Ken Lee-The Journal

Bicycle Knee Soreness-Not

2011-08-31T23:20:00.013-05:00

Introduction
From time to time I have heard of or have been involved in conversations where a biker (bicyclist type) complains about having sore knees after riding, even if only on rides of fairly short distances (<10 miles). Not being a doctor, I can't make any professional medical pronouncements on this condition but I want to take a few minutes to share some experience I have on the subject. If it works for you, great, if not then "Big Disclaimer, yadda, yadda, yadda... ;-).

I have had sore knees in the past from running on hard surfaces and from many, many hours in the gym practicing and playing volleyball. Bicycling, walking and cross country skiing are now my preferred exercise modes primarily because they are very low impact. But when I first started logging a significant number of biking miles (15-16 years ago), I would occasionally come up with sore knees too. The resolution I quickly arrived at was pretty straightforward, primarily involving "fitting" of the bicycle to my body flavored with the addition of some understanding about the mechanics of how the body handles the motion and effort involved in propelling a bicycle. Please note that this article is primarily directed toward standard bicycle frames and not recumbent bicycles, although the main principles apply to both.

Background
There are 4 important elements to consider if you want to get the most out of your bicycle riding time while avoiding sore knees. These are:

1. Correct frame size for your leg length
2. Correct setting of the saddle position
3. Monitoring pedal cadence while riding
4. Monitoring your heart rate while riding

Follow The Steps
The first two items above comprise the elements of fitting the bicycle to the individual (you). Items 3 and 4 complement the (now) well fitted bicycle and rider, providing real time feedback to ensure the most efficient return on exercise time as well as providing awareness of proper pedaling effort... very important in terms of preventing injuries or chronic pain conditions from occurring. More detail is presented step by step below.

Step 1.
Taking the time and effort to get the proper frame size is crucial to everything that follows. I recommend that this be done with professional guidance at your Local Bike Shop. Generally, the longer the rider's legs, the bigger the frame that is required. As an example, for me at 5'10", the correct frame size (for my 2007 TriCross Sport bicycle) is 54cm. There is a fairly close correlation between frame size and overall height but I recommend paying attention to your inseam size (mine is 33"). At any rate, the variables here clearly lend themselves to "on the bike" measurement by someone that does this type of thing regularly.

Step 2.
Once the proper size bike is available be sure to take the time to ensure the proper saddle height. This is as important as step 1 and must never be neglected. To set the saddle height, first get the saddle in an approximately appropriate "fore-aft" position (don't worry too much about this yet). Then sit on the saddle (holding yourself up by a wall or the side of a car or with assistance from a companion) and, with normal riding shoes on, place the heel of your foot on either pedal with the pedal in its fully "extended down" position. If the leg can be just straightened completely (with no noticeable bend), you are set. If the leg is bent then the saddle is too low and must be raised. If the heel cannot comfortably reach the pedal with the leg fully extended then the saddle is too high and must be lowered. Adjust the saddle and check again until the height seems to be right. And be careful to ensure that the seat post is inserted within its proper (marked on the post) range.

It may be necessary to iterate the "up/down" and "fore/aft" a few times to get it right. Fore/aft saddle placement is best done by holding a string with a weight (use a large washer or a nut) against the outside base of the patella of the knee while sitting on the bike with the foot (not just the heel) properly placed on the pedal and the pedal in the fully forward (crank parallel to the ground) position. The string should exactly intersect the axle of the pedal. If it is forward of the pedal axle, the saddle must be moved back and if it is back of the pedal axle, the saddle must be moved forward. In either case, if saddle movement is required, the vertical position of the saddle should be re-checked to ensure that it is still correct. Some personal leeway is generally applied regarding fore/aft saddle position. Many riders prefer, for example, to set the saddle back just a little as they feel it adds more power to the pedaling stroke. If you feel you do need to deviate from the fore/aft positions outlined here, I recommend the rearward direction over moving the saddle forward as it implies less pressure on bent knee joints.

An interesting point about vertical saddle position is this: in order to make the most effective (and efficient) use of the legs, the rider should never be able to easily touch the ground with more than the tips of the toes when sitting on the saddle. This means that dismounting is accomplished by removing one foot (say the right one) from its pedal, standing on the other (the left) leg and then bending that supporting leg to lower the (right) foot to the ground... all the while braking in a coordinated fashion to complete the stop. It's my opinion that most sore knees happen to inexperienced riders who feel insecure if they are unable to put their feet down flatfooted on the ground while still sitting on the saddle. When a bike is set up in this fashion, as noted above, the saddle is set too low. The result will always be that the legs are not allowed to reach their full length (and maximum power) when pedaling and, I think, this is what strains the ligaments of the knee, causing the soreness.

Once steps 1 and 2 are completed to the rider's satisfaction, the importance of using the bicycle's gearing system properly moves front and center as the key to items 3 and 4. Items 3 and 4 complement each other and they are intimately joined by use of the mechanical advantages given by proper selection of the front and rear gears of the bike.

Step 3.
Monitoring pedal cadence (i.e., RPM of pedals) is relevant to both efficient use of the engine (the rider's body) driving the bicycle as well as the condition of the mechanical linkage (particularly the rider's knees) upon which power transmission to the pedals depends. It may be easiest to think of this in terms of how a car's engine and transmission interact. The principles are identical. For example, when driving a car with a standard transmission (say, 5 speeds) one starts off in the lowest (or 2nd lowest) gear. The reason is that there is more mechanical advantage in the lower gear and, although the top speed of the car might only be 15 or 20 mph in the low gear, extra power is provided to the wheels to get the mass of the vehicle moving. Without the gearing system, the car might require a 1000 horsepower engine to both "get started" as well as to cruise on the interstate. Efficiency would definitely suffer if this were the case.

In terms of the bicycle rider, and the issue of sore knees, efficient transmission of the rider's muscle power to the pedals means that extreme stress on the knee ligaments is avoided by proper gear selection. In other words, riding in "too high" a gear at slow speeds will put strain on the knee joint. So gear down as appropriate to how fast you wish to ride. While there's generally no additional strain involved with "spinning" pedals too fast (i.e. too low a gear when traveling at relative high speed), riders almost naturally seem to shift up (as well they should) when that occurs.

Step 4.
As promised, this step ties in to the 3 preceding elements by allowing the rider to monitor the condition of the "engine" (you... and your heart) in various states of gearing and effort expenditure during a ride. Pedaling cadence, gearing and the rider's heart rate (or amount of effort being put into the ride) are intimately related. If you don't know your aerobic exercise range of heart rate, please take the time to find out what it is (google will do a good job helping you learn this) and be aware of the numbers as you will use them regularly if you follow the precepts presented here. My range is from 125 to 150 beats per minute (bpm). A heart rate below the low value means the body is not being as efficient as it could be at, for example, burning fat... or at utilizing the carbohydrate produced energy of the body to get the best speed for the least amount of effort. The goal is to maximize the amount of time spent in your aerobic zone. To this end it's useful to use a heart rate monitor (HRM) on the bicycle.

Putting It All Together
With a properly fitted bicycle, monitoring one's heart rate to keep it in your aerobic zone while simultaneously keeping tabs on pedaling cadence for a preferred value (for me, 80-90 rpm feels right) will give the rider the best riding performance and least stress on the knees. For example, if, in my case, my heart rate drops to 110 and my cadence is 95, it's time to shift up to a higher gear. That will make my heart (or me as the "engine") speed up as I work closer to my body's maximum efficiency regime. So I might shift (back rings) from 6th to 7th. Whereupon I will immediately notice the cadence dropping (to, say, 85) and my heart rate should increase (to, say, 120). In this case, I'd probably shift up again to 8 and put more effort into pedaling to get my heart rate up to about 130 and keep the cadence at around 85. Well, I think you get the idea.

Conversely, if my heart rate should go significantly about 150 (my maximum for aerobic exercise), I'd probably adapt by shifting to a lower gear, reducing the pedaling effort... and see the heart rate drop to, say 140. Meanwhile, I'd keep paying some attention to the cadence so that it leveled off again at the (favorite) 85 rpm rate.

A quick word of caution: be sure to maintain your concentration on riding safely and with due attention to people and other bikers on the trail or to traffic around you if on the road. As always, riding should be an enjoyable experience. Hopefully this article will be useful to those that have been trying to solve sore knee problems when bicycling. Feel free to comment.

Washington Insanity

2011-07-29T07:58:00.003-05:00

While I don't usually comment on the events in our nation's capital, this is one time that I feel compelled to do so. One reason is that my son is in the process of moving and has just received an offer on the house he's selling. But the buyer hasn't finalized yet and it's *very* likely that the buyer's financing costs are going to go up. At this point, that is likely regardless of whether or not our (less than astute) politicians raise the government's debt ceiling. The reason is that the U.S.'s credit rating is certainly going to be downgraded by the other 2 (of 3) rating agencies and credit across the country will be going up. Yes, that includes borrowing costs for us, the taxpayers.

