Home again home again

Swimming in Bremerton was neat, they have one of those pools that is dark blue.  It's in a brick building with no windows, so imagine the acoustics. There was no one but me in the pool and a teen girl lifeguard who was jamming out some soulful a capella Rhianna.  So it was like: stroke, stroke, stroke, "ella ella ay ay ay" stroke, stroke, stroke, " I told you I'd be here fo-evvah" stroke, stroke, stroke... pretty rad swim all in all.

 Now I'm back home, there's snow on the hills and my view is jaw dropping leaf-a-rama. I'm kicking off 2 weeks of swim form work.  that means swimming most days with a bike or run after.  Today I met the coach at the pool for drills and for her to check if I knew how to swim yet.  The best part of the day though was the run after.  I went up Post Canyon and it was an arc of butter yellow and rain falling as I wove along little dirt paths in a very peaceful fall world.
 Amazed along the way to recall that: Mountain bikers around here are cray-cray.  Again, Hood River is an otro nivel of hard core. 

Road Maps

 It sure was great to be home for a second.  I disappeared into this super intensive work flurry, jammed out my first newsletter for No Shame In My Game, and as I was sitting up late at night trying to meet my own deadline, listening to De La Soul, and coloring in my pirate map of change with lots of colored pencils, it occurred to me:

This is exactly what I want to be ding right now.

  The jobs I've fallen in love with have all given me broad creative license,  I can invent games, processes, traditions, and things it's an off the cuff fiesta.  With the Newsletter No Shame In My Game rose to the challenge and delivered, as an awesome job.

RIP?

  It's been a treat to swim in Hood River Pool again, I was a little saddened and grossed out by the dead guy in Bend and like my home turf pool sans dead guy.  I am actually really liking swimming lately.  This morning at the Mt. Scott Pool in Portland, I felt awesome! I dropped 15 seconds off my time, I was really happy, then suspicious.... turns out the false breakthrough was what happens when you swim in a 25 yard pool, rather than a 25 meter one.
 But I took it as a win, because it felt awesome while it lasted
In other news: My truck quit, which is a bummer and we'll see what happens with that.  If anyone has an awesome car that is reliable and super cheap and they just have to get rid of, I'm your gal! All in all, despite the stress it was a pretty good breakdown:
1. Stopped at a light
2. In Hood River

3. On a construction sight
4. 7 eager to help construction workers
5. I work for an awesome company who helped
6. I have an awesome sister who was on-call google gal
7. I have good friends


So now I'm in Bremerton via rental car gazing out at Oyster Bay, toasty and warm after a rainy bike ride where I tried to calculate how long it would take for the forest to grow over all roads and towns if we weren't here.  Probably 2 years.

Get busy living!

I'm back at home again! It was 2 days ago and I got to the pool after work for my swim and as I walked onto the deck there was some kerfuffle going on.  I looked around and saw a terrified teen lifeguard pulling a middle aged man out of the pool, another lifeguard went to call 911 and the poor boy began checking the man.  I thought to myself how strange/fortuitous it is how often I find myself in the place I need to be to help people with medical emergencies.

 So I walk over to the lifeguard and let him know I can help if he'd like, he looks up at me with these sweet scared eyes and we begin, "Is there an AED here?" "Yeah, it's coming" "Is he breathing?" "No" Did your breaths go in?" "Yeah" "Does he have a pulse?""Dunno" so I check and the man is pulseless so we do some CPR.  The AED comes and so does an ER doc in a speedo, we dry the guy off, put on the pads, and it's "No Shock advised" the Doc asks if he can take over, and he does, I stuck around for a few cycles and decided I had done my part.  I think if anything I helped the teen feel effective, I went to ride my bike, but there was a class in the bike room and it was getting dark, so I went back to try the pool, the man had been transported and so I swam, it was good, it is good to feel alive and so lucky.  I got on a bike after and drove home in the beautiful crisp edged fall to an amazing sushi and sake dinner and a warm bed. 

 The next day we wrapped up the course and I went to Dad's for his awesome company and I finally watched Shawshank Redemption for the first time, the whole couple days made me feel glad I'm getting busy living.  I topped it off with a beautiful ride outside Sunriver and headed home yesterday.

