One of the more interesting traits of my daughter is that she won’t touch meat. Any kind of meat, cooked or raw. Literally, even to give it to the dog. The one exception is chicken in shredded, deep fried form, and then only grudgingly. However, she loves fruit… all types of fruit. Oranges, apples, mangoes, grapes, watermelons, cantaloupes, berries… if it’s in the fruit family, she’ll eat it. Even if it looks like part of the fruit family, like cucumbers, it’s fair game. This has given her the nickname at her preschool of “fruit bat.”

While dining with some of our friends from Shanghai, I asked the question, what is fruit bat in Chinese? Well, here it is: 果蝠, or guǒ fú. Guǒ is fruit, and fú is bat. Or, the HTML representation: 果蝠 (果蝠).

Apparently, fú is also a homonym for 福, which means fortune or happiness. Apparently, during Chinese New Year, it’s written everywhere for good fortune . And, it’s a good sign for the name.

My daughter, 果蝠.

So a bit over a week from STP (and yes, I’ll put more up one of these days), and my left Achilles is still sore. Not sure if it was from the 204 miles, or from the heel notch of my SIDIs bashing into it too much on a hill or something. Anyway, Achilles tendinitis is something that can linger, so off to the podiatrist I went.

Note: it’s a fair question whether to see a podiatrist, orthopedist, or physical therapist. I picked a podiatrist mostly as I had seen him before for  a different matter, and didn’t know any orthopedists or physical therapists.Anyway, I went to see my podiatrist, Dr. William Warnekros. Hmmm… “my podiatrist.” Man that makes me sound old. And not like I see him all the time… just once before for an ingrown toenail. But hey, you do amass specialists when you have the “everything is free” health care plan of Microsoft. Back to the story — I went to see him in his office near U Village. He looked over the ankle, and promptly made the following recommendations:Anyway, I went to see my podiatrist, . Hmmm… “my podiatrist.” Man that makes me sound old. And not like I see him all the time… just once before for an ingrown toenail. But hey, you do amass specialists when you have the “everything is free” health care plan of Microsoft. Back to the story — I went to see him in his He looked over the ankle, and promptly made the following recommendations:

Anyway, I went to see my podiatrist, . Hmmm… “my podiatrist.” Man that makes me sound old. And not like I see him all the time… just once before for an ingrown toenail. But hey, you do amass specialists when you have the “everything is free” health care plan of Microsoft. Back to the story — I went to see him in his He looked over the ankle, and promptly made the following recommendations:

1. Take an anti-inflammatory;
2. Ice the ankle for 20 minutes twice a day;
3. Put in 3/8″ elevators in my shoes to relieve stress;
4. Taped up my foot and I’m to keep the tape on for 5 days;
5. Rest the ankle as much as I can.

Joy… but hey, Dr. Warnekros is actually super nice and a pretty good doc. He taped up my foot, explained why there was no tape around the ankle in a reaosnable way, and was pretty good about getting the elevators in my shoes (they’re just ankle lifts that give my heels a bit of a rise in the shoe).

BTW, something interesting… I found a decent number of doctor recommendation sites, but none that had Dr. Warnekros. You’d think that some doctor recommendation site could hit critical mass… but apparently not. So, I thought I’d put in a blog entry and see if that might help out. So, if you’re reading this and end up seeing him, please leave a comment… I’d love to find out if these type of recommendations are better / worse / indifferent than everything else out there.

A bit of a placeholder to get updated later…
We did it! 2 days, 204 miles, 11 people from Seattle to Portland!
‘cuz I just couldn’t wait, here’s the GPS route: http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/episode/view.do?episodePk.pkValue=1062951
Lots of pictures and a video forthcoming!
Go Pastries!
Pastry Powered T(o)uring Machines 2006 STP Finishers Scott Naomi Erik Rich Joanna Ruben Megan Keith Paul Marc Lauren Greg
wOOt!

So after an hour in Centralia, we rode on 30 minutes to the Acres of Pride Arabian Horse Farm, where we’ll bed down for the night in a RV.
We got in, and started eating! Fresh fruit followed by spaghetti and COOKIES! Yum!

We made some awesome time. Pacelines are an awesome thing - was cruising at 20 mph and a heartrate of 130. I picked up Joanna about mile 80 and Ruben and Megan caught up to up just before Centralia. Greg is still up ahead, but the 4 of us are leading! Woot!

Just some administravia… I finally tracked down why the advanced editing functionality in my WordPress image wasn’t working, yet was on some of the other blogs I manage. Turns out it’s the Email Notification plugin. I’m not sure why exactly, but a fresh install (including nuking the database tables) didn’t solve the problem, so I’m killing it for now and will make all you guys that use e-mail notification do something like get an RSS reader.

One more day…

Two more days…

A second triplog of our ride to Bainbridge / Poulsbo; see Lauren and Greg’s original here: http://pastrypowered.com/?p=27.

Data: Erik’s GPS Log. Also, here’s MotionBased’s new player link for just the Bainbridge section (apparently I got lucky and in the beta!)

As the final training ride before STP, Lauren, Greg, Paul, and I decided to do a quick ride around Bainbridge Island. In truth, and in large part due to laziness on my part, I just put forth the Chilly Hilly route of 33 miles with travel to / from the ferry from UZ and called it good.

We got off a bit late (my fault; forgot the cue sheets and had turned around to get them before Lauren called and said she has a map), and then booked it down to the ferry. We made it with seconds (literally) to spare. Chances are if we were a week later, we’d have missed the ferry as they’re planning on stopping boarding 2 minutes before posted sailing time to ensure on-time departures (boo!). The day was gorgeous though; here’s a quick picture of Mt. Baker from the ferry (yes, it’s there, I’m just not a master with the camera phone camera!)

and here’s where they keep those other ferries!

We put on some sunscreen and stretched out…

and it was off we go!

After a few miles, Lauren’s back rack came off and slammed into her tire. At this point, we thought there’d be a bike shop in Poulsbo, so we decided to head up there. We also ran into Brent from Wisconsin who had sold his business and was in the process of biking from Seattle back to Wisconsin. He tagged along with us to Poulsbo, where it turns out there wasn’t a bike shop. But there was a nice bakery — Liberty Bay Bakery & Cafe:

We headed back to Bainbridge, and Lauren then headed to town while Greg, Paul, and I did the rest of the route. We tried to meet up at the cider stop (although we were about 5 months late for cider), but Lauren got a flat so she just headed to the ferry. Greg, Paul, and I then did the southern part of the route, and about mid-way through Greg picked up some glass through his big knobby 26″ tires… d’oh! Paul, wanting to get back, took off for the ferry. Greg and I headed out without too much of a delay… and were zipping down to the ferry past the gates when we heard HOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNKKKKKKKKK! D’oh! The ferry was leaving. And suddenly, there was Paul, who had apparently missed a turn somewhere and was behind us. Oh well!

We turned around, and I picked up some Grapefruit Juice and a yummy tea biscuit at Blackbird Cafe in Bainbridge… yum yum good. We then took the 2:55 ferry and headed home. The day was still gorgeous… here’s a final pic of a sailboat we passed on the way home: