General Fluff

Farmland 2011

2011-05-13T23:20:00.000-04:00

Okay so I haven't blogged in a while (sorry). Well, so far this winter and spring have not been good for getting in miles, but spring is getting better. I just did my first century (May 7^th) on the CJBC Farmlands ride. The club laid out new routes and, with few exceptions, they were a very nice change (don't worry I'll get those roads fixed). It was a gorgeous day, starting out cool (~55F) and ending up mild (~70F, I like it hot). My average time was in the high 16's and considering my lack of riding that's okay. I did manage to get in one of my 'long pulls' way above pace. Afterwards I felt terrific and my leg problems of the last few years doesn't seemed to have surfaced. Additionally the stress of getting and learning a new job and the lack of miles have allowed me to put on too much weight. All things considered the average speed and the day-after feeling says I'm well on track for the longest day. My friend Mark and I rode well together and it looked really good for us on the Longest Day. Unfortunately Mark had a bike accident on a Sunday ride. He and another friend collided. Ken went down with a concussion and cuts above and below his eye. Mark ended up with lots of road rash and a broken clavicle. I'm wishing them both a speedy recovery and not to go nuts during their time off the bike.

Weekend updates

2010-08-08T14:34:00.001-04:00

Last weekend I kind of put off the work I need to get done outside because I was busy playing. :-) That Saturday I led a bicycle ride and we tested out a new route. It was nice to have Bikely.com to help plan out the route (I did that on Friday night). I really like the satellite feature as it helps me envision what the area generally looks like as I ride the roads. Since my 3D perception is pretty good I understand what the area should look like from the ground as well as above it. I now have a nice smart phone that I hope will be useful when we're out riding (for short cuts or alternate routes). We'll see how that goes. Sunday I spent a lot of time trying to organize my various information sources so I could reach them using the smart phone (I'm still working on that).

Now, I really wished I had drank more as Sunday I was slightly dehydrated. It would have also been nice to have had the GPS working on my Android based Samsung Captivate (bug in the firmware) to test out and get use to using the feature. I was able to use the phone to check the radar for the area though it really doesn't give you a good idea of the way the headwinds are blowing in the various areas (yes it comes from various directions). On Saturday, my friend was able to text me that she was running a few minutes late and to not leave without her. I've since added Facebook and Twitter to my phone so I'll be able to post inane information for all to see! ;-) Despite the fact there is a lot of junk posted, both Facebook and Twitter have their uses. It allows me to keep up with friends, family and acquaintances. What I'd really like to do is to figure out how to post pictures and information from my rides like my friend Lane does. I often see interesting things along the way and wouldn't mind sharing them (most of NJ doesn't look like the start of the Sorprano's). I'm glad I've met people who have given me these ideas. Now I just need to figure out how to implement these ideas.

This past weekend I did the Princeton Free Wheelers - Princeton Event. It's one of the area's big rides. We managed to get a break in the weather as it only reached 85F but starte out at 65F @ 7AM. The previous weeks before were very humid and the temperature started out at 84F and rose quickly to as much as 103F. This break in the weather was a nice relief. This year the event took a different series of roads, as it always does. They took us out to Columbus NJ, down to New Lisbon, over to Turkey Swamp and back to Mercer County Park. It was a gorgeous route. I'll have to take advantage of some of those roads now that I know them. On the hydration front I decided to learn from my previous mistakes and drink a lot more. I still went out and stayed on the front too much so at the end of the ride I was very tired. We finished with a 17.3 mph avg. Not bad considering the previous weekends air quality alerts (I'm asthmatic) and that heat & humidy limited both our speed and distances. I'm hoping that we'll continue to get a break for the rest of the summer and I'll be able to get down to Chatsworth (107 mi.) and Tuckerton (131 mi.).

Can't wait for the 2011 Longest Day!

2010-06-22T16:16:00.002-04:00

Oops, something got messed up in the editing, this should fix that right up.

Yup, despite the problems I had running the event, I'm still looking forward to running and participating in next year's Longest Day. There are a number of problems I need to resolve such as communications (when I'll be at the Days Inn, from what time to what time, what to do if x, y, or z). I'll start working on all of that plus a whole lot more. I've seen my mistakes and I've figured out how to improve the experience. So we'll see how next year goes.

So this is the way things went; starting Monday, June 7^th through Thursday June 10^th I was busy with the last minute details (and there are a lot of them). On Thursday, I put down road markings at a few unmarked intersections. I plan to do that again next year. I nearly got busted twice (I didn't have permits) and the Federal officer was very polite and let me go. Friday, I had to run around and drop off the goodie bags to the folks who would hand these out at the Century and Double Metric starts. Since I had very little sleep this week I was a little dain bread and couldn't remember the house numbers (ARGH!). My Windows cell phone was useless as it kept locking up and returning no useful information. I was so tired that I forgot about 411 (information). I arrived late at Port Jervis at 7:30 PM. From 8:00 PM until 10:30 PM I was busy with handing out everything and answering questions. Unfortunately not everyone was there as several people were coming from out of state (WA, MI, OH and AR). At 10:30 PM I finished my dinner and went to bed. I had to be up by 3:00 AM to do the ride. At 1:30 AM I received a call on my cell. Unfortunately I was totally out of it and didn't really wake up and missed the call. So much for sleeping! Next year, clearer directions and I'll better prepared.

At 4:00 AM I was out the door and prepping the bike. By 4:38 AM Team Are We There Yet? (Our SAG Greg, Mark, Kevin and myself) left the Days Inn. I turned my helmet camera on (yes in the dark) and began recording our ride. It worked rather well and I'll post a montage later. Our initial 100 miles were uneventful. One rider did report and short encounter with bears (yes real bears). We saw many deer but had no problems. It was a comfortable morning but the fog kept us a bit wet. As we road we crossed the paths of many teams. We road with some, passed others and were in turn passed by others. While the camera gave you a hint of the speed we were descending it didn't really give you the feel. By the time we arrived in Manville we were feeling pretty good. Up to this point we had done some work in pace lines but the roads, hills and traffic are not really conducive to doing pace lines. Once we got on Canal Rd we kept a steady diet of pace lines. Also starting at Manville the wind was much more noticeable. A wind out of the south, expected to be 15 mph in Central Jersey and increase as the day goes on and we head further south. Head winds are a part of the Longest Day and this year didn't disappoint. The ride into Allentown went smooth though the wind was more noticeable. We had trained for winds up to 18 mph but this was worrying me a bit. The Chatsworth section is where we first start seeing head winds and they're usually mild but because your mentally fatigued you notice them (they're unrelenting). The lunch stop outside of Allentown (at the Soccer Fields) was a welcome stop. We had food that wasn't bicycle food and drinks that weren't Gatorade or water and Potato Chips that were salty and delicious! ;-) As we were in the final stages of leaving Will Bayley came up to us and asked if he could join us. Since we had trained with him we had no problem with him riding with us.

After lunch we left at the same time as several other teams. I think we came across Team Liberty, Team Major Taylor and a few others. Again we decided not to give chase and possible ruin our day. There was still 106 miles to go. The ride went smooth and we really began to enjoy the gusts of wind that would drop your speed 3 mph. Usually this occurred when someone (Kevin) was just coming to the front of the pace line. But other than that it really was a nice ride to the Ranger's Station. At this point the sun began to really come out and the temperature began to rise (as expected). A 10 mile break in Jenkins was very welcome. Unfortunately several teams had passed us while we were stopped. Including a team of about 20 people. Once we were back on the road we caught them rather quickly. They seemed to be doing about 14 mph in the heavy winds. My team didn't want to be slowed to 14 so we attempted to pass. While we were able to pass the entire train was able to latch on to our rear wheel. We weren't too happy as they could keep the pace we needed and we weren't thrilled with having to work with 20 tired people we don't know doing a pace line. That meant we (Will, Mark, Kevin and myself) were stuck with dragging the train the last 10 miles through the Barrens to the Mullica Bridge, another quick 5 minute rest stop. We then got back on the road and picked up the pace again. Along the way we picked up Kenneth from Team Major Taylor. Ken had completed the entire Chatsworth section solo (ouch) and we invited him to tag in. So we rode to May's Landing for another quick stop at McDonald's. As we were about to leave Team Major Taylor stops by the CVS next store and we discuss what Ken will do. He decidef to continue riding with us to the WaWa (mile 185). So we're off again, and the next 11 miles went pretty smoothly. The wind was still there and were dealing with it pretty well. The pace lines and chit-chat seemed to make the time go by quick. Once in Tuckerton we rode down a nice tree covered road for a few miles. It was nice to get out of the direct sun and the different scenery was also welcome. I don't know about anyone else but I was feeling pretty good as the miles ticked away to the WaWa. I picked up some extra food (not bike food) at the WaWa and we left after 6:00 PM for our last 25 miles. Up to this point we had maintained a 17.1 mph pace. The last 25 miles were brutal! We maintained the pace line but our final average dropped to 16.8 mph for the day. The winds felt like they were in excess of 20 mph. We noticed white caps on the inland bays and water ways. The only relief was that we were near the end and we knew we could make it. As we crossed the canal in Cape May the bridge didn't seem as steep (but still wasn't easy) and the final miles went better than expected. When we reached the light house (a welcome sight) we reflected on our speed with some delight and some disgust. 16.8 mph for the day, low by any standards but high when you consider that we just traverse 140+ miles of real head winds. In that light, a very respectable number. Overall an excellent ride!

Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy!

2010-05-30T06:20:00.001-04:00

Just got back from Halter's Cycles (Rt 1, Monmouth Junction, NJ) and they were able to fix my favorite bike the Giant TCR Advanced (see my stable) for tomorrow's ride. I haven't had a chance to get it in to the shop due to work, family, The Longest Day Event and training. I expected it would be in the shop for more time than I like (separation anxiety) so I put back together my Mongoose Ti RX100 road bike. By the end of today I'll have 3 working bikes (yeah!). That should lessen the separation anxiety a whole lot.

So far the Longest Day event is going along pretty well. Since this is my first year and I haven't a clue as to what I'm doing. I actually expected a lot more problems. The majority of the registrations came in at the last minute and have kept me up late dealing with them. I have some small things to deal with but we're pretty much ready. Kevin Tatoris did me a huge favor and took over the Jersey (next year it will be part of the event from the start). He's doing some redesign work and changing the Jersey enough so that it is distinguishable from the previous Longest Day Jerseys. Thanks Kevin,

This week end I really need to put up the information on Longest Day teams.

Well more training tomorrow! I have a 124 mile (double metric) planned and 62 mile (metric) planned for Sunday. The heavy part of my training is done and afterward just some light road work (miles) to actively rest for the Longest Day. Looks like it will be a good year.

Longest Day and a ride to Tuckerton

2010-05-23T21:48:00.000-04:00

Longest Day update: Well the registration forms keep coming in and I'm busy processing them. Wow did I get a lot of last minute registrations. I'll have the last in by tonight and the vest order will go out tomorrow. The Longest Day Jerseys are now the next order of business but I need the entire email list complete. The Jerseys will be $60 and pretty much exactly like last year (updated date of course). Sorry but I didn't have a lot of time to handle this. There has been a lot of interest in the Jerseys and they will be a part of next year's Longest Day instead of a separate part. The route review is going well I've got 150+ miles complete with a minor change at the Bridgewater Foothill Rd section. The second part of Foothill Rd is notorious for it's pot holes. This year we're going around it. While Bridge St is not one of my favorite roads it's better than Foothill (narrow, dark, cratered, too much traffic for conditions). Well I've got more work to do.

So this weekend as part of my training I took a ride down to Tuckerton. We started out in Allentown because I didn't want to make it 130+ miles, 117 was quite enough. :-) There was Lane, Will, Mark and myself. Will, Mark and myself will be doing the Longest Day. Will expects to keep a 16 mph average speed while Mark and I should keep at least a 17.5 mph average for the day. Lane has other business to attend to that weekend but if his riding is any indication of his speed he could do it faster than 18. Lane only had his heavy commuter instead of his nice carbon fiber. We told Will to hang at the back so he had a chance to survive. He did come out for his turn at a pull but we made sure he wasn't on there too long. Better to survive and ride than drag and possibly get lost on the way back. I don't like loosing riders.

The ride started out in all the familiar places: Waln, Emiley's Hill, New Egypt, Whiting. Common enough places for my rides. We then headed down to Tuckerton and passed through Lacey. As always there were plenty of pine trees (Pine Barrens). We saw the section of devastated pine forest from a few years ago. Nothing taller than 3 ft for miles in all directions. And as is common in such devastation, new growth pine trees, thick as can be. It was a 3 ft tall blanket of Pitch Pine trees. Eventually the forest will thin out and we'll see the more familiar 15 to 20 ft tall Pitch Pine Forest. It will be interesting to watch this grow over the next few years.

