Best day EVER!

Some of you may recall a previous post (Aug 06) with a similar title. This last Saturday really was the best day EVER though.

I’ve been a bit of a lame princess of late. I hurt my neck in May and was incapacitated for a couple of months there. Then work became thoroughly insane and then I was on the road for three weeks straight and then I got sick with a death cough for a couple of weeks.

So my whole “exercise routine” was disrupted. I managed a run here or there and a little bit of the gym from time to time but nothing significant really. And when I don’t exercise I feel… bad. Sort of like I’ve been beset my demons in fact. I get moody, stressed out, irrationally irritable and overly angry at nothings. And then I see what is happening and just feel bad and sad and even start to cry sometimes. Yeah, no good at all.

So I need to exercise. And I’m better now (both my neck and the cough) and Saturday we had a most glorious bike ride. We did a 40-ish mile ride from Hood River toward The Dalles and back. It was a sharp fall day sparkling with sunshine, I was on my brand new bicycle (her name is Babette), I was with my Christopher and a friend and we were on one of the most fun and beautiful rides around. The path was mostly along the Historic Columbia River Highway and follows the massive river along the stunning cliffs of the gorge. Generally there are huge winds (making it a premier wind surfing destination) and as we were driving out there had some serious gusts. But while we were riding we had hardly any wind at all. And it is a great, winding, hilly ride with very little traffic. It was a fairly challenging ride as I haven’t done more than a few short, flat rides since May and this had some notorious climbs. But I love feeling that kind of exhausted so it was good.

As if that isn’t enough to make Saturday the best day EVER we topped it off with a visit to Full Sail Brewing in Hood River where we had great beer, great food, bought beer to take home, were given free beer to take home and through it all enjoyed another splendid view of the river.

And THEN we stopped at the Apple Valley Country Store to get frozen marionberry pies for Thanksgiving, huckleberry jam, apples, pears and a marionberry milkshake!

And THEN that night we went to a Halloween party where everyone was dressed up. I LOVE Halloween.

Saturday was a very good day.

New exercise routines

We found a new way to exercise the pup. Being a Labrador new ways to exhaust the guy is a perpetual challenge. A past favorite has been to throw a ball, stick or other terribly exciting object down a big hill. He barrels after it, pounces on it and runs back to you with it hoping with all his heart that you’ll throw it again. Being on a big hill helps you throw the object further and also make the running for the pup harder. You need a big hill though.

This last weekend we struck upon a new method for tiring out our furry bonehead. We start the car, roll down the windows and say, in exciting tones, “hey Sam, wanna go for a ride?!” This gets him all excited and then, as we start to drive away, he tears down the road ahead of us. We keep saying exciting and encouraging things and he keeps running. And running. And man is he fast! He actually broke the speed limit – going uphill! We were on a fairly secluded, tiny road with a speed limit of 15 mph. We clocked Samson at 20 mph. At his reached the crest of the hill he slowed down to 17 mph, then 15 mph, but with the flat picked it right back up.

I was a trifle bit nervous he would get into an accident with a car but he actually was very good. When he rounded a corner ahead of us he would stop and wait and I’m sure he would be able to hear a car coming.

And it worked really well. A few short minutes of sprinting like a cheetah and he was a tired puppy dog the rest of the day.

My personal workout routine is far less exciting. It consists of having a really annoying cough that has me hacking up my lungs all day and even more so all night. It is quite annoying. How am I supposed to get over being sick if I can’t sleep because I’m coughing all night? My abs are getting a serious workout though. They are really sore!

I'M BACK!

I traveled 2,000-ish miles, stopped in 20-ish communities, visited about 100 businesses and met about a thousand people. I stayed in very nice places, met fantastic people, got amazing tours of amazing places, and ate great food (and had dessert at least twice a day) but really it is very, very nice to be back home with my Christopher.

You can read alllllll about my journey at the Tour blog.

When it was all over (last Friday) I celebrated by having four "tour-tinis" (a lovely mixture of pear brandy and vodka), some wine, some beer, some tequila, some more beer... I did this at our great, grand, final party in Portland, a bar, a hotel and then a hotel bar from about 5:30pm until 1am. This from the girl who has a beer or two a week and is lights out around 10:00 these days. And Christopher, the driver, was the one who had a headache the next day.

And then on Sunday I continued the uncharacteristic binging and bought a really (really really) nice bicycle! As some of you know I've been riding an old steel frame thing (circa 1983) that weighs a ton, shifts terribly, handles like a Buick from the same era, was way to big for me and has a lot of very hard miles on it. This isn't the sort of bike serious riders see and say, "What a great classic!" Rather they say, "you really ride that?" I commuted, crashed, trained, did triathlons, knocked it over, left it in the rain, did Cycle Oregon (a mere 435 miles in one week), did a century-ride (100 miles in one day) and so much more on it. The guys in the bike shop kept asking me, and my parents when they would visit the shop, when I was going to get a new bike. It is actually a very fine bicycle. It is just better suited, at this point in its life, for an easier life than I would give it. A casual 20 or 30 mile ride here or there and it would be fine. But I like to ride a lot, ride far and do things like go up icky steep hills and ride with fast boys.

I walked into the bike shop Sunday with the intention of starting the careful, considered process of researching the options, figuring out what I want, shopping around to see if I could find the same thing or something comparable used or at another bike shop for cheaper, etc. etc. I even said, "I'm not going to buy a bike today." But one thing led to another and next thing you know I was demo-ing a fantastic bike much nicer than I intended and WAY out of my intended price range. But after a 90-minute blissful ride I couldn't let it go! I could turn corners effortlessly, ride up mountains, had control of my bike, and didn't feel every bloody pebble or crack in the road (all carbon is NICE!) Luckily the WAY out of my price range bicycle was on super sale ($600 off the official, $400 off the store's normal price!) and that put it only $100 above my price range. So I bought it. At the beginning of winter (hence the sale) when it will be forced to languish indoors far to often...

But there are nice winter days when we'll get to go riding. I can't WAIT!