the 108 incident! UBOB

So this past weekend a bunch of friends of mine, myself and many other, new participants headed out into the Sierras of California for a weekend of riding motorcycles, catching up with friends, and drinking a lot of beer.

I'll preface by saying this weekend, rocked like none other. hahahaha

I do have to post this video first though. It's a video edit from our trip up the mountain on hwy 108 heading west, when we were suddenly met with wet roads and rain, and with a quick dip in temperatures...hail! yep, those stupid little needles digging into you. So as we're riding a few guys pull over to regroup, and make a decision. My plan: we're in this shit, we gotta get off the mtn, either forward or back. and I hate, absolutely HATE going backwards. hahaha just from hashing. so we press on, knowing we're near the summit and will soon drop fast.

We continued on, to what is now known to us as the 108 incident. hahaha

make no mistake, this was one of the most fun, exhilarating, dumb, insane, kick ass things we've all done at any one time. No complaints from any one of us...but I digress. watch the video.

not more than an hour later we were bombing the central valley at mach 5. (not for realz)

what a kickass weekend. 

SF Armory.

I had a chance 2 days ago to stop by the old Armory in SF. 14th and Mission. The building, surprisingly enough, is pretty inocuous and slips your sight if you don't pay much attention to it. It is surprisingly bigger than what it appears while driving by it too. The building was built over Mission Creek, which still runs under it, and housed the National Guard, after being completed in 1914, in the style of an old Moorish Castle. It stayed in use until 1978, when it was designated as a historical site. Some much planned condos were put by the wayside, after they encountered much community resistance. Eventually, it was quietly sold to a company, which now leases it to it's current occupants.... Kink.com :D


Parking outside, with seemingly no entrance, and no signs anywhere.
The indoor photo is of a window, lining the side of the 39,000 square foot drill court. The windows housed anti-aircraft guns that could fire over the city and into the bay. pretty cool shit.

Underground/basement walk through shows, on the right, the indoor rifle range, which is pretty significant in size, and to the rear of that photo is Mission Creek.

On the left is a movie prop, used for...well.....you can distinguish, that that is a chainsaw belt, with tongues attached. :D haha Johnny Five, is alive!! There were underground horse stables, which have since been converted into movie sets.

I'll have to go back for the official tour, but it was still a great day to get inside such a historic building. As well, as touring along with it's current occupants. :D

Next race - May 9th

Just signed up for my next Ultramarathon. Redwood 50k, in Oakland, Ca.
May 9th. I had to, it's the best way to get myself to run and train. hahahaha

this, along with, the two triathlons in July, should move me forward. I think I will try and sign up for the SF marathon as well. Missed it last year. :D

Squaw Valley Board Meeting! 3-6-10

A few weeks ago, I drove out to Reno to see my sister and brother in law. Him and I managed to sneak away from the city to get some board time at Squaw Valley Ski resort (olympic location). I ran into my friend Emma out on the slopes after we threw a few texts back and forth. We also got to make a few runs down the mountain before we all went our way.


Photo #1: Myself and Chris. Photo #2: Chris, Emma and Myself.

Great fun, and the weather held out just fine for the entire day. Unfortunately, when we came to the lower end of the mountain, the snow sucked, and wasn't sticking. bleh. we decided to be done for the day and get back to town.

Space Cowboys were playing at the bar at the main resort, and that was pretty cool. Tons of people outside, having beers, listening to music and having a blast.

I enjoyed finally snowboarding Squaw Valley Resort during the day time. Not just night boarding.

A day at "The Wall"

A quick shot of me with Oakland, the bay, the bay bridge and SF in the background.
It was a little hazy out, but warm and scenic. I had heard from my buddy Ben that they would be coming up here, so I figured why not come up and meet them. It took them a little longer as some of the girls riding were taking their sweet time. haha


photos: #1 Kurt and I. #2Katia and Myself. #3 Ben, Myself and Katia

While sitting around waiting, I saw a bike coming up from the other direction, and noticed it was red, and it was a hypermotard......then I immediately saw the rider had on a bright yellow jacket....and I know only one person that is that nerdy...Kurt. hahahaha I stood up, looked, the bike pulls in, points at me, and sure the hell enough, it was Kurt, one of my riding buddies, who happened to be coming up this way to go home (the long way). haha

so he hung out and we chatted for a while.

