Manatees Roar into the 20s! CLOSED (Page 108)

Please send Stay Safe thoughts to Karen. As of yesterday, the evacuation area is now within 10 miles of her.  She also reported that  an entire town 20 miles upriver got obliterated Monday night.  I didn't realize that the fires were that close to here.  Scary.

Originally posted by Hot Runner Thanks everyone! Right now we are "safe" (from immediate threat of fire; the air is pretty unbreathable!). They delayed school opening for a week as the air is so bad that they couldn't finish handing out I-pads to the students (we're online through at least December), plus some staff and kids have been evacuated. Plus it's not safe for people who were planning to teach from the buildings. (Although it turns out that at most schools, including ours, the network speed is so slow we can't actually all teach from there anyway. It's gone within days from being told we have to teach from our classrooms to being encouraged to teach from home if that's possible.) I'm grateful that the school board here is being sensible, not just about Covid but the fire and internet situation. There are fires all over Western Oregon right now and a really major one in our county, just east (up the McKenzie River) of Eugene and touching the easter edge of Springfield, our sister city. Two communities about 30 miles upriver were pretty much obliterated with several known deaths, evacuations have approached within about 15 miles, and the "be ready" zone within about 10. If anyone remembers the bridge I shared a picture of on my birthday (a 51 mile round-trip ride), that is well within yesterday's "go now" evacuation zone, and I don't know if it's still standing. At least two of our county's historic covered bridges were destroyed. My little bit of heaven here is turning into hell. One of my colleagues barely made it out with a tiny house that he had parked on a friend's property not far from that bridge; we heard his harrowing story of the friend trying to evacuate family, pets, and horses and the two of them trying to get wheels back on the tiny house and then being stuck in traffic. It's a small town surrounded by a very rural area so most traffic wasn't cars but RV's, trucks with horse trailers, etc. OMG. Anyway, we are fine so far; little risk of that fire spreading here as there would be two big downtowns in the way without a lot of dry timber there to burn, and winds have died down. The real danger is that someone will do something stupid, or nature would cause another fire to the south of us. We live about a mile from the edge of town (the school's out about another mile), and almost anything beyond that is steeply wooded hillside for miles and miles. Kind of a tinderbox waiting for a match. Anyway, I'm very glad now that I invested in a treadmill last winter. Throughout Covid, my big consolation has been going outside to run, walk, etc. Today I had to settle for a VR run through a forest in New Zealand. Okay for a week or so, I guess, but I think I'd go start raving mad if that was "running" for the long haul.

im happy to see you are as safe as possible with everything that is happening. A friend’s mother lives in that area as was evacuated earlier this week, she got to go back in yesterday to check on her house and all that was left was the chimney. The area was decimated. Such a scary thing. 2020 can’t be over soon enough!

2X

Mini Manatees 2.0. 

The girls did the Active Okie kids Triathlon on Saturday.  It was not a sanctioned USAT races so their year USAT membership didn't save them any money and there weren't any AG Elite teams there like they saw the previous week.  It was more of a fun event for the local kids than a competitive event for Triathlon families from near and far. 

My 10-year-old got her first podium (not that they actually did award ceremonies due to Covid-19 precautions).  She was 3 out of 12 in the F10-11 AG and 12th overall out of a little over 80 kids. 

My 9-year old, who got to complete in the 6-8 AG distance last week, was in the F8-9 AG this week.  She was happy that she was with the 8-year-olds even though she had a birthday this week.  She was 8th out of 15 in her age group. 

My 6-year-old had multiple bike technicals and a bike wreck.  Coming out of T1 there was a nice downhill section and she went faster than the training wheels were designed to travel.  There was a lot of vibration and the nut holding the training wheels came loose.  I didn't have a wrench but twisted it back on the best I could every time it came loose.  The last time it came loose was going into T2 where the course was again on that downhill section.  She was going too fast and wrecked.  She skinning her knee really bad but still finished the race for 6th out of 7 in the F6-7 AG. 

I got to help a few kids out at the race.  One was an 11-year-old boy who had his chain come off and get wedged between the frame and the gears.  I ran ahead of my daughter when I saw him stopped and was able to get the chain back on and send him on his way.  There was no way that he was going to be able to get the chain unwedged by himself and, with no SAG on the course, I saved his race and turned what would have been a negative experience into a better one. 

Also, as we waited for the swim start a family lined up behind us who were doing their first triathlon and had not had the chance to walk through the course or to get any instructions from the race staff or any questions answered.  They had no idea how the swim worked or what to do when they got out of the water (a lazy river swim), or what they needed to do in transition, etc.  I took the 8-year-old son up to the swim start and showed him how they would do things, showed what direction he would go in the lazy river, where he would get out, how he would get to the bikes, etc.  They were really happy for all the help.  After the race, I saw them and asked how it went.  They had a great race and I learned as they were leaving that they lived in the same town as we do.  I couldn't help but think that they might have been part of our kids Triathlon camp if things hadn't been canceled.  I was glad that I was able to help is a small way at the race but felt bad that we didn't get to meet that family before the race at our kids camp so that they wouldn't have got to the race so disoriented.  I also regretted that we didn't get to help more have a positive first race (since there were so few people at the race that were familiar with triathlon) and I regretted that more kids from our town didn't get to take advantage of there being a race just 50 miles from where we live to get an early introduction to the sport of Triathlon.  There have been a lot of mix emotions this year with races and with cancelations.  It will definitely be a year to remember and that I am grateful for.   

This sounds like an awesome experience, bike mechanical issues aside. I love that your youngest aged up and was excited about it!  Congrats on eldest's podium!  What a day!

Same!

I grew up in a suburb of Salt Lake City.  So we had a big town, but there weren't any Kids Triathlons that I knew of either.  There were adult triathlons but I didn't know anyone that was in the sport and had zero contact with it.  A guy on my block, who had qualified for the USA 4x400m Olympic relay team before breaking his leg and being forced to watch his team break the world record from the stands, started a youth track team when I was about 8 years old.  Every kid on the block joined the team.  There was another youth track team in the same town but for some reason, the guy on our block didn't want his kids to be a part of that team.  So the other team had every kid in the city that was doing track on their team except for our block.  The families on our block turned out to be really talented.   The 10 families on our block put up a track team that could rival any team in the region.  I think we set about a dozen state records and half a dozen regional records. The founder of that team passed away at the beginning of this year.  I got the Youth Running Club that my wife and I started underway right before he passed away.  The club is a tribute to him.  I had great people get me started on running early in life and while I am not half as effective as they were I know how much good they can do and want to pass on what I had to the next generation.      

Yep....I thought triathletes were all maniacs too.  Now that I am one it doesn't bother me and I feel that if you aren't a maniac that mabey this sport isn't for you. 

Karen - Are you doing OK? The fires are not any closer, are they?  Air quality?

Ann-Marie - Teddy update?

Melanie - Lake Placid update?

Teddy is doing well thanks. It’s amazing how quickly dogs heal from things that would take us so much longer! He is, however, on tree climbing restriction

Now that we know that he's OK, I want a picture of him up there!

i wish I had a picture. Damn dog!

I hope that the weather does something favorable for you sooner rather than later.

We're all thinking of you!

Strava peeps -- what do we think of Bandok names? 

https://bandok.com/

Put an end to boring- ride names and give your rides the names they deserve.

Fun or lame?

My first reaction was more towards the lame side, but i suppose i should see some examples before coming firmly down on that position! 

I'll try it and then we can review it.