Mike and I left the metropolis early for the 10AM meet up time.  Kettle was in pretty close to perfect shape on Saturday.  The ride started with a 30 minute effort led by Kevin that had us flying through trail with complete lack of reguard for direction.  When Mike and I rode the blue loop for a second time later, there were parts of the trail I did not remember at all.  The three of us hammered out 3/4 of the blue loop before taking any sort of a breather and it felt amazing.  The kinks worked themselves out and I started to feel like I had regained control of my bike after a long winter.  Well, it must have showed because I was later to be paid one of the best compliments I have ever gotten on my riding.  Every time one of us would slow down, make a dab, or over shoot a turn there was always another person to take the lead and push our little group.  The sections of the connector were a blur and I had a smile from ear to ear.  On our way back through the connectors we caught Holly, Tom, and Mark, soon there after we crossed paths with a big group of familiar riders and we hung out at one of the road crossings and chatted for a while.  Back to the parking lot, most of the group was going back to the Klug's new place, but Mike, Tim and I still wanted more.  We went out and rode a mish mash of the red, white, purple, blue, green and orange trail.  It was confusing, we were trying to ride every inch of trail, but we were stopping more than we wanted to and look at the maps.  We hit the parking lot again after a while and went out for one last blue loop.  Mike and I had Lake Shore Path syndrome and wanted to race every rider who we passed which led directly into Mike and I pushing each other.  I could not have asked for a better day, a better trail, or a better group to ride with.  Somewhere between the blue loop and Emma I remembered exactly why I started riding with the Killjoy folks and am so damn happy to wear their, and now my, bad ass kit.  I tried explaining it to them, but I don't think it makes any sense.  I can't thank them enough for everything.  Maybe it is because I have been spending so much time lately on road rides, but everything about trail makes me so much more happy with cycling.  All the worries just melt away.

So last night was the third day of my "official" training program.  Hill repeats, in Chicago, are a joke.  I have always sort of laughed about how our city is so flat, but when it comes time where you could really use a hill, there are not any, not to mention the 2-3 minute hill the plan was calling for.  If I only needed to ride it once I could hit up a parking garage, but this was calling for ten.  Anyway, Zach and I went down onto the path and rode over the speed bump down south.  I timed three minutes in either direction and we just made it an 130% effort from that point, finishing on top of the bump.  It worked out well and for all intents gave me the same amount of effort.  I only made it through seven of the reps before I was completely cooked and would have been useless on the remaining three, the ride back to the loop was a struggle.  This is the point of training right?  It started to rain on Zach and I just as we hit the museum campus.  Not so bad for me, with two miles West to ride, but I felt bad for Zach, who came down to ride with me and was still looking at 12 more miles North.  Either way, by the time I hit State Street it was pouring.  Riding West on Adams, there was a significant amount of standing water on the street and inevitably, as I rode between the right lane and a parked car I was forced into one.  Well, in short, there was something significant in the water and it dumped me onto the pavement.  Lesson one, wet handle bars are slippery.  We all knew that and I was almost expecting to slip up at some point on the way home.  Lesson two, you really slide when the pavement is wet.  I hit the ground and bounced off my bike and went into this pretty rad 20 foot slide and spin, stopping facing my bike 15 feet behind me as the traffic came to a stop as fast as possible.  Picked myself and the bike up, slightly embarrassed, but also feeling pretty lucky and huffed the last mile home.  Sore and road rash was the only result, but it defiantly was not supposed to be part of my recovery cool down.  I got home and Julie took care of me in my exhausted stupor, having a much needed dinner ready.  My bike, completely fine.  The rear wheel needs a little truing, but I am completely astounded at the amount of abuse the carbon SRAM Force levers have taken without breaking.  Mud, snow and a hard hit of frozen tundra in Kansas City racing cross on top of the other times I have fallen over.  That endorsement also is extended to the carbon levers on my juicy ultimate brake levers on my mountain bike, which by all standards should have exploded into nothingness by now.

I have always called Chicago home.  I have always felt that it was the place for me to be.  For the first time this weekend that internal notion had reason to be doubted and it seemed like each person Julie and I encountered was willing to offer one new reason we'd enjoy life there better than Chicago.  There are the reasons we all, as cyclists, want to move there.  Portland is, after all, the only platinum rated bike friendly city.  Their cyclocross scene is second only to Europe.  The beer; three days is not enough time to consume enough to make an honest assessment of what I liked best, and I damn well tried.  Coffee is an institution, with multiple local roasters.  The city itself is big enough that it seems to lack redundancy, yet small enough to to feel personable.  The independent nature of everything defiantly drives the warm welcome home.  My liking of the area began on our drive to Eugene and only amplified as the weekend went on.  The morning spent walking around downtown Portland forced the feelings to be something that needed to be reckoned with.  And over breakfast Julie allowed me to talk through what had become one of very few serious life changing ideas I have wanted to enact.

There are quite a few really good reasons that I think a move to Portland would be beneficial to life.  The view of the mountains from the city center only causes these feelings to resonate deeper.  The climate; let us just say that the "bad" winter they had was a couple months long, 40's and rainy.  No bugs.  The way of life is different; more relaxed seems like a lame way to put it, but it holds true.  Of all the great reasons I was able to make for making that transition, there are three really big ones that will keep me within pretty close distance to Chicago. One is our home. Three years ago, there would not have been such a commitment holding me to a city, but I made the decision, happily, to ground myself here.  The second is work.  It probably would not be beneficial for Julie to move again and I would probably have a hard time finding work in the sprinkler industry without a proper education in it.  The most important is family and our desire to have our own.  Both Julie and my parents are close by and a move to the Northwest would abandon our entire support network.  Yes we could raise a family on our own, but having the relatives around is important to us, and right now we are within a relatively short drive from most of them.  It would be a lie to say that I am not disappointed that the move to Portland is not in the cards for us.  At the same time though, the goals I have in life are not short term and there are things I can and can not do to make them happen.  People of Portland, know how lucky you are.