Train of Lights with the family

Wednesday we embarked on a family evening of dinner and a ride on the Train of Lights:
http://www.ncry.org/

It was a good time all around. We started with a stop for dinner at Bosco's Bones and Brew:
http://www.boscosbonesandbrew.com/
At bit on the pricey side for what you get. Their big claim to fame is a dog that was mayor once and its replica urinates beer. Hey, what do you expect? It's Sunol!

The train ride was pretty cool - starting in Sunol and heading down to Fremont and back via the Niles Canyon Railway. The experience is probably geared more towards smaller kids (Santa makes an appearance), but the boys had a great time. Josh only spent maybe 10 minutes of the trip texting people and Kyle made the observation that "This would be a cool place to pop the question." Umm, dude, you are 14, hang tight for a few more years please!

If you go, get there early (30 minutes should be good), so you can get a good seat. I suggest sitting outside (kind of the whole point of the ride in my opinion), but bring a blanket and warm clothes for sure. Gloves and hats would be good.

More pictures and a couple of videos here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jdonohoe/20081210TrainOfLights#

Soccer tournament pictures - Vallejo

Some pictures over the two previous weekends where we had our a$$es handed to us multiple times. Kyle still had fun. Josh's season does not start for another few weeks - more pics to follow then.

http://picasaweb.google.com/jdonohoe/20080817VallejoSoccerTournament_Kyle

Santa Cruz Mountains Challenge - 100 Mile Bike Ride

Saturday some friends and I did the Santa Cruz Mountains Challenge - a 100 mile bicycle ride, also called a "century ride" in cycling circles.
The cast of characters on this journey were: John, Devin, Chad, Guy, Rusha, and myself.

Here's the official website:
http://www.santacruzcycling.org/scmc/

The course was described as 100 miles with 11,000 feet of climbing but my GPS must have been off a bit as I showed close to 17,000 feet of climbing total.
http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/6373947

The ride was definitely challenging, the heat a bit annoying, the climbing on the painful side, but the descending was AWESOME as I brushed against and then over the 50MPH mark a few times.

The food and fluid support was pretty darn good though I did find it a bit odd that an event sponsored by Clif products had PowerBars at the water stops... I would like to have seen the course marked a bit better as we almost missed a few turns and had to really look for the arrows painted on the ground.

Congrats to Chad for completing his first century and
MAJOR congratulations to Guy and Rusha for their wedding in about three weeks!

Downieville Classic MTB Race

The Downieville Classic Mountain Bike Race was this past weekend and it was a blast!
Chad and I made the journey in Kim's mini-van (yeah, two guys in a mini-van - chicks dig it ya know?), stayed in a crystal meth house, rode over 40 miles of sweet trails, drank some beer, met some great people, did not crash, did not have a mechanical, and I got a podium spot!




We both took Friday off and left in the AM to beat the traffic.





3-1/2 hours later, we arrived in Downieville and did an initial recon of the area. Much smoke was the order of the afternoon with all of the fires in the California area. Race packet pickup was not until 3PM so we headed to our lodging to see if we could check in early. After we found the place (Kokanne Kabins in Sierra City), we were having second thoughts. The place has seen better days for sure but Terri was nice as could be and told us it would be about another hour before our Kabin was ready. Back to Downieville to pick up our race packets and figure out what the plan for the weekend would be.



Food was the next order of business so we stopped and ate at the Grubsteak Saloon in town, owned by Mary and her husband. Mary was the nicest lady and gave us some great contacts for next year's lodging.



Some of the vendors were setting up their tents so we took a moment to check what was going on there and then headed back to our humble abode to prepare for the next day's contest.
Saturday came much too quickly but at least the smoke had cleared a bit and visibility was improved. We decided to ride our bikes the 1.8 miles to the start of the XC (Cross Country), race which started in Sierra City. The XC race was a 29 mile grueling ride to the top of Sierra Crest at 7100 feet of elevation (3100 foot gain), and then descending down 5200 feet back to Downieville. My Garmin Forerunner 305 gave slightly different results than what was officially posted with ~27 miles total and 6400 feet of total climbing and 7800 feet of descending. I managed to complete the course in just over 3 hours - about an hour slower than the pro class! Chad beat me by about a minute - phucker. After the race, we hung out, drank some beer and and checked out the different vendor tents.




Off to the Kabin to rinse off and get some clean clothes before putting some dinner in our bodies.
Yes that is dirt all over my arms and face - sexy eh?








Enjoying some well-earned frosty beverages after our effort on Saturday!





