Amber Rides

The Happy Package:

Our dear friend Alex was a complete Doll and sent us a care package from her new place of residence, Honolulu! It was filled with macadamia nut Hershey kisses, clusters, mauna loa, fake lays, hats, body salve, beer snuggies and postcards from both of us telling us how proud she was of us! This particular day Kallie & I were feeling a little drained, a little down and in need of a little bit of hope, and BAM there it was sitting inside my gate addressed to “Kallie & Amber”…cus’ apparently we actually live together now. But regardless, it was EXACTLY what we needed that day, it put smiles on our faces, goosebumps on our skin and giggles all around….seriously one of the Best things I’ve ever received in the mail!! Thankkkkkssss Alex! We love you tons! xox

Our AH-mazing friend Laurel came up to the city for a couple days and helped us do our LAST bake sale which we did at Crissy Field in the Presidio where the massive celebration for the 75th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge was happening. We didn’t make as much money as we normally did at Dolores Park, but we still had fun and met some really neat people. An extremely gracious man from the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus made an announcement to the entire chorus that we were fundraising for ALC and to buy some water/baked goods from us in support! It was amazing, we had a rush of people, it gave us great business! We also got some great support from our friends at Roaring Mouse Cycles and inevitably ended at Sports Basement to say hello to our friends there as well. All in all it was a good day! Kallie & I got to laugh & joke to Laurel about how exhausting it is to do the bake sales…the bottom picture is a depiction of her decreasing energy throughout the day (did I mention that she is the mother of an almost-one-year-old…she she KNOWS what it means to be tired!).

A little collection of the ‘goodies’ I’ve been baking/making for our Bake Sale Fundraisers. My roommates have been subjected to coming home to the sweet smells of delicious brownies, cookies, cupcakes, and rice krispy treats…could be worse!

Park Rats

So Kallie & I have officially be recognized by visitors of the park, as well as other vendors, such as the hot dog man, Darin. This officially makes us Park Rats. And by rats I mean lovely young ladies who frequent and smoosh the sunny place to the point of no return. So as we were bake-saleing about, yet again with our fabulous friend Alma (aka: Papi) we had to entertain ourselves somehow, and did so by taking ridiculous pictures with ridiculous things. The top pic: The wind got a little intense and was blowing the trash can lid up and letting all this trash fly out everywhere, in almost immediate response I (ask if doing a kung fu move) threw my leg up in the air and slammed the lid down, while Kallie attacked the other side of it. Our strange leg-reaction is due to a recently engraved habit of not touching anything nasty with our hands due to the fact that we are passing our FOOD and need to stay decently sanitary….I was pretty impressed by it if I do say so myself. The bottom pic: We came across this group of young folk like us, who bought some goods and had this funny little man sitting with them. They explained they saw an enormous statue of (someone famous, can’t remember?!) and wanted it but it was like 100 bucks, so they settled for this little dude that was 5 bucks…he’s pretty creepy, but awesome enough to want to nap a picture with him ;)

Our LAST TRAINING RIDE! Holy anxiety-excitment attack. It seems like a dream, it’s happening, but not really, it hasn’t registered in my brain that this is it, the Last one, no more training until THEE ride. Panic, no…no panicing. It’s going to be fabulous, it just seems as though time warped and I really actually do have more training rides, right?! Nope. But if there were to be the perfect Last of something, it would have been this ride. Friday rides were Always my favorite: meeting time (not till’ 9:30, yay!) destination, terrain, scenery, people, all of it! We went a short 32 miles or so to Fairfax and back, this was my very First training ride…and now it’s the Last. The weather was Perfect, hope its like that all throughout ALC. There were no complications or break downs, only laughs and smiles. We got the lovely lady at the bakery to snap a picture of all us :) Good times with the Friday crew.

Yet another day at Dolores Park…it’s become a bump & grind routine. Smart & Final purchases, mix, bake, mix, bake bake bake, wake up, prepare, gather, collect, shove into car, buy ice, barge to park, pray for a close parking spot (we had great luck this time), then it’s smoosh, chat, sell, vibing, sell, sell, sell. Sometimes it’s quite difficult to get into the smooshing mood & you need a little liquid encouragement; this was one of those days. It didn’t help that it was super windy, we were chilly almost the whole time. After our load of baked goods was depleted, we walked to Churchill (our fav ‘local’ bar) to grab some more of that now: liquid relaxation/method to warm us up. As we walked, we had to wrap ourselves in the one and only warm item in the car, a blanket. When we got there, I snapped the pic of Kallie: drained, exhausted and dehydrated.

how do you have your own background? and your title? thanks

cyclingdude

Ya know, I’m not computer savvy at all, I asked one of my best friends to help me and she made the layout/background/title and all for me and I now just write/post in it. But you can ask her! She on here too as ‘Cocobeann’ :)

Oh man, I've had that derailleur issue twice in two months (hanger ripping off and going into the spokes) on my nice bike. So out of the last four months of having it, I've only actually ridden it for two of them. I had back for just two days after it was shipped off to Wisconsin to be fixed and it happened again =( So don't fret! It happens to everyone.

dogsandcycling

Good to know! That actually does kinda make me feel better haha, I pick up the bike today, let’s pray it doesn’t happen again!

So here I am, chillin’ on the side of the road…just moments after catastrophe! And by catastrophe I mean Kallie’s bike completely breaking/mutilating/falling apart/misbehaving and cutting our ride short. Basically her derailer snapped off and the whole chunk of bike got wrapped in the chain which got stuck in the spokes and all bent, muttled into a broken mess. Fortunately we weren’t on a busy road, and we were ahead of most the group so we had ALC people that would eventually see us. A very nice jogger lady stopped to make sure we were okay, saw the bike (she was bike-savy) and said “oooohhhhh” we giggled and Kallie said “it could be worse” and Paula (the lady) said “Mmmm, I don’t know- don’t think it can!!!” She gave us her number just incase we needed a ride back to our car (she was an Angle sent from the cycling god above!). Once the ALC training leaders got to us they all had the same awful reaction and said they’d never seen something so bad blah blah, but eventually got the chain untangled and all the parts off. Once they moved on we attempted to find a friend to come pick us up…but it was Friday afternoon and everyone was either working or didn’t have a car, pooh. Sure enough Paula came to our rescue! She picked us up in her SUV which perfectly fit both our bikes and all three of us and gave us a ride back to my car. It’s moments and people like her that make me re-believe that there are good samaritans still wondering out there!

We’re pretty excited, can’t you tell!? We got new wrap for our handle bars! Bright orange and yellow, yeahhh buddy. I’ve only ever wrapped tennis rackets, but I think its fairly similar…although it will take some practice. I also purchased a ‘bento box’ for my bike so I can easily grab things up front like my cliff bars etc. And I nabbed some of those (probably nasty) goo shots that keep your blood sugar up, figured it couldn’t hurt to try since I know the Shot Blocks are affective. We’re yet again at Sports Basement (pretty sure I should just camp there).