Yosemite

As we drove into Yosemite National Park, it began snowing. This was not planned for. When we got to our camp, it was hailing. We thought we were going to sit in the van for 5 days. Towards the evening, the sun came out and the amazing sights began to emerge from behind the clouds. It made our first day more dramatic. Every time we turned around, we were pointing out high peaks, giant cliffs, waterfalls, or snow to each other. We woke up every morning and said, "Wow". We took lots of pictures, froze our butts off for 5 days, and I was constantly looking for bears at night. It was a lot of fun.
See you next week after Wildflower.

Time to say goodbye to the "Yosemite Beard".

Almost there.

Thinking that we would be in Yosemite for a week, I started growing a beard that might help me fit in. Something scraggly, but not dirty. I did a dirty beard in the past.

Me with Rutger Beke with my dirty beard.

Now I am not in Yosemite, but I still have the beginning of my beard. Luckily, I still fit in here in Sonora. We were amazed (again) by the restaurant where we ate for lunch. This town has been a fantastic gastronomical gem. The people are small town people. Our waitress thought that Sonora (population 5,000) was a city. The town she grew up in has 200 people.

This is what we saw while getting lunch today.

Going for a run today, I saw lots of cigarettes, chew cans, and even spent shotgun shells. The trucks got bigger the further out of town I went, but I saw one other runner and I applauded the people that were protesting the was. That takes some guts in any small town in America. Today, the car repair place ordered us a new fuel pump. It is supposed to arrive this afternoon and they will fix it tomorrow. Then we can get camping! I am mostly excited for that because of all of the food that we bought at Costco. We have filet mignon, chips, salsa, salads, all kinds of stuff sitting in our cooler in the back of our van! At least the weather is getting better. It was over 90 for the last couple of days and has dropped down to a normal 70 degrees lately.

Stranded.

We left Sunset Beach yesterday. We drove 9 hours up to San Jose. We stayed with Mojdeh's aunt again. It was a quick overnight stop. This morning, we ran to Costco, the post office, Trader Joe's, the gas station, and Safeway, then we were on our way. We packed most of the bikes into the trailer and hit the road. We were excited to get away and start a small vacation. A couple of hours drive into our trip the car died. We pulled over and called AAA. They picked us up and took us to the nearby Chevy dealer. The manager there is a cyclist that moved to Sonora (where we are) California. He was very friendly. He had their mechanic take a look at it, but they couldn't figure out what was wrong. So now they are going to look at it in more detail tomorrow. Turns out Sonora is a cool little town. Some of the people wear overalls and have long beards and some own wineries. We had a great dinner at the Diamondback Grill. I hope that we get to go to Yosemite tomorrow, but if we don't we have a new favorite place to eat. All organic greens, free range beef, and pesto and gorgonzola burgers. The table next to us found a grasshopper on their salad. That is organic!

Going to the beach.

Tricia finished the Boston Marathon in 3:32! Awesome. I am trying to get serious about my half IM training. We bought new running shoes today. I got the Saucony Progrid Ride.  

I have worn the Mizuno Wave Riders forever, so this will be new. The bikes we have don't quite fit us. I am riding a medium triathlon bike which is a little too small for me or a large road bike which is a bit too big. 

I am hoping to receive a bike that is in between, but if not, I will have to get on my old bike for training and racing.

Sunset Beach, CA

We went for a short bike ride this morning. I rode a road bike after riding the Triad TT bike for a while and it definitely feels different. The weather has been amazing here and the forecast has nothing but better weather ahead. B stopped by for his birthday and it was good to see him.

Surf Tacos down the street has $1 tacos for their happy hour. Every house on the block we are staying on is having a garage sale, so we have been helping to clean out the house. We picked up a gas burning stove and met Noodles from The Offspring all in the same day.

Bed.

Again, do not let us stay at your house. We might stuff goodie bags, we might do bike repair, we might even build a bed. Realizing that we are living in this van for the next few months, we decided to make it more comfortable. Usually at night, we sleep in the van instead of our tent. That would require us to pile up all of our bags on one side and sleep on the floor. That was after we were smart enough to remove the seat.

The first step was to go to Home Depot and buy the lumber.

We had no sketches. No plans. Didn't know anything about building, cutting, or hammering. We stood in the lumber section trying to do calculations on our phones or in our head of what we would need.

We took it all "home". 

Then we had to see if our plans would work out. The first thing that I forgot was nails. I guess I thought that it would hold together with good luck. We got that situation figured out quite easily.

Then I had to re cut the 2X4s because we didn't get it right the first time. 