Everyone out there, blame *both* Republicans and Democrats. Republicans for the budgetary mess they've generated during the Bush administration (2 unfunded wars plus the $1 trillion unfunded prescription drug program) and Democrats for being just as liable in going along with deregulation (or "looking the other way") steps regarding the mortgage backed securities fraud being perpetrated by Wall Street since at least the Clinton administration. Additionally, Democrats seem to almost never see a tax they would like to add.

Proclivity to tax and spend by Democrats, coupled with the Tea Party anti-tax fanaticism and overall consuming greed of conservatives has meant that there are no longer enough moderate voices to pass legislation, important or not, that is meaningful and rational and very necessary to the welfare and progress of our country. The answer has been clear... we need to let the Bush tax cuts expire and also cut spending in rational and appropriate ways. We then need to reform our tax code with an eye to letting all contribute appropriately (some kind of "flat" tax algorithm). If any of this happens now, at the 11th hour, it will be in spite of the Tea Party but, and note this carefully, it is already too late to prevent a fairly decent negative shock to our economy (just what we need, I know) in the form of 1-2% increases in interest rates across the board.

As Bush's administration unfolded I took no joy in knowing that I (a lifelong Republican at that point) did not vote for him either time. Or that I finally dropped my Republican party affiliation in Iowa and became an Independent. I still vote for the person I think will do the best job, but it's hard to see anyone in Washington doing that right now. All I can say is... what a bunch of losers we have there. And it's us, the voters, that are to blame. So what are we going to do about it?

Minnesota's Budget Crisis Ends... Cheers!

2011-07-15T18:07:00.002-05:00

Interesting to note that the Minnesota legislature (and Governor Dayton) rather quickly (after such a long period of disagreement and non-compromising stands) came up with a solution to the budget crisis that has shut the state down for several weeks. Interesting because it seems that the real mover was the fact that it wouldn't be very long before no more beer would be available in the state due to the lack of official government business license sales. That was very clearly enough to get things going and a resolution appeared in short order. It would seem that timely resolution of the Minnesota budget issues would've been assured, in tandem with tremendous angst avoidance, if the legislative session was scheduled to end on St. Patrick's Day.

We can only hope that the President and the (so-called) leaders of Congress decide that they too need to share a beer...

Droid 2 Global and Rapid Car Charger on Garmin Friction Mount

2011-01-10T15:09:00.043-06:00

Being both a long time GPS development engineer (now retired) as well as a commercial GPS user, I've used the Garmin Friction (or "bean bag") mount in my car for many years. It's reliable, easy to move out of sight and great for moving to an alternate vehicle whenever that need arises. Additionally, for California driving in particular, using the bean bag mount is a good alternative to mounting the GPS device to the windshield--illegal in that state.

With the advent of smart phones and their very useful, somewhat sophisticated GPS navigation capabilities, I finally did buy one ... a Droid 2 Global. The GPS driven goal of using this phone was to be able to attach it to my Garmin friction mount, for the reasons given above.

Some online research led me to the Motorola Car Mount and Rapid Car Charger device for the Droid 2. This product works as is for the Droid 2 Global and there are different models for other phones (such as Droid X). So I had part of my answer but hadn't yet found a connection device that would let me hook it up to the bean bag mount.

Enter ProClipUSA and their "2 Prong (Dual T) Adapter Plate with Tilt Swivel" (P/N 215199). Coupled with their P/N 215049, the "Angled extension plate for use with the Garmin Friction mount", I felt that I finally had the answer I was looking for. In the process of researching and exchanging emails to get to this point, however, I became aware that there were concerns and issues with mounting the phone into the Car Mount and Rapid Car Charger while the phone was still in its case. Most of the comments ended in hints that the only case(s) that would fit were produced by Motorola (big surprise, eh?). But my new phone was already fitted with a Seidio Innocase. I like this case because it gives the phone a great feel, it is very easy to "get a grip" on and, bottom line, I'm loath to give it up. But moving forward on the "GPS mounted in the car" front might mean I'd have to give the case up ... if it just totally wouldn't work. Time would tell the story and I'll show you what I did and how all the parts go together in the rest of this article.

This is the Motorola Car Mount and Rapid Car Charger--the installation of which is the subject of this article. Note the phone power (micro-USB) connector extending up from near the bottom, just left of center. The phone must insert smoothly over this power connector.

