Whirlwind Weekend

Up up and away....

Another whirlwind weekend gone by.

My workweek was pretty much filled with work and taking care of the animals. I don’t know what my deal was, but I just wasn’t motivated to really ride Pokey all that much, so she got extra turnouts with light rides.

WINE BAR FRIDAY NIGHT
On Friday we tried out this amazing wine bar that Claire, a colleague, knew of. It’s called Amelie http://www.ameliesf.com/ and I think their website gives an idea of just what a gem this place is. I went with Claire, Mario, and Luiz and finally got to practice my Spanish; it’s been getting pretty rusty, so I was really glad to have the chance to “dust off” those language skills. We shared the 3-cheese plate, ordered some wines, and finished off with crème brule. It is safe to say that I have never tasted cheeses like these in the States before. I tried the Prosecco and a chardonay from Ardeche that I wasn’t crazy about. I especially liked the fact that although this was a French-owned wine bar, they offer an eclectic mix of wines from all over the world. Amelie is sophisticated, chic, and modern without being pretentious, and I thought it was extremely reasonably priced. Needless to say, we’ll be going back soon!

CALAVERAS RESEVOIR RIDE WITH TNT ON SATURDAY
I think I was in bed just after midnight and woke up at 4:50 on Saturday morning, took Buddy for a walk, took a bubble bath, and did some emailing before heading out the door for my Saturday TNT ride. (Turns out this is a great time to catch my buddy Marina who is always up around 4:30 AM).

This week’s ride was the closest that we will ever get to my ‘hood’. It was nice to only have a 25 min. drive instead of my usual hour. Ready for the Calaveras Resevoir ride, it was funny to be back at Sunol Glen elementary- this is where I used to do 4-H!

We started off with a pre-ride discussion on what to eat and drink before/during/and after rides with a nutritionist specializing in cycling. To my delight, my favorite meal (bean, rice, and cheese burritos) got a seal of approval from the expert! Giving up alcohol before rides, not so tough; burritos, I’m not sure I could have managed.

One of the many things that I love about all my fellow TNTers is their sense of humor. Always quick to laugh, I have to say they are a witty bunch. Sadly, we had a sobering moment with news of Maxx (you may remember, from my last entry, that we had done the previous week’s ride in his honor). Sheryl had to deliver the tough news that he did not make it though the week. For me, this was a confrontation with the reality of what people battling blood cancers face. My commitment to the cause was reconfirmed then and there. I got an extra umph and was ready to take on this ride!

We started out with a nice 3-5 mile stretch of flat road, great for warming up. But when I heard that the next 11 miles would be uphill, it took a moment for that information to register, and I found myself asking, “Wait? How many miles?!” The beautiful scenery is the best distraction I could imagine, and at one point during the climb I actually realized that I was enjoying this part of the ride. I was shocked at this revelation, but hey, I just went with it. All in all we did a total of 32 miles over a 3 hour span (though I believe actual ride time was 2h 45min b/c of course we stopped and chowed down on the yummy snacks provided by SAG). Susie (my coach) has this great little device that tells you all sorts of information, one of the little tidbits she shared was that we did 100 feet of climb/mile. That doesn’t really mean much to me, but apparently it’s quite a lot.


I was thankful for a short drive home, stripped down, and took bubble bath # 2 for the day and just relaxed. On Sunday I was up early AGAIN (thanks to some 2 pairs of pestering brown eyes staring me down, telling me it was time to get up). I had left my car at BART on Friday night, so had to do the bike ride of shame to go and pick it up. This is the route that I used to struggle with when I would bike to the pool. I did it in 30 minutes and was amazed at how effortless it was! Talk about gaining some perspective. From there I headed out to the barn for some quality time with Pokey. Went back home, showered, and got changed to go over to Jed and Holly’s for dinner. Their place is like a winter wonderland; Holly’s decoration obsession was in full effect! It was great to see them, and I can’t believe how much Mia’s changed. She’s definitely grown, was really looking at people and things, and has started to coo. Soooo cute. I visited with them for a while after dinner, headed home, watched some 24, and headed to the airport around 11:30 PM to pick up the parentals. Got back and was in bed by 1 AM- just enough time to get some sleep, wake up, and start a new week.

Wazzzz Up?

Well, well, a little mid-week update.

What’s goin’on… I kicked off Monday fresh and ready to go after a good night’s sleep.