The guy at Home Depot was interested in the vagabond lifestyle. I was surprised to find out that he wasn't homeless himself. He looked like he could be. In fact, his mother had done triathlons and had also run the Boston Marathon.

Laying the top on was easy. 

Hammering the nails in straight was difficult. Having nails of different lengths made life a bit easier.

It seemed like a good idea to attach the legs.

That gave us 16 inches underneath to store all of our stuff. We felt pretty professional. We had measured the dimensions inside the van to maximize the surface area of the bed. No point making a bed that was small we figured.

We had to re attach the legs.

The doors are not as wide as the interior. Throw on some legs that stick out and you can not fit through the van doors! We held the bed (about 50 pounds) while kicking off the legs that wouldn't fit. Then we squeezed the frame inside and did some more hammering. We found a killer deal in Santa Barbara on a mattress and box spring. It was a few hours south, but on our way to our campground. I called Olga and her husband whose name I cannot pronounce or even figure out how to type (Russians). and picked up the set. There were two dilemmas. One: Olga's mother was sleeping on the mattress. Two: It came as a set with the box spring underneath. Problem one was solved when I convinced them that I had nowhere to sleep but on my wooden frame. Olga's husband told his mother in law that she would be sleeping on an inflatable mattress for a night. The problem of the box spring was a little more difficult to solve. It wouldn't fit in the van. Nor in the trailer. So we jumped on it, breaking every piece and shoved it in their dumpster. We did this around the corner so they wouldn't know. Then we left. Picking up some a pillow case, comforter, and lights, we are making it a home.

Here you see the bedroom with the kitchen in the foreground.

 

The bedroom at night. Mood lighting.

 

This is the side view.

There isn't much room from the bed to the seats. All of our bags are underneath. So far it has worked out. We are happy. It is better than inflating an air mattress or sleeping on the floor. Next problem, how to cook warm meals. We need a propane stove I think. Now we are at my ex step grandmother's house. It is an awesome place on Sunset Beach California. Neighbors include a guy from The Offspring, Jesse James, and Sandra Bullock. Swam and ran this morning. Got to surprise some of my family lounging on the beach. Tomorrow looks like a good time to ride  fancy bike.

Going North.

 

We got to play some Wii in Atherton.

We drove up from San Diego to our next event in San Rafael. It was a long, but fun drive. We got to hang out in Sausalito, Sunset Beach, Buellton (again) and San Francisco.

This is our favorite spot in Carpinteria.

We saw my brother in San Francisco.

We have had lots of Persian food this week. Now we are leaving Mojdeh's mom in San Jose and heading back down south to our next race in Newport Beach. We built a bed in the back of our van. Look for the pictures coming soon. It was a fun experience.

Persian... like the cat.

Today, we went and saw the Body World  exhibit at the San Diego museum of Natural History. It made me want to learn more about my body, but made me realize how fragile everything is that I have. Maybe it was the 60 minute run that hurt this morning that didn't help. Tomorrow, we head back up towards Santa Barbara. The next day we are supposed to pick up our van with a new transmission and drive to San Francisco!

 

La Jolla cove.

Pacific Beach.

I see dead people.
Apparently this coming weekend is Easter. We made it to San Diego. We have been eating a lot of Persian food since Mojdeh's mom is with us. Today we had beef and chicken, rice, cheese, bread, yogurt, lots of tea. I also had a drink made of yogurt, mint, and water.

The yogurt drink.

Back to Bird Rock.

Yesterday, I rode couple of hours with a lot of wind. Whenever the wind died down, there were hills. It was beautiful though. I felt like I was starting to get serious about my training. I passed through little tiny farm towns taht are capitalizing on wine. I passed a place with a sign out front "as seen in the movie Sideways". There were lots of luxury cars in Disneyland like Solvang, but I felt better being on my luxury bike. The bike was brutul with the wind, but I needed to make up for some training so I threw in a 70 minute run after my bike. I felt surprisingly strong all day.
I love hotels because they have baths and ice machines. After a long hard workout I have started taking ice baths when it is convenient. I am not like Bree buying 50 pound bags of ice. I just put a couple of pounds from the ice machine and cold water.
Today the to do list looks like this:
Drop off van to get transmission replaced.
Drop off rental van.
Pick up new rental car.
Drive to LA to finalize everything with the boss.
Drive to Temecula to pick up Modeh's mom. (And have dinner.)
Sell extra Disneyland tickets in San Diego.
Stay at a friends house in La Jolla.
The drive alone to San Diego should take about 6 hours. Without all of these stops. Here are some pictures from my ride yesterday:

VV 2.0

If you can't get a hold of us, we are holed up in our room playing Virtual Villagers. An addicting iPhone game. The weather is supposed to get bad over the next few days so we will never be bored. Now I have to get out of this room.

