7 Hills of Kirkland

This morning I met up with Chris, Sandy, Francesca, and Jennifer for the 7 Hills of Kirkland bike ride. The ride had three distance choices: 7 hills route (42 miles), 11 hills route (78 miles), and new since the city of Kirkland is celebrating its centennial this year, the Century (100 mile) route.

Chris and I opted for the century route. I originally thought the 78 mile route would be plenty for me, but he was interested in the century. I figured, if he is flying in from the Chicago area, where it isn't very hilly, and wants to do a hilly century, then so can I!

I originally planned to ride my Trek, since it has a triple chainring, which would make the hill climbs easier. But his bike, a Felt S25, only had a double chainring. So, I decided I could ride my Cervelo and its double chainring as well. Besides, I have bigger gears on my derailleur (12-25 versus his 11-23), so I would have an "easier" time. After all, if he can climb on the 11-23 then I can too on the 12-25.

You might detect a slight competitiveness here, but that wasn't really it. Chris is a stronger cyclist than I am. This was more that I needed some pushing to work a bit harder than I originally would have, which makes for better training. Kind of like how a coach will make you stretch a little bit farther than you would on your own.

We all rode up straight into Market Hill, immediately out of the start area. This is pretty gentle compared to the next two hills: Juanita Hill and then Norgate Hill. We took it easy, not wanting to exhaust ourselves 20 miles into a 100 mile ride. At the first food stop Sandy, Jennifer, and Francesca caught as as we were leaving, so we chatted briefly and took a few photos.

Me, Francesca, Sandy, Chris


Chris and I left to do Winery Hill, which was really tough. We climbed a residential street right next to the hill, which had two steep sections with flatter grades in between. At the top was some entertainment: a kilt-wearing bagpipe-playing gentleman, who was really good and a nice diversion from the effort.

After this the route took us by the food stop again, and on down to the Sammamish River valley. We climbed 60 Acres hill (that is what I call it, but it is probably part of Education hill) and midway up was the split: 11 Hills and Century course kept going, while the 7 Hills course turned. Up until this point the course was busy - lots of riders. But after the split, we looked back and saw that nearly everybody following us turned for the 7 Hills route.

We kept going up Education Hill, so named because an elementary, junior high, and Redmond high school are all on it. After a steep descent to Avondale road, we we soon climbing up Novelty Hill Road, a long but reasonable grade. Near the top we turned off and road over to Union Hill and had a nice descent to the next valley, which I think is called Cherry Valley. Food stop #2 was located here, and we took advantage. At this point we were around mile 45 of the trip.

I gobbled up some apple slices, spreading peanut butter on them. I also grabbed a bunch of fig newtons, and decided I wanted more peanut butter so I spread more on the fig newtons and ate them up! After refilling water, we got back on our bikes and took the Century route fork.

This section of the course was a loop through Carnation and Duvall, back to the food stop. It is quite rural, and Chris said it reminded him of his area a little bit. We pedaled on a road that Jennifer and I have biked on, passing the Nestle Regional Training Center, before coming to 203. This part of the route wasn't the greatest, since 203 is busy and doesn't have much of a shoulder. We rode along single-file until Stillwater Hill road, where we turned into a sharp grade and kept climbing for a while.

Fortunately, this road was really a gentle grade, looping around the hill Duvall is on. After circumnavigating Duvall we were back on 203 riding north. There are only a few bridges across Cherry Valley, and the one right at Duvall would be really unwise to bike - two lane, heavy traffic, no shoulder. Our route took us several miles north until we came to a suitable road and bridge we could use to get back across the valley.

At this point we were around mile 65. I've noticed past 60 miles or so, my lower back starts to stiffen up. I stretched a bit while riding, and when we got back to the food stop at mile 74, I hopped off my bike and did various leg and back stretches. And of course, ate more apples, peanut butter, cheese squares, and fig newtons. I had plenty to eat, because I was also eating some gel every 30 minutes or so.

Now we had to climb the nice long Union Hill descent, which seemed like it went on forever. After a lot of work, we were coasting down Novelty Hill road again. Chris was several bike lengths ahead and going too fast to make a turn, so he passed it up. But he signaled and I saw it in time to slow down and make it. This was my only complaint about the course marking - the Dan Henry mark was literally 10 feet before the turn, which isn't enough time to react when you are coasting along downhill at 25+ mph.

I made the turn and saw him slowing to cross the road and come back, so I rode along for a bit, and got off my bike to stretch more while waiting for him. Chris caught up really quick and we took off, getting back to Education Hill at 116th St. After two rollers we found a "mini stop" in a church parking lot, which let me refill water and grab a few snacks. We were at mile 85 at this point, and knew we were almost done.

Throughout most of the ride past the 7 Hills turnoff, we were by ourselves. But now, we found ourselves with half a dozen others, which was nice. As a group we rode back from Education Hill and took the turnoff, so we were back on the common route. We pedaled along Willows Road, which was flat. Chris was leading and two or three others drafted off of him, including myself. But at the first slight hill, we lost them all, only to group up again at a light.

Only one last hill to climb: Rose Hill. I ride this every week, as part of my "basic home hill loop". So I knew as we climbed up that it was in the bag. We left behind the small group and climbed up Rose Hill and turned south to finish up.

We got back to the Kirkland Marina, and ate strawberry shortcake to celebrate. My bike computer showed 103 miles in 6:41 (ride time), which I was pretty happy with.

Afterwards, we went to a Memorial Day barbecue at Eve's house. Sandy made some delicious asparagus and steak, and we ate very well. I prepared some homemade ice cream, and finished it up at Eve's. It turned out OK - I used 2% milk instead of whole, and I could taste the difference - but nobody complained and most of it was eaten on the spot. Next time I'll use whole milk - it just doesn't make sense to use 2% given what else goes into homemade ice cream. ;)

Guild Wars

Several years ago, I played an MMORPG/MMOG named Asheron's Call. There was a fancy back story and in-game lore, but basically this was an online game where you killed monsters to earn experience and money, repeat. I burned out after a while, and went back to playing offline games on the PC and PS2.

One thing that bugged me slightly was the monthly fee. It wasn't much, $10 or $12 a month, and for the hours I played, that worked out to far less than the cost of going to the theater, for instance. Still, there are so many computer games to play that don't charge a fee, it seems like a ripoff. Plus, by paying a monthly fee it always made me feel like I had to play to get my money's worth.

When I heard the Guild Wars wasn't going to charge a monthly fee, I was intrigued. It seems they plan to make their money by releasing expansion packs every six months or so.

So I bought a copy and started up. These kinds of games can be major time sinks, which is a concern. However, I am positive I can resist. And, I am happy to say after having the game for 15 days, I've only played a total of 12 hours total.

The general setting is some mythical kingdom, which is under attack - the ongoing story will involve heroes (i.e. people playing the game) getting strong enough to repulse the alien invaders.

The setup is very quick - you choose a profession from among six choices that boil down to 2 fighter classes, 1 healer class, and 3 spell caster classes. A few tweaks to your appearance (hair color, skin color, etc.) and then you name yourself and appear in the game. I mulled it over for a bit and decided to play a female ranger (fighter that uses bows and ranged weapons) and started up.

You begin the game in the days before the attack, which is known as "The Searing" in the game. Pre-searing, there are several starter quests meant to familiarize yourself with moving around, grouping with other players, and questing. Quests are easy to find, because the game puts a large floating exclamation point above people who can give you one. After talking to them, the quest shows up in your journal, with a checklist of things to do. Even better, the in game map shows you where you have to go in order to complete it!

He's got a quest!



Through various quests and item hunting, I managed to upgrade all my armor and bow, and stash some money which I know will come in handy. One fun thing about the ranger is they can tame a pet - I managed to charm a lynx (in game they are called "Melandru's Stalkers") and named it "Kitty", so now I have a faithful companion that follows me around and helps me fight.

Me and My Pet Kitty



I've pretty much exhausted all the Pre-Searing content and am ready to move onto the rest of the game. Post-Searing, even more quests will become available, with harder monsters and better rewards.

A Little More Info For RPG Fans

In Guild Wars, each class has attributes and skills. Every time you level, you get attribute points to spend which improve your general abilities. For instance, as a ranger, one of my attributes is Marksmanship. Putting points into this makes all my shots do more damage. Under Marksmanship are various skills, such as "Power Shot", which does even more damage. Skills cost energy and time to use, which limit how often they can be used. For Power Shot, it is once every 6 seconds, if I have the energy, which naturally recharges. Skills can be bought from certain merchants, or gained through various quests.