Monday: TNT training, here I come! I can handle riding in the dark, and I can even navigate crazy Bay Area traffic, but traffic in the dark… kinda scary. I did a hard 30 min. ride pedaling as fast as I could and even sought out some of the freeway overpasses to get in some short climbs.
Fundraising: sent out another batch of emails to friends/family (thank you Auntie Beth for your donation!)

Tuesday: I really really wanted to just go straight home after work. It was C to the O to the L to the D! But I forced myself to do the barn. Pokey was a wooly beast due to the recent temp drop. I just lunged her- too lazy to ride and with the crisp air.

Things that made me smile:

Not one but two awesome messages from Jesse. You are the queen of voice mails. They made my day! Now if only we could connect and have an actual conversation. Hhhmmm. Very tricky.

Sopranos reruns on Bravo… still one of the greatest shows ever to air. How can it not be when they have an episode that threads a Van Morrison song all the way through?!

My kitty, my doggy, my horsey. I’ve stopped keeping track of all the times they make me laugh, especially Mr. B who is the most un-coordinated cat ever.

Cashmere socks. Need I say more?

The Fearsome Foursome, 3 Bears Ride

Our ride this Sat. was dedicated to Maxx.
Pump it!
I made it. Who's your er daddy? Or was this Mamma Bear?
Almost there....
Thank goodness I made it to the top, otherwise I would have missed out on these goodies (:

These pictures capture the beautiful scenery. We've been so blessed with great Cali weather.
Some of my teammates

What a week! I felt like the Tasmanian Devil, but it was a great week. Andrea, my "virtual co-worker" was in our S.F. office- in the flesh! She’s actually someone who is crazier than I am, so it was obviously love at first sight when we first met in August.

We went to Eva’s (another co-worker) house after getting nice and buzzed at work (After work, of course. C’m on. They may be French, but we do leave the wine and cheese for after hours). So we hung out at the office for a while, so Andrea could mess with people's screen savers and then headed to Eva’s for dinner- which consisted of Oreo’s and chips with salsa. Nutritious!

We headed downtown to meet up with some other girls and found reggae central. I had a scrumptious Pearl pomegranate martini (I hardly see Pearl carried anywhere, so I had to take advantage), stole a wine key from the bartender, and since my duties were obviously taken care of there, headed to this crazy underground reggae club. It kind of felt like a college party, except they hadn’t run out of alcohol- thank god. (Just kidding, but not really). At one point I went to the bathroom, but then couldn’t find everyone, so I was just sort of standing there dancing alone (happy as a clam). Finally I see Andrea waving to me from the middle of the dance floor (I don’t know how I missed her) and she said, "EZ (yes, this is the name the Frenchies have given me) what the hell are you doing?!" I told her that I couldn’t find them, so was just chillin’on my own. She about died laughing. We finished up there and took a cab back towards her hotel. I don’t know why b/c we had such a filling dinner, but we were hungry and found this great pizza place. Who’s idea it was to order another round of beers (at 2 AM) is beyond me. Clearly we didn’t need them. Walked back to the hotel, and crashed only to wake up 4 hours later to head to work. Friday was painful, but it could have been worse. Had Indian and Naan -N- Curry (love that place) with the staff and before I knew it we on our way to Chevy’s for Margaritas. (I had an additional motive to get Mario a sombrero to block out the sunlight that puts a glare on his computer screen).

Our waitress must have been brewing her own special concoction of crack in the back. I can’t even get into how out of control she was other than the fact that she served me a virgin strawberry margarita (Hello! It’s happy hour on Friday) and chicken enchiladas (after suggesting black beans instead of refried beans since I’m a vegetarian). Then she dropped the birthday cake all over the table and just said, "Oh well. Do you want another one or not?"

Took BART home, and was really dreading my Saturday morning ride after 2 nights out and definitely not ample sleep.

BUT…. The ride at Pinole was spectacular, and I have to say that I am a rockstar for taking those hills on, lack of sleep or not. This ride was dedicated to Maxx, a 21-year old patient diagnosed with lymphoma. He originally had ulcerated colitis, and the treatment led to lymphoma. He has been having a very difficult time, and 3 days before his scheduled bone marrow transplant at Stanford, he came down with pneumonia. It brought tears to my eyes and a lump in my throat, and all I can say at this point, is thank you Sheryl, for sharing this story with us and letting us ride in his honor this Saturday. If you want to make a donation to support research and support for Maxx and families like his, you can do so here by visiting my donation page:

http://www.active.com/donate/tntgsf/tntgsfECloern

After last weekend’s ride in S.F. I was pretty apprehensive about hills in general. But, I picked up by newly tuned up bike (Merci Sports Basement… you are Bike Gods) on Wednesday and did an evening ride, as well as runs on Mon. and Thurs. Who would have guessed that doing additional training on your own would help- duh! So I was feeling pretty good on Sat. and ready to go. Until…my first flat tire.