Rabbits and resurrections.

A half an hour before I was about to get on a train to San Diego and have a little vacation, I got a phone call from Craig Mintzlaff, my previous employer. We began working things out. This is starting to feel like a high school relationship where you break up every time you are mad at the other person. I am hoping for full disclosure and no more empty promises. We went to the next event in San Luis Obispo. At 5 in the morning, it was so cold that I didn't want to move. I am not used to being outside when the air is 30 degrees. By the time the race started, the sun hadn't hit our booth, but the water in the lake was steaming. The lake water temperature was in the 50's. It turned out to be a gorgeous day.We are back in Buellton, CA. You have probably never heard of this town. Our van needs a new transmission. So it will sit here until Thursday or Friday when it can get fixed. For the event, I had to rent a big cargo van with no windows. It is all blind spots. I can't see anything when I am driving and I feel like a kidnapper. Craig had given me a credit card, but has canceled it. Because it is Sunday, all of the mechanics are closed. I think that it might be Easter. I am going for a bike ride. If I feel up to it, I might run as well. I guess I will go look for eggs.

I got Mojdeh to ride a triathlon bike. Now we have to get a saddle that is more comfortable. Luckily I have a box of them from one of the partners in the trailer. The Oceanside 70.3 event looked like a great race. My two heroes Rachel Ross and Rutger Beke had good races. I was told that we would be at that event, but it turns out it was another thing that "fell through".

Split peas and the recession.

We saw some cool places.

I thought that I had a dream job. The idea was great. Travel around the west coast of the US doing triathlons, selling gear, and meeting new people. It could have been wonderful. After a month of lame excuses, no pay, and it not looking like things that we were promised would never materialize, we quit! They never paid us. Their credit card rarely worked. The van broke down once a week. They didn't have enough money for a hotel for us... I gave him a contract and he refused to sign it, so we walked away.

I got to ride some cool bikes.

I was told that I was a "roll with the punches" kind of guy. I agree. Mojdeh and I are still happy. We had a good time. We learned a lot. There is still a tiny sliver of hope that this will all turn around. The people at USA Triathlon were wonderful.
 

We met some great people.

Their partners are amazing.

So now we are stuck in Buellton, California. As you come into the town, the sign says, "Buellton. Welcome travelers. Home of the split pea soup." I couldn't make this stuff up. I wonder if one of the 400 people that live in this village can take me to rent a car...

Carp.

I guess there are some advantages to sleeping in a van. When the people camping beside you are snoring so loud that you can hear them 30 feet away, it is nice to crawl into the van with and close the windows. We had to take out the seat so that I can lay down completely horizontal. It is nice at night, but all of our stuff is piled at our feet. It looks like someone threw up the contents of our closets all over the inside of the van. Sometimes it feels as if we are in a mansion. Right now I am in the office (because I am on my laptop). If we are eating we say that we are in the dining room. If we are putting peanut butter on a bagel or making a bowl of cereal, we claim to be in the kitchen. We don't have anywhere to cook, so making food is easy. Training is getting better. I decided to become more serious and my training schedule say that this is a recovery week. I only skipped the first 5 weeks or so. Today I rode 25 miles and swam 1k. The swimming is more fun with music. It takes me about 300 yards (my warm up) to get my headphones in my ears properly, but then it is all good. I am negotiating my work contract. My life is still great. Going to Starbucks I am surprised to hear people complaining about not having money. Why can't people live within their means?

For the Obama fans out there here is another HIC tribute.

Yesterday's run was pretty fun. I wish that I could take pictures of everything that I saw. I ran down to Rincon point and saw peeling rights that seemed to go on forever. Giant houses overlooking the ocean from their nice gated community. Tar that seeps up from the ground. The giant, fat, bald guy sunbathing nude (ok maybe I don't want pictures of that). I also got to swim at the pool here for what I think is the last time. I can't stop using my H2O Audio waterproof iPod holder. It makes my swimming much more fun.

The views are nice here in Carpinteria.

Our last event was pretty small. I was excited to see collegiate teams racing together. I spent so much time and work trying to get a team together in Hawai'i it was nice to see that it was possible. These teams had uniforms, sponsors, group workouts, everything that I was trying to do in Hawai'i.

I like taking pictures in my free time.

Tomorrow, we are driving to San Luis Obispo. I guess I had better figure out where we are camping there.