The Think Tank

As many of you know because you so generously donated on my behalf, Joel and I took part in Reach the Beach, an annual bike ride fundraiser for the American Lung Association.

This year’s ride caused a bit of a stir and earned some airtime on the local news stations because the police in Amity – the halfway point on the 104 mile ride from Portland – setup a sting operation for bikers who ran a stop sign.  I have definite opinions on that, but I will address those in a bit.

All in all the ride raised more than $600,000 dollars for the ALA, which is a great accomplishment and an event record.  The ride was limited to 3,000 riders and sold out more than two weeks before the deadline.

The ride itself proved to be very pretty and mostly enjoyable, but much more difficult than either Joel or I thought it would be, and I had anticipated it being pretty tough.

Everyone I spoke to about the ride insisted that it was very flat, and indeed there was a significant portion of dead flat land from Newberg to Grand Ronde, but that leaves about 75 miles of climbing.  It wasn’t always super steep, but it was pretty constant.  As is clearly evident in the picture above, I am not a pristine physical specimen, but even still, this was pretty tough.

In fact, it was so hard that neither Joel or I finished.  Joel made it 50 miles and I got as far as 82, but eventually the hills and killer headwind were too much for me.

Click through for the full details.

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*** UPDATE ***

With the aid of some Goof Off and Turtlewax Rubbing Compound – and a little bit of elbow grease – we managed to get all of the paint off of my car.  So at least there is a happy ending to this frustrating tale.

*** ****

We went down to Sweet Home last weekend to help Debbie repair/replace her fence that was blown down back in March, and when we returned home we found that someone had spray-painted my Corsica.

Adding insult to injury, a fuel injector went out on my Z on the way to Shannon’s house last night.

All-in-all, it was a rough weekend for my cars.

Mom and I came up to Seattle last night so I could shoot in a club-hosted STAR FITA event this weekend, which is just a fancy way to say that this tournament meets all of the qualifications of a US Archery Association shoot, and therefore any score shot at this eventcounts towards team qualifications and national and/or world records.

Sadly, I do not have to worry about breaking any national or world records this weekend.  Today stunk to high heaven.  I experimented with an adjustment to my rest yesterday, actually making the arrow tune out as it should instead of relying on group-tuning, which is to say adjusting things until it seems to group well despite the arrow being all catiwhompass on the bow.  It seemed to be working alright yesterday afternoon, but today was a whole different story.

Sadly still, I can’t blame it all on that.  I shot pretty badly on top of everything, not holding well, executing poorly and eventually I got very frustrated and had a hard time even thinking straight, much less shooting straight.

I shot a 1335 today, which is 105 points off perfect. It wasn’t the worst score I’ve ever shot, but it was definitely among the worst I can remember.   (To give some contrast, National Champions are shooting right around 1400, and you can probably make the US Archery Team if you stay in the 1380’s.  Decent guys at the state level shoot around the 1360’s.  I expected to shoot around 1350-1360 and I sailed smoothly under that bar without even rustling my hair.)

They didn’t get around to posting the scores by the time I left, so I don’t know for sure, but the only guy I saw who was scoring worse than me was the poor fellow who lost an arrow early in the morning and only had five arrows left to shoot… which is problematic, since you are actually supposed to shoot six arrows at a time.

Oh well.

Seems like every post I’ve made about a tournament since my return to archery has been pretty much just like this one: not the worst I’ve ever done, but very far below where I think I should be at this stage, which in turn is along way under where I was.  This one was more disappointing to me the others, since I’ve been practicing pretty well lately, so I thought I might actually be able to do something respectable this weekend.

I did put the rest back during lunch, and the second half of the day was better, although not terribly impressive given that we were at the close distances.  Still, it did give me a little glimmer of hope for tomorrow.

We will start out tomorrow with an elimination round at 10 AM, and follow that up with 900 round in the afternoon.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the last couple of days, you have no doubt heard that Brandon Roy single-handedly pulled the Blazers back from the brink of destruction on Saturday, outscoring the entire Dallas team in the fourth quarter and erasing an 18 point deficit to win the game 84-82 and tie up the series at two games apiece.

What do our beloved Blazers get for all their trouble?  Game Five tonight.  In Dallas.

The stats still favor the Mavericks in this game: They have a deeper bench, they have a lot of veteran savvy, and they have one of the best closers in the NBA.  Worst of all, according to ESPN’s John Hollinger, the win-loss record for series where the higher seeded team has won the first two games is 64-8.

However, there are several things for Blazer fans to be hopeful about.  First and foremost, Portland’s lanky defenders have done a good job of keeping Nowitzki contained for at least three quarters a game, and they did a great job of denying him the ball in the fourth quarter Saturday.  Second, emotions flow like tidal waves, and right now Portland is riding a really high one.  Third, losing a game when you had a 23 point lead with 13 minutes left is enough to shake anyone’s confidence, especially a team that is fighting the demons of early Playoff departures.  And finally, the Dallas Mavericks are one the Not-So-Elite Eight who have found themselves on the wrong side of that 64-8 ratio that Hollinger talked about in his article today.

No matter what demons may be lurking in the back of the Maverick’s minds, Dirk and Company aren’t going to lay down and give us anything.  Portland will need to scratch and claw its way to a first round victory.  So… what does this mean to you?  It means that you need to offer whatever prayers you can to whatever deity you admire… maybe offer up your first born… maybe poke pins in a little blonde-haired doll with a 41 on its back…  maybe even sacrifice an errant virgin or two… whatever it takes.  That’s what it means to be the Sixth Man.

The game will be aired at 5:30PM on KGW.

The NBA Playoffs have officially arrived, and our #6 Portland Trail Blazers are set to face off  against the #3 Dallas Mavericks at 6:30PM tonight.

This is the match-up that I wanted to see, not because of the Mav’s history of First Round departures or because I think we are that much better than them, but simply because I think our players and strengths match-up better against Dallas than any of our other possible opponents, and therefore give us our best chance to move on to the Second Round.  That isn’t to say that it will be easy.  Dallas didn’t rack up 56 wins be accident.

This series has captured the attention of the whole league because the two teams are so well matched, especially since the Gerald Wallace trade.  Predictions from the top sportswriters  are about 50/50, with a razor thin edge going to Dallas, despite Jason Terry’s comments that he feels his team is the underdog in the series.

What does that mean to you?  It means you have to get yourself in front of the nearest television, don your luckiest Blazer paraphernalia (or least something red and black) , hoist your favorite beverage and cheer our boys on with all the furor you can manage!

The game will be aired on ESPN and locally on KGW.