Heading to Canada

Ted requested homemade Chicago-style deep dish pizza for his birthday dinner, so we loaded it up with pepperoni, green and black olives, artichoke hearts, and Italian sausage.


...and for dessert we had birthday cake.


Hitcher and one of his many girlfriends, Lucy, from across the street. They stare at each other across the street like star-crossed lovers, with Lucy often caving and coming over to visit Hitch.

Ted and I are getting super psyched for our trip to Montreal and Quebec City next week. We leave Tuesday morning, arriving late that night in Montreal. The next morning we'll pick up a rental car and drive to Quebec City, where we will spend the next couple of days, before heading back to Montreal.

Our tickets for the F1 race include practice, qualifying, and the actual race. We'll definitely watch all of the qualifying and the whole race, but we may only catch portions of the practice, depending on what else we discover in Montreal. We plan to have some good meals out, and to spend lots of time exploring. We'll be sure to hit up the Dieu du Ciel brew pub, which appears to have a huge variety of beers (thanks for the recommendation, Dave!).

On our easy spin this evening, we decided to have a coasting race on the trail. Surprisingly, I won. I coasted for just about 1 km, with Ted not far behind. The numerous recreational riders who passed us going the opposite way must have been shaking their heads at us - all decked out and in our lowest tucks, coasting at 6 mph! I found myself laughing outloud, picturing what we looked like, and then I could hear Ted chuckling behind me.

Three more busy days before we head North. Hitcher will have a long stay at the kennel, but after this trip we won't have too many more trips where he cannot come along. If only we could find a trustworthy, hound-proof dog sitter. Now back to watching Fast Food Nation. On the movie note, I will definitely be hitting the theater for Sex and the City at some point this weekend.

I've been pretty negligent in updating my blog lately... but really there hasn't been too much to write about. Last weekend we went to Boise to do the Treasure Valley Stage Race. It was a fun, well-organized race. Unfortunately, the fields were very small for all categories. It would be nice to see more Washington racers travel to the Boise area for races.

Ted and I have decided not to travel to Enumclaw to race this weekend because it would be a lot of travel, especially right before we head to Canada. Plus, Ted and I never seem to have great races there, and with gas around $4/gallon, it just doesn't seem worth the trip! Instead, we'll stay home and get some good, hard training in, so we can be guilt-free on our bike-free vacation.

Ted turns 35 tomorrow, so I'm making a cake. If it turns out okay, pictures will follow.

Hood

Moriah MacGregor and I couldn't resist getting our photo taken with Jeannie Longo, the greatest female cyclist ever.


And, here's Ted with Jeannie.

The past week at Mt. Hood was not a great one for me at all on the bike. Not sure why really because I thought it would be. All I can figure is that I don't have enough racing in the legs. The other Bob's ladies did awesome, so that made up for my personal disappointment.

I timed myself for the prologue, which is something I do not normally do. When the results came out, my time was 7 seconds off of what I had gotten for myself. In a 1.7 mile event, lasting about 3 minutes, 7 seconds is a lot! I disputed my time with the judges, but to no avail. Two days later, however, they corrected my time, along with the time of another woman, and I was much happier. I guess they must have discovered a glitch. Not that the prologue really matters anyway, but it was the principle of the fact that I knew I had gotten a much better time.

The rest of the stages were rough for me. I just had no snap in my legs. I called it a day after 25 miles Saturday. They did not enforce time cuts that day, so I could have hung in to do Sunday's crit, but my legs were feeling so bad anyway that I don't think I would have lasted long in the crit.

It's nice to be home after being gone for a week. Hitcher is completely hoarse after being in the kennel. The only problem is that we think we have a yellow jacket nest somewhere in the house - we have killed 4 of them in the house this morning. Yikes! After being stung 17 times a couple years ago, I have a bit of a phobia.

Mystery Vacation

This is Pazza's newest perch.


Lily, the neighbor cat, comes over to play almost every sunny day.


Shamus still loves to straddle Ted's leg.

Several weeks ago, Ted and I were discussing traveling to New Mexico to do the Tour of the Gila, along with my teammate, Sarah. Ted eventually said that he could either travel to Gila, or he could do a "mystery trip" he had up his sleeve. I had no idea what he was up to, but the unknown adventure sounded really interesting, so we opted for that.

One day not long ago Ted and I were talking on the phone, planning lodging for races this summer, and he accidentally slipped, telling me where we are going. He was bummed about telling me, but then decided to fill me in on all of the trip details. So, in June, we will fly to Montreal. We will drive to Quebec City and spend a few days there, before driving back to Montreal to watch three days of Formula One: practice, qualifying, and the race. We have become big F1 fans over the past year, so it will be awesome to see the Grand Prix du Canada in person. Ted got us tickets in the grandstands by the first corner.

Obviously, F1 is going to consume a large portion of the trip, but we'll also have some spare time in Montreal and Quebec City. If anyone has any recommendations on things to do/see in either city, let us know.

We are spending this weekend at home, which I think is the first weekend at home in about two months. We're doing a long group ride tomorrow morning that has a ton of climbing. Mt. Hood is just around the corner, so it'll be good to get some climbs in the legs.