BM Prep

Burning Man starts in 1 week. This will be my 4th consecutive year of attendance. I am looking forward to the compression/decompression and the relief from the default world. I haven't taken much time off this year, only a couple days since the beginning of the year, mostly for flying related activities. Due to my starting the new job mid summer, I haven't had the luxury of getting away for quite a while. In fact the last time I went out of town for more than the day was my last trip to Bend at the beginning of May. I am ready for the week of hot,noisy,craziness followed by a week of do nothing (maybe camp with Orbit at the coast) time. Haven't been blogging much since I haven't had much to blog.... here's the fun sign I made for my camp, Levitation Station.

Mountain Biking

I love mtn biking. That was one of the reason's I loved Bend so much during the first few years; incredible mountain biking. As the population grew and the trail system became more and more crowded and worn out, I lost my passion for riding in Central Oregon. The past three seasons have seen a definite decline in my riding. This has been partially due to work and partially the distancing of many of the friendships I had formed in the community. Now that I am back in Portland, I want to gain my passion back. So far my life has been ridiculously busy, so much so that I have only ridden my mtn bike three times since I moved here ... and considering I am accustomed to 3 times a week, I have been anxious to get out and ride. I have one friend who says she wants to ride but has bailed on all but one of our planned trips. I guess its time for me to find some other folks to ride with, but I am not sure where to start. I tried to go on the Fat Tire Farm Thursday night rides but with my new schedule, its very unlikely that I will ever get out early enough to go. Regardless, Today I found my passion again, at Scappoose. There is a small trail system there with 8-10 miles of singletrack loops built off a main artery fire road on some private forest land. No map exists so I just had to ride around and discover. I did four loops up the climb with various descents. It was fun, rootey, technical singletrack. I just need to dial in my bike and I will be all set. A few weeks ago I bought a new suspension fork for it and today was its maiden voyage... infinitely easier on my wrists than the rigid karate monkey fork that came with it. I am gonna go out again next weekend for more discovery

Orbit At Ricochet

My new job is hard. I have been working 10 days straight now and will hopefully get a respit this weekend. I was told last Wed at 5 that the client expected a live site on Friday at 5pm to which I said, there was just no way that could happen. So they asked me to work through the weekend on my first week, which I did but I am getting really tired and starting to wonder if this was a bad choice. I like the people I work with but if this is the expectation, then I don't know that its for me ultimately. At least I can take orbit in with me occasionally (when I feel like paying the $10 for parking). He went with me Saturday and yesterday and will again today. What a good dog ...

Bikeworks Bruce

I was visiting a very old and close friend today and he showed me this video of the shop where we first met back in 1989... nothing has changed... nothing... the same crap is sitting on the floor and the same bikes are in the rack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L1m1QIFTtg

First Weekend of Summer

This past weekend was beautiful here in Portland. Temperatures hit 100+ degrees on Saturday and 95+ on Sunday... summer is finally here. I was out walking Orbit on Saturday morning and saw this chugging along next to our favorite walking spot.



Then last night after a very long work day I went for a short post burrito ride through Westmoreland then down to the Springwater corridor, what a nice sunset... I love Portland :)

New Job to go with my new life

Today I accepted a new job. I will be going to work for a Portland based marketing firm as their web programmer. It will be a shift in focus for my career from pure application development to a mixture of web programming, application programming and technical advisor. I will be working with a team of creatives and sales folk. It is something I have always seen myself doing but didn't feel confident until now to take it on. I am excited about the opportunity.

I will be leaving a job that I never felt totally comfortable in and in reflection, it has been a wonderful learning experience. I haven't really left a job that I wasn't totally fed up with before, but in this case my heart wasn't in it and opportunity came knocking so I opened the door. I have been enjoying what I have been doing to a degree but I noticed that when people ask what I do I often talk poorly about my work. That isn't a good place to be, no matter what your situation is. I also realized once I had some time to relax after six months of go go go, that I wasn't really very happy with my job and that now that it is my primary focus my motivation went downhill fast. Having been down this road before, I knew it was time to look for something else. I began sending my resume in to various and sundry craigslist postings, visited a recruiter and took some interviews. Nothing really fit or was sparking my interest until last week when I interview at Ricochet Partners. They were obviously very interested right off and the interview went swimmingly. The original posting was for a contract to hire, which I wasn't enthused about but was willing to take the risk if the opportunity was right. They made an offer the morning after the interview. I thought that seemed a little odd at first so I hedged a bit and told them about the other interview I was taking that afternoon. This seemed to work in my favor because by that evening they were talking about making it a full time position with benefits and a moderate raise over my current salary. Being not terribly greedy this seemed fine to me, but I still told them that I needed until Friday afternoon to decide and that I would like to see an official offer letter before I committed. They produced and offer letter and after a second phone interview that I initiated, I was feeling a lot more comfortable with them company. You can really never know about the reality of a place until you get inside though. Today, after a conversation with the CEO that went very well, I began negotiations. My demands were pretty small, more vacation time to be a little more in line with what I have had and the understanding that I have some commitments to fulfill. So now I start an entirely new chapter of my life here in PDX and I am quite excited about all the future holds. ...

Forest Park

Went for a MTB ride in Forest Park last night. It's been a long time since I have been there but not much has changed. I ran into the Fat Tire Farm group ride, a ride I used to lead, at the Saltzman road pad. I talked to the group leader and reminiced about the old days. I decided I would try to hook up with them next week but this week I just needed to stretch out my legs and get a feel for being on a mtn bike again. It was really wet up there for June and I wasn't really prepared for the mud. No glasses, no rainjacket, no fenders. This made my descent back to the Real World a little difficult as my eyes filled with goop. Its still coming out of my eyes this morning.