…yeah, i’m still doing it…and getting PAID for it!

Last week was a proposal week for us at work, which means less sitting in front of the computer designing hardware, and more working in the lab doing rapid prototyping and proof of concept models with materials we have laying around the lab or buy on runs to the hardware store.

Things get a little crazy, some people react to the pressure by getting more high strung, some don’t change their behavior at all, and others just get ‘in the zone’. It’s a time when ideas fly and go from sketches on a piece of paper to reality in a matter of hours. Some people love proposal week, others hate it. I’m definitely one of the former. Sure the pace is higher and more intense than we could hold week after week, but to mix things up and sprint every once in a while is a hell of a lot of fun.

In other news, after thinking about it for months, Rachel and i were motivated by our friend Jenny (a recent convert to cycling) to enroll in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program with Blue House Farm. The way it works is we pay up front for 25 (of 52) weeks of fresh produce, taking on some of the risk of the farm. For those 25 weeks we pick up a box full of produce in a location a few blocks from our apartment on Thursdays. This way, we get fresh, seasonal, local, organic (am i missing any trendy food adjectives that might apply?) produce every week, we support local farmers, and it helps us to learn to cook with ingredients we wouldn’t otherwise buy. Everyone wins!

This week we got our first box. It included romain lettuce, corn, potatoes, leeks, jalapenos, summer squash, purple bell peppers, cilantro, and basil. They also have an option for fresh flowers with every box, which we chose to go ahead and do.

We jumped in about half way through the 25 weeks, so when they wrap up for the winter/spring, we may try another company that runs year-round, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. For the time being, it takes about 5 meals to use all of the produce in a box, so i’m excited to enter an ‘Iron Chef’ situation and produce five meals based on whatever we get in our box. It should be a good time and good eating. I’m excited.

I'm in the green kit, with the red bike toward the back

Today was a ‘no excuses’ day. Not only was the drive to the race a pretty minor 45 minutes (instead of the usual 1:30-2:00), but the race start time was a much more manageable 10:20am, instead of the usual 8:00am. These two factors meant the alarm clock was set for 7:00am instead of 4:30am. Not only that, but we showed up parked, got regged, and had me set up for warm up about 75 minutes before the start.

I got a good 50 minute warm up in, which for me especially, is critical. Since crit races start out fast right from the gun, it’s very important for me to get a good long warm up in with a few hard efforts so that the start of the race isn’t such a shock to the system.

Today everything was perfect. Got there early, got warmed up. Got in a few short, hard efforts. Got to check out the course a little before the start of the race. Got lined up in a good position behind a team mate. Set up for this race was perfect, it’s the last one of the season, no excuses.

The gun went off and i had a little bit a trouble getting into my pedal, but was able to make up enough ground in the first lap to get back up into the front half of the field. The pace wasn’t too quick and i actually felt okay. I felt like i was cornering well, and felt comfortable in the group.

The most efficient place to ride a crit is up near the front without being on the front. By being in around 3rd-5th position, you can pedal the entire course without even touching your brakes, so you don’t have to deal with the extreme accelerations that you do in the back of the field. At the same time, you don’t want to have your nose in the wind, so you tuck your wheel in behind someone else to be the most efficient aerodynamically.

I was sitting in decent position, but i really needed to make my way up to the front. My heart rate was high, but i was hoping it would settle back down as my body adjusted to the shock of the race.

Unfortunately, that never happened. Around lap 3 or 4 i hit a wall on the little climb in the course that should have been really easy. I started moving backward through the field, meaning that i now had to break and accelerate for every single turn. It didn’t take long for me to get totally worn out and then get dropped from the field. After 2 more laps of riding solo i got pulled from the race by the official. It sucked. I had everything i needed in the way of prep on the day of the race and couldn’t do anything with it. The whole thing is frustrating as hell.

So where do we go from here? Well that’s it for my racing season. For the time being i’ll go back doing long, ‘fun’ bike rides. ‘Fun’ meaning no heart rate monitor, going out with friends, not worried about the ride from a training perspective but from a fun perspective. I’ll work in some running with Rachel (she’s training for a half marathon around Halloween), and cut my diet back with the intention of taking of 10-15 pounds in the next month or two. After that i may take two weeks completely off the bike and then start base training for next season. My Elite 4 teammates are going to be continuing their training in the winter, so i imagine i’ll be doing quite a bit of riding with them. I’ll also be buying a power meter sometime in the next month or so and adopting a much more structured training plan for next year.

The next item on the horizon is the Tour for Wooside fun ride in our area that has a very difficult, climbing intensive, 100 mile route that i’m looking forward to doing just for fun. I can’t explain how excited i am to do a different kind of event, especially one where there’s no official to send me home early.

