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 ...