Recovery

The weather recovered nicely this week, Saturday seemed beautiful.  I observed it from the temperature controlled environment of my desk... oh well.  Went for dinner and a Flames game with a handful of clients great time overall, but another "oh well" on the hockey front.  Capitals whipped us 7-2.

Tried to make up on Sunday for the lack of outdoors.  Mom gave me some Buckley's too, so went off with eucalyptus taste feeling a bit recovered/pursuing more recovery myself.

Sunny day.  Warm.  No gloves.  Out on the township roads north of the city.

Beautiful prairie.

Targeting cardium is my guess.  Horizontal just north of town.

Descent with mountain views.

Babbling creek.

Convention

More conventional remedies showed up in time for the downtrend of my dry cough. What a dumb set of germs - don't make me ill so I feel bad, just make me cough. What's the point?

Unintended uses

This must be how Charlie Sheen started his slide. I'm on a week of being sick. Nothing serious, feel fine other than a dry cough and runny nose. It just hasn't stopped. I have no Scope to gargle with, a favourite remedy of mine. So I've stooped low and resorted to gargling Silent Sam vodka for some germ kill/dry cough/pain relief. I also embezzled a box of Kleenex from work to avoid post work errands to stores I don't usually go to. And yes, that is a hammer gel flask half full of vodka. I have been spitting it out; so gross. I'd make a poor Russian. Slippery slope between me and Charlie Sheen?

Gravel Road Love

This road winds along beautifully, you can see it cut back to the right just beyond the blackberry's ability to capture much detail.  Windy roads... just like life.

It's been a full weekend, and I'm glad to say about 6h of quality aerobic time was part of it. Gravel road time has somehow grown to be part of me.  Saw two moose, two coyotes, and a great big hawk taking off from a fencepost right next to me in ESPN style tracking camera action as it flew same direction I was riding but only like 15' away.  Love seeing the prairie's alive.

Fitting that in with Shawntoberfest and other stuff is tiring - no rest for the wicked I guess... I suppose I'll end up sitting still only when it's coffin time.

Prairie fall sunset, north of Symon's valley.  I could ride in 5 degree weather all day, it's so nice.  Plus it really lengthen's the range of two water bottles for me.

Diet of Champions

Mmm... Tubby dog is so wrong but so right.

Unbridled fun and happiness

Jon and Tori chillin.  The quotes the round of malibu and 7 up generated were priceless.  Who bought that turpentine at the end of the stay at 510?  ugh...

Aerial ab footsies

New Shawntoberfest tradition.

Bike locking at Shawntoberfest

That's all there is to say.

Diverse Reading

An original Mao Redbook Communist manifesto from 1970, being one of the 6 billion printed and one of the most printed books of the century. A copy of Damn It Feels Good To Be A Banker, a book of minimal distribution that conveys a farcial, cynical look at Wall Street's capitalism through the eyes of junior investment bankers... a satire.

Vegas wrapup

The finale to last night was a workout (in the overpriced gym) and a few hours in the "european" pool area.

Catching up on everyone's stories is funny before the late flight out. One of our younger guys hasn't taken out his contacts since putting them in Thursday morning. Since arriving on Thursday he's slept a cumulative total of 11 hours.

Most guys are going home down on wallet size. A few are going up. For the record, I abstain from "gaming". Here's two who are up. I'm actually fairly shocked at the tally to be honest, but when you spend 10 hours straight on a red bull run from 2am after the nightclub to noon and are incoherent after, I suppose its nice having something to show for it.

We're polishing off with seafood flown in from the Mediterranean; Las Vegas excels in facilitating conspicuous consumption.

On the way out, a co-worker emailed from home and said find a roulette table and put $500 on red for me. Bam, red it was. Easy.

Surrender

We surrendered to Surrender nightclub. Las Vegas is just a different world. Table with bottle service split between a duo of energy private equity firms in town for fun, and us. No curfew... equates to good times with trouble mixed in. I'm fairly certain I exceeded the recommended daily allowance of red bull and vodka by a wide margin tonight. No alarm clocks allowed in morning.

Bear's Best golf

A group of 10 of us had an amazingly tight scoring golf day, not that we're great, but the dispersion was quite low, so the betting was high. A pretty decent golf game for me, modern clubs seem to help quite a bit.

Nice course, great big houses with neat architecture, good times.

ZR1 Corvette

The day consisted of a leadup to doing hotlaps in a ZR1. Before I get to that...

Skills building all morning. Race track laps all afternoon... Warmup for the autocross.

