Our track mechanic

 

 

Lurking on the edge of a lot of the recent pictures from the track is an elusive beast who needs to be surprised to be captured on film: our team mechanic Dean. Dean arrives at the velodrome half an hour before our workouts or races and puts bikes together and makes sure that everything is tip top to ride. The few times when he can not come out we often spend half an hour or more trying to figure out how do routine things to our bikes because we are too pampered. We are very ordinary bike racers, but our great support makes us feel like rock stars! Now for a new game from here on: Spot Dean in pictures. 25 cents to the first one that finds all of them.

AVC

 

 

So AVC came and went. I improved my results significantly from last year, with fourth placings both in the kilo and the pursuit. The big winner, however, was Amelia who did an excellent team sprint and ended up second. She brough home actual money! Like last year the weather was really freaking hot, so a we spent a lot of time panting in the shadows. Amelia's parents were visiting from San Diego, so they got to see her race which was really cool (here Bobby taking pictures of the action).

Remnants

 

Here and there you can see the traces of the past on buildings. Right next to the excellent place where we get our hair cut (the leep), there is a creepy shut up building where there used to be a minimart. Apparently the son of the owners moved in there and put cardboard up over the windows when the last tenant moved out, and it is now a big space filled with trash. However, in contrast to the crappiness of the front facade, on the back of the building there is an cool old mural with a washed out rainbow and an admonishment to drink the uncola. I am all for not drinking the cola so big ups for them.

Photo ops

 

Due to our reawakened interest in photography, we have been cruisining around documenting various things around our neighborhood. A few weeks ago we popped out and went to NW Natural gas old headquarters, which have been derelict for a long time. After a bit of us futzing about, a guard came out and I thought we would be in trouble. But no, he was just bored and wanted a chat. Apparently the building was full of asbestos and they had to vacate it after a bunch of people got really sick. Now it is slated to get torn down, and the site is becoming a biodiesel plant. That is cool, I guess, even if it is sad that the building is going to go away. Interestingly the pictures we shot of the building did not turn out that great, but Amelia took some meta-pictures documenting the process that turned out quite nicely.

A warm week

 

The weather this week has been scorching. Friends of team P+A may know that we are not that into heat (in fact, I have been known to bring ice packs to bed when it gets really warm). Our apartment is pretty ok in terms of not warming up too much, so imagine the heat necessary to drive Carrie and Finnegan outdoors to eat an evening burrito.

Yesterday night we took a mini vacation and went to a hotel room to get some AC at night. Needless to say, we watched animal planet and had beers and showers; the classic hotel trifecta.

AVC prep

 

This week was spent preparing for our first big time competition of the year, the Alpenrose Velodrome Challenge. Amelia went all out to create team spirit by manifesting an awesome Brian's house of pain t-shirt, which created a demand surge among Coach B's athlete (and assorted random people not coached by the B-man, such as one of the bar-keeps at our closest watering hole, Lucky Lab). Nerves ran high, and everyone attempted to work out their race plans. Here, another entry in the series I have titled "listen to the coach".

Thurman

 

Another evening expedition to get some summertime in, and another awesome bridge. Here, the Thurman overpass over the entrance to McClay park. Very climbable, although I have a hard time seeing my dear monkey wife ascend very far as I worry that she will fall and become as flat as a pancake.

A shoe

 

The other day I came across this scene in one of the disused spaces next to our house. For some reason, a bunch of trash has piled up. Fair enough, I guess. But who left their one shoe? And what did they do next?

Relaxing in the park

 
 

Sometimes it feels like we have no spare time after we have done our daily workouts, worked, and eaten. However, every once in a while we get our butts in gear and go out and do something. A few nights ago we decided to go to Cathedral park and throw some frisbee. The park is under the St John's bridge, which was a grand rehearsal for the architect who drew the golden gate bridge, and it is not very well used considering how nice it is. During this visit, I realized that Amelia needs to brush up on her frisbee throw, which has a interesting habit of randomly going any which way. This aside, we had a very pleasurable evening.

First 4k of the year

 

The first 4k pursuit of the year was also the state championship, and it was done just a week before our biggest local event of the year, AVC, where I am doing it again together with the kilo. As AVC attracts professionals, and has a big prize purse this was a great time to get a baseline reading to see how fast I could go. To be safe, I decided on a conservative pace (target time: last years personal best). I did this comfortably, and I now know that I should be able to go a lot faster on friday. The time was .3 seconds slower than Seth Hosmer, so I had to settle for a state silver this year too. That's ok though, the big events that matter is yet to come. Things are looking good!

Midsummer 2007

 

Holy smokes, midsummer again---the time of crazy hedonism for swedes. We restricted ourselves to getting some swedish akvavit from our neighbourhood liquor store (they had some!), and eating new potatoes and chives. We also taught Carrie and Andy how to drink snaps the swedish way, complete with the manly sound "iiiiih". If you watched swedish state television in the eighties you know what I am talking about about.

On another note, it is funny how amateurish and quaint those old shows seem now, yet how important they were to us back then. Sweden had a tightly regulated state television, and we rarely got shows that were not made in Sweden. And what shows we got were pretty odd.