ABHCWW AKC Herding trial in Arlington, WA

In the Zone Photography (Wendy and I) handled the event photography services for the All-Breeds Herding Club of Western Washington (ABHCWW) at their trial at On the Lamb Farm in Arlington, WA. It was a slow weekend Friday - Sunday (not many sales because they didn't have a lot of entries for the event), but still a lot of fun.

Took over 1,500 photos. I took more pictures of each dog run just because I figured there were fewer entries and Wendy could keep up with editing still. Normally I try to just take about 10 - 20 per run, but this time I probably averaged around 30 or so.

We stayed with Erika in Seattle. It was good to know Kaylee was being taken care of back in Seattle - and got to hang out with Pamela too! (she came out to Seattle to visit Erika and also spend time with Kaylee - since she heard we'd be up for this photo shoot).

Some day Kaylee will be able to help us at these photo shoots... we do need a "runner" to take the filled compactflash cards back to the tent for processing. Right now I just do that between runs (herding goes much slower than agility so it's easy). I'd bet if we really wanted to, we could make this a full time gig -- traveling the country and doing just herding trials. But that's just crazy talk.

McKenzie River Trail (Oregon): 26-mile single-track mountain bike ride

Had a GREAT ride on this epic trail along the McKenzie River. It's couple hours from Salem. Have ridden it before, but it's been a few years. Between me and couple of other people that had ridden it before we guided the rest of the group without getting too lost along the way.

It's a 26 mile trail, and we did about 20 miles of it. There's about 1,000 feet of climbing and 2,000 feet of decent (over the entire course). I think the hardest climb was maybe a mile long for 400 foot gain (so not too hard).

Here's GPS profile of our actual McKenzie River Trail route (I captured with my Garmin GPS MAP60CSx and uploaded to MotionBased.com - they even layer in weather data for the time you are riding). Cool new site someone just pointed out to me earlier - great for training!

Felt great to just ride for the pure fun of it. Listened to iPod the whole way - Modest Mouse mostly. I was dead tired by the end of it, but can't wait to get out and ride again soon. Wonder how this bike with handle on the Black Rock trails? This bike will be great for "Super D challenge" event that hopefully someone organizes for 2007 - a Super D is combination of downhill and cross-country style "race".

Trailhead for McKenzie River trail... (that's my new all-mountain bike for doing long cross-country type rides like this one)



Here's the group from Salem I rode with.. (front to back: Todd, Felix, April, Travis, and Rich) This was taken on the bridge at south end of Clear Lake...



Sahalie Falls along the route...



This is what the trail looks like when you're flying along at 20+ miles an hour along the single-track... (actually this was just a blurry picture, but that's what it reminds me of).



Bikes loaded up for shuttle back to van at the trailhead and then home... (mine is the second one from the left)...



Picture gallery of ride.

Kaylee's first bike ride!

See, THIS was why I needed a general "all-mountain" mountain bike!

Rode the bike paths at Minto-Brown Island Park...



Kaylee in her bike seat...



Having a drink of water after the ride...



More pictures and a video of Kaylee's first ride.

New mountain bike for general trail riding... (Santa Cruz Superlight)

Bought a new mountain bike yesterday! It was sort of spur of the moment, but not. I've been missing the good ol' trail bike I had in my Trek that Wendy bought for me in 1998 for my birthday. When I tried it out again though earlier in the season, I found that after riding a "big bike" with full-suspension that a "hard tail" just wasn't gonna do.

So, been keeping an eye out at local shop for a decent trail bike (not for flying off cliffs or jumping road gaps, etc) that wasn't gonna break the bank.

There was a white Santa Cruz Superlight at Santiam Bicycle that I really liked, but didn't really like the color (didn't want a bike that matched the color of my truck, that'd be too "something"...) Anyway, one of the guys at the shop said "hey, I think we have a blue one in the back"... and when we went back there and he opened up the box, it was actually this orange frame I saw and I KNEW that was "my bike"!

They built it up the next day (Saturday), just in time for a group ride down McKenzie River trail (26 mile single-track)...

