Friday, July 18, 2008

July 18, 2008

This week has been a little hectic for some reason and I have not had an opportunity to post since Monday.

The Night Ride - July 12, 2008

This was our 3rd year riding the Night Ride and it has always been a fun ride. The route winds thru parts of Portland that I would not necessarily go thru during the day! Bruce & Lynette joined us again this year and we were separated from the start, but somehow managed to find each other along the route and the end for donuts.

ALPENROSE VELODROME

Tom and I took some time off this week so we could finally go to the velodrome, something that we have been wanting to do for a while now. The last time we planned to do this traffic was horrendous for Tom and Teddy during their return trip from the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum so that idea was nixed. I was a little disappointed, but whatever, there is always another day. So this week we took off early yesterday and all day today and went to Alpenrose both days.

While it is possible to ride a regular road bike on the track there is a special bike for track cycling and it's pretty cool. A fixed gear with no brakes. That would be quite a sensation to be pedaling all the time even when slowing down to a stop.

Thursday night is the regular race series and we happened to see one of the guys from Performance who raced last night. The race for the night was long points and there were only two groups, Cat 4 and then Cat 1, 2 & 3. Every race night starts with the kiddie kilo and that was the most fun to watch - all those little kids on their bikes riding around the bottom of the track!


This race is the Cat 1, 2 & 3's

The Alpenrose Velodome Challenge was a bonus for our Friday off. The race for the day was pursuits - two racers start opposite each other on the track and race for a set amount of laps which turns out to be 3000 or 4000 meters. The races were quick and so we were out of there pretty early today. Will return again tomorrow later in the day to check out some more action.

We decided to check out the Bike Gallery to see if they might have a Banjo Brothers backpack the Sandy Blvd store did not have one - and turns out neither did the Downtown Store. We got a little closer though, they did have some panniers for groceries. Not what we were looking for. Looks like Tom will have to order the backpack on-line.

For a late lunch we made a pit stop at HUB (Hopworks Urban Brewery). Justin (formerly of Performance) works there now and we had hoped to see him, but no such luck! This place is totally eco-friendly and the food is pretty good. The beer is organic and quite tasty. We ordered the Hunter pizza and a couple of brews - Stout for Tom and ESB for me and we settled in for a nice relaxing lunch.

The drive home was a little slow, but it was a nice afternoon anyway.

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