Bike for Breath a huge success!

Wow! It's done! We started out bright and early leaving the hotel parking lot at 7:15 AM to register and pick up our jersey's and t-shirts. After a quick rendevous at the car, we were off by 7:40 AM to start our 65-mile ride! Here's me and Danek Duvall getting started.

It was a cool and incredibly windy day. I didn't see the sunlight until well after noon. This was the longest bike ride I've ever been on, and I'm quite happy with myself that I was able to finish in 6 hours and 8 minutes (including rest stops). It was an amazing ride in a beautiful part of California. My team, Team Salty Dawgs, were the number one fundraisers. I should've gotten a picture of us with the trophy, but after the ride I was a bit tired and just thinking about eating lunch.

Happily, I wasn't too sore or too tired, until I got out of the car after the long drive home. Then I discovered I had tendinitis in my knee *ouch*. But after only hobbling around for a couple of days, I'm already feeling much better. I'd like to get back in the saddle again, but will be passing on road bikes for awhile and get back to my mountain biking. :-)

More pictures can be found on my website.

Training continues!!!

I did 45 miles on Saturday and another 13 on Sunday. Not as much riding as I was hoping to get in this weekend, but it was hot and I got hungry :-) I'm going to have to do some serious climbing on Saturday as well as just sitting in the saddle a long time. I figure that the 65-mile bike ride will take me about 5.5 hours, perhaps more, depending on how hot it is. I will finish the ride - it means a lot to my mother, and a lot to me. The Bike4Breath group has been very supportive, too. It should be a ton of fun - the Salty Dawgs ride on Saturday! Argh, matey!

watch this space for ride photos...

Sun's employees are amazingly generous!

I am currently raising funds for the Bike4Breath's 2 Rock Ride (I'm doing 65-miles!) and I am just amazed at how incredibly generous Sun employees are. Even in these tight times, not one person I've asked for a donation has said no. And I've just been flabbergasted at just how giving each person is. Wow!!

I did two training rides this weekend. First was just starting from home, going to the Alpine Inn, down to Sun Menlo Park, and home again - *whew*. Yesterday, I went to Hecker Pass in Gilroy, started out at Fortino Winery, then road all around through that beautiful area, winding through
Morgan Hill and getting back to Fortino just in time to pick up a couple of bottles of their wonderful Zinfandel.

I did just about 60 miles this weekend. I have to somehow work this up to 65-miles in one ride in the next two weeks. Yikes!

Chairman's Award winner! Yipee!!!

Every year, Scott McNeally and the executive staff give out a handfull of awards for outstanding contributions and innovations. This year, the Solaris Cryptographic Framework for Solaris 10 was awarded one of the prizes! This is an amazing recognition for all of our efforts and the great benefits the crypto framework can bring to developers and ISVs!

Our team got to spend the entire morning with the executive staff, in attendance at the virtual leadership conference, and we all got to shake Scott's hand and get our pictures taken with the award.

Afterwards, the executive staff provided a boxed lunch with an executive at every table. I was fortunate enough to get to sit with Jonathan Schwartz and Anil Gadre. Both of these men were very open to listening to feedback from the "normal" employees at the table and actually seemed interested.

Now I'm just waiting for people in the field to really start playing with the Solaris Cryptographic Framework and giving us feedback. C'mon - we're waiting!