Tiring Plastic

no time for relaxing at home

Busy, busy (and tiring) day. Mike (a coworker) and I went for a spin at the dump with our dogs. We rode pretty much non stop for between 1.5 and 2 hours. When I got home I did a little computing, then started cleaning up the house a bit. I tossed back a couple PB & J sandwiches, grabbed my cleats and a couple T’s then it was off to pickup Ulti. I got there around 1:30 and left at 3:45

I am a little exhausted but it was a lot of fun. The ride was good and challenging. I ran into a couple people I hadn’t seen in a while: Loch and Naomi. They had gotten seperated from their group.

Ulti was really fun today. Running around in the sun playing with a hunk of plastic. I felt pretty good throughout the whole game, but got run down when the points were long (the wind played havoc with the game). I felt like I played a pretty strong game, but my feet paid the price as I developed blistes on both feet. Hopefully I will be good to go in time for Wednesdays game.

All in all I think I deserved that beer I drank tonight.

Kinsmen Locations

beautiful flowers

Tuesday night was the most recent Photoclub meeting. I chose the Kinsmen Gorge park (although I think it is called something else now), as the destination. I got there a little early, and since Yoshi was with me, I took him for a short walk. This allowed me to scout out a couple nice locations to shoot. I actually enjoyed the location, and came away with some nice shots.

I got a bad surprise when I got home though. I had forgotten to change the iso setting on my camera, and it was set at 1600. I can see some noise in each of my shots, so that is a little disappointing. Overall it was a good experience. Nice park too. I will definitely go back there.

Pics are here.

Panorama Coffee

faster than a speeding turtle

Sunday I got up a little early, and headed out to the Panorama Rec Centre to watch the Panorama Triathlon. Sox wasn’t in this one, but a couple other of our friends were. Their significant others were there, so I had some company which was fun. I practiced taking action shots, which is definitely a learned art. The overcast sky with slight sprinkling action made me keep the camera hidden as much as I could. Taking pictures of the swim was impossible. Either I was up high looking through the glass, or I was inide the pool area, and having my lens fog up. Aaarg. I think that the race went well for the two guys I was watching. Both looked good at the end of the race. After the race I grabbed a coffee and headed home to meet up with some guests. It was Sox’s bday, and we were having a barbeque.

Pics from the tri are here.

Tea Floats

cars on parade

This is only a few days late, but on Saturday Sox and I joined K and E to watch the Oak Bay Tea Party parade. It was pretty good! I had never been to it before, but for me it was the perfect length. Not too long, not too short. It had a couple marching bands, some fire truck, some military vehicles, and other random floats. Very fun.

After the parade was done we walked down to Willows beach to have a little fun at the midway. We had burgers and mini donuts too. Fun day.

Pics are here.

Stupidity Glare

Today was my last day for BtWW. I thought I had gotten through the week with only seeing a little stupidity, but today I saw two more incidents. I am still shaking my head.

The first was a little red car on Broughton right before Wharf. At first all I saw was garbage truck backing up, but that turned out to be to let oncoming traffic by since the red car was stopped. As I approached, the red car started backing up, evee though there were no reversing lights on the car. I stopped in the middle of the lane, ad car length back. I couldn’t see what the driver was doing, because of glare on the rear window, but I did see an arm flying about. This chick was wacked. She would back up a few feet, stop, then wave her arm about. I finally figureed out that she had missed her turn, and was trying to back up the road to get to it. By this point there were other cars behind me. Despite thinking otherwise I got on my bike, and rode around this crazy woman. As I was passing she was rolling down her window. Not sure what she was trying to accomplish. I think she missed the turn into a parking garage. My strongest advice to her would be to fix her reverse lights, and next time go around the block. It would have taken less time.

Not two blocks away was incident 2. I was riding along Wharf at a pretty good clip, with no traffic around me. As I got close to the cross walk at the foot of Yates a pedestrian approached. Before I knew it, dippy stepped off the curb and crossed right in front of me. Dippy never looked left before crossing the street! Dumbass. I was in a high gear, and never got to gear down before stopping for this guy. Taking off was difficult.

Two clueless people withing a couple blocks within a few minutes.

Curb Maneuver

With Bike to Work Week upon us again, there are a lot more cyclists out riding the streets. I am participating in BtWW, like I have in previous years. Most of the time riding the roads is fine, but every once in a while you run into someone who just doesn’t get it.

Today was that day.

I was riding home from work along Esquimalt road. As the light at Head turned red, I stopped in the right hand lane, about a metre from the curb (as is suggested by the BtWW pamphlet).

From the left hand lane a minivan starts creeping right, and ends up diagonal across my lane. I look at the driver (male around late 20’s I would guess), who looks back at me. The passenger is looking at me like I am an idiot. I watch incedulously as said futtbuck motors around the corner, then honks at me. Apparently he wanted me closer to the curb so he could get by. Lameass.

