Kid home again

My somewhat bedraggled kid came home from camp

with a dragon on her arm.

She had lots of fun and did many farm chores, which she may or may not choose to write about, and seems to be bigger that when she left.

While she was gone, I racked up a total of 36,000 vertical feet climbed on foot and/or mountain bike in 11 days, finishing all the trails in the open space district for the year,

fixed everything that had piled up on the sewing table,

went out to dinner several times and up to the symphony with Chad,

and finished making the apricot liqueur that has been soaking for a month.

Eating on the Quebec bike trip

One of the fun things about a bike trip, or even just traveling in general, is the food that one finds along the way.  The bike just makes it much easier to stop, when, for example, you find a duck farm on your route.

Le Canard Goulu (pictured above) is the supplier of fois gras for all the good restaurants in the region, and is well known for its fine duck products.  Of course I had to make sure our route went right past it :)  Nimue enjoyed visiting the white Muscovy ducks, and the woman inside the shop was nice enough to help me pick a tasty snack to add to our picnic stash.

A few miles down the road, we ran across a cheese shop attached to a rather large cheese-making facility.  Mmmm, more snacks.  Note the little orange "Arret Gourmand" sign -- the gourmet stops were often good places to pick up things for lunch.

Some days, we had to rely on trail mix we carried with us.  Or leftover pizza.

Other days, there was food at tourist stops.  (this one is the Huron village reconstruction at Wendake).  Even Faith occasionally eats an ice cream bar!

Sometimes, we cyclists were thirsty, rather than hungry.  In the apple-growing area of the province, it is a good idea to look for a ciderie.  The first one we tried to stop at was not yet open for the season, but the second one had a wide selection of comestibles to sample.

And, they had a nice patio where they would let you sit and drink your beverage of choice.  In this case, it was unfermented apple must -- a most delicious cider that Nimue picked out.  We had the added benefit here of enjoying our beverage for long enough that Bill and Faith caught up to us and joined in on the fun.

Speaking of things wet, the only rain we saw on the trip was first thing in the morning on the day we had planned to walk around Old Town Quebec.  Nimue responded by hiding everything except her eyes under coat, hat, and warm beverage.

For dinners, we relied on Bill's excellent, carefully-researched restaurant choices, which meant we ate rather well :)  The standout in my mind was a restaurant called Toast! in Quebec City, which served foie gras from the farm we had stopped at earlier in the trip, along with many and varied other interesting bits of yum.

We did run into one day where it was hard to find food.  Apparently June 24 is a national holiday and things were closed when we arrived in Saint-Michel-de-Bellechasse around lunchtime -- except for a tiny little internet cafe/photography studio that only served espresso drinks.  Nimue got lucky (I didn't think we'd get away with drinking lattes in front of her without getting her one too.)  The interesting photographer guy running the place, J. Lauzier,  only spoke a little English (about on par with our French), but we gathered that he had *never* made a coffee for someone so young, and was amused by it.  We also admired his work around the small shop.

Note that Chad focussed on the coffee and not on the kid when he took the photo...

Oh, look -- we are still carrying around an extra bottle of cider!  And this one was cider for grown-ups.  A fine way to kill some time while waiting for Bill and Faith to arrive at the hotel.  Enhanced by fresh strawberries from the farmers' market at the port across the street from the hotel. (devoured by Nim before a picture could be taken)

Also not pictured are the amazing giant ice cream cones hand-dipped in a thick layer of high-quality chocolate that Chad and I found at the Chocolaterie de l'Ile d'Orleans in Saint-Petronille.  Totally worth the half hour wait in line, and powered us through the last 25 miles of our long day on the tandem.

And last but not least, at lunch stops, sometimes you even find a playground!

Note on the mountain bike for Chad

Stupid thing kept sucking the chain into the gap between the chainstay and the front chainrings every time I put any real power into it.  For example, any time I wanted to go uphill.

Three forward pedal strokes, bad noise, one pedal stroke backwards to untangle, four strokes forward, clunk! stuck, one pedal stroke backwards, three strokes forward, argh stuck stop, five strokes forward, bad noise, one stroke backwards...