Lets do a little photo comparison. The first picture is from January 2009, the second from today:

January 2009

September 2009

Try for a second to ignore that these photos are taken from totally different angles (you can absolutely chalk this up to the second picture being of my ‘better’ side). In the first picture i look downright doughy. Goodness, look at that gut! In the second i look considerable more trim and fit (back/shoulders, upper arms, legs). I also look pretty uncomfortable in the first picture, despite being up near the front. My point? I’ve come a long way this season. I was amazed at how terrible i looked in the first picture when i stumbled across it this afternoon. I’m not anywhere close to where i’d like to be, but i’m making progress. Now i need to double down on my commitment and push even harder.

I realize that i said a bunch of the same stuff last year. I’m about 12-15 pounds lighter than i was this time last year, and i have a much better idea of what it’s going to take to get me competitive in races. That i racked up so many DNF’s this year and had my best race in the month of February, is frustrating, but if anything, i’m more motivated now than i was last year. I’ll continue to update as things progress.

My happy place

Perhaps no word is more cliche and over used in cycling than ‘epic’. Once reserved for Tour de France or Giro d’Italia stages that involved incredibly long mileage and some sort of inclement weather (snow, near freezing temperatures, or torrential rain), spring classics where riders end up looking like this, or a long ride with your buddies that you will remember for years, the word ‘epic’ has come to mean that something was just marginally above average. However, when it comes to using cliches, you’ve probably figured out that i tend to throw caution to the wind and use them anyway, lest we start to take ourselves too seriously.

In the last few years, UK based cycling apparel company, Rapha (which is mostly epic in the ridiculously expensive pricing of its products), has put together and sponsored a group of riders, the Rapha Continental Team, who have brought the concept of ‘epic riding’ to the fore by going on an absurd number of epic rides and documenting them with written accounts, pictures, and video on their blog. I guess it’s pretty sweet work if you can get it. I respect the hell out of these guys, and wish i had the time, ability, and connections to tag along, but that doesn’t mean i didn’t get a laugh out of this.

So what makes a ride epic? The Rapha Continental website talks about ‘commitment to the lost art of cycling and the glory of suffering’. I’m an engineer, so i find that a little too abstract. Here’s a check list i created of what makes a ride ‘epic’:

• Long mileage – the Rapha crew’s rides are almost always over 100 miles, though my epic rides are usually between 45 and 70 miles
• Lots of climbing – you don’t have to climb mountain passes (though that helps), 100 miles of endless rolling hills tires the legs too
• Foreign roads – a big part of doing an epic ride is exploring unknown areas
• Dirt roads – in a pinch, roads with bad surfaces will work too, not for the whole distance, but at least for a few miles
• Rural roads – an epic ride should have long stretches of miles where you see no other cars, bikes, or human beings
• No race bikes – epic rides are not the place for deep dish carbon rims and race bikes where speed is the only concern. Instead, equipment for epic rides should be about durability and feeling fresh (or as fresh as possible) at the end of the ride. Because of this custom steel bikes from frame makers most people have never heard of with box section rims are popular equipment choices for the epic rider. If i had the resources, this would be my epic bike.
• Crappy weather – it’s not a necessity, but temps in the triple digits, 40 degree temperature swings, howling wind, snow, 40 degrees and raining, help make any ride more epic
• Signs you’re doing an epic ride – these aren’t requirements for an epic ride, but signs your getting close
  • Empty bottles – you can only carry so much water
  • You get lost – you’re on unexplored country roads, getting lost adds to the adventure
  • Flat tire – flats suck, but are a price worth paying for riding on tough roads
  • Run out of food – jersey pockets can only hold so many clif bars, or if you have an awesome, baking girlfriend, homemade granola bars
  • Bonking – when you run out your glycogen stores and your body revolt

Epic rides are as much about mental strength and the ability to endure as they are about the physical. Like many people’s experience in high school, it can be miserable when you’re in the middle of it, but the sense of accomplishment when you finish, and the way you look back fondly much later, are totally worth whatever struggles you had to go through.

So why talk about epic riding?

Well, on our trip to the Central coast of California last weekend i got to do a little epic riding of my own. On one day Rachel and i took off for a ride out to Cambria, about 20 miles north on Highway 1 of where we were staying. Unfortunately, we got a late start and were crunched for time (had to go wine tasting, you know, such a chore), so we had to turn around before we got to Cambria and the 40 mile ride turned into a 30 mile ride. Still, riding along Highway 1 is pretty awesome.

That night at dinner, Bruce (the father of the family we were visiting), was talking quite a bit about how if i wanted a real challenge i should go ride up ‘the wall’. Now it seems like every cyclist or group of cyclists have some local short (usually under a mile long), steep (typically grades over 10%) climb that they call ‘the wall’. I was intrigued so i got Bruce to tell me how to get there from his house and headed out the next morning.

