A family picture

Our friend Dina visited tonight and snapped our first family picture while she was here.

More from Jasper-palooza

Jasper Elliott Prince

Our baby made his long-awaited arrival this morning.



Water broke at 12:30. To the hospital by 12:45. Epidural by 4:15. And out he came at 7:15.

He's a big guy -- 8 lbs., 13 ozs. and 20.5" long.

Whole thing seems like one intensely happy blur. Along with a lot of very sweet cooing and gurgling. Can't believe he's here. He's ours. And he's just stunning.

Measuring my ride

For months now, I've resisted getting a computer for my bike. This week, however, my friend Q led me to a new find that -- minus measuring the wattage of each pedal stroke or my heartrate -- tells me most of what I'd like to know about my rides. And, better yet for all those naysayers out there, it's on my iPhone. The TrackThing app is pretty damn cool. Here's a couple of screengrabs I clicked after getting home tonight.


The odometer is based on total riding distance today -- my usual length, if this thing is right is just under 14.5 miles, which is pretty much what I expected. The average and max speeds and pace are based on just the ride home. But here's the really cool part...

It charts my speed versus the elevation change over time. The big green spike is the worst hill of my ride. And you can see, it's definitely an urban ride with lots and lots of stop lights.

This morning -- again, if this thing is accurate -- I hit 30 mph on the downhill side of the Interstate Bridge while passing cars stuck in rush hour traffic. I've always wondered how fast I get rolling there, but never knew. Never would've guessed it broke low 20s.

Next up: 40 mph.

Summer's kiss

I'm off Mondays during college football season, and Amy took the day off to rest as well. We ran a few errands in the morning, including buying a highly-recommended glider rocker for basement baby soothing. She slept most of the afternoon; I worked outside. Got a lot done -- including cutting the grass with my new no-engine hand mower. Nice. Did a little reading as well, from the late David Halberstam's "The Breaks of the Game," which includes this passage that fits the day perfectly:

In late summer the weather in Oregon is lovely, warm and dry, as if conjured up by some Chamber of Commerce to atone for the wetness past. There is a sense that you can see forever, or failing that, at least, and with ease, to the awesome mountains that surround Portland. The air is clear, as if from another, preindustrial, age, since potential polluters fear the power of Oregon's ecologically alert citizenery, and after the long gray months so recently past and so soon to return, it seems a special gift. On days like this it is inconceivable to stay inside, inconceivable to work, and there is a feeling that no business is being transacted in Portland at this moment, that an entire state may be on vacation.

Bring on baby

Nursery is done, and Lil P, as he's currently know, is nearly done cooking. Some pics while we wait.




Amy did a little artwork for the walls. The rug is one we picked out for the nursery in fall 2006, during our trip to Morocco.

Buh-bye, 'Bu

Today we sold Amy's old Chevy Malibu, affectionately known as "The 'Bu," which officially makes us a one-car family.

My friend Casey once was going to write an essay about our bonds with our cars. Perhaps this will re-inspire that thought.

We put it on Craigslist on Saturday, had a looker Sunday, closed the deal today. (Man, that was fast.) It was a good little car for us. It's what we drove out to Oregon together, loaded up with her stuff.

On Day One I remember pulling out of her parents' driveway, the car packed tight, everyone in or on the verge of tears, before we headed north on I-35. We drove through to Denver, stopping overnight with our friend Ellen shortly after she broke her back. (Only Ellen would flat-out insist upon having house guests with such an injury.) On Day Two we pressed on through Wyoming -- where the cross winds nearly blew us off the road and did sweep the hat off my head at a gas station -- and stayed the night somewhere in Idaho. Day Three brought us down the Columbia River Gorge and to our rather snazzy apartment -- two balconies, count 'em -- in Tigard.

The three-day drive in that car just after she graduated was, I suppose, the official start of our living together. So perhaps it's fitting that we say farewell to the car as we start a new phase: parenthood.

Of course, as my friend Q said, only in the Portland area (read: not back in the Midwest) would a couple be having a kid and downsizing the number of vehicles they have. Maybe so.

Timing's good on another account, though. Last week was full of rain, which tested my bike-commute commitment. I geared up and slogged through. And it wasn't nearly as bad as I imagined it could be. In fact, I kind of liked it.

Squawk

This flier is on telephone poles all over our neighborhood...

The escapee flies, eh? I'm glad to hear she didn't walk away.

(And I say this with complete empathy -- we'd flip if Wiley ever got lost, of course. Just haven't heard of missing parrots before.)

Worth a listen

Passed on by my friend Q. The Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne on what he believes.

Elsewhere, sort of...

We had some friends over last night for a pre-baby cookout. One of them, Casey, has a photo-a-day blog, and so the evening was well documented. Check it out here. (In the second shot, no, Amy's water didn't break -- though I have fears of it looking something like that; she's extinguishing my underwhelming attempt at a fire in the chiminea.)

Though it's Casey's blog, the pics are by our friend Q.

May our pictures of the baby look so good.

Ty. Sigh.

One of my favorite writers and a fellow Oklahoma native, Hank Stuever, on the housing crisis exemplified. It includes this wonderful paragraph:

All the crying people did for the camera: They cried when television's magic wand touched them, and the hosts always cried, too, while telling the camera how good they felt making the dreams of the sick and wretched owners of substandard tract houses come true. Think of the many tears that were shed on American television over organized closets and new kitchen countertops.

Pics

I was backing up some data tonight when I came across a few previously-not-downloaded pics... and added a new one for the sake of memories.

The first three from our trip to Cannon Beach back in May. Great weather, great escape, great weekend minus the infamous failure/forgetting to stop at Sonic for the pregnant wife. Wiley is not a fan of the sand, though. Ah, the Civic. Wonder who is driving it -- and getting amazing gas mileage -- now.



And then from tonight.

Seven and a half months and -- it's official -- that button has popped. Gotta document that, right? Even if Wiley is giving me a 'She wouldn't approve' look. She'd kill me if I posted the close up of it, though. Little guy is kicking all the time, which I take as encouragement for us to get a crib, a dresser, and the rest of that nursery together -- pronto.

Mileage

In my new-found bike geekdom I watched some of the Tour de France's opening stage today. I didn't get up at 5:30 a.m. to catch it live; the countless replays satisfy my curiosity right now. Amid the crashes I shudder to see, the kilometers I struggle to comprehend and the names I shouldn't even try to pronounce, though, it got me to thinking about one thing: mileage.

The guys crazy enough to finish what is one of - if not the - world's toughest sporting event will log 2,175 miles over three weeks with just a couple of days out of the saddle. I, on the other hand, have pulled only about 750 miles total on my LeMond since I started riding in late March/early April. Roughly speaking, in three months I haven't done even half of what they'll do in three weeks.

Really, 750 isn't anything. My friend Craig - he who was kind enough to show me how to actually navigate this commute - cleared 10,000 miles not too long ago. But, nonetheless, I'm proud of my 750. That's about the equivalent of riding from Portland to Salt Lake City. Plus, here's a couple of benefits: not having to buy about 30 gallons of gas and feeling healthier than ever (achy wrist aside).

Onward to my first 1,000 - and more.

My ride

I've been curious about the length of my bike commute, but I've been hesitant to go spend even more money on a bike computer to calculate that and much more. As my friend Craig said, it only makes you feel antsy about whether you're keeping a good pace.

So today I found MapMyRide.com and calculated my commutes. In the morning, when I ride from our house to the MAX, it's exactly three miles. In the evenings, when I ride straight through from work to home, it's 10.95 miles. So, all told, most days, I'm doing about 14 miles. And I'm toying with the idea of starting to ride all the way in most mornings when the summer weather is so nice. So that'd be, basically, 22 miles a day.

Here's a map of my route home.

Of course, all this was moot since last Tuesday. On the way in that morning, I took a bad spill -- rookie mistake involving the clip-in shoes -- and sprained the holy hell out of my wrist. Got it X-rayed Wednesday and there's no break. It's still sore, but I'm getting back on the Poprad in the morning. I've missed it.

All baby, all the time...

A few other updates.

The new baby-friendly car....

And the old porch swing I stripped, sanded and refinished so we can swing on it with the little guy this fall. We'll re-hang it later this week.

And, of course, she's still glowing.

A little of this, a little of that...

Sigh. Long week. Some odds and ends....

It's Pedalpalooza here in Portland, which best I can describe is basically a festival celebrating all things bikey. The events even drew some other guy form Oklahoma all the way out here. (Video from BikePortland.org.)
My favorite line: "Like any other, you know, ding-ass town..."

Next up, more bike fun. Riding home Wednesday night I encountered my first unicycle commuter. I was in a good groove, fresh off topping the worst hill of my ride, when I looked up and there he was. I had -- had -- to slow down and just watch how he managed that thing. In particular, I wanted to see him handle a red light. Sure enough, about two blocks up we caught one. The guy slowed and worked his way over to the curb as we approached the crosswalk. Then, he just reached out and grabbed the telephone pole and sat there. Impressive, no?

When the light turned, though, he couldn't get it going and fell/jumped off. Still, he landed on his feet, which is almost better than me occasionally in these new clip-in shoes.

Third bit o' news: In the ongoing preparation to sail away from the no-kid island we currently inhabit, we went out this week and got ourselves a proper baby-friendly car. No pics yet, but it's a pretty sweet, year-old Toyota Rav4. Traded in the trusty 5-year-old Civic -- what a good car that was. Kind of sad to see it go. Still, this new ride gets good gas mileage and will be a lot easier to get the wee one in and out of while also being a better fit for us and our occasional light hauling needs. Next up, cleaning up and selling the Malibu and becoming a nice, simple one-car, one-commuter-bike family.

Finally, tonight, ever exciting, we flipped through the dial and saw not one, but two classic cheesy martial arts movie scenes. First, caught the final fight scene from "Karate Kid" ...



I admit, I teared up a little. But then, it got better - or worse, depending on your view -- "Bloodsport" with Jean Claude Van Damme was on some other channel. Amy, to my horror, had never seen it. We had to watch a little to its great fight scene. Enjoy. Especially the way he yells -- one loudly, one weakly -- before he realizes he can fight blind.



Yeah, that pretty much made my night. Not so much Amy's, for some reason. (Though the baby was busting out some serious kicks on her. Maybe he liked the flicks, too.)

The price of pregnancy

"Wiley, tonight we're going to have a glass of sparkling water and just imagine it's a LARGE beer."

-- Amy to Wiley, our dog, while cooking dinner

(By the way, it's official: We're having a boy.)

$4/gallon

Sometimes graffiti is good. This is on the back of the bar down the street from our house. The parking lot? It's full of big Dodge trucks and SUVs. This bike thing is looking better all the time. I figure I'm riding about 65 miles in my weekly commute.

Sense and sensitivity

Our gussied-up kitchen is on a remodeled homes tour this weekend (ours is that first bullet point), and we figured getting out of dodge would be more fun than hanging out while Wiley loses his ever-loving mind as a bunch of strangers tromp through the house. Which explains why we're at the coast tonight for the start of a weekend away.

Which brings me to the point of this evening's post: I've noticed a lot of different smells and sounds -- just senses and sensations, in general -- lately. (Who says it's only Amy's sense of smell that's heightened because of being pregnant? Wiley's sniffing this pet-friendly room up and down, too, like you wouldn't believe.)

Sitting here, not quite ready for bed yet, I'm finally mentally unplugged enough to realize the steady hum I've been hearing is not traffic, not the port, not the train depot. It's just the rolling crash of wave upon wave a few dozen yards from here. It's a little mesmerizing now that I'm in tune with it. Clearly, I've been too wound up at work if it took several hours and finally muting the TV for that to register. Still, nice, eh?

And I've noticed lately, too, on my long rides home from work each night that I'm not just seeing, but also smelling things I never would have before. One part of my ride smells like a bakery -- like fresh bread, specifically -- but I'm pretty sure there's no bakery nearby. There's also one part, down just a couple of feet off the riverfront in downtown Portland, where I can smell the fresh water -- part river, part current, part fish, part air sweeping across it. I keep hoping the dudes fishing there on the esplanade don't rear back with their gear and snag me or some other passerby one of these evenings with a big ol' hook.

I've been riding my bike to work for five weeks now, and tonight was the first time I didn't ride home. It felt weird not seeing my bike parked there near my desk during the work day. It felt weirder not to get on it to head home when the day was done. That was because while this morning I rode to MAX, light-railed it downtown, and then biked to work as usual, around 10 a.m. I pedaled over to River City to drop my ride off for a tune-up. So Amy picked me up downtown after work and we drove straight to the coast. And as we sat in rush-hour traffic, alternating between the gas and the brake, checking the rearview to make sure no one was coming up fast, I realized it's been a while since I've been behind the wheel of a car for any extended period of time. Felt kind of weird.

Of course, so did nearly getting doored (see entry No. 1, mom) on Interstate during my ride home yesterday. So did the two head-up-their-asses pedestrians who yelled at me yesterday when they were jaywalking or generally stumbling around clueless. So it's not like biking is all bliss. Though I am liking it.

But this weekend, it's nothing but the beach ahead of us. And we've got perfect weather, too. Today was in the 90s in Portland. Tomorrow's supposed to be in the 80s here. I'm looking forward to the feel of the sand between my toes.

And the smell of the ocean.

And the taste of that taffy.

And, through it all, the sound of those waves.

Bump

We've got ourselves an official baby bump. Brangelina, watch out.
I told her she's glowing.
Word is we're having a boy. Confirmation coming soon. Any suggestions on names?