Sunday was pain. Chad and I were pretty smoked from Saturday's effort but soldiered onward. Fortunately, we expected Sunday to be a bit more than an hour and not the three hours from Saturday. As I took off from the start gate, I realized just how little I had in the tank - legs were rubber and arms were just somehow attached to my trunk but offering little else. The offical course stats were 17 miles for the DownHill with 5000+ feet of descending joy. My GPS said ~14 miles with 6400 feet of descent. Much of the course was similar to Saturday so at least I had an idea of what to expect but I still struggled quite a bit. Exactly an hour later, I arrived in Downieville, spent but happy I had given it my all.

Apparently my "all" was about 10 seconds short of second place but third place seemed assured - or so I thought. I guess there was a mixup and I was given fourth place during the awards ceremony. The final times posted today show me listed in third place by over 16 minutes. No worries, hopefully the folks at Yuba Expeditions will get me squared away.



So, lessons learned - full body armor might be overkill for the course, stay in Downieville rather than further out, do more hill work to prepare for the race, try to ride the course at least once before the race. Yeah, we will be back next year.

Here are links to pictures and GPS output:

All pictures of the weekend:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jdonohoe/20080713DownievilleClassicMTB

GPS for XC race
http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/6242659

GPS for DH race
http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/6242660

Evil Dead the musical

Last weekend I took the family to see Evil Dead, the musical. Go See It!

Even though my family had not see the Evil Dead movies, they had seen Army of Darkness and enjoyed it.
Everyone laughed all through the musical, it was great! Caution to those with children, there are a few F-bombs. The musical covered the story of Evil Dead but had quite a few of the classic lines from the Army of Darkness movie which was great. Our tickets were in the "Splatter Zone" and we were not disappointed in the result. There were big faucets on either side of the stage and during the "gore" scenes, SuperSoakers and a bucket make an appearance as well. Our seats were in the second row (table 101), and we got some "blood" on us but the first row was absolutely soaked.

Go here for tickets:
http://www.willowstheatre.com/evildead.htm

Carmel trip with the family

At the end of March during the boys' spring break, we took a little trip to Carmel - our first time there. Going during the week was great as the traffic was almost non-existent and things were very quiet. We found a place (The Hosfas House), which took dogs so we brought Zoe of course.

Zoe found a "little" stick to play fetch in the ocean.


Monday and Tuesday we went hiking in Garland Regional Park.
You can see the GPS output by clicking on the days: Monday and Tuesday.
Both days were pretty heavy hiking for the family, especially Tuesday, but everyone did well.


Where's Kyle? Kyle was running a hiding from us but I turned and barely caught him and his big smile, with Josh and Kim out of focus.


Each day after hiking, we went to the beach and let Zoe run crazy. We were a little concerned that she might not like the waves but she actually body-surfed a few of them when she was fetching the ball.

Kyle whipping his slave, Josh. Not really but it looks that way from the angle.


Carmel was definitely a fun time and I expect we will go back though sans kids next time.

My favorite picture from the trip...



For all of the pictures from the trip, click here.

Solvang Century Bike Ride

Catching up on my world here...



I did my first "century" bike ride back in March.
Yes, 100 miles
Yes, all at once.
I had never been to Solvang and a some buddies of mine from Chevron that I had ridden with previously invited me along at the last minute to come and hurt for about six hours and change.

We (John, Dan, and myself), left the SF Bay Area Friday afternoon in order to miss the bulk of the traffic which was a smart move and arrived in Solvang before dinner time. We met up with Don who was coming up from SoCal and tried to find some dinner. After a nice walk around Solvang for about an hour (working up a good appetite), we settled for a breakfast and lunch place that was serving dinner due to the large bicycle crowd. All you can eat spaghetti sounded like a great idea at the time. It took a bit of convincing to get our fill of all we could eat but we ended up leaving full and happy.
Saturday morning came much too early but we rolled our happy butts our of bed and proceeded through the fog and the cold to the starting line. It was probably about an hour after we left the starting line before I could put on my sunglasses due to all of the fog we rode through.
Solvang is beautiful, click here for some pictures of my friends and I in action
Part-way through the ride, I stopped to grab some pictures of the guys and when I started again, I pulled the classic noob maneuver and failed to clip in correctly. BLAM on my ass I went. Of course a friend from work, John Rhodes, happened to be riding by and saw my humiliation. Oh joy. We rode together for a bit before I took off to catch up with my Chevronite friends, flatting almost immediately of course! After fixing my bike, I was off again and caught up with them at the next rest stop.

The GPS data dump from my ride is available, just click here.
The numbers looked like this:
6,736 feet of climbing
100.58 miles of riding
6hrs, 20mins of total riding time
15.9 MPH average
49.8 MPH top speed!!!