After eating some breakfast i headed out down the long, dirt driveway of their orange grove and started heading inland toward the wall. After about 5 miles of climbing Old Creek Road, i crossed Highway 46 and continued down Santa Rosa Creek Road. Bruce told me that i would hit the wall after about a mile and i would surely know it when i saw it. Well, after 3 miles i had gone up a few short little grades, but certainly nothing worthy of being called a wall. I started to get a little suspicious of these Central Coast cyclists. Then after 4 miles i took a turn, and there it was. It shot straight upward, jogged once, got steeper, jogged again, and then had a final kick. The average gradient had to be around 12-14%. My heart rate shot up, but luckily, my legs were warmed up enough that it wasn’t a huge deal. Still, hill repeats on this thing would be pretty nasty, and i’m sure someone is doing them once or twice a week.

I decided from the outset to ride for an hour and fifteen minutes and then turn around. I still had twenty minutes so i kept going. From the top of the wall i could see Cambria. Immediately i found myself shooting down this super steep descent with a poor road surface, and a few ridiculously steep corkscrew / hair pin turns. This descent was on a open hill side following a river and looked much more like the roads in the French Alps than the heavily wooded roads of the Santa Cruz mountains west of Palo Alto that i’m used to. About half way down i hit the 1:15:00 mark, but realized that after last night’s epic dinner (between the 8 of us we ordered damn near everything on the menu and had 5-6 bottles of wine), going back up that hill just wasn’t going to happen today. I figured that i could see Cambria earlier, so i’d just fly down the rest of the descent into Cambria, then hop on Highway 1, hopefully have a south blowing tail wind, and ride the wind back down south to Cayucos, arriving just in time to go grab lunch with everyone.

As i was coming into Cambria i got a flat tire and had to pull over to change it. Bummer. Then i forgot that Cambria lies below Highway 1, and forgot about having to climb a significant hill to get back up to the highway. Then, once i got back up to Highway 1, the tailwind i was hoping for was actually more of a cross wind off the ocean. The average speed of 22-24mph i was hoping for to get back to Cayucos in time ended up being more like 17-18mph as i fought the headwind and brought myself to the brink of a bonk.

When all was said and done, after the flat and the wind, i ended up getting back about and hour after i promised i’d be back. Luckily everyone else was in laid back vacation mode and my late arrival didn’t slow anyone down in filling their stomachs with fish tacos.

So how’d i do in the epic checklist?

• Long mileage – 47 miles on the day, a little short, but they were a tough 47 miles
• Lots of climbing – significant climbing, not a ton, but significant
• Foreign roads – big check mark here
• Dirt roads – does time on a long driveway count? How about descending a road with a bad surface at 40mph?
• Rural roads – at one point i went 14 miles without seeing another car
• No race bikes – I’m not fortunate enough to have multiple road bikes, or a carbon road bike, so aluminum bike it is (though it is my race bike), half check?
• Crappy weather – meh, hot on the climbs, cold on the descents, windy on Hwy 1
• Signs you’re doing an epic ride – these aren’t requirements for an epic ride, but signs your getting close
  • Empty bottles – check
  • You get lost – no, this route was too simple
  • Flat tire – oh yeah
  • Run out of food – finished with 1 cliff bar
  • Bonking – brought myself to the edge, but didn’t actually bonk

I wouldn’t say it was that epic, but it was certainly close. Closer than anything else i’ve done lately trainign for all the end of season criteriums (calling for short, high intensity work outs). Next time we go to Cayucos, i’ll definitely bring my bike. Good stuff.

Rachel and i have been looking at and bidding on houses since December of last year with little success. Last night we submitted what i count was our 12th offer on a house, though i may be off on that number by 1 or 2. It’s been unbelievably frustrating getting emotionally attached to a house, submitting an offer well above the asking price, and then finding out that there were 10 other offers, and the seller has selected an all cash offer from an investor that will turn it into a rental property.

I’ve lost count, but i’d guess that we’ve gone to look at close to 200 properties, all but two of which have been foreclosed homes that are either an REO (repossessed and bank owned after a foreclosure) or shortsale (the bank agrees to cut their losses, sell the house for whatever they can get, and forgive the debt of the owner so their credit stays intact). We’ve talked to a ton of people who are getting kicked out of their house as well as real estate agents selling homes, so we’ve gotten an idea of what happened during the sub prime mortgage crisis. I figured it would be worth sitting down and writing down my interpretation of what happened for those of you that get your information on this topic from newspapers and articles on the web. Like i said, this is my interpretation of what happened and i’m just some guy trying to buy a house. I am not an expert on the sub prime mortgage crisis. With that out of the way, let’s get started:

From what i gather, things started in the early 2000’s after the dot-com bubble burst. Silicon Valley, where we live, was basically ground zero for the dot-com bubble and subsequent burst. Following the bubble burst people began looking for other ways to invest their money. At the same time banks began giving mortgage loans to people who couldn’t afford them and with virtually no pre-screening. As i’m sure you’ve heard, most of these loans had adjustable interest rates, with ‘interest only’ payments (for the first few years you only pay interest, with nothing going toward the principal), and no down payment (the down payment was usually borrowed from another bank, called a ‘piggy back’ loan). People were getting loans with no pre-screening, no proof of ID, no proof of income, nothing.