FOR SALE: 2002 Honda Shadow Spirit VTX750

Well, I finally did it... put my motorcycle up for sale... Been putting it off as long as possible, but finances dictate. Only way to pay for the canopy, bed liner, and Thule rack for truck.

Asking $4,500 for it. We'll see what happens. Put it up for sale on craigslist.org in Salem for sale section.

If I don't get any takers, then I'll put it in the Portland for sale section.

"Someday" will get another motorcycle...

4 alarm fire at McMahan's Furniture store in Salem, OR...

Got to work this morning and noticed billowing smoke coming from near front of building. Parked in the parking structure and walked down the alley to see what was up...

The furniture store across the street was on fire (picture above is what the scene looked like when standing right in front of our office)! When I first got to work, they had not even started spraying it with water yet.. They broke open the store front windows, then started nailing it with water. One big pumper truck blew out windows on the opposite side of the building even with so much water! Saw flames once in awhile as a couch or bed would go up in flames.

They sprayed it for a few hours and closed 3 or 4 blocks around. It's smoky in our office now. They had to chop down some of the trees in front of the build because they started on fire and blackened leaves where blowing down the street.

Kind of an exciting morning.

Here's some video and photos published by Statesman Journal...

http://www.statesmanjournal.com/assets/mov/J037236810.MOV

More pictures

Visited Mount Saint Helens area...

It was more of a recon trip since we'd never been to area before (been here for years and keep saying we're going to visit but never do), and it was spur of the moment too so we didn't reserve a camping spot or anything. Just a quick day trip to see the sights. We were disappointed they do not allow dogs on any of the trails or at the visitor centers - apparently it's still a "delicate ecosystem" and "people are afraid of dogs - even the most well-behaved ones" (that's what it said on a kiosk sign anyway). Geesh. Whiners! The dogs didn't enjoy the trip at all. We drove for more than 8 hours and they were in the truck for majority of time. Had expected to be able to take them for hike from Johnson Observation Center down to Spirit Lake, but Mount Saint Helens is dog "unfriendly" so we just drove home (basically).

We left late in morning, so the sun was high and bright when we got there so photo ops were poor - didn't even bother to even try to get landscape shots. Mostly just snapshots.

Did some geocaching though... There was one at the "Red Zone" (where they blocked access to area in 1980 before it blew) and another at the edge of the blast zone.



Here's the pics (not many): http://itzphoto.smugmug.com/gallery/1743945

Oh, and you'll see Kaylee's first tooth in that set! I'm sure "she will blog about it".. so check her blog too!

Cool mapping project at work...

So in the past several days, I've been working on this really cool project at work (yeah, weird eh - getting paid to do something fun!)...

Anyway, we're looking into the feasibility of providing a GIS tool for Sales and Dispatch to use. We'd be "geocoding" our customer data (turing addresses into Lat/Long coordinates) and showing on a map - sales person could query "show nearest existing customers assigned to me near this location" or "show me leads in Portland, OR who have not been called in the past 30 days"...

Here's a screenshot of a quick proof-of-concept tool I put together using Microsoft Virtual Earth API (literally took 3 hours - and that counts figuring out the API calls) :

(click for a larger view)


Also looking into Google Maps API and some other possible solutions.

Dinner on Willamette Queen Riverboat

For our anniversary, Wendy and I had a nice dinner on the Willamette
Queen riverboat (leaves from Salem and travels up the river a ways and
they serve a gourmet dinner, etc). And yup, we took Kaylee along
with us... we had a great spot on the boat where we could let her play
on the floor next to our table while we ate and stuff.

Learned some new history of Salem from the captain - he's always got tidbits of river lore to share with the passengers. Anyway, I guess there was a civil war battle on the island across the river - where a bunch of soldiers from the South gathered for a march to report back south, but a bunch of soldiers from the North decided to just deal with them right then and there. 12 were killed, lots captured, and more had to swim across the river back towards Salem to flee for their lives. That's the only North vs South Civil war skirmish that took place in the Northwest.

Here's some pictures from our cruise on the Willamette Queen, and you need the family password to view these private photos (as always).

Gallery: Dinner on Willamette Queen Riverboat

Also have a short video clip (no audio)...

Video: http://itzphoto.smugmug.com/gallery/998565/3/85486142/Large