Ben and Katia rolled up on their respective bikes, we snapped a few photos and hung out, talking bikes and shooting the shit. It was a great time. Jeff ,another buddy of ours, happened to roll up, and stopped also.

The wall is a well known local bike hangout/stop, up in the Oakland Hills. You'll usually find some bikes at this spot, especially when the weather is awesome.

this is an addendum to one of my previous posts yesterday about spending the day riding and at the wall, in Oakland.

Sunny weather these last few days has gotten people out from behind their computers and out riding. It's great.

ws100 volunteer experience

This last weekend I went up to Auburn, Ca to volunteer at the medical tent, at the finish line, for the Western States 100. I wanted to get an up close encounter with what this event might have in store. It is one of the more challenging 100 mile races in the states, and runners come from all over the world.

A bit about the Western States 100, it is in it's 35th year of running, and had 399 runners signed up to run it (edit: 238 runners finished). With the 2008 race being cancelled due to smoke from forest fires being to thick, many of the runners that were slated to run in 2008, were actually carried over to 2009. I signed up to volunteer and was placed at the finish line. Some years they have enough volunteers and others, they don't. So I prepared myself for anything. Mostly, figured it'd be a lot of mass casualty scenarios as runners are coming in close groups, near the end. Lots of IV starts, rehydration and monitoring for hyponatremia, vomiting, et al.

I arrived on Saturday morning, while lots of the structures and finish line setups were just being put up, and then went for a quick run in the blistering 103 deg F heat of the central valley. It was fucking hot, plain and simple, with little to no air movement in the valley I was running, it sapped the energy right out of me. My friend, Steph, went for a bicycle ride around Folsom Lake instead, and did 45 miles, and also came in pretty beat.

My shift wouldn't start till about 9pm that night, when they expected the first runners to come in. I was asked if I could work till 11am, as that is the cutoff (30 hours) for all runners. I said I'd see what I could do.

After meeting the friendly staff in the medical tent, we went through what might happen, how the runners are acting when they come in, and what to expect...since this is my first year volunteering there. It was a good time, and then the waiting for the first runner, who was on par to finish in just over 16 hours, so we had heard. List of finishers.

The winner, Hal Koerner, finished in 16 hours 24 minutes 55 seconds. Damn.
The course record is 15:36, if I remember correctly.

It was interesting to see the first 10 finishers (which included the top woman finisher, Anita Ortiz) come in, some of them deliriously blabbing on and on, others acting like little babies, that need to be coddled and throwing tantrums in the med tent, cause they want to be tucked in and shit. really, come on dude! you're fine, you're now trying to take advantage of the situation. make room for the next runner. The womans 2nd place finisher (my new crush) came in and ended up needing some assistance and we kept her in the tent longer than normal. This was her best finish at ws100 and she'd pushed pretty hard. I was happy to see her get up and walk out on her own later on.

I spent all night there, till about 0730, when I decided it was time to go for a break, and was pretty much done for the day, since they had 5 more volunteers that were going to cover the morning portion. I started 14 IV's, and we monitored more than that, as they'd come in, cool off and then weren't able to move anywhere, vomiting, cramping, and needing fluids.

In the middle of the night, I texted my friend Jasper to encourage him. He texted back later saying he'd had to drop (mile 55) cause he was sneezing/coughing up blood. shit. well, I felt really bad for him, but he was in good spirits when he came in, and we talked for a while, as well as the other hashers that were crewing for him.
They went to the bar to get drunk and relax, and I went back to work, this being about 0030 in the morning.

I was almost ready to leave in the morning, when another hasher (Finger in the dyke, from the Long Beach H3 area) came running in. She wasn't the happiest, as she'd been on a sub 24 hour pace, and bonked hard, bringing it in about 25 hours and change. Still, she finished.

What did the constant site of pain and agony do for me...well, the same as the joy and elation that runners had when they crossed the finish line, it made me want to be out there doing the same thing. I have a long way to go in training and need to finish some races first, before even thinking about doing an event like this, but I've been known to do stupider things. So On On to new goals.

The most impressive runner, to me, was the older genlteman (had to be in his mid to late 60's) who was announced as he came in, and they read out his accomplishments for 2008. He had run 15 - 100 mile races, 5 - 50 mile races, and 4 marathons. WTF?!?! hahahaha that's awesome.

My computers have been giving me problems, but I'll be back with more photos of the RTO race, and the last few weekends of adventure and fun. With more coming.

Sun break...

Cool spot off skyline to chill.
Big blue off in the distance.