Throughout 2700 feet of climbing.  Bike seemed to know to misbehave right in corners, looser sections, and when I was tired.  Interesting challenge trying to time the backward strokes to untangle the chain before it got fully stuck without losing momentum while going uphill.

Resistant to all attempted derailleur adjustments.  Argh.  At least Chad will derive some amusement by the note I left on it.

Watching a bike race on TV

Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? Well, in this modern world we can make it as complicated as we want!

Step 1: give up cable, since we really don't watch hardly anything that we can't (hypothetically) get over the Internet.

Step 2: since we still want to watch that Internet content on the TV, get an Apple TV device.

Step 3: it's Tour de France time! NBC licensed the race for the US, and thankfully are making it available over the Internet, both live and afterwards, for a reasonable price ($30). Yay, let's order it up!

Step 4: Well, NBC's solution on the computer is implemented in Microsoft Silverlight, which isn't supported by the Apple TV. Apple provides a way to stream content from the computer to the Apple TV -- but only on recent (mid-2011 or newer) machines, running the latest OS -- Apple's solution uses the newer computers' hardware capabilities to do this efficiently. Ours is about a year too old, drat. What to do? Search the Internet for a solution.

Step 5: AirParrot ($10) takes care of it, sort of. It actually works better than I expected. AirParrot uses the computer's CPU to compress and stream anything on the screen, over to the Apple TV; the quality's pretty good, but the CPU is working hard to do the job, and the computer gets pretty hot (about 150 F). But: there's no way to *control* the playback remotely.

Step 6: Remote control hack achieved by using screen sharing from the computer (built in) to the iPad (VNC Lite, free). This is a crude way to do it, and doesn't work very well, mainly because it's not intended for video. If there was any way to script or control Silverlight remotely, that would be better, but I haven't come up with anything.

To sum it all up, here's a sketch of the process. All this, just to watch a stupid bike race, what the heck was I thinking?!

While I really, truly, appreciate NBC Sports' effort to make the race available to those without cable TV subscriptions, their coverage (well, commentary and production, really, as the video footage is provided to them directly by the race organization itself) is dreadful. The audio is often bad, and even when there's "live" reporting in English coming through from the race, Phil & Paul (the NBC commentators) talk right over it, or it is eventually muted out. There's zero local color, and no one on the ground talking to riders, teams, fans, or anything else. It could be so much better.

Happy cyclists in Quebec

Proof of the recent multigenerational cycling along parts of the Route Verte in Quebec:

Bill charging up a steep pitch to the bridge across the Chaudiere River.

Nim and Chad speeding up the Piste Cyclable Dansereau/La Liseuse.  

Faith working her way back through the park near Les Chutes de la Chaudiere.  (Nim and Chad behind her)

 Me on the road to the duck farm.  (Nim took this one from the back of the tandem!)

Jet lag and apricots

We always seem to get back from vacation just as it is time to pick apricots, and this year was no exception.  Being out in the sun in the afternoon to pick fruit is a good way to counteract jet lag.
The only side effect is that we always end up picking more fruit than I mean to.  Bags of fruit must be larger than they appear to the tired brain.  Either that, or they multiply on the way home.

Nimue gorges herself from the top of the tree.

Last year's learning was that if you cook down a pot of apricots with a cup of water and 1/4 cup sugar for about 10 minutes, you end up with a delightful puree that can be frozen and used all year in sorbet, as cake filling, tart filling, scone/pancake/waffle topping.

Thus, I spent the hottest day of the year over the stove up to my elbows in apricot goo and now the freezer is full of jars of summery goodness.

And there were still apricots left.  We made and ate a batch of apricot sorbet (3 cups water, 1 3/4 cup sugar, 1 1/2 pounds apricots, and a splash each of rum and spicy bitters that I made last year).  Yum.  We made apricot smoothies.  Yum.  We made a delicious apricot coffee cake for breakfast.  Yum.

Can't forget the kangaroo meatballs with roasted tomato and apricot ketchup.  Mmmmm.