Autocross warmup I pulled citizen win time, instructor beat me. After that, I got down within a second of the instructor... but braked late on finish and broke the finish-stop line by a foot. So a 2 second penalty. Having said that, the winner who ran without penatlies was 1.2 seconds back. I think I was 4th even with a 2 second bump. Oops. So fun, and yes I'm fixating on this stuff, love going fast, busted by a foot!

Now for the grand finale - hotlaps with pro drivers in ZR1 Corvettes. These are race cars. $140,000, 640hp bundles of supercharged joy. True performance car, full real deal. So unreal, so fun. This is by far the most intense motor vehicle I've ridden in (on pavement).

Vette

Today is gonna be a good day, I already here some roaring V8's out on the track. Yeah!

Waste

Hey, ever hear of double sided when proofing that prospectus?

FW: Bakke's New Haircut

Investment banks don't tend to be sensitivity training ground type places.  I'm glad I help approve the writer of this for a salary and bonus compensation package every year... and this is the good that comes of it.  Too funny.

 

From: xxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 2010 5:37 PM
To: xxxxxx, xxxxx, xxxxx, xxxxx, xxxx, xxxxx, xxxxx, xxxxx

Cc: Erik B. Bakke
Subject: Bakke's New Haircut

Reminds me of this fucking hipster

 

West coast riding

I'm on a bit of a singletrack kick, but it's quality over quantity. Wish I could do a few more longer days, say 4-5 hours, but at the very least got in a north shore day, a day on Whistler's lost lake trails, and a Comfortably Numb day in Whistler too.

Also spent a few hours at coffee catching up with Ian Magrath, one of my dad's ski guys from back in the day. Lots of bike talk this weekend, plus throw in a thanksgiving dinner and it amounted to a relaxing weekend. Did I mention two 8 year old girls cut my hair at thanksgiving dinner? So much for the long locks.

Pimms #1

This is what happens when I get a case ordered to the office and the young guys notice it on a Wednesday night...

For the love of 'cross

Devin and I commuted over to the Tuesday night race, where naturally Devin's commuting composure led him to whip more ass than the deer in headlights look I was sporting, which was also appropriate.

What a beauty night for once. Watched the B's go first, including THE Bee herself as a hallmark of local 'cross, then tagged in for a warmup lap. In all honesty I actually didn't suffer too bad, which perhaps means I didn't even do the sport correctly, but I wanted to ease in for a lap and I was worried my non-cycling centric lifestyle might lead to a nuke about two laps in if I wasn't careful. Turns out that it helped eke out a relative improvement to last time. Either way, it leads to big smiles and good stories.

Craig is a machine! Followed by Peter Lawrence and Devin at the front.

Furnace Creek 508

I felt stifled down in Phoenix this weekend, the entire American southwest has been a wee bit "warm" lately.  But my buddy Dallas has always been a machine amongst machines, and I've always been impressed by his riding.  Proof is in the pudding given his ride at the Furnace Creek 508...

Good job Dallas!

Phoenix Fun in the Sun

Hiked the Camelback.  Beautiful, fun, good time.  Except for the lady who slipped and broke both legs and got airlifted out.  I'd love to just pin it for lap time on this thing.

Snake near where we parked.  Andrea didn't particularly like it when she inadvertently walked right up to it on the sidewalk.  I tried squirting it with my water bottle which got zero reaction - sorta was hoping for more.

The Duce.  Retro spot, old warehouse renovated.  Unique business plan.

The Duce has a pie shop and some organic produce.  Not pictured here is also a restaurant, bar, bleachers and a projection screen.  It's rather eclectic, but nicely executed together.

The Duce has cruiser bikes, a boxing ring, and some boxing supplies.  It also has root beer floats and italian sodas. 

 The Duce cruiser bike itself.

It also has a lady who embroiders/decorates various army surplus clothes with Fleurs de Lis to take the war out of them and bring peace to the articles.  Shirts, purses, boots, and of course army drab leather mini skirts.  

Next on the afternoon was bowling at Lucky Strike.  It's a super nice place, I'd actually bowl more socially if we had places like this at home.  

Suitable social spot decor with restaurant, bar, billiards and pool, plus TV's of course as it is America.  

All in I'm super impressed with Phoenix.  Last time I was here I dismissed much of it as urban sprawl and lacking culture - the sprawl part is true.  But my take is the "ugliness" of the exterior inspires people to bring very classy worldly type decor and style to places that make the interiors super beautiful.  Finding them without locals might be hard, everything is stark and bland from the exterior.

Phoenix Offsite

25 super smart, super motivated, super driven people debating our present position and future course for a day. Didn't see the outdoors other than walking to our conference room, but even if it sounds nerdy, a great thing to be a part of and contribute to.