BluepoofBikes Motorcycle Adventures

Holiday Tournament Championship Game!

Oops, I forgot to blog about yesterday's games.

First, we played A2 at 4pm.  We won, 2-1, hooray! I don't really remember many specifics about that game.  It was more of the same for me -- I had a couple of good shots, a couple of good dekes, a couple of good pokes, but nothing that the Sharks scouts will draft me for. ;)

The championship game was at 7:45pm and we wound up playing A2 again.  

A2 was Team Filson -- four of their skaters are family members -- and Glenn is definitely their best skater.  He'd let me skate right up to him and then, as soon as he thought I was getting too close to their goal, he'd BOOP and poke the puck away from me like a knife cuts through butter.  :D  

There was one move that I was really proud of during the championship game -- I've been working on receiving passes from the D while I'm skating forward.  I saw our D had the puck, I called for it then turned and skated away from him with my stick perpendicular to my body on the very forehand side.  He put the pass right on the tape, I lifted the stick up and back over the puck to pick it up and keep skating forward.  EXACTLY what I'd been practicing!  Yay!

We finished the regulation game 2-2 and went to shootout.

Again it was the World's Longest Shootout as over 10 skaters from each team shot (I went 6th or 7th, I think) before Rex finally got a goal against Raf.  So A2 won the tournament, 3-2.

It was a great tournament as always and I had a ton of fun.  :)

New little dirty guy!

I've been eyeing the Honda CRF80F for quite some time. *happy*

There's a bike dealership right next to Ice Oasis and so we stopped by after our first tournament game yesterday. 

I intended to just "say hi" to the bike and walk out with a bike cover, but I wound up leaving with both the cover AND the bike.  

Since it doesn't exist without pictures:

SO. EXCITED.  

It's very un-intimidating, which was exactly what I wanted out of a non-street legal dirtbike.

Tomorrow or Tuesday, I'll go to Metcalf with Peter and the DRZ. I really think that the offroad confidence I can get on the CRF80F will translate directly to the XT and then onto the Beemer.

Holiday Tournament A3 vs A1: 4-2

We remain victorious in the 2008 Holiday Tournament!

We actually got a few goals in this game, which was very exciting.  We were starting to worry that we'd get to the championship without ever actually scoring a goal in regulation.

Raf is our goalie for the tournament and we allowed him the two goals against since he broke his finger in the warm-up before the game.  Apparently he blocked a practice shot from Jordan with the not-padded part of his glove and that was that.  He taped up the glove with stick tape and was ready to go for the game.  

I played center again and did pretty much nothing useful.  Well, I guess I had a couple of good pokes in the defensive zone and, again, I had some decent shots on goal, but nothing that didn't go straight to Jason's pads.  Boo.

Tomorrow we play Team Filson at 4pm and then the championship game at 7:45pm (likely against Team Filson once again).

Holiday Tournament A3 vs A4: 1-0

It's time for the annual Ice Oasis Holiday Tournament! 

There are only two days of games this year, instead of the usual three, so we have two games a day this weekend. 

We just played the first game and we won in a shootout, 1-0. As you can probably gather from 60 scoreless minutes, both of our teams were pretty heavy on the defensive skill. ;)

I played center with Peter on left wing and Neil on right. We had a good time and I don't think I was the worst person to ever play center in the history of Ice Oasis. I had a couple of shots on goal that would have been great had there been no one playing D (or, for that matter, goalie). But the shots were at least on net and not five feet wide or something. 

I think I was doing well because I could hear Susan yelling "wa wa wa wa Carolyn wa wa!" from the bench. I have no idea what she was actually saying, but when I came back to the bench, she never smacked me with her stick or anything, so I assume she was yelling encouraging things. 

I think we had seven shooters go out for the shootout before someone finally got a goal to win the game. I shot 5th and was blocked by the goalie, but I didn't lose the puck off my stick or fall down, so I wasn't the most theatrical of our shooters. ;) 

Our next game is at 5:15pm today.

Puck Ewes vs Gitterdun: 3-0; Puck Bunnies vs Red Menace: 1-0

Sunday was a hockey doubleheader for me; we had our Puck Ewes game at 4:15pm, then I stayed and subbed for the Puck Bunnies at 5:45pm.