Nimue now has apricot fatigue.  With a couple pounds left, I decided to make some apricot liqueur, and had to make a weird late-night grocery run -- a large bottle of vodka for infusing the apricots in and a box of dishwasher soap to cope with the fact that it seemed every item in the kitchen was covered in apricot goo.  No wonder the checkers always look at me weird.

One pound of fruit left...might be time for another smoothie!

End of year in pictures

I think we just made it through the whirlwind that is the last couple of weeks of school.  Here are a few highlights that I happen to have pictures of

Early Music Singers concert.  Chad snapped this one while we were warming up.

Crazo kid before one of our training rides for the upcoming Quebec bike trip.

5th grade promotion ceremony this morning.  I can't believe she will be in middle school next year.

Early birthday cake for

the party at a giant bouncy house warehouse.

We have to have her party early before her good friends all take off for summer vacation.

She hasn't stopped smiling all afternoon.

Family outing: Tour of California stage 7

This was a fun week of bike entertainment!  Chad got to participate in Specialized's dramatic unveiling of their brand-new wind tunnel on Thursday, then followed Anna's fun day as a volunteer on the Amgen Tour of California's Stage 6 (the individual time-trial near San Jose). On Saturday, we packed up the bikes and motored over to Livermore, proximate to the Tour's 7th stage.

Stage 7 began in Livermore, headed north out of town and quickly up and over a big climb. But the next 30-some miles were downhill or flat, leading to the next KOM on Patterson Pass. From the pass, the route descended back to Livermore, passing through the start line again before heading out of town and, eventually, climbing Mt. Diabolo (rated HC!) to the finish line.

In deciding where we wanted to watch from, we considered that:

• climbing up Diabolo with the tandem (with Nimue as stoker, anyway) was right out
• downtown Livermore would be crowded for the start
• watching from Morgan Territories (the first KOM) would require an early departure to get there in time
• Patterson Pass, the 2nd KOM, was plenty of hill for us to climb up, the timing would work out, and we could continue on to ride a nice loop after the race went by.

So that pretty well settled the plan. I unpacked and re-assembled the tandem in a park outside Livermore. It's faster and easier to take the tandem apart into its 3 main pieces, leaving the wheels in place, than it is to rig up the tandem rack on top of the truck, and heave the bike up there... And the more times I do the disassembly-reassembly dance, the faster I get. Four couplers, three cables, and it's apart (or back together).

Off we pedaled, picking up a brand-new bike path for a mile or so - it wasn't even on maps yet, we found it by accident! Then we started to climb.

We were soon passed by a string of exotic supercars zorching along. I saw Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Porsches, some things I couldn't identify, and an F-40 (real or replica? Who can say?) They too were enjoying the twisty and mostly traffic-free road.

Nimue was in a good mood, telling stories and singing and generally powering right along. The grade increases alluvially (if that's a word) and as we approached the pass it was getting quite steep - 8% for a while, then kicking up to 14ish% near the top. At my request, Nim kicked out her last reserve of turbo-boost and we left Anna in the dust as we got to the top. Of course, she was laden with all our supplies for the day, so she had quite a job getting up that hill too.

We were among the first to arrive, and most of those there already came by car.  We settled in and found a good vantage point.

 The view was great, but the wind was blowing strong and steady, 20 kts at least. Strong enough that it was too fast for many of the windmills, which sat strangely still.

Before too many people were around, it was very nice and warm and quiet in the late-morning sun... one could easily find oneself dozing.

The crowds started to form, slowly but steadily. Bikes started to trickle in, as well as pedestrians who had to park down the hill and hike back up. A few fans chalked the road with favorite riders' names.

Peter Sagan (well, his head anyway) was also in the crowd. A couple kids had Sagan's head printed up on signs, and ran around like goats on coffee when the riders came along. Ted King also got his name on the road; I hope he got to see it!

Some groups of cyclists who were pre-riding the racecourse came through -- some of the riders didn't look like they would make it to Mt. Diabolo, and really suffered up the steep upper part of the climb, while others were fresh and not in any difficulty. One of the big groups (Carmichael Training) had a support van at the KOM with cold drinks and snacks. A microbrewery truck stopped briefly at the top, and we were hoping it would stick around and start handing out free beer, but it didn't.