All quests areas are "instanced", meaning a private copy of the quest world is created for your party. This solves a lot of problems: camping (other groups waiting for quest monsters to appear), griefing (other players interfering with your group), and game balance (the challenge and difficulty can be set by the game designers, based on a maximum number of players).

The extra twist in Guild Wars is while there are dozens of skills, you can only select eight for usage during a quest, and you can only change them out in cities (i.e. when you aren't on a quest). So you need to choose carefully and make sure what skills you bring meshes well with what the rest of your group is bringing.

In the Pre-Searing game, you have a chance to try every class out - the game makes available starter quests for everyone. In fact, you have to, as you must pick a secondary class before moving onto the Post-Searing game. I chose Mesmer as my secondary class, which is basically a spell-caster that casts illusion-type spells.

Taking in the sights

Wait, is that the Loch Ness Monster in the water?

Bainbridge Island Ride

Another beautiful sunny, and dare I say hot day in the Seattle area. Sandy, Chris (visiting from Chicago), and I met at Francesca's house for a bike ride. We decided to show Chris and Sandy around the area and picked Bainbridge Island for a nice moderate challenging ride - basically we could do the Chilly Hilly course.

Chris



So we rode away towards the ferry terminal, but decided to detour by the Ballard Locks. We arrived and walked our bikes in, since riding them isn't allowed on the grounds. Soon we were standing at the fish ladder, which is more like a fish fire hydrant. On one side, incoming water is channeled to a narrow chute, with mesh-like sides, so that some water spills out; on the other, a big tube that suddenly ends in mid-air, shooting salmon out to fall to the water below. After watching and seeing a few salmon blasted out of the end of the tube, we walked out the other side of the locks and continued towards downtown.

Locks Sculpture



Once on Bainbridge Island, Francesca and I discovered neither of us brought a map. Fortunately, the route was marked by paint on the road - so called "Dan Henry's" we could follow. We followed the route (except for two wrong turns a few minutes into the ride) and enjoyed the challenge, but decided not to overdo it and took the shortcut route of 20 miles. Still, the total ride was around 50 miles counting the round trip to/from the ferry terminal.

Seattle from the Ferry


During the ride we passed a woman who was doing the same route... on a unicycle! Her unicycle had a really big wheel, at least compared to a bike wheel. She also had some extension for resting her arms. I rode next to her for a bit and she was moving along at 11 to 12 mph. She said it takes about a week to learn to ride, but three or four years before you are skilled enough to ride the moderate hilly route we were on. I can't imagine having the balance to do hill climbing and descending, on a unicycle. She said she was training for a "Swiss Alps Unicycle Tour" - wow.

House Sale

Lowering the price apparently did the trick. Another realtor called me and said his client really liked the house and wanted to make a full-price offer on it! This morning, my realtor and I waited at my house for the other agent. He appeared, and explained his clients cooled on the offer overnight, and were now prepared to offer $365K instead of $370K. He gave us the offer and went off to leave us alone.

One thing important to me is the closing date, when they would like possession to occur. Their offer gives me until July 4th to clear out, which is perfect - I can have the movers come after IMCdA, which is all I really wanted as far as timing.

My realtor didn't like two other things about the offer. First, they inserted a "neighborhood inspection" clause, which allows them to back out of any offer within 3 days, for any reason. The purpose of this is to allow a potential buyer to scope out the neighborhood, their commute, the neighbors, and change their mind if something doesn't quite add up. Sometimes, this clause makes sense - I had one when I bought the house, because I was moving from Seattle. But in this case, the couple offering on the house lives close by, so my realtor said she didn't think it is necessary and therefore she would ask for that clause to be deleted. Her reasoning was, they live nearby so they should already know the neighborhood. Plus, I wouldn't really know if I sold the home until Monday.

Second, they inserted a "sliding closing day" clause, which said if closing were delayed for reasons out of their control, they wouldn't be penalized, for up to 5 days. My realtor said she had only seen those clauses for new construction, meant to protect against construction delays. In this case, we aren't new construction so she said she would ask for the clause to be deleted as well. Or at the very least, pay me some penalty for each day.

We also split the difference on the price difference. Thus, our counter offer was to sell the home for $367.5K, and have the two above-mentioned clauses deleted. I went off for a run, while my realtor went to meet their realtor at the local Starbucks to hash it out.

