Bakery Nouveau

Today was a rainy day here in Seattle, and Roanne and I took advantage of it to run some errands and eat some delicious baked goods. We had a lazy morning playing scrabble and reading, and then headed out on a Home Depot run with a detour to Bakery Nouveau in West Seattle. Several years ago this Bakery won an award for "Best Croissant in the World" at a competition in France, and they have the huge trophy on display above their showcases of delicious treats.

We ended up arriving at the Bakery just after lunch time, so we enjoyed some of their Sicilian pizza before moving on the main event, the double-baked chocolate croissants (shown at left). Mmmmm! I had a pretty lackluster weigh-in this morning and I'm sure this little trip will result in an even worse one tomorrow morning, but if its a rainy day and you find yourself at a bakery, what choice do you have?

After Bakery Nouveau we continued on to Home Depot where we purchased some materials and tools to build shelves in our new closet on the main floor where the chimney stack used to stand. It looks like more rain tomorrow, so stay tuned for another boring blog post!

Weight: 162.8

Tempting...

The other day I was walking to the restroom at my new place of employment, and what did I see leaning against the wall but some sort of turbo-charged pogo stick (shown at left). Needless to say, I was sorely tempted! Since my last pogo stick problems had stemmed from a wooden 1850's pogo stick, maybe I would have better luck with this super robotic pogo stick from the future?!? I felt a powerful force drawing me towards this wonder of modern technology, but in the end my self control won out and I continued on to the restroom. I'm not sure how long I can hold out if I continue to spend 8 hours a day in the same room as this little beauty, maybe I better ask one of my colleagues to hide it so that I don't get tempted on a daily basis.

Weight: 160.8

Rollers

Last night I rode my rollers for an hour and did some core exercises, not much else that is interesting to write about. This working thing is cramping my blog entries a bit! I will keep posting shorter ones during the week, and then longer ones on the weekend when I have interesting adventures and more time to write.

Weigh: 160.8

Group Run

Last night I went on a group run with the Seattle Running Company. Lately I have been trying to run once a week since I have read a lot about how beneficial it is for maintaining bone density, and I thought if I am going to force myself into going for a run I might as well do it with other people. Emily had told me about this run and was also there, so it was nice to see a familiar face and have someone to chat with during the run. It ended up being a 5.5 mile run, pretty fun, though I would say that group running is lacking some of the merits of group cycling, since people splinter into smaller groups without drafting playing such a big role. My first day at work was good also, speaking of which, I need to leave for work now so I'll have to write more about that another day! Another record weigh-in this morning, I just shattered the 160 barrier!

Weight: 159.8

Hi ho, hi ho ...

... it's off to work I go! If you haven't been reading my blog lately you might be asking yourself "Why is a man of leisure writing a blog post at such an uncivilized hour?". Well, last week I got a job and today is my first day of work. Of course, I got up early to sneak in a roller ski work out in Volunteer Park and now I am savoring my last moments of freedom before heading in to work.


Roanne's chemo treatment went well yesterday, and on the way home we stopped off at Top Pot Donuts to sample their Apple Fritters and Old Fashioned Lemon Glazed donuts. Delicious! After that I headed in to the climbing gym for some bouldering. I haven't climbed at all in the last few weeks since my elbow had been bothering me (tennis elbow, but not from tennis) but it felt pretty good last night so hopefully those problems are behind me.

Weight: 160.6

3/4 of the way!

This morning we are at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance for Roanne's 6th (of 8) chemotherapy infusion. So, it is pretty exciting to be approaching the 75% done milestone! We just met with the Oncologist who said that everything was looking good, next week Roanne will have some ultrasound imaging done in advance of her meeting the surgeon on Feb. 23, it will be exciting to get the surgery scheduled (hopefully in late March after the last chemo treatment on March 8).

Yesterday Roanne and I went "back to school" shopping, since I now have a job (that I will start tomorrow, I would have started today if not for Roanne's chemo appointment). Roanne thought that I needed some new clothes so that I can look respectable. The back to school shopping was a resounding success, with trips to several Nordstrom Rack stores and lots of clothing tried on. I learned that about 95% of size Medium shirts have arms that are too short (darn this positive ape index of mine!), but pants are a little easier if you look for ones that are designed to be hemmed before wearing (the only drawback here is that these are usually the more expensive ones). After we finished the shopping marathon I got out for a bike ride around Mercer Island.