It's been raining off and on here for about a week. Everyone is crying and whining about it...sheesh, for fucks sake, you'd think it was a monsoon or something. It's just rain people. It hardly rains here, as a matter of fact, we were in a drought warning for some time before these small rains.

Anyway, the sun popped out, so my buddy Chris and I took the bikes out for some hooliganism up in the hills. Hit Skyline road, going up Woodside to Alice's for some lunch and then catching the sun as it dropped down with some beers and stuff.

Finishing up day 4 of 4 now, at work.

Bay 2 Breakers (SF) vs. Keep Austin Weird (Austin)

So, recently there has been a huge uproar in the bay area (SF really) about the upcoming Bay to Breakers event in May. In tradition, it has been one of the craziest parties in SF, drawing near to over 80,000 people to the embarcadero before starting the 12k run to the ocean (through Golden Gate Park ending at Ocean Beach) I've participated in a few of these, and it is always flipping awesome to see the shit that people come up with as far as costumes go. The record for this race was somewhere in the ballpark of 110,000 runners. Starting in 1912 as a way to lift the city's spirits after the great fire of 1906, it is the longest consecutive running footrace in the world. (runs from same start to same finish) Some years, the participation was down to under 50 people, but has never stopped.

There is even a group that runs it backwards, dressed up as Salmon, swimming up stream. hahahaha I remember seeing them that year (2004), and here is a video from 2006.

Recently though, the rights to this event were purchased by one of the sponsors for this run, being ING.com, and they've have decided that they needed to tame it down a notch, and implemented new rules that included, NO ALCOHOL, and NO ROLLING FLOATS! What the fuck!? This all but negates what the whole bay to breakers experience is. Including some really amazing and imaginative floats, as well as the "poor man's" float...ie. shopping cart with a keg in it and some kind of decoration. hahahaha genius!

Yes, while the front running bastards, maybe 5,000 actual runners are done and gone before the rest of the crowd even gets started, it's still a race mired in tradition that must not stop.

Unlike Austin's "Keep Austin Weird" movement, and event that was started more along the lines of protesting commercialism and over development of Austin, this race in SF is one of the funnest events of the year, started mostly to bring the spirits of the city up after a devastating event. (Fire of 1906)

The Hash House Harriers have been running an event here for many years...usually stopping at Stowe Lake ( in GGP) for the after party. They usually make a long weekend of this event...here is some photos from 2004 that I dug up. First few are of the run on Friday, and they rented the whole floor at a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown for the after party. It was nuts, we had hashers that were having to show the little Chinese dudes how to tap the kegs faster, cause we were going through so much beer.



One of the beer stops in North Beach. Some friends from Dallas h3, and yes, this is when I was harrier...hahaha the flowing locks, long since gone. :(

This was hilarious, the homeless dude, had some rap jammin' on the boom box while asking for money, but wasn't impressed when one of the hashers decided to dance for him and then ask the homeless dude for money...for dancing. HAHAHA :D
Day of the event, Sunday morning, luckily there was beer at the start, and lots of tortillas...for the great tortilla toss...and trying to bean the reporters up on the scaffolding before the race even starts.
The theme for this year ended up being "The Gropenator" as this is the year, that Governor Davis was ousted from office and Arnulhd "get to the choppa" Schwarzenegger then took over. Not a lot of people in SF liked him, so they went with the whole groping events, that were in the media, and built the "gropenator" as you see below.

We (the collective hash) groped EVERYONE, even some of the reporters who thought it was hilarious. Hashers took turns carrying this float the whole way.
This is (I think) Fell st. leading into GGP. Jam packed. They have bands playing on street corners, and people along the way have house parties on their front yards. Great party.

So like all great things, some people are going to complain, and rightly so, cause with all that alcohol, there is always a group of people (large group) that will fuck it up for everyone else. The amount of drunkenness and trash left at the end, had a lot of people up in arms.
I think if the city, just provided better facilities (more porta-potties, better security, and maybe more accessible trash collection) it would be a different story.
Anyway, with the new rules, there was a grass roots movement that went into effect, and within several days over 4k people had joined, and communicated with city officials, to come to a decent compromise and keep this tradition alive. They secured an audience with city officials, race organizers, and sponsors to talk it out and mediate to some kind of compromise.

some groups:
Facebook group
Save Bay to Breakers
Petition to Save B2B


What has Austin done to Keep Austin Weird!??