Christmas Vacation

Icy outside this evening and it looks like we're going to get snow on top of that. But it was above 40 today and most of the snow is gone from the yard (the grass still looks great!) Missing out on a Waterloo dance this evening, but I'm just not up to challenging the icy roads ... a DVD, ice cream and some coffee really does feel good tonight.

Got lucky at the video store and picked up 5 movies in about 10 minutes of searching. One of them is Christmas Vacation with Chevy Chase. Takes me back .... Anyway, I'm watching it right now and seeing many new things in the movie that I hadn't noticed before. It's a hoot.

I have a few new songs to practice, including Garth Brooks' Belleau Wood. This song, a favorite of mine, is about a 1914 Christmastime truce along the Western Front in WWI. The truce really did happen and there was a recent docudrama about it on the history channel. The final few lines of the last verse always get to me and, if taken to heart, would certainly make for a better world. See what you think: "Heaven's not beyond the clouds, it's just beyond the fear. No, heaven's not beyond the clouds, it's for us to find it here." And it seems that would be so much better to find heaven here than to be spending so many lifetimes and resources hoping for that imaginary one "beyond the clouds".

Speaking of hope, I hope everyone (or at least most people) got all they wished for and deserved this Christmas. It was a nice, if quiet, one for me.

Get A Grip

The replacement units for the failed YakTrax "ice walkers" arrived today. Called "Get-A-Grip", they fit over the shoes and 6 small carbide-tungsten spikes provide traction on ice. The spikes are only about 1/8" long and they seem to work well even on hard surfaces (such as cleared sidewalks/streets). It remains to be seen how well they'll really hold up, but, for now, I recommend them over the YakTrax given that two YakTrax failed in only 30+ miles of walking (and no response at all yet from the company). By the way, I've now been able to find many negative YakTrax reviews with the same complaint as I have ... namely, that they are very unreliable as the gripper springs separate/break.

Today it's snowing again and the roads are very slick with an expectation that it will get worse if the wind picks up as forecast. This will be good for skiing, so no room for complaints.

Meanwhile, I'm testing out the complete hardware setup for Monday's Christmas karaoke show and, with some cappucino, Milk Duds and a couple of DVD's to watch, I have plenty to keep me occupied for this Saturday afternoon and evening. If the roads get reasonably cleared off I'll likely get out to sing tonight but probably no out of town driving as blowing snow is often worse than slippery roads.

New X-Country Season

Today was my first day this snow season to try out the Cross Country skis. The snow was great and the temperature was mild (mid 20's).

Also got some new karaoke software today (a version update download). The software I'm using is called Karma and the engineers working on it seem to go 24/7/365. It's great to have such good support and they even installed two of my recommendations from Tuesday of this week into today's release. Now that's efficiency. Anyway, I heartily recommend this software as it seems to be pretty efficiently coded (runs well on my 1.73 GHz Pentium M laptop) and it now supports MPEG, AVI and WMV video in addition to MP3-G and .ogg (for DJ work).

Monday will be a fun day as I'll be doing a Christmas karaoke show at The Villages rest home here in Marion, IA.

Looks like more snow headed in this weekend ... but the snowblower is working well and the skiing should just get better and better.

Thought about going up to Waterloo to dance but decided I really didn't want to take a 2 hour drive for that tonight. Maybe I'll just go out for a quick drink ... but I do need to practice some of the songs that will be on tap for Monday. This weekend will likely be spent getting more videos ready to play on Karma. Karaoke on a PC is really fun ... nice to not be dealing with CD's (and scratches, etc.) anymore.

But I am still ready for Spring ...

Sunday Highs and Lows

I'm pretty sure the high temp here on Sunday (the 14th) was above 50 degrees ... and Monday morning it was about -4. Quite a swing. But the good part is that I did get one more bicycle ride in on Sunday for a revised total of 3688 miles and 240 hours for 2008. Looks like the rest of the week is going to be around zero (or lower) at night and we'll have snow off and on almost every day. Well, walking still works, eh?

Today looks like a time to "stay indoors" this afternoon and evening. But I have Hot Tamales and M&M's along with a couple of DVD's to watch, so, along with some song practice and watching "House" this evening, it will be a great day.

Mac Is Back

Got my Mac back from its warranty repair yesterday and it seems to be working great. Turns out that the problem was not the hard drive but the power supply. So they replaced the power supply and all is well ... plus I didn't have to go through any data restore process(es). Glad that's over with, for now anyway. Hopefully that was the one issue with the computer and it will now work fine for many years.

Yesterday was a tough walking day as we had a coating of ice over everything around here. The YakTraks were indispensable as they made it into a fairly routine stroll. Funny thing is, I actually bought them at least 18 months ago and then never used them last winter (all workouts were indoors or else outside on the cross country skis). This year there isn't enough snow around here (yet) to ski but I just don't feel like working out inside. I have this major urge to be outdoors and so I guess all things do finally work out.

Got some new "old" songs for the PC karaoke system and they've been pretty well received at the retirement home ... will give them another spin this Friday as I return to The Villages in Marion. Those folks really like the old Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, Perry Como and big band stuff. I don't want to get stuck in a steady diet of that myself so I sprinkle in a few other songs ... that way everyone gets to experience something different and we all get to smile at the end of the day.

Time to get going on today's walk.

Covers Installed

Today I finally covered the motorcycle and put it on its stand (weight off the wheels) and then brought the bicycle indoors (I like being nice to my bicycle and warmth is what we all crave, n'est pas?). So the riding year is truly over. I must admit I'm still seeing a few hardy souls on bicycles ... even yesterday there was a guy riding up 1st Avenue in Cedar Rapids on a bicycle. I looked at his tires and they didn't appear to have any chains on them, although they were fairly wide. All I can say is that it's nice to know there are some folks out there crazier than I, hehe.

Had fun singing at The Villages rest home today. Seems that they must have enjoyed it as I've been invited back for next Friday afternoon as well as for a Karaoke Christmas program on the 22nd. Well, I'm not sure about the karaoke stuff as I don't have a very large selection of songs (especially Christmas songs) but I've already talked to a couple of my friends, who do have a large collection, to see if I can use some of their Christmas tunes and if they'd be interested in going along to sing. If they can't make it, I'd still like to use the songs, but we'll see what happens. I also would bring along a CD drive that can be used to play CD+G karaoke disks as the activity director said they have some there that they might want to use. Anyway, it should be fun.

Not sure if I'm going out tonight ... I have a few DVD's I can watch and that might be just the thing for a cold Friday evening.

Walking & Ice

It's just so much nicer to get outdoors in the winter that I think I'll focus on cross country skiing and walking rather than indoor exercise (Nordic Track or stationary bicycle). All well and good but it's sometimes difficult to walk with the snow and ice that remain on sidewalks around here. A few years ago I happened on a device consisting of a set of shoe add-ons called "Yaktrax". They are stretchable and the bottom has a series of criss-crossing and tightly woven metal springs. When they are on your feet, they provide extremely reliable footing in slippery conditions, even ice. However, that first set did not stay on my shoes extremely well and it didn't take more than a season of walking for some of the rubber stretch parts to break apart. But, liking the sure footing when they worked, I decided to try again and now I have a pair of Yaktrax Pro attachments. Their initial test period started today and they fit very well. They also have an additional velcro strap across the top that allows them to be better positioned and maintained in that position on the shoes. So they worked great ... and we'll see how long they last.

So I've decided that the motorcycle's time is over for the year and, most probably, the bicycle's too. But, while I'm ready for spring already, winter is interesting in its own way. And it will be fun to ski, not to mention singing in many new places as I tour the rest homes in Cedar Rapids.

It feels like just a regular year coming up in 2009 ... we'll see, eh?

Riding In December in Iowa

Today could very well have been my last bicycle ride for the year. There are 3671 miles on the odometer and it looks like cold, snowy weather for the foreseeable future ... sigh. Of course, hope springs eternal and, after all, the year isn't over ... yet.

Latest news is that the hard drive on the Mac does not restart reliably upon returning from "sleep" mode. I'm pretty convinced it's the drive itself as it has been gradually (over the past month or so) taking longer and longer to "kick in" and start spinning up after I wake the computer. That time has gone from practically zero to 5 to 20+ seconds and in the past few days it has failed to start at all. So now my only issue is to decide whether to just buy a new 500GB Seagate drive for about $69 or spend time on the phone with Apple support and get to the same point, with significantly more aggravation, in about 2 weeks. Of course, it is possible that something else (memory, some other hardware component, maybe even software) is the problem. And then I would kick myself for wasting time on the Hard Drive replacement. But I don't think it voids the warranty ... I'll have to check it out.

