Saturday

We've been up extra early for work lately and there have been some great sunrises. Today was especially nice as there are clouds which is a rare commodity these days. 

Turned a bunch of fuel into smoke and noise, then headed home. 

We put in a five mile walk out to Big-Rock Park. This is the longest walk I've ever done on flip-flops, score Olukai.

Thursday

Warrior Dash

Corrine ran Warrior Dash  in Iowa this year. It was an impressively big event - I think 7000-some people actually raced. I was spectating so was only able to see the fire leap and mud pit as the rest was out in the forest somewhere. I'm not sure if I'll run it next year or not. It was tons of fun to wander around because the general energy level is so high but I'm not really a fan of giant mud-pit type things. Organization was great and it never felt too crowded.

Meadow

In process since last summer, the flower meadow is starting to really look like something. I had wondered for quite some time after sewing seed if anything at all would happen. We had such a long early spring that it was touch and go for a while helping the flowers beat already established weeds. If this keeps going well, it's a big chunk of the yard which will only need to be mowed once a year. Plus we get some great color out of the deal. There are like 20 flower varieties in here and we've only seen maybe five so far. The meadow keeps constantly changing. The first picture is a little older than than the second. You can already see the colors shifting from yellow to purple as the early annuals die off. It's even more purple than that now with a smattering of red thrown in.

We found this cat in the back yard. It seems to occasionally live here now, which is ok, as it's about the most friendly cat ever.

High-Trestle!

After sending out a way last-minute email, I got a thumbs-up from Nathan and Sarah and the High-Trestle group night-ride was born. We wanted to see how the long bridge looked lit up, so we left Pella in about enough time to hit the Woodward trailhead around 8:30pm (I think?).

Leaving work, the car thermometer said 113°, which is partially due to heat-soak from the office building but still the highest number I've seen on there this year so far.

On the trail and moving in plenty of time. The stifling heat very rapidly gave way to cool breezes (which was about 85° at this point but it really felt that much better).

Timing perfection - we stopped to look around and the lights clicked on. I thought more of it would be lit but it's still pretty neat to ride through.

One of the most interesting folding bikes I've seen. The four-wheeled "kick-stand" was bizarre. I think the kick-stand turned into a rear cargo rack when you're in riding mode, I wasn't paying enough attention when they rolled up to find out.

Great views from up here. I'm sure it was great fun (or terrifying) to be in a train flying across what was probably a mostly wooden bridge back in the day.

We did bring some lights and they proved to be very necessary. Lots of people do high-speed training rides out here at night and you definitely want to be seen. I blinded lots of people with my (Corrine's) headlight and all four of us were complained at for lack of tail-lights.

This picture was taken shortly before we were semi-asphyxiated by anhydrous ammonia. We had made it to the second town after Woodward (I've forgotten its name) and were riding past a coop of some sort. A tanker truck filling smaller tanks was releasing a fair amount of product into the air and it was just kind of hanging around. I think we were well past the powerful smell stage and into the irritating effects stage. We turned around and rode back out of it. The group we met shortly after rode through it, but they were screaming a lot, so it was passable but not well.

Back on the bridge before arriving at the trailhead, the lights are extremely bright now. It was pretty great to ride though, a great finale to a great trip.

4th of July

Hoop Bling

In order to promote cyclocross dominance, Corrine got some new wheels for her race bike. The previous wheels were rapidly dying and could no longer be trued back into shape. These Mavic Aksiums will be both lighter and more durable. Mostly to entertain myself, I decided to weigh them to find out how much improvement we're looking at here.

896 grams for the Mavic front wheel.

983 grams for the Formula front wheel, so we've already saved 87 grams.

982 grams for the Mavic rear wheel, which is 1gram lighter than the Formula front despite having a beefier hub as well as the cassette spindle! Impressive.

1163 grams on the Formula rear wheel, for a savings of 182 grams in favor of the Mavic.

64 grams for the Mavic skewer.

66 grams for the Formula skewer and a handy win for Mavic again. The new wheels are lighter by 271 grams total and vastly stonger. Now we know.

Eastward Bound