May 2:
When the child of morning, rosey fingered Dawn, spread her rays across the sky, (I've been reading the Odyssey. Can you tell?), we couldn't tell because May Day was a showery one, but the soccer games were spared. Ellen's game was up first. She did a really good job keeping spread on the field so that she didn't bunch up with her teammates. That provides an easy way to get the ball away from the other team. She learned how to keep her position and fight to keep the ball against a team that was much more experienced. The whole team did a great job, and we coaches decided to stop yelling so much instruction from the sidelines too so they could play. Between games, the girls and I went downtown to the Lucky Lab Brew Pub to pick up my rider packet and register Ellen for the Reach the Beach ride in mid May. I gave Ellen one last chance to back out of the 100 mile ride, but she's excited about it. I'm not sure she still has the full understanding of how long that will take, but she's ridden 76 miles before with us so I'm not worried. She's in good shape with gymnastics and soccer. I'm more worried about me and my back at this point, but I know I can make it as well. It's probably the easiest 100 miles you can do out here. We went straight from there to Phoebe's game. We set up a little differently than last time I helped out where we put 2 in front and 1 back to give them a preview of positioning that they'll see next year. They did well with it. Phoebe scored a few goals, so she was happy. By the time we were done, it was dinner time. Jada had picked up some pork chops (no applesauce) at New Seasons that morning, so we tried something new. The girls liked it.
Sunday morning, we had big breakfast and took a trip to CostCo. The nice thing was that the girls finished their piano before we left. I also went to Fred Meyer to pick up a push mower because I'm sick of failing to get mine to start, and they were having a sale. We visited Gramma for a longer stretch in the afternoon prior to swimming class, and we finally made it on time for the first time since the spring schedule began. Ellen got to jump off the diving board. Jada said she's done it before, but I'd never gotten to see it. She walked up and jumped right off. While Jada worked on making "chicken on the bone" (as the girls have dubbed a whole roasted chicken,) I put my new push mower together and took it for a spin. It worked ok, but it's definitely for use on lawns that get groomed more frequently, so I'll just have to bring it out every week to keep things under control, and maybe do a bit of weeding.
May 10
I just haven't had time to update this journal in over a week. That's horrible. Hopefully I can remember what happened. I remember it being cool and rainy and then warm and sunny. Soccer practice for Ellen was mostly dry. I think Phoebe had some rain at hers though (actually only half the kids showed up since their parents thought it would rain, but it was nice!). My back started feeling better around Wednesday, and I was able to go to the gym on Thursday. I rode my bike to work Thursday and Friday when the weather had started to dry out, but was still cool in the air. Saturday morning, we would have liked to have had time to go to the opening day for the Farmers Market, but we had to get our grocery shopping done before Ellen's soccer game. She played another club team that was actually the same team we played last week but in pink jerseys this time. They also didn't have the same goalie as last week. Our team did quite well this week, and Ellen scored 2 goals. More importantly, our girls spread the field well and passed the ball well. While Jada visited her mom with Phoebe, Ellen did her piano and I prepped for a bike ride. It was 70 and sunny that afternoon, but we were almost derailed by the rear brake on the quad which had unwound from the pulley. It's hard to explain since I had to figure it out too, but I got it fixed. We got started about 30 minutes later than we wanted to, but it didn't matter. The ride was fun. We stopped at a park we like to do a mid-ride stop at to let the girls play for a bit before shoving off again. We got some whoops as we sped through intersections, and someone actually pulled over to the side of the road to take a picture of us going by. I'm wondering if they have us confused with the Metal Cowboy or the Harris family. We got home too late to cook, so we went out for dinner.
