The Think Tank

It was chilly and wet in the morning

Joel and I took part in the Worst Day of the Year Ride, the second largest organized ride in Oregon.  It is so named because statistically speaking the middle of February is when the worst day of the year occurs, but despite that mathematical fact, the previous 8 rides have all taken place under blue skies with temps in the 50’s.

This was my first year taking part in the ride, and of course, it is also the first year that it has rained.  Go figure.  Fortunately it didn’t rain terribly hard or for very long, probably only the first hour or so, then it dried out.  By mid-afternoon the sun even made a cameo appearance.

I left my house around 7:30 and rode over to Joel’s house, where we met up and rode down by the Rose Garden, along the East Side Esplinade and then to the start line .  Our registration also paid for food and drinks at all of the many rest stops, including doughnuts and coffee/tea/cocoa here at the start line.

(continue reading…)

We stayed up late last night having fun with Ansel and Tiffany, so we didn’t get moving until about 9am. We had breakfast at A neat little diner, then we hit the road for Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center.

I didn’t realize it, but our launch tickets also give us two days admittance to the Space Center.

We are doing the touristy stuff in advance of the launch tonight (weather permitting). Right now we are on the bus headed out to the assembly areas and the closest spot where we can see the shuttle on the pad.

More to come later, along with pics of course!!

Update:

We are in line now and waiting for our bus, which is not set to load until 1:30 (two hours). Then of course it will be three more hours until the actual launch.

Joel and I are on the way to Florida for the Space Shuttle launch scheduled for early Sunday morning. It is the last night time shuttle launch scheduled, since they are retiring the shuttle this year.

We are laid over in Houston for a few minutes. I will post updates and pictures regularly, so check back often over the next few days!

Tim, Joel and myself took part in the first ever Hood River Harvest Ride, a bike ride through the back roads Around the Hood River / Odell / Parkdale area. There were a total of four loops to choose from and riders could do as many or as few as they wanted to make the ride more challenging. We chose to do the main 28 mile Parkdale loop and 16 mile loop out to Panarama Point and back.

It was a good ride and turned out to be a bit more challenging than any of us had anticipated, but we had a good time nonetheless and I for one would love to do it again next year.

Since I was busy riding I didn’t take any photos, but Aleks took some at the event.  I’ll be posting those as soon as I get them.

You can get all the details after the bump…

(continue reading…)