collar update II

As mentioned, I had a little set back on the fourth week of my recovery. I went to the doctor on Monday and he said I’ll need another week or two to heal as I expected. Then I screwed myself again. On Tuesday, week six, I messed it up for the second time. I was sitting on the couch, reached down to pick something up off the floor with my collarbone against the arm rest, and reached a half inch further than I should have and put a little pressure on the bone. It felt like it bent in at the break. Well that set me back another couple weeks. I’ll never heal at this rate. We’ll see what the doc says a week from Monday when I’m supposed to go in for a second final follow-up. I’ll get to schedule my third follow-up. Someday I’ll get on my bike and race cars again. Someday.

parents visit

The parents came for their annual summer visit over the weekend. Beth came up without Matt. They came to Arlington first for the weekend this time to spend the following week helping Beth with wedding stuff in Raleigh. I was coming back from Montana and got home at 5:00. Beth was still stuck in traffic. We decided to go to Captain Pell’s Crabhouse out near Scott’s. It was your typical dive crab shack. Scott and I each got a dozen crabs and everyone sat around for 2 hours while I ate mine.

The plan on Saturday was to possibly hit the Colombia Pike Blues Festival but the day started out with rain. We decided to take a family trip to Whole Foods and get food for the BBQ tomorrow. The Whole Foods in Fairfax is pretty big and they have all the goodies inside. I’ve heard from local beer folks that they have a few taps flowing and you can drink a fine pint while shopping. We heard the live band as soon as we walked in. Dad, Beth and I cruised around and tried some samples while Scott and Mom shopped. They had not one but two tables set up for beer tastings. We had the Serria Nevada Kellerweis for the first time. I also tried the Avery 16. They had a much better selection than my local Whole Foods. I may have to come back for the beer.

Saturday night we ate at Ray’s. It was melt in your mouth flesh as usual. They even brought out glasses for our beer without us asking for them this time. There was some miscommunication on the reason for the reservation and they thought it was a special birthday or anniversary and brought us out some desserts. It was yummy. After dinner Beth and I met up with Judy at Ragtimes. Some female singer was there she was familiar with who was wasted and singing Led Zepplin songs all night long.

On Sunday we went to a wine festival in Manassas. All the local wineries were there. It was Mom’s first wine festival. Probably Dad’s too. I tried to touch base with Marc Wismer but he was at the Outer Banks. The wine fest was right in downtown and pretty full for the venue. It took forever to get to the front of the lines. Everyone was enjoying the full line-up from each of the wineries so each booth would take 10 or 15 minutes. Compare that with the few seconds it takes to pour a brew at a beer festival. We bought a bottle of the Viognier from Horton and sat down for a bit.

We BBQed up at Scott’s for dinner. Kabobs, corn, and sangria were had by all. Along with a bunch of pre-dinner snacks. The Wii was the entertainment around the house for the weekend. We all jammed out on the full Guitar Hero band. Playing the drums was cool but their drum set was broken. It is an interesting concept but I still don’t understand why someone wouldn’t spend all that time actually learning an instrument.

They didn’t leave until late morning so Beth took me to my follow up appointment for my collarbone. Another summer and another weekend with the family.

pics and videos

collar update

Its been about 5 weeks since I broke my clavicle. On week 4 I was doing real well and wasn’t using my sling very much. I was getting a lot better range of movement and felt little discomfort. Then all of the sudden the bone started separating again. Not sure if I was using my arm too much or what. I assume that put me back over a week on my recovery. I’m using my sling about half the time now. I hope in another week I won’t be using it. I checked out my muscle mass for the first time and holy crap I think I don’t have any shoulder muscle any more on my right side. I still have my bicep, tricep and forearm, but that muscle off the side of my shoulder has disappeared. It used to be much larger than my left side. Guess I’ll be working out a bit once I’m healed. I’m supposed to go to the doctor for my last follow up on Friday but that ain’t going to happen as I’ll be on a plane.

Big Sky

I'm back in Montana for work. We are doing bringing all kinds of funky technical gizmos to the remote wilderness. Tomorrow will be a very interesting test of a temporary wireless network that we are going to set up over some 10 or 20 square miles with wave relay nodes on the ground and aircraft in the air. We will be transmitting all kinds of valuable data over the network to mimic a large fire incident in the mountains. Let me know if you have Google Earth and I can send you a KMZ that shows what we are doing.

After hanging out in the remote wilderness all day we hit the Blacksmith Brewery in small little Stevensville yesterday. It’s a relatively new brewery and unfortunately their fine dry hopped IPA was out. After a few beers we headed over to Bob’s house, site of the homemade Google Earth crop circle, to shoot some golf balls on his newly created island green. They dug out a nice little pool in the irrigation ditch out back, created an island, and Bob laid down some sand with a green in the middle. My two golf playing coworkers thought this was the coolest thing ever. Cooler than Bob’s internet controlled gopher sniper gun and his 10 barrel 22 caliber gatling gun. Bob is a smart technical guy who doesn’t eat or sleep so he puts together some pretty slick toys. Of course yours truly was the only one who doesn't play golf and the only one who got a ball to stick on the green (with a broken clavicle).

When we are traveling we never get back to the hotel before 9. Last night we got back close to midnight. And there was still a slight glow of sunlight visible. It is nuts how late it stays light out here. Gets bright early as well.

All week long there has been a tiny yellow finch looking bird flying outside the windows of the hotel restaurant. The little guy goes nuts and continually tries to fly through the glass. He has been doing this for days. Someone suggested he was a house bird that got loose. I think this is a good theory, the little thing must be scared out of his wits flying around other birds 5x his size.

Stopped by Big Sky Brewery as usual after work today. Next time I’m making it a priority to hit Kettlehouse for the first time.

I flew out first class and I best get upgraded to first class on the way back!

Pics from Thursday field testing of wireless wave relay network

the best food ever

Fresh berries are the best food ever. The fact that they are natural and healthy is just an added bonus. They evolved over millions of years to be irresistibly tasty. I love raspberries and strawberries. My mom used to have a patch of each in our backyard and they have been on the top of my list since. Fresh off the vine berries are mmmm good.

Having a vendor at my neighborhood farmers market that sells fresh berries is da bomb. Apparently I’m not the only one who feels this way because there is always a long line; much longer than any other vendor. It is not a problem though because it goes fast and they bring a ton of whatever is in season: strawberries, blueberries, cherries, raspberries, and blackberries. Well this year the line is just ridicules. It’s about 100 feet long! Last week I got a quart of strawberries and they were delicious. This week I got there before 10pm and the line was longer than I’ve ever seen it. They had raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, and cherries. Although they were running quite low on the raspberries and I didn’t expect any to be left by the time I got to the front of the line. Sure enough when I got up there they appeared to be gone but there were about 4 half-quarts hidden in a box with blueberries. The ten people in line in front of me grabbed those real quick once they were discovered. Then a few minutes later when I was about to step up to their cashier the guy came out of their big truck with one more flat of raspberries that were hidden away. I was able to get two half-quarts along with a quart of strawberries.

Next week I’ll have to wake up earlier. The only reason I was up this Saturday was because of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It started at 9am. SPEED is broadcasting a good portion of it as usual. Audi versus Peugeot again. 24 hours non-stop. Exciting stuff.

Mmmm… vanilla ice cream and strawberries on a hot humid day. With a fine framboisé of course.

2nd ever MLB game

I attended my 2nd ever MLB game yesterday. It was my first time in the new Nationals Stadium. My first MLB game was the same team a year or two ago at RFK Stadium. And I think my only other professional game was the Toledo Mud Hens many many years ago. I’m not much of a baseball fan. I think my boss Robie got these tickets from his wife who got them from work. Robin met me on her bike after an ultimate frisbee clinic. I came via metro since I’m not quite healed yet. They had a free bike valet which was nice. Not too many bikes there this rainy weeknight.

The radar showed all kinds of storms in the area and I thought for sure rain would hit around the start time. We got to our seats right after they started and were impressed with the stadium. There were lots of seats, you could sit very high and far away if you were not so fortunate. No one checked our tickets as we walked up to our seats in the lower section although there was an older gentleman checking the first 10 rows right in front of us. Our tickets ended up being quite good; 12 rows away from 3rd base. The place wasn’t half full. And there were many up on the 3rd tier. You could see signs from your seats that told you which section you could find Ben’s Chili Bowl or Five Guys Burgers & Fries.

Around the 4th or 5th inning I saw everyone on the opposite side of the stadium stand up and head for cover. The rain was coming. I was worried about Robin getting her bike on the metro among the thousands of people so we wanted to beat the crowd. Robin ran off to get her bike and the rain ended up tapering off without doing much. Both of us had enough baseball for one season so we headed for the metro anyway one block away. On both sides of the short block is a fence lining the road that has advertisements for the new stores coming in the rubble behind the fence. At the metro the station manger wouldn’t let Robin take her bike through. No bikes allowed on game days. This is a reasonable rule similar to the restriction during rush hour. Except we were the only ones in the station. No one else left the game. The station manager looked at me like I was an idiot and said “I can’t change the rules for you.” So accommodating of her. So Robin rode back to Arlington and met me in Clarendon for some dinner.

I found out later the game was delayed at some point and eventually play resumed until after 1am.

An afternoon in Oregon

On Friday our only commitment was a business development lunch with a guy from Northrop Grumman in Portland. He suggested a place called Henry’s 12th Street Tavern in the Pearl District. With over 100 fine beers on tap I was quite pleased with the choice. They had a ring of ice going around the bar to keep your beer cold. I had a Russian River Blind Pig IPA. I had this last Friday at the Lupulin Reunulin tasting for the first time and this one didn’t have that fresh hop taste I remembered. I could tried a few but being a business lunch we kept it at one. After lunch Robie and I headed west to the coast. I sorta wanted to head east, see Multnomah Falls, the Columbia River Gorge, drive past Mt Hood again, and stop by Full Sail Brewery in Hood River.

It was a nice drive out to Seaside, OR. We did see a lot of clear cuts although none on Forest Service land. I navigated with GPS and Google Maps on my phone. We stopped by Fort Clatsop National Memorial and learned more about Lewis and Clark. This is the point where they found the Pacific Ocean. Robie and I have seen some L&C history while driving around Montana. We walk a very short loop in the park and saw huge trees and a bunch blown over. We saw a ton of trees blown over on the drive and we forgot to ask the Rangers at the visitor center how that happened. Huge root systems were standing straight up all over the place. 

We drove in to Astoria on the huge Columbia River. A friend from work told me that it is difficult to sail in to the river from the ocean at times because of the strong current. Robie remembered that the Goonies was set in Astoria and the house was in some neighborhood here. The town isn’t all that big and the neighborhoods on the hill looked like they fit what I remembered from the movie. I did a quick Google search on my phone and the address came right up. It was only a block or two out of our way. In the five minutes we were there to snap pics two other cars stopped. They must have people coming by constantly because of a movie from 1985. 

Goonies pics

We drove along the river back to Portland. It was a long drive from McKenzie Bridge to Portland to the coast and back to Portland. We got some drizzle but it turned out to be a decent day. Back in Portland we passed all kinds of seedy strip joints on our way to the hotel by the airport. The Embassy Suites there is quite nice. I was happy to check in to first class on both of my connections back to DC that night. And the two beautiful 6’ tall African American flight attendants didn’t hurt.

I finally make it to the NW

We’ve talked about it at work for awhile and finally I scored a trip out to the Pacific Northwest. I was extra excited having just tasted some fine NW brews at SAVOR. We are going to implement some mobile technology on various forests around the country and the Deschutes National Forest happens to be one of them. Robie and I flew in to Portland where the Rogue Brewery brewpub was representing. Usually Robie and I travel in Montana and we like to laugh at the Hummer H3 drivers who look out of place among the outdoorsie Subarus. Robie has elite status so we just walk right up to our car and as I looked across the parking lot I saw that yes it was a H3. We took a nice drive past Mt Hood to Bend, OR. Central Oregon is pretty sweet with big thick forests on the mountains and dryer rangeland elsewhere. We learned that those in Bend hate Californians who come buying land and building houses and our H3 of course had California plates. 

In Bend we stayed at a place with a sweet view of the Deschutes River. We tried to go to the Deschutes brewpub on Monday but it was special night and that wasn’t happenin’. Instead we went to McMenamins Brewery. The next night I dragged Robie and Art back to the Deschutes brewpub and we had good food and beer. They had about a dozen beers available only on location. I sampled their Bachelor ESB on cask first and it was quite tasty. Next was some IPA on their in-house-only list and I enjoyed that a lot. I also had a taste of the Hop in the Dark which is a 90 IBU dark beer. Yummy yummy.

After two nights in Bend we drove a short distance away to Prineville. This is a very small town with some very interesting landscape. The whole town sits in a valley that is more like a gorge. Some study came out this week that said they have a 16% unemployment rate. We went to the Redmond Air Center to meet folks for work. They have an air tanker and smokejumper base there. We got to check out the smokejumper Sherpa plane. I tell you what those females who jump out of planes in to fires are damn sexy. They sell singles out of 6 packs at the grocery store so I picked up a Full Sail IPA and a New Belgium 1554. I wasn’t too impressed with their selection. My coworker Art who hooks up with hotel deals everywhere we go was the guest of the week at our hotel in Prineville.  See pic=>

After working at the Redmond Air Center we went “over the hill” from central Oregon to the western side. The scenery was amazing. We drove by the Three Sisters peaks and through the B&B fire of 2003 that burned about 91,000 acres. It was a site to see. We stopped at a nice overlook near Mt Washington. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my camera and my cell phone pics are pretty crappy (the one up top was stolen). The difference of the ecosystem between western and central Oregon was quite obvious. As mentioned, central Oregon is dry with lots of rangeland. Once over the “hill” the precipitation is like five fold. The forest is thick with moss and ferns. As Art said there are layers and layers of moss on top of ferns on top of other vegetation. We drove by Clear Lake and apparently there is a standing petrified forest under the water. There were also lots of ancient lava flows around. Robie, the former forester, said the cedars were bigger than he had ever seen.

Art hooked us up with some cabins on the McKenzie River. The river was flowing pretty good. Art took us up to his office in the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest. It is quite the place to work. We saw his deer friend who visits his office often and an elk on the drive. We had dinner with his wife at a nice place before calling it a night. Ideally I wanted to hang out next to the river, have a fire, and swill some fine brews. But after dinner there nothing was open within 50 miles to get beer and we were all tired. So I started a fire in my cabin, scored an internet connection over my phone, and got a little crap done such as this post. 

I’m all about Oregon. It’s laid back, the terrain and forests are awesome, rivers and lakes everywhere to have fun in, mt bike trails, mountain climbing, snowboarding, fine beer, and all the other outdoor sports you can think of. I’ll be hanging out here some day.