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Earlier this week, in a search for some fine dining options outside of the dual metropolises of Wenatchee and East Wenatchee, I went to a restaurant I have always wanted to dine at ever since moving to the Wenatchee Valley.
Next Sunday marks the 9th running of the Apple Capital Triathlon. Approximately 250 athletes from around the NW will swim, bike and run toward personal glory, and perhaps public triumph. The race starts and ends at Daroga State Park and swimmers take to the cool waters of the Columbia River before climbing onto their bikes for the out-and-back cycling leg of the event.
These cyclists will be racing along Highway 97, beginning at Dargoa State Park and heading north toward Chelan. While the race begins at 8am on the 24th, we generally have cyclists on the road until noon on race day. We’ll have flaggers and ample signage to warn drivers, but if you’re on the highway on the morning of August 24, please pay special attention and use caution as you navigate around the racers. They’ll be instructed to stay on the shoulder of the road, but sometimes with focus comes a lack of sensibility.
If you’ve never seen the event, the Wenatchee Triathlon Association invites you to come out and watch. Who knows, it just might inspire you to join us next year!
My daughter Aviva and I jumped on the old motorcycle and headed for Tonasket Saturday. We steered clear of the Suicide Race in Omak on the way to visiting good friends Jerry and Victoria and their daughters Matia and Aurora. They hosted us a superb meal of broiled Copper River salmon that Matia brought over from Bellingham and roasted with thyme, butter and lemon. Aurora cooked up roasted fingerling potatoes with lots of rosemary and coarse salt and ground pepper. Aviva and Victoria picked fresh greens from the garden. The Australian Yellow Tail Chardonnay hardly I brought hardly did justice to such a great meal, but no one seemed to care as we told stories and laughed at the outdoor table overlooking the Okanogan hills at sunset. Life doesn’t get much better.
In case you haven’t noticed, this has been the “year of the wind” in the Wenatchee Valley! A great year for cyclists of all abilities to feel first hand the power of the most important factor in successfully riding a bike! This is often unpleasant when riding west into our prevailing wind, but it makes you feel like superman when you turn around to come home. So, what is going on here, and why is it so important? Well, a bicycle is an incredibly efficient means of forward travel because the rolling resistance is close to nil on a smooth, flat road. However, as your speed increases, you have to push air out of the way to move forward, and the resistance increases almost exponentially above 20mph. This means that unless you are going up a hill, your ability to ride against the wind is the main factor determining how fast you go. If you are riding alone, then you truly are at the mercy of the wind, and most of us consider it more unpleasant than climbing a hill when it is blowing in your face. However, if you can ride behind another rider, the resistance drops incredibly! In fact at 20 mph, you will get about a 20% savings of energy output by drafting, and as you go faster, the savings will increase dramatically. Understanding this is the key to understanding the sport of cycling! We have all heard of “aero”-this, and “aero”-that, but all the aero gizmos in the world pale in comparison to simply having another rider breaking the wind for you. And… if you have three or more taking turns at this, you can form what is called a “pace line” so that the work is shared, and no one rider ever rides into the wind for more than a few seconds at a time. When a small group is well organized at this, the average speed goes up remarkably, yet the energy expenditure stays reasonably controlled for each individual. They work for their 30 seconds at the front, and then get to rest as they drop to the end of the line and work their way up. So- there you have it! Now you know one of the main reasons that the “team” is so important in this sport, and you have learned the most common “play”- it is called the ”pace line”.
But don’t take my word for this- if you are riding a bike these days, try this out for yourself! The most important thing is to ride with riders that you can trust not to be “squirrely”, and agree on a steady pace (a speedometer helps for this). As you are riding, drop into single file and start concentrating on the rear wheel of the person in front of you. Try to stay within a bike length of that wheel (the closer the better), and keep a smooth rhythm. You will immediately notice that the riding is easier even though your speed stays the same. You should realize that this requires concentration (no cell phones!), and you should know that if the wheels bump into each other, the rider in the rear is the one that crashes! Your pay-off will be miles of road covered with less work! Most pace lines will change the lead every 30 seconds or so, and on a highway it is best to “peel-off” to the right as the line passes you on the left in order to avoid peeling into traffic.