At first I didn’t know what had happened. I kept hearing/feeling a thump thump thump. I thought it was the road..somoeone forgot to call out, "rough road". But when it continued on, I thougth maybe it was something with my bike. Putting 2 and 2 together, I realized if I went faster so did the thump thump thump. We got to the bottom of the hill and pulled over to see what was goin’on. Yep. My back tire was completely flat (see picture above). Bamberger took charge, and I sort of stood there looking like an idiot. But even he had a difficult time. Once we got over that initial bump, it was smooth sailing. Getting through the 3 bears definitely boosted my confidence, and how great is SAG (support and gear… basically you get hooked up with all sorts of goodies throughout the ride)?! We got split into a group of 4 ( hence the title the Fearsome Foursome) due to my flat which included Steve (party captain), Steve (Bamberger), and Monica who I hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting before, but she rocks (I had a hunch she would be cool when I saw her Sierra Nevada water bottle- where do you get those?!).

After the ride, I drove home, and crashed from 3-6:45 only waking up to eat dinner, watch and episode of Alias, and go back to bed. Sun. I was up and out early to drop off the ‘rents to the airport. A week in Hawaii sounds pretty nice. I hope they have fun. Then I went on another ride with Sheryl. Of all the things that could be sore, it was my butt that was killin’me, but we did a light ride at Coyote Hills, and I felt better after the ride than I did at the beginning. Then it was off to the barn to give Pokey some lovin’and ride her. Am I a maniac or what?! Jesse- I could give Tornado Anne a run for her money!

Phew. I think that’s it. Thank you all to everyone who has made a donation in my name to the Leukemia and Lymphoma society. I just got word this weekend, that the Solvang Century Cyclists (just the S.F. group) has already raised over a whopping $18,000!!!! Whooooooooo hoooo. If you have questions about how to make a donation or about the society and its mission in general, I welcome comments on my blog and/or emails.

To all my friends residing outside of CA, I miss you and send you many many bisous, abrazos, and baci e abbracci. Have a great week.

Loggin' In Some Time in the Saddle

This is where we kicked off our ride.Pete, the crazy bike mechanic gave us a great demo.


Riding along the coast.


Can you guess?

I especially enjoy this picture of me ON my bike rather than on the ground.

Legion of Honor.

This is how TNT likes to torture us! Solvang here we come.

The bike gods sure blessed us this weekend. I got up at 6 AM on Saturday, packed up my car, and headed to S.F. As my luck would have it, I basically did the same exact drive while I was lost last weekend, so I got to the meet spot (The Presidio) w/o a hitch; we met at Sports Basement (love that place!)

Since I didn’t get lost, I was a little bit early and took advantage of the location. I am the proud new owner of a small bike pump (the "pocket rocket"), spare tube, patch kit, and booties for my toes which I fear losing to frost bite sometime in the near future. I know the necessity of the pinkie toe is debatable, but I’d like to keep it nonetheless.

We all gathered ‘round (I was waiting for naptime followed by graham crackers and apple juice) on the carpet to watch a wee (Lou, if you’re reading this, this is for you!) demonstration given by Pete- the bike mechanic / evangelical. This guy was a character. I wonder if he does birthday parties? Informative and entertaining- can’t beat that!

We split into groups and headed out, ready to enjoy the beautiful weather that California is so famously known for. We couldn’t have done more than 500 yards and were heading up a huge/long/steep hill. What had I gotten myself into? This is when I began to regret the Taco Bell dinner and Chardonnay I had on Friday night at Jed and Holly’s. Woopsy.

My bike has been riding pretty well, but I noticed that my back brake was scraping the entire time. I pulled over to "check it out"(a.k.a. to take a breather). I really think I was at my limit, huffing and puffing- my trusty heart-rate monitor said my heart was beating 137 times per minute! Aye madre! We had only just begun, and my legs were like spaghetti noodles.
Thank goodness for all of the support and encouragement from Sue, Steve, Carol, Peni, Richard, and Frank. The ride truly was spectacular with views of the Golden Gate Bridge, Pacific, GG Park, and more. Since there was a problem with my back brakes, we decided the best solution for this ride would be for me to not use them… um ok. I was a little leery of that particular approach (visions of myself flipping over my handlebars), but in the end, it worked out just fine. We all made it back as a group with all our body parts and no injuries- amazing, what, with all of the city traffic. I decided to leave my bike there for a tune-up.

All in all, we did a 23-mile ride that took 2 hours and 55 minutes. Thankfully, the first hill at the beginning was the worst though we did have a shorter steep one at the very end (see photo).

I raced home, took a quick bath to warm up and headed to Jed and Holly’s for his annual Birthday Crab-fest; Holly bought 39 pounds of crab!!! I can’t believe he’s 30. What an old man (o;

Sunday, true to its name, was a day of rest (at least until 11 AM when I finally woke up). I headed out to the barn for a ride on Pokey, determined to take advantage of the dry weather. It was really cold (59 degrees, according to the sign at the bottom of Calaveras Rd.). Kristi moved her gelding to another stables, so we lost our trail buddies. It was just Pokey and me. We spent 2 hours out in the hills. I tried to keep her at a walk b/c I didn’t want her to get so sweaty, and b/c I’ve let her run quite a bit the last few rides and didn’t want her to think it’s always going to be galloping around on trails. We came across one of the bridges and out of nowhere she decided to jump, landing just before the other side taking off at a gallop. So much for that thought. I can’t really discipline her, b/c I like to go fast too, but as she started down the descent at a full gallop, I thought it best to slow down a little. I don’t know how many more rides we’ll be able to do out in the hills; I guess it depends on when we get rain, but I’m going to take full advantage while we can.

Things I learned this week:

-Taco Bell is NOT an ideal pre-ride meal.
-Don’t drink a lot of wine the day before a challenging ride.
-Riding uphill with your breaks on is not fun.
-Alias is not nearly as good now that Michael Vartan’s character is killed off. Way to ruin a good thing Jennifer.
-Kitties can snore quite loudly.

Dinner at the Waterfront

Hopefully I don’t stutter as I type this. My fingers are fraa frraaa freeezing!
This past week was super busy between the barn, TNT, and a holiday dinner in S.F. on Wednesday night. Rika, one of our suppliers treats the whole company to a fancy dinner every December. This year, we had it at The Waterfront Restaurant at Pier 7. ( http://waterfrontsf.com/ )

We rolled in style on one of Rika’s charter busses. It’s always nice to spend time with people outside of work, but this evening was especially nice since Magalie was visiting from Montreal, and we have several new hires as well. We kicked off the evening with champagne (for those of you who don’t know, I LIVE for champagne -one of the greatest things in life) and all sorts for tempting treats: fried calamari, prawns wrapped in bacon, and smoked salmon. Then it was onto a bowl of clam chowder, our entrees (I had scallops and prawns), a little green salad, and crème brulee (another one of my favs).

Somehow we got on a riddle kick and I heard the worst riddle ever! It’s supposed to be in Italian, but it translates to: "What smells like a rose, and is the color rose, but isn’t a rose?" Any guesses???? Read to the end to find the answer if you haven’t guessed it already. So after all the good eats and riddles, we finally headed out around 10:30. I know that doesn’t sound too late, but it got me in the door just before midnight with 6 hours until I had to get up and ready for work. Needless to say, Thursday morning was a bit rough.

Work was work, and then I headed out to the barn afterwards since poor Pokey didn’t get out at all on Wednesday. She was a maniac running and bucking and rolling. I was tempted to hop on bareback and give her a little more exercise, but she was already pretty warm to cool out, so I just gave her a good grooming and her grain.

I took a personal day on Friday, which included the barn in the morning and then shopping for Jed’s bday present. I headed over to his place to drop it off and found Holly in the middle of making two cakes for his party on Sat. We hung out, and I got to hold Mia (don’t even get me started on how flippin’ cute she is!), and drank some wine. By the time I got home, it was almost 10- just enough time to watch an episode of Alias and head to bed.

Ok, you made it all the way, now you get the answer to the riddle. Which is….
SOAP.

I know! Hey, I said it was the worst riddle ever. I started making up other ones like, "what smells like vanilla, and is off white, but isn’t vanilla?" - shampoo! Ok, I guess I should give Massi a break; he said it was a really old riddle (um from the Stone Ages?), and some of it gets lost in translation. Ok, I guess we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.