May 12
Sunday morning, we let mom sleep in before going to the Zoo for the Mother's Day brunch. We briefly walked around a small part of the zoo before heading in to eat. The spread was good as always. I don't know where Ellen puts all the food, but she ate many plates full of food. We were only home for a little while in the afternoon. I used the time in the garage prepping the Cannondale tandem for a test ride with Ellen. We did about 6 miles, and I'm even more confident now that she'll be fine on the Reach the Beach ride next weekend. I did notice the chains were stretched a bit, so I made plans to pick up some new ones during their swimming class. After that ride, we went to visit Gramma for the Mother's Day tea at her facility. None of us was hungry yet from our massive brunch, but Gramma got to partake of all the yummy food. Then we had to head over to the swim center for lessons. There weren't a lot of kids there. Phoebe had a personal lesson since no one else in her level was there. It looked like Ellen's class was all there though. I spent the evening working on the Tandem. I replaced the drive chain easily enough, then I made my critical error. I tried replacing the timing chain without first understanding how to do all of it. It takes about 1 and a half chains to create. So I went online to get some advice. I worked on it some more Monday night unsuccessfully after soccer practice. We got rained on during practice this time so we ended early. Tuesday night I stopped by the Bike Gallery on the way home from work to get some advice and tools. I was able to swap and reverse my timing chain rings since the teeth were a bit worn on the one side. I got the chain on, but I got stuck at the tensioning of the chain when I couldn't get the eccentric bottom bracket to loosen enough to tighten the chain. On tandems, the front bottom bracket can be rotated in the shell backwards or forwards on a cam to do the tensioning of the timing chain. The Cannondale has a wedge design, and I couldn't get the wedge out to rotate it. I'm going to have to give up on that and see if Bike Gallery will let me bring it in to help with that part since that's all I have left to do. Let that be a lesson for you (or at least to me!)
May 16
On Wednesday, I rode with Ellen to school on our bikes for their Ride + Bike month. At some point during my ride to work, my right pedal broke. I rode back to the school after work to pick them up since Jada was there working on things for the open house the following night. We rode to soccer practice at the school up the street, and then Ellen and I rode home with one other girl from her team who lives on the way.
When I last left off, I was frantically trying to get the tandem ready for Reach the Beach. I was able to get it into the Bike Gallery on Thursday afternoon after work. I dropped it off, they said they'd be able to look at it in a bit, but just in case, they may need it over night. I had to get over to the school for open house night, so I left it, and went home to pick up Jada and the girls since I still had time to make it over there and back to the school. By the time I had gotten home, the Bike Gallery had already called to let me know it didn't take as long as they feared since it was still pretty well greased. I just hadn't whacked it hard enough to loosen it. So, we drove separately to the school. I took the girls around and checked out their rooms and all the work they had been doing while Jada was in her room. I got to see the tiles that Jada has been helping with where every student in the school made a self portrait in clay this year, and different volunteers have been helping to get them painted and fired and glazed over the course of the last few months. They have them all hung in the entry way outside the office now. I got to see both of the girls and Jada on the wall. I'll have to go back and get a picture some time, though I'm not sure how well it'd turn out. They have also been doing lots of work on one of the forgotten court yards of the school with volunteer help. Each of the grades have made something to put out there. Jada helped Ellen's class create a mobile out of one of my old bicycle rims. Each student created something out of clay. Ellen's contribution was a cherry tree with delicate limbs. It all looked terrific. Phoebe's class helped decorate a planter box for flowers. She did 2 different paintings, and planted one of the plants. Then we went to Ellen's room to look around. It's astounding the amount of writing that girl does. She has notebooks full of partially completed stories mostly about witches or fairies or mystery. Following that, we went out for pizza on the playground and sat with one of our friends who have kids in both Phoebe and Ellen's class. At 6:30, I took the girls back in to leave with Jada so I could run back to the bike shop before it closed to pick up the tandem all repaired and ready for action.