This picture shows the rear view of the Motorola Car Mount and Rapid Car Charger (which I'll call the "Car Mount" from this point on). Note the micro-USB power connect plugin on the lower left. This is where power from the (included) 12V car "cigarette lighter" cable is received by the car mount. The center section contains the dual "T" mounting slots and this is what must be adapted to the Garmin Friction mount.

Here is the ProClipUSA dual "T" adapter (P/N 215199) already attached to the Angled Extension plate (P/N 215049). In this configuration, it is capable of swiveling, turning and it is ready to install directly into the Garmin Friction mount. Note the dual tabs and, returning to the previous picture, it's easy to see how they fit into the Car Mount.

Note the closeup detail here of the left interior corner of the Car Mount. In particular, notice the small lip that extends in from the inner edge. The purpose of this lip is to provide "in and out" horizontal support to keep the mounted phone in place on the Car Mount. We'll go into more detail later on why this is an issue for phone cases.

This is the Droid 2 "insert" for the car mount. Being a well designed device, the Car Mount allows for the Droid 2 (or Droid 2 Global) to be inserted with or without having a case attached. This insert uses up the extra space that a case would normally use just "in case" you'd like to use your phone without the case. If the insert was not present the phone would not be stable in the mount and would essentially be held in place by the power connector only. That would be a non-workable design. Just pop in the insert and the phone fits perfectly.

This shows the "no case" adapter insert being slid into place on the car mount.

And, finally, this shows the Car Mount with the Droid 2 insert adapter fully installed. The difference with and without the insert is subtle but can easily be seen by comparing this to the 1st picture of this article (which shows the Car Mount *without* the Droid 2 insert). Note that the Car Mount comes with the insert installed so it must be removed to work with a phone that remains in its case. Also, there is a second insert supplied that allows using the original Droid phone (although I cannot comment on how it works as I don't have that phone to test it with). For this project, we are not interested in using the Droid 2 insert since it's best to mount the phone while it remains in its regular case, so we remove it.

This is the Garmin Friction mount. It has a bit of heft to it and is coupled with a non-skid bottom surface so that it does a very good job of staying wherever it is placed on your dash. While this unit is specifically from Garmin, similar (and compatible) mounts may be purchased from 3rd party vendors at such stores as Target.

Here is the ProClip mount (pictured earlier) attached to the Garmin Friction mount. It is now clear that all we need to accomplish is to successfully attach the Car Mount to the "dual T" mounting tabs on the ProClip and we'll be most of the way there.

And so we have it. All the critical components (sans power) together in one spot with the exception of the Droid 2 Global phone itself. At this point, it's probably best if I elaborate on an earlier comment regarding concerns about using "whatever case" one would like to use on the phone, and not having to remove that case just to mount the phone in the Car Mount. Alas, I found, at first blush, that my Seidio Innocase would not "fit" into the car mount. The next picture, however, illustrates my solution to this problem.

This is a picture of the backside portion of my Seidio Innocase. For orientation purposes, the right (near vertical) edge is the bottom of the case. So the corner seen here is the lower right, looking from the front. What I did is quite simple and I think most people should have an easy time repeating it. Look closely and you can see that the edge at the top (which is the right-hand side of the case) looks fairly rough ... like it has been filed down. And so it has. After using a small, fine file to take out about 1/2 inch on both the lower right and lower left vertical sections of the case, it was able to slip past the "holding tabs" in the Car Mount and let the phone mate perfectly with the power connector. Check below for more detail pictures.

Here is a closeup of the Seidio Innocase, filed down per the previous paragraph. Note how the minor bit of filing allows it to slide down behind the Car Mount's "hold in" tabs. This is the only trick to getting this case to work and I suspect the same technique will be just as effective for other cases that might not fit the Car Mount when first tried.

And here is a picture of the Seidio Innocase for the Droid 2 Global successfully installed in the Car Mount. The small amount of filing done was in two spots that did not involve the case's "hold on" tabs for the phone and it had absolutely no functional effect on the case. The filing is also virtually impossible to see with the case attached to the phone. And, of course, it works!

Here is a closeup from the right rear of the Car Mount showing the connected power cord (from the vehicle power adapter).

Here is the completed project with the Droid 2 Global phone in the Car Mount and displaying the Motorola supplied application that automatically runs when the phone senses that it is connected to the Car Mount. The sharp eyed amongst you may notice that the hold down arm at the top of the mount has not yet been pushed down onto the phone (but see the next, and final, picture for that).

This final picture shows the completed project with phone installed and ready to be taken out to the car and plugged in. And it works well.

To summarize, the parts for this are available at ProClipUSA.com (P/N 215199 and 215049) and, among other places, Amazon.com for the Motorola Car Mount and Rapid Car Charger. The Garmin Friction mount is available at numerous locations online and locally at stores like Target, WalMart, etc. This project specifically involved installation of the Droid 2 Global with a Seidio Innocase but it also works for the Droid 2. I strongly suspect that it will work for the Droid X (given the proper Car Mount model) and the corresponding Seidio Innocase but perhaps someone who actually implements this for the Droid X would be willing to comment on the success of their effort. I'm also confident that other cases will be able to be made to work but you have to look at them to see what specifically blocks them from mounting in order to determine that. And, of course, there appear to be one or more Motorola cases that are designed to work with this setup without additional modification.

I hope this has been useful to you and feel free to comment. Thanks!

DSL/Phone Wiring

2011-01-08T09:18:00.033-06:00

Starting off the New Year right is one of my priorities in life. For me, that often means implementing a fun project, typically involving technology and/or something around the house, car, bicycle or all of the above. This year was no exception and I decided that it was time to put together all the parts I had accumulated over the past several months to update my telephone wiring. To be clear, this is *not* about ripping out all the wiring behind the walls in my house. It's just to improve the "visible" stuff in the unfinished basement utility room area. There were 4 primary goals for this project:

1. Clean up the spider web phone wiring mess just inside the house.
2. Directly connect a DSL jack to Telco Network Interface Device (NID).
3. Implement whole house phone line surge protection.
4. Clean up the alarm system phone line connection.

In addition to these enumerated goals, a side benefit was to gain knowledge and experience about proper wiring supplies, techniques and equipment.

It helps to understand the solutions if the specific problem areas are described in more detail. The following paragraphs will do this ... check them out to see if you may have some of the same issues or concerns about "doing it right" (or at least "doing it better than it was" ).

POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) Wiring
As was common in the mid 90's when this house was built, standard 4 wire (Red, Green, Yellow, Black) telephone cable was installed. Not very resistant to cross talk and capable of generating quite a bit of noise, I was uncomfortable with using it for my DSL connection to the Telco (Qwest, in this case) NID outside the house. The inside wiring was done in the "Star" configuration where each wire pair was connected to the NID and then run directly to a room (or area) of the house. In the destination area, it might be hooked up in series (daisy chained) but the star technique still allowed for isolation of connection problems to a small number of phone jacks. Good idea, but it felt like a better idea to bring a single line into the house (and see the DSL section, below) for a very short distance, subsequently distributing it via multiple cables to the various rooms.

DSL
The aDSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) 7Mbps connection had been working OK but there were occasional times (confirmed by Qwest technical support) when somewhat high "dropped bit" rates were encountered. Not knowing the source of this, it felt important to do the best possible job of eliminating local house wiring as an issue. For this reason, and in tandem with the goal to bring a single cable set in from the NID, 4-UTP (Unshielded Twisted Pair) Cat 5E cable was chosen to bring the connection in to the house. While good cable alone doesn't make for a good connection (connectors, jacks, proximity to power and noise carrying lines and installation technique are all contributors), using the correct cable *is* a key requirement for a good, solid connection and it's a straightforward thing to do. The idea was to run as directly as possible from the NID to a jack specifically used only for connecting to the DSL modem.

The "normal" DSL setup for a residence is usually done on the cheap and often consists only of connecting Telco supplied low pass filters to all the active "phone" connections to keep the high frequency DSL signal noise out of voice conversations and prevent the low frequency (voice and DC) signals from attenuating the DSL signal. Not wanting to put a filter on each phone in the house, the original wiring job fed the input lines to a pair of DSL filters before distribution to the rest of the house (with the DSL line running directly out to the NID). These small filters, however, are not designed to operate this way and may be overloaded, depending on the number of phones in the house that simultaneously ring. The alternative chosen was to implement what's called a DSL-POTS splitter. This device is mounted (depending on its specific design) at the NID or just inside the building and it filters and splits the input line's signal into its voice and DSL components. It does cost a bit ($35 or so for this one) but it provides a relatively cheap and elegant alternative to appending a filter to each phone. In this case, the Wilcom PS-15-I3S (mounts inside the residence) xDSL-POTS splitter was chosen and two were installed to allow for possible future easy movement of the DSL connection to Line 2 (from the standard Line 1) as well as the option to have 2 independent DSL lines active simultaneously. Another benefit is the redundancy factor--for single line DSL, should one of the splitters fail, it would be a very quick procedure to switch to the other, avoiding more than minimal down time.