I was surprised at just how busy Rt 563 to Tuckerton was. It was heavier than I liked but not enough to worry about (this ain't Rt 206 between Pemberton and Hamminton). Once we reach Tuckerton we discovered that it was busy (not surprising). There is enough of a shoulder where it's not a problem but summer weekend traffic must be a nightmare. Once we reached our turn (Stage St) we were quickly out of the traffic and quickly back into the quiet Pine Barrens (nice). The forest down there was a quite a bit thicker. We crossed over several bridges over the Mullica and picked up the Longest Day route below the Green Bank Mullica Bridge. Lots of folks out fishing! We 'ran into' a cyclist in full mating colors riding a carbon time trial bike riding on the wrong side of the road (???). That was weird! As we started heading up towards Chatsworth we picked up a tail wind. One that would last most of the way home. In the Chatsworth Barrens we saw (and heard) a convoy of Corvettes, a group of motorcyclists who didn't know where they were going (Mark pointed them in the right direction). We checked out Mick's Canoe Rental and they're ready for us (they stay open until 5 PM). We also checked out the Ranger's Station. It looks like it will remain open, this is good news. In the end we averaged 17.8 mph had no problems with the route and enjoyed the day. Overall the Tuckerton ride is a keeper so I'll post that with my routes soon.

Beautiful weather for riding

2010-03-21T18:41:00.002-04:00

What beautiful weather we had this weekend (Sat. 3/19 and Sun. 3/20). Saturday was the first day of spring and it reached a balmy 72F. Since early December we've had early snow storms, heavy accumulations, melt off, refreezing, flooding, and then heavy rains. It seems that every other week we had a change of weather to the opposite extreme. There are still many damaged and fallen trees in need of being cleaned up and many areas are still flooded or exhibit flood damage.

Despite all this we have been able to get out and do some riding. With all this on and off riding I've managed to pull a muscle in my quad. It seems to happen every year and I think I may have finally figured it out. It only happens when I push the pace up and it might be related to my habit of pedaling with my right foot toes down. I've found that this aggravates the tendons behind the knee and the muscle in the middle of the quad. So yesterday we go out for what was supposed to be a 50 mile ride. I really felt like doing a 72 mile ride to Pemberton. I did warn my riders that the speed would be less than the advertised mid 17's average. The ride turned into a 62 mile ride and the weather was most cooperative. Never did we hit a strong head wind. The sun shined the whole time, the birds sang, everything was ready to start budding. We kept a pretty good speed (mid 16's average) and I finished with no leg problems. I even went was far as riding today with the group out of Cranbury. We had another great day with the same wonderful weather. Still didn't have any leg problems. I am tired but I've put on over 110 miles in two days. Much more than the recommended 10%/week increase. :-)

I'm going to have to work out some additional exercises to help with the quad issue and take off some additional weight (yes, I'm also eating better). I've already started with the rest of my program. Still a few more days like this and I'll be in mileage heaven. I'm now looking forward to higher temperatures (I like it hot) and I hope to start commuting to work to build up mileage and improve my climbing. Turns out I more hills on my 40 mile commute than on the 210 mile Longest Day ride.

PS: Ah, I forgot this bit. I brought my new Tachyon Helmet Camera and put it on my handlebars. I had thought it was pointing upwards a bit but viewing the recordings showed it wasn't. I do have to devise a better mounting. It was allow to bounce around pretty good. As I've said before the camera works great. As I'm finding out the mount is a little tricky.

Grad student at NJIT

2010-03-14T15:28:00.001-04:00

Well it's official I'm now a grad student at NJIT. I'm in the Computer Science program and I'm looking forward to learning. I'll need to do some more work on my attention deficit problems. I think I'll talk to my doctor and see what we can do. I'd prefer not to go the medicine route unless it's absolutely necessary. In the meantime I have some calculus to refresh and a few bridge course to attend to.

I also decided to do my part for the economy and get a new TV. It was expensive but it has a nice picture. I got it home, unpacked it, drooled over the picture quality and suddenly came to the realization that there were no quality programs to view. That crushed my rather frugal nature pretty severely. The good news is that my wife likes the TV and she'll use it to watch baseball. So it's not a total waste of good money. The TV supports DLNA and I now need to compile a DLNA server on my Linux server. I'm currently running MediaTomb on the server but it's UPnP and the TV doesn't recognize it properly. I'm now in the process of getting the various HD cabled up properly. The way I had the previous things cabled hasn't made it easy to hook up the new TV.

Tachyon XC, Helmet Camera Pt. 2

2010-03-06T18:36:00.001-05:00

So I've had the Tachyon XC, Helmet Camera for a month and done some modest testing (the Northeastern US has been dealing with some snow). Two weeks ago I setup the camera for medium resolution and went out for a ride. I attached it atop my helmet and despite the make-shift helmet mount the camera worked great! It pretty much stayed put and followed wherever I looked. The medium res. wasn't too bad and the voice recording actually worked pretty well (big surprise). I've determined that I really don't like it on the helmet too much as I am rather twitchy and I'm looking all over the place. The next test will be to attach it to the handle bars and see how well that works. The final test will be attached to the frame. I'm now in the process of finding some open source video editing software that I can use to edit the half hour files (I recorded 2 hours worth of a 4 hour ride). I've had no trouble reading the files off the SD card and playing them on my Linux boxes. So far I am pleased with the camera. It's well worth the money and it works great!

Tachyon XC, Helmet Camera

2010-02-06T08:17:00.001-05:00

Recently, while hunting down further information for the CJBC's Longest Day event, I found a rather neat video someone took of the 2009 Longest Day. The video came out pretty good but I felt it didn't fully capture the feeling of the Longest Day ride. I'm not some great photographer but there are certain things that standout on do this ride, such as: starting the ride before dawn, the early morning fog, some of the views on the early climbs and descents. The tunnel in Andover (you also need sound to go with this part ;-) and the list goes on. So anyway, I set out to see what was available for filming. I started with helmet cams and I found the Tachyon XC after reading a few reviews. The Tachyon was a bit more expensive but the overall quality was much better and the reviews were very positive. The available videos showed pretty good video quality. I still have some questions and soon I'll have some answers as I purchased a unit. :-)

So the other day my Tachyon XC and my Class 6 - 4G SD cards (x2) arrived. The XC can be purchased with a 32G SD card which is good for 16 hours of 640x480 @ 26fps with compression (H setting) video (up to 64 hours at the lowest quality 320x240 @15fps) but that card costs as much as as the camera itself. The camera is a nice small camera about the size of one of the double-A battery 2-4 Watt head lamps that are shown in the magazines. It's light but solid and comes with 3 different mounts. I've been playing with the side mount and it fits on the right side. I've been able to attach it to a belt, it has a slot for that, which fits around my hips. I'll need to work out how to attach it to my helmet and then my bike. For my helmet I would prefer it on my left side. I'll have to try it out on the top of my helmet, on the side, on the handle bars and on the frame. I don't have the handle bar mount but I think I have something that will work as well.

So far I like what I've seen, basically I've simply attached the camera to me and walked around with it. I set it to the best quality (640x480 - 30 fps with best compression), I'll give medium (320x240) a try later and see how that looks. My first test was a simple test, in my well lit computer room I held it against my chest and slowly spin around. I then plugged the camera into my server (running Linux) and copied the avi file over to the machine. Once on the server the avi played fine. So I expect that it will work with just about any modern OS. In fact I was surprised at how smooth the avi displayed. This camera works better than some of the other small hand held digital cameras I have. I didn't test the sound because while riding I doubt the sound would be very good (expect a lot of wind). Oh, in case your wondering, my other cameras wouldn't attach to anything very nicely and they eat batteries in a few short minutes. The XC is rated for several hours with the appropriate batteries (2 AA batteries). Next I tried the XC outside, during the day. In sun it works well but when I went inside my house the lack of direct sun light (and any inside lighting) caused the picture to be too dark to really see (still not a problem but good to know). I later tried it at night but it doesn't pick up much (I expected that). Oddly enough some of the lights the camera did pick up at night had an odd blue tint to them. As soon as I get some clear roads I'll do a night time test run. I have some wonderful roads that appear pitch black. I'd like to see how well it picks up the road with my MiNewt X2 lights.

Longest Day update

2010-01-31T23:19:00.001-05:00

I've finally gotten my hands on the Longest Day information (the club has a small file box with the information. I now understand my role as chairperson a little better and what I need to get done soon. It also has information dating back to 1996 (Cool!) so further updates are in order to the web pages. As I'm busy with a bunch of things it may take me a couple of weeks to get that extra info on the pages.

The Longest Day meeting are set for the the East Brunswick Public Library on Tuesday April 13^th and Thursday May 18^th. I wasn't too happy with the dates but it was all that was open and Metuchen's library has broken links to their reservation pages (argh!).

As I've said before I'm ordering the Tachyon XC helmet camera. I figure if I start playing now I'll have it ready for the Longest Day. :-).

Longest Day 2010

2010-01-22T20:50:00.000-05:00

As I've said before, I am the CJBC's Longest Day Event chairperson. So far I've started pulling together my check list of things to do and the one concrete thing I've completed (other that the web page) is the event date. It is: Saturday, June 12^th, 2010. I have to make sure none of the costs have risen but I'm still expecting the cost of the event as it was last year $35. The cost of a 2010 CJBC membership is $13 for the electronic membership (email newsletter). I think $48 for a double century is not bad! :-) Finally I've added a twitter feed: LongestDayRide. Let's face it it's a great way to get quick updates and I'll have plenty of those to come.

Longest Day 2010

2010-01-17T22:21:00.001-05:00

Yes, I know it's still January. I only managed my first ride in a month last Saturday (Jan. 16^th). I will admit it felt great to be back on the bike and the 50F temperatures didn't hurt either. :-)

So starting in 2010, I am the newest Longest Day chairperson. Fran Sanchez, who did a wonderful job and set high standards (eep!) has turned it over to me. She has done me a great favor by sharing with me a lot of what needs to be done in preparation for the Longest Day (it's a lot of work). I hope I'm up for it. Anyway, starting some time in September 2009 I started working on the new format for my Longest Day page. I also kept a copy of the old page. That page won't be updated any longer. So far I've gone nuts. I've added a history section, an updates section, slide show, SAG Guidelines, Hand positions, Calendar, and a Poem by one of the original Longest Day riders. Today's Longest Day is a far cry from the first Longest Day back in 1980. We've certainly learned a lot since then. :-)

Asus EEE 1005HA review Pt 3

2009-12-11T14:25:00.001-05:00

So far I've had the 1005HA for about a month and I am pleased with it after the initial power supply problem. The replacement power supply is holding up very well though sometimes I find that it and the netbook get pretty warm. I've left XP on the system though I am being careful with what sites I visit. I've tossed a bunch of my tools such as Groovy, IntelliJ (I'm real happy with the 8.1 IntelliJ editor on Linux and Windows - woo-hoo, 9.0 was just announced). The primary use of the netbook has been browsing the internet, reading my books, a little multimedia and light application use. Video is choppy but that happens on all my machines so it's probably an access problem (too much latency?). Over all I am very pleased with the unit. The battery really does last a long time (6+ hours) when put into the correct mode. Hopefully I won't need to have any service done in it as that seems to be Asus's weak point.

And life goes on ...

2009-12-06T12:30:00.000-05:00

No, no one in my life has died but I've been very busy. In August I finished my BS degree and my employer has informed me that I need more which means a MS. Basically they want more of an engineering degree with 16 university level math credits, at least 8 science credits and a curriculum that has that as a pre-requisite. I'm looking at Pace University and NJIT. I like what I see with NJIT and I'll be attending a Graduate Open House there in a week. In addition to putting me in the whole for an addition $40K I need to get 8 additional math credits (Calc III and Statistics and 8 science credits to replace my college level course). I'll need to study for the Graduate Placement Exam which I should pass but I am nervous about. I may also need to review the GRE. Overall I am excited about learning.

I have been busy riding my bike. I've actually written several blog entries but I never posted them. The new Giant TCR Advanced frame is fantastic! I've slowed a bit because my ribs still hurt at various times. I think I cracked a few rib and maybe my shoulder. They really get sore with weather changes but are fine the rest of the time. I've been using my lighting system to get out and ride. It's fun riding at night but it's a bit hard to find low traffic areas to ride in.

