Crater Lake Century...Finally

Perfect riding weather! I arrived the day before the official ride to enjoy this view from the west rim of Crater Lake.

What a wild & spectacular summer. All kinds of summer fun was had by all without an excessive (or sufficient?) amount of biking. 

• Our oldest child married his college sweetheart at the Montalvo Arts Center in May. Several attendees said it was the most beautiful and romantic wedding they had ever been to, and I had to agree...even comparing it to my own wedding (sorry, honey!).
• July and a UCLA grant brought our younger daughter to Houston for six weeks. I had never been outside the airport there so I had to visit. She took me to Galveston for a day of fun.
• With an event like the Crater Lake Century on deck, I had to get some training in. I had signed up for the event in 2018, but the wildfires in California and Oregon turned that into a really bad idea. This year: No fires along the way and quite possibly the best weather ever. (My wife took advantage of my disappearance by going to visit her high school friends in Chicago during my trip.) I highly recommend this ride if you like a long, beautiful climb. It was fantastic, and the road trip up & back was an interesting camping/hotel journey through the 🔥 hot central valley of California. 
• Our middle child enjoys her job in LA while her  boyfriend takes a new job at Apple in the Bay Area. The separation is bound to be very challenging as she decides what she's going to do in the coming months. 

Now, back at home in San Diego, I'm trying to get a few good training days in every week to get ready for another trip with Andy Hampsten's Cinghiale Cycling Tours, this time we'll explore Cilento, the area surrounding Naples. This will be a "3-piggy" tour, one piggy more challenging (on a 4-piggy scale) than tours I've done with Andy, Elaine, and my local riding buddy Marc Lee in the past. Here in San Diego Marc and I only see each other during the local SDBC club rides, for which I'm a fairly regular leader, as noted in this write-up on their Facebook page: 
https://www.facebook.com/sandiegobicycleclub/posts/10157930808622214 
On the roads of Italy, we'll have tons of time to talk about everything under the sun, which Marc is pretty good at. 

It's not a trick question. If your adult daughter asks you to join her on a trip for your first-ever father/daughter trip, the answer is "YES!"

Who cares if this underutilized cutie is heavy and awkward. So am I! I bought a travel bike so I better OWN it before it spends another year waiting in storage.

Yet another (of many) fun interruptions to this scattered summer: Our youngest daughter—back in LA from Houston—invited me to go with her to Hawaii for a quick break before she goes back to UCLA later this month. My first reaction was stupid: "No, I need to train for Italy." I woke up a couple days later to call her and say, "Of course!" I've never had a father/daughter trip alone with either of our daughters, so it's time for a new tradition. It's also time to pull out my hardly-used-but-ancient Dahon travel bike, because that's what I'm taking to Kauai with us.

​Since... 
① we're staying in a couple different places, including the somewhat remote Mākua Beach on the north shore of Kauai, 
② I don't want to spend time going to/from rental provider, and 
③ my old Dahon travel bike—an impulse buy on a business trip to Berkeley many years ago—is horribly under-utilized,
...I'm going to take that dinky but adorable little Dahon with us. Maybe my daughter will even give it a try. She has agreed to do the long, guided downhill ride with me and Keko Adventure Tours on the south side of the island. I don't mind the bike's weight; I'm not racing but I do have to train for Andy & Elaine's 3-piggy tour. Having a bike with us every single day should be a good influence. The heavier the better. I'm not going far anyway, since I need to be back in the afternoons for beach and snorkel time.

​Today or tomorrow I'm off to UC Cyclery...I hope they carry spare 1.5 x 20 tubes...and I'll need a portable pump that can fill tubes with Schrader valves, as I'm not a big fan of how the adapters need to be unscrewed quickly enough to avoid the loss of too much air. 

What does my wife Katie get out of the deal? Our daughter's dogs will stay with her, and we all adore those pups! ​If I think of it, I'll report back on our impromptu bike adventures. 

Olive & Rafi are so much fun that Katie might have as much fun at home with these two professional wrestlers as we will in Kauai.