Since so many more people could now buy a house, demand shot up, causing prices to sky rocket. Here in Silicon Valley, were already some of the highest in the country, and they almost doubled. Even to live in East Palo Alto, (the murder capital of the US from a few years ago, a predominantly black and hispanic, low income town across 101 from its homogeneous and better known counter part) to get into a 2 bedroom, 1 bath falling down house that needed tons of work was going to set you back $600,000. Things quickly got out of control. You had families where both parents were making just over minimum wage working as construction workers, waiters, house cleaners, landscapers, welders, machinists, etc. moving into homes that cost $800,000 and beyond. These people should have realized that no hand waving would result in them being able to afford such a house, but they were blinded by being told that they could achieve their dream of home ownership, so they didn’t bother to carefully  read the complicated contract they were signing. Greedy bankers were okay with it because they were trying to get that bonus/promotion and were hoping to be gone by the time the stuff hit the fan, or they patted themselves on the back for helping a low income family fulfill their dream of home ownership. Little did they know it was going to become a ball and chain. This hole thing was predicated on the idea that home values always go up, as does people’s income, and by the time that their interest rate went up in a few years, they would surely be earning more money and be able to make their mortgage payments. While that may prove true for college educated people who are climbing the corporate ladder, it is much less likely to be the case for people in blue collar jobs.

This is where people looking for a new place to invest their money comes in. Because no one is going to buy the mortgage of an hourly wage construction worker who bought a $800,000 home, all of these mortgages were chopped up into tiny pieces, regrouped, somehow given a AAA investment rating, and sold as ‘mortgage backed securities’ to people who had no idea what they were buying.

Meanwhile, the family who bought the $800,000 house realizes that making these payments is going to be much more difficult than they expected, so they move all of their immediate family into one bedroom and ask another family to move into the second bedroom and help contribute money for the payments. A little bit later they convert the garage into multiple bedrooms and ask another family or two to move in. A few months later another family moves into the living room. A walk in closet might even get turned into a bedroom, with a blow up mattress barely fitting on the floor. With no more room in the house they buy a storage shed from home depot, put it in the back yard, lay carpet, hook up electricity and another family moves in. There might end up being 2 or 3 makeshift structures in the back yard for even more people. After a while you have 10-15 people living in a 1200 square foot house, putting all their money together and barely able to make payments. After a while it comes time to adjust the interest rate on their loan, and since they are making interest only payments, their monthly payment doubles, there’s nothing they can do, and they eventually get kicked out of their house. If the bank is able to sell their home in a short sale, and they get out with their credit in tact they are one of the lucky ones.

So this is where we are now. In some places, prices are half what they were at the height of the bubbles. Banks are so backed up foreclosing on people that they are months behind. People who quit making payments 8 months ago are barely beginning the foreclosure process. Repossessed houses hitting the market now are from people who quit making payments last fall before the economy went from bad to horrific. That, and the fact that foreclosures haven’t slowed down, leads me to believe that the housing market isn’t getting better any time soon. Though prices have stopped dropping as quickly, i think there’s going to be another down turn before things get significantly better.

Rachel and i began looking for a house last November. As i mentioned before 2 of the close to 200 properties that we’ve looked at have not been foreclosed homes, for those who aren’t good at math, that’s exactly 1%. I would say that 95% have a converted garage or storage shacks in the back that were used as living space. In almost all of these places renovations and additions have been haphazardly and cheaply done with the singular intent of being able to house more people. Even houses that were once nice have been so meesed up by cheaply done renovations that they would require $20,000-30,000 just to make them look normal again. It’s also common for people who have been kicked out of their homes to tear the place up as they leave and even return to vandalize the place after they leave. Since the sale is being completed by someone who works for a bank on the other side of the country, there isn’t really anything they can do.

We thought we had a place in the spring, but WaMu, the lender that loaned the owner the money for the down payment wanted her to put $14,000 to them on a credit card in order to close the deal. We decided we didn’t want any part of that so we walked away. Of the other 10-12 offers we’ve made, none have been accepted. Though we usually bid well above asking price, sometimes by as much as $50,000, it’s pretty normal to hear that that there were upwards of 10-15 other offers. Since we will be getting a loan from the government through the FHA program for first time home buyers, our loan is seen by sellers as complicated and messy. As a result, investors who swoop in with all cash offers almost always come up as the winners, in one case, even when we bid more than $30,000 higher than their offer. At this point we’re feeling pretty lost, as it’s clear there’s nothing we can do to make our offers more appealing than an all cash offer. Luckily, this article does a great job of describing the situation and at least lets us know that we aren’t alone in this.

The really frustrating thing is that when investors buy these homes with all cash, they are almost guaranteed to become rental properties. There’s no doubt that a home where the owners live in the house is more likely to be taken care of, and is much better for the neighborhood. Unfortunately, at this point there just isn’t much we can do but keep going through the motions, keep looking at houses as soon as they hit the market, keep making offers the day after they go on, and just hope that we catch a break.