After my run, I checked my messages and found that the counter offer was accepted! So, the home selling process is moving right along. They already scheduled the home inspection for tomorrow at 9 am, so I'll clear out by then. The inspection is standard for any real estate transaction - the inspector will compile a list of issues and then I get the chance to address them (fix the issues or offer to compensate).

My timeline now looks like:

• June 13th to June 17th - house hunting trip (exact dates to be scheduled)
  
• June 18th or June 19th - throw myself a going away party :)
  
• June 30th and July 1st - movers come to pack and load my stuff
  
• July 1st or July 2nd - fly out
  

Napoleon Dynamite

I Netflix'ed this movie because I had heard so much about it. I also heard you either love this movie or hate it... let's just say I'm more towards the "hate it" side. I think this is supposed to be a comedy, except I didn't laugh the entire time. I even let the credits roll fully and watched the extra footage at the end, of the wedding scene.

The plot centers around an awkward misfit high school student, Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder). The plot sort of meanders around and the movie is quirky for the sake of being quirky. This can sometimes be funny, but it just didn't work for me this time. I found the main character to be quite irritating, from his speech pattern, facial expressions, actions, oddball outbursts, and abrupt manner. On the other hand, if the character were supposed to be unsympathetic, then the actor absolutely nailed it.

I'd say see it yourself to make up your mind, but then I can't really recommend it. Netflix it if you are a subscriber, so you can disguise the rental fee in your monthly charge.

Ring Tones and House Listing

Over the past days, I've had lots of people come through and look at the house. Traffic was the heaviest on Friday and Saturday, tailed off a bit on Sunday, and just a handful of people on the weekdays. A total of perhaps 20 or 25 people have come through.

Usually, the buyer's agent will call up to give notice. If they can't reach me, the message is typically "I'd like to show your house at X p.m. and if that is a problem, please call my back at XYZ". I got tired of talking to so many buyer's agents, I decided I needed a way to tell one way calling.

Enter ring tones - my phone, a Nokia 3120, has caller groups, which allow me to sort my contacts into various categories. I set the default ring to "Heavenly", and put all my friends into their own group with the ring tone "Robotique". Now what happens in when somebody I know calls, I hear Robotique. And when I hear "Heavenly" instead, I know somebody is calling that isn't in my address book - e.g. a buyer's agent. If it is convenient I answer, but if not, I don't worry about it and check the message later when I can.

So far, nobody has offered on the home. My realtor called up the other realtors to get feedback, and generally heard some people didn't like the yard layout, and others didn't like the kitchen. As for the yard, the back is small - most of my yard is on the side and half of that is on a gentle hill. My kitchen isn't updated - cabinets are older I suppose - but this is hardly something I'm going to address before selling.

So, my realtor suggested dropping the price by $5000. She's going to do another market analysis to see if there are new homes on the market. We had originally priced it a little higher to account for roof negotiations, and it looks like for whatever reason, that was too high. Hopefully it will sell at the new price; I think we will let it list for a week or two more before changing anything.

Board Games: Evo

We had various schedule conflicts last week, so the board games group met tonight. We decided to play Evo, a fun game where you play a dinosaur species fighting for survival.

The game is played on an island map, and each player accumulates points to use to bid for genetic mutations, which in turn give your dinos an edge on survival. The mutations give your entire species various advantages: move faster, survive in heat, survive in cold, lay more eggs, fight better, and so forth.

This game favors defense, so I didn't attack and instead moved to my strategic advantage. I also spent as little as possible on buying mutations, bidding on heat/cold survival rather than attack enhancements.

Midway through the game, I had sucessfully fended off a half dozen attacks and was in second place, close to the leader (Jeff). Another player was essentially out of the game (Ken), and the fourth was far behind (Stephane), but closer on the map to the leader so they were fighting it out for territory. I had moved my dinos to spaces they would survive, but new births wouldn't - I had a large stable population that wasn't growing. At this point I knew the leader would have to attack me to try to pull further ahead, so I took a chance and fell behind in points to secure better fighting (and defense) capabilities.

I was a point or two behind, when basically Stephane and Jeff got sucked into a territory battle that wiped out most of their population. Since you get points every round on how many dinos you have on the board, I was able to pull away and coast in for a victory, my second in a row (counting last time's win at Starfarers of Catan)!

This may have been my last board games evening with the group; perhaps I can make one more in the middle of June. Over the years we've played some pretty good games, and I've wound up buying my own copies of several ones I liked. Plus, taken a chance and bought a few games based on reviews.