Thanks to the amazing Nora "Nabby" Grasham, we shut out both games! :D

I really had a lot of fun in both games.  I played D for the Puck Ewes and center for the Puck Bunnies and did passably at both.  I probably did slightly better at D (and the defensive half of center), but I may just be thinking that since I didn't get any goals/assists at center.  Ah well, story of my life this season.

I got my first penalty EVAR in the Puck Ewes game, too: a tripping penalty against Jodi.  April even captured it in all its glory:

Annnnnnd, there's my call.

Pffft.  Though now I know the sweet taste of goondom and will soon be slashing and hooking with the best of them (*cough* Andrea* cough*).

Speaking of April and her pictures....why am I ever worried that I'm screening Nora?

Forget that I appear to be defending against no one, yeesh.   Point is, even WITHOUT skates, I think Nora has a good 10" or 11" on me. 

OK, one last picture, because Nora is the cutest thing evarrrr.

 

Critters of 2008

OK, I'm having too much fun with this "....of 2008" theme.   Here are some of my best critter pics of '08, all taken on rides, of course.

Lots of these guys where we live:

Coyote near Mammoth, CA:

Of course, there were tons of friends on the cross-country trip. 

Javelina along Texas Hwy 116:

Lake Fausse Point State Park, LA:

Lizard at Homestead, Florida's Coral Castle:

Prairie dogs in southern MN:

Lots of friends in South Dakota:

 

Wild horses in WY:

No ride to NV is complete without Mormon Crickets:

I have a tendency to take photos of kitties.  We met this fierce hunter on our last day of the summer road trip:

This one was in Fricot City, CA:

Roads of 2008

Someone posted this over at Sport-Touring.net and I liked it so much that I'm stealing it. ;)  So, without further ado, here are my favorite road pictures of 2008.

March:  NF-56 near Seattle, WA

April: Santa Rosa Creek Road, CA

May: Apache Trail, AZ

June: Roger's Canyon Road, WY

 

July: Our new street!

August:  Dirt road by our new house

September: A forest road I was happily lost on near Mammoth Lakes, CA

October: Fricot City Road, CA

November: Highland Springs Road, CA

Impending Burnination!

I'm so excited!!!

My friend Liz asked me to skate for her team, the San Jose Burninators, at the 2009  Las Vegas Women's Hockey Classic!!

I know a ton of people on the team, through NCWHL mostly, and am already bouncing around like a little kid at Christmas.  This will be my first out-of-town tournament and I really hope I do well by the team.  They've all been playing together as a tournament team for years and I'm being all junior high school about fitting in and being part of the "cool crowd".  Hee.

It looks like I'll be playing D for the team, likely with Andrea.  That will rock earth.  I got 3 assists in our Team Danger game last night so hopefully my D fu will remain strong and I'll be useful at burninating the countryside, too.

So. Very. Excited.  Oh my.

Puck Ewes vs Wee Ninja: 0-1

Well, I finally got an assist this season...too bad it was for the other team! Doh!  I poked the puck away from an oncoming wing and it deflected right to the other wing, who then brought it in and scored.  Oops!

It was a fun game with very hard skating.  Jeannie and I were the only centers , which is rough at Fremont anyway, and both of us were totally gassed by the end of the game. 

My skating was better thanks to Steph's advice at public skate last week and stick-and-shoot on Saturday.  Keeping my knees out does make a huge difference.

I'm still impatient with my shot. I feel like I've been working on it forever with no noticeable improvement.  Rarrrr.  It's not frustrating, per se, as much as I'm just impatient.  No want sucky shot! Want reliable lift and modicum of power!

New forks for the Beemer

Here's the write-up for replacing forks on a F650GS.

Why'd I do it?  From the write-up:

"As of this writing (November 2008), there have been multiple reports of catastrophic fork failures on the 2001-2002 model F650GS. BMW refuses to officially acknowledge the problem; however, for the 2003 model, the fork lowers were significantly reinforced. There have been no reports of failures from 2003 onwards.

Whether these '01-'02 forks should be subject to a BMW recall is a topic well outside of the scope of this writeup. However, I chose to preemptively replace my fork lowers with the '03+ model. Please note that the part number has not changed, but if you order a fork now, chances are that you'll get the new style."

For the curious, here are some comparison shots between the 2001-2001 fork lowers and the 2003+ models. It's very obvious where BMW has added substantial material around the axle mount.

The dirty ones are my '01 forks. ;)

Right side:

 

Left side: