This is what you get when you wear lightweight long pants on an extremely rainy team ride. The pants have an almost indistinguishable grid pattern of thickness in the fabric, with slightly thinner lines and slightly thicker squares.

After 73.3 miles of drenching my legs in water and road filth, apparently enough dirt had worked its way into the slightly thinner sections to leave a nice grid on my legs after I removed the pants. What this picture doesn’t show is how tired I was when I dripped my way home, and the misery of post-ride sore knees that has come to haunt me again. Ian did get me a Kidd Valley milk shake and fries, though, which sure helped me feel better.

If you’re wondering, don’t worry, I had shorts on for the picture. Also, don’t mind the stubbly appearance of my legs — that’s an optical illusion created by the camera’s focus. Really. And, last but not least, I’ll be working on alleviating some of that wintry pastiness next week on our vacation in Hawaii.

Saturday and Sunday, January 14 – 15

(Photos courtesy of a teammate)

A small part of Team Group Health on Orcas Island before setting out on our day’s ride.

Mt. Constitution, on Orcas Island.

Sunday, the ferry to Lopez Island.

A dusting of snow on Lopez Island.

Monday through Thursday, January 16 – 19

At first the snow was exciting.

Ian got to work from home!

Hummingbirds got food despite the lack of natural flower nectar.

More snow kept falling, although not the prodigious volume predicted.

Our next-door neighbors broke out their snowmobiles for getting around.

Dad and I met up and went snowshoeing.

Other people snowmobiled around the neighborhood, including a mom with a kid perched in front of her.

But then more snow kept falling, after they predicted it’d switch to rain, and we all started getting a little stir-crazy. (There’s an out-of-focus hummingbird perched on some of those little twigs.)

We shoveled the driveway and sidewalk three times. My back is not pleased, but at least it was outdoors and productive.

Friday, January 20

After seeing an article in the Seattle Times about a brand-new sea otter pup born earlier this week, Mom and I resolved to get out of the house and take a bus to go see the baby otter (or “fluffy puffy,” as Mom ended up calling it).

This turned out to be quite a trek: I walked 3 miles through a foot of melting, slushy snow to the bus, meeting Mom along the way. Our bus was stuck so we took a different one and got off in Kirkland, instead of going straight to Seattle. That worked, though, because we met up with my friend Rachel in Kirkland and the three of us caught a bus into Seattle. We saw the baby otter, scooped our melted-from-the-cuteness selves off the floor, ate some food, went back for Round 2 of cuteness (awwwwwww), and then went up to Pike Place Market for dried fruit (no success) and chocolate (success). Along the way we splashed through ankle-deep puddles of melting snow and rain, slipped around on extremely slick slush, and turned up our collars against the almost-freezing drenching downpours. The trip to Seattle took about 2 hours and involved walking 3 slushy miles and two buses. The trip home took about 3 hours and included a standing-room only bus that had chains and could only travel up to 30 mph, another mile-long slushy walk, and a ride in Dad’s four-wheel-drive Subaru.

It was all worth it, though.

Okay, in this picture, the baby does look like an anonymous lump of fur.

Here the mommy otter cleans her baby otter. My camera can’t zoom and focus at the same time, which is really quite inconvenient, but you can kind of get a sense of the cuteness.

Fortunately even though none of my pictures turned out, there are always ones like this one from the Seattle Times.

It was bound to happen sometime: On a group ride yesterday, there was a crash. Three riders went down, but fortunately I was not among them. I just started to write a detailed description of what happened, but I’ll just summarize, since the details aren’t that important:

We were riding in a loose paceline with a good amount of space between us, because we were on a very curvy stretch of road. I was towards the back. Riders 1, 2, and 3 were just ahead of me, with the ride leader ahead of them. As we went around a corner, Rider 1 (two bikes ahead of me) slipped and fell; we still don’t know why he went down. Rider 2 (one bike ahead of me) promptly ran into him and went flying over his handlebars. Rider 3 (directly ahead of me) slammed on his brakes and crashed, but didn’t hit anybody. I had time to see the crash happen and react safely — I honestly don’t remember what I did, but it was some combination of steering and stopping. I just remember tossing my bike on the side of the road and running to check the damage to my buddies.

Rider 2 got up fairly quickly, but Riders 1 and 3 stayed on the ground for a while. We established that Rider 3 hadn’t hit anybody, and he seemed okay, but he took a little while to recover and get up. Rider 1 we kept on the ground, because he reported head and neck pain in addition to stomach pain from where Rider 2′s front wheel had run into his stomach — ouch! We called 911.

Then we waited, the ride leader taking care of the guys who’d crashed, while me and the other uninjured rider (who was behind me) directed traffic around the blind curve. This was actually fairly important, as Rider 1 remained in the road, and cars couldn’t see anything until they were right on top of us. We used the familiar “car up” and “clear” to communicate and it worked very well.

The Medic One aid car arrived after a few minutes. They checked everybody out, talked to Rider 1, and started the process of putting him on a backboard preparatory to moving him. They patched up Riders 2 and 3, too, and then waited around for an ambulance to move Rider 1 to the hospital. Rider 2 called his wife, who picked him up and took him to the hospital, too. Rider 3 suffered bruising and some road rash, but he and his bike were okay to go.

A Mercer Island police officer arrived after a while and he started asking what we’d seen. He took my information, as I was the only one who’d actually seen the whole thing firsthand. Then he warned us that Riders 1 and 2 could both receive moving violations for their bike handling failures, because they were operating as vehicles on the roadway. That’s right: In addition to paying craploads of money for medical care and bike/gear repair & replacement, and having weeks of agonizing bruises (if not worse injuries), Riders 1 and 2 could actually be ticketed, too. The cop said that Rider 1 was “driving” too fast for the conditions, if he couldn’t control his bike at that speed; and Rider 2 was following too close if he wasn’t able to stop without a collision. The cop seemed irritated that we’d had this crash on his road, and mentioned all the paperwork for such a minor collision. He also mentioned, almost wistfully, that if this had happened on the I-90 bike trail, it would be a whole different story. Well, too bad, buddy. We were on the road, and you get paperwork.

Eventually we split up. The Medic One aid car took Rider 1 off to some ER. Rider 2 and the ride leader waited for Rider 2′s wife. Rider 3 and I headed back home. I kept an eye on him the whole time, and he seemed okay. Later we found out that Rider 1 “only” suffered from bangs and scrapes. Rider 2 — the guy who went over his handlebars — came off the worst: He fractured his collarbone. He has a one-week-old baby at home, too, which I imagine will add to the fun of recovery.

So that was the first significant crash I’ve witnessed on the road. It shook me up. I wasn’t immediately involved, thank goodness, but it wouldn’t have been difficult for me to be Rider 1 or 2. A different ride order, is all it would’ve taken. As the cop pointed out: Everything has risk. Riding in a paceline on a curvy, damp road is risky. We accept that, and usually it’s fine. I’m grateful I wasn’t in the crash, but if I had been, I’ve accepted that as part of riding — the benefits of riding outweigh those dangers. Even so, I’m feeling a little twitchy about group riding.

If you lived here, this is what you would see.

And it would be normal.

I haven’t said a peep about life all month, thanks to NaNoWriMo. Let’s stick with NaNo for a moment: On November 18, I hit my 50,000 word goal and, incidentally, wrapped the story up. That said, I feel that it’s my best novel yet, and the first one I actually care about enough to want to improve. As I wrote, I left a number of inconsistencies and unexplored avenues open that I would like to correct or expand upon.

To this end, I have taken the unprecedented step of actually printing and re-reading the tunnel novel, something I have never done with one of my novels before. Typically I believe in a scorched earth, do-it-and-don’t-look-back policy for National Novel Writing Month efforts. In fact, most of them embarrass me deeply, and I wouldn’t mind if they vanished forever. I leave them up on and publicly available on my blog to keep me humble.

This one I really invested in the characters; they feel like real people to me, although unlike in previous NaNos, I didn’t base them on anybody I knew. These people are truly fictitious, although they definitely draw characteristics from people I know. I care about them, what they think and feel, and I want to do right by them and tell their stories the best I can. This was a first attempt, and I plan on cleaning it up significantly before I post the PDF online. For the remainder of the month, I will be editing and revising the story.

For those of you who haven’t read it but are interested in doing so, contact me and I will give you access to the Google Doc version that’s much more reader-friendly than the daily blog posts.

November has been a difficult month in many other personal ways. First and foremost, on Monday, November 14, we found out that my cousin Valerie had passed away unexpectedly. This came completely out of the blue for us, and kicked off one of the hardest weeks I’ve had in a very long time. I didn’t know Valerie very well, but now I never will. Her choice breaks my heart, and I’ve spent a good amount of time after finding out about her choice red-nosed and puffy-eyed.

Within two hours of learning about Valerie’s passing, I was on the road to Goldendale to teach a Train the Teacher workshop. I spent almost three hours stopped, waiting in Snoqualmie Pass; while waiting, three truckers helped me put the chains on my car. Six and a half hours after leaving my house, I arrived, only three hours overdue. I taught the Goldendale training, which was the worst I’ve had in a while, for a variety of reasons. It couldn’t end soon enough for me. On Wednesday I drove home the southern route, through the Gorge, which had snow and slush on the ground to within 30 miles of Portland. That commute home took another six hours.

The rest of the month has involved a heavy concentration of Train the Trainer work. I taught in Mt. Vernon the first week, Pateros the second week, and Goldendale the third week. This coming week I have off, which is good because we’re flying down to LA for Valerie’s funeral. The following week I teach in Vancouver, WA; then, two more weeks in a row, Castle Rock and Kiona-Benton (near Tri-Cities). So I will have taught 6 out of 7 weeks from the end of October through mid-December.

Each training I refine what I do and say, and I have become very comfortable with doing the trainings, so I no longer get nervous or stressed beforehand. I’m confident that I can teach them, and fairly confident in the outcome. But each training is hours of preparation and packing, more hours driving, and hours of high-energy work. I come home exhausted. Have I just forgotten what it feels like to work a regular job, or is this harder than my previous experience? I don’t want to complain to people that I’m tired from my work, because mostly they look at me and say, “Um, yes, that’s what it feels like to have a job.” But it’s hard, and I come home really tired.

Having teaching work is generally good: I’m happy to have work, to earn money. After that last training in mid-December, I don’t have any work scheduled for months; and the grant (and my job) end March, 2012. The back-to-back trainings, however, start to wear on me. I’m alone in very remote parts of the state, tiny towns with nothing out there. I get lonely and depressed, especially the second night in the hotel room by myself. I don’t have a computer or smartphone, and start feeling deeply disconnected with my Internet brain eliminated. I read books and take hot baths, but I can’t ride out on dark, unfamiliar country roads by myself — that’s a recipe for disaster. I’m crazy, but not stupid.

Meanwhile, every weekend Team Group Health has been holding team rides, which all newbies are strongly encouraged to attend. I go to every ride I can, which means definitely Saturday morning, and Sunday morning if we don’t have church. That happens once or twice a month. Counting forward, we only have about 3 months until the first road race. I have so much to learn in those months, not to mention fitness to build, I’m excited and intimidated at the same time. I’m starting to learn teammates’ names, but there are 80+ members, and I don’t think I’ve even met all of them, and even the names of people I have met elude me frequently. I enjoy the team rides, but they’re also a lot of new information coming at us fast.

In short (I know, too late!), to be completely honest, it’s been a difficult month for me. Christmas is coming and I’m already feeling stressed at not having presents for people I love (or have to give presents to for other reasons).

I’d love to end this on a happy note, so here’s a picture for you. Not of puppies, sadly, but of the reorganization I did in my office. The back story first: I really hate running on tracks, and I’ve avoided bike trainers as essentially a track for bicyclists. However, people who know these things strictly ordered me to obtain a trainer so I could get ready for racing. As you wish.

It’s in my office so I can watch movies and/or listen to music on my computer while riding.

One of the things about being an adult is that you listen to advice from people you respect, but you don’t always have to obey that advice. That’s why it’s advice.

I mention this because today, against the advice of many people whose opinions I value and respect, I joined Team Group Health, an all-women bike racing team.

This will be a big outlay of time, money, and energy for the next year, and I’m kind of nervous at the prospect, but I am also excited to try it out for the next season. That is all for now. I have lots of work to do to get ready for the BAW train-the-trainer I’m doing in Quincy later this week.

I have NaNoWriMo brain right now, but I’m shifting gears because I want to talk briefly about the replacement I bought for my sad, squashed Garmin Edge 605.

REI is having a 20% off sale right now, so I decided to go there and buy a Garmin Edge 800. Garmin has changed their Edge lineup significantly, and the 800 is the only one that still displays maps, a feature I really want (as per my 2008 blog post, Directionally Inhibited). As it turns out, the 20% off excluded “devices using GPS,” so I didn’t get my $90 off. As REI members we’ll still get $45 back at the end of the year, though, so that’s something. Plus I was able to obtain it in time for the Sunday’s ride. After a mere one day on the data wagon, I fell back off again, gladly.

I bought the Edge 800 on Saturday afternoon after we finished moving dirt. I used it on my short Sunday ride, and while out Monday and Tuesday for errands. I have not yet used the navigation features, but I can speak to using the device in general. Oh, and I didn’t buy the heart rate monitor, cadence monitor, power meter, or rocket pack, either.

My experience so far with the Edge 800 all by itself:

1. I love the touch screen. I always found the little toggle button on the 605 irritating to use, but got used to it because in 2008, when I bought it, touch screens weren’t exactly mainstream. Now if it’s not touchscreen, you wonder why not. Garmin did pretty well with the touchscreen features; my only complaint is the hard-to-use vertical scrolling. But being able to change the data display by pressing and holding more than makes up for any annoyances.
2. The elevation data is noticeably more reliable. By now I have a sense of how big hills are, and about how many feet I can expect to climb on a given ride. My 605 would report head-inflatingly large climbing values, I think because it relied entirely on GPS satellites for vertical data. The 800 (like all new Garmin bike computers, I think) uses a barometer for a more accurate elevation estimate.
3. The user interface is improved. Features are listed in logical places. Sometimes the sub-menus seem excessive, but mostly they’ve organized it into many menus with a few sub-menu options each. This may be annoying in the future, when I don’t want to go 4 menus deep to simply turn a thing on or off again. That said, on to number 4.
4. There are many shortcuts to the most frequently used features, so you don’t have to go 4 menus deep to change those features.
5. The device itself feels sturdy and well-built, although I’m skeptical about whether it can take the same kind of beating my 605 took before finally giving up the ghost. Being a touchscreen, I won’t be able to abuse the screen as thoroughly as I did with the 605.
6. It finds satellites just fine.
7. I like that I can put my own background picture on it. That is a neat feature. The background in the screen shots, below, is I took in Ashland this summer.

Here are some screen shots (yet another neat feature).
The home menu.

Main training screen.

Second training screen.

Settings menu.

Training screen sub-menu.

Training screen sub-sub menu. This would be annoying, except that the navigation goes quickly thanks to the touchscreen.

Summary: I’ll have to see how the navigation features work before I confirm that it’s worth $450 + sales tax. But so far it’s performed well and I anticipate that, once I get used to the screen configuration, I’ll find it as useful a tool as its predecessor. (I would set the screens up the same as my old one, but despite having looked at the old one thousands of times, I still can’t remember exactly what went where. I just know when I look at this new configuration that data isn’t displayed quite right.)