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.

little robin captures big worm!

My most favorite mountain bike ride, check that, bicycle ride of all time, ever, no contest. The mountain biking on Marys Peak. I have ridden on Marys' needle strewn trails and gravel roads through whatever weather you can dream up. Inches of fresh pow, pouring rain - east ridge trail maybe should have been classified as some level of rapid, maybe a stream quality assessment would have been necessary. Some DO levels, invertebrate index, LWD, you get the picture. whoops, got off track a bit. My first night ride ever was heading up to the top from my home on hwy 34 using all fire roads and trails. Alone. Not a vehicle ever crossed paths with me. It was pretty scary coming down North ridge trail, thinking about cougars, singing some Bob, no woman no cry, as loud as I could, it was more like shouting, thinking back, I'm sure anything living that had the ability was quite far away from me. In fact, I'm quite confident that any cougar would have lost it's appetite. Although, I was a bit more scared when the little indicator light came on that says there's only 20-30 minutes of energy left to light my way, 12 miles of fireroad still to rally. I pedalled really fast. Just one of the countless times I've been up there in spandex on two wheels.

Yesterdays ride was a bit less memorable, possibly, but it put a big smile on my face.

Not a cloud in the sky

Well, I'll start off by saying that I completely forgot about sunscreen until well in to the ride. ah, what can you do sometimes? I was planning on a long ride today, 5-6 hours or so. I wasn't planning on heading up Marys Peak road again.

I don't know so much what happened, I just came up to the turn off and took a right. It was completely beautiful again, but in a completely different way from yesterday. Not a cloud in the sky. I guess I wanted to see the ocean blue while I was down here and this is a great place to do it if you can't make it out to the water.

Butterflies were everywhere up there! Hundreds of thousands of them.

The Alsea Falls part of the ride is fantastic. A narrow single lane road cruising through coast range hills. Most of the time the trees are so tall and thick that the road is completely shaded, nice feature considering my lack of sun protection. I found an injured butterfly on the road. I was bummed, he seemed fine but was missing some key equipment needed to fly around.

I got caught by an old timer on a tractor sneaking of photo of him after we waved happily at each other. The next guy on a tractor I saw was focused, and he hadn't forgotten his sun-pro.

Two things that I love about where I grew up, and that Bellingham doesn't have, are grand old oak trees, and turkey vultures. Do you ever feel like those guys are following you? They think I'm weak and I am about ready to fall over and gasp for water? Is there a cougar tracking me and they are going to be there to pick up the pieces? Yeah me neither.

Regarding the slideshow, you can hit the button with the four arrows on it and enter full screen mode.

Marys Peak

Today was great. It started with a healthy dose of sleeping in. Followed by some amazing cereal. Chilled out for a couple good hours, then got on the bicycle and headed down the road towards ol' Mary.

The climbing really starts just about 3 miles from home while still on the Alsea highway. It's another two and a half miles until you get to the Mary's Peak road turn off. From there you've got 10 miles all uphill save for a little descent in the middle of the climb.

The day was overcast and I wondered how soon I'd get into clouds and maybe some rain. Would there be a view?

A bit over half way up I got into some clouds. The temperature dropped a bit, and that beautiful mist rolled in and everything was just as it should be. The road had a nice green tinge to it. Noted. It's smart to remember these things when your traction patches are no larger then the nail on your pinky finger.

When I reached the parking lot up top I was greeted by a nice view of the valley floor below. Clouds cruising by pretty quick kept the view always changing. The gravel trail to the top is stunning. The wild flowers are incredible right now, the pictures below don't do any justice at all.

The descent off the peak is amazing. Fast, flow, smooth, fun, grip, carve. These are some words that come to mind when I think of the trip down, but the feeling isn't something for mere words.

Visual journey through the yard

My Mother and Step-father Allen are avid gardeners, and by avid, I mean they are really really excited about gardening, nurturing and being nurtured by these plants. We grow the plants and the plants grow us. Here is a tiny bit of what they have done to the piece of land that in 1997 was completely barren.

** I've found that with most Canon cameras, especially the point'n shoot smaller guys, they are over exposed from the stock setting. You get much deeper colors, more contrast, and less 'white-out' by stopping down the exposure 2/3 to a full stop under-exposed. I didn't bring the big-daddy camera with me, but for how tiny this thing is, I'm impressed with the images it captured.