I love summer

Here are some things I love about summer:

• Swimming
• Bike rides
• Sundresses
• Campfires
• Drinking beer outside

This weekend, some of my favorite people and I went to the Truckee Brew Fest and I indulged in all of them.

Drinking beer outdoors with Kelly, Eva, Katie, and Allison (not pictured),

I got a lot of good swag, including this snap bracelet/beer coozy from Alaska Brewery.

After an afternoon of drinking, what's more fun than going on a little bike ride?

And by "little bike ride", I mean that Katie and I attempted to ride this bmx bike at the same time around a grass field.

We were not very successful.

We tried switching it up, with me on the handlebars. Still, no dice.

Some friendly bystanders even attempted to help us out with no luck. Oh, well.

We then walked to Allison's friend's house by the Truckee River, where we went for a little dip in the chilly water. I think most of the water in the Truckee right now was snow about an hour ago.

No pictures of swimming, as we were in our skivvies. Here is a picture of our host's dog instead. His name is Tucker.

I kept trying to rename him Travis and steal him. I was not successful.

The night ended, like any awesome summer night, with a campfire. Also, Tucker/Travis kept humping Kelly. It was pretty funny.

The next morning we were not the most energetic lot, so after brunch at Jax (their veggie burgers are amazing!), we each bought 4 different types of liquids and laid on the public docks at Donner Lake.

It was a beautiful day, best appreciated through sunglasses.

On the way home, we drove by a Renaissance Fair and saw some LARP-ers.

The End

Ready...Set...Cancelled! Or my attempt to spectate the 1st leg of the Amgen Tour of California

Snow in May? Tahoe, this is why we can't have nice things. South Lake Tahoe was the host of the overall start for the 2011 Amgen Tour of California. We were all so excited!

There were tons of local bike-related activities in the week leading up to the race.

Like community bike parades in the beautiful sunshine. The sunshine was not to last, though. Katie and I woke up, bright and early to a blanket of snow. The race was delayed and shortened, but we looked on the brightside - more time to sleep!

We woke up again and rode our bikes to Sprouts, which, in addition to coffee, magazines, and delicious food, was on the race route.

The snow was still falling on and off, and the wind whipped around the already fallen snow, and roads were clear and wet. Pretty soon volunteers started showing up to close down the roads, and my excitement was growing.

The nice employees at Sprouts even gave us pots and wooden spoons to bang as noise-makers.

I'm so stoked! And squinting.

The motorcade arrived! The race must be starting soon. Eager locals lined the streets, waiting to cheer on the racers.

But, alas. The race was cancelled at the start line. We had pots, but no reason to bang them.

So Katie and I headed towards the start line (at Stateline!) to see if there was any action happening.

We saw some SWAG First Responders, people whose job it was to pick up the things thrown down by the riders. I don't know what the TMDL for squeeze bottles is.

This guy was my favorite. At this point we heard about the after party/lifestyle festival happening at Northstar (the intended finish). We decided to head to where the party was. The appearance of team cars on our way cemented that decision.

Team Rabobank.

Team HTC -Highroad. Someone in that car waved to us. I like to imagine it was Mark Cavendish.

Men in spandex! Just what we were looking for. I think that this was Team Sky.

The sad, empty starting line. As I drove up towards Northstar, we spotted something exciting in the distance! A team of total bad asses, who said, "Screw the snow storm. We're biking to North Lake anyway."

We did the only reasonable thing. We pulled over to cheer them on.

Now I am totally rooting for Team Kelly Benefit Strategies - OptumHealth.

Not only did they ride through the snow storm, they called us awesome!

Team Jelly Belly/Kenda was pulled over on the side of the road. Probably eating Jelly Bellies. As we approached Northstar, we got excited for the glitzy and glamorous after party. This is what we actually found:

Maybe next year, Amgen. On the bright side, the Girls Gone Wild bus was in town.

Free Guinness Earmuffs!

I got off work a little early yesterday, so I got to hit the gym a little early and watch UCSB get pummeled from the elliptical before spin class. I ended up doing 45 minutes on the elliptical and then 90 minutes of spinning.

I was super hungry by the time I left the gym, but instead of eating like a responsible human, I instead picked up Katie and we headed to MacDuff's for some St. Patrick's Day fun.

I hadn't gone out for St. Patrick's Day in a couple of years. Not since I'd been in B-ham with these crazies:

We must have had some pretty awesome parking karma, because we got a spot right away. It was packed inside, so we had a beer while we waited for a table to open up.

Pint of strong beer + no dinner + more than 2 hours of cardio = that one beer hit me pretty hard.

Luckily, we were finally able to flag down a waiter and order some food. I had some delicious veggie pizza, french fries, and more beer. Some of Katie's coworkers, and our intern Carissa showed up, and a good time was had by all. And more beer was had. Of course, in honor of the holiday, we also had Irish Car Bombs. And I got free Guinness earmuffs!

I had a lovely (if cold) walk back to my car in MacDuff's parking lot this morning. Luckily for my flat-clad feet, it didn't start snowing until about 2 pm this afternoon. It's snowed a good couple of inches already.

In exciting, snow-related news- my snowboard came! I now have a board and bindings, I just need boots and to put all of them together. Last weekend's snowboarding outing was pretty frustrating by day two. Learning something new is so hard! I might pay to take a lesson this weekend.

My knees were really bugging me this weekend, and I think that I just have to admit that my knees can't handle half marathon training right now. Goodbye, American River Half. I think that part of the problem is that my running is pretty much exclusively on the treadmill right now. Maybe I'll try again this summer when I can run on a more forgiving surface, like trails or the beach.