Everyone we’ve run into is really slimy too. It seems like any time there’s an opportunity to take advantage of someone else’s problems, greed, slimy people come out of the wood work. The realtors selling properties for the banks are the worst. They never return phone calls or emails, and when you do actually talk to them they tend to be arrogant jackasses that think you owe them something. Many of these people have this nasty habit of listing a home for well below what it is actually worth with the intention of stoking up demand, getting a ton of people interested, and then manufacturing a bidding war. Then they invariably become overwhelmed with the phone calls and freak out like it’s the fault of the people interested in the property and not a problem that they purposely created. One realtor required that a ‘worksheet’ be completed with the offer and then that the offer be hand delivered by our realtor instead of the traditional fax or email. When our realtor went to deliver the deal, she cracked the door to her office, snatched the offer out of Ted’s hand, and slammed the door in his face without saying a word. It’s just crazy. The whole system is overloaded and there’s no one to enforce the rules, so no one follows them. It’s like the old wild west or something. It’s just insane.

Luckily, as i’ve said before, if we end up not landing a place, it’s not the end of the world. We aren’t planning on staying here for the rest of our lives, and we’ll certainly be able to afford a house when we move back to Texas. If we don’t find a place we’ll have a nice little chunk of money that we can use to get married, go on some sweet trips, or save for when we buy a place in Texas. So it’s not the end of the world, but it’s really frustrating. Going to look at a place, getting emotionally attached to it, and envisioning living there, only to see it go to someone that’s going to turn it into a rental property is tough. Sure it’s easy to say that you shouldn’t get emotionally attached, but i would argue that you shouldn’t spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on something that you don’t find yourself emotionally attached to.

Life moves on, things progress, and we keep telling ourselves that we’re lucky to even be in a position to buy a house right now. We’ll keep going through the motions and hope something breaks our way, and if it doesn’t, we’ll have some extra money laying around. C’est la vie.

Hurting...

So the king of the DNF delivered again today. While getting DNF always sucks, there are a few good things to take away from today’s race. First off, i lasted about 5 miles at an average speed of 30mph, which is freaking fast. Coincidentally, within a lap or two of me getting dropped, the pace came way down. Lap times on the short course jumped from the 57-58 second range up to 65-68 seconds. While it sucks that i got dropped, if i would have been able to hang on for just a little bit longer, i probably would have been fine. I also need to keep in mind that this was my first Category 4 race. My cornering was really solid. I felt great diving into corners, was able to stay off the brakes, and was comfortable in the group. That it was a simple 4 corner crit on a simple course with good pavement certainly helped matters.

I’m disappointed with the DNF, and while they still sting, they don’t sting as badly as they used to. It was pretty easy to go from racing to standing on the sidewalk cheering on my teammates. It was a mixed bag for the Webcor team today. Two of us got dropped, one of us crashed (flipped over the bars, broke his steerer tube, which is a solid rod of carbon, and amazingly walked away totally unscathed), and one of us got second (or third, i never saw the official result).

The bike’s in the shop right now getting new tape on the handlebars. Next weekend Rachel and i are going to LA to see a Cubs-Dodgers game at Chavez ravine (and eat a bunch of Dodger dogs), then pick my Mom up at LAX and drive up to our friends house on the central coast for a few days of hanging out, reading, eating, and drinking wine with the fam (my Dad is helping my brother drive his car up to Portland for the fall semester, so they will be joining us on Sunday). I’m planning on taking my bike and exploring some of the local roads. I’m really looking forward to it.

This weekend didn’t involve any traveling, bike racing, camping, eating at cool restaurants, trips up to San Francisco, parties, visits from college friends, or any of a handful of other things that make for enjoyable weekends, but that doesn’t mean it was any less awesome.

This weekend Rachel’s mom, Cathy, was in town as a hold over from the Thomas family reunion (better known as Willitswald) last weekend, as was her brother (and Rachel’s Uncle), Mark. Mark and his wife, Pam, live just a few minutes north of us, but they also own a house in Puerto Vallarta where they’ve been hanging out and working since May. Anyway, we decided with everyone in town, we should just hang out with each other as much as possible.

Saturday and Sunday followed this basic schedule: sleep in, grab breakfast, run a few errands, hit the farmer’s markets for food to be eaten for dinner that evening, grab anything we couldn’t find at the farmer’s markets from a grocery store, get a light lunch, head up to Mark’s place in Belmont around 2:00, hang out all afternoon talking, reading, watching movies, sipping summer cocktails or wine, start cooking dinner in the later afternoon, sit down at the table with a few bottles of wine for dinner, move out to the patio and hang out some more, come inside and watch a movie and eat a little dessert. It was a winning combination of good people, good food, good drinks, and nothing to do but hang out.

