I went up Dog Mountain to work off Thanksgiving food. I think last year Ingrid and I did it in 1:20, today I made it up in 1:00:10, just missing under an hour. My average heart rate was 158, just about my anaerobic threshold, for the whole time. It was nice and snowy and cold up top, sometimes bad weather makes it more exciting.

Photos

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Cleaning of the deck with a power washer.

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Thanksgiving with Ingrid's mom and brother, no turkeys were harmed but some pumpkins were taken out.

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I have been working on various incarnations of a page for listing my books for a few years now. It started off as a way for me to see what books I had so I wouldn't buy double, so it was a .wml page as my first phones were old. It eventually got to be a page that was only usable by me as a result of horrible design. One weekend I even spent both days scanning the covers for each of my books so I could show the covers. (That set of photos is lost in the ether.)
I just revamped the books page to be searchable by author or title. The author page has two views of the books, the traditional list and a coverflow view, with a icon to switch between the two. Hopefully it's intuitive enough.
I used a few web services to cobble together images; books.google.com for book covers, and wikipedia for author photos (which sometimes is the wrong person.)
Plus now the books link is up top next to photos link

Last February I took a EKG stress test to get a baseline of my heart for future. It used the Bruce Protocol as part of the assesment, which extrapolated to a VO2 max number of 48.5.
Yesterday I went and took a proper VO2 max test at Bridgetown PT. The test consisted of running on treadmill with a mask and hose strapped to your face and a heart rate monitor. The test itself took ~15 minutes, starting at 4mph ramping up to 10mph. I ended up with a peak VO2 of 52.6 ml/kg/min.
Besides the VO2 number, I also got my Aerobic and Anaerobic numbers. My Anaerobic Threshold is only 157, so there is more work to be done.

Zone	Low	Moderate	High	Peak
HR	104-146	146-157	157-168	168-172
C/hr	245-943	943-1113	1113-1384	1384-1474

Ingrid, Sara, my parents and I went to Opal Creek for a long weekend. We had one good day of sunshine and another good day of rain.

Timelapse

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Sara and I hiked through the Enchantments in Washington. We were told to get to the top of Asgard Pass by noon, otherwise it'd be a long hike out in the dark. So we camped at Snow Lake trailhead and got a 4:30am shuttle to the Stuart Lake trailhead, getting us a 5am start. This got us to Colchuck Lake by the time the sun was hitting the peaks around us. We started the hike up the infamous Asgard Pass at 8:30 and topped out at 10, taking our time to enjoy the views as the hike up was actually pleasant.

We ate and drank near the top of the pass and enjoyed all of the views. The scenary is seriously underrated, even with all the hype. As we had all day and it was all downhill from here, we went slow and kept taking in the views and taking photos of the lakes and peaks. As we made it further down the trail we saw more campers and goats (one goat followed us until we screamed at it for a long while). It just got prettier and prettier.

We stopped a few times to eat our modern day lembas and filter water. At one lake crossing we soaked our feet in the 33 degree water and took a quick nap before heading on. We continued on following the myriad cairns and made it back down to the car an hour before sunset and in time to chow down on chinese pork and sandwiches.

Next time a camping trip would be in order, it would be great to stay a few nights and have more time to enjoy the lakes and not hassle with hiking it all in one day.

Panoramic Photos

Cairns

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I've been wanting to do an overnight camping trip on the motorcycle for a while now so I bailed on work and went out towards Condon with my moto loaded up with cameras and tent. It was quite cold and windy in the Gorge, with some rain that turned to fire on the other side of Hood River. I took the old twisty highway from Mosier to the Dalles, which was a nice switch from the highway. From there it's awesome smooth roads down to Condon where I grabbed breakfast and a Dan Brown book for camp.I found a campsite on a river close to a store where I got 2 beer, candy and a gallon of water which about topped out the carrying capacity of the Triumph. I played around with camera settings for night shots and after an hour of fiddling got everything set up so I could sack out in the tent.
I had the idea of getting up early and going to the Painted Hills for sunrise photos, but it was too cold so I slept in until the sun was up. This turned out for the best as it was still a cold ride over towards the Fossil Beds. I stopped in Mitchell to get gas at the station that would open near 10am. The closest gas station was around 40 miles away, which was about the range I had left in my tank. So I went over to the Painted Hills to eat breakfast and read.
After getting gas back in Mitchell, I headed East to more great roads that would eventually lead back towards Maupin and home. I went through more burnt valleys and firefighting staging areas. Whole hill sides were scorched and black. Then it was back to the clouds and cold once I hit the cascades and went over Mt. Hood.

Panoramic Photo

Panoramic of gorge

Video

Sky near Condon

Photos

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Day trip out to Trout Lake via Goldendale and Glenwood. Awesome roads.

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Ascent

Ingrid and I went over to Bend for the weekend to get up South Sister. We got a mellow alpine start, meaning getting to the trailhead at 9:30 along with a hundred other people. I was surprised by the utter lack of snow on the South side. Pictures from a few weeks ago showed snow all the way up, but now there was a faint line of the trail all the way to the summit.
A contrast between now and two months ago:

August

June

The trail up was quite pretty as it went up next to a small stream up to the plateau. We stopped a few times to tend to our heels with duct tape and GORP. There were tons of people on the trail, wearing everything from jeans to sweats from the 80s. By the time we got to the summit crater most people seemed to disappear. I think a lot stop at the South rim and call it good, which was nice so we could get the summit proper more or less to ourselves.

Descent

We ate our squished sandwiches and put more duct tape while enjoying the views that stretched North to Mt. Adams and South to Mt. Shasta. A cloud formed over us, providing nice shade and a little cooling. Under the cover of the cloud we bombed down the cinder dust.

Thoughts

It was good to get Ingrid up the South Sister as it seems to be a rite of passage, everyone talks about going up it. It was a beautiful day and it's always nice to be up in the air with views.

Photos

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