After one of the rest stops, I forgot to kick my GPS back on so I missed capturing the worst climbing of the ride and some of the downhill after that so the distance is a touch short but close enough.

As a reward, the four of us found a nice Italian place for dinner and began the denial phase of how fast we were (not!), and how we could improve for next year.

So bottom line, how was it? Good fun! I will do it again next year if it fits into my training schedule.

Golden Gate bridge and the Haight

Kim claimed she had never been across the Golden Gate Bridge - what a horrible husband I must be! I took Kim and the kids to walk across the GG bridge and learn a little bit about how our military defended the entrance to the bay years ago. We parked at the Fort Point National Historic Site on the SF side and made our ~2 mile trek across the bridge. After building up our appetites, we headed to the Haight for some food and people watching.

Golden Gate Bridge Pictures


The fam with the GG bridge in the background


Some birds surfing under the bridge on driftwood


Another shot of the fam with the bridge in the background

Haight Pictures


The green dinosaur on Haight Street


A quick stop by "Coffee to the People"

The rest of the pictures are online, just click here.

Baseball season is upon us once again

Kyle is back in baseball again this year, big surprise!
I grabbed a few shots of him at practice a few weeks ago.

LeMans Karting with the kids

This past Sunday, Kim and I took the kids to LeMans Karting in Fremont and they had a great time. Check out the pictures here. The program is a new experiment for LeMans as I understand it. Previously they had a 30 minute class and then let the kids loose on the course. The new program is two hours long and consists of a 30 minute class with a test followed by ~60 minutes on the track with a walk of the course, individual, and group driving. Lastly a sprint race and a pizza lunch to finish it off. During one of track sessions, the instructors pulled a kid off the course and removed him from the class since he just did not have the skills to command his kart. I was pretty jazzed to see that they wanted to have decent drivers rather than just anyone willing to pay the entrance fee. Kim and I spent some time chatting with Rick, who owns LeMans with his wife, June. I walked away with the feeling that this is both a business and a passion of Rick's which is great to see.

For those of you not familiar with this type of go-karting, this is a very different animal than the regular go-karts you may have ridden previously in your misspent youth. These karts will hit 40MPH on the straights if you can set up for the turns correctly. Some of you have been to the old SpeedRing in Santa Clara (maybe even with me!), and this is close but those karts were ~6hp and the LeMans karts are ~9hp. The class was only for kids so Kim and I did not get to drive, (though Kim really wanted to do it). They were booked up for about the next 7 hours after we finished the class so we passed on doing a "family run" but will be back one weeknight evening to try our luck.

First race of the 2008 season

This past Sunday was my first race of the 2008 season and I chose to compete in the TBF Racing Mountain Bike Kickstart in the Granite Bay area. I entered the "sport" division and I managed to place 5th in my age group which was pretty stellar in my book. The results are here.

The race was just balls out as I spent just over 95% of the race above my anaerobic threshold. You can follow my ride here from my GPS watch which includes heart rate, speed and distance.

The course itself was pretty straightforward with minimal technical challenges. The weather was cold and a bit damp which helped with the traction on the trails. I took the opportunity to try out some semi-slick tires and I will not be doing that again. I use more brute force than finesse around the corners and I was pushing my front end too hard for the tires to grab. Lesson learned - they work great for fire roads but not anything more difficult than that.

I tried out my new video camera by mounting on the handlebars and that did not work out very well. Lots of scrambled video and garbled sound. It presented better/smoother video when I was riding down smooth trails so next time I will try mounting it to my helmet and see if that provides better results.

All in all, a great day.

Hike in Sunol

A buddy and I went for a hike in Sunol-Ohlone Regional Park (link) with the dogs up to Flag Hill. Grabbed some nice pictures here. A much better way to spend my day off than the list of "honey-dos" I have stacking up around the house.

Happy birthday to me!

The life I have today is pretty darn amazing with so much to be grateful for, what else can I say?

Multiple Sclerosis ride pic

I was catching up on my old email and came across this picture of me from the Waves 2 Wine Multiple Sclerosis this past September 29-30. I am looking MUCH too serious for a charity ride eh? I raised $1,050 myself and the the Chevron team I rode with raised $20,650 which is awesome!
People often ask me why I ride as hard and much as I do. The simple answer is because I can - I have no excuse not to ride. When I participate in a ride for multiple sclerosis, cancer, Challenged athletes, etc, it brings home what it would be like to not be able to ride. Sure, there are days when it is cold, wet and I have had two flat tires and still have another 20 miles to get home. Usually I can stop whining to myself long enough to remember that riding is a privilege many others will never or can no longer experience.
Some might call that gratitude...