Eventually, we spotted a few highway patrol motos making their way up the hill, eventually followed by a group of 10 riders in a breakaway. There was lots of cheering of the group as they crossed the summit looking strong; Andy Schleck was in the group, along with a couple other notable riders.

About three minutes later, the big peloton came along with 80-90 riders, followed by all the other team cars, emergency vehicles, and the ubiquitous broom wagon designating the end of the race.

The spectators packed up and left forthwith, and once most of them had cleared out we took off on our bikes to continue our loop. The initial descent quickly got the tandem up to speed, and Nimue and I left Anna in the distance as we carved down through the swooping turns into the hot valley outside Tracy. We stopped at the bottom to let Anna catch up, then started working our way through a crosswind on Midway road, towards (and under!) the 505 freeway. We then picked up Grant Line road, which turned into Altamont road and climbed along roughly parallel to the freeway but thankfully separated from its noise by some hills.

This climb, while not steep, was dead into the wind. I also discovered that Nimue had used up all her power (or her enthusiasm, anyway) on the initial big climb of the day. We crawled our way through the hills, eventually emerging on the other side and coming back into Livermore. 

A fine time was had by all -- but I do admit to wishing, while battling the headwinds, that we were riding this:

Volunteering at the Tour of California San Jose Time Trial

Last Friday, I amused myself by volunteering to be course marshal at the time trial stage of the Tour of California.  The course was interesting for a time trial, as the 19 mile course ended with a climb of about a thousand feet up Metcalf Road, at an average grade of just over 10% -- not your usual sort-of-flat route.  Needless to say, I was hoping to see some impressive riding in addition to making myself useful.

The organizers wouldn't give out location assigments before that morning (probably so that they knew people at critical corners were there and wouldn't flake out), so I rode my bike over to the volunteer sign-in early, and asked for a spot on Metcalf.

Oh please please please give me a spot on the hill.

Not quite.  They figured that no volunteers would want to get themselves up to the top of the closed road, so the best that was on offer was the corner at the bottom where the riders turned uphill.  Of course, I took it.

A fine and jolly choice it was, as you will see.

Since I had gotten my assignment relatively early, I had plenty of time to ride over and find my spot.  There was still about 45 minutes before I was officially supposed to be on duty, so naturally I took the time to ride up the hill.  It gets one in the mood for the race.

A lovely, though exposed, climb up into the hills east of San Jose.  Note how the road all of a sudden ramps up -- it maintains the 10%+ grade for nearly 2 miles as it winds into the hills.

I was glad that it was still early, as it was a bit of work going up on the relatively heavy commute bike loaded up with my lunch, reading material, and extra water for the day's activities.  I got to watch the team in charge of barriers put up fencing along a large part of the route.

It turns out that the fencing was thought to be necessary for two reasons:
1) The road is narrow
and
2)  Riders would be going up every two minutes with support vehicles on one side, and the other side had to be clear for said support vehicles to go back down and follow the next rider.
so
3) Overexcited spectators had to be prevented from doing stupid things.

Once I got back down to the bottom, I got to watch them put up the big inflatable red arch marking the front of the hill.

According to the guy in charge of the arch, the wind that was steadily picking up made it harder than usual to erect.  As I chatted with him, the whole thing bounced and danced erratically, and he eventually requested that a couple of us who were supposed to be managing spectators at the corner move up the hill 100 feet or so to keep an eye on the arch.

If you are running a time trial with riders racing the clock coming through every two minutes, the last thing you want is to have the sponsor's arch obstruct the course.

There were eventually three other volunteers posted at the same corner. All were crazy enough riders that the conversations while waiting turned to double centuries, bike touring, and the challenges and joys of putting one's kid on the back of a tandem.

I found a nice spot to plant myself in the small amount of shade available, and settled in to people watch and answer questions (the orange Amgen volunteer shirts made everyone think we know stuff).  There was a constant stream of spectators heading up on bikes and foot, a bunch of people doing a charity ride, then a race for juniors (some of the kids didn't look more than a couple of years older than Nim), and then the women's race started.

