By Ryan McElroy
Wednesday, I woke up late, so I went to class and then work instead of the normal order. I left work around 8:30, watched some Law and Order with dinner while lifting weights, and then I went for a run — about 3.8 miles according to MapMyRun.com. The “run “involved a little too much walking for my taste, but it also involved two sets of Montlake Stairs.
When I got back, Mario had just returned with some stuff from the lab, so I offered to take him down there to clear the rest of the stuff out of what has essentially been his primary living space, with the house here used only intermittently for showers, cooking, and laundry. He had the movie Syriana with him, so we ended up watching that starting about 1:00am. No wonder why I have trouble waking up. Anyway, the movie was pretty good at weaving together a lot of interesting threads into some powerful and dark messages. Too bad they didn’t show the explosion, though. 4/5.
Shopping list:
Sweat bands
Leatherman Micra
By Ryan McElroy
By my 25th birthday, I want to be in the best shape of my life.
To start out, I ran about 4 miles today, then walked one more to cool off on my way back home.
I also did two sets of twelve 25lb curls and lifts. Not much, but its a start.
By Ryan McElroy
I woke up late and had no Capstone class today, so I went to work after my Networks class. As has become my custom when going to work in the afternoon, I took the 545 bus across the lake and then biked from the Bear Creek Park and Ride to Microvision. At work, I found a bug in the scanner that was mistaken for a bug in the ATF code; then I tightened up the ATF code a little anyway. After finishing up, I decided to bike home since most of my testing duties are on hold until additional units arrive.
I left work a little after 7:00, and started what I consider the real trip at 7:15, on the Sammamish River Trail heading North. Somewhere around Kenmore, the same trail becomes the Burke-Gilman Trail and heads back down to Seattle. The ride was very nice, but still challenging, as I was pushing myself. I completed the approximately 25 miles in about 1:45 before stopping at Safeway for some groceries. I think I could go somewhat faster on my road bike, as I feel that I lose a lot of energy to the shocks, larger tires, and more pliant frame of the mountain bike that I generally take to school. Oh, also, I’m always clipped in when I take the road bike, whereas I am only rarely clipped in on the mountain bike (which has dual platform/spd pedals).
Along the way, I passed the park where I started a geocaching expedition several years ago as well as numerous walkers, roller-bladers, and cyclists. A number of cyclists also passed me — I am pretty sure I was the swifted mountain bike on the trail, however. Somewhere past the halfway mark, I came across an area where a vast expanse of Lake Washington was visible with the Olympic mountains in the background. It was beautiful, but I didn’t think to take a picture at the time.
Once I got home, I made myself a burger for dinner — its been a long time since I’ve done that. It was quite good. I then settled in to watch the Mariners finish beating the Red Sox. A good day indeed.
By Ryan McElroy
On Saturday, in lieu of a using the beautiful day to play Frisbee, I was invited on another hike. Since Sunday’s Mariner’s game plans crapped all over my Sunday (mega)hike plans with Danielle & co, I decided to go on Saturday instead. Sure, I ended up hiking Mt. Si again, but this tiem the weather was great and some good pictures were had. The company was good too; Whitney from church brought her friend (CRAP I can’t remember her name). They were fun to hike with.
We made it to the top of the haystack this time and I took some pictures.
More hiking please!
By Ryan McElroy
Thursday afternoon, my mom called me at work with a wonderful proposition: An evening afloat in a kayak on Lake Washington. I couldn’t say no, so we headed out to Kirkland and put the kayaks in around 7:30 until just after 9:00. Then I picked up Maria in Redmond and we dropped her off at her frat-turned-summer-house residence in the U-District.
This afternoon, I enjoyed a leisurely bike trip with Alice around Greenlake, through Ravena park, to Gasworks Park, and back. I just fixed up her bike (all it needed was a tube patch and air), so we thought we’d take it for a spin. It was a lot of fun, hopefully I’ll get the chance to do it again soon.
By Ryan McElroy
Another rainy day means, of course, that I went on another hike. Just two days after hiking Mount Defiance, and just hours after returning from a DotA LAN Party, I headed to Alpental with Danielle and Josh from Frisbee and Danielle’s roommate Maiko. From there we headed up from the Snow Lake Trailhead. The hike was pretty low-key compared to Thursday’s outing, but it was still a lot of fun, and it looks like this is a crew that will be up for a lot of hikes this summer, so that is pretty exciting for me.
We left the U-district a little after 9, starting hiking around 10:30, peaked around noon, and then post-holed our way back down to source lake and then back to the car for an easy 3:30 return to the U-district.
By Ryan McElroy
After a few days back at work, I took the day off to finish off the Spring quarter right — with a Bioengineering Juniors (now Seniors!) barbeque after Dave’s Birthday Hike with Larry and Greg. The hike was great — we officially conquered Mount Defiance. The last I went on was Mount Si back during spring break, and it rained on us pretty hard that day. Thursday, it didn’t rain quite as hard, but it was still wet. Nevertheless, we all had a great time winding our way across and sometimes straight up the mountain. We took the main trail up (until it was covered entirely by snow, when we started improvising and going straight up), but Larry and Dave knew about a semi-secret older trail that followed the stream from the lake down the mountain. We found it and took it, and the experience was nothing short of incredible. The padded ground cover on the more forested, less traveled trail was nice for coming down as well. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of the second half of the trip because my camera batteries died on the way up (way to not change them Ryan!)
As far as timing, we left Sunset Elementary just after 6:00 am, started hiking not too long after 7:00, peaked around 10:30, and were out not long after 1:00. I managed to make it to the barbecue afterwards, but I was spent and fell sound asleep not long after 9:00 that night.