Surge Protection
Similar to the issue (see above) regarding DSL/voice filters, the proliferation of phone line surge protection devices was something that needed addressing. Another good argument for bringing a single set of wires into the house from Telco, the idea was to run them through a surge protection device *before* distribution through the rest of the house phone wiring. The device chosen to accomplish this was the Open House ChannelPlus Telephone Entry Module (model H611). The H611 is designed to mount in a service center enclosure box (Open House model H318 used here) and provide surge protection for up to 4 incoming Tip/Ring pairs. In addition, it provides an RJ-31X jack to allow line seizure capability for an alarm system. Since the DSL line bypasses the voice line surge protection provided by the H611, a separate, surge protection device (TrippLite's Traveler 100Bt) was added at the DSL jack to protect the DSL modem (and downstream devices). Simple, effective (it is hoped) and now the whole house is protected from some degree of line surge without having to incorporate multiple surge protection devices.

Alarm System
While the alarm system (Rokonet Wisdom) was a DIY home project, it works very well and is designed to seize the phone line to call out to user programmed phone numbers (ostensibly to an alarm monitoring service but, for this system, just my cell phone). In order to do this, the alarm system must be connected as the first "phone" in system and the RJ-31X jack is designed to make that easy to do. The challenge here was to take out the old 4 wire cable connecting the alarm system and connect it to the H611's RJ-31X jack with standard (3-UTP) 24 gauge twisted pair wiring.

In summary, the problems above were to be addressed and the implementation accomplished is described below. Pictures of the detailed connections in the H318 Service Center Enclosure tell the story.

This picture shows the white H318 Service Center Enclosure box mounted in its final location between two wall studs in the basement utility room. The two black components mounted near the top of the box are the Wilcom PS-15-I3S DSL-POTS splitters for Line 1 and Line 2, respectively. The horizontal rectangular unit below the splitters is the H611 Telephone Entry Module. The blue Cat 5E cable entering the Enclosure at the top left side carries the Line 1 and Line 2 wires from the Telco Network Interface Device outside the house. The other blue Cat 5E cable exits the Enclosure at the top right side and goes directly to the DSL modem wall jack.

The leftmost white cable (on the H611) is a Cat 3 UTP from the "Phone" outputs of the two splitters and it connects via the H611's 110 punchdown connector for (input from the CO) Tip and Ring on Lines 1 and 2.

The middle white cable is another Cat 3 UTP connected to the H611's RJ-31X connector and it runs to the alarm system in the upstairs entryway to the house.

The rightmost white cable leaving the H611 consists of the surge protected Line 1 and Line 2 outputs from the H611 and it runs up and to the left of the Enclosure where it connects to the rest of the house's phone wiring.

Finally, the green wire running horizontally across the top of the Enclosure is simply a 10 gauge ground wire.

This is a closeup of the Open House H611 Telephone Entry Module. Here you can see (from left to right) the 110 connector for lines 1-4 (note that lines 1 and 2 are connected), the RJ-45 telephone disconnect plug, the RJ-31X alarm connector (at the bottom) and the house telephone output on the right side with Line 1 and Line 2 connected via the RJ-45 plug (which is connected in parallel to the alternative output 110 connector). For maximum connection flexibility, RJ-45/RJ-11 plugs were used wherever the option was available. Note the "Surge Warning" lights associated with each of up to 4 telephone lines that the H611 might be protecting. Each line is protected to 50 Joules and 4000 Amps. If the surge level is high enough, surge protection will be lost and the surge event will be shown as an illuminated LED associated with the appropriate line(s). Repair or replacement of the H611 module would then be required. Regarding connecting wires to the 110 connector--be sure to invest in a 110 punch down tool for this task. The 110 is a fairly sophisticated Insulation Displacement Connection (IDC) system and trying to get by with, for example, a screwdriver and/or needle nose pliers is unlikely to seat the wire properly, resulting in damaged contacts and possible future failure of the connected phone line(s). Finally, the module's RJ-45 jacks are wired to the TIA T568A standard.

The H611 module connects to the Service Enclosure with metal tabs in the back designed to fit the vertical columns of device mounting holes in the Enclosure.

This picture shows the Wilcom xDSL-POTS splitters mounted and connected in the Service Enclosure. The two units are facing each other to allow use of the RJ connections while minimizing the wire length needed as Line 1 and Line 2 are broken out from their respective cables to be sent to the individual signal splitter devices. The splitter on the left handles Line 1, the one on the right handles Line 2. Since these devices are not designed to mount directly into the Enclosure's pre-drilled holes, Velcro was used to attach them and to give some additional flexibility regarding precise location.

