Cezanne's Birthday!

Yesterday was Cezanne's Birthday.

It started out with banana and blueberry pancakes (same as today).

The first part of the day was a little rough for me.  I was going to my first Cat 4/5 ride and skills clinic (I call it) at Hains Point in D.C.  First off, every road I tried to turn down was blockaded and when there was an open road, it was quickly closed off by a cop turning in front of traffic and turning everyone around.  

So, it took me over 45 minutes to go 6 miles and there really was no traffic, just detours.  I showed up late and the ride was just getting underway.  Hains Point is on the Potomac, just across the way from Reagan Airport.  It was 28 degrees F with winds gusting to 35 mph.  Not fun.  I've been fine on rides in the mid 30s, but this was a whole new experience.

It wasn't too bad when we had a tailwind and were actually riding.  We stopped a few times and the leader explained wind, drafting, echelons...  then we rode a little more then stopped to do bike handling drills, like picking up standing water bottles off the ground and putting them back down while riding...I left before the ride/clinic was done.  I left partly because I was shivering and partly because although I respect people wanting to learn and get better at tactics, etc, I just want to ride at this point and that's not what we were doing.

The day got better from there!  Cezanne's brother came down from Hagerstown with his Great Dane and we all went to the dog park.  Then we enjoyed Chipotle for lunch, relaxed, then Cezanne and I went out to dinner for her birthday!

We went to 1789 Restaurant in Georgetown and it was awesome.  They have a dress code, so I had to wear a suit.  I can clean up when I need to.  It was a great night!

Long time no post...where to begin

One of the toughest things about writing a blog entry after not writing one for a while is knowing what to post, especially when so much has changed.

I'm writing this entry mainly to satisfy my Mom (one of my 3 readers) who says she doesn't want that creepy mustache picture to be the first blog entry anymore.  It's also for you JW!

The story of the cross-country trip will have to wait for another time, but Cezanne and I are mostly settled into our new apartment in Northwest DC (near the National Cathedral).  The finishing touch will be our new sofa to be delivered this Saturday (the one we moved from San Diego couldn't/wouldn't/didn't fit through the door.)

I've been on 2 Sunday rides with the National Capital Velo Club (NCVC) which have been fun.  It's a quick 2.5 mile ride down Wisconsin Ave. to Georgetown where they start the ride.  The feel is a little different out on the East Coast.  "LT Andy Baldwin" from "The Bachelor" fame was riding with the group the first time I went.

I was riding the metro to work, but thanks to experiments by Cezanne my 1 hour plus commute by metro will now be turning into an 18-22 minute drive.  I love it.  That's not bad for commuting in D.C.  I hope it continues!

So we've been to a couple of Navy Football games already and we'll be going to Army-Navy.  The below pic is from the Navy-Temple football game.  I thought it was a cool sunset.

The rest of the pics on this post are of the apartment we are renting.  We decided to go with NW DC because we liked the neighborhood and the apartment the most.  I'll post pics once is fully moved in to.

Bono is chilling below.

Cezanne hard at work before the movers arrived...

The bay window...

So that's it for now, a mini update and the "mustache" is no longer the first post!

A cool beard becomes a creepy mustache...

So, I'm sitting here with something on my face that Cezanne hates. She can barely look at me without shaking her head.

One of the great things about going on leave or not having to be at work for a while is the freedom to not shave and then once the beard starts itching too much, to do something goofy with the hair.

Usually I shave the beard into a goatee (spelling?). I'll be honest, I think it looks halfway decent. I've never shaved it into a mustache though and I think there was really good reason for that. The pictures will tell that story.

Above is about 2 weeks worth of growth. It started getting itchy, so I wanted to shave it today. I shaved most of it...


And above speaks for itself. Definitely creepy. Cezanne told me not to go to any playgrounds while I have this facial hair. I agree, but I'll go everywhere else and be proud of it, kind of. It's probably coming off tomorrow morning.

Of course, the creepy grin doesn't help the creepy mustache.

