Family Happenings

The Eugene Celebration is an event…..  Eugene is weird in itself; the parade gives everyone an opportunity to showcase their weirdness.

Eugene is unashamedly democratic, liberal, and inclusive. The parade reflects that.

These guys got the biggest applause in the parage.

And these guys, pro-environment activists, got my vote for the most cutting commentary. If you can’t make it out, the guy is chained to a gas can.

And in between every civic group imaginable.

And then there are the plainly bizarre - I assume some of these groups has a point, or agenda, but what it was I had no idea…..

And lastly, the Eugene school district offers an amazing choice of schools. There are language immersion shcools, arts schools, environmental focus schools, technology schools, you name it. Each school strives to provide something unique and original. This has resulted in a public school system that is strong, excellent, and well supported by the local citizenry. In spite of this, there are people who feel school choice is bad, and want to make all schools the same. Bah. Here’s a short collection of the various school floats, including Yujin Gakuen, the Japanese Immersion School where our kids go.

After the parade, we found this guy on the street doing his thing. You can’t really tell from the video, but he is in his mid-50s…. Pretty amazing.

The High Pass Challenge is a great organized one day bike ride from Packwood to Windy Pass and back. It starts near the foot of Mt. Rainier and winds its way up to WIndy Pass, halfway up Mt. St. Helens.

Last year I rode it with a friend of mine. We did well, finishing in about 8 and a half hours. This year I rode it on a tandem, with a blind stoker. This is a real challenge, as tandems are really, really bad for climbing hills. You lose too much power between two riders on the same bike. Tandems do well in descents and flats, where the reduced wind resistance and additional power overcome the disadvantages of two people pedaling.

We started just past 7 AM, and returned back to Packwood around 4 PM. It was the hardest ride I’ve ever done. I seriously underestimated how hard the climb was going to be.

The videos start after the first small climb, and continue up the majority of the climbing.

On the descent, we hit 42 MPH. Whee! At one point, we hit a pothole at 33 MPH and got the tandem airborne. It’s a pretty scary thing; tandems don’t fly well. I didn’t have the camera on at the time, and I wasn’t going back to shoot it….

The really hard part of the ride is the last 30 miles or so coming into town. It’s long, it’s tedious, and it’s painfull….

At the finish line, we had hot dogs, beer, music, you name it. That night we had pizza and beer. We stayed at a resort campground, with sauna and whirlpool… Whee!

I teach indoor cycling at a local gym. I use a lot of visalizations on my rides; one ride we do is Karlštejn. Here’s some pictures of the ride.