34m0nz bl4wg

I’ve switched to an iWeb blog. I’m not really sure why, but iWeb is cool anyway. My new blog is at web.mac.com/eamonford. I’ll still keep this one as an archive though.

I got a new bike! It’s a Bottecchia. My dad and I went on a 54 mile ride today to test it out, and it works great. It’s super-light and feels really fast when I accelerate. Here are some photos.

The last meet of the season was this weekend, in Bend. I was staying with Adam and his dad in a tent about 30 seconds from the pool.

The car we took to get there was a little Lumina towing the boat with all our luggage. When we were going over the Santiam pass, we started hearing unhealthy noises coming from the engine. Because we were listening to loud music, and because the temperature gauge is the one that nobody looks at, we didn’t realize what was happening. Then, we looked back, and could barely see the boat through all the smoke.
We stopped for a few minutes, let the engine cool down, and then resumed. Fortunately, we (barely) made it to the pool without anymore problems.

There are two pools at Bend: an indoor 25 meter pool and an outdoor 50 meter pool. The little kids were swimming in the outdoor pool (but only using half of it), and we were swimming in the indoor pool.
I swam the 100 free, 200 back, 100 breast, 50 free, 100 fly, and 200 free, and I won the 100 free, 50 free and 100 fly.

On Saturday we went boating at Cove Palisades. The place looks like the Grand Canyon filled with water.
I published photos of the meet and the lake to Flickr and to a Photocast.
Here are a few of them.

I’ll be riding with Adam up Bend today for the last meet of the season, so I won’t be replying to any email until Sunday or Monday.

On another note, look at this video of a triple stage rocket Eric and I launched yesterday. You can’t really see much, but the sound effects are worth it…
And no, it didn’t survive.

Yesterday was the Oregon State Championship time trial, in Peoria. This was my third year doing it, and this time it was twice as long as before: 20k (instead of 10k). I finished 6th out of ten people, which, I’d say, is good for someone who didn’t train for it. Also, my time was 34:45. Last year, in the 10k, my time was 17:53. So, this year I averaged 30 seconds faster per 10k than last year.
Here are some pictures from the event.

Eric has a seven foot tall rocket which tried to launch today, but we couldn’t launch it because it’s so tall that we couldn’t get it to stand up for more than five seconds. Also, our launch pad needs some duct-taping…

So instead, we launched Odin. Here’s a video.

Huge Beetle

Originally uploaded by Eamon Ford.

We found this beetle in the garage. The body (not including antennae or stinger) is 2 1/2 inches long!

Does anybody know what kind this is? If so, post in the comments.

I bought a wireless Mighty Mouse! It works great. Here are some pictures.

Last night, we got back from the State Championship meet at Mt. Hood, which lasted four days. I swam the 50 free, 100 free, 200 free, 400 free, 100 fly and 200 fly, plus three relays. I made it to finals in everything, so I actually swam 15 events.

I missed a Zone time in the 100 fly by 0.14 second! And yes, I time trialed it afterwards to try and get a faster time, but I was almost two seconds off in the time trial. It was my fourth 100 fly at the meet (prelims + finals + relay + time trial), so I was tired. At least I got 4th place.

I got all best times, even though it was mostly cold, and on the last day, raining.

I didn’t get very many pictures since I spent all my free time sleeping, but here are a few…

The pool

Our team

I just had to take a picture of this

And here are my times.

400 free: 4:35.67 (7th)
100 fly: 1:05.43 (4th)
200 free: 2:10.48 (5th)
50 free: 27.58 (8th)
100 free: 59.87 (7th)
200 fly: 2:29.71 (5th)

We’ll be leaving on Thursday morning for the State Championships in Mt. Hood. Hopefully I’ll post some pictures after the meet.