Water Sports.

Take 1:

As a triathlete, I occasionally want to get out into the open water that I race in, freeing myself from the black line on the bottom, the endless flip turns, the chlorine, and the lane ropes.  I want to swim in which ever direction I choose and have it feel as if it is going on forever.  So it was that last Saturday  at 5:45 am, I met up with the usual tri-spects to drive out to Foster Lake just East of Sweet Home, OR for a little be-wetsuited frolicking far from the pool.

It was so nice to get into the water, stretch my arms and practice a little sighting.  Ever since my shoulder injury, I have really had to work on swimming in a straight line.  So, even in the rare air of Colorado, I was able to alternate breathe (breathing on both sides of my body, for the non-tri crowd) every third stroke and sight slightly above the water-line on every sixth stroke (my shoulder never did get strong enough to allow me to sight on that side).  And in case you are wondering, I breathe before I sight so that the head motion naturally turns to the side, sweeps in the direction of motion to look and then down back in to the water.  Some people site the opposite way, but I have always felt that it is more important to breather first.  In this way I have saved myself from veering off-course too much and often kept from following wayward feet in an arc around buoys.  Which is why it surprised me when JoeM told me I was all over the place when he was trying to follow me on Sunday.  Qui?  Ah-hah... actually, I had been doing backstroke when he was on my feet, to which he replied "that's why I was looking at the top of your pink toes...." (Doh!)

Take 2:

Rope swing.  'Nough said.  To escape the heat of the valley, a bunch of runner/cycling friends of mine headed toward the Coastal Mountain Range and the Alsea River after work on Monday. I was really proud of myself for having my lab meeting presentation mostly ready to go for Tuesday, so I decided to join.  Having left my phone at home that morning and needing to make some phone calls anyway, I biked home at lunch to get it and figured I might as well pick up my swimsuit while I was at it.  We drove to somewhere around mile marker 28 on the Alsea Highway... and there it was.  A three-inch diameter rope with knots strung up along it's length to the top of a huge tree, two different height platforms for jumping, and a deep pool in the Alsea River below.  The water was chillingly refreshing and the rope swing was amazingly sturdy.  Thanks so much to whomever maintains that thing!  It is awesome.  We played around for about an hour and a half before heading back to town and Monday night festivities.

Next day.. arms and abs hurt like no-other.  I need to get in the weight room again!

Aaaa---yeah!

Reverse backflip trickery!

OMG... Caution, major props ahead.

My former MU Track and Field teammate and first-year triathlon pro, just won a race in my old Boulder, CO stomping grounds.  But, not just any race, the Boulder Peak Triathlon.  This race is hard!  95 °F temps.  A bike course with an 11% grade, mile-long climb at mile 5 .  A run course with about 5 ft of shade.  Awesome.  And she ran down some major contendors.

Congrats Angie!  Your dream will come true sooner than you think!

The town I live in.

Cow-town. That's right. I live in the Oregon equivalent of Greeley, CO. But, talk to any resident of Greeley (ahem, Leah) and they will extol the virtues of their town. So, I will attempt to give the city-girl impression of Corvallis, OR now that I have lived here for a bit.

Aside from the lack of a 3-second delay (very key in Colorado) between when my traffic light turns red and the opposing direction turns green (making running yellow lights on a bike a bit treacherous), the absence of many big box stores and a shopping center (Target is the most notable of these... even though there is a major distribution center just 15 miles East... Go figure!), and the complaints I hear about how far "Southtown" (the part I live in) is from town proper (a beautiful 15 min bike ride through two riverside parks or a scarce 7 minute drive from the city center... please, let's redefine "far").  Yes, despite all these minor complaints...

Impression #1: Saturday Market. Boulder had one of these. I went occasionally, but often it seemed to me that the produce I got from the market (with a few exceptions) was the same quality I could get from Whole Paychecks or Wild Oats anytime of the week and no cheaper. I went mainly for the ethnic food and the periodic art festivals that sprang up among the food vendors. And it was crowded. Corvallis on the other hand is set on a fairly wide street. It boasts some of the best people watching I've ever encountered. There is cheap, farm fresh produce, meat, wine, cheeses, jams, honeys, eggs and flowers. All brought to you by rough hands and carharts. This is where I saw my first green eggs, got my first taste of marionberry jelly, nibbled my first sheep cheese (once you go sheep, you'll never go...). And lest I forget, you can also meet a black guy.