Lastly, I've had my first experience with bad internet business service from Nostalgia Films (www.nostalgiafilms.com). I will never do any business with them ever again! Since October 31st I've attempted to contact them about an order I've placed. I have not received it and I have not received any reply to any of my emails (I've tried 3 different email addresses). They claimed to have filled the order pretty fast but that was the last I've heard from them. They use Yahoo Store to accept orders but I've been unable to issue a complaint to Yahoo Store also. So I won't be doing business with any more Yahoo Store businesses either (what good are they, they provide for reassurance). So if you are interested in doing business with Nostalgia Films I recommend you don't.

Crash! Owie!

2009-09-06T13:17:00.000-04:00

Well now I've gone and done it, I crashed Wednesday night. Yes it was my fault. Basically what happened was I accelerated hard, looked back at traffic when I looked up my friend in front of me went left, I went right and rode into the path of a large I beam. I was probably doing 20 mph and somehow I walked away with only minor damage. The bike, on the other hand, cracked. That night I didn't notice the damage as it was hard to see and rode home 10 - 15 miles. But in the bright of day it was found. So it's now in the shop getting an estimate for the repairs. Oddly enough the front wheel sustained no damage (no cracks in the rim, spokes or hub), stayed true and the tired didn't burst. As for me, well I flipped off the bike (I went completely over the handle bars and did a flip). My helmet cracked and I'm surprised it didn't shatter as I hit the ground hard. I skid on my helmet and Camelbak of a brief distance and landed on my ... butt. :-) I compressed my chest pretty hard and was in a lot of pain. When I finally stopped I was in a great deal of pain. I took inventory of the damage (start at the toes and work your way up), waited a while for the adrenaline to subside and determined that I actually survived relatively unscathed. I'm one lucky rider! My sternum still hurts (sore when I sneeze), a few neck and back muscles are slightly sore, my knuckles are scabbed now (dang I'm a knuckle dragger :-/ ) and I did not sustain a concussion (I've had plenty and know what they feel like). Oh, I also shattered the screen on my cell phone, which was in my Camelbak. The ride back home was interesting my friend and I laughed a lot (which hurt like hell when he made me laugh too hard) but I was grateful to be alive!

Finally some nice weather!

2009-07-05T12:15:00.001-04:00

It has been a rotten June and start to July! It's rain almost every day, many with thunderstorms. So finally this Saturday (July 4 20009) it was gorgeous (well it was windy but I'll take it anyway), sunny and mid-70's. We rode from Cranbury to Brielle. I was tired of visiting the Pine Barrens and we hadn't been down the shore this year. Technically we weren't down the shore yet as the shore traffic is dangerous once the summer season opens and we weren't going to play in that kind of traffic. Anyway, Mark and I decided to keep it short and not do a century as neither of us had been on the bike since the Longest Day ride (206.5 miles @ 17.5 mph avg). We also decided not to bust it like we usually try to do. When we hit the Manasquann rails-to-trails path it was full of tons of people (it's very popular). We had to be careful as there we lots of kids and dogs. There were several large groups of non-club cyclists who were all over the place. made the ride interesting but like I said we weren't busting it so no big deal. Our return ride was just as interesting the trail traffic was still busy as it was the first nice day in over a month and the 4th of July weekend. For Mark and myself we had to do battle with a head wind. Summer winds in NJ are generally out of the West when it's warm and this was no exception. The difference here was that it was quite strong. I probably should have gone to Ringo but I need to hit a bike shop and Brielle Cyclery is one of the best. Overall it was an excellent ride.

On the subject of Brielle Cyclery, I must say it's really is one of the best shops I've been to. I needed a new cluster as I had worn out the current one. I also thought I needed a new front ring as the chain was shot and I had ignored it since early June. I put the chain on two months earlier and I must have put on a lot more miles than I thought as I wore out a new chain and a rear tire (also put on with the chain). Anyway the gentleman from the shop took a look at my bike (outside) while the place was packed and busy. He told me just the chain and cluster would need replacing. He could have sold me the ring but told me I didn't need it. He said they probably last a lot longer than I thought. He was very polite and helpful. We spoke of the saddle as he's a Brooks user too. and the radical setup I have (nose down, handle bars lower than the nose). I told him it was very comfortable for me (yes it's weird). Brielle will be getting a lot more of my business in the future.

Leading up to the CJBC's Longest Day ride

2009-05-28T09:49:00.001-04:00

The last few weeks have been interesting. Last year, around this time I was dealing with leg problems that were scary. I was pushing a pace of around 18.3 mph over 120 miles (a flat route). By about mile 110 I could no longer push up an over pass (South Jersey mountains ;-). I had no strength at all. I'm not talking about the lack of snap you may have towards the end of a long ride, I mean had nothing! At the start of the month I had a little scare on a century training ride when I managed to keep pace until mile 90. I had been off the bike for two weeks and played catch up just days before. This year my scare turned out to be rather minor. It was my diet, I bonked. Since then I've been pushing the pace and chasing cyclists late in our long rides (phew!).

Last week my friends (Gina and Mark) and I rode from Cranbury to Batsto then Tabernacle and home again. It was a nasty ride. Gina's tires were low for the first 40 miles so she was beat up. It was warm and windy. So windy that we had yellow/green fog (pollen) in the Barrens (great for making it difficult to breath). I was hot but we couldn't tell because of the wind and as usual it was humid in the Barrens. The Chatsworth to Batsto section (20 miles) was into a decent head wind. Then the ride back up Rt 206 from Hammington to Taberbacle was just plain nasty (too much traffic and high speed). The only good thing to come out of the ride was that we checked a good portion of the Longest Day route route, we determined that Rt 206 is no longer an option for this ride and that it was a great training ride. It was great for training because it was a ride from hell, we survived and we we experienced everything one would expect on the Longest Day ride. Oh and most importantly, we survived.

I am an odd individual

2009-04-07T10:03:00.000-04:00

Today I came to an odd realization. I am an odd individual. I Work in a place with lots of brilliant people but few have an interest in the curriculum they took in school. Is this what lone inventors and mad scientist feel like? Yes I have a lab at home and yes I build experiments. I've asked my colleagues and none of them have any interest in conducting experiments. Maybe it's because my they have families or that they really weren't that interested in what they took in school, I don't know. I do know that it makes me somewhat lonely individual when it comes to having others to share my ideas with in a face to face manner. I have no one to bounce ideas off, argue with or share discussions with. I know I have the Internet and there are chat rooms, forums and newsgroup but sometimes you just need to have whiteboard discussion face to face.

Of course, this feeling sorry for myself maybe due to the fact that I'm stressed and exhausted from school, work and the economy. But they will each resolve themselves in time. :-) Now if I can just get the weather to cooperate I'll be able to get out and ride a few centuries (100 miles).

It's February and that's not a bad commute

2009-02-22T11:11:00.001-05:00

On Tuesday (Feb 17) I rode to work. Unfortunately it was on my older Trek 1100. My nice Giant TCR3 snapped a cable. Odd, I've put a lot of miles on my other bikes and not broken a cable this soon (2 years, about +10K miles). Right now the cable end is stuck in the STI but the STI is still working. I'll take the STI off the bike and put new cables on the bikes (brake and shifter). The Trek needs a bit of work too as it's not shifting as smoothly as it should but it worked well enough for a ride back and forth to work. I was going to leave before dawn (around 5 AM) that way I could use my new lights. But I ran into some problems and need to do a little work to the Trek before I could leave. So I postponed my ride until later and stay at work until 9PM. So I got to use my lights anyway. I was really surprised at the level of traffic at that time of night (it was lot). The good news was that I was well lit (two read blinking on my Camelbak and the Niterider MiNewt,X2 Dual on the front). Oddly enough it was easier to climb in the dark because I really couldn't see the top of the climbs. The ride in was sunny but it was a bit colder than I had dressed for so my chest was cold for the entire ride. On the way home I dressed more appropriately. I thought I might have been a bit too warm but as the temperatures continued to drop (22F when I arrived home) it wasn't a problem. I'll do it again next week but I'm hoping that I'll have the Giant this time. It looks like I'll only be able to squeeze in a single day of commuting as the weather doesn't look to cooperating.

I was going to go out and ride tonight but the wind is howling and I'll have more than the 10% increase for the week. So I'll just stay warm indoors tonight. ;-)

A few places to visit

2009-02-15T12:42:00.001-05:00

In a few weeks my bike rides will start to stretch out the mileage so I can start training for the Longest Day (and possibly a new Princeton Freewheeler Double Century ride). In the mean time I still need to lead winter rides, a time for building a base. My friend Mark suggested that I keep it to less than 50 miles as I hadn't been riding for the last three weeks, I just got over the flu and my chest is pretty much congested. So I came up with a Mid-Winter's Ride (54 miles). It includes sections I normally do when I do lunch time rides or late night rides. Seeing how I'm going to start commuting to work I won't get much time for those and still get what I need to do for the day. I chose the route just so I can visit some different places. Now I probably should have listened to Mark's advice on the ride length but I wanted to ride. I knew it would push me past my limits (0 miles for the past 3 weeks, a jump to 80+ miles this week, and not so good lungs). Every thing felt fine until the last few miles where my lungs were sore (that's not good). It didn't help that my cable snapped for my rear derailleur (early in the ride) and I was stuck with a two speed. Still it was a nice ride and my lungs feel much better today (as long as I don't laugh ;-).

The weather for the week looks like I'll be able to commute to work on Tuesday (20 miles each way) but I'll probably only be able to do a late night ride on Thursday night. Next Saturday looks to be more of the same , cold, possible snow. I may plan out a metric but I'm not sure. If I can't lead Saturday I'll do another group ride on Sunday. Possibly ride to and from the group ride to get my additional miles. So next week I hope to have more than 100 miles for the week. Not bad for February! :-)

It's February and it's 68F in NJ!

2009-02-11T16:06:00.001-05:00

I managed to get out and ride today at lunch time. The weather was beautiful! It's been 3 weeks since my last ride. Last week I was in Houston for training so no riding there. Here it was as low as 8F (at night). So I took this day as one of those little gifts you get from time to time. It was only slightly windy, but it was a warm wind. I rode in shorts and it felt great! The rest of the week looks to be less nice but much better than 8F. :-) I may sneak out for a few more ride before Saturday's club ride.

For those that are curious this was my router: Old Bridge - Jamesburg - State Home.

Some items of note. I'm seeing that some of the general public has forgotten how to share the road (pass and leave 3 ft between your vehicle and the cyclist, pass only when it's safe and you have a clear view of the road ahead). A number of folks in those large high end vehicles seem incapable of crossing the yellow line when passing a cyclist (hence leaving less than 3ft.) with no traffic approaching. The folks with smaller vehicles and 18 wheelers have no trouble (???). I want to thank the person in the black Corvette for the polite double honk before passing (no really) and the appropriate room as they passed (nice!). Technically nothing unusual other than the polite and correct motorist. Still it was a good day to ride.

Random babblings ...

2009-02-03T15:39:00.001-05:00

I'm currently in the middle of training to learn how to install AT&T's U-verse TV, Telephone and Internet service. There's a lot of hard work that goes into putting this service in and a lot to remember. Though I may never actually have to install anything (I'm training as U-verse Technician as part of a strike contingency plan) I have found a new respect for the amount of work these tech's have to do. I took an online test where I had to replace the existing cable providers equipment and I was terribly confused as my cable installation consists of nothing more than a drop wire, a splitter, the set top box and my cable modem. The installation lacked a proper ground wire (I hooked one up to my incoming water pipe). Having learned what it takes to install the service properly I'll be taking care cleaning up the DeMarc in my home. I also happen to need to clean the connectors because the transmit power my cable modem is using is 54db (3db too high). That can't be good.

So far I've learned a lot and I've enjoyed the class. I was also payed an indirect comment when the instructor commented that I'm 'an engineer, aren't you?'. Well four more training classes and I'll be back home. I'm looking forward to picking up some new tools (I'm buying them) that I've used while in training.

And, finally, I'm training in the Houston area and I've found the people to be friendly they tend to drive a bit less aggressive than they do in NJ (though I've seen a few nuts, fewer than in NJ). Also the traffic is a bit heavier than where I live with lot of new construction going on. The weather has been very nice, usually hitting the high 70's. The other night I saw a 'boomer' (thunderstorm clouds) that were bigger than anything I saw back in NJ. In NJ those would have sent me to hide in the basement. The light show (lightening) was impressive. My wife tells me that she just got 4 inches of slushy snow. The weather prediction for Saturday, in NJ, is a high in the low 50's. Anyway it will be nice to be back home. :-)

Whither the librarians ...

2009-01-30T20:41:00.000-05:00

This semester I have a course on 'Mass Media' and I'm learning a little about the Internet, social sites, blogs and other other topics related to Media and Mass Media. One of the things that the Internet has brought us is information. Huge amounts of it.Heck, we're drowning in it. It's a conspiracy junkies delight as now they have 'proof' that we never reached the moon, the earth is flat and many other topics that they (loosely) keep under their tin hats. Within a few minutes, using any search engine, I can probably get a dozen different pages that say a dozen different things about any particular topic. When all is said and done how do I know what is right and what is wrong? In the past you could generally trust books in the library because they were a bit expensive and difficult to produce (try writing a book some time and you'll know what I mean). Today anyone can, and will, write on any topic, without fact checking and declare themselves a fountain of useful information. It used to be that when we wanted to research material we went to the research librarian (not the lady behind the main desk sorting books) to get help doing research. Not today, we now have Google and a dozen different search engines but we basically can't trust the information that's presented to us. From my class I've learned that librarians want to come up with a new system. One that will again put the librarians' talent to use and hopefully bring some renewed level of trust back to the information we need. Hopefully my class will go into further detail. Maybe, when I have to write a term paper, that can be the topic of my paper. Outside this class I don't have time to look up such information as my interests lie with other topics that need as much of my attention as does this class. Someone has to help rebuild the level of trust in the information we use to make decisions on a daily basis. Lets face it information is the new currency.

Testing out my new MiNewt.X2 Dual lights

2009-01-25T19:03:00.002-05:00

Last night (Jan. 23, 2009) I finally got a chance to use my new lights. :-) It was warm (40F) and it was dark. I decided to ride over to a road that is hideously potholed, no street or house lights, and the forest on either side is far enough away that it can't be use as a reference. So I took off, rode this section road in both directions and found a reasonable smooth path to ride on (good to know for my commute home). The pair of lights, set as I have them, worked great! I'm very pleased with the lights.

For Christmas I received these new lights. I was looking for something that would last at least an hour (hi: 1:45, Lo: 3:30) and recharge in less than 8 hours (my work day). This would allow me to ride my bike to work before dawn and ride home after sunset. It will also allow me to take my older sets of lights and modify the setup to use newer halogen bulbs and an over voltage battery setup (more on that at a later date). I did a little searching on the 'net and found that the overall review of the Nite Rider MiNewt.X2 Dual setup was favorable. So that's what I got.

Back to last night, So I rush to get out, I got dressed, put water in the Camelbak and I'm outside with my bike and I put the lights on, I push and hold the button and the lights barely get any light. I turn them off and I push and hold the button longer, it now blinks but barely lights, I fidget with the lights for 15 - 20 minutes, Nada! So I take the lights in the house and fidget some more. What I've found since I first received these lights was that I had to push and hold the button for about 3 seconds, then the lights begin to flash brightly (I feel that I'm about to have a seizure when it first starts) once they start blinking I can release the button and push it a second time to get it stay on high and steady. Push it again and it drops to low and steady. Any more button pushing toggles between high and low. Today I tried simply hitting the button and releasing it quickly and it works. Tomorrow I'll try it out in the cold again to see if it was me or the lights (I suspect it was me).

Once I got over the initial problem I had to adjust the lights to put down a nice beam on the road. I chose to put the left beam center and closer to the tire (about 10 - 15 feet). The right beam was aimed a little further forward and slightly left. This worked out nicely. Some of the roads in my area suffer greatly from potholes, cracks and some would make the cobble stone roads of Belgium and France seem smooth. The lights did a real nice job of lighting these surfaces. I was available to avoid the potholes without slowing down.

Update: Jan 25, 2009 - Looks like the battery I have has some kind of problem. I have a second one (don't ask) and it works properly. I'll send the bad unit back to Performance and get it replaced.

Weather sucks ...

2008-12-22T12:40:00.001-05:00

Well I'm done with my classes for this semester and I did quite well even though things got a little topsy-turvy. My classes didn't leave me a lot of time to ride. Just before Thanksgiving I did manage to squeeze in what appears to be the last long ride this year. As usual we left from Cranbury, we rode out to Cedar Lakes in Browns Mills (my Bikely's route: Cranbury Cedar Lakes (Full) - 71 miles). It was a nice ride though I wouldn't recommend it on a windy day as it is open to the lake (very cold wind!). And in my never ending search for more roads to the NJ Pine Barrens I found some in Old Bridge (my Bikely's route: Old Bridge Pine Barrens - 46 miles)! Although most of the NJ Pine Barrens are in southern NJ, some can be found as far north as Freehold (around the Rt. 537/Turkey Swamp area I believe. The section I recently found was near the intersection of Rt 18 and Rt 9 on Robertsville Rd. It's not much but during the winter when riding a century to the Pine Barrens is prohibitive (and difficult) it is enough to satisfy my need to seek out the Barrens.

New routes!

2008-10-14T19:23:00.001-04:00

Well I got the sudden itch to add some new routes up on bikely.com. A friend of mine (Larry Goldsmith) had suggested riding south of Bordentown, NJ (thanks Larry :-). This was a little problematic as we run out of rural roads and are boxed in by Rt 130. But a little research and the memory of an August Habitat for Humanities Century (in 105+F direct sun) made it a little easier to come up with a route. I now have a route the goes through Bordentown, down to Medford Lakes and back via Tabernacle and Pemberton. I've added a few variations and various distances (though I may not have posted them yet as I want to check them first). I've also added a ride out to Cedar Lakes/Whiting (near Lakehurst) and through the back of Lebanon State Forest. Future plans are for a few rides into PA. This will be a little tougher as they have real hills and I'm not familiar with the area (but I'll work on that). So far I have 124 routes (posted), most are over 60 miles in length, not bad :-).

The ups and down of cycling

2008-09-14T21:25:00.001-04:00

The past few days have been mostly great and I've enjoyed most of the time on the bike. On Thursday (9/11) I commuted into work by bike and I enjoyed the ride in (and home). It was a little somber as I was aware that it was 9/11 and I reflected on my memories of the days before and days after that fateful day (I have a lot of memories though I wasn't affect directly). Today I noted that the cemetery, on Texas Rd., was mostly deserted. One lady stood over a grave. I was a little surprised that there weren't more people there (it was mid morning). After 9/11 there were quite a few burials at that cemetery (and others in the area). I doubt anyone directly affected has forgotten.

That day was a nice ride as I tested out a new rear wheel. My previous one only lasted around 5 - 8K miles. I guessing a bearing went but I haven't had it into the shop yet to find out what's wrong with it. The new wheel is ultra quiet. When I coast there is no noise, it's a little spooky. I also tested out my larger back pack. It worked well except that I packed my lunch in the top compartment and my helmet would hit it and that kept me from picking my head up. I quickly adjusted that and I didn't have the problem anymore. This larger pack allows me to bring my Camelbak bladder, clothes, laptop, towel, toiletries, tools, tubes, tires, and lights. It's heavier than anything I've ridden with on my back but I feel it's not too bad. It's kind of a toss up between this pack and the trailer. With the trailer I have to use the Trek as it's setup for the trailer. With the pack I can choose any of my bikes.

Saturday was a very nice ride. We rode out of GSP120 (behind the Pizza Hut). We rode down to Brielle Cyclery via Manasquan Reservoir (the most scenic route) and the rail-to-trail by Allaire in Manasquan, over to Brielle, then north along the shore, and finally back to Matawan/GSP120, 80 miles in total. It was hot and humid but since we where down the shore we were kept cool by the breeze off the ocean. At one point I pushed the pace as a second group decided to catch and draft but not pass. I stayed on the front for several miles (I don't know why). I ended up being a bit tired after that ride.

Today's ride started out well. I woke up, had a heart rate of only 54 bpm (excellent!). I left on time, arrived at the club ride in Cranbury early (11 miles). Everyone else showed up, we had a big group so we split in 2. I left with the smaller group because they were going south (towards farms). It was supposed to be about 40 miles and it was supposed to be warm again. I managed to get a few miles when my seat broke. The rails at the back of the clamp snapped off (argh!). So I had to ride home with my saddle taped to the remaining rails. It was 15 miles home and I stood a good portion of the way home (my legs are tired). Now I'll have to break out the older Brooks Pro and pop it on or I may try to break in the new B-17. Only problem is I have two centuries coming up in the next two weeks. Not a good time to be breaking in a saddle. Oh well.

This week looks good for at least two commutes. I'll take the Truk (Trek ;-) and trailer if I have to. Besides saving me $5+ a day in fuel I enjoy the rides into work. It'll be getting cooler so I'll have to adjust. I currently have the a 20W light but I may try to build something little better. I'm looking forward to riding in the dark. I rode with my friend last April/May on night time road rides and it was a blast.

Bicycle commute, pack review

2008-08-27T11:57:00.002-04:00

I've decided that I can get in more of my training miles if i commute to work by bicycle (40 miles round trip). Right now I've got two of my three bikes ready to roll. My current favorite, my Giant TCR3 and my Trek 1100 (with BOB trailer - see my stable). So far I've been able to squeeze in two commutes a week. Yesterday was my first try at one day after another (with a weekend century) and boy am I tired. I need to get my Ti bike setup and ready to roll. It will be my all weather bike. It's a great bike and seems a little faster than the Giant (???). Over the next few weeks I'll working on lighting and wardrobe. So far the commutes have been really nice despite being tired. I've scheduled them for the off hours so I'm not fighting the rest of the auto commuters. This may change next week as it's the first week of school and then things will get nuts. I intend to keep this up until we start to get black ice. We have a lot of natural streams here and they cause lots of problems with various roads. I had one bad meeting with black ice and I'd like to avoid any more.

So for commuting to work I decided that the Camelbak Ventoux (1300+ cu in) wasn't large enough. It can hold my clothes, towel bladder, tools and toiletries but not my laptop. So I went looking for another back pack. I searched the Internet and I asked around at work. Elke (Hi Elke!) suggested I check out Ebags.com. I came, I saw and I purchased OGIO Metro (2200 cu in). This is a good pack and I like it very much. It sits still and comfortably on my back even on fast downhills and on sprints (with traffic). It's a good pack when I'm off the bike as well as on the bike. I now use it daily for work. It's not perfect and that's more because of my special commuting requirements. First what I like, it's waterproof, the laptop section is great as are the pockets. Strangely enough I didn't think I'd be able to get my note book (i.e. bound paper), my clothes, some tools, tire and lunch in the main compartment. Well it fit. I put the towel in the laptop compartment with the laptop (more on that in a moment). I put my light kit in the water bottle compartment and the rest of the odds and ends in the other three compartments. The main organizer compartment has my calculator, pens, screw drivers and other work related odds-n-ends. When done the pack is a bit heavy but it rides pretty well anyway. I have no trouble with sway and looking back while riding is no problem as the pack doesn't block my view (as does a framed pack). The front chest strap holds the shoulder straps in place, even with the heavy loads I carry.

The problems are few and that's good. The first one was that the laptop causes the pack to sit flat on my back. I ride a road bike with a very aggressive setup (I lean forward, a lot). That leaves my back arched and the flat pack sat funny until I made adjustments. That adjustment was the towel in with the laptop. The laptop compartment has room for both the laptop and the towel. So far the laptop has stayed dry but I need to do a few more tests and I'm keeping the laptop in a plastic bag anyway (better safe than sorry). The towel allowed me to soften the pack on my back and to cause the pack to be a bit more curved. The next problem is that the pack doesn't have a waist strap. For bike commuting with a large load a waist strap is probably a good idea. Because it doesn't have a strap sometimes the pack sits a little off center which is an odd feeling but not really uncomfortable. It would be nice if the pack sat a little further down my back but with the stiff laptop I'm glad it's not. The last thing is that I can't ride with my Camelbak. I've gotten spoiled by having that tube over my right shoulder. I've switched back to water bottles but I miss the Camelbak. I may attempt to use the older simple bladder sleeve somehow strapped to the Metro. Well see. Overall I give the Metro a 4 out of 5.

Oh the music player pockets, I haven't tested them yet. I normally don't ride with a music player as I don't want anything blocking my hearing. For an hour commute I can live without music.

Bicycle pumps

2008-08-22T13:09:00.002-04:00

Over the years I've had several bicycle air pumps. I started out with a really nice Silca pump but wore that out after about 10+ years of use. I've had several Zefal frame pumps which were okay. They were a pain in that to get to 120+ psi you had to pump 120+ times and once you reached 90 psi you really had to work hard. Also to properly pump the tire you had to play games so you didn't break the tube valve stem (which was all too easy). Then my friend introduced me to the Topeak Mighty Morph G Master Blaster (hate the name, love the pump). I've only needed it a few times but it's much easier than using the Zefal 3x frame pump. The other day I flatted, changed out the tube and was busy pumping up the tire. I had been talking to my riding partners when I looked down to see 120 psi on the gauge. I had put a little effort into pumping but I must have only pumped 35 - 40 strokes before I reached that amount. Wow, nice pump! The nice little foot step that folds out worked well in holding the pump steady and the small size fits nicely in my Camelbak (nicknamed the Tardis because I've lost a bunch of stuff in there and it's kind of unbelievable what I've tossed that much in there).

While I'm at it I'd like to tell the story of the good customer support from Topeak on one of my Joe Blow pumps (can't remember the exact name). This is my floor pump and it gets a lot of use. Well the screw in the head came loose (it's about 3 years old) and the head would no longer hold air when the pump valve was closed. Even after I tightened it it would work. I contacted Topeak asking for a rebuild kit, they're sending me a new head. In the mean time I disassembled the head (easy to do), I cleaned it up, and it's now working again pumping my tires to 140 psi. I'll be getting some silicon grease and that should do the trick to keep the seals properly working, I hope. I must say that I really like the Topeak products (I also have another Joe Blow pump that I destroyed through abuse, my fault, oops) and one of their multi-tools. I think I'll be purchasing more Topeak products and recommending them to friends and acquaintances in the future. Good products and good service.

Wild Turkey!

2008-08-19T21:54:00.002-04:00

No not the Bourbon, the bird. Today I came across a group of seven wild turkeys! My wife thinks that they are a young brood and that makes sense as they are about two feet tall, thin and they didn't scatter when they finally saw me. It's pretty easy to sneak up on wild animals when riding a bike. I remember riding past a Red Hawk eating a snake (way cool) and about 50 Turkey Vultures feasting on a deer carcase (Ooh, ooh that smell. The smell of death surrounds you.). That was a little spooky.

Two in a row!

2008-08-19T09:12:00.001-04:00

Sorry this is a little late ...

For the past few weeks I've been busy with school, work, and home (oh a little bit of weather problems too). So for two weeks no cycling (mind numbing!). Well I finally got back on the bike, first a Wednesday ride (usually about 35 miles). Then a Saturday ride (an easy 79 mile ride :-), then a commute to work. It started out cold (in the 50's) but it was in the warm in the sun, which felt good. The next day another Wednesday night ride. So now I'm getting back into a normal flow. Yesterday, Saturday (8/16), I had to be home by noon for a block party. Otherwise I would have done a century. So we left out of Matawan at 8 am. We were going to go to Sandy Hook (Jersey Shore) but because it was a bit cool we decided to stay inland and went to Manasquann Reservoir. Initially it was supposed to be 50 miles but I was feeling good so I added more (yes, I know, I'd be late to the party, but the ride felt so good!). I ended up with another 70 mile ride. Sunday I decided to a club ride out of Cranbury but I wanted mileage (I was still feeling good). So I commuted by bike to the ride (11 miles), did the club ride (55) and rode home again (11 miles). :-) Another good day.

On Saturday's ride I ran over a tack (that's what the imprint on the tire looked like) and I flatted. I've been running higher pressure tires (140 psi) and wasn't looking forward to pumping them up by hand. I have a Topeak Morph Mountain G mini-pump and before I knew it the tire had reached 130 psi. On on of my other bikes I have a Zefal 3x frame pump and once you reach 90 psi (about 50 pumps) it starts getting really tough to pump. I must have only done about 35 pumps and I was at 130 psi! Wow nice pump. It still wasn't a breeze as there was some effort but no where near the effort of the Zefal pump. Now only if the gauge was a little easier to read. Anyway I'm now off to commute to work. There is a threat of a thunderstorm but I'm still going. With tropical storm Fay just hitting Florida the rest of my week is looking like it may be wet so I'll get my miles when I can. Sort of "smoke 'em if ya got'em" if you will. I'm hoping that I'll still be able to get my century in this Saturday, I've got a few new routes to try and I'm looking forward to getting down to the Pine Barrens again.

Back on the bike!

2008-08-11T10:00:00.002-04:00

This weekend (2008/08/09) was a great weekend to be out on the bike! It was a little chilly (for summer and me) at around 65 - 78F but tolerable for me (I like it hot). We rode out of Cranbury to Pemberton. We did a 70 mile ride as I've been off the bike for two weeks with school work and wasn't about to attempt a century. I was listed for 70 - 110 miles (normal for summer) so I was good. I know it's a large range but it gives me the freedom to venture all around the state. We did a new derivation of my Pemberton route called Pemberton - via Mangolia Rd. (69 miles). It was slightly breezy but not nasty. Seems this summer has been pretty breezy, odd. Anyway, I've also created a few new routes, a Cranbury - Batso (125 miles) route and a Cranbury - May's Landing (147 miles) route. The Cranbury to May's Landing will have to wait until next year as I don't think I have enough daylight to complete it right now. The Batso ride I may attempt in September. I also have a Cranbury - Tuckerton (130 miles) route that I haven't been able to try. I had it scheduled for May but we had strong winds (18 mph + gusts) out of the West both times so I rode something with less than 30 miles of head winds. I've also noted that I'm missing a few routes (Mt. Misery), so I'll add those soon. Anyway it feels good to be back on the bike.

Ow, what a ride!

2008-06-15T20:37:00.000-04:00

Well, I'll post a short summary of our ride yesterday (2008/6/15 - the Longest Day - 208 miles). A longer version should be posted on my page within the week. We left at 4:48 AM (according to my watch) and arrived at 8:28 PM (again according to my watch). I don't have an average speed as my computer was messed up (I forgot to turn it on) but we're certain it was close to 17 mph as the other teams were reporting this and we left close to when they did and arrive before most of them. There were two reasons for the long length of time. The first was we lost our SAG, the second was the heat and humidity in the Pine Barrens. At our lunch stop the SAG was supposed to meet us in Allentown. He stopped in Kingston at a local deli to get lunch and he didn't see us pass him (we where doing pace lines and flying onto Allentown another 20+ miles ahead). So we ended up waiting in Allentown for 45 minutes for him to arrive. I made the mistake of not giving him my cell phone number and he didn't have mine (oops). So our lunch stop took around an hour instead of 30 minutes. Next we really suffered in the Pine Barrens, actually we began to suffer on Four Mile Rd (just below Browns Mills) and knew we needed more stops. So I modified the route to include another stop in the Pine Barrens. Earlier we added a stop early in the ride so we now had at least 20 extra minutes there. In the Pine Barrens we also hit heat, humidity and wind. It was reported that Woodbine, NJ (southern end of the Pine Barrens) had a high of 89F. I'd guess the middle of the Pine Barrens were higher yet. Add the humidity and the direct sun and we were riding in 100+F adjust heat index. The wind did us no favors as it was quite strong. We all suffered (every team, not just mine). I can honestly say that I think our team could have gone much faster as the last 23 miles were our fastest. We managed to up the pace to 18.4 for the last 23 miles.! I'd hav e to say this ride has caused me to doubt my leadership abilities. I'll have to work on that. More about that later (on my web pages).

On the road again ...

2008-06-13T08:48:00.001-04:00

Well it's the day before the Longest Day and the training is done. If we're not ready now we won't be ready tomorrow. ;-) The weather looks good for tomorrow. We'll start out at 4:30 AM and it looks like it will be in the low 60's. When we get to the Pine Barrens we'll be looking at the low 90's. When we get to Cape May it should be in the low 70's with a head wind of 12 mph out of the south. This is to be expected and I don't think I've seen one of these rides where we haven't had a head wind on the lower half.

I've tried to figure out how to access the blog and Facebook via my cell phone but I haven't quite figured that out yet so I'll not worry about it. The cell phone has a camera and I'd like to remember to take pictures but I'm not that good at it (shaky pictures usually). I'll see what I can do. Anyway I'm off for my big ride and I am excited.

Back to back rides, final training for the Longest Day.

2008-06-02T08:51:00.001-04:00

This weekend (5/31) my friend Mark and I did back to back rides (one on Saturday (5/31), one on Sunday(6/1)). This was the final preparation for the Longest Day (6/14). The idea is to do a Century followed by a Metric on back to back days, at the pace you wish to keep on the Longest Day. If you can do this then you're ready. Well we're ready! :-)

Because of weather we needed to reverse the two days. Tornadoes were predicted for Saturday so we rode the Metric using this route: Cranbury Griggstown Allentown II and Sunday we did this: BBC Manasquan Reservoir. We rode at 18+ mph avg on Saturday and 17+ on Sunday. Though we did take it a bit easy on Sunday as we knew there was going to be a lot of head winds (typical 16 mph and out of the West).

While I am tired from both rides I have recovered nicely. Oddly enough my naps after the rides was very short and I wasn't as tired as I have been. The single change was that after the rides I continued to drink as if I were still riding. I'm guessing that I was getting dehydrated after the rides and didn't realize it until now (some 10+ years after doing my first long distance ride). My legs held up real well! I still have the strength to ride further and I didn't have any problems with loss of strength as I have on the past 4 rides. This was my primary concern and it seems my last minute changes where exactly what was need to remedy the problems. I'm now confident of at least holding a 17.0 mph avg speed for the 208 miles of the Longest Day.

... and your little doggy too!

2008-05-31T15:16:00.001-04:00

Weather-wise we had an interesting Saturday (5/31). The predictions were for sever thunderstorms, strong winds and heavy rain around noon. While watching the news the night before they showed the radar models for the tri-state (NY-NJ-PA) area and the area I was riding in was going to have the most severe weather. The kind that could spawn tornadoes. So I decided to err on the side of safety and cut the ride back to a Metric (Cranbury - Griggstown - Allentown). This was actually Sandy's and Mark's idea and this turn out to be a good idea. We managed to get back just before noon and while Mark and I did our cool down ride we got rained on. While driving home it came down heavy. When I finally got home I took at look at the weather service and found this:

 Forecast for Trenton, NJ 1114 am EDT Sat may 31 2008 ...Tornado Watch 402 in effect until 5 PM EDT this afternoon... .This afternoon...Mostly cloudy with showers and thunderstorms. Some thunderstorms may produce heavy rainfall...large hail...frequent lightning and damaging winds this afternoon. Highs in the lower 80s. Southwest winds 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80 percent.

I'd say that pretty much sums up the day. While the winds were strong they really didn't give us too much trouble.

Now onto our training. Today was a good day. I've lowered my seat about a millimeter or two and my left leg feels okay. I did push the pace today which Sandy wasn't too happy with. Sorry Sandy, I promise that on the Longest Day we won't keep that pace all day long. We ended up with a low 18.2 mph avg. pace. That's pretty good but not a pace we can keep for the entire Longest Day (we're expecting 17 - 17.5 mph avg). Over all I'm pleased with my progress and tomorrow will give me a clear indication about the condition of my legs. Tomorrow Mark and I will be doing a Century out of the Manasquan reservoir. It's a derivative of my BBC ride (which I'll layout later). Starting that ride out of Cranbury would mean we finish with a 35 mile head wind (we return West and the wind is out of the West). I'll check that so that we don't have to do that but instead end up with a 25 mile tail wind to finish. Hopefully I'll feel just as good tomorrow. If I feel good then I know I'm ready for the Longest Day. At the moment I'm very confident that I won't have any problems on the Longest Day (6/14 - 208 miles, Port Jervis, NY to Cape May Lighthouse, NJ).

That didn't go well!

2008-05-26T15:24:00.001-04:00

I decide that Saturday's (5/24) ride would be this:

Cranbury - Mt. Misery figure 8 (106 miles) Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

We had Ed (a fast Tri, training for the Longest Day- LD), Sandy, Mark, Gina and myself. Sandy, Mark and I are on the same LD team so we needed to do some pace line drills. Thos, another member of our team, is up in Massachusetts doing solo training. Gina, well I'll comment on her later (she kicked butt and then some). Well this ride didn't go as well as I'd like. The wind was 16 mph and out of the NNW. This meant that any ride south was guaranteed about 40 miles of head wind on the way home (hmm and I knew this before hand). I didn't want to do a ride out to the shore (on Memorial Day Weekend, dangerously bad idea!) and I needed to practice pace lines so riding out to the hills was not an option.

I decided to attempt to redo the ride through Lebanon State Forest (Mt. Misery) where I managed to get lost the previous time (last month). This time we made out much better, we found the correct unmarked road. The roads through the Forest are not maintained and there were quite a few huge potholes (lack of road) but over all the scenery was spectacular. Ed noted that this was much like a ride he did through Spain. That sounds like a ride I'd like ! to do.

For the first 60 or so miles I let Ed dictate the pace (18.5+ mph) as he is much faster (more than a full mph) than the rest. That was my first big mistake. My second was pushing the big ring and sprinting early in the ride. I just wanted to see if I could do it. Well after we stopped at Nixon's, in Tabernacle (mile 67), I paid for it dearly. My legs stiffened up pretty good after the lunch stop, the head wind made every climb (even small ones) very painful and I lost any strength in my left leg while climbing the NJ TP (Rt I95) over pass outside Hightstown. In short I did a very bad thing! The last 40 miles I was dragged home by my friend Mark who was tired from playing catchup to the pace I let Ed keep (bad ride leader!). Somehow Mark finished with 17.4 mph and I managed 18.0 (there is some doubt about my computer at this moment but the distance was correct within .5% of the mileage, hmm).

But all was lost on this ride. We did a wonderful pace line from Chatsworth to Nixon's Deli in Tabernacle. I wouldn't recommend it for your local club fast pace line but it is enough to make the ride easier. Ed has caught on to doing the pace line though we did have to reel him in a few times as he tends to rocket off the front. The pace line enabled us to breeze through the 10 mile stretch and didn't drain us mentally. Too bad Dave (another Tri in training for the Longest Day) was ill that very day. That was something he needed to learn. Well he has one more weekend of training to get in. As the last ride is going to be Sandy Hook and the pace will be dropped. It's more of an active rest ride.

Now on to Gina! Mark and I call her the queen of our ride and she kept here crown with dignity on this ride. Gina goes to the gym, works with weights, does spin classes, takes care of her two year old son Luke, works full time and gets in a little riding from time to time. She also said that she did a Metric in the area where she lives (the hills of Morris County) and that she maintained 16.6 mph. She to! ld us la st week that she'd be able to join us on this weekend's ride and I told her that if she needed to she could hang off the back drafting. I figured that she hadn't done a century in a while and that various aches, pains and sores would slow her down a bit but I had no doubt she'd be able to keep up. Oh boy was I ever wrong! She stayed up with Ed for most of the ride and finished with Ed's faster group (Mark and I were the slower). Now I think that Sandy has talked Gina into doing, at least, the Century. Gina wants to do the full Double Century. After what I saw on Saturday's ride and knowing Gina I have no doubt that she can do it!

And as for me, well I know have doubts. This is the third week in a row where I had leg trouble. It seems to pick up around mile 80. Mile 80 is not good enough to finish the Longest Day. I know it's not a problem with diet or cramping. What I am going to do is to lower my seat as I raised it up a bit at the beginning of the month. I'm also going to drop the pace on next weeks double century and I'm going to take it easy over the next three weeks (active rest, no really I'll take it easy). Ed and Dave will not be kicking the pace up this time as I've got to figure out how to at least survive the Longest Day ride. The thought of DNF is extremely offensive to me! I'm also going to check my cleats. They're Look Red cleats with float but I think I may need to position them so that my foot doesn't float into the rear stays so much. Right not they have a lot of float but I do find that they work very well. So that's my plan.

Wow, what a ride!

2008-05-20T12:03:00.002-04:00

Yesterday (Sat., May 17th 2008) I had planned for a ride down to Tuckerton, NJ from Cranbury, NJ (129 - 131 miles). But the weather service was predicting strong (18 mph) head winds from the west. This was problematic for us as that ride has a 30 mile section was east to west. That ruled that route out. So instead I decided to do the Griggstown/Tabernacle ride (121 miles). This only had a ten mile section between Chatsworth and Tabernacle that is east to west. This was a much better choice.

The ride started out cool at 51F and the roads were wet from rain the night before. After about 40 miles into the ride my legs were feeling comfortable and I was now able to keep up with Ed better (Ed's much faster than I am). As we rode it warmed up nicely and by the time we reached Allentown, NJ I had to get rid of the wind vest and wool sweater. I was down to a long sleeve jersey and shorts. It turned out to be a good choice as I was comfortable for the rest of the ride. After Allentown we road to Browns Mills and we did a good job of riding through Ft Dix. At Browns Mill we stopped so I could fill up my Camelbak. After Browns Mills it was Four Mile Road. On Four Mile Rd. things got a little weird. The wind is supposed to be out of the west but it felt like a headwind. It was actually a cross wind as we could see dust clouds being blown across the road. It turns out that this dust was pollen and not fine sand as I thought it was. We found out when we got to the Ranger's station and found that we were covered in yellow/green pollen. At this point I felt is would be a good idea to wash up a bit. This made me feel better. So we're back on the road and riding towards Chatsworth. Once at Chatsworth we made the right towards Tabernacle. We get exactly what we expected, a nasty 18 mph head wind. Ed and I took turns at the front. When we finished that 10 mile section we were extremely tired. Ed noted that if it had been a a mile or two longer his spirit would have been broken (I agree, that wind was nasty). We really looked forward to Lunch at Nixon's Deli (mile 80). When we arrived we met two young ladies who are also doing the Longest Day. They were out of Forked River and doing 100. They also had just finished the same section as we did. So we sat and talked for a while and eventually Ed and I decided it was time to get lunch. The ladies eventually left, we wished them well, and we ate our sandwiches. Ed noted that we managed to complete this much of the ride at 18.3 mph even with that nasty section, I'm impressed. Ed and I agree to push our luck and keep the pace. So we rode the last 40 miles at that pace. When we finish we were dead tired but thrilled with a completed 121 mile ride at 18.3 mph.

Eating tips for Long rides

2008-05-15T15:47:00.001-04:00

First I hope that the folks training for the CJBC's Longest Day have some mileage under there legs. There are only 30 days until the big ride (June 14th). A number of folks are report getting in about 200 mile weeks. That seems to be right on target for the big ride. I'm currently up to 230 miles/week but I'm a little ahead of schedule. I'm pretty sure that I have more than 1500 miles on my legs for the year so far (I haven't really kept a running total). I've already done a back to back 100/50 mile weekend and my legs seem to be fine so far.

A few folks at the last Longest Day meeting were asking about what to eat on the Longest Day. The first thing you need to know (my opinion and I'm not a doctor) is that on a 208 mile ride you will not be able to eat enough food. If you estimate that a near 200 lb rider, riding at around 15.5 mph will burn something like 700+ calories an hour (these are very 'loosey-goosey' numbers). That same rider will be riding for around 13.5 hours and end up burning around 10,000 calories for the day. That's like burning around 2+lbs of fat off your body in one day which would not be a good thing. This is not a day to worry about staying on your weight loss diet, so eat! I'd venture a guess that most cyclists would normally eat around 2500 calories in a single day. So to keep up you'll need to eat about 4 times as much food for the day. I doubt your body will have an easy time keeping up with the digestion needs. This is why it's important to experiment with food on your training rides. To stay even close you need to eat while you ride. So find out what you can tolerate and what you can't tolerate while doing your training rides.

I've discovered that on normal Centuries and Double Metrics (I do these all the time) I can drink my Lemon-Lime Gatorade mixed to about 50% powder/water (I prefer the mix). I can eat pretty much anything but no large quanti! ties. If too much food sits in my stomach for long periods of hard effort I tend to get an upset stomach which will ruin the entire ride. On a Double Century I've found that I can't drink the same drink all day long. I need different flavors and I like to have small amounts of soda at the rest stops (gives a different texture also). And don't forget that sometimes regular water is exactly what you need but don't drink it exclusively as it doesn't replace the lost electrolytes. Oh one last thing, a cyclist (thanks Ed) told me that he find bibs to cause less stomach problems than short because the elastic waist band on shorts restricts your stomach. I haven't tried a bib but this sounds like a good idea.

As for food, I've found that normal mix of gorp (mixed nuts, chocolate candy and dried fruits), bananas, PBnJ, gels and various cycling bars also work well. Again, I want real food during the ride so at lunch I'll order a mustard sub (I have some other things like Turkey, Swiss, Lettuce and Tomatoes with my Mustard) and eat part of it at one stop and finish it off over several stops. Various candy, pastries and cakes may work well for you as well. I enjoy rice/marshmallow bars as it's solid food, plenty of sugar and it tastes good. One thing I really recommend you avoid is heavy foods that may contain heavy creams or grease. Your digestive system may not handle these well on such long rides.

Now here's one thing I haven't heard asked about: Caffeine and these new 'energy' products. If you plan to use caffeinated gels I'd recommend you save them for the lower half of the ride. If you normally have a coffee or tea in the morning continue to do so but during the ride don't go nuts with caffeinated products. I've found that by saving them for the lower half (after Chatsworth or May's Landing) that I get a pick-me-up during the mental doldrums of the Pine Barrens. Use caffeine too much during the day and your body will just get used to it. As for these! new 'wo nder' drinks that only have 4 calories but work for '5 hours', I am more than sceptically about them. Where are they pulling this energy from? I've tried Red Bull but it has little boosting affect on me.

Oh one last thing, Ice Cream and Dairy products. Some cyclists can not handle dairy on long rides (I can). It gives them flatulence (gas, the winds, etc). My friend Mark and myself have found that Ice Cream works well for us on long rides so we'll be using it.

Longest Day Training

2008-05-15T13:42:00.001-04:00

This past weekend was cloudy and a bit chilly but better than the previous weekend. The previous weekend was the CJBC's Farmlands ride. I did the Century (103 miles). I just couldn't seem to get my legs to spin. I just wasn't comfortable. So I rode to a 16.5 mph avg. Three weeks previous it was in the low 80's, I did a century and road the a 17+ mph avg. This last weekend was much better, my avg 17.3 mph for 105 miles. I did manage to strain a muscle and I had spin with my right leg to get up over a small steep hill in the back of Monroe. I then rode Sunday, the leg was still mildly sore but working quite well. So it looks like it's not serious damage.

This weekend is going to be an interesting ride. It's my ride down to Tuckerton (down the shore :-). It's a 129 - 131 mile ride. I thought the mileage would have scared off most riders because I listed it as 120 - 140 miles. I had two riders two weeks before the ride. I usually have to wait until the night before to find out how many riders I'll have on my Saturday ride. My usual riders will be riding the Montauk Century on Sunday so they won't be riding with me. The two gentlemen I'll have are tri-athletes. This will interesting as I try to teach them to work together (minor pace lines). They're used to riding alone and no pace lines. I think this will be difficult in the Pine Barrens. One of the two had suggested that they'd just put on their IPOD ear buds but I warned them that this is dangerous. At least I don't have to worry about dragging them around as they are at least a full mph faster than me. The next week will be another 120 or so.

Oh my god, I'm bald!

2008-04-13T15:03:00.001-04:00

It was a wonderful weekend for riding in NJ. Saturday's ride (2008/4/12) was a 76 mile flat ride down to Pemberton. The weather was predicted to be rain with thunder storms and low 50's F for a high. Instead we started out with fog and 58F. Within 15 minutes the sun came out. Another 30 minutes and it felt like low 70's. After a short climb in Assunpink Park we removed the excess clothing. Shortly we were on our way enjoying one of the first nice weekend days this year (there have been several really nice weekdays). We diverted from my original route a little bit when one of the riders forgot his Camelbak but had water bottles. That ended up shorting the ride a bit but I didn't realize that until after the ride. Anyway, this meant we had to fill up more often. We soon got into a comfortable pace and were riding and joking like we always do. The miles tend to tick off fast and I was enjoying the sites (wild life and the Pine Barrens in Ft. Dix). We stopped in New Egypt, a busy town, popular with Cyclist. The WaWa is very friendly towards cyclist and they have plenty of goodies (good and bad ;-)). We then stopped in Allentown, I was a little disappointed when they didn't have gallon size water for sale (don't use the tap water). I know of a store that has water just outside Allentown so I'll stop there next time. I instead picked up two small Gatorade, Berry flavored drinks. That lasted the final 11 miles until the end. During the ride there were four of us riding, JD, Sandy, Mark and myself. We each took a turn at the front of the pace line and we were doing quite well. Also the last half had a nice tail wind (I rarely see those). Mark surprised Sandy and myself when 'Sir Issac Newton' (as I like to call him) rocketed over the Rt. 195 over pass on Old York Rd. Sandy and I had trouble catching him and JD. Once we caught on Mark pulled for about four miles (it's how we train for longer rides like the Longest Day). Anyway at this point the corner of one of the thunder storms began to catch us and ! we got a little rain. Apparently we just missed a heavy down pour as the roads were soaked. So only a few rain droplets, very wet road, sun, warmth, sun burn (we didn't apply sun block) and an 18 mph avg for 69 miles. That was a great day. Here's Saturday's route.

Sunday's ride turned out to be almost as nice. It started out sunny in low 50's and windy (from the West). I wasn't leading this ride, Ken Leon was. He had 22 riders for the 16 - 17 mph avg ride. We started out by leaving Cranbury and heading West into the wind. That split the group in two but we soon pulled ourselves back into one group. After a while we started to pull ourselves together but the 'pace line' had a huge problem with yo-yo-ing. I decided I'd spend a bit more time towards the front (although I wasn't on the front too often). There were a few sections where I got on the front but I kept pulling he group apart so I kept it to a minimum. Most of the ride I kept hearing this weird clicking noise. When we reached Clarksburg Deli (Le Chateau to the locals) it became a little more obvious that my tire was bald, the threads were showing through and the tire began to bulge (in several places). I only have around 5K miles on the tire (I got the bike last May). I've never worn out a tire before I tend to buy cheaper heavy tires and replace then when they begin to crack. Well it seemed obvious that the tire had to be replaced right away (I have two spare tires, three spare tubes in my Camelbak). The rest of the ride we a lot more quite. We averaged 16.7 mph for the day. Not a bad two day total. Here's Sunday's route.

Next week, I'll be doing a century on Saturday. I hope we can get to 18 mph but more likely it will be in the 17's. The tail wind on the last 28.9 miles on Saturday's ride really helped with the 18 mph pace. I think I'll be doing the Cranbury - Sooey Rd.

Nice weekend for a ride

2008-03-24T10:01:00.001-04:00

Thos (a visiting rider) had a bit of a bad day as he broke his handle bar early on my weekend club ride. Luckily he wasn't leaning on it when he discovered it was 'loose' (broke). He refused to turn around and continued the ride. He still had the left (front) brake but he couldn't shift or use the rear brake. He still managed to keep up (good work Thos) and we averaged a nice 16.8 mph pace over 65 miles. Early on Mark had suggested that we cut the ride back to the 50's because a few of us couldn't ride this last week (it was very windy) but I was determined to hit a metric (hence the extra meandering above). Next week it's going to be about 75 miles so I have several choices:

East to Allenwood via Farmingdale(74)
West to Sergentsville(70)
South to Pemberton (75)

It will depend on which way the wind blows (literally) but I'm thinking Allenwood. I wanted to do that this weekend but with Easter the local roads would have been too crowded. So I opted for the lesser traveled roads South. I'll probably do Sergentsville in two weeks and only add a little more mileage since it's so much more hilly. Pemberton the week after with more mileage to put it in the mid 80's (I'll post a new route). The reason for the early long mileage is that I'm training for the Longest Day (register here). That and I like long miles. ;-) This year I have a nice 130 - 140 mile ride but I'm not sure how well that will go over. I'll need to discuss that with my riders.

This year's first commute!

2008-03-11T14:53:00.001-04:00

Yesterday was a good day to commute (19 miles one way). It started out at 30F and quickly rose into the low 40's. I think I was slightly over dressed as I would get hot from time to time. The wind would make me a bit cold but the hills would block the wind and I'd heat up nicely. I had forgotten how difficult it was to ride my Truk (Trek) 1100.

The reason for the name Truk is that have a BOB trailer that I tow behind the Trek and the thing handles like a truck. My Trek 1100 hails from 1995. It was my first 'expensive bike' that I picked up at a year end sale. It was the bike I did my first Longest Day with. I didn't like it for the Longest Day as the seat sits flat (I tend to go nose down, a lot).

Anyway, the triple helped with the hills as the trailer really slowed me down a lot. The trailer changes the bike's handling in a big way. When you hit bumps in the road you feel it on all three tires. If you're not ready for it it can cause you to lose your grip. When you hit a small dip the front wheel becomes light as the third wheel dips and the center wheel becomes the pivot point. This can cause you to lose control when going you're going fast so you have to take it easy on the descents. Turns are interesting because as you lean the weight of the trailer wants to straighten you back up. The faster you go the more pronounced the effect. And finally it take a lot longer to slow down and stop because of the added weight. Still the trailer is very useful as a training tool. My legs are still feeling the climbs, 2214 ft total over 40 miles. That's more than most of my centuries (I'm a flatlander, which means I ride in an extremely flat area). I'll have a few more hilly centuries this year and this should help.

Rest in peace Sheldon Brown (1944 - 2008)

2008-02-05T09:37:00.001-05:00

I just signed up for the rec.bicycles.misc newsgroup, which I haven't read in about two years and there it was: Sheldon Brown 1944 - 2008. There are very few people I've not met that I really appreciate but Sheldon was one of the few I really liked. He introduced me to the Brooks saddles that I have on all my bikes. I remember posting to the newsgroup, complaining about saddles in general. Sheldon told me about the saddles and the amount of work required to break in and maintain the saddle. I've never regretted listening to his words of advice. Sheldon, we'll miss you.

To Sheldon's family, I can only offer you my words of condolence and a tear in his passing. I'm happy to say I met Sheldon Brown and was better for knowing him. The bicycling community has lost a valuable member and he will be missed.

Sheldon's web site.

Back in the saddle again.

2008-01-27T18:23:00.001-05:00

Well I'm back in the saddle again. Actually I've been riding on and off since September but I've begun putting in some real miles in January (very odd). I got back on the bike in September so I could ride the Staten Island Bike Club's Pumpkin Patch Pedal. Since I injured my right thigh (a strain injury) pushing too big a gear I decided I'd get back to basics and spin. I completed the entire century in the small ring (39 tooth). I averaged 17.3 mph over the entire ride. For the next few months (October - December) I rode on and off, spinning of course, because of family, school, weather and the holidays. So far January has been very cold when it comes time to ride (twice in the low 20's). Oddly enough we've had a week (Monday - Friday) where it was in the 60's. I took advantage of that weather and rode at lunch time. This made up for the lack of ride time in the colder weather (I'm asthmatic, I'm not supposed to ride below 32F). Finally here we are at the end of January, where we'd normally have snow on the ground (usually a couple of feet). All we've had is rain and cold (any snow melted). Last weekend we rode down to the Griggstown canal and rode over black ice, two of my riders fell. One rider jammed his hand the other road rash on his chin, cheek, knee, elbow, and shoulder. In addition a broken carbon fork, Yikes! This past weekend I decided against riding where the natural springs might pop up (we get a lot of that here in Central New Jersey) and rode out to the farm lands (a short, flat, 40 mile ride). The rider with the worse injuries was back and riding again. It was a nice ride (though it only reach about 26F). I'll start putting up my ride cue sheets again and I'll hopefully have weather information for my rides too as I've just received a new weather station. All I can say is that it feels great to be back on the bike again putting on some miles.

Taking a timeout ...

2007-08-18T22:59:00.000-04:00

Looks like I'll be off the bike for a while (grrr!). A few years ago I hurt my right leg (somewhere in the front of the thigh) on the last 35 miles of a Century. I had to ride through it as it was an unsupported Century. Lately it has been sore while riding. If I stomp (spin at a rate less than 90 rpm and above 18 mph) it hurts a lot, if I spin (spin at a rate above 90 rpm and above 17 mph) it hurts less. But lately its been hurting more. On one Century I made it 100 miles and my leg began to get sore the last three miles I was reduced to 12 mph (from my normal 18 - 19 mph). I've completed 11 Centuries since May so I know how I should feel and this didn't feel right. I've also begun to momentarily lose control of my right leg while climbing stairs and I've had a variety of pains in my leg. It's time to let a doctor look at it. Worst part is I just found out about the Century-a-Month club. I was looking forward to riding a century every month. April through December are easy enough to ride through as it's warm enough (above 40F). I could sneak in a Century on the first/second of January. It's usually warm enough for a Century. I figured that February (snow, cold and wind) and March (rain and wind) would be my troublesome month. February is just nasty with temperatures down in the upper 20's and low 30's as a high. It's also windy and the lovely idle farm fields are covered with snow. Wind chill on a Century now that's something to look forward to, remember to dress warmly. Maybe I should fill my camelbak with Expresso? ;-)

An afternoon ride (Monday, June 25, 2007)

2007-06-25T18:49:00.001-04:00

I decided that I would go out for an afternoon ride today. I recent put new cleats (?) on my shoes, a wireless computer on my bike and I needed a little time on the bike. When I put on the new cleats one of the bolts on my right shoe stripped (argh). I've replace the screw but the new one appears to have the same problem (the hole is also stripped). I'll have to work on that. My right shoe still needs a little adjustment as it swings to far into the crank and my shoe hits it. The computer also gave me a little trouble as the magnets are pretty sensitive to where they can cross the sensor. They seem to work best when they are crossing at the left or the right side and not at the middle. A quick minor adjustment (needs to be about 1.5 mm apart max) and I had no more trouble. Once the computer was working properly I paid attention to my cadence and heart rate. On the Longest Day I noticed that I couldn't generate more than about 18.5 mph on the bike with or without wind and my heart rate just seemed wrong for the gear I was in. Because I was sick last year (very little consistent time on the bike), inadequate proper training this year and my bike problems early this year (two broken bottom brackets on two different bikes) which lead me to breaking in a new bike three weeks before the Longest Day (normally a very bad idea), I haven't felt quite right on the bike though the bike is very comfortable (a Giant TCR2). Well today I finally figured out why I've been so uncomfortable on the bike. I'm not spinning! My legs like to spin, they are most comfortable with a spin in the mid 90's. Today I found my legs spinning at 79 rpm. When I attempted to bring it up the best I could get was the upper 80'. I've begun to start working on getting my spin back. It'll probably take all summer but it will make me feel more comfortable on the bike and it will get my speed back up.

Post ride: CJBC's The Longest Day, Saturday 06/16/2007

2007-06-18T19:22:00.000-04:00

Short version:

Start: 4:45 AM, 48F, 92% humidity, foggy, minimal wind
Finish: 7:54 PM, 68F, strong wind, S
Total time: 15:09
Ride time: 12:28
Avg: 16.7 mph

The entire ride was pretty quite, the first half traffic was lower than expected. Many (but not all) of the road ways had been repaired. It was interesting to descend at 40 mph in 48F weather (think wind chill). It warmed up on the middle part, the Pine Barrens seemed to have changed a bit. Down by the Mullica bridge the pine is now more pine and pin oak. It didn't help us with the wind but did minimize the direct sun. We managed to miss one rest stop on Rt 50 (our SAG was on a refill run) but it worked out a little better. I describe this section as the doldrums because it looks the same and we're really far into the ride and physical and mental exhaustion starts to set in. We managed to stop in the middle of that section and reduce the distance between Egg Harbor City (some visual and mental interest), the Pines and the WaWa at mile 183. This helped to make these two sections a little easy mentally and physically. The last 25 miles were all head wind. The gusts were the worst part. We had lots of wind in our training most of it worse. None had gusts of this strength also the traffic increased and we had to deal with discourteous pick up truck drivers and high school graduates yelling out the window. One of the more interesting things was the number of people who were honking and waving hello to us. There were at least as many as the discourteous folks. We managed to pick up one straggler from another team (we totalled 5 people then). When we pulled into the park at the light house most of us felt pretty good. Also, because of the wind there were no mosquitoes. That is unless you were by the reeds that minimized the wind.

CJBC's The Longest Day, Saturday 06/16/2007

2007-06-12T10:30:00.001-04:00

Description

Name: The Longest Day
Pace: Low 17's mph avg (into the low 20's with pace lines)
Distance: 208 - 212 miles
Terrain: 2 - decent hills on the first half, 4 for the rest (3 - 4, on a scale of 1 (nasty hills) - 4 (flat as a pancake))
# of Stops: 8
Destination: Cape May Lighthouse, NJ
Starting point: Port Jervis, NY
Finish point: Lighthouse, Cape May, NJ
Starting time: 4:30 AM
Finish time: 7:00 PM (expected)
Club ride: Yes (CJBC - Paid registration also required)
Cue sheets provided: yes
Guests allowed: no
Route: Longest Day Double Century
Rain doesn't cancel this ride

Weather prediction:

Partly Sunny, 55F low, winds SW @4 mph, 8 mph gusts (in Port Jervis, NY, 5 AM)
Partly Sunny, 78F high, winds SW @11 mph, 21 mph gusts (in Chatsworth, NJ, 12:30 PM)
Partly Sunny, 76F high, winds S @11 mph, 18 mph gusts (in Cape May Point, NJ, 7:30 PM)

Wea ther Forecast | Weather Maps

Like I've said I like long rides and this is the ride of year for me. This will be my 6th Longest Day double century and I'm looking forward to many more. Don't get me wrong I'm proud of rides I lead. I've added a lot of new rides this year (more to come) and a new starting point. But this is the ride I train two months for, I created my own Longest Day web page with the details. I hope for hot weather though my team mates would prefer that it's about 12F cooler than I like (90F). I just really don't want to wear a sweater on the Longest Day. :-)

So it looks like we're not going to be too hot or too cold for this year's Longest Day. Though I may need a sweater at the beginning and towards the end of the ride. It may be a bit cool for me down in Chatsworth, only 77F. The wind is a bit stronger than I'd like but it's what is expected around this time of year. The last 20 miles are going to be into a head wind. Our training has gone well so I expect we'll see the 17's for an average speed. If we're lucky and can find other teams to work with that are of the same pace we should be able to pick up the pace a bit but I'm not banking on that.

I'm not sure how well we'll do on the first half. We're lousy climbers (we're flat-landers) but this year our climbing is better than it's been in a while. So maybe we won't go so slow on the first half but I know we're not going to try and break records (our records of course :-) as that would mean we'd have very little left for the last half. That's the tougher part because of weather and mental and physical exhaustion.

We've picked up one more person so now we're a team of four. I'm hoping that we'll be able to work together and that we don't slow him down too much. He said he did a 150 mile ride at 16.5. With a team I think he'll be able to hold the 17 mph avg. He is a lot faster than we are on the hills (isn't everyone ;-).

Post-ride:

I'll post a separate blog entry for this ride as it will be a very long entry.

Post ride: Which ever way the wind blows, Saturday 06/09/2007

2007-06-10T12:15:00.001-04:00

Wow did we have a great ride Saturday! There were 6 people who rode with us. One gentleman was as fit as a fiddle (small, muscular and light, a mountain climber) and could out ride us in a split second. He sprinted several times to various road markings including hills and flat windy sections. He was looking for a team to ride on for the Longest Day. He might have ridden with my team but we would have slowed him down way too much. He's now going to ride with a friend's team. They're supposed to ride faster. I'll venture a guess that the team will be split in two at some point and that my friend will be in the slower team. He always pushes it and then bonks midway only to recover later on and go like mad. Either way I wish the best of luck to them, hope my friend doesn't bonk and rides his fastest double century ever!

As for the rest of us, we did pretty well. I still didn't have my new computer yet, it's a VDO C3 DS Wireless Cyclocomputer w/ Wireless Cadence and it's back ordered until the 15th, I'll be riding the Longest Day the 16th so I won't have that computer. Instead I'll wire up my Cateye Astrale (w/Cadence). Without my computer I have a tough time telling what I'm doing I usually go by heart rate, cadence and how I feel. Lately I've been going by my heart rate and how I feel. It's worked out OK but I miss the cadence. Remember that you still need to give your mind something to do on these rides. Anyway the other riders were dealing with the heat (except the sprinter, he likes the heat too), the pace and the wind. We had a rather odd wind from the West and North. Normally we experience a West and South wind which means that we end up with a bit of a tail wind on the way home. We had a head wind and that was causing problems. Early in the ride I had to control the pace and slow down the riders while they had a tail wind (long rides require a conservative approach unlike my friend who bonks on much longer rides). They weren't happy but we were beginning to ride outside ourselves'. Meaning we were pushing the pace past what we could do into the head wind later on. So I did a bit of nagging though it seemed another rider was the problem. I owe him an apology as he save the pace by requesting we slow down (he's a smart ride leader also). I've been busting on him for his past slower pace but yesterday's 17.8 mph average says he's doing fantastic. Three weeks ago he could barely keep 17.0 mph avg over 100 miles. Now he's doing 17.8 and he seemed more much more comfortable at that pace. We're going to have a good Longest Day ride next Saturday (2007/06/16) and our pace should be on target for the 17's. Overall our pace line worked went well, the ride was hot and windy (~13 mph with higher gusts) and we still did well. Wish we could have ridden as well as well as our sprinter. :-) It would have been fun to try but there was no way we were going to be able to.

One more little thing, my fellow riders were busting on me for one of my training tools, my Camelbak. It's a Ventoux, which is just short of a full fledged all day back pack. I just throw everything in there and I don't worry about it. It probably weighs at least twenty pounds. I'm detailing it's contents on my Camelbak Ventoux page. There are pictures and a list of it's contents. For the Longest Day I'll unload it's contents and just keep the bladder (a 2L version, not the normal 3L version), 2 tubes, the air pump, cell phone and my wallet. That should lighten it up significantly.

Which ever way the wind blows, Saturday 06/09/2007

2007-06-08T20:29:00.001-04:00

Description

Generally I'll decide which route I want to take a day or 2 before the ride. Letting the wind decide which way I ride (hence the name of the ride). What I can tell you in advance is the distance. I like long rides so the later in the season the longer the ride. During the summer rides will be about the metric mark (or better).

Name: Which ever way the wind blows
Pace: Low 17's mph avg (into the low 20's with pace lines)
Distance: 96 miles
Terrain: Flat with rolling hills (3 - 4, on a scale of 1 (nasty hills) - 4 (flat as a pancake))
# of Stops: 3 - 4
Destination: Pemberton, NJ
Starting point: Village Park, Cranbury, NJ
Starting time: 8 AM
Club ride: Yes (both PFW and CJBC)
Cue sheets provided: no
Guests allowed: Yes
Route: Cranbury Pumpkin Patch Century
Rain may not cancel a ride, contact the ride leader for further details

Weather prediction:

Sunny, with rain in the morning
70F at 8 AM (at Cranbury)
Winds from the NNW at 9 - 15 mph, 22mph gusts
High for the day 82F at 4 PM

This is a derivative ride, it's the Pumpkin Patch Century but with the start in Cranbury, NJ instead of Monroe Twp., NJ. The Staten Island Bike Club created this ride and I'm posting it here. Many of my rides down south, use portions of this route.

We've been training for the Longest Day but this week we're taking it easy on the pace. The team I'm riding with is ready and we don't need to push any further. No sense in getting injured.

Post-ride:

Nothing here yet, I haven't done it yet. :-) ! I'll update this tomorrow after the ride.

Which ever way the wind blows, Saturday 06/02/2007

2007-06-01T20:47:00.000-04:00

Description

Name: Which ever way the wind blows
Pace: 17 - 18 mph avg (with pace lines)
Terrain: Flat with rolling hills (3 - 4, on a scale of 1 (nasty hills) - 4 (flat as a pancake))
# of Stops: 4 - 5
Destinations: Griggstown & Chatworth, NJ
Starting point: Village Park, Cranbury, NJ
Starting time: 8 AM
Club ride: Yes (both PFW and CJBC)
Cue sheets provided: no
Route: Griggstown/Pine Barrens Double Metric (120 miles)
Rain does not cancel this ride.

Weather prediction:

Sunny, with an afternoon thunderstorm
70F at 8 AM (at Cranbury)
Winds from the SW at 5 - 11 mph, 20 mph gusts
High for the day 90F at 3 PM (same for Cranbury and Chatsworth)

This is an unusual ride in that I normally don't do double metrics. A century is usually enough for most folks. We (my Longest Day team) need some extra mileage and since it's going to be hot I think we'll be luckily to keep a fast pace (better than 17 mph). Most of this ride is the same as last week (at least 3/4's of the ride) with the exception that I've added Griggstown, Kingston, Plainsboro. Most of this section is used by the Longest Day Route. It's good for pace lines and we'll experience the the heat that we might expect on the Longest Day. So we get in our mileage (seat time) and we'll begin turning down our training because we're ready. Currently the weather looks to be cooler (mid 70's) for the 16th. Of course it's too early to really predict, so we'll see.

Post-ride:

Today's ride went very well. I made one change, instead of using the above route I used this one: Cranbury-Griggstown-Chatsworth-deviation. It is a little shorter (118 vs 120) but the first half of the ride is the Griggstown to Chatsworth section of the Longest Day. This really worked well for us it was hot and humid (like the predicted weather for the Longest Day). We had 90 F and very high humidity. When we got down to Chatsworth the humidity disappeared but the wind picked up. It was out of the South and West so we felt it when we left Wharton State Forest and when we turned toward Tabernacle from Chatsworth we rode into a strong headwind for 10 miles. The wind was harder than the predicted 5 - 10 mph but the gusts were about 20 mph (as predicted). We averaged a comfortable 17.2 mph, a speed we hope to keep on the Longest Day.

Which ever way the wind blows, Saturday 05/26/2007

2007-05-25T13:22:00.001-04:00

I lead rides for Princeton Freewheelers (PFW) and Central Jersey Bike Club (CJBC). I'll post here for bicycle rides that I lead, general bicycle information and tips or rants and raves about my bicycle rides. Some folks might refer to them as single day tours as they tend not to be short rides. Here's a description of my ride for Saturday, May 26,2007:

Description

Name: Which ever way the wind blows
Pace: 17 - 18 mph avg (into the low 20's with pace lines)
Terrain: Flat with rolling hills (3 - 4, on a scale of 1 (nasty hills) - 4 (flat as a pancake))
# of Stops: 3 - 4
Destination: Chatworth, NJ
Starting point: Village Park, Cranbury, NJ
Starting time: 8 AM
Club ride: Yes (both PFW and CJBC)
Cue sheets provided: no
Guests allowed: Yes, within reason
Route: Pine Barrens Century

Weather prediction:

Sunny
70F at 8 AM (at Cranbury)
Winds from the WNW at 5 - 10 mph
High for the day 88F at 4 PM (same for Cranbury and Chatsworth)

Weather Forecast
|
Weather Maps

This is one of my favorite rides, I love riding down to the Pine Barrens. Especially when it's warm. So far I expect to have 6 riders (including myself). The first 20 miles will be a bit disorganised (it always is). After we leave New Egypt (Plumstead) we'll begin doing pace lines. I'll have my new bike (Giant TCR2, Carbon Fiber) which is a little skittish. So I'll be leaving a bigger than normal gap in the pace line until I get used to the bike (I only have 200+ miles on it). Fluids will be a problem between Browns Mills and Tabernacle as that's where the stores are and they're about 30 miles apart. I'll carry 2 additional water bottle in addition to my 3L Camelbak. I'll also pick up 2 additional liters of water in Browns Mills. You'd be surprised at how may people under estimate the amount of fluid they'll need! for a long hot ride.

Post-ride:

Well, the ride went off less than perfect but wasn't a terrible ride from a training perspective. I arrived early and was certain I was ready. Turns out I missed my helmet (ARGH!) and the ride started 45 minutes late! We didn't really do pace lines until after New Egypt (@23 miles) and I got the feeling that the group was a bit uncomfortable at first. Once we left Browns Mills the pace lines went well. In fact they worked beautifully and are the reason we kept a decent average. I felt very comfortable int he pace lien with my bike (we had better riders). It was pretty warm and cloudy for most of the ride, probably about 88F (~30C). The wind was mostly out of the West but on the lower half it appeared to be WSW. On the upper half it appeared to be WNW at about 13 mph (guess-timate). At the mid-point we had 2 riders in distress. One said his feet burn like fire and the other had leg cramps. Another rider had a watt meter on his bike and he used that to judge the group's effort. I still don't have my bike computer on so everyone would tell me what pace I was keeping that they were comfortable with. Pulls on the front were limited to about 1 minute (remember we had only 5 riders). I don't know if I could have gone faster but I think I could have. I was having some problems with my right leg, the muscle bulge by the knee was sore but I could still keep the pace line and hill climbing was not a problem. I did take it easy on hills to wait for the 2 troubled riders. By the end of the ride we had 2 groups with group A (who could have ridden faster) about 20 feet ahead of group B. Group B consisted of myself and and the gentleman with the leg cramps. He kept his eyes on my rear hub (really not recommended) and I kept a consistent pace, avoided any sudden moves and road debris or holes. I'd tuck in on the group A pace line sometimes but needed to keep a bit of a distance as my rider couldn't react suddenly to changes in pace or obstacle avoidance. My rider is very used to my riding style.

One the subject of riding styles, the gentleman with the watt meter had a 'smooth-as-silk' pedaling style and bike handling. I rode on his wheel while on Four Mile Rd and it was a joy not to have to worry about wheel overlap (which I avoided anyways) or sudden surges fore/aft or left/right. One day I hope I can ride that smoothly!

Obligatory first post!

2007-05-24T15:29:00.000-04:00

I have another blog (Linuxha Blog) which I spout off about things related to Linux and Home Automation. But I needed a place where I could talk about other non-sense not related to home automation. One of the other things that is very near and dear to me is my bicycling. I take it very seriously but not to the point of racing. I'm a member of two bike clubs, the Central Jersey Bicycle Club and the Princeton Freewheelers. I lead rides for both groups and I intend to post my rides and maybe even build a forum on Linux HA for cyclists. For now I'll start here, then my web page for my routes.