le tour de france

The tour de france is over. Contador won, Armstrong third. I was seriously rooting for Tyler Farrar to take a stage, but he had some short/stiff competition.

I'll leave you with a photo circa fall 2006, of a cyclocross race at Western Washington University. Tyler showed up for some fun in the mud with skinny tires. A friend of mine (I don't remember which, but I think it was Paul) took the photo.

Scenes of Skagit

Riding your bicycle is a fantastic way to see the world, as a friend once said, no too fast, but also not too slow.

Skagit county is a place where tail winds (and their counter-parts) are just as plentiful as tractors, and farm fresh eggs. But as with most things special in this world, you may have to work a bit to find them.

lookout!

It's called, "I've got the Mic." If you've got the mic, no one else can talk.

Words, spoken and written, are extremely powerful tools. But words are only one way to communicate, and sometimes less is more. In the silence of our minds and our environments there is so much to be heard. So much is said in silence.

The climb up lookout mountain just east of Bellingham is brutal, long, steep, and route finding is trial and error when your just figuring it out. The fire roads are desolate, more likely to see a bobcat then another human on the 2100+ foot climb. The view of the San Juan Islands looking over Chuckanut and Blanchard mountains is surreal, every time I see it, it's as if I'm seeing it for first time. A shortness of breath, a calming, but most obviously, no words to speak.