Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy!

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

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

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

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

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!