Testing
Integrity of the wiring was verified by inspection and by alternating the Line 1 supplied DSL signal between both the Line 1 and Line 2 splitters. Given this setup utilizing the RJ plug connections, line swapping to accomplish this test was trivial. Additionally, although this residence does not currently have regular POTS service from Qwest, a Phone Labs Dock-N-Talk was attached at the Network Interface Device to provide Tip and Ring in parallel with the DSL signal from the Telco. The phones and alarm system in the house were successful at dialing out. But full confidence in the alarm's line seizure capability will not be achieved until such time as regular Telco service can be used to verify it. Most DIYer's working on this kind of project probably have regular Telco phone service so that test is something that will normally be easily accomplished and it should not be neglected.

Finally, the new Service Enclosure all buttoned up and operating as planned. Much neater looking than the random wires that were floating around in the basement. For future reference, all device documentation as well as a rough schematic and URL reference to this blog are included in an envelope inside the Service Enclosure.

It is hoped that the information presented here is useful to others that may be mulling over the issues of telephone line surge protection, DSL/POTS performance and possible problems with handling an alarm system's dialing requirements. Again, this is just what one individual did and there may be better solutions ... but perhaps it's a good starting point.

All comments are welcome and please don't be put off because comments are reviewed before appearing in the article.

Qwest DSL--Throttling?

2010-12-23T10:38:00.004-06:00

You may be aware that there's quite a bit of discussion reflecting concern and actual problems with true available bandwidth for the end users of various broadband delivery systems, including cable, satellite and DSL. I have Qwest DSL (ADSL), which I recently upgraded from 1.5 Mbps (download) to 7.0 Mbps. The key reason I upgraded was because I was seeing quite a bit of lag time with streaming video ("buffering") from various news websites as well as YouTube. The idea I had was that the basic bandwidth being received might have been so close to the edge that any kind of internet load could cause such delays. In addition, as past posts will reveal, I added MagicJack internet calling this spring, further consuming bandwidth on my DSL line. So it seemed like a good idea and the cost was actually a wash if I switched from my local ISP to Qwest's preferred ISP, MSN.

The switchover was very smooth and I went so far as to even buy Qwest's ActionTec PK5000 modem (rather than a 3rd party modem). So I was lined up with Qwest's preferred equipment and ISP, the change was very efficient and there I was one fine day, running at 7Mbps and enjoying it. By the way, no faster DSL speed is available at my location or I may have tried for something like 20Mbps.

But the honeymoon was fairly short lived. Although the interruptions were fewer, I started noticing that there was still quite a bit of streaming video buffering going on. The typical time of day was during the work week between 6pm and 10pm CT with virtually no problems during the daytime unless it was a holiday or, occasionally, on weekends. I started capturing bandwidth data from 3 main online (and free) speed measuring sites: bandwithplace.com, speedtest.net and pcpitstop.com. Sure enough, I was seeing download speeds of well under Qwest's requirement (80% of 7Mbps, or 5.6Mbps). Often speeds were in the under 2Mbps range with the lowest reading to date being .77Mbps (on December 9, 2010 at 7:44pm CT) ... and, yes, these are download readings, *not* upload (which is spec'd at about .75Mbps and is consistently around .65 to .72Mbps).

So I called Qwest and immediately learned a very interesting fact. Their performance criteria of 80% of 7Mbps applies *only* to the data link (in the midwest) from Qwest's servers in Kansas City or Minneapolis (take your pick) to your residence (for example, I'm here in Iowa). So if you want to verify that Qwest is contractually compliant with their requirement on their DSL delivery bandwidth, the only way to check it out is to run their test at http://kansas-city.speedtest.qwest.net/ ... what that means is that your overall performance is not their concern at all (yes, I was told those very words). The only thing they are obligated to provide is whatever bandwidth you're paying for from their server(s) to your residence.

This is new stuff to me and I've not seen it described this way in the forums and blogs I've been reading on the subject. The fact that my performance is good except when it seems that a much larger part of the population is probably logging on to the internet could mean that the internet is just busy and everyone is slowing down ... or not. I have a theory that says it's possible for Qwest to throttle the "input* side of their servers based on total data transfer requests (which will obviously go up during high usage times like the evening) but still provide the full bandwidth paid for on their servers' output side (which is the input to residences). In my case, I typically do see about 6Mbps and, since it should never be lower than 5.6Mbps (.8 * 7), it's certainly acceptable. But why is it that there are many times when I'm seeing 6Mbps from Qwest but at the same time only, say, 1.58Mbps from a measuring site like bandwidthplace.com or speedtest.net?

