2009 Tour de Cure photos

Tour de Cure 2009 Wrap Up

We had a great time riding July 25th out in Hillsboro. I guess I am slow getting this posting written up. This has been a busy summer.

Our team (only six of us this year) raised a total of $6,185. Thanks to Rob and Cherie Rainwater for joining us. We had a great time riding with them!

The AMEC match for donations in my name was $2,549 - which was incredible. All made possible by your donations to the ADA. Thanks for your support in this worthy cause!

Here is a Picasaweb slideshow of our photos taken that day. Click here to go to the Picasaweb site.

One Week 'till Tour de Cure Portland

Today is Sunday July 19th. Next Saturday is July 25th - the day of the Tour de Cure event here in Portland. It takes place out in Hillsboro, which is west of Portland. Checking out the temperature forecasts at this point - it looks to be a hot day. The NWS Portland office hourly model shows a high temp of 99° at 5pm on Saturday. It looks to be only 79-84° at 10:30am - out start time for the 10 mile ride. No rain forecast though!



There is still time to donate to the American Diabetes Association. We have all met the $150 minimum fund raising goal, though we'd like to do more. My account (Brian) has quite a bit more, since my company, AMEC, matches the amount I raise dollar-for-dollar. They have agreed to match up to at least $3,000 - so I still have around $1,100 more to go to make use of that commitment.

A recent potluck at my office, with voting for the best food with your money - raised $209 dollars! Mick's peanut butter pie and ham and bean stew won 1st and 2nd prizes. Thanks to all my AMEC co-workers for your donations!


Yard Work #14 - July 16th. About four weeks since the last mowing - the grass is quite patchy now. Some areas that get the runoff from the driveway or where spray from flower watering helps the grass to survive - these areas have still managed to stay green and grow. Other areas - that had formerly been bark dust - are quite dry and brown. The recent 90°+ temperatures here in Portland haven't helped.

Tour de Cure 2009

The cool looking poster for this year's Tour de Cure in Oregon...come join us!

http://tour.diabetes.org/goto/TeamTegan2009

Clean out my refigerator!

We need help cleaning out my refrigerator.

We've got the normal food and drink in our refrigerator. We've also got something you probably don't have in your 'dairy' section. You would probably put eggs or a butter dish in here.

In our frig, this is where we keep insulin.

Lantus and Humalog Insulins - fresh and cold

Insulin is hormone that in a healthy person is made in the pancreas. In a person with Type 1 diabetes - the pancreas no longer makes insulin. In the body, insulin acts as a key that unlocks the cells doors allowing them to use glucose as energy. Without insulin, the glucose cannot get from the bloodstream into the body's cells. As the blood glucose level rises, the kidneys work hard to extract out the excess glucose. This causes excessive trips to the restroom and a great thirst as soon much water is being removed from the body.

Since insulin is a protein, a type 1 diabetic cannot take a pill or drink a solution of insulin. The insulin would be digested and never reach the bloodstream. Diabetics must take insulin subcutaneously using needles. The bottles of insulin a diabetic is using should only be at room temperature for about a month. So the future bottles of insulin that will be needed are kept cool in a refrigerator.

There is currently no cure for diabetes. Diabetics must manage their blood sugar levels by balancing the amount of food they eat, the amount of exercise they get, and the amount of insulin they inject. This process is like those performers who balance multiple plates on sticks. Sometimes it seems like everything is going well and no great effort is needed to keep them spinning. But then a little something happens - like a breeze blows by, the performer gives a little too much spin, maybe they bump the table, or something unexplainable happens and a plate just falls.

Diabetes management is just like this. For days everything can be going well - blood sugars are in the normal range, insulin injections are timed perfectly with meals, exercise is normal, and the body is healthy. Throw in a late meal, a missed insulin dose or maybe mismeasured dose, a little bit more effort in an exercise routine or soccer practice, a restaurant that serves up a regular Coke instead of a diet Coke (no joke - this has happened more than once), coming down with a cold....or something else that you'll never figure out. Soon there can be high blood sugars causing discomfort in the muscles or low blood sugars risking the possibility of becoming disoriented or passing out.