So in the name of get busy living and when Andy Dufresne says "That's the beauty of music. They can't get that from you..." in Shawshank I present my current training hits mix, that all the dead men in the pool and gross sad shit inspires me to rock my glitter jock strap a little harder.
1. The Girl is Mine: Michael Jackson
2. Senorita: Justin Timberlake
3. Good Lord: Brother Ali
4. Orishas Llego: Orishas
5. Sleepyhead: Passion Pit
6. Jump in the Line: Harry Belafonte
7. Free Fallin': Tom Petty
8. Beautiful Day: Mary J. Blige
9 Young Forever: Jay-Z
10. Keep it Moving: Tribe Called Quest
11. OPP: Naughty by Nature
12: Close to Me: The Cure
13. Anything Can Happen: Wyclef
14. 30 Something: Jay-Z
15. Izzy Izzy Ahh: Missy Elliott

Get busy living!

Silent Destroyer

Hot Tubs, Mountains, Country Roads, Guns, and Pizza! I woke up after a hot tub evening in Sun River at Dad's, Dad made breakfast, took a great 2 hour ride up Cascade Lakes Highway and back down under perfect blue skies and the watchful Mt. Bachelor. And then went shooting! Kristen's boyfriend who I weirdly also went to college with for a sec is a rep for Glok Guns.  Yeah, Glok. (see Wu-tang, Tupac, Cypress Hill, and most police forces for more info). So he took Dad, Kristen and I shooting with his demo car full of like 40 hand guns.  While I can't exactly get behind hand guns politically or conceptually, I gotta say I love to shoot, and these were the nicest guns, so we went out, set up targets and made sure those clays and boxes would not be walking home on their own.  For the grand finale I shot a silenced rifle called a silent destroyer.  Creepy and fun and very emotionally confusing. We headed home through glorious sunset and rainbows to pizza and beer and stretching and early to bed.

Good life on the road

I took it on the road and am teaching in Bend this week.  I think I got my bike seat, oops I mean saddle issue sorted out after a sperm count decimating ride before leaving home to drive here.  Or whatever the lady equivalent of that would be. So it's big days, teaching days and some nights, and training at lunch or after class, but Bend is perfect or this.  Dry long desert sage rides, an awesome heated outdoor pool at the rec center, and desert trail runs.  I started multi-sport days now, I'm in a bike intensive phase and doing swim/bikes which is fun and feeling good to be able to train at something I know how to do like ride a bike.
 The class is awesome, arctic explorers, adventuring 20 somethingers, chefs, artists, at risk youth program folks, a french, a swiss, lots of dry sun and a big barn to teach in with a fireplace to sit next to at night.
 Excited for my day off Sunday which will be a swim in sunriver a bike down bachelor through alpine lakes galore, potential caving with the Daddio and hot tubbing in Dad's new house.  The good life!

Rock with you

It was just what I wanted to be doing in the darkness of 6:30 am, gliding down 35 towards Hood River watching the colors change in the predawn on Mt Adams, hot coffee in hand, and a little MJ "Rock with Me" tying it all together.  I had a beautiful "this is the life I want to be living" moment.
 I met Coach Cassie and her boyfriend super cyclist at Cassie's house and we hopped on bikes and rode out Mosier Tunnels, a beautiful paved car free section of the old Gorge Highway, my chain is all whack so I can't use my easiest cog, so I got a little added challenge, but the ride was so nice.  The leaves are changing and the river was a perfect mirror.  We rode for about an hour, returned to town, and I hit the pool.
 Yesterday was the first day swimming seemed fun, and today it was actually relaxing.  Pretty wild to go from winded flailing to relaxing in a week, maybe I've just relaxed into my flailing.  The workout that took me an hour takes me 40 minutes now and my "golf score" (#seconds + #strokes to do 50m) though I'm sure not awesome when compared to others has gone from 136 to 133 to 130 to 129, so my spirits are buoyed (haha.)
 Now is hunker down time, clean house, finish Niki's weaving, fix my chain, do some work, and get ready for a bakeathon (baguette! challah! croissants!) with Belle and Andy and a weekend in Portland, all with a little MJ to keep it rockin.