Six Pillars

My friend Winsome, fellow triathlete and Chinese student, told me about a bike ride she was signed up for: the Six Pillars Century. She is training under a coach who has all his athletes riding the full century... I can't ride that distance (and enjoy it) right now so I signed up for a shorter route, a 56 mile route which is basically the Eagleman bike course.

I drove out to Cambridge, MD, picked up my stuff and rolled out. It was actually a nice day for biking, not too hot, little bit of a breeze, clear skies... I thought the route itself was pretty nice as well, consisting of a big loop around Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge.

Blackwater NWR

Cherry Blossom Festival

I had some friends of friends in visiting the DC area, and they wanted to wander around the National Mall and see various monuments. I took them along the Moonlight Monuments route, and they really seemed to enjoy it.

One nice thing about their visit was excellent timing: the cherry blossoms were in full bloom and there were huge crowds all over enjoying the various festivities.

SunTrust Relay

Mai and Charles spent their spring break taking a family vacation up the East Coast, stopping along the way a few times before reaching me. They brought Maddie and baby Estelle, already a traveler at only 3 or 4 months old!

I took time off work and we wandered around DC for a bit, visiting museums and monuments. They were in the mood for a low key vacation so we didn't grind out an exhausting visitors schedule.

The one thing I did have planned was a half marathon relay - I was on a relay team that needed to replace a team member, and Mai was interested. The half marathon relay teams consisted of 3 people: 5 miles, 5 miles, 3.1 miles. I had one of the 5 mile legs and I was positive the friend who couldn't make it had the 3.1 mile leg, so I told Mai she could take that one over. But, I was mistaken as our team's third runner Leslie has the 3.1 mile leg. Mai was OK with bumping up from 3.1 miles to 5 miles - no big deal for her.

The morning of the race, we couldn't figure out how to get to the exchange points. If I ran the 1st 5 miles, Mai would need to get to mile 5 in order to meet me, then swap with Leslie at mile 10, and somehow get back to the finish. Granted I didn't look all this info up ahead of time, but to make a long story short, since we couldn't find anybody who knew what to do, we just decided to run the first 10 miles together, and then work our way back with the metro cards the race provided.

So I had promised Mai 3.1 miles, which became 5 miles, and then 10 miles that morning. I'm lucky she was cool with the ever growing mileage she had to do. :) This race was actually very nice - scenic course passing many of the major landmarks, and not quite as crowded as the MCM.

Outside the Museum of Natural History.

Street full of runners and paper cups.

Ski Liberty

Kevin and Heather texted me and asked if I wanted to tag along for some night skiing at the Liberty Ski Resort. Of course I was in!

One thing I really liked about the Seattle area was the proximity of winter sports. I don't want to drive in or shovel snow just to get to work, but I do like to ski/snowboard or snowshoe. Even a winter hike is fun.

Liberty isn't very far so it is a perfect day trip. The area reminded me of the Summit at Snoqualmie, perhaps a little bigger and taller... on the other hand it has been many years since I last visited the Summit.

After arriving, Heather joined the beginner lesson so Kevin and I went off to ski a few green and blue slopes. We checked in a few times to see how they were doing and after the class was over we all skied the green hill a few times.

Chinese Class

I've thought of taking Chinese for years, but never did much about it. However, that has changed as I recently signed up to take 1st semester Chinese at Howard Community College in nearby Columbia, MD. Class starts today and I'm looking forward to it!