Hope everyone got a chance to see Jupiter, Venus and the crescent Moon (the 3 brightest objects in the earth's night sky) in conjunction last night just after sunset.

It's Winter ...

Today's ride was not a sure thing to happen as we got about 2" of snow here and then it's been snowing during the day. But the temp has been holding at 32 and so the snow has not been sticking to the pavement. I couldn't resist and it worked out very well. Even took time to rinse the bike off and dry the chain (otherwise it will rust pretty quickly as it's not well lubed right now) after I got back. Mileage at the end of the ride was 3645 and I now have 238 hours in on the bicycle (and the Neuro 4.0 cyclometer) this year. The Neuro is still going strong on its original batteries so it's clear that it can go for a year (well, at least one of my year's) of riding. H-mmm looks like on the year I'm averaging a bit over 15mph, and that seems like a pretty good number.

Feels like a good day for some hot soup and a Kielbasa sandwich. Maybe a little football watching and then I'll look into finding another rest home to sing at. That's really quite fun.

Balmy Day ...

Nice riding today as it was about 42 when I went out at 1pm. I'll hit 3600 miles for the year with the next workout. Nice improvement after many days of temps between 27 and 35 degrees (and windy). Nice breeze today, only about 10mph from the south.

Looks like I'll be heading up to Fargo for Thanksgiving ... and most likely I'll leave on Wednesday afternoon (that way I can get my mail before heading out). I'll likely return by Friday evening. Well, if I have things organized ahead of time I'll probably whip up a pumpkin pie on Wednesday morning and take it up for the Thanksgiving meal.

Good news as the Hawks won (big) over Minnesota yesterday and the Vikings won today ... all in all a pretty good football weekend.

Finished converting about 75-80% of my music files to FLAC, so that's getting close to being done. Not quite ready to delete all the WAV's I have yet since, if I need them again, I'd have to either recreate them from the FLAC files or re-rip them. Someday soon, I'll delete them but it feels better to keep them around for awhile ... at least as long as I have the storage space. I have been deleting the equivalent ogg and mp3 files but I also have a backup of those on the portable karaoke drive (as they can be used by the karaoke player software).

Later ...

Singing ... Again

Tonight was the culmination of quite a bit of work getting all my karaoke disks on my (mostly unused) Toshiba laptop. I gathered all the necessary equipment in my cloth music bag (also used for getting groceries) and brought along the Fender amp system. Stopping in at the rest home on Council Street, I asked if I could do a test run and set things up to see how they worked (and whether or not I'd forgotten anything!). They said "sure" and so I set it up and everything worked, first time. So I sang for almost an hour and it seems that most of them enjoyed the music. It is fun ... and I'll be doing it more often and probably at several different places. It's always a good gig, after all, because you have a captive audience and if you're at all off key, they usually can't tell ... and they truly enjoy the music.

Hopefully, I have enough of a music selection to satisfy most of the audience ... but I'm going to try to get a few more of the real old oldies (like Blue Heaven) as I expect they will be very well received (although I'll surely have to spend some time practicing them).

In other news, it was a cold day for riding (30 when I was out there) but not much in the way of wind and quite a bit of sunshine. It was a fun ride, although I need to decide now whether or not it will be worth my while to clean and lube the chain again before winter. The bike surely does need it as it's now squeaking pretty good but I'd rather save my time and do it in the spring just before starting to ride again. However, if I'm going to get a few hundred more miles in this Fall (depends on the weather), then now is the time. Well, I guess it'd be best to do it now ... finally talked myself into it. First thing tomorrow.

Later ...

Good Riding Week

With a total of 109 miles this week, it should be easy to hit 3500 in the next day or so and it's pretty clear that 3600 miles is a good possibility for 2008.

I've spent quite a bit of time lately converting my CD rips (WAV) to FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec). Track by track, album by album, I'm converting my Sonos network files to FLAC (from the current ogg/mp3 formats). Since my experience is that the FLAC files take only about 60-70% as much space as the (also lossless) WAV versions, I plan to use them as my CD backups.

The conversion process is fairly easy and, depending on one's plans, it might work well to use a handy setup like AutoFlac. For me, I had already ripped the WAV's to a hard drive using EAC so the issue was converting WAV's to FLAC and I've found that FooBar2000 does an exceptional job at this. I use a straightforward program called Tag & Rename to update the file tags (it works for ogg, mp3, etc., as well) and then update my online (Sonos NAS hard drive) files. Although I did take the step of backing up all my MP3/OGG files on a separate drive since it's really nice to have those for "carrying your music" type devices. Incidentally, FooBar2000 also converts FLAC files to OGG and to MP3 (I used Oggenc and LAME as the encoders for these). Since it will also convert FLAC to WAV, it's fairly easy to recreate CD's if necessary, from the FLAC backups. To do this, generally speaking, however, I recommend generating cue files during the CD ripping process (EAC has this functionality). It's not essential but it's an easy way to ensure that you can produce and exact duplicate of a CD (not critical for me).

Later ...

3400, Finally

Hit 3408 miles for the year on today's ride. Conditions were a bit nicer in that it was warmer (about 37 degrees) even though there was some rain and about 10mph of easterly wind today. Riding with temperatures in the 30's is really not too bad. I think it's pretty likely that I'll reach 3500 unless we get snow and/or significantly colder temps that result in icy road surfaces. Then it *will* be time to hang up the riding shoes for the year. I need to be focused on using the Nordic Track and getting out for Cross Country skiing on a regular basis this winter though as it makes the bicycling startup much easier in February/March and I'm just not big on riding indoors.

Well, winter's sliding in pretty quickly so, as with many things in life ... we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Later ...

It's That Time Of Year ...

Tough times are starting for bicyclists in Iowa. Yesterday's ride was at 34 degrees with an approximately 25mph wind from the west. Today it was 28 degrees with a NW wind at about 15-20mph. One thing I'll say, though, is that rides like this make you realize you're really, really alive ... and a warm shower at the end is a great thing. Approaching 3400 miles for the year ... not bad but not really outstanding. Still likely to hit 3500 if the weather holds up just a little bit (i.e., no early snow).

Looking into putting my leaf gutter covers back on and I've been talking to a guy from the East coast named Tim. He's very knowledgeable and has worked home guttering for quite a few years. I need to get out on the ladder to figure out a few things but I don't think it's going to be an easy job. So I'll clean the leaves out this Fall and then get this all resolved by sometime in the Spring.

And how 'bout those Hawkeyes beating #3 Penn State yesterday? Pretty good. Maybe the Vikings will be next (playing Green Bay today).

Later ...

3000 Miles

I know it's been a few weeks since I've posted here (although, at the end of September, I did do an edit on the Neuro 4.0 review) but I decided that it was worth noting that I (finally) passed 3,000 miles for the year on the bicycle. That does mean that my riding mileage per week has gone down but it's still a nice number. Looks like I won't hit 4,000 this year though ... and that's OK too.

Of course the most important thing going on right now is that it is actually less than 4 weeks until the election ... it will be so good to reach the end of that (very) long road.

Looks like we'll see a few days in the 70's this week, temperature-wise. But I don't think that would officially be Indian Summer as, at least in some areas of North America, Indian Summer can't happen unless there has first been a frost. Well, maybe there has been some frost already but the official low temperatures at the airport (National Weather Service source) here have never hit 32 degrees or lower so I'd say any frost is not official and probably consists of only spotty occurrences in some low lying areas. No matter, I'll still take solid 70 degree temperatures in October any time.

Later ...

Ryder Cup ...

Today looks like a golf day as the Ryder Cup has started (without Tiger, of course) and then I'll be playing in the end of season golf tournament this afternoon. Overall, I'm thinking I'll probably not be riding the bicycle today.

By the way, a new word has occurred to me. Seems like everything you hear from Palin (assuming one can handle that accent) is just parroting whatever McCain tells her (although there may be some of that in reverse too). So here's the new word: Palindrone ... hehe. Whether it is said backward or forward, it all sounds the same and it tends to just merge with the rest of the political "noise" ... so just drone on.

Somedays it's so good just waking up to such a bright day ...

Later ...

Coffee Time ...

Ahhh ... cool, crisp nights and sunny days. It's Fall again, and that means it's time for coffee. Started making up batches of that this week and it tastes really good. I use a flavored decaf along with a bit of Amaretto flavored coffeemate ... tasty! This is also a good time of year to be letting the sun in during the day so that the house warms up enough to make it through the nights (which are in the 40's and there's talk of being in the 30's for lows) without running the furnace.

Not really looking forward to winter but this is a good time of year ... and I am looking forward to two golf tournaments coming up between now and the end of the first week of October.

And about my carbon footprint ... besides having replaced all my lighting with compact florescent bulbs and getting newer, more efficient appliances (refrigerator, washer/dryer) over the past few years, there are more little things that I think are good to do. Reducing plastic bag use is one of them. So I have a cloth bag that I'm starting to take to get my (few) groceries in and I've been looking at things like how long the fridge is left open. It looks to me like it makes quite a difference in how much it runs by simply knowing what I want to get and taking only 5 seconds to remove it rather than 10 or 15. A check of the fridge was showing that opening it for 15 seconds allowed the internal temperature to get to the mid-50's, whereas with only 5 seconds of open time, it rarely reaches 45 degrees. It's all energy that is easy to save, so I say "why not?"

Have to really work at keeping the bicycling going this year as long as I can but I do take a day off now and again and it feels good. And, good news, I've finally gotten my "true" weight (i.e. with the new, more accurate, balance scale) back down to 160. So all is well (smiling). The only complaint I have with the SECA 700 scale is that the weight measuring arm tends to oscillate more than it should, often never stabilizing no matter how still I stand. It's not a big deal, but, for the price, the scale should have some built in dampening of that oscillation so that the arm quickly stops moving.

Later ...

A Poem?

Cloudy, cool, air filled with fog
Window shades up to catch the sun
Should it choose to rise

Cold bike ride, slow day
Time to start the coffee pot ... aahhhh
Read a good book
Don't watch for that sun

Clock ticking, strawberry breakfast
Gray day, fall approaches
And the sun? Yes, it will

K. Lee

Cold and Rainy ...

Brrrr ... autumn is really trying to make a comeback and it seems to be succeeding. Cool out (maybe 60) and it has been raining all day. The difference between today's ride in the rain and the last one I mentioned is that the air is colder and the rain itself is very cool. Gives you a clammy, "I wanna take a warm shower, now!" feeling. But it was OK as the answer was to use gloves and full length riding pants along with a skull cap and the old standby ... the rain jacket. And, at the end of it all, that warm shower did feel mighty good, I must say.

Stayed up late watching the US Open tennis last night but still got to bed around 12:30. And what's with those Cubbies? Hope they're not turning back to their old ways. I guess it *is* still possible for them to not make the playoffs ... but to keep that from happening the bats simply have to come back to life. Let's hope that happens soon.

Now I have had a pretty good spring scale in my bathroom for 16 or 17 years. And I've calibrated it before (maybe 10 years ago) against a balance scale and it was OK. But I've wondered a bit lately how accurate it really is. Then a friend of mine mentioned last month that it seemed to be reading a few pounds light. Well, that was the incentive I needed and so I decided to get a good balance scale and find out how accurate it really was. After all, as they say, the only thing worse than no data is wrong data. So I got a Seca 700 balance scale, complete with height measuring rod and did a test after it was calibrated. Sure enough, the old scale in the bathroom was reading around 2.5 to 2.75 pounds light. So I instantly gained 2.5 pounds! (heh-heh). But I could easily lean back and make the spring scale read the correct weight so I think that may be what happened when I originally verified its accuracy. It's easy to make that old scale vary by +/- 3 pounds. And it looks like the error is linear as I see a little bit less than 40 pounds when I weighed two 20 pound dumbbells. Again, of course, I don't know how accurate those dumbbells are but the data at 40 pounds is consistent with being only a few pounds off for a 160 pound weight (like me). Well, live and learn.

Got a haircut today and also hooked up my Nokia phone to the Mac via the WinXP OS running under VMWare's Fusion. Using Nokia's fairly complete set of Windows utilities was nice for making edits to contacts, etc., and also for backing up all the data in the phone. I've done simple file transfers using the Mac (via bluetooth) but Nokia doesn't have much in the way of Mac utilities yet. Also tried out Google's new Chrome browser (Beta version). That thing needs quite a bit of work but I guess that's why it's in Beta.

Finally, I refreshed my Moose Tracks ice cream supply with a Splenda sweetened version. It has less fat and maybe 25% fewer calories, so it's certainly worth trying out. After all, that means I can eat 25% more and still break even!

As I re-read the paragraph above, I realize that dreary days like this tend to lead one to take delight in small, sometimes vanishingly small, things ... well, whatever ... I'm heading off to the freezer to start the next taste test. So many different ice creams ... so little time ...

Later ...

Labor Day 2008 -- Ice Cream

Looks like another slow Labor Day holiday for me. Saw a bunch of Harley's on the road today and that started me thinking about taking the motorcycle down to Conesville, IA (I've heard there's a rally there today). But I'm not sure I want to do that without having someone to ride along with me ... I've never been to one of these rallies before so it might be fun to see what they're all about.

I think I've finally decided on the very best ice cream ... ever! Yes, you heard it right folks. Lately I've been going back to an old favorite that I've neglected for some time. It's made by Whitey's (and perhaps others, but I think Whitey's is the best) and it's called Moose Tracks. It's "fully leaded" ice cream with fudge, some peanut butter and chocolate embedded in perfect proportion. I like almost any ice cream out there (including the "Light" stuff) and there are several fairly close runners up ... but, so far, Moose Tracks gets the nod.

Think I'll have a nice little lunch today with a sub from Milio's and then a quick visit to the local DQ for a Dilly Bar (yes, I know ... more ice cream ... mmmmmm). Probably get some reading done and don't know that I'll fire up the grill (again) this year. But it's great weather out and I've already had a good bicycle ride. If it was tomorrow, I'd probably mow the lawn, but it doesn't quite need it yet ... just so I get to it before it rains.

Later ...

Weekend Approaches ...

No real plans for the upcoming Labor Day weekend. It does certainly feel like I should "grill something" and I do want to see the Hawkeye game. Otherwise, I'm sure I'll get some miles in on the motorcycle and on the bicycle ... and things will continue as they should.

Looks like great weather and I'm considering riding the motorcycle up to Fargo but that's a goodly distance (500 miles) and I'm not too sure I want the stress of that ride right now.

Looks like no obvious dances this weekend (although I think there will be some stuff happening at Riverside Casino) so I'm not thinking too much about that ... singing will work both Friday and Saturday and that will be a good time.

Not much happening (obviously!) ... oh, well, there is Obama's speech of course.

Later ...

500 Miles and Lawn Mowing ...

What great weather we are having. Played some good golf yesterday and then today the bicycle riding was exceptionally fun! This evening, even though it was after 7:15, I just decided to mow the lawn and that even went smoothly. Did a little work on the motorcycle and set the bicycle up on the work rack to remind myself in the morning that I need to do a chain cleaning and lube. Believe it or not, I've gotten 500 miles in during the 4 weeks since the end of RAGBRAI and that's just about as far as I can go without doing maintenance on the chain. I probably should do it at about 400 miles but 500 just seems like such a nice round number.

Should go out and sing a few songs tonight but I haven't been practicing lately. So maybe I'll just try out a tune or two and then hop on the motorcycle and head out to Sammy's (not too many choices on Tuesday night).

Keep enjoying summer. My theory is that if we all focus on good weather and good times then summer might well last long past the upcoming autumnal equinox ... and some of the best golf days are yet to come.

Later ... I did go out and sing tonight at Sammy's and it was pretty fun as there were only 2 singers and I got 4 or 5 songs in during the hour I was there. Plus I watched the Cubs score 7 runs in the 8th inning and beat the Pirates 14-9 ... gotta love that!

Rainy Days and Thursdays ...

Raining out there today. But it was about 68 degrees and not much in the way of wind so I went for a ride on the bicycle anyway. Worked out pretty well although I didn't see any other riders (heh). It actually can be a pretty good experience to ride in rain like this and it does make one appreciate the very good weather all the more.

Looks like the weather might get nastier this afternoon as thunderstorms are in the forecast for after 1 pm. Guess I'll run out to Milio's quick and get a sandwich as that's what I have an urge to eat for lunch today.

Later ...

Interesting Ride Today ... and 2500 Miles

Definitely encountered a first today as I rode north on highway 150. At about a mile from Center Point, a car pulled up beside me on the road. This makes for a nervous situation on several levels. First, of course, I wondered if I was going to look over and see some nasty fellow about to run me off the road (or worse!). Well, that was not the case and before my mind could run crazily through other options, I did look over and observed that the driver was an elderly woman. She rolled down her (electric) window and asked me how to get to I-380 "from here". I replied that she needed to go up to the stop sign near the gas station and then turn left, to which she said "thanks" and off she went. However, I would not recommend her technique for information gathering. For one thing, she had to slow to about 16 mph to talk with me ... not good on a fairly major road unless you turn on your flashers. Better to pull into the next gas station and ask the question(s) one might have.

A nice milestone reached today as I hit 2500 miles for the year. Looks like that should make it relatively easy to beat the 3600 mile distance from last year and it would be nice to get to 4000. Meanwhile, those Armadillo tires just keep on rolling ... well over 4500 miles now without a flat tire.

With my weight down to 159, I'm feeling pretty good and I'm enjoying the Olympics ... although I think it's just too bad about the result for Nastia Liukin in the uneven bars (she was simply better and got ripped by bad scoring). By the way, does anyone at all out there really think either of those Chinese gymnasts (one got the gold and the other the bronze in the unevens) are older than about 6th grade? I think you have to be 16 to compete in the Olympics. Oh well ... and keep on keepin' on, volleyballers! The women are looking good both indoors and on the sand courts. Strangely enough, I haven't seen anything on men's volleyball ... h-mmm.

Keep on smilin' ... enjoy this "winding down" phase of summer and remember that it is *still* summer for over a month yet.

Nominal Ride Conditions-Results

It finally happened today! The "nominal" riding conditions for my 24.3 mile route (from Hiawatha to Center Point and back). Here's the definition of nominal in this case: temperature 64-67 degrees(F), wind calm. Pretty simple, eh? But the key is that there's almost always some level of wind, even if it's 3-5 mph, so it's very difficult to find a truly calm day. And the temperature can easily be much warmer depending on the time of day and cloud cover. But I've wanted to have a day such as this just to record the results of riding it as a baseline of sorts (OK, yes, maybe it *is* an engineering thing!).

So here are the stats on the ride ...

Bicycle: 2007 Specialized TriCross Sport (stock)
Tires: Armadillo, 85 psi (4488 miles of tread wear)
Rider height: 70 inches
Rider weight: 162 pounds
Rider resting heart rate: 44 Beats Per Minute (bpm)
Average Heart Rate (this ride): 128 bpm
Max Heart Rate (this ride): 160 bpm
Bike Load: 1 rack bag, about 5 pounds
Total distance: 24.3 miles
Total riding time: 86m 54s
Calories Burned: 836
Average speed: 16.78 mph
Average cadence: 83 RPM
Odometer (miles in 2008): 2399

Not much earthshaking information there ... but it's nice to have a solid baseline to compare against. Deviations from the baseline, in my experience, are generally driven by environmental conditions. Wind velocity is probably the biggest factor. But temperature does have an effect and the physical condition and even a particular day's attitude of the rider plays a significant role.

But, hey, the main thing really is to just get out there and ride (or sing, or dance, or play golf or bowl or have coffee with friends or ... just do it!).

Later.

Visiting Up North and Brett Favre

Just got back from visiting my Aunt Elaine and Uncle Don in Fargo. Pretty good time ... well, except for the fact that the main karaoke place had "summer hours" and was closed the two evenings I was there. Not to worry though ... had a good time singing up at my cousin Ramsey's house.

Elaine is doing as well as could be expected, even a bit better than that, with the cancer fight. And I'm sure I'll make it up there to visit them again.

Don and I played some pool on his table out at the shop in West Fargo and he won the majority of the games. But it was clear that the pool balls needed replacing (all of them looked dull and worn out, with two 2 balls, two 7 balls and not even a 1 ball ... basically you could only play 8 ball with what was there). So I got him an early birthday present (he'll be 79 in September) consisting of a pretty decent set of new billiard balls along with a mechanical bridge (for those long shots, especially crucial on a 9 foot table). I think he'll enjoy it.

And what's with this Brett Favre thing? I'm a big fan of his but, really, his time is past ... kinda reminds me of Michael Jordan not knowing when to say when. I'll be the happiest guy if the Jets win the Super Bowl with Favre this year but it just ain't gonna happen! He's good ... and he can get a team to the playoffs ... but I don't see him having the capability to make it all the way anymore. And I respect the management of the Packers as they both realize the same thing and also stick by their commitment to Aaron Rodgers and the longer term success options for the team. A lesser group might have caved and brought Favre back to the Packers for another chance at the playoffs (again, this would be more to just "make" the playoffs but, in my opinion, not have much of a chance at going all the way).

Well ... let the season roll on and we'll see what transpires, eh?

In biking news I had a nice 24.3 mile ride this morning with light northerly breezes blowing me home after riding out to the north. So nice after 4 full days of not riding. Closing in on 2400 miles for the year so far and I'm expecting to reach between 3500 and 4000 miles by the end of the riding season.

Great weather out there still (and likely for the rest of this week) and I'm planning on doing some riding on the motorcycle today.

Later ...

Nice Riding Day ...

The weather is just great with light winds and temps no higher than the low 80's. So I took off riding today, having decided that I'd take the "big loop" up through Center Point, Urbana, Vinton, Shellsburg, Palo and then back home. All went well until I got to within a couple miles of Vinton, coming in from the north on highway 150. The road there is still closed as a long stretch of about 2 miles was washed out in the June flood. Not being able to talk the IDOT folks into letting me pass during the work, I turned around, rode back the way I came, and ended up with 57.25 miles on today's ride. Apparently it will be 4-6 weeks before highway 150 north of Vinton reopens for regular traffic ... so that loop is not an option for riding for awhile.

My total riding time this year is now at 154 hours covering 2338 miles, with 239 miles since the end of RAGBRAI. It's nice to have such great weather ... low humidity and light winds ... it makes each day just that much more smooth.

Today I tried orange flavored PediaLyte as an electrolyte/mineral replacement fluid. My son Scott recommended this as a good alternative to Gatorade for summer outdoor workouts. It really did seem to be pretty good stuff but I will say that the flavored PediaLyte is really too sweet. I mixed it 50/50 with water and that was much better. Also, the cost of PediaLyte (about $5.50 per liter) is significantly higher than Gatorade or bottled water. The generic equivalent fluid (HyVee has this, for instance) runs about $2 cheaper per liter and it's not too bad at all (price and flavor-wise) once it's diluted appropriately with water.

Oh! and everybody remember that the summer Olympics opening ceremony is tomorrow, August 8.

Later ...

RAGBRAI 2008 Day 7

The last day of RAGBRAI XXXVI arrived on Saturday, July 26. This ride covered territory from Tipton to the Mississippi River at LeClaire. The day dawned clear and seasonal with mild winds. This last day of riding was also light on the amount of hills to cover and, as a consequence, I covered the distance at an average speed of 15.2 mph. Subsequent in town riding and a 7 mile ride out to meet my trip home driver lowered my average to 14 mph on a total of 59.02 miles and 2099 miles on the odometer. So the total distance covered by this rider in RAGBRAI was 504 miles in a riding time of 40h 3minutes (12.58 mph average).

And what a welcome sight was the last town of the ride ... it really was "all there in LeClaire" ...


With such a quick ride on this last day, I didn't stop for much in the way of pictures, but the dip site at the Mississippi was very interesting. Riders lined up in a steady stream under a balloon archway to get to the river:


The occasion in the town brought a very festive atmosphere with many spectators lining the streets as well as milling around the dipping site. I did finally get my turn to dip my front tire in the Mississippi ...


Completing RAGBRAI for the second time gave me a great feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment and sharp eyed readers will note that I'm wearing my Cubs hat in the photo above (go Cubbies!). The person of the day today would have to be Sandra, who drove all the way down from Cedar Falls to give me a ride home. Of course the route I chose to ride out to meet her (away from the madness of 10,000+ riders) involved about 4 miles of gravel road, to my surprise and chagrin. But it is a lesson well learned and I'll review options more carefully next time as riding on gravel with full speed car and truck traffic is not safe and I would not wish it on anyone. Needless to say, I did eat a lot of dust in the course of this lesson ... hehe.

Well, that's it for my notes on RAGBRAI XXXVI, hope you've enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed the ride. I did miss seeing several people, but after returning home last Saturday I took 2 days off from riding but now have more than 100 miles in over the past 5 days. And it feels good.

Later ...

RAGBRAI 2008 Day 6

This day's ride was from North Liberty to Tipton on July 25. My distance total was 69.41 miles with an average speed of 12.4 mph (5h 34m). For one of the shorter rides, this was a deceptively hilly one but nothing that phased any of the riders too much, at least as far as I could tell. I had the impression that most people were taking it in stride as they considered how straightforward (i.e., very few hills and only 53 miles) the last (July 26) day's ride would be to Le Claire and the welcome banks of the mighty Mississippi. The interesting person of the day award goes to Theresa, an ex-colleague from Rockwell ... I'm not sure if we were in Mt. Vernon or Martelle but I think it was Martelle. Theresa, as you might guess from the picture, rides with the ConeHeads.


The morning's ride was again under cloudy skies and so it was nice and cool. The kind of day where one could easily "ride forever" ... well, except for the pain in one's butt, of course ... hehe.

Upon arriving at Tipton, I was in for a nice surprise as there was an indoor place available to stay. However, it was only about 1:15 and the owner of the home, Pat, was not going to be back until after 2:30. So I stopped at a Subway and had lunch and then spent time writing notes in my journal as well as catching up on the news, as they had a few (Davenport) papers available for customers. After that welcome break I rode back over to Pat's house (see picture, immediately below) to introduce myself.


Somehow, I now realize, I never did get a picture of Pat, but we sure had fun that day. I told her I was an engineer type and would be glad to offer her computer assistance in exchange for a shower and a nice bed in which to sleep. She laughed ... and I could see that she did, indeed, have something in mind for me to help with on her PC.

That "something" involved helping her set up a mechanism to save email attachments (pictures) for easy reference and so she could then delete the associated emails and "thin down the herd" of email in her inbox. This was fun to do and I also helped her set up a new gmail account as one of her issues was an abundance of SPAM (and who among us doesn't have that as a problem?) and I really like gmail's automated SPAM filter. Got that all working and went uptown for some pasta and pie dinner while taking in a few of the sights ... then I was ready to hit the sack.

Turns out we had about 1/2 dozen more riders stay there and even more stopped in to shower. I tell you, it's so very nice of folks to offer up such seemingly simple amenities to the riders ... very much appreciated by all.

As a postscript, Pat and I have exchanged emails regarding more PC questions and I think we shall simply be friends for a very long time.

Tomorrow, the final day ... I was glad to see it arrive!

RAGBRAI 2008 Day 5

This day's ride was from Tama-Toledo to North Liberty and it took place on July 24. I rode about 75.2 miles at an average of 11.7 mph (6h 25m). This was probably the second toughest riding day for me personally and it was compounded by the "laundry incident" (see below). The day itself was quite cool and there was some rain or light mist for most of the morning. This was the only day I used my rain jacket but it helped significantly in warding off both the cold and the wetness of the day. There was only one really significant picture I want to put out for this entry. It was a home with a great garden surrounding the place (in South Amana, I think). The picture doesn't do true justice to all the "green thumbery" to be viewed, but here it is:


After reaching North Liberty, I stopped in at my friend Barb's house as she had kindly agreed to let me stay overnight there (and, yes, that meant yet another indoor shower *without* any lines to wait in ... sweet!). Well, since she offered to let me use her washer/dryer I took her up on it and promptly threw in riding clothes. However, I had removed my cyclometer (Neuro 4.0) from the bike (which was not necessary, but happened merely out of habit) and then slipped it into one of the riding shirts (instead of one of the storage bags). Yes, I can tell you're ahead of me on this one ... I actually washed and dried the bike computer. And it would not work after that beating. However, it *was* keeping clock time. I tried the reset button but no joy there.

Then I called up to Northtowne Cycling in Cedar Rapids and they had another one in stock. Barb graciously agreed to take me there and I picked it up, thinking the old one was not going to work at all. Then we stopped on the way back and I sang a few songs at karaoke (the Sip 'N Stir bar on 1st Avenue in Cedar Rapids). We arrived back in North Liberty at about 10:25pm and, on Barb's recommendation, I tried resetting the old cyclocomputer again ... and it *did* reset. Amazing! Anyway, I entered the calibration data and got it sync'd to the bike wheel/cadence transmitter and decided that if it worked all the way to the end I'd take the new computer back and just see how long the old (but very clean) one would last.

It worked to the end of the ride and it has now covered over 100 more miles of riding in the past 5 days. So I think Blackburn has a pretty good product (and see my original review in my April 21, 2008 entry) ... it's even "wash and wear" functional (if you want to try this yourself, I used cold water wash and the permanent press drying cycle). By the way, the batteries are still working fine in this unit (something I commented on in the original review) but I only have about 146 hours of operation on them (plus some time at the end of each ride before the computer goes into "Sleep" mode ... I don't know how to come up with that value but it's probably something like 5-10% of the total operating (riding) time ... maybe 7-14 hours here. It seems to me that the unit takes about 10 minutes after every use to actually go to sleep and I don't know of any way to force it to sleep earlier than its automatic "cycle to sleep" time.

Of the people I talked to on today's ride, the most intriguing was probably Yves from Oelwein, IA. She's ridden on 20 consecutive RAGBRAI's (including 2008), starting in 1989. That's pretty impressive.

Well, I got a very good (if somewhat short) night's sleep and had a fine breakfast that Barb made for me before hitting the road at just before 7am for day 6 (more tomorrow).

RAGBRAI 2008 Day 4

Day 4 of RAGBRAI XXXVI took place on Wednesday, July 23. The ride was from Ames to Tama-Toledo with a distance of about 78 miles and almost 2900 feet of climb. This ride featured many fun towns but one of the best was Nevada, where I met the Wicked Witch of the West and Miss Piggy.


And thank goodness for those much needed rest areas, like the one as we approached the halfway town for the day, Albion:


I found a great place for the hammock in Tama in the wooded acreage backyard of Don and Marian. One note of interest on hammock accessories here is that the "tree hugger" straps that are supplied by Hennessey are only about 45" long. That means they only work for trees that are approximately 45/pi or 14" in diameter. This is fine for the most part but I picked up some 1" wide nylon webbing and made a 10 foot strap just in case I had to use a larger tree. In the camping area at Tama there were more choices for trees but for the two I *really* wanted to use, one of them was much larger than 14" in diameter. Check it out:


If you look closely you can see on the nearer tree that the (longer) strap is orange in color (the standard straps from the manufacturer are black, one of which I used on the far tree). So strap length is an important consideration and I would recommend that anyone with a Hennessey Hammock get some longer straps made. In this case I stopped at a shoe repair shop to get the ends stitched up as loops, matching the original strap design.

The ride today covered 78.99 miles with an odometer reading of 1896 and an average speed of 11.7 mph (6h 43m). Tama was a fun town with a very nice swimming pool. I ate "supper" at the Dairy Queen for some nice air conditioned relaxation. Finally, the hammock was extremely comfortable on this night ... with light rain to fall asleep by.

RAGBRAI 2008 Day 3

The day is the 3rd one of riding on RAGBRAI XXXVI, Tuesday, July 22, 2008. The ride route is from Jefferson to Ames and it's with a sense of relief (and after a much needed good night's sleep) that I got on the road at Jefferson, starting at about 6:40 after having a banana and some pomegranate-blueberry and cranberry juice.

This was a very good riding day for me although not a day for many pictures. Early on, though, the ride encountered a delay when a train came through.


It was remarkable how quickly it seemed that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of riders were backed up and trying to decide whether it might really be good to get breakfast here (in Grand Junction) or wait until Dana or Ogden (today's meeting, or halfway, town). In the event, though, the setback was minor at only about 4 minutes. This day's ride was also a fairly short one, listed as 57 miles, with level roads. After Monday's difficult trial, it was very much appreciated. And speaking of Ogden, what a great town! The streets were very wide and, of all the towns of the ride, this was the one that seemed the most wide open and comfortable feeling. Basically, this town handled the large number of riders without making it feel like sardines in a can. And this photo shows me sitting on a tractor in Ogden ... marveling at the size of the tires compared to my bike.


Still in Ogden, it was nice hearing some great songs by this couple on the bicycle stage. They sounded very good together ... and I found myself looking around for someone to dance with ... but no joy. But it was one of those nice RAGBRAI ride places to hang out ... they seem to just pop up when least expected.


In my opinion, the RAGBRAI folks did a great job setting up the riding days with a good combination of tough days and easier ones which helped keep spirits buoyed and attitudes very positive throughout.

My odometer mileage at Ames was 1817 with a total of 70.4 miles ridden (quite a few "in town" miles as I went back and forth from the north side of town). With an average speed of 13.4 mph and a total riding time of 5h 13m it was a good day. And I was fortunate enough to get another indoor room, staying with Ruth and Dennis. I spent about 3 hours helping Ruth update her PC ... pretty good trade when considering having a nice room, shower and a good night's sleep (in a bed). I remember going to bed looking very much forward to the more challenging 4th day's ride (to Tama-Toledo) coming up in the morning.

RAGBRAI 2008 Day 2-And More

Well, I'm back riding again. Got 14 miles in yesterday and 25 miles today but I had a surprise in store for me this morning when I went out to the bike at 8am. I had gotten the tires ready last night, checking them for proper pressure and I do recall that I noticed the valve on one seemed a bit loose (and the clamp down nut was loose). I tightened it back up and didn't give it another thought. Additionally, the pressure on both tires was pretty good, although I pumped it up to 85 psi (ensuring that it would be at least 80 after pulling off the pump nozzle). So as I was rolling the bike out of the garage I noticed that the front tire was flat! Immediately I though how lucky I was that it went flat at home rather than on the road. But further investigation revealed something I've never had happen to me before in 40 years of bicycle riding. As I removed the tire and tube I noticed the valve just flopping around. Soon I saw the reason for the flat ... the valve had simply broken away from the inner tube as you can see in this picture:


Needless to say, I'm glad that it didn't happen on the ride, although the solution was pretty simple, especially because it was on the "easy to remove" front tire. I replaced the tube and all was well for my ride this morning. My theory on the failure is that the tube (size 700x28/38C from Specialized) really doesn't fit snugly down to the hole in the rim that the valve stem goes through. So when I tighten up the stem lock nut and then put pressure in the tire, the tire is probably pulling itself away from the stem. Eventually (in this case over 13 months and nearly 5000 miles), something has to give ... and it did.

My solution is that I will now always put air in the tube before tightening the lock nut and then just snug the lock nut up to the rim, adding a second lock nut (from a spare tube) so that they can "lock" together and give support to the valve but not stress the valve's connection to the inner tube proper. Hope that works.

OK, on to the 2nd day of RAGBRAI 2008. The day is Monday, July 21, 2008 and the ride is from Harlan to Jefferson. There is no doubt that this is the most difficult riding day of the week with over 5000' of altitude change (i.e. hills) and about 85 miles in distance. I had some trepidation starting out as I knew that I had gotten only about 4.5 hours of sleep (what with the tornado warning, etc., in the wee hours of Monday). Since sleeping was not the best anyway I decided to get an early start and was on the road by 6:10 am. That part felt good ... very little else did that day as far as the biking was concerned but the end of the day was one of relief and a feeling of great accomplishment. I captured one of my favorite images on this particular morning ... take a look:


One look as I was riding by and I had to stop and take this one. If you look carefully you can see that another rider had already stopped and was down by the lake near the windmill when I took this picture ... and he appears to be taking a picture of a bicycle that looks like it's magically floating out in the middle of the lake (click the picture for a larger image and you'll see what I mean)! I have no idea how he (or, more likely, the farmer that owns the lake) did that. Another nice picture on this ride features an alfalfa field with the hay nicely baled on rolling hills as the riders continue making their way towards Jefferson:


Here's another great image of the countryside around Monday's RAGBRAI riders:


And what would RAGBRAI be without the cornfields? There was some concern about whether or not they would be "tall enough" for typical RAGBRAI rider use this year but ... not to worry. The corn was fine. And if you've never ridden you may never know what happens in those cornfields because ...


Jefferson arrival was a welcome relief and I stopped at the info center and asked if there were any (indoor) rooms available for a lone rider. The gal there said "sure, why don't you stay at my house". How cool was that! Her name was Beth and she gave me the address and phone number and said her husband, Keith, was at home and would be waiting for me to show up and get settled. I think they had 3 or 4 more riders stay at their house that night and they had two daughters, Emily and Heather. Here's a picture of the five of us on Monday night:


From left to right: Keith, Heather, me, Beth and Emily.

The mileage at the end of the day in Jefferson was 1747 with an average speed of 12.4 mph and 86.84 miles ridden. What an enjoyable afternoon and evening ... and I slept really well! Tomorrow we'll cover the 3rd day's ride from Jefferson to Ames.

RAGBRAI 2008 Day 1

The next few blog entries will be about my experience at RAGBRAI XXXVI which ran from July 19 (Saturday, with day 1 in this blog being defined as the first riding day, Sunday, July 20) to July 26 (for more details, click here). And for your convenience, here's a photo of the route to refer to as you read on in this series.


The stay overnight at the starting town, Missouri Valley was relatively uneventful. The trip out there was full of fun conversation with my friend, Sandra, and the interesting part of the day was finding a good location for my Hennessey Hammock (my model is the Ultralight Backpacker Asym and you can check it out here). This was the first real overnight "camping" use for the hammock and I wanted to have a good test of its utility. The picture immediately below shows my bike (2007 Specialized Tri-Cross Sport) loaded with all four panniers, a rack top bag and water bottles in its RAGBRAI configuration (note that you can click on the pictures in this blog for a larger image). The bike and racks weighed 29 pounds and the load (with water in the 3 bottles) was 36 for a total of 65 pounds. Adding my weight of 161 plus 4 pounds for clothing and shoes gave a total riding "weight on wheels" of 230 pounds.


Note the metal device strapped on to the top of the left rear pannier. That is actually a telescoping bipod designed for stabilizing a gun while shooting. The reason I added it to my equipment was as a contingency for setting up the hammock as a tent, should I end up in an area where there were no trees (or other suitable structures) for tying up the hammock. The way this would work is that I would route one end of the hammock cord over the bicycle seat and the other end over the bipod ... connecting both ends with aluminum stakes in the ground. After tying off the center lines for the hammock and its rainfly, I'd have a secure (from mosquitoes, etc.) place to sleep ... although it would be on the ground. In the event, I never (thankfully) had to resort to this option.

The odometer reading at Missouri Valley was 1595, which also represents my training miles for the year (starting in the 2nd half of March). My plan was to make sure I kept track of the mileage to allow reporting on each day's progress.

My initial choice of hammock location was the corner of a covered pavilion. This setup did work, but it turned out to be less than optimal because there were lights in the pavilion and it became clear as the sun started to go down that there were going to be many people hanging out there talking till who knows how late that (Saturday) night.

So I did a bit of reconnoitering around the park and finally hit upon a spot that seemed almost custom made for the hammock situation. There was a cage with a wooden floor that someone guessed might have been used to weight livestock bound for shipment to market via train. No one was using it and so I hastily moved the hammock over to the new digs and was rewarded with an easy setup and a great situation for the night's sleep. Here's a picture showing the hammock along with the bicycle:


Now the funny part of this is that I felt quite a bit like Otis on Andy of Mayberry (except I wasn't drinking, hehe). He was the perennial town drunk always locked up in the jail but he had access to the keys ... and often would come in and lock himself up. Well, if you notice the doors at the far end of the cage, there are identical doors at the near end and I had to throw a swinging bar open to get in or out of the cage ... which brought back the memory of the Mayberry jail and Otis!

Several people were quite interested in the hammock including one fellow from Florida named Bill. He was very interested in the fact that my equipment this year weighed 19 pounds less than last year (36 vs. 55) and most of that change was due to dropping the tent, tent poles, sleeping bag and mini-mattress for the 32 oz. hammock and hi-tech (light weight) blanket plus bipod. I did also cut back on the number of pairs of riding shorts, shirts and socks but the camping gear was truly the big savings. My goal is to get to get to a load size of 30 pounds or less for next year's ride. Interestingly enough, by the way, I put the more heavily loaded panniers in front as the back already has plenty of weight (including me plus the addition of the two lighter panniers and the rack bag) and if the bike's too heavy in back the steering feels too light. I know it sounds a bit weird but that's the way it works best for me. Finally, I also made sure that the weight was evenly distributed left and right and I made a 4x6 card that identified the contents of each bag. You'd be surprised at how helpful that card was in allowing me to quickly and efficiently retrieve (and return) items from the various storage locations.

The night passed without incident although I did use the (supplied by RAGBRAI, bless their hearts) earplugs as there were both trains and plenty of highway 30 traffic nearby.

Sunday Morning ...

Got up a little before 6 and got the bike packed and rolling by around 6:30 (after letting myself out of "jail"). The first day's ride is from Missouri Valley to Harlan and it's very hilly. By the way, here is a nice summary of the day to day riding, giving the towns visited and the "ups and downs" of each day.

I set up the hammock at Pioneer Park in Harlan ... although I was mildly annoyed at having to ride all the way through town to get to the information center and then ride almost all the way back to get to a camping area with trees. Anyway, it was a pretty nice setup, as you can see from this picture:


Then I headed out to a nice little restaurant to have a sandwich and a vanilla shake in some restful and air-conditioned surroundings.