Why do people do crap like this? I hope it isn’t to save time since he would have only saved 30 seconds or so. People tend not to do stupid actions like this when there is a motorbike in the same situation, so why do it to a cyclist? Use your head and think a little.

Then, while I was waiting for the light at Esquimalt and Lampson I can see that in the cross traffic someone was turning left. The traffic behind them was changing lanes into the right turn only lane, and proceeding through the intersection. One guy in the opposing traffic almost got smacked because he turned left also, but someone had done the deak maneuver, so both cars honked at each other.

Morons.

Ulti Jumped

powered through the day

Had a great day. Rode to work: 4.5 km’s. Worked all day, then rode home (another 4.5 km’s).

Packed my stuff and headed back out the door. Back on the bike I rode over to the fields: 7.5 km’s.

I played Ulti, and had a great game. I felt strong throughout the game, and only felt out of breath once. The problem with our team is that we have too many people. There are just too many subs, so I don’t get to play as much as I would like to. Our team won the game which was the icing on the cake.

After the game I jumped back on the bike and rode home: another 7.5 km’s

Fun fun. After a quick bite to eat, and a shower, I am off to bed.

Folding Wrestlers

After leaving the bike race early I met up with Jim. We were heading over to catch the WWE wrestling show. Yeah baby! Jims friend snagged us 6th row floor seats.

We found Jims friends in line, and were heading in when I got stopped. The guy wanted to see what I had in my bag, so I opened it. He took one look at my camera and said “You can’t bring that in here.”

My heart sank. I asked why. “Because we consider that a professional camera.”

I was too chicken shit to try sneaking it through another line, so I ran back to the truck, and hid it there.

Getting back in line I was steamed. Everyone else was already inside when I was stopped, so I just had to wait. Grrr. :grr:

When I finally got it, Jim met me, and we headed down to our seat. Woah. Great seats. We were about 30 feet from the ring. Other woah. The ring looked a lot smaller in real life than it does on TV.

The show started right at 3pm. I must admit I wasn’t sure what the show would entail. Seeing it on TV is one thing, but seeing it live, surrounded by lots of screaming fans is something else. And screaming fans there were lots of. The best dressed award goes to the guy dressed as the Ultimate Warrior (albeit with much smaller muscles). Hilarious.

Another highlight went to the seating arrangements. The floor seats were nothing but small folding chairs zip-tied together. I am not a big guy, and most of the guys in our group weren’t either, but each of us was sitting hip to hip with one another. We watched a large woman occupying two seats two rows in front of us. Trouble soon found her as another large woman was supposed to occupy the seat beside her. Not very comfortable for anyone.

To really piss me off, some guy a couple rows ahead of us had a very similar camera to mine. His even had a battery grip, and a longish lens too. More grr.

Anyway, the show was a lot of fun. The first match wasn’t all that great, but then they had a Divas match. Surprisingly this turned out to be quite entertaining. The moves that the ladies were throwing were quite spectacular. Remember how I said that the ring looked smaller in real life? Well, the womens breasts looked a lot larger in real life.

Then some of the guy wrestlers came out. Holy crap! Huge is an understatement when it comes to describing the muscles on the wrestlers.

Some of the wrestlers we saw

It was pretty cool to see live some of the moves done on TV. The body slams, the throws, the DDT’s, etc. Didn’t get to see Triple H throw down a pedigree though.

In the Shelton vs Christian match, Shelton was the good guy, and Christian (canadian) the heel. The crowd threw the whole match off by cheering for the wrong person, and by heckling Shelton. It was quite funny to watch how the wrestlers handled it, and played up the crowd.

The topper on the whole spectacle was just after Triple H and Batista finished their match (Batista won), some guy from the crowd jumped the rail, and jumped into the ring. As he was jumping for joy with arms raised, the ref got a running start and tackled the guy from behind. ouch! It looked like it would have hurt a lot. The ref shoved the guy out of the ring, and he was pounced on by security. A couple police officers were right there too, and so was Triple H. Triple H was trying hard to get a piece of the crasher, but security managed to keep him away.

In all it was over 3.5 hours of entertainment. Pretty reasonable for $55. Plus, as a bonus, we got to see some of the finest rednecks available in the Victoria area!

Sizeable Work

the pain of racing

Yesterday was an eventful day. After lazing a bit in the morning, I headed out to do the grocery shopping for the week. Once that was complete, and after a little house tidying, I was off to watch the Bastion Square Grand Prix. The men started at 1, but I never got downtown until 1:30 or so.

When I arrived it was obvious that one guy had broken away from the pack, and was holding a sizeable lead. Slowly the main pack closed in on him, and caught him. There was one team that was pretty sizeable too. I think there was at least 6 riders, if not 7 on that team. I ran into Duncan and Todd, and talked with them for a bit. Todd mentioned that if I had the right pass, he could have taken me out. Before I knew it, Todd had to go work at one point, so I tried to get a few action shots of him.

Pics are here.