I'll be putting up a post of the cross country trip this weekend hopefully. We got a lot of good photos and have a lot of great memories.

SDBC "A" Ride

Today I rode with the SDBC "A" Ride instead of going with the "Bs."  

I was 3rd around stud loop and 1st in the sprint to the Solana Beach sign.

It was a good time.  Wound up averaging exactly 20 mph for the 46 miles, about 1-1.3 mph faster than the B ride usual averages.  I guess the A ride was a little smaller than normal today.  Someone said there is a time trial tomorrow.

I was running late as usual, but I got to UC Cyclery just as the As were rolling so I hitched on.  Cezanne helped get my water bottles ready.  It's funny, I did 46 relatively hard miles on a bowl of Kashi GoLean cereal and a big cup of coffee...probably not enough fuel.

Above is the beautiful view rolling south along the Coast Highway between Encinitas and Cardiff.  This picture was taken this past Tuesday.  It was really windy today, coming from the northwest, so it was quick coming down this area.

A guy in a UC Cyclery kit basically pulled us along around 32-35 mph for this entire stretch (probably 3 miles) until the sprint.  He pulled off and looked back to see who was going to pass him gunning for the sprint.

After the sprint some guy said I got a 2 bike length gap on him and he couldn't close it down.  So, I've got decent form going into the cross country road trip and driving 10 hours a day :) 

Above is a pic of Bono's new bad habit.  He's taken up smoking cigars!

Bono loves sticks and he happened to find a pretty thick one.  It's currently sitting outside our front door for him to pick up when we go outside.  He looks for it EVERY time we go outside.

The movers came yesterday, so our place is pretty barren, except for some clothes, the laptop I'm typing on, Bono, Cezanne, my bike and not a whole lot else.

Before lunch Cezanne and I enjoyed some time chilling on the patio (the patio furniture is staying for our tenant).  It is chilly today, but really sunny.  The above pic is of Bono out there chilling with us.  He loves sunbathing!

32nd in the bike...I'm bummed

The splits for the Mission Bay Triathlon were posted today.

The official time for my bike was 27:02 which was the 32nd fastest. I blame it on the equipment! :) The winning bike time was 23:18 with the 2nd fastest bike almost 2 minutes back at 25:04.

I wish I would have done a little better, but actually, despite the title of this blog, I'm not that bummed about it (okay, I was REALLY bummed for about 5 minutes, just ask Cezanne). Doing the relay gave me a chance to hang with Mike and Ricardo before leaving San Diego and an opportunity to do something fun.

This above pic is of Ricardo telling me about one of the other relay teams near us in the transition area. They were probably late teens and were really fired up! Ricardo said they were yelling at each other and firing each other up and once they handed the timing chip off to the runner the swimmer ran next to him through the transition area yelling at him for motivation.

Our team didn't quite do that...

Last SDBC (San Diego Bicycle Club) ride, for a while.

It's always nice to get compliments.

Over the past few months I've been getting more and more during my SDBC Saturday "B" group rides. It's been a fun few months doing that ride. I know it's not the "A" ride, but I don't care.

I've been having fun being off the front and in the mix on the race around stud loop and in the sprints before stopping at Java Depot.

I really haven't made any friends doing this ride, but I mainly keep to myself, so it's not a huge surprise. I have made a couple of acquaintances, guys that I talk to on the ride because we usually find ourselves in the same spots in the group at certain points in the ride.

I did what I think is my last SDBC ride 3 Saturdays ago. Over the past 2 months I think I've been in the best cycling form of my life. In our little "B" group sprint I was consistently coming in 2nd. I guess I was "getting noticed" a little bit because one day early in the ride one of the "B" ride matriarchs (a lady who races and is probably 5-10 years older than me) asked if I was going to win the sprint for her that day. Is that flirting? Anyway, I didn't win (but came in 2nd). And yes, I had to relay that story to Cezanne. She got a kick out of it.