Saturday morning, I got Ellen up at 5:45am for breakfast. We were dressed and ready to ride to the start line at 6:30am. The start line was at Conestoga Middle school only a few miles from our house. We were meeting up with some parents from the grade school that we had arranged to ride with. One was doing it for the first time, and one was recovering from an illness and didn't get very much training in...just like me. We shoved off at 6:50am. The tandem rides surprisingly well up hills. It's a lot lighter than the quad, and it's built more for speed too. We tackled the hills really well, and we flew down the hills with our extra weight. Everyone was very surprised that Ellen was doing the full distance. We saw lots of interesting bikes on the trip too such as people doing 100 miles on unicycles and tall bikes (those are the bikes that are like 2 bikes welded on top of one another one of which was a tandem. I didn't get any pictures, but one of the people I was riding with may have gotten one). The weather couldn't have been much better than it was. No rain, slightly overcast, but enough sun to warm things up. The head wind was pretty much the standard for heading to the coast. We made a stop that was a little too long in Dayton, but I had to get Ellen some food to keep her topped off. We hit the next stop for a deli sandwich for lunch and ate out on the parking lot of the school in Amity at the half way point. Ellen was still smiling. The next leg, we took turns fighting the wind. Drafting was a lot different with Ellen than Jada. Ellen does a lot more soft pedaling than Jada (that's where you're spinning, but not really forcing the pedals to engage) so it was easier to stop and start pedaling in the draft. Though sometimes when Ellen was standing, she wouldn't warn me and I accidentally started too soon. But we got past it. We skipped the Sheridan stop, made it through the next rough road section to Willamina. Highway 22/18 was nice and smooth, but the wind was really picking up, so it was nice to turn off the road into the forest to start climbing to the Pow-wow grounds near Grand Ronde. Ellen and I had some chili before our potty stop. Ellen found a rock pile to play on. As the 2 other people I was riding with were standing and stretching, I said, "Well, I don't know if she has any energy left to go on." After that stop, we started the climbing through the coast range. This was roughly when my legs blew up after too many changes of speed due to car and bike traffic along with the bad road that hemmed me in. I'm a diesel. I have one speed that I can go, and if I have to speed up and slow down too much, it throws me off. I had to let my companions ride off so I could settle into a pace I could maintain. Ellen wanted me to ride faster to catch back up to them, but I explained I was doing what I had to do to keep moving forward. We weren't crawling. I was still keeping around 10mph, and I was still passing people. It was still humbling for me since I typically pass just about every body. Ellen still didn't complain too much. There was enough scenery and people to make the time pass. Then just as suddenly as it started, I got my second wind, and we were drilling it through a more flat section. We actually ended up catching our companions just before the last rest stop. It was starting to get a little chilly so we put our jackets and pants back on for the finishing stretch. Ellen and I hit the last steep pitch hard, and took it's best shot, but we emerged over the top victorious without looking back. We flew down the hill towards the coast even with the head wind. We even passed Ellen's gymnastics teacher on the way down. Ellen had been hoping to see her. I slacked off a little bit on the drive into town again, and had Ellen pass me some FRS chews which were surprisingly helpful for an energy boost. They weren't rough on my stomach either. We caught everyone else just before the finish, and crossed the line together. We all got our medals and took some pictures. Then we had to go eat some food.
As we were having fun, Jada was stuck in traffic for 4 hours trying to get to the beach. She never did make it since we rode back out to meet her at the road so our total ended up being 107 miles on the day. Phoebe spent the day at a friend's house and got to go to her soccer game. They ran a lemonade stand in the neighborhood and actually made some money. We picked her up around 7pm. She was eating a hot dog, or more precisely, she ate one bite and said she was full because she ate a Dilly Bar before dinner. I was hungry so I finished her hot dog, and Ellen had a second dinner too. Then we all went home and fell asleep.
Sunday morning, the girls were really cranky, but they did work on their piano while we got breakfast made. We visited Gramma's in the morning, and then had to get back home for lunch since both of the girls had make-up soccer games from the first games of the season that were rained out. So the plan was to go to Phoebe's game, have someone take Ellen over to her soccer game. I would finish up Phoebe's soccer game, and then I'd drive over to coach Ellen's game while Jada took Phoebe to swimming class. What actually happened was Ellen accidentally knocked a butter knife off the counter while she was making her lunch which landed point down on her foot opening up a nasty little gash. We couldn't tell how deep it was, but it looked like it might require stitches. So we changed up. Jada took Ellen to the ER, and I took Phoebe to her soccer game and to swimming. Ellen ended up with a single butterfly stitch, and luckily no other damage. They got home just before we did. In the evening, I went to our massage therapist where I found my left leg was quite locked up. I left there in a little more pain than I went in with, but I was better later.
May 18
Monday night Ellen had soccer practice, but she didn't play because her soccer shoes hurt her foot after she had been able to participate in gymnastics. During school, Ellen wore her medal from Reach the Beach to school. Her gymnastics teacher gave her a silver dollar to commemorate her first 100 mile ride. So she sat on the sidelines and watched while it showered off and on. Tuesday was another showery day. Phoebe had her last soccer practice in the evening. My allergies came on really strong this afternoon, but I think they've been affecting me all week so far. I've just felt drained.