Saturday was asian style pork ribs with corn on the cob, salad, and bread. Mark’s friend Steve came over with his daughter and brought a few bottles of wine. Steve’s a big oenophile (wine guy), so he always brings a few good bottles of wine. Saturday was no exception as he brought a few bottles of two great pinots. Sunday was crab cakes with more salad and bread. Delicious.

Somehow, i was able to sneak out of the apartment early on Saturday morning and get in a 50 mile ride with my racing club covering 2 major climbs in the area. I’m still getting dropped on the climbs, but i’m no longer the last guy to the top, which is progress.  I usually have issues with the descent too. I’m just not that willing to fly into blind corners on mountain roads at high rates of speed when there’s nothing to be gained but bragging rights at the bottom. However, i went to a crit practice last Thursday with some Cat4 racing team members, and we spent most of the time pacelining around a crit coarse seeing how fast we could take corners. It helped me a ton, as cornering in a group is not one of my strong points. The things i learned from crit practice transferred right over to descending. Instead of falling off the pace on the descent i was actually passing people and worked my way up to the front group even though i started at the back. For the first time i felt really comfortable leaning waaaay over into turns.

When descending, cyclists use a technique called countersteering where you steer by leaning the bike over instead of moving the handlebars. It’s called countersteering because you actually steer the bars just a touch in the opposite direction of the turn. This allows you to lean the bike over even further. However, when you feel like you’re coming into a turn too fast, your natural instinct is to sit up, not lean the bike over so far, and hit the brakes. This lowers the speed at which you can go through the turn, making it a totally counter productive move. Instead, when you feel you’re coming into a turn too ‘hot’ the correct thing to do is dig in, lean in even further, and keep the hands off the breaks. I feel like my brain is finally getting re-wired to think that way, which is great. Sure, i still had to brake in the middle of a few turns, but for the most part, i did the descent better than i ever have before.

My next race (and first as a Cat4), Suisun Harbor Crit, is next weekend, i’m pretty excited. Hopefully i’ll do well. I have a lot of teammates doing the race, so i’ll be totally jazzed if i can contribute, help teammates, and finish the race in the pack.

We submitted another offer on a house today. I can’t remember how many offers this is, but it’s somewhere around 10. I’m ready to finally land a place. This article came out today in the San Jose Mercury News and does a pretty good job of explaining how crazy things are right now in our price range. Maybe i’ll get a post up about the housing market and our experiences seeing it first hand at some point. In the end, if we end up not getting a place, it’s not the end of the world. We have the advantage of knowing that we’re not going to be here for the rest of our lives, so there’s no pressure to find the perfect place. And if we don’t find a place, we have some money that we can use to pay for a wedding, or save and use for a down payment when we move back to Texas. Sure the consequences of not finding a place are pretty minor (no garage to store stuff, no yard, no dog, no washer and dryer), and we realize that we’re lucky to even be in the position we’re in, but that doesn’t make the whole thing any less frustrating.

Anyway, that’s all i’ve got for now. Look for a race report this weekend or early next week.

As of last Friday my road bike racing license has officially been upgraded from Category 5 to Category 4!

Settle down folks. Usually an upgrade in category happens because you’ve had solid results (top ten finishes, maybe even a few wins) over a series of races proving to those in charge that you are kicking the asses of the people in your current category and need a bit more of a challenge. Obviously, that’s not the case with me, because there’s no way i could be kicking ass at bike races and managed to keep it from everyone i know.

So what the heck is going on? Well, Category 5 is the ‘beginner’ category. The goal is just to get people used to flying around a course at high speeds in the middle of a group. As a result of that logic, you don’t have to get any results at all to move up to Category 4, you just have to start 10 races or clinics. It’s like getting a ‘C’ just for showing up to that 8:30am ‘Calculus for Enlgish Majors’ class in college and thus getting to take Calculus 2 because you technically passed Calculus 1.

‘Great!’ you say, ‘that means Travis has at least reached some kind of bench mark in bike racing! 10 races, that shows commitment and grit!’

Yeah, because the language for upgrades states that i have to start 10 ‘races or clinics’ to be eligible for an upgrade and each early bird race i did back in January was preceeded by a clinic, each of those days counted for two races/clinics and i was technically eligible for an upgrade in February.

So what happened? Why so long? Well, I couldn’t figure out why i was oscillating so wildly between feeling great at races and sucking, so i figured i’d stay in the 5’s until i got things figured out. Then i went on a pretty incredible spree of suck. First i told myself that if i get a podium (top 5) at my next race, i’ll upgrade. Then it was a top 10. Then it was just finishing with the pack. For various and sundry reasons, it never happened. So here i am looking at the tail end of my season. Of the 4 races left that i’d like to do, 3 have combined Cat 4/5 fields (where Cat 4’s and 5’s race together because most of the guys that started the season at 5’s have moved up to 4’s so there aren’t a ton of 5’s left and having them do the race with 20 guys kind of defeats the purpose), and the remaining one has no Cat 5 field at all. Since i’m going to be racing in the same fields for the rest of the season whether i’m a 4 or a 5, i figured i might as well suck it up and just upgrade. A bunch of guys i started racing with at the beginning of the season are now racing in the 4’s, so there’s a core group of about 10-15 guys that all race together and train together 3-4 days a week. Racing with a team is a hell of a lot more fun than racing solo, so i think i’ll finish my season training and racing with these guys, and we’ll see how it goes.