So, long story short, in my last SDBC ride I lead the group up the climb before stud loop, was in the lead group around stud loop, bridged solo about 1/4 mile up to a lone breakaway on the winding El Camino Del Norte stretch, rested for a minute, then passed the lone breakaway and finished that stretch (which is a mini-race/sprint) in first. Then I was able to win the main sprint before Java Depot with enough room to look back 3 times to see if anyone was close. Finally!

Good times. Now I have to keep it going over the Washington D.C. winter and see what happens next year.



Above is a photo of what it looks like on Saturday around 10:30am outside of Java Depot in Solana Beach. Yeah, bikes occassionally fall over or someone knocks them over.


Cezanne and I have a storage unit since our place is about 450-500 sq ft. One of the big projects before we move was to go through everything in the storage unit and separate it into these groups: (1) give to Goodwill (2) throw away (3) shred and (4) keep.

We found my old P3 flight helmet which Cezanne put on. I couldn't resist taking a pic. I haven't worn that thing in over 5 years. We put the helmet in the "shred" category, but it broke the shredder (hahahaaaaahhaa! funny joke!)

Oh yeah!!!!!!! Look at that aero triathlon bike! :) That's a joke because most of the frame is square, not aero at all! But, I had to set it up to be as aerodynamic as possible, which meant (besides putting the Zipp 404 wheel set on) that I had to be as aero as possible. So I slapped some clip-on TT bars on, put my triathlon saddle on, and adjusted the seatpost up about 1/2 an inch and moved the seat forward from where my normal one usually is.

I'll have another blog post on the Mission Bay Triathlon when we get the full results, but I wanted to post this pic and say that I did a "relay" for this triathlon with Mike Francis doing the 500 meter swim, me doing the 15k bike and Ricardo Roman doing the 5k run. It was a "sprint" triathlon, the shortest they have, but I hate swimming and am not a big fan of running, so relay it was.

It was a ton of fun. We came in 4th out of the Male relays and 36th overall out of about 1500 participants. But to be fair, we did the relay, so we could go all out in our event and not worry about the other 2. We finished in 58:10. The individual results (for each leg) are supposed to be out by Wednesday.

Being the geek that I am I looked at last year's fastest bike time. It was 26:38 and by one of the male relays. The top 2 Elite male finishers did the bike in 27:45 and 27:46 to give them the 2nd and 3rd fastest bike of last year's triathlon. I did the ride this morning in 27:43, so we'll see how good that is.

I wound up averaging 22.3 mph and a 175 bpm heartrate for the ride, which I think is pretty good (especially with no warm-up). I had to ease off after the first third because there was a point about 10 minutes in when I realized that if I kept up the same intensity, I was going to eventually throw up (before the finish line). Nice. So I had to ease off a little.

More details and overall bike ranking to come on Wednesday hopefully.

Cezanne's Baptism

Yesterday was the big day, Cezanne's Baptism!

It's one of the many things we wanted to get done before we left San Diego. We found a really good priest in Father Andrew and that was a big reason for Cezanne feeling welcome in the Greek Orthodox Church. Leaving a great Church is part of the sadness of us leaving San Diego...along with the weather...the beautiful coast...the convenience of our place...the BIKE LANES!!!!

The ceremony started around 6pm. My favorite part is when Cezanne had to "spit on Satan" 3 times and denounce Satan 3 times. Usually in the Greek Orthodox Church, it's the babies who are baptized, so the Godparent has to "spit on Satan" on behalf of the baby. I've had that pleasure!



Above shows Father Andrew anointing Cezanne with the sign of the Cross and Cezanne's Godmother, Irene, looking on.

Above shows all of us, Brad (Irene's husband), me, Cezanne, Irene, and Father Andrew.

Cezanne didn't want me to post the pictures of her in her bathing suit, one piece by order of Father Andrew :) and getting the holy water poured over her. It was "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" all over again, except the kiddie pool was replaced with a rubbermaid basin.

So, it was a really beautiful and meaningful day.