When Qwest actually came out to my home, they verified that the modem was properly installed, the wiring was all good and everything in my local network was working fine. But I have also actually seen bandwidth data from Qwest showing download speeds as low as 2.1 to 2.7Mbps. It's quite rare, but did give me the reason for a no-cost visit from them while they checked it out. They had no answers for me but when the problem occurs (and I'm keeping the measurements in a spreadsheet) they also want me to verify the internal modem status on my LAN at 192.168.0.1. It always has shown 7168Kbps for download and 896Kbps for upload but I'm also now collecting that data.

So the bottom line here is that it looks suspicious to me that I can get excellent performance from Qwest but dismal overall bandwidth when loading actual internet data. And, after all, it's overall performance that counts. If I'm getting throttled 1Mbps data over a "bigger pipe" (i.e. 7Mbps DSL), it's still only 1Mbps to my system. And what I'm wondering is if there are other folks out there that see similar performance, particularly Qwest DSL customers. Any 20Mbps customers out there that have similar issues? It's discouraging to me to think that I could probably go back to 1.5Mbps service and have everything work just as well ... but that's about where I am today, based on what I see at my computer and the data I've collected regarding this issue.

To be "fair and balanced", I do see where it makes sense for Qwest to have contractual terms that limit their performance liability to something they can control (i.e., Kansas City or Minneapolis to you). Otherwise, they'd probably be getting hammered by folks about every underpowered server system on the internet where the output bandwidth may be 1/2 Meg or so. But the performance hits I regularly see (pretty much every day) are enough to at least make me think that DSL might be a poor choice, at least from Qwest, for consistent download bandwidth operation. Wish there were some alternatives, like fiber optic ... but cable is my only other choice and it's more expensive, plus there seem to be similar bandwidth issues there, according to some comments I've heard and read.

Please comment if you have more information on this. Thanks everyone!

MagicJack ... It Does Work

2010-03-24T17:14:00.007-05:00

Primarily out of a desire to save daytime (7am - 5pm, M-F) cell minutes while not having a landline, I decided to give MagicJack's VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) system a try. Basically, it's pretty much a no-brainer to at least try since it's only $40 for the first year of service (and $20 per year after that). This writeup is going to be my documentation of the high's and low's of installing and using MagicJack (MJ) over the first few days. I'll update it later with comments about my ongoing experience regarding its long term functioning and viability.

First, the ordering process. I ordered from the online store late in the evening of March 14, 2010, using a PC running WinXP with Google's Chrome browser. At the time I decided to order I'd already spent about 1.5 hours reading comments on MJ from various forums as well as familiarizing myself with how it worked via the FAQ sections on its web pages. At any rate, I decided to order (with a credit card) and got to the very end of the process when some additional, final question (I don't even remember what it was) popped into my head and I left the order page right at the point of "last click". However, I hadn't closed the page because I didn't want to go through the entire ordering process again. I just clicked over to another tab that had the FAQ section on it and read through to find the answer to that one last question. This took me about 10 minutes. Imagine my surprise when I returned to the order page to see a "Thank you" for my order. I absolutely never clicked that last required link so I know it timed out or something and entered the order as if I *had* actually done so. Fortunately, by the way, it did use the cheapest shipping option. This "auto timeout order click" thing was disturbing, but since that final question was answered correctly (for me) and I really was going to order anyway, I let it go. Again, that should definitely *not* happen ... you really should have to make an actual positive click to finish placing an order. I wonder if anyone else out there has had a similar experience?

The MJ arrived in snail mail on Saturday, March 20 and I immediately started the installation process on my iMac. This was about 2:30pm and thus began a 7 hour odyssey with MJ's chat support technicians. While the system mounted properly after being plugged in, and I could start the MJ program running, the registration procedure was not clear at all. I finally ended up dbl-clicking the upper center magicJack icon area but it simply was not (apparently) able to properly startup my account. I did have a phone number assigned but the top line of the soft dial pad showed a phone number of 000-000-0000 instead of the correct number. By now, if you've read about this type of thing from other customers' adventure tales, you know that I was chatting with tech's and they were going through the same procedures with me, time and again, before passing me on to one of the "top 10%" agents. So when you can't get a problem solved, you visit 2 agents every time you start a chat. We downloaded the "upgrade.dmg" file and erased the Mac volume on the MJ several