Bike Racing is Back

Bike racing is back! After a long winter of training and then summer of waiting, we finally were able to hold some races.

More importantly, I met my season goal of getting on the podium in my first race of the season (August 2nd) and my first criterium race ever. Additionally, this was after upgrading from category five to four. It just so happened to be that it was the Master's state championships. The race came down to a photo finish, and although I was much faster than everyone else in the final sprint, I was too far back at the start of it and I just barely ran out of road. Just a rookie mistake! Second place was an encouraging sign and a confirmation of many things.

I also raced up Pikes Peak again in August. Although I finished fourth out of only seven, I still beat my personal time best by 3.5% and power best by 6.0%. A couple of weeks later, I raced the same criterium up in Golden and finished an encouraging fourth once again. The conditions were very bad for me, very windy with gusts up to 30 mph, so it was a completely different race and one that I was just happy to complete without crashing.

In many ways, although a very weird year, after only a few races I can consider this season a success and further improvement from my first racing season last year. I actually have worked my way up to being competitive in races, and if things would have been a little different, could have even won a race. 

Interior Decorator

Julia decided to spend some of her own money to decorate her room...and her "front porch"!

Date Night

I had a race up in Golden this weekend, so Stacey and I took off for an overnight without the kids. Red Rocks has a series of movies that they show throughout the summer, but due to COVID they had to change things up and change the showings to a drive-in format. I had never been to a drive-in movie before, so it was a lot of fun. We toured Red Rocks and walked around it earlier in the day, then watched Jurassic Park from the back of the 4Runner. Fun times were had by all!

Home Sweet Home

Nothing like coming home after along bike ride and turning to see "man's best friend" anxiously waiting for your return. And, falling out of the house onto your lap...

Camping with Jonathan

We were invited last minute to go camping with Mike and Kensei at O'Haver Lake down by Salida. I was racing up Pikes Peak Saturday morning, so Jonathan rode with them and I met them at the campground later that day.

The trip was a lot of fun. The boys got to do some fishing and paddling around the lake in the kayaks. Dinner one night was the rainbow trout Mike caught, which Jonathan tried, and I ended up eating most of it. Generally, we just kind of hung out for a few days. We went for a hike around and above the lake, which gave us some pretty good views.

Glad we went. It was a good another good memory for the scrapbook.

Spokane Pictures

We have some shots of Riverfront Park downtown, siblings at the 4th of July barbecue, pictures of our drive and my ride up Mt. Spokane, and then some various pictures of the countryside I got to see on all my bike rides.

Spokane

After a week in Sandpoint we headed down to Spokane for a few weeks to hang out and see friends an family. It was a typical trip in that I worked one of those weeks, we had a nice 4th of July gathering and celebration of John's 70th birthday, I rode up Mt. Spokane on July 4th, and the kids with Pat and Melinda went and saw fireworks.

Other than that, we just kind of hung out. We did some crawdad fishing in the Spokane River, I rode my bike a lot, and we did whatever else we felt like doing on the day. The weather wasn't particularly warm, and we had already gotten our fill of sand and water, so we didn't do too many things outdoors. We played games, walked around Riverfront Park, went up to Manito Park, and ate froyo and drank coffee. Pretty fun.

Lake Cruise

Pat and Melinda joined us in Sandpoint for the weekend. Although we didn't have great weather, we were still able to have some fun.

Today we took a couple hour boat cruise around Lake Pend Oreille. We saw some bald eagles and nests in the distance and parts of the lake we otherwise would have never seen. Towards the end of the tour the kids were able to steer the boat and were given honorary captain certificates. It was a fun experience and not something we are able to do back home.