I’m a sucker for hot sailing photos.
Recently Glenn turned me onto Boston.com’s Big Picture feature and I found some good sailing photos – The Volvo Ocean Race and sailing around the world.
For you J24 fans here’s a YouTube highlight reel from the most recent national’s.
Saturday we hopped on the Whidbey Island Ferry at Mukilteo and rode forever. Check out the ride on Bikely (which is a pretty cool site for mapping your rides):
The ride started with me blowing out my rear tube just off the ferry. Fortunately Donald knew where a bike store was so I could get my tire properly pumped up (turns out my little hand pump doesn’t cut it). Other than that it was pretty uneventful. Just lots and lots of rolling hills that probably did more psychological damage than anything else.
Here’s Ming and Donald:
When I got home I eat a steak, half a burger, fries, dessert and a few beers; I couldn’t stop eating.
Every few months my mom emails me asking to use my blog to raise money for one cause or another thinking I write for an audience measuring in the tens of thousands. I try and tell her that I only have five readers and that my sisters have already had their arms twisted by her and I’m not going to be able to apply any more pressure.
Now the tables have turned.
Mom, it’s it is not too late to join me in donating to the LIVESTRONG challenge!
But let’s back up a second…
I don’t know how this ride snuck up on me but before I knew it most of the cyclists at work were participating in Lance Armstrong’s LIVESTRONG Challenge, a bike and cycling event to raise money to fight cancer (the Seattle ride has raised $880,000 so far!). Since I missed the previous weekend’s century hosted by Flying Wheels, I couldn’t miss this one too. (For those who aren’t cyclists, a century is a 100 mile ride. A metric century is a 100 km ride.)
Fortunately, it wasn’t too late on Saturday to register and pony up a donation to get to my minimum fundraising requirement.
After a late night celebrating Ming’s birthday (the Grey Goose shots seemed like a bad idea, but in fact, did not slow me down) I joined the crew at 6:45 a.m. at the start line for the 100 mile ride (check out the map):
Here’s a video of us starting. We show up around the 13 second mark:
This was the largest ride I’ve participated in. My number was 1166 so there must have been a good 1200 riders on the line!
The highlight of the ride was definitely the start charging through the empty streets of downtown Seattle and then taking the I-90 express lane out to Mercer Island. At one point I looked back and was pulling what looked like 100 people in a single line (and no, I didn’t pull the whole way across). Thanks to the police and state patrol for doing a good job at closing off streets and intersections for us. I wish we had that every ride.
The lowlight of the ride was either the torrential downpour we experienced leaving Renton (seriously, cats & dogs were coming down) or the Montreux climb (750 feet, high grade, short distance). RiderX has a great description in his course preview of the climb which I’m glad I didn’t read before registering:
Montreux is, to put it simply, a beast. If you have a climbing cassette for your bike, bring it. If you have a small electric assist-motor, bring it. If you have a supply of EPO, use it. If you are like me, you will be spending about 20 minutes of time on this hill. On the upside, the pavement is excellent, and there’s also a view, if you have the oxygen to turn around and see it.
Right from the start, it’s at about 10% for the first little bit, then it will turn a bit to the left and ease down to around 7%. Then it will kick up to about 14% for a bit, taper down to 10%, up to 14%, and then there’s a nice section that’s even steeper. I was climbing at about 3.9 MPH on that section.
The worst part was that 2/3rds of the way up there was a guy dressed like a devil saying there was only 25 meters to go so I stood up and started to really pound it only to get around the corner and see that I wasn’t yet at the top! Glenn tells me this is a Tour De France thing:
The emotional part was seeing so many people riding in memory or in honor of someone. Not surprisingly, I too have had friends and family fight cancer. Fortunately, there were many supporters along the way cheering us on. It was very energizing to not just pound the pavement on another weekend ride but to actually get out and ride for something.
We made it! Here’s the Redfin boys (Dave, Rob, myself and Robert):
I’ll definitely do it again next year as the event was extremely well organized. The only fault I could find is that the beer garden was too far away from the food and in my exhausted state I was too lazy to find the stairs to get up there.
Next up, a 200 mile ride from Seattle to Portland on July 11th.
Learnings for next time:
My weak sauce stats (weak! we started off so strong…):
Related links:
And again, it’s not too late to donate!
Woo-hoo! Redfin’s summer 2009 intern class started today. Welcome Patrick, David, Daniel, Aeron, Edward and Ben.
Seems a fitting time as any to press publish on this post that has been languishing in draft form way too long.
Here are my favorite program manager (or product manager or marketing analyst) books:
Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management by Scott Berkun. This is the book I got a year and half into my time at Microsoft as a junior program manager. I wish I read it day one. It would have really accelerated my learning as it touches on almost every aspect of program management.
Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug is the one and only book I recommend on web usability. Though if you’re designing a lot of forms I do really like this book, Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks by Luke Wroblewski.
How to Win Friends & Influence People by Andrew Carnegie is a timeless classic. I need to re-read it.
Smart and Gets Things Done: Joel Spolsky’s Concise Guide to Finding the Best Technical Talent by Joel Spolsky on hiring.
What’s missing from this list is a good book on branding or customer focus. Any suggestions?
This past weekend we made a quick visit up to Salt Spring Island (in British Columbia, Canada) to visit my dad. He was there kicking the dirt on a piece of land he bought a few years ago.
To get there we flew Kenmore Air to Victoria, and then taxied from downtown Victoria to Swartz Bay where we then ferried to Salt Spring (in hindsight the direct flight probably would have made more sense!) The flight was awesome. No lines, no security bullshit, no taking off your shoes and you could use your cellphone most of the flight since the plane flies so low. Plus it cost only a little bit more than taking the Seattle-Victoria ferry (the “Clipper”).
Here’s the 1950’s Beaver we flew in:
We arrived just in time for the Saturday market. Truth be told it wasn’t that exciting.
Here’s my dad’s west facing piece of land on Canvasback Road in the Channel Ridge development. As you can see he has a lot of work ahead of him :).
The B&B my dad and Jill were staying at was right on the water with a great view. It’s also for sale for $1.5mil:
Our view at the Seabreeze Inne wasn’t as nice but it was close to the town of Ganges:
For the flight home we were in a larger Otter, also built in the ’50s:
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