The interesting camping event at Harlan was the tornado warning at 2am on Monday morning. I heard the sirens and turned over for some more sleep and then heard them again ... along with a sepulchral voice giving some kind of directions (to a church, of course). Since I could feel the wind picking up significantly I decided it was probably time to heed the warning and I packed all my stuff on the bike in about 10 minutes and headed to a nearby street. There I met a couple trying to figure out where to go and I said that I heard "the voice" indicate that there should be a church to go to and they knew that there was one up the street a few blocks. So (since they were walking) I told them I'd ride up and check it out and ride back to let them know what I found. Well, the church was locked up but there was a school behind it that was open as a shelter (and already had riders spending the night there). I let the other two know the situation and then I put my bike inside and found a piece of carpet on the floor behind a stove in the kitchen area. There I laid out my blanket and pillow and got another hour or two of rest, or restless sleep. And there was no tornado but maybe 2-5 minutes of light rain ... however it did get very windy outside for awhile. What a tiring night!

For the day, I covered 64.54 miles in an average of 12.8 mph (5h 2m 32s of riding time). The odometer reading ended up at 1660.

Tomorrow day 2 ... Harlan to Jefferson

RAGBRAI XXXVI Completed!

Here's to a successful and fun ride completed yesterday morning at LeClaire, IA on the banks of the mighty Mississippi river! Had a good time on RAGBRAI and met many nice folks, including Beth, Keith, Pat, Heather, Emily, Yves, Ruth, Dennis, Dwight, Rick, Monica and Ben, among others.

Found some good spots to hang the hammock and also got indoor places to stay at for 4 of the 7 nights of the ride ... sweet. I was happy to spend time at two of the houses working on PC's ... seemed like a good trade (a room for some needed advice and updates on a computer) and we all had fun getting "computer stuff" accomplished.

Overall, I rode 504 miles in 40 hours and 3 minutes (about 12.6 mph average). I was happy with that and with the fact that my weight at the end of the ride was identical to what it was at the start ... 161 pounds (I gave a *real good* shot at gaining weight though ... hehe, especially when it came to home made ice cream). The maximum speed I hit was a shade over 38 mph (I know, not too earth shattering, eh?). Over the next week or so I'll be updating this blog with a few pieces of RAGBRAI info that I saved in my journal as well as some pictures taken along the way. I took today off from riding but I did actually feel like getting on the bicycle ... go figure! Toughest day: Monday, hands down ... town that stood out the most in my mind: Ogden ... very fun with nice wide streets and an extremely *non*claustrophobic feeling for the visiting bikers. Most evil deed: some person or persons laying tacks out on the road which caused flats for several riders ... I think this was reported on in the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

It's good to be finished with the challenge of RAGBRAI and it was very much worth doing. More posts to come, including the story about "Ken's laundry" ... stay tuned.

Later ...

Ready To Ride

Everything seems to be "Go" for takeoff to RAGBRAI tomorrow. The final numbers include 1595 miles and 100 hours of training, my weight is 161 and I got the equipment weight on the bicycle down to 36 pounds. That's about 19 pounds *less* than last year (and it includes 3 full bottles of water). The fully loaded bicycle (with me on it) weighs in at 231 pounds. So all the space/weight saving effort actually turned out to be worth it. The new panniers worked great on the final test ride today. About the only thing left before leaving tomorrow is for me to make sure the tires are inflated to 90 psi. I have a feeling that this year's ride is going to be wetter than last year's, based on the NWS forecasts for Iowa but we'll just have to see.

I don't expect to have internet access during the ride so there probably won't be any more updates here until about next Sunday, July 27. And I'm going to post more pictures in this year's RAGBRAI blog entries (OK, well, that's my goal at least!).

Later ...

RAGBRAI Weigh-In, Test Ride

Alright, there is good news! This morning I tested the Hennessey Hammock again and was able to quickly set it up and take it down. And I verified that, while I would normally only need 4 pegs for tie downs, I really need to bring along 6 in case I have to end up setting it up as a tent (two pegs replace the two trees that would normally be used). Again, though, I hope I don't have to use it as a tent as it would be a hard bed to lie on. And, as before, when I crawled inside to test out the hammock I almost immediately wanted to fall asleep ... that thing is sooooo comfortable.

Next, I packed all the bags and mounted them on the bicycle. A quick weigh-in test told me that the current load (with 2 bottles of water) is 39 pounds. I plan to add a third bottle so I'm sure it will hit 40 pounds ... and that's 15 pounds less than last year. My current weight is 161 so that's about 2 pounds more than last year (all muscle, of course, heh). Today I had a banana smoothie in preparation for all the strawberry-banana smoothies I'm planning on downing during the ride this year.

Finally, since one of my old (and smaller) pannier bags lost a rivet last year I decided that was a sign that I should get another set of (larger) bags and so I picked those up this afternoon. Yes, no more fashion faux pas for this rider, now the front and rear bags match up nicely, hehe. One more test ride tomorrow morning and I'll be good to go. Just hope I don't somehow manage to forget something anyway (I told the bicycle shop there was a 90% chance I'd be back there sometime tomorrow after I remember at least some of what I've forgotten). But seriously, I think that my list is pretty good as I've built it on last year's list and it's more complete (and lean) now.

Tomorrow I do have to also remember to mow the lawn (and I hope the rain lets up enough for that to be possible). Oh, and I need to take my bamboo plant to the neighbor across the street as it really likes water every day and it's special enough to me that I'd hate to see it suffer (and perhaps die). Remember, I've been known to kill cacti so it's not like I need to push the green thumb thing (hehe).

Later ...

Kudos to Canon

I was surprised yesterday to receive my repaired and fully operational camera back from Canon after sending it in to them only 12 days ago. Of course, I never figured it would be back in time for RAGBRAI so I got a new (lighter, smaller) camera for that. But my hat's off to Canon as they analyzed the camera's problem, recognized it as a known recall issue involved a CCD sensor failure, fixed it and then sent it back to me in an amazingly short (to me) time. And the camera does actually work now!

Today I will be packing the panniers and making a test run on the bike in its fully loaded configuration. I don't anticipate that there will be any significant problems. I'm also going to practice setting up and taking down the hammock a few times. Later ...

Mixing in some Golf too ...

Well, having played at Gardner on Sunday and Twin Pines today, I now have two official league rounds of golf in. On the back nine today I played with an interesting fellow named Bob who actually sings in a 4 part harmony barbershop quartet. He's going to call me one of these days to stop by at one of their rehearsals. I'll probably do that but I'm not sure that barbershop singing interests me too much ... especially since it's all A cappella. But since I've never really involved myself in that style before it should be fun to give it a whirl and, if nothing else, I expect to hear some good singing at their rehearsal.

Yesterday I degreased and re-lubed the bike chain and then repacked both the front and rear wheel bearings. After putting on new tires, I also lubed all the cables and pivot points in the derailleur/brake systems. Boy, that bike was running soooo smooth today. My best estimate on re-calibration of the cyclocomputer's wheel circumference value is that I needed to increase it by 4mm with the new (same style and size) tires installed. That means the diameter of the old tires had decreased by about 4/pi (about 1.27) mm. So the tire face had lost about .63 mm of tread (i.e. 1.27/2) in its lifetime of 4500 miles of biking so far. That really doesn't seem to be much tread wear ... h-mmm, maybe I should've put the old tire up against the new one and made an actual measurement. Well, too late now as I'm not going to do a tire change just for that. Maybe I'll check it when I put the old tires back on after RAGBRAI. I'm pretty confident they have another 1000 miles or so in them ... I just feel better about using the new tires for this upcoming adventure.

As of the end of today's training ride, I have 1551 miles in since starting in late March. That's in about 97 hours of riding. Looks like it will serve me well, especially in the first two hilly days at RAGBRAI this year. By the way, since I'm using a Hennessey Hammock instead of a tent, I hope that any camping I have to do will involve an area with trees! Actually, I can also set the hammock up as a tent, if need be, but that would result in a very hard surface to lay on since I'm not bringing any kind of mattress or closed cell foam pad.

Good news from Canon ... they're fixing my old camera at their expense as the CCD sensor problem was a recall issue for them. Yay! But they won't get it back to me before RAGBRAI so I'm happy I got a new (lighter, smaller) camera for the ride anyway.

Haven't put gas in my car since June 21. And probably won't have to until about the end of July (although I do have to pay for gas for my ride to get to the start of RAGBRAI and to be picked up at the finish). It's nice having the motorcycle, which, I'm reminding myself, needs to go in for its 12000 mile maintenance at the beginning of August.

By the way, my 41 (front 9 of Gardner last Sunday) for league actually won lowest net for the week and I got $10 for it ... nice. Not sure what my 9 hole handicap is ... probably about 9.