Jeremy and Tara Stand of the Bronx, with 1-year-old son Osiris, pose with Corvallis resident Jeff Oliver at the Meet a Black Guy booth near the Saturday Corvallis Farmers’ Market. -Corvallis Gazette Times

Coming soon: Meet a Missourian

Impression #2: Berry Picking. Rare is the backyard in this town that doesn't have a blueberry bush, a cherry tree, apple trees, rasberries, or strawberries. I heard a story last Thursday from a guy who had seen a cherry tree overhanging the fence of a friends backyard. So, the tree didn't belong to the friend, but the friend urged this guy to go ahead into the neighbors back yard and pick as many cherries as he wanted... "they won't mind". So this guy takes a bucket over to the tree one evening and starts picking cherries. The residents also come out and pick some cherries this evening and they run into each other in the backyard. Rather than be angry or bemused at the finding a person in their backyard, they realize that they know each other, happily pick cherries, pit some, munch, and chat well into the evening. This also illustrates another small town fact that the "seven degrees of Kevin Bacon" is more like the "three degrees of Kevin Bacon" around here.

Blueberry picking at Anderson Farms, 0.5 miles from Corvallis.
Total haul: 5 lbs (for $6.25) in my bucket. 1/2 lb in my belly.

Impression #3:  Workaholics.  These are a rare breed.  The halls of the office are vacant by 5:30 pm.  Everyone is instead, very efficient at work in order to get out the door to berry picking, family, the rope swing on the Alsea river, or to hit the trails.  You will see people making a conference call from a camp site after mountain biking for five hours.  Stopping in at a wifi hot spot to send off a work e-mail.  Or my personal favorite, pull up on a road ride for a few minutes to send off an important text message.  Because I frequently use my runs and rides to think through science questions as work or organize my thoughts on a particular experiment, I feel a bit of kinship for this type of work ethic.  I call it the Get Out approach to working.  Enjoy your work, but enjoy your life more.

So Corvallisians, I get it.  The never-ending rain (to bring on the fruity bounty), the eight hours of daylight in the winter (more than compensated for by the 16-hours of daylight in the summer), and the 30+ coffee shops in a town of 50,000 (to fuel the awesomeness to be had in 16 hours of daylight).  Props for sticking out that winter.

Homage to Vaca

Thanks to everyone I got to have coffee with, breakfast with, lunch with, dinner with, chat with, drink with, party down with, ride along with, bike with, run with, swim with, get nails done with, get dessert with, happy hour with, and shower with (kidding).  My vaca was epic and it is going to take a long time to recover.  So, Colorado, thank you:

Two "Hotlips" and a "Hawkeye"

 at the CB annual costume party and funky dance fest (a.k.a. Featuring 70's TV show characters and Jane Fonda).

2008 CB 4th of July parade

"What if I don't want to get wet?" - Too bad

"Watch out for the fire house" - Sorry Adam

"Where can I get a water bucket?" - Steal that house's garbage can.

An "easy" 1:30 with the Fleet Feet runners at Switzerland Trail.

Amber and Eric

The two best friends a single gal like me could ever have.

  Thanks you two for a such great memories!

It still tastes good.

Ready to swim at Flatirons... am I really smiling without coffee,

 before jumping into a swimming pool at 6:00 am?

Slurpee Heaven

Did you know that Sonic has a happy hour?  1/2 price slushies and cream slushies from 2-4.  Of course, I never knew this because I can't remember a time when I was not working or training or cleaning my house during this time.

But when you are on vacation, especially in the town where you used to live, you discover an astonishing subculture coexisting, facets of society that I never encountered before.  Sitting on Pearl St. in the mid-afternoon, I observed a strange mix of second-hit-of-caffeine-suits (or what passes for a suit in Boulder) on coffee break, parents taking kids to the small play-parks that dot the walking street, those lucky people who work from home, and tourists (in which group I guess I fall).  This last group are particularly easy to pick out if you are a professional people watcher like me.