May 19
Wednesday was the last day for passport at school, so I went in to help with that. In the afternoon, I picked the girls up from Jada at her BEA office, and we had time to go to Sweet Tomatoes for dinner since soccer practice had been canceled due to the storm that blew through in the early afternoon. Of course by this time, the rain was replaced by sun, but the blustery winds were still around. The forecasts are calling for snow in the mountains this week. Crazy. I got the girls home, and Phoebe finished her piano. I called back on a message I had regarding my high school's 20th reunion. Unfortunately, I won't be able to make it again since they're scheduling it for June, and there's just no time to pull things together. Oh well. (Don't let him fool you-Dave is really disappointed about missing out on seeing everyone;)
May 22
Storms continued to roll through this week. Friday the girls took the school bus home with some friends. Jada met them at the bus stop with their mom. I met up with them over there for dinner. We kept the girls there way too late, but we all had fun. The girls went from playing house to creating science experiments. The two older girls were trying to figure out how to make glue without using glue. They used flour and water, and they claimed that it worked better than real glue. They also made paint by shaving chalk into some water. The younger girls were trying to different seeds in water to see what would happen. The adults had fun too.
Saturday morning, we were expecting (and sort of hoping) the last soccer games of the year to be cancelled, but it wasn't raining very hard in the morning. Just light showers when it was raining. We went to the market in the morning followed by some regular stops and our other grocery stores. We stopped by home to make lunches since Phoebe's game was immediately after Ellen's, and we had to eat lunch in the car (Ellen's ended around 12:30, and Phoebe's started at 1pm. The fields were no where near each other). We managed to only be sprinkled on during the game. The girls did a great job in their last game. Ellen scored a goal too. Then as soon as the game ended, we were off to Phoebe's game. We still managed to be one of the first ones there. The fields over at the Micro fields were a lot more spongy and muddy than the fields Ellen played on. The kids there were not all that focused. I had to direct the kids on my field to stop comparing loose teeth and get ready for a goal kick. Phoebe was able to score at least 1 goal. Her team had a quick ceremony after the game to present the certificates that Jada made. Then we had a little bit of time to get ready for Ellen's party. Jada made up the certificates for that team as well while I sat around watching Giro d'Italia race coverage and Tour of California coverage. The party started at 6pm. We finally started eating around 7pm, and awards at almost 8pm. So the kids got home late again that night. We presented each of the girls a certificate and a soccer ball shaped notepad, unfortunately, three of the kids couldn't make it. The kids presented us with a silly string attack, a card, and red shirts to match the team (since we're almost always wearing blue). It was a fun evening. We really have great families on our team.
May 23
Sunday morning, we went out to eat at our favorite cafe. I didn't let the girls know they could get up until 7am since I hadn't heard them yet. I watched the Giro d'Italia coverage in the morning. We visited Gramma before lunch. After lunch, it was time for the girls' piano recital. I had technical difficulties with the camera during Phoebe's pieces. It wouldn't focus so I just let it record the sound. I got it working for Ellen's though. We stayed through a few more kids before ducking out to take the girls to their final swimming class. They did their safety checks. Both girls did well. Phoebe moved up a level, and I think Ellen's in the same level. It's hard to tell with the different levels.
May 31: Thanks to all whom serve our country
It's been a whole week since last I've had time to write up a report. It was a rainy and slightly warmer week than last. Not a lot going on. I was able to ride to work 4 days this week. That's the first time in a while, and my legs could tell. I got really wet most days. On Thursday, I left work dry, but around the midway point for me which is at the Nike Campus in Beaverton, the sky opened up and it poured down huge rain drops. The road was like a river, it was coming down so fast and so hard. The hardest was done as I powered my way through it at the lead of a couple other bike commuters who had come up behind me. Eventually, as I turned up the street heading to our neighborhood, it looked like it hadn't rained at all. I rode by one of my neighbors who was out trimming her lawn, and I asked if it had rained there at all. She said no. So here I was pedaling up a completely dry street soaked to the bone and dripping from every appendage. But that's just part of commuting by bike in Oregon.
On Friday, Jada had a teacher's work day, so the girls went to Nature Camp. This was a great way to spend their time just before our camping trip. I'm pretty sure Ellen and Phoebe did creepy crawlers so they looked at bugs and hiked through the park.
On Saturday, we went for a quick shopping trip in the morning to prepare for our camping trip and visited Gramma. After lunch, we got packed up and drove to Silver Falls State Park near (-ish) to Salem, OR to go camping for the night. It was quite chilly up there in the foot hills of the Cascades at ~1700 feet according to the GPS. We got the tent set up. I got Jada one of the same cots that I had picked up for me during Cycle Oregon last year, so we had those this time. Our camp plot had seen better days. It looked like someone had just gone through and backed a large camper into the site, and sunk it in. There was standing water in the tire tracks, but at least it was cold so we didn't have to worry too much about mosquitoes. I was able to find a decent site for the tent too. The picnic table was close to one of the little puddles of water, but we managed not to step in it. The girls, of course, were just fine. They were having fun just getting dirty. We made a terrific dinner of chicken skewers with Uncle Ben's rice with frozen green beans. Unfortunately, Jada wasn't feeling very well, so she went to bed at the same time as the girls. The girls didn't really fall asleep too fast since sunset wasn't until almost 9pm, and it was quite loud out. I also failed in my quest for fire, and by transitive property as a man. A big problem is that I had no kindling. The second problem is that the wood I did have was soaked this winter when our pipe in the garage burst. I was hoping it had dried out by now, but it more sort of hadn't. So I'll have to buy some when we go camping next time from the park host. On the plus side, it doesn't impact our dinner because we have camp stoves, just our ability to roast marshmallows and things. With Jada going to bed early, though, it worked out that I couldn't get the fire started. Lots of kids were still out playing Frisbee and riding bikes around the loop. I may need to look into getting a tailgate bike rack for camping trips where I have the box on top of the car. I didn't bring a book this time or ear buds. So that was kind of disappointing. It was chilly out, and I just was waiting for it to get dark. I went off to find a disposal for my spent propane canister, and when I got back, I found Jada up and around. She was expecting that I would have finally gotten the fire going, but I had just let it die when it didn't start up the first time. I was too busy trying to get the dishes cleaned up before bed. I just figured it was going to be nice not to have to keep getting smoke in my eyes. I'll have to google making a fire before my next camping trip. We ended up going to bed a little before 9pm. It was still light and noisy out. I started falling asleep anyway. Ellen was awake by 5am, and after a trip to the bathroom by Ellen and Phoebe, Phoebe fell back to sleep but Ellen spent the next hour making every noise imaginable to keep me awake. I think I should just put a couple books in the tent for when she wakes up because if she has a book, she'll be quiet. Unfortunately, if she knows it's there, she'll get up even earlier.
We had a terrific breakfast of eggs, peppers, and chicken sausage hash with pancakes. When we camp, we do things right. I can't make a fire, but I can cook out the right way. It took us about an hour to get everything packed into the car, but we were still on the Canyon Rim Trail by 9:30am. After consulting the map, we decided to do a slightly different route this time than last which involved fewer car transfers. This time we were going to hit 8 of the 10 waterfalls on a single loop, and then picking up the last 2 from the north parking lot. In all, we hiked 7 miles. The Canyon trail is 8.7 when you do it contiguously, and I think the next time we go, we'll be able to do it. The girls complained, but rarely about being tired. It was usually more about wanting to eat lunch or who was in the lead. The falls were beautiful. It was still chilly, but it wasn't raining. I tried to video some things, but the lens got wet walking behind the first falls. At the last 2 falls, we couldn't find a parking space in the tiny lot, so we parked up a dirt road nearby. I was the one that got hurt this year. I was running my hand along the fence keeping us from falling over the side of the cliff, and I cut my finger on the chain link. However, we pushed on. We got back home in the evening, stopping for dinner, and book shopping. We got the girls to bed at a reasonable hour, and I had a massage appointment.
The girls actually slept in Monday morning for Memorial Day to almost 7am. It was a busy day for us. Jada started off by doing 3 errands-including acquiring a Cinnabon for me. After morning snack we headed out to REI to pick up things that we found lacking during our camping trip. Then we visited our friend Laurie and her little boy. Ellen really enjoys helping take care of the baby, and has offered to help feed and bath him on a future visit. She has so much fun playing with him too. She just giggles and laughs at everything he does. We often refer to her as his future baby sitter. Next we returned home for lunch and to try to get some things done. I had laundry to do. Jada spent the time making dinner for a friend of ours who recently had surgery. We took the dinner over to our friend and the girls played with her boys. I dropped Jada off to see her mom while I took the girls home so Phoebe could finish piano and I could get to the yard work that I had hoped to do when this long weekend started. I got the weeds whacked in the back yard, and the trees trimmed back over the sidewalk before I had to go pick up Jada again. Then we spent the before dinner time attacking the yard some more. I mowed and trimmed the hedges while Jada went after the firs between ours and our neighbors yard. We actually got quite a bit done. The yard looked pretty good too. Then we had dinner, I worked some more on the laundry, and then tried to get this done in time to finish before the end of the month. Mission accomplished! (but as in a real accomplishment, not in that George W kind of way)
Journal Entry: May 31, 2010