Silly course marshal vehicle

One of the things Chad and I had wondered about with this goofy time trial course was what kind of bikes the riders would choose:  the traditional super-aerodynamic but slightly heavier and worse-handling time trial bike suited for the early part of the course or a more normal road bike for the climb.

Many riders opted to do a bike swap.  Right at my corner.  It was a good spot.  Two helpers were stationed at the side:  one with the road bike; the other to grab the time trial bike.  The whole swap took about 5 seconds, and then the time trial bike would be thrown on top of the follow car as it went by.   Except the one that the car forgot to stop for. Most entertaining.

Pictured above: Alison Powers, doing her bike change.  What was particularly impressive was how little her forward movement slowed as she changed bikes.  She ended up taking second place for the women.

Finally, it was time for the main event.  By this point, there were enough spectators doing dumb things down at the corner that the head marshal asked me to move back down and plant myself in the middle of the road.  Now I had four tasks:  pleasantly telling people still heading up the hill to walk their bikes along the edge and watch out for team cars and finished racers coming down, keeping people from leaking out over the edge of the barricade at the corner,  watching the race myself, and keeping an eye on that dancing red arch.

Good thing I can multitask.  My poor eyeballs had to look in four directions at the same time.  I figured out pretty quickly that keeping my feet actually on the orange cone at all times was a good idea, lest I accidentally step back into the descending team cars.

By about halfway through, I though I had it all figured out.  Then from the corner of my eye, I saw the red arch buckle.

Argh.  Sprint up the road.  Throw hat into bushes as it fell off.  Grab air blower and sandbag while not getting tangled in rope, and help push big billowy red thing off to the side of the road.  Throw sandbags on top to anchor it all down.

Good thing all of us could multitask.  We got the collapsed arch out of the way before the next rider came through.  Apparently it was so windy that the fabric at one of the D-ring rope attachment points ripped out.

Ok, so now I was back down to three tasks.  It didn't take long for another task to be added, though, since it became clear that some of the riders were coming back down the hill with only a fuzzy notion of where they needed to go to get to their team bus.  As a result, they would stop at the corner and ask the two of us in Amgen shirts which way to go.

That was kind of cool.

It took a while to get the rider photography dialed in in the midst of all of this.  For a while, my focus timing was off, such that my happy orange bike in the background was in great focus with a fuzzy rider in front (Peter Sagan, this year's green jersey winner, in this case)

After a while, I figured it out, and got a halfway decent shot of Jens Voigt.  He's one of our favorites, as he not only is one of the hard men of the sport, and the oldest member of the pro peloton (at the same ripe old age as me), but also has a great sense of humor.  How can you not like someone who has "Shut up legs!" written on his top tube?  And he still attacks and wins a stage now and again -- in this picture he is wearing the "Most Courageous Rider" skinsuit due to his excellence attacking and winning the previous day's stage.

Something about the idea of a Most Courageous Skinsuit just cracks me up.

More riders going by in front, team cars and tired riders behind, spectators all around.  At one point, I turned around to answer the "Where's the bus?" question, this time in a pair of appealing European  accents and turned around to see two racers in RadioShack kit.  

Duh duh duh... That's Andy Schleck and Jens Voigt.  Talking to me.  (Or really, me and the other volunteer who was there.)  Eventually brain kicked in and answered.

They were cheerful.  And nice.  As they rode away, I finally realized I had my camera in hand and snapped wildly, figuring I had missed that photographic moment.  I got lucky though -- once home I realized I had this fabulous candid shot of Andy with California hills in the background:

On the other side, the race was still going on, with the last few riders still heading up.  When she saw the pictures, Nimue was amused by the fact that Matt Busche was riding, as his picture is on the Grape Nuts box currently on top of our fridge.  (I know, hard to see the resemblance, but she pointed out that he was on our cereal right away.)

And of course, here's a gratuitous shot of Tejay Van Garderen, this year's winner.  We've all been waiting for him to get a big stage race win, and he pulled it off at the tender age of 24.  He looked very very focused as he went through.

Phew.  Now we're done.  Time for the broom wagon.  After it went by, I hopped on a nearby bike trail and headed home to make dinner and put together maps for the next day's family race-watching adventure.