Finally, I hit another 2010 record on the weigh-in this morning, if I can keep this up I should be able to meet my goal even before my first ski race of 2010 (the Gatineau Lopppet)! Just to clarify the rules of the game, to have met my resolution I need to have a weekly average that falls at or below 160 (not just one day where I have tremendously lucky weigh-in).

Weight: 160.6

Mount Margaret

On Saturday Emily and I decided that it was time for a backcountry ski adventure, so she stopped by our house in the morning and at 8:30am we packed up and headed for Snoqualmie Pass. We decided to do a tour up Mount Margaret, so we exited at Hyak and crossed the highway to the Gold Creek Sno-park. We were delighted to find that the trail head was over run with snowmobilers, and so our first pleasurable moment of the outing was opening the car door and breathing in the hazy fog of blue smoke and hearing the musical sounds of them all rev'ing their 2-stroke engines.


We suited up and headed down the trail, happy to leave the noise and stench behind (at least temporarily, until the went roaring past us). The route starts by following an unplowed road for about 3km, which is a little unpleasant since it is about 20 feet from I-90 making it very loud. Eventually the trail switchbacked up and away from the highway, and the snow quality started to get a little better also (it was pretty warm out and really slushy where we parked).

Eventually we left the road and headed up through a clear cut which was a lot more fun, since we were no longer on the snowmobile tracks. Here is a picture of Emily heading up, with Keechelus Lake visible in the background below:


It had been a sunny day when we left Seattle, but as per usual as soon as we neared Snoqualmie Pass it became socked in with fog. Ah, the joys of the PNW! We continued through the clear cut, and at about 3900 feet the forest began again and we reached the ridge that would lead us to the summit. All of the trees on the ridge were completely encrusted in snow, making for some splendid white scenery as shown in the photo below.


We continued along the ridge, which first led to a false summit then descended briefly and continued on to the true summit at 5600 feet. It was pretty foggy, but we could tell that the ridge was heavily corniced and dropped off sharply to one side. Emily is peering over the edge of the abyss in the photo below:


The guide book we were using had instructed us to start our descent before reaching the summit, but I immediately recognized how ridiculous that would be so we continued on to the summit before de-skinning and prepping for the powder feast that lay before us. We then headed down through the trees, traversing towards our ascent route when the trees were too tight and then making turns down through open sections. The snow was pretty good considering how warm it had been down low, there was definitely good powder to be had though it was considerably heavier than other deep snow I have skied in (after being spoiled by the dry and fluffy champagne powder in Utah, this was my introduction to the soggy cascade concrete). Here I am with a big smile on my face since we just found a nice steep open shot through the trees that was just begging to be skied:
Here is a shot of Emily freeing the heel and freeing the mind:


And then finally one of me heading down with my patented pole flying pole technique:


Eventually we emerged back at the base of the clear cut, which we headed down to connect with the snowmobile track that we had taken up. We then bee-lined it down this section, skinned along the final flat section of road, and were back at the car. What a great day! Shown below is a topo map of our route with our GPS track plotted on it. We started on the left by I-90, and the loop near the top is because we descended along a different route than we had climbed up.


The total elevation gain for the day ended up being 3100 feet with 17.5km covered, not too bad for leaving Seattle at 8:30am and being back at the house before 5:00pm. The elevation profile is plotted below:


This was a lot of fun, much better than the previous tour I had attempted in Snoqualmie Pass (Mount Amabalis with Fras and Beno over Christmas) so it left me excited to explore more of the Snoqualmie backcountry options. We drove back to Seattle where we met Roanne back at our house and then were joined by Andrew who drove up from Tacoma for a really fun dinner. Good times!

Finally, it is time to sum up the weekly weigh-ins, I had a 2010 record weigh-in this morning with a 161.0, so that was good news. However, the weekly average was a little lackluster as I came in at 162.1, just 0.4 lbs less than last week. Oh well, I will redouble my efforts for the coming week. The one thing that may work in my favour this week is that I now have a job, and during the week I will no longer be able to sit around the house eating cookies all day.