Once you have experienced the magic of a well working pace line, you will understand how races like the Tour de France are won and lost! In one of the tours that Lance Armstrong dominated, it was estimated that outside of his individual time trials, he only “faced the wind” for 21 miles in a race that was over 2000 miles in length! On TV, we never see the miles and miles that a team leader or a “protected rider” covers in the shadow of his teammates, but the energy he saves this way can make or break him when crunch time comes. In the Tour de France this year, we watched the incredible work of the CSC team on the key day of big climbs in the alps. Some of the guys who were “stars” in their own right, were pulling hard to protect their three climbers from the wind- all the way to the last climb, with no thought of finishing with a good result themselves. Their job was to position the teams’ three top guys near the front of the pack for the final climb, and see who had the “good legs” on the famous “Alpe de Huez”. Carlos Sastre had been waiting for 10 years to be in this position and after riding behind his teammates for over 5 hours that day, he was fresh enough to leave the others at the bottom of the climb. The rest is history- he went on to win the 2008 Tour de France. The key was literally the ability of his team to “break wind” for him on the way to Paris, and in this endeavor all the members are important. Trying to win a bike race without a team, would be like sending the center and the quarterback out to make yardage against the defense in football. That is one of the reasons that the “winnings” are always split evenly among the team in the sport of cycling!
More to come: the quirky nature of echelons and how to beat the wind in the Wenatchee Valley.
Up here at World News Central (a.k.a. the Wenatchee World’s newsroom on the second floor) everyone was abuzz about 30 minutes ago when a massive BOOM came from the sky and lightning struck a tree downtown.
The booming thunder shook the building here on Mission Street and it was soon followed by a couple more monstrously loud thunder and lightning strikes.
While it is not what happened here less than an hour check out this cool video of lightning in slow motion. As the text describing the video states, watch for Zeus lancing bolts of electricity at the :04 mark.
See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.
A few more thoughts about Brett Favre’s move to the Jets. Playing pro football is very hard. Gross understatement, but bear with me. Just a few months ago, Brett Favre was done. Retired. On the golf course. In the last two weeks, he’s tried to force his way back onto a team that he’s held hostage for years, and said team attempted to pay him $2 million a year to stay home before reluctantly shipping out a guy who’s more popular in Wisconsin than Mr. Pabst and Mr. Miller put together. Now, he’s on a new team with all new guys in a city with the most ravenous sports media in the country. He has to learn an all-new offense and develop chemistry with all new receivers. My big questions are these: the first time a Jet offensive lineman misses a block and he’s got a mouthful of Giants Stadium grass, will he wish he was at home with his kids. The first time the New York media skewers him and the idiot talk-radio hosts/fans roast him for throwing a bad pick, will he wish he was on the golf course in Mississippi, sipping sweet tea and sucking down crawfish? I can’t get completely excited about having No. 4 on my team, because I think the answer might be yes.
Mrs. Applesauce and I are having a garage sale Saturday and to promote said G-Sale I placed an ad in, where else, the Wenatchee World.
Along with the advert of 30 words or so announcing what sort of goods are up for sale, the ad space I purchased also automatically put Applesauce’s garage sale on the Wenatche World’s garage sale map.
Surprisingly, at about 6:30 tonight a woman knocked on my door and inquired about some of the items I listed for sale in the advertisement. My wife sold showed her what we are planning on selling and the woman purchased what she was looking for for $10.
I am completely amazed by this.
What amazes me isn’t that an advertisement in the Wenatchee World actually brought me business (take that Criagslist!), what amazes me is that someone showed up at the garage sale nearly 36 hours before it is scheduled to happen just to purchase one item!
Reporter Rick Steigmeyer and Photographer Kathryn Stevens had a long haul Sunday when they headed a couple of hours south to the Yakima Training Center, near Yakima.
But it was nothing compared to what faces the soldiers they went to see: Members of the Army National Guard’s 81st Heavy Brigade Combat Team. The soldiers are getting ready to be sent to Iraq where they will provide security for convoys and new installations.
Its members include soldiers in the 161st Infantry National Guard unit based in Wenatchee. This weekend, we’ll publish Rick and Kathryn’s report, based in large part on interviews and photographs of soldiers from North Central Washington.
Today we identified a person charged with felonies as the stepson of the man who, until recently, was the top Washington State Patrol officer in North Central Washington.
It was a decision that was made after several newsroom conversations.
We made the decision for two main reasons: The high position held by the State Patrol officer, which makes him a well-known figure, and the violent nature of the incident that led to these drug-related charges.
We made a similar decision earlier this year to name another son of a law enforcement official in this case. This officer was a candidate for Douglas County sheriff in 2006 and, like the State Patrol commander, is a well-known figure.
Wenatchee AppleSox owner and all-around good guy Jim Corcoran has come full circle. He first tried to get a baseball team to Wenatchee in 1983 and broadcast the games on KW3 radio, which he owned at the time. Repeated attempts to land the franchise that turned into the Everett AquaSox fell through. On Friday, the Seattle Seahawks’ first preseason game will be broadcast on KPQ 560 AM, the AppleSox radio home, and Wenatchee’s game at Bend will be bumped to 1340 AM, which is Corcoran’s old station. Exhale.”After almost 26 years, a Wenatchee baseball broadcast will air on that station. It’s funny that I have a team now, but not the station,” he said.
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