Studio711.com – Ben Martens

As a homeowner, I’ve learned to stop and read those “Proposed Land Use” signs a little more closely than I used to. There’s one on the really tight corner as you head north from my house and go down the hill into Woodinville. After reading the sign and then looking it up online, I learned that there is a luxury gun club going in! My first thought was “AHHHH the noise is going to kill my property value!” But no, it’s indoor so it won’t be a big deal.

It’s called Securite and yes, it’s a “luxury” gun club. The concept art looks like lots of leather chairs, fireplaces, etc. It will be interesting to check it out when they are done, but I’ll probably stick with the shotgun sports at Kenmore.

When we moved to Woodinville in 2011, I noted that our house was positioned very well for me to ride to work. It’s only about a mile down to the Sammamish river trail and then I take that all the way into Redmond with about a mile or so from the end of the trail to campus. Here it is, 2015, and I hadn’t done it yet. So finally I circled a date on the calendar and made it happen.

That date ended up being the hottest day of the year to that point, but I didn’t let it deter me. The ride into work was pretty nice for the first 8.5 miles. I even had a bald eagle flying overhead right above the trail for a little while. But there was a problem lurking. Google Maps has a nice bike route feature that includes an elevation view. As you can see, there’s a 400 ft hill on each end of the route.

That last 1.5 miles up to campus is brutal. I started off thinking that I would slog it out and make it all the way without stopping. I failed that, but I only walked for about 100 yards of the hill. And I’m not going to lie… when I made it to the top of the hill, I felt like I was going to pass out and I had to sit and rest for a while. I’m an old man. But the trip was a success. I made it in 1 hour and 2 minutes, just like Google predicted.

Work provides us with a badge-locked storage area for bikes and a locker room with towel service so that I didn’t stink all day. It was the first time I’ve ever used those perks of the job and they’re pretty nice to have!

The flaw in my plan was that I underestimated how tired I would be after riding to work and then working all day. So I swallowed my pride and asked Tyla if she wanted to meet me at a park along the trail right before where I would need to break off and head up the big hill to our house. The ride there wasn’t too bad although there was about a 10 mph wind blowing in my face and I was pretty tired by the time I got to the park. It’s a good thing we set up that rendezvous. I was happy to throw my bike in the car and drive up the hill.

Will I do this again? Maybe someday. It would be fun to get in shape and be able to handle this a little better. I do think that I’d want more of a street bike instead of a mountain bike. And it’s hard to justify the extra time out of my day when time is so precious right now.

This was the first year of the new NASCAR playoff scheduling system. Every car still races in every race, but towards the end of the season, they start knocking people out of contention for the championship. In the last race, points are reset for the top four drivers and whoever finishes the best, wins.

It was an interesting format and I’m not sure how much I like it, but what I did like was watching Ryan Newman’s terrific year. After parting ways with Stewart Haas Racing and getting a rid with Childress, he really seemed to flourish. He never won a race, but he finished strong most of the time and that put him in contention for the championship in the last race of the year.

He ended up finishing the race second to Harvick so he was one spot away from winning it all. While winning clearly would have been sweeter, this was still an incredible effort. Congrats to Newman and his whole team!

I hardly watched any races this year due to dropping ESPN from my cable package, but hopefully I’ll get to watch a few more next year as Elijah gets a little older and the are only split across FOX and NBC (not ESPN or TNT, yay!)

For quite a few years, NASCAR has had internet subscription models for watching and listening to the races. But now, for the first time, NASCAR surprised me by offering all of the remaining races this season for free on YouTube (after the race is over.) That’s an especially cool deal for me since some of these races are on ESPN which I don’t pay for anymore. You can check out the New Hampshire race from last week. It’s exciting to see more and more sports embracing the Internet.

For Father’s Day of 2013, Tyla and I got Don a night at the track up in Monroe. We’ve all talked about seeing a race there so it seemed like a good gift idea. It was, but it took us over a year to actually get up there! It was a fun night though. We saw a bunch of smaller races and then the late model cars took to the bigger outside oval for their 100 lap race. I could definitely see going back and it will be fun to take Elijah there once he’s a little older. Tickets were under $20 so it’s a pretty good deal.