Luckily i just have crits lined up for the rest of the season. To do road races i’ll have to be more disciplined with my eating and shed 10 pounds or so over the off season and be more deligent with my base training and cross training in the winter so i can get over hilly terrain without getting dropped.

Fun stuff.

In other news, we spent last weekend up at Rachel’s family property in Mendocino County for a little family reunion action. Though the group was down to around 25 from the usual 40, and the length was down to 3 days from 5 or 6, we still had a great time. The pictures can be found here.

I’ve been dormant the last couple weeks. With work, the Tour, Training, and everything else, bloggin time was one of the first things to go. Now the Tour’s over (but not with the result i wanted), so that’s 2-3 hours a day i have to do something else, so blogging will likely creep back into my life.

Last weekend we had Alex (my roomate all four years of college), and Ami (a close friend in college who lived across the hall from us freshman year, the two have been dating since senior year of college), up for a visit. As has become the normal routine, they stayed up in SF Wednesday-Friday while we were working, stayed with us Friday and Saturday night, and headed home Sunday. Since we only had one whole day to spend together we packed it as full as we could. We left early and headed for the Ferry Building Farmer’s market, grabbed breakfast and walked around a bit, then headed up to wine country to visit some of our favorite vineyards, along with some new ones. Our route ended up dumping us out onto 101 north of Santa Rosa, so on the way home we stopped at Muir Woods for a look at some redwoods. We arrived back home more than 12 hours later and immediately left walking for dinner on University Avenue. We were able to grab breakfast before taking them to the airport Sunday morning, and as usual the visit felt far too short. C’est la vie.

That’s all the time i’ve got, more posts to come soon (i hope).

It’s been pretty fast and furious since we got back from Houston Sunday morning, so i haven’t had time to blog.

The trip was, in a word, awesome. As usual, the time flew by and it felt too short. I got to see a ton of people i hadn’t seen in a while. We had a group of about 12 doing stuff together Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, which was cool. I felt like i didn’t get to spend as much time as i was hoping to catching up with everyone, but when you live thousands of miles away and try to get a year’s worth of hanging out with 12 people done in 3 days, you’re kind of destined for failure. But damn if we didn’t give it our best.

As with the people, we got to eat at a lot of places i’ve been wanting to try for going on a year now (Textile, Little Big’s), as well as places i’ve been missing (La Jalascience, Central Market), but i wish we could have hit some more places (Feast, Catalan, Ninfa’s on Navigation, Asian Market, etc.)

We didn’t sleep very much, so by the time Saturday afternoon rolled around and a lack of sleep, a little dehydration, the Texas heat, an outdoor 4th of July BBQ, and some beer all got together for a party, i hit a wall, my body shut down, and i had to call it an early night, missing the planned fireworks all together. Luckily, i didn’t feel too bad for the 4am wake up call the next morning and the 6 hours of traveling to get back home.

One aspect of the whole super early flight back that was pretty entertaining was that we arrived home at 9:30am, even after 6 hours of travel. But because we had been up for 7 hours, Rachel and i were hungry for lunch. We desperately searched for some place serving sandwiches, but all we could find was breakfast fare. We finally descended upon Quiznos within 2 minutes of them opening. It was delicious. I think we took a 3 hour nap that afternoon. We were so wiped out. When am i going to learn that i can’t revert to my college behavior when i get back together with my college friends?

It’s Tour time, have you been watching!?! Considering the first week of the Tour is usually boring flat stages where only the last 5km are interesting as the break away inevitably gets caught and the sprinters duke it out for the win, this has been an exceptionally exciting first week of the Tour. I can’t wait to see what happens when the race hits the mountains. I’ve gotten to the point where i really like most of the riders in the pro peloton and find it hard root for a single guy or team. I guess i’ll just keep watching a see who i feel myself pulling for. I think the only way i’d be unhappy was if Contador just smashes the field, or Cadel Evans finds a way to squeak out a victory. For the most part though, just give me a compelling story and some exciting stages and i’m a happy camper. Seeing Lance grab number 8 would be pretty sweet though.

I live a monk-like existence during the 3 weeks of the Tour: wake up, shower, eat breakfast, go to work, go for a ride, shower, cook dinner, watch the tour, sleep. That’s it, not much time for anything else.

This weekend should be a good one, but in a totally different way than last weekend. Saturday morning we’re going to a Tour watching party at 5am with some people from our softball team. It should be a good time. After that Rachel and i will be heading to the velodrome for a track racing clinic. This will be number 3 for me (after which, i can start racing on week nights!), and number 1 for Rachel. She’s a little reluctant to give it a try, but i think she’d really enjoy it if she just gave it a shot. Sunday morning, it’s looking like we’ll be heading out for a mellow bike ride with some riding buddies.

So are we doing anything this weekend that doesn’t involve bikes? Why yes, we are. Since moving into our apartment 2 years ago we’ve aquired quite a bit of new stuff without ever really getting rid of older stuff that we haven’t touched in two years. Our little back yard, once a bare 15′ X 15′ patch of dirt, is now starting to look a little ‘white trash’, over flowing with camping gear, bike stuff, grills, smokers, potted plants, gardening tools, etc.. The kitchen, which was already pretty starved for space is full of kitchen gadgets, dishes, cookware, and small appliances that we don’t use anymore and should probably get rid of. I think the thing to do is just go through every single item in every single room and decide if we really need it. Unpacking closets haphazardly stacked with stuff that just gets thrown in there, evaluating what we need and what we don’t, and repacking the closet could go a long way to getting us more storage space that is so precious for people like us that like to do a wide range of activities, but live in a place without a ton of storage place for all of our toys.

Just because: embrocation.

Embrocation is a liniment that European cyclists have been putting on their legs in cool temperatures to keep them warm for decades. It’s a staple of Euro cycling culture, especially for riders from places like Belgium where the weather in the winter is terrible, and remains pretty brutal for the spring classics races there. So what’s the tie in? I decided to order some this winter, just to see if i liked it. For the more mild NorCal winters where temperatures hoover around the mid 50’s, it’s incredible stuff. It keeps your legs warm and your muscles supple on long rides in the cold when your legs would otherwise be tight. So why mention this in the summer? I woke up at 5:30am last week so that i could get in a 90 minute ride that included a trip up Old La Honda before work. Temps when i left the apartment were in the mid 50’s so i threw a long sleeve base layer on top, but stuck with my shorts on the bottom and slathered up the legs with embrocation to keep me warm. I forgot how much i loved the stuff. The ritual of putting it on feels like shooting jump shots on the basketball court in that it just feels good and gets you excited for the ride you’re about to go on. The slow burn you feel (in a good way) out on the road. The ‘hot legs’ sensation you feel when you get back and for a few hours afterward. The way it makes your legs glisten and pick up little specs of dirt over the course of a ride. I just dig everything about the stuff. The company i got my mine from, Mad Alchemy Embrocation, is based out of Massachusetts and is a pretty small, mom and pop operation. I just got an email newsletter from them today. They have 2 new summer embrocations, one with eucalyptus and mint, the other with mango, as well as a new chamois cream. Not to mention a coffee embrocation making it’s return this fall. Damn, i might have to get an order together.

Oh crap, it’s getting late, i’ve got to get to bed. G’night y’all.

Man, celebrities have been dropping like flies lately. I’ve been neglecting the blog because everything else has been pretty wild and fast paced lately, but fear not, i’m still here.

There have been some new developments on the housing front (a deal on a house we thought was a sure bet seems to have fallen apart, and one we thought had fallen apart may have been resurrected).  The computer i got after graduating from high school to last me through college final died after 6 noble years of service (a hell of a run for a computer), so we’re the proud owners of a new iMac. It’s pretty sweet. We went Hellyer Velodrome last Friday night to watch their annual ‘American Velodrome Challenge’ racing series which draws riders from all over the West Coast and even a few guys from the Midwest and East Coast. Needless to say, they were a hell of a lot faster than me. Many of the races saw speeds rarely dipping under 28-30mph. That’s freaking flying! It’s the end of the month and the quarter so i’m swamped at work writing progress reports, not to mention all the other stuff on my plate. Anyone see the US-Brazil game on Sunday? Rachel caught the game at our favorite sports bar. When the US went up 2-0, the place was going totally insane, we were on cloud 9. The rest of the game was like a punch in the gut. We walked the 8 blocks home in silence because there was just nothing to say. The bike training is back on track after being off the bike for 2 whole weeks with the wedding in Denver and then my back problems. I did a long (4 miles) climb yesterday after work and for the first time ever i felt better at the end of the climb than i did at the beginning. I put on a few lbs in the last few weeks, but i’m setting myself up to make a final push for the rest of the season. I’m pretty excited about that. To top everything off, Rachel and i are leaving at 6:30am Thursday morning for an extended weekend in Houston. As much as i’d love to get a real blog entry posted before then, let’s be honest, it ain’t happening. It’s going to be a great weekend though. We’ve got several groups of friends coming from Austin and San Antonio that we’re looking forward to seeing, as well as family and friends in Houston. Three days isn’t much time, but we’re going to do our best to see everyone, spend some quality time, do some fun stuff, go back to some of my favorite places, eat some good food, and probably sleep as little as possible.

Have fun this weekend folks. Eat some good food, see friends and family, and catch some fireworks if you get the chance.