A weekend of taper

Saturday -
Portland celebrates cycling for 2 weeks with http://www.shift2bikes.org/cal/viewpp2009
With this weekend being taper for Pac Crest HIM I thought a great way to be active yet not tax myself would be to partake in the Pedalpalooza Scavenger Hunt.
I teamed up with Mark (new PDX tri club member) and his buddy Scott. We were strangers before the ride and Facebook buddies after :) The rules were pretty simple. We were given a 4 page (yea that's right! 4 page!) list of items we needed to either bring back, take pictures of or video record, all within a 5 hour time frame. Quickly we raced off!

*Here we crashed a bike wedding! The bride had killer veil on her helmet, it was serious awesome!
We later saw the bride and groom at another Pedalpalooza bike event - Bike Jousting. Mark took a video of this and if he Youtubes it I'll add the link. The bride and groom went straight at it and the groom knocked her on her ass! It was LMFAO funny!

*Hehe, I think I should mention the diversity of the bikes in our scavenger hunt group. I was riding Carnage. I felt pretty out of place riding a TT on a casual BS type ride but Feltalia is in the shop so I had no other choice. Mark was riding his Kona road bike and Scott, Lol, Scott was riding Wasabi. Lmfao! Wasabi was Mark's scrap put together bike. It was a fixie, with very poor breaks and tires that were shredded - please keep this in mind as I mention later down the line some of the places we road.

*After the bike wedding we headed downtown to Pioneer Square in search of bike cops. We didn't find any down there but we did find a family of 8 that allowed us to use their bikes and helmets for random things to check off our list.

Here I sit balancing 8 or 9 helmets on my head. I only held them up for a few seconds as you can see Scott removing his hand.

*We saw a woman with a pig snout on her nose. Not sure what she was doing, it was rather disturbing.

*We then headed down to the Saturday Market for more craziness. While we were down there we got 2 video's - One of Scott riding Wasabi and playing - well I don't know what instrument it was. It was the thing where you click two sticks together. He was actually pretty good and held a beat to the guy in the background who was playing a song with several instruments. I played a tambourine on Carnage but had no rhythm or song. I was mainly concerned with making noise with the instrument and not falling off my bike :)

*Along the waterfront we got picture of Scott of 10 different bikes in different poses. Seriously badass.


*Finally got a picture with a bike cop!

*For an additional 30 points we rode up to the Zoo and then up to Mt. Tabour. We really should have gotten more points for this as
A. We were the only team to do it!
B. The Zoo and Mt. Tabor are both big on elevation gain
C. Are polar opposites - West Vs East
But alas we did it! And big ups to Scott for doing so on a FIXIE! I felt bad as we're climbing and I'm shifting down taking it easy (Hey now, I am in taper!) and Scott is mashing up the hills with no gear to switch to. I think Scott deserves the Hardcore medal for the ride. I don't have the picture of the Zoo but here's one of us at the summit of Mt. Tabour


Once we descended the Zoo we hit up St. Cupcake to pick up a vegan pastry to bring back to the judges (on the list - what a scam!). We decided to indulge in a little sugary goodness ourselves

Here you have
3 mini toasted coconut cream
3 mini carrot cake (my personal favorite)
2 mini chocolate with butter cream
2 mini vanilla chocolate chip
and one cookies and cream large vegan cupcake

Here I am devouring a coconut cream cupcake

Sooooo DAMN GOOD!


*Here we are with the statute tributing the Zoo Bombers - crazy ass mofo's that bomb down the Zoo hills on kid bikes.
This is one of my favorite pics


*Bike on furniture, random and weird I know - but it was on the list

*Off we went to River City - who totally hooked us up with points. There we were able to get 10 punched tubes, a broken derailer, bike shop receipts, pictures of bike tattoos and murals. Mark even got a woman to let us get a picture of her sunburn (on the list) even though she didn't really have one - she just rocked a blushed face. We got a double score with River City's free espresso. Woot! Woot! The question was did we really need caffeine after all that cup cake sugar? :)

*After River City we headed up to do the Mt. Tabor climb were we rode by the Bicycle Jousting. What a scene! Looks like 250+ bikes all of which might have come from a junk yard. We had to stop to get more picture and laugh our asses off some more.

*Once we submitted we decided to ride out east to try to get the highest address point. We got a picture at Old Chicago at 103rd and decided it was time to head back to the start. Riding around 102nd on the east side is scary - it's a one stop shop - hooker and meth all at once!


*Fun random pic heading back to the start

All in all we ending up riding a little over 30 miles in a 5 hour duration and managed to get 2 significant climbs in. We ended up taking 2nd place with about 200 points separating us from 1st and 3rd. The first place group was a little more bike crazy then I think I ever want to be. At the end they all got naked....it was a tad bit on the disturbing side.

2nd place won us $35 - Money that was well spent with recovery beer, food and a soaking tub session at The Kennedy School.
I couldn't have asked for a better taper day. Met new friends, lmao (seriously my abs hurt today) and got a little bit of fitness and beer in! Booyah!

Big ups to Mark for taking documenting the event via media
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Sunday
Eh - I felt the beer the next morning. Sleep was pretty much none existent. I didn't end up getting to bed until around 2 and then I was up every 90 minutes to 2 hours. Not so good. I met my gf Nicole at Leif Erickson for my last LSD run before the race. She too had been up a little late and had a little too much poison - so we were great running partners!

Easy LSD run - 75 mins/8.75 miles - 8:40 pace
Run felt REALLY, REALLY good!

Post run we decided what better way to recover then with Bloody Mary's! We hit up Kell's for food and drinks. My oh my, Kell's was quite the experience. As soon as we walked in a group of guys invited us to join their table. We politely declined and sat at a small two seater table. Well that didn't stop them, they decided to intrude with their chairs. For the next hour or so Nicole and I downed 2 Bloody Mary's each to drown out Dumb and Dumber. I don't know if Dumb and Dumber fits better or Twiddle Dee and Twiddle Dum. Wow! One of the tools decided he wanted to show us an example of his complete stupidity, he lifts up his shirt and flashed his tattoo. It's an American Flag all up his keg of a stomach. OMG! I asked if he was in the military, hence reasoning for the flag. That was not the case, he was drunk in Thailand and got in a heated argument with a Britain - which resulted in a 15 hour ugly tattoo. Not that I think the American Flag is ugly, his tattoo was done poorly and his *ahem* canvas - pot belly did not do it justice. Nicole and I headed to the bathroom and had the staff sneak us out the back door. Douche bags.