After all that is over - well - you keep on doing it. This is not a disease that can be cured. You don't go to the doctor's visits to get well - you go to see how well you are managing a process that your body should be doing on its own. Four (or more) shots of insulin a day. Eight (or more) finger pricks to get out the blood to be tested. Carbohydrates to count on everything you eat. Guessing how much less insulin you need for those 15 minutes of exercise. Fighting with the insurance company over the most absurb things (how can they be so incredibly blind? Oh wait...I forgot. It's a profit thing.) Diabetes is a real thing. Concentration is always needed. No time off. Not for birthday parties with cake. Not for Halloween. Not for midnight snacks (unless you wake up incoherent due to low blood sugar). No vacation days from diabetes.

So how can you help us? How about donating to the American Diabetes Association (ADA)? The ADA is involved in efforts to improve diabetes care - and efforts to find a cure. There are many research programs in need of money. Our family is participating in one of the fundraisers again this year. The Tour de Cure is a series of bike riding events all over the USA. Bike riders pay a small fee to register, then go out and raise money to support the ADA. Last year our team of riders raised $8,340. We'd like to raise that much or more again - but the donations this year are coming in very slowly... It is disappointing - but I realize people just may not have that much extra money. Maybe if you can't donate - help spread the work. Pass along this posting and our donation page URL. http://tour.diabetes.org/goto/TeamTegan2009 Or you could join our team and raise some money yourself. We are looking for some more riders...

If you want to donate - head on over the the Tour de Cure page and go to the Portland, Oregon event. We'd love it if you donated to (or joined!) Team Tegan and Her Daddy - but anyone registered would love your support. Check out the ride in Minneapolis - Uncle Kevin, Auntie Paula, and cousins Jake, Luke, and Kyle have their own team - Tegan Power. Sponsor them! Both Tegan and Her Daddy (that's me!) would be very grateful.



Help clean out our refrigerator.

Tour de Cure 2009

The registration website for the Portland area 2009 Tour de Cure event is live. The event this year will not be called Summit to Surf - because it is not being held up on Mt. Hood and in Hood River. This year, the event is being held in Hillsboro - with the start and ending all taking place at the Hillsboro Stadium. There are 10 mile, 27 mile, 63 mile, and 100 mile rides.

We had a great time last year, and got some cool photos of Tegan and me. The local ADA person liked them so much - we are featured on the website for the Portland event. Check us out!

Team Tegan 2008

We've already signed up our family and got Team Tegan and her Daddy in the starting blocks. (do they call the starting line for bike races 'the starting blocks'?) Check out our progress at Team Tegan and her Daddy.

Tegan and Brian - Red Riders 2009

Tegan and Brian - Red Riders 2009

You can check out our individual fundraising pages here...visit them often. Or at least once...with your credit card handy. :)

Brian

Mick

Tegan

Connor

Picasa facial recognition

I know the Mick & Brian Adventures blog has been a little slow lately. If you check the header - you'll know why. We had a very busy summer, with just enough down time to sit back and relax. We didn't use the grill much that I remember - but the weather here - we can grill anytime. Nicely BBQ'ed burgers in January sound good, don't they?

Something that Google released in early September is interesting to note. I wanted to write about this just about a month ago....but you know. Adventures happen. Just yesterday, we participated in the JDRF Walk to Cure Diabetes, here in Portland. We registered at the last minute - and just went and had fun! We walked on a team organized for one of Tegan's friends - Lili. The Team we were on was called Hi Lili Hi Lo - and they have done this for a few years now. Lili was one of the Walk Ambassadors for this event - very exciting! After the walk - we got to ride on the Oak's Park rides all day long! I even discovered that as you get older - you don't have the same ride endurance. I went on about 3 rides too many - and by the time we quit at 4:30 - luckily lunch was four hours past....

So - on to the main topic of this post - facial recognition comes to the impoverished masses!

We have used Picasa to manage all our digital photos - probably since before we got our digital camera, and only had photos sent to us by others. We started using the Picasa Web Albums soon after to share photos of our adventures with all of you. Now - Picasa Web Albums have facial recognition technology!

What does that mean? Well -the Picasa/Google servers look through all our photos that have been uploaded. The software find all the faces that it can recognize - and then starts sorting them by facial characteristics. Once it has finished that - it presents the faces it thinks are the same person to you to identify. It does actually work very well. Now - whenever we upload new photos, it can find our 'classified' faces and tag the photos automatically. Neat!

The first face groupings presented for identification are usually all the same face. Sometimes - interesting things happen. Photos of Tegan and Connor were sometimes grouped together. Sometimes they were at the same age, or shared a similar smile, or Tegan's long hair was up in a hat... Sometimes Connor's nephews were grouped with him, and vice versa. I don't think my face and Mick's were ever mixed together...but I guess we need to be a lot older before we start looking like each other.

Just for fun - I grabbed a most of the shots of me (Brian). Take a look, and see the tough job that the Picasa computers had to deal with. I think they are up and processing again after dealing with this crazy face.

Click on me to see it slightly larger - if you dare.

I really wish this technology was in the Picasa software on our computer, because I don't want to upload our 10,000+ library to Google. Someday - when I get the time - I intend to indentify all the people in our photos. The EXIF tags make this 'easy' to do, if you get the right software. I am still looking for that perfect setup - so I can export data to Excel, enter info there, and then reload the data back into the photos. I did find a freeware program once that did this (Exifer) - but that one is no longer being developed. Something will come along....even if the time to do it doesn't.

Tour de Cure - July 26, 2008 (Picassa slideshow)

This version might have better resolution photos.

Or just go see them on our Picassa site

Tour de Cure - July 26, 2008 (quick photo slideshow)

Here is a quick slide show of some of our photos from the Tour de Cure ride today up in Hood River, Oregon. We all had a great time, no one got hurt, and the weather was incredible.

I've got over 150 photos to choose from - so this movie is a quick way to see our adventure. We'll probably post them on Picassa soon.

Tour de Cure: Ride Day

The bikes are loaded in the car. The sun is rising, and the temperature is still cool. Soon - the family will be awake and we will all climb into the car and drive up to Hood River.

We are excited!

Just for you - since we don't have any ride day photos yet, and I'm sure you are sitting by the computer all day long today - here is a logo that Nate and Jody created for our team T-shirts.


Nate and Jody were going to ride on our team (they are serious bikers) - but they had a crazy relative that thought getting married in July was the thing to do this year. Who gets married in July? Uh...I guess Mick and I did....so I guess we can't blame them. Since they could ride with us, Nate and Jody created this cool design and had it made into a silk screen for us. Wednesday night Mick and I screened it onto a bunch of shirts, after a quick explanation from N&J how to do it - since they were getting on a plane at 1am Wednesday morning. Most of them turned out really well.

Brian measures screen placement

T-shirts drying....don't touch!

Logo closeup

I played around a little with coloring the design to try and come up with a logo I could print out at work on our large HP 800ps 42 inch plotter. Maybe a banner to put on the car... I had some fun with it - but I didn't have the original file that they had created, just a lower resolution JPG. And so, it didn't scale up to 80x42 inches. But you can see it here...

Nice!

Tour de Cure: Final pre-event posting

The Tour de Cure event - Summit to Surf XIII - takes place in two days. You can still donate at our Team Tegan and Her Daddy page.

We've met our team goal of $5,000 - currently we are over $6,000. At one point we were in 2nd place out of 71 teams. Looks like the other big teams are finally getting their money in, and we are slipping back a little. Brian is a little short of his $2,000 goal...you could help with that if your charitable giving account is not empty this month...

Last Sunday - we took a drive up to Hood River to take a look at the course, and give it a test ride. It has incredible scenery - and in the Pacific Northwest - the scenery always includes ups and downs...unless you are at the beach.

We got on the bikes and went...it was hard - but we made it. There were quite a few other bikers on the trail, but I'm sure there will be a lot more this Saturday. Over 1,040 riders have registered. Not all of them will be doing our 10 mile course - but I'm sure all the family groups will. Even with the Gorge Games going on in Hood River - we saw many other cyclists.

Tegan, Brian, and Connor take a break from the 1st climb

Tegan, Connor, and Mick take a break from the 1st climb

So - early Saturday we will load up the bikes, head off to Hood River - and earn all the money that all of you have so graciously donated to the cause so dear to our family - the cure of diabetes Stay tuned for the results of this adventure!

Tour de Cure biking update

Since it was going to be in the 90°s today, we got on our bikes before 10am this morning. We we out on a wondering path - ended up at the end in Cook Park in Tigard. We went over the Tualatin River twice - and this weekend you wouldn't want to be in the Tualatin. Apparently there is an outbreak of blue-green algae. A total of seven miles today - when we got home the temps with past 80°. This was a good test for us - because the Tour is in two weeks - and it will be in Hood River around noon. The temperature is sure to be warm then.

Be sure to check out our fundraising progress - we are at over 80% of our $5,000 goal.

Memorial Day Weekend Camping

Well...I put off writing this post because I needed to get some photos together to add to the story. But going through the photos we took - there are too many to choose from. Looking at the photo filenames - it looks like 270 photos were taken. Some of these were deleted immediately on the camera due to a blink or failed flash or maybe someone didn't want to smile. But threaten to withhold the s'mores - and you'll get at least a halfhearted smile.

So - I decided to create a Picasa album. It is uploading right now - 82 of our best shots. Some even worthly of publication in a magazine. We did get good weather on Saturday and Sunday and on Tuesday - but the other days it did rain. Imagine that - it rained in Oregon on the coast in May. That must have never happened before....

Check out the Picasa album. The photos tell the story. Any questions? Well - post a comment on the blog entry! You know you want to...

Here is a slideshow of the Picasa photos. I hope this works...

Tour de Cure Update #4

Our planning for the Tour de Cure this July is going very well - the name of the event is Summit to Surf. This is because the longest route is 100 miles and starts on Mt. Hood and end in Hood River on the Columbia River, a great spot for wind surfing.

Our team - Team Tegan and her Daddy - is up to 12 members now, and we have raised $960 of our $5,000 goal. The goal thermometer on our team page is almost to 20% - just $40 more will get us there. Might we have to increase the goal? Stay tuned to find out - or help us get going faster and donate! There are 29 teams signed up so far. Our donations at this point place us in 3rd place. But we are just getting started!

Take a look at these routes listed below - maybe you want to join. You can take a fun 10 mile ride with 1,200 feet of elevation change or the 100 mile endurance test with the 9,500 feet of elevation change. What looks good to you?


100 mile route
Starting up on Mt. Hood at Welches - the course then goes up to Timberline Lodge (try just doing that!) and then down again to Hwy 26 and Government Camp, up to Bennett Pass, then to Hwy 35, and downhill (most of the way to Hood River) and then over to the Mosier Tunnels and back to Hood River.

75 mile route
Same start in Welches and route as the 100 mile route, but skips the trip to Mosier near the end.

68 mile route
Similar to the 75 mile route...not sure where the differences are.

56 mile route
Start at Welches and skip the Timberline climb, up to Bennett Pass and down the hill to Hood River.

48 mile route
Start at Government Camp, up to Bennett Pass, and down to Hood River.

36 mile route
Start at Mt. Hood Meadows on Hwy 35 and go downhill (mostly) to Hood River.

10 mile route
This route starts at Port Marina Park in Hood River, goes to Mosier on the old Columbia River Highway, through the twin tunnels, and park to the start.

July is coming soon!

Tour de Cure Update #3

It has been winter here in Oregon. Some flirting with snow, but mostly rain. February was actually quite dry - not sure what is going on there, but it prevented flooding as the mountains have lots of snow.

So - our training for the upcoming Tour de Cure has been slow. We almost got out and biked some recently, but Brian has been sick on and off for the past two weeks and had no eneregy to do much more that sit and breathe.

Last night we were invited to Tegan and Connor's cousins' Lanee' and Cendra's birthday party. Cendra's birthday is in February and Lanee's is in March, but they sometimes have a party together. This year the party was at the Canby Swim Center. When we got there, we found out that they had setup the party as a fundraising event for our Tour de Cure team - Team Tegan and her Daddy! Both Cendra and Lanee' had asked for donations to our team instead of birthday gifts. And the grand total was just over $500! Hurrah! That is over 10% of our team goal of $5,000. We can't thank Cendra and Lanee' and the Bare family enough. Thank you!

And thanks to all who came and swam and ate pizza and cake and had a great time!

Tegan and Cendra enjoy the party

Jacob and a friend clown around

Everyone waits for cake!

Connor loves the pool and the pizza

Tour de Cure Training #2

We begun our training for the Tour de Cure. The Tour is on July 26, 2008. We've got over 8 months to go - and we're doing great! We drove our bikes to the Tualatin Community Park, and biked about 3.5 miles over the new bridge over the Tualatin River to Cook Park in Tigard. Mick and Tegan each rode their own bikes, while Connor rode the tag-a-log connected to Brian's bike.

It was a nice sunny day that was supposed to be rain - a perfect autumn day.
Check back for more training updates.