmets are a lot more useful when one is on a stepladder than when one is on a bicycle, but nobody seems to feel the way I do.  I started doing this long ago.

The gutter graveyard:

 

The next step was cleaning the fascia boards:

  

Next was painting.  This was easier, a lot easier, because we didn't have to go very high on the stepladders.  

 

 The final step was the easiest:  writing the check for the new gutters to be installed.  

Everything looks so nice and clean.  The roof is a 30-year metal roof, the fascia boards are painted, there are new gutters.  We are working our way down from the top of the house to......the.....part.....that.....needs.....repainting.