Starting to think about what to eat for supper, so I think I'll wrap this up now. There's a Tuesday night bicycling group that rides between two area places (bars/restaurants) and then has supper at the end of the round trip. I suppose I could do that tonight but I'm feeling pretty good about my workout situation today and I don't really feel like riding another 20 miles or so this evening ... although it would be fun ... h-mmm.

Later ... I ended up stopping over at Pei's for dinner and Alice shared with me that they are closing the place, effective this Friday, July 18. Tom and Alice will be renting the space to a guy who is going to open a Japanese restaurant there instead. Anyway, it's a sad day as I have really enjoyed going to Pei's ... although the one on the SW side of town will still be open. So I guess my main lead for a bartending job has now fallen through (hehe). Needless to say I, once again, did *not* go out on the Tuesday night restaurant ride. Maybe in two weeks.

1522 Miles

Passed the 1500 mile training marker during my 24.5 mile ride today. Pretty good ride, too, as there was a guy on a road bike that chased me for almost 5 miles, then drafted on me for a half mile, then passed me and I drafted on him for almost a mile until we reached Center Point. This afternoon was reserved for playing 18 holes of golf at Gardner city course with my singing friend Steve. Nice day for it except for the brisk winds and, somehow, I got a bit of a sunburn on one shoulder even though I had a goodly amount of sunscreen on (go figure!).

This week I'll be putting new tires on the bicycle (the current tires look OK, but they do have about 4500 miles on them), repacking the wheel bearings, lubing the chain and tweaking the shifting cables as the last few days to RAGBRAI count down. Also in there will be mounting the front wheel pannier brackets and doing at least one test ride with everything loaded (hopefully with a load of less than 45 pounds).

On an interesting (to me, at least) note, my Polar F11 heart rate monitor started acting erratically this weekend and so I changed batteries in both the watch and the transmitter belt ... but no joy. Now I've ordered a new transmitter belt but it's starting to smell a bit like a racket by Polar. We'll see how things play out. I wouldn't mind getting the HRM belt for my Neuro cyclometer but I like the Polar as it does a pretty good job of computing calories burned (for everyday workouts) and that's not a function of the Neuro HRM (as far as I can tell from reading the literature). Well, if anyone out there is dissatisfied with the way their Polar F11 watch/transmitter HRM system has been working, I'd like to hear about it. Mine is less than two years old and I replaced batteries in both the belt and the watch just last fall with no apparent ill effects. So this is a bit of a mystery to me. At any rate, I'm not using it on RAGBRAI so it's not a big deal from that perspective.

Among other things I'm looking forward to on next week's RAGBRAI is eating my share of homemade ice cream and banana-strawberry smoothies. It really is fun to eat about 4000 extra calories every day and not gain any weight. And, having said that, I will note that many people actually eat enough on the ride that they *do* gain weight by the end of the week. Proving that it seems to be always possible for someone to overdo pretty much anything, eh?

I've been missing Larry as I've played 2 rounds of golf in the past 10 days ... and I just don't feel at all like ever going out to his house again. It's the strangest feeling. I do realize that I've lost quite a bit, personally, in the last 7 months or so but I'm really getting a sense that I'm losing too many people that are close to me. And I don't know what to do about that. Maybe being a dedicated loner will help ...

Oh, by the way, I took a few pics with my new Canon SD890 IS camera today, just to see how the 5X zoom worked with the Image Stabilization. It looked pretty good but I'll have to spend a bit more time operating the camera before I'm going to be comfortable and efficient using it on RAGBRAI. It's my intent to take many more pictures this year than last, so I'm going to try to take 25-100 pictures every day. I'll charge the battery before I leave and I think it will handle taking pics all week long, especially if I use the manual viewfinder and pretty much leave the display turned off.

Well, I think I've rambled enough today ... think I'll watch another episode or two of "Friends" (3rd season).

Later ...

And 1400 Miles Goes By ...

So it turns out I'll easily have 1500 miles in before leaving for RAGBRAI (less than 2 weeks away). I've not been feeling well this past weekend (starting on the 4th) and I think it's just that I have been neglecting sleep. With Scott here and watching TV stuff and then I like to read in the evening so I think for almost two weeks I still tended to get up pretty early in the morning resulting in only about a 5 hour per night average for sleep. Anyway, feeling much better today as I try to keep my schedule if possible, but work on getting to bed earlier (11pm is my goal).

Did an interesting project last weekend (which I didn't really feel like doing but my neighbor, Jim, was available to help and so we got it done). I've always had a ceiling fan in the kitchen but the crazy guy that wired it didn't run separate switches for the light and the fan. Consequently, leaving the fan always on, I was forced to use the pull string switch on the fixture to turn on the light. Or, if I wanted the switch to run the light, I was forced to use the other pull string on the fixture to run the fan ... what a pain! The end result was that I rarely used the fan (since, most of the time, I simply want to use the overhead light in the kitchen). Well, I looked into what it would take to run wiring up there for the fan and it's a real pain to even get into that area of the attic. There's almost no overhead room up there. Anyway, becoming discouraged, I stopped looking at it for a long time. Then I was at Lowe's the other day and saw this remote control fan switch gizmo. I had to search for awhile to find "just the right one" that would work as a wall switch replacement and that did *not* require separate batteries (I hate replacing batteries all the time). So that's what Jim and I installed on Saturday. It's soooo cool. I now have a neat little switch on the wall where I push a button to turn on the light and have a choice of 3 fan speed buttons (and, of course, "off"). Very nice, and no crazy wiring was required plus no extraneous batteries were needed.

One drawback occurs if you have Compact Florescent Lighting (CFL) as all of the remotes I could find (even online) had a dimmer capability with the light control and the box says it will not work with CFL bulbs. Two comments on this: first, it *does* work with standard CFL bulbs if you do *not* engage the dimmer function. Figuring that's hard to be consistent about (especially if a guest in the home ever runs the light switch), I located some "dimmable" CFL bulbs. They are (even more) expensive, but if you want to add this remote capability and you've been considering replacing the standard bulbs in your ceiling fan, add these to your thought processes: 1, defer replacing the standard bulbs right away (because they'll work with the dimmer) or, 2, spring for the extra bucks and get the dimmable CFL variety (I was able to locate some only with an online search). Finally, this is a project that requires 4 hands when reinstalling the ceiling fan so make sure you have some help for that part. So if you've ever had this type of ceiling fan issue, stop in at Lowe's and see if this solution works for you ... if it does, it will make things much nicer in your life.

Well, I'm feeling like I should relax a bit as the temperature climbs into the upper 80's here ... still not feeling the need to turn on the air conditioner, though. Maybe I'll get by until at least the end of the month. H-mmm, sometime I need to get my other TV set up downstairs as it's really much, much cooler down there and I can also sleep in the guest bedroom there when it gets so hot and humid at night.

Later ...

Interesting July 3rd ...

Unusual day yesterday. First of all, I sold my old lawnmower. I learned about craigslist.com, a buy & sell website, and put in an ad for it at around 12:30am ... by 10am, someone emailed me, I called them and it was out of the garage by 10:30. So if you have something to sell, give craigslist a try ... I think you'll like it.

I also played my first round of league golf yesterday, ironically enough with a guy that's not actually in the league this year. It was a fun day except for the one guy that kept hitting into us (he was there golfing with his 10 and 12 year old daughters). We talked to him but it kept happening ... so at hole number 14, when he did it again, I hit his ball back to the ladies tees. I think he might have figured things out by then because he finally stopped hitting into us.

Needless to say I didn't have many moments of glory but I had one birdie and a few very good shots (keeps the crowd on edge, you know!). However, those good shots weren't enough to compensate for missed approaches and lack of driving range time ... but the weather was perfect and it was a great day.

Fun Today at 1325 Miles

Well, it was a very nice day today. Getting a bit warmer and more humid but still nice for July 1. It looks like I'll be right at 1500 miles for RAGBRAI and, after reading the route description, all those training hours may be a very good thing (given the hills this year). Basically, I think that a relaxed attitude of "keep the spin going" and get over the next hill (while looking for the next Strawberry-Banana smoothie or homemade ice cream stand) will be a good thing.

By the way, Sandra, a good friend of mine, is going to give me a ride out to Missouri Valley so that's really a load off my mind ... very much appreciated! She will also pick me up at the end of the ride on the 26th. Again, you can follow along on where the riders are by going to www.ragbrai.org ...

Tonight Scott and I stopped out to a couple of bars to experience the (new for Iowa) non-smoke environment and it was a real difference! Had a few beers (and a margarita) and it was very relaxing.

Not much else to talk about ... my weight is passing through 163 on the way down to 159 or so and I'll probably (realistically) be at about 161 at the start of the ride on the 19th. I feel good about that.

Later ...