So I'm going to stick with the more manageable distances in tri-training, snowboarding, and dreaming about bike season.

Expensive dreaming.

OMG a SUV

I'm going to look at a car tomorrow! Wish me luck.

It's like I don't even care about the environment.

For serious, though, I wish I didn't have to buy a car. I wish that I could be car free again. But South Lake Tahoe is not a walk-friendly city. Especially in the winter. Businesses aren't required to shovel their sidewalks so the only place to walk is on the shoulder of the highway. There are exactly 2 bus routes that run every half hour and are almost always late.

Keep Tahoe Blue? Maybe Tahoe would stay more blue if everyone didn't have to drive everywhere.

At least I'll be able to ride my bike when spring arrives (in mid-June).

The end of summer

I had a weird "fall" this year. I'm going from fall weather in Seattle to summer in Santa Barbara and then directly to winter in South Lake Taco.

As I'm leaving for SLT (not to be confused with the SLUT)...gulp...tomorrow, I thought that I should get in some summer weather enjoyment while I still could.

So I went for a little bike ride. I rode up this mountain road that is totally awesome for riding, steep, nicely paved, and hardly any vehicle traffic. I used to ride it all the time on my road bike, but this was the first time I did it on my mountain bike.

I was a little worried that it would be really hard compared to my road bike, but it wasn't bad at all. I even passed someone on a road bike going up. That made me feel like such a bad ass. They'd probably ridden up and down like 12 times, but whatever. I still felt like a bad ass.

Here is a picture I took from the top of the first big part of the hill. That's how high I usually go. I'm not crazy.

The road. Look how nice the pavement is.

Today, I enjoyed the sun by doing yoga in the patch of sun that comes in the window of Dan's living room. Speaking of Dan, here is a picture of him in his Halloween costume. Unfortunately, you can't see his unicorn tail. It was pink and purple yarn and I made it myself.

It's almost fall!

As much as I love summer, fall is definitely my favorite season. But here are some pictures and stories about my end of summer fun!

A kiteboarder enjoys the extremely windy Lake Tahoe.

I went to California for work one last time (hopefully! I had a job interview on Monday for an awesome job in Seattle that I really hope to get!). We got a lot of stuff done, and they extended my part time gig until December, so I have that to fall back on, if I don't get another job. Then I went to Lake Tahoe for fun. I went biking at a resort for the first time, and, while it was a ton of fun, it was really really hard, too. I got blisters, then my blisters got blisters, then my blister blisters became an open wound, and, finally, my open wound got a blister. Lovely! I convinced Dan to go camping, so we stayed in a beautiful spot in the Tahoe National Recreation Area. There were no showers, so we washed with biodegradable hippie soap in the Truckee River. It was chilly. The campground was apparently the go-to spot for dirt bike and atv riders, so we were surrounded by large groups in $200k motor homes. Oh well.

I made sure to sample the local brews. Fifty-Fifty Brewing Company, Truckee, California

We also (inadvertently) ate at two restaurants that had been featured on the Food Network. The first was a burger place called Burger Me, that had been on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. I wasn't all that impressed. My homemade veggie patty was super boring and pretty tasteless. I have made better black bean patties myself! The second was The Squeeze Inn which I think was on Throwdown with Bobby Flay or something. They claim to have the best omelettes on the planet. I did not get an omelette, but I did taste someone else's and it was delicous.

Gasworks Park in Seattle

Dan came to visit the northwest. We did some Seattle-y things like the Ballard Locks and Gasworks Park and Pho and lots and lots of coffee shops.

Dan was not sold on coffee shops. So I bought him a cookie.

We then had an unofficial (no book discussion) book club meeting. There were jello shots and big mamas and free flan and sombreros and the beaver and dollar well drinks and Glo and fancy dancing. Then there were cheese fries and gatorade and coffee.

Birthday twins Ren and Jodi celebrate their birthday, a bit late.

I also went biking at Galbraith. The two mile hike and bike to the top was not the most fun I've had in my life and neither was the first 2/3 of the first trail that I could barely climb down with my bike, let alone ride. However, the rest was tons of fun, but makes me really want a full suspension bike. We also drove up to the Mt. Baker ski area, where Dan really wanted to build a mountain bike park until he looked around and noticed all of the snow. In August.

Sasquatch!

My new favorite things

I love Poladroid! A free program that turns your pictures into polaroids. It's so much fun.

The Space Needle from the Hamilton Viewpoint at dusk.

Someone paragliding at Elings Park in Santa Barbara.

Iced tea with fruit! I have been drinking approximately 45 glasses a day.
Step 1: Brew some black tea, stronger than you would normally drink it.
Step 2: Fill a glass with frozen fruit (I like strawberries, peaches, and mangoes).
Step 3: Pour tea over frozen fruit. Cool.
Step 4: Drink up, then eat the fruit.
Step 5: Repeat.

Tea with fruit next to dead herbs.

My mountain bike finally came! It's bright green and yellow with pink grips and I love it!

My favorite birthday present. Thanks Dan!

One of my favorite people ever came to visit. Emily was in town for a wedding. She is so very popular that I only got to see her one night, but we had a great time. We drank some $5 martinis, caught up, and played bingo.

Facebook wives reunited!

I figured out the macro setting on my camera. I disturbed this spider's home when I finally got rid of the evidence of our failed container garden.

Sorry spider! Keep eating mosquitoes.