Memorial Day weekend trip to Seattle/Canada...

Wendy and I went to Seattle for Memorial Day weekend. Left the dogs at a kennel in Salem.

On Saturday, we went for a biking/geocaching ride around East Lake and to Discovery Park (the huge city park where Erika teaches for the summer). Found 8 geocaches on our biking trek on the way!

On Sunday we drove up to Vancouver, B.C. and rode mountain bike trails up on Mt. Seymour. They've been building freeride trails there for more than a decade (it's where freeriding was born!) Was extremely technical terrain, and I learned that I need to practise riding "skinny" logs more (narrow raised sections of logs).

24 photos...
Seattle photos

10 photos...
North Shore Freeride photos

Note to Erika : this is NOT a diary, so there! *chuckle*

"Big air" time at Basic Training...

Now that word is out that Basic Training has a massive dirt jump, and weather has been very much like summer... this evening a large group met up outside of Santiam Bicycle in Salem, and we made the trek out to Blackrock specifically to session the new jump. It was great to see it hit again and again and again (and again), and to hit it again and again and... *chuckle* I actually cleared the entire wooden tranny a couple of times (landing rear tire on the dirt part of tranny). That means I could clear the road on the real road gap. Think I'll practise more though. The amount of time spent in the air allows for quite a lot to go wrong before getting back down to earth. I need to get more comfortable with what a good jump feels like and what a bad one feels like (and what to do to compensate).

There was 7 or 8 people out there this evening, and I spent some time practising taking action shots with my Nikon D70. Tried the "pro" mode with Shutter priority and using the flash. Here's what I got...

49 photos...
Basic Training Simulated Road Gap jumping.

Basic Training trail build update - mini excavator!

Today we had a mini-excavator out at Basic Training! It made short work of creating a very big jump and a huge transition landing area. Lots of earth got moved. Nick (the operator) cut a new intermediate trail also - for the run-out after a new drop from road we plan. It was a good solid day of building, and I got to test out the new big jump first! That's two for two on getting to hit the new stuff we've built in the dirt jump bowl (first the new big drop and now the big jump). I cleared 15 foot gap at least. When I get more comfortable with the launch and landing, i'll be ready to hit the real road gap jump up on Granny's Kitchen (there's no "safety net" on that jump though - like we have built into our big jump).

I published a photo album of the mini excavator at work...
Basic Training Trail Building. Check 'em out!

Reach the Beach 2005 - photo album

As promised, here's the RTB2005 photo album of our ride yesterday! There's 50 pictures in the album...

Reach the Beach 2005

We Reached the Beach! It was the best ride yet! This was our 4th year riding Reach the Beach, and the weather was perfect (no rain, and not too sunny - nice and overcast with little wind). None of us had any "issues" this year either (no flat tires). It took us about 6 1/2 hours of "on the bike" riding. We started after 8:30am from Salem and got to Pacific City around 5:30pm. Took lots and lots of pictures along the way. I'll edit them and try to put up a photo album tomorrow. 

Adoption update... birthmother reviewing our album!

Last week, a third-party contacted Oregon Catholic Charities to request matching for waiting families. A birthmother with healthy, 6 month old, baby girl is interested in open adoption through CC. We gave our permission to send out our information to her.

The birthmother is currently looking at 5 adoptive families (all from Catholic Charities). She was given our bios, photoalbums, our birthmother letters on Saturday, and has asked for this week to be able to review them with family. We should hopefully hear something more by end of the week!

Eschelon Telecom, Inc. Files Registration Statement for IPO (Initial Public Offering)

Here's a press release from the company I work for as a software developer (well, my official title is "database developer" but that doesn't mean anything)...

Minneapolis, MN – May 9, 2005 – Eschelon Telecom, Inc. announced that on May 6, 2005 it filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering of its common stock. Neither the number of shares to be offered nor the price per share has yet been determined. The offering is being managed by Lehman Brothers Inc. and Jefferies & Company, Inc., as joint book-running managers and UBS Securities LLC as a joint lead manager.

Eschelon Telecom, Inc. was founded in 1996 and is a leading facilities-based competitive communications services provider of voice and data services and business telephone systems in 19 markets in the western United States. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the company offers small and medium-sized businesses a comprehensive line of telecommunications and Internet products. Eschelon currently employs approximately 1,130 telecommunications/Internet professionals, serves over 50,000 business customers and has approximately 375,000 access lines in service throughout its markets in Minnesota, Arizona, Utah, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Nevada and California.

An IPO means that Eschelon stock would be traded on the stock exchange (as ESCH), and as an employee with "stock options" I'd be able to purchase them at a set price.

Shellburg Falls hike on Mother's Day

Hiked to Shellburg Falls on Mother's Day. It's about 30 minutes away from Salem, and makes a great place to walk the dogs and explore. With permission by ODF, we hid our first geocache at a new campground they'd built in 2003. There was an old homestead nearby also and the cache is actually hidden in a depression where the root cellar was. It's by a couple of 500+ year old incense cedar trees, so makes for a great destination. Today we refilled our cache with some "stuff" for people to trade (I also threw in a copy of my freeride DVD!) The dogs sure enjoyed the trek. Lacey almost fell off a cliff over the lower falls - that was scary for a moment. She hasn't learned when we say "NO!" we really do mean it... Anyways, was a good way to spend a few hours. Oh! Shellburg is also where they're building the second ODF sanctioned freeride trails (a few miles North from the falls/campground).

Want to see more pictures from our hike? I published 22 pictures in a "Shellburg Falls Hike" photo album on my server - just click the link.