wakefield race recap...

first race of the wednesdays at wakefield series last night... great weather, decent traffic on the way out. had to fix a loose star nut with a big rock so i could tighten my headset before heading out to preride. the course was pretty much the same as usual. lined up near the back of the experts and the group was a little shaky at the start... a bobble on the first creek crossing and some squirrely riding (got away from that guy fairly quickly on the first lap). rode 4 laps, painful from the start, but progressively harder. passed a couple of people, got passed by a couple of people. finished somewhere near the back of the pack... fun as usual.

too much?

perhaps it's time to start leaving the house with blinders on in the morning... i spent 15 or 20 minutes on this blossom this morning, but didn't get anything that i liked as much as the last couple of trips. it's a similar bloom one to one i shot on sunday afernoon, but with fatter petals with a more wrinkled edge and a pinkish color.

edit: maybe i should stop this whole low depth of field macro thing and just work on some more traditional macrophotography...

black & white flowers...

trying hard to get some more tonality from digital black & whites. this was from the d200's in-camera black and white setting. the flowers in the garden are beckoning again, as are the leaves heather wants me to tidy up while i'm waiting for the plumber.

watershed...

after getting shut out of riding saturday (the electrician was late and then storms blew through once he was done) my brother and i went up to the watershed sunday morning. i'm surprised there weren't more folks out on the trails, as it was a beautiful day up there... the mountain laurels were in full bloom, the sky was clear, and the air was cool. we did a big loop out blue to sandflats then salamander to the overlook. we started back on blue but were running a little late so we ducked out onto the roads to hurry back to the cars. other than a couple of mechanicals (a flat & a broken chain) it was a great day to be out on the trails.

vote...

...for arleigh in the santa cruz hellride.

To all my friends, family and fellow bloggers:

Hellride 5... This is at least a 70 mile mountain bike ride in Downieville, California this august. 12,000 feet of climbing, crazy terrain and life will be rough. The top 4 females get to goto the event, and currently I'm in the top 12.. I need your help. Please vote, blog, post, forward along to everyone you know.

http://www.santacruzbicycles.com/hellridefive/voteforpedro.php?hellrider=1&userid=0233

Thank you!
Arleigh

space...

...the final frontier

i've just crossed the line i said i'd never cross and registered for my first road race. matty's done the cat 5 race at the giro di coppi for the last couple of years and came close last year. had it not been for an ill timed lead-out he might have had the W so this year he's calling in all the favors he's owed and it looks like we'll have respectable squad in the 5's. matty as team captain, backed up by klasmeier, biggles, jj, and myself... a motley crew indeed.

dammit, i've just realized i did one of the tradezone training races last spring, so the line was crossed over a year ago... what a shame, such a good literary device wasted.

last chance for artomatic...

this photograph isn't in artomatic, since it was shot since the show opened, but i wanted to put it here anyway

if you haven't made it down to artomatic yet, you've only got until this sunday to do so. the show closes june 15th. i've got a volunteer shift this friday so i'll be somewhere inside capital plaza I from 5 to 10. i normally try to get one of the bar spots, so check in "the bar" on 11 or one of the performance spaces/bars on the first floor.

If you're interested, my space is on the 6th floor

these and others are though; and they're all available - mounted and framed - for purchase

Location:
Capital Plaza I
1200 First St NE, Washington, DC 20002
corner of First & M streets NE

Best way to get there:
Take the Red Line to the NY Ave stop then walk a block -- you'll see where it is from the station.

Hours:
Wed, Thu: 5pm-10pm
Fri, Sat: noon-2am
Sun: noon-10pm

the one where the wheels come off...

last year we had a great run at these 24 hour events. yeah, maybe the small fields at some of the races inflated our results, but even at big bear where the field was big we were still 5th overall and 4th expert. last year we rode strong every lap, rode smart, rode consistently, had great luck, and maybe most of all had season long goal to keep us going... this year that just wasn't to be: dead batteries, a broken frame, legs just not feeling up to snuff, what else can we say?

in some ways a very disappointing weekend, but we still got out into the fresh air for the weekend, rode our bikes, and had some fun.

congrats to our fellow city bikes teams for scoring 1st in just for fun (tom, lynne, jonathan, and JJ) and 2nd in vet (marc, joel, chris, and kent). the c3 boys were rocking all weekend in expert giving the locals a run for their money.

big bear...

getting ready to roll to big bear... waiting for the plumber to show up and then i hit the road to pick up matty and then out to west virginia. the weather will be a big player this weekend. with the combination of heat & storms it could be bigger competition than any of the other teams. you can follow the realtime results here. i'm racing on dcmtb/city bikes in men's expert, but there will be another couple of city bikes teams out there this weekend.

tick, tick, tick...

time keeps on ticking by... big bear is this weekend, so prep work for that is underway. got up to fairland on friday for a quick spin and i've got to say that austin's made a nice little trail system up there -- nothing too technical, but it flows well and you and push hard through most of it -- and having it 10 minutes from home is making it a more frequent destination.

tried to get a gambrill/shed ride in on saturday with mike, darren, and mark, but we only got the gambrill half done. near the far point of the yellow loop we started hearing ominous rumbles and figured that the best place to be in a storm wasn't on top of a ridge so we decided to bail. the rain started as we hit the road, but luckily we made it back to the cars before the heavens really opened. the rain was so hard that i could barely see the road until we got to Gaithersburg.

i got a couple of hours on the road in on sunday, but the rest of the weekend was spent getting a lot of little odds and ends tied up around the house. you know, all of those little finishing details that just get put off right at the end of the project... one last knob on the wardrobe upstairs, the light in the beer room, hanging pictures, silly little stuff like that. things that just needed to be collected up and done.

we're just about at 3 months to heather's due date and we've started on the nursery. we happened across some great furniture that was on sale last week while we were out at one of the everything baby type stores so we figure we've got to get the room painted before it arrives. luckily we've got lots of help with projects like that so it hasn't been too bad.

tonight i've got my sister and (future) brother-in-law coming over to brew some beer to give away as a favor for their wedding. last summer's brewing (and bottling) marathon for our wedding favor beer was what made me finally decide to start kegging my homebrew, but i can't escape the bottling. hopefully he'll be able to rope some friends into helping him with the bottling so i can just "supervise".