And people-watching, incidentally, is one of Sarah and my favorite pass-times. So, last Wednesday we spent an afternoon browsing the offerings at Urban Outfitters, having barguments (arguments best had after 2 beers, on sunny afternoons on a park bench, or after three cream slushies at the Sonic), and observing and commenting on the downtown fauna.  We also did a fair amount of what the French call faire du lèche-vitrine, or literally translated as window-licking.  Finally ending up in the Borders, our second bookstore of the afternoon.  And if you know me, you know I can't pass up a good bookstore... 

I am now the proud owner of "Portrait of an Unkown Woman" by Vanora Bennett and "A Year of Food LIfe" by Barbara Kingslover.  When I will have time to read these, who knows.  But I finally finished "The Birth of Venus"by Sarah Dunant and it was wonderful.  A light-hearted read that seamlessly weaves references to Renaissance artists, political figures, and historical events.  So that I almost felt smarter for reading a historical romance.  

Orange, Strawberry, and Grape cream slushies.  For the record, grape tastes like you would think it would (not like a grape at all) and orange is the best.

Thanks Sarah for an awesome afternoon!  It was just like old times and a veritable shot in the arm for me!

Rave Run: Hall Ranch

Thursday night I had a date. A friend date with Amber and Eric. Men take note.... this was pretty close to a perfect date (aside from the obvious lack of smackers).

We had decided earlier in the week that Thursday would be our night. A 1:30 trail run was on the Ironman training schedule and a quick consultation of my training plan (primary goal: enjoy vacation to the max) revealed that our objectives coincided beautifully. And so at 5:00pm MST, A&E picked me up at the World Headquarters of Zeal Optics (where I had just secured an awesome pair of Zeal Zektor sunglasses in wood/green, the latest addition to my collection of sweet eyewear), and we headed North to Lyons, CO and the Hall Ranch Trail head.

Rave run background: Hall ranch is a popular destination trail for Boulderites and the pride of the Lyonsians. It is far enough out of the way (a few miles West up St. Vrain Canyon) to make it relatively uncrowded most of the time. E and I took bets on how many bikers/horseman/other bipedal transporters we would see on this particular evening. He picked eight bikers, I picked two bikers and two horseman. I think he had inside information.

There are a couple of ways to run Hall Ranch. We chose to run up the Nighthawk Trail, a no-bikes-allowed-unless-you-swear-that-you-walked-it-the-whole-way trail that winds somewhat gently uphill for four miles, traversing high desert prairie and the occasional scrub pine stand. It has amazing views of the red mesa cliffs carved by the St. Vrain creek and I had to stop on more than one occasion to "drink in the view" (code for drink in some oxygen while "gasping" at the view).

Up top of the mesa, we wound around Nelson Loop, choosing the westerly route for its views of the old Homestead (I am pretty sure each side of the loop is equally beautiful and equally downhill). We saw our first bikers on the loop... six to be exact. I had already lost my bet with Eric, but I was beginning to wonder what was going on, especially with what I remembered of the trail ahead.

We proceed along the Bitterbrush Trail, the mountain biker access trail to the Nelson Loop. More mountain bikers passed us on their way up. With just a few miles to go, the trail which has been rolling gradually downhill to this point, takes a sharp dip down and looks more like a bouldering adventure than a running or biking trail. And then I see it, an "emergency access and authorized vehicle only" fire road that MTBers can take to completely skip out on the expert section of the trail that would keep riders like me off of Hall Ranch. Ahh-hah! You still have to ride up a steep hill, but you don't have to have full pads and major kajones to ride up or down. There were a couple of brave MTBers trying to ride up the hard stuff as I bombed down the trail on foot. And then as I came around a bend, I almost ran into a couple of horses and riders in full gallup mode. There was never any danger, but jeez-my heart-rate went up a few beats. So, at least I won that part of the bet with E.

Back to the date: We all finished somewhere around 1:30 and piled into the car. Nearer to town, we soaked our legs (and, yes, washed off the sweat and dirt all over) in the St. Vrain Creek. We then descended upon the Oskar Blues Pub/Microbrew for some fine dining and even finer microbrews. Though, I've always been a fan of their beer, I've never been to the pub (that I recall) and I drank in Leroy's Brown, an ale that is only offered in the pub, and munched on Nachos Blue and a perfectly spicy chipotle burger with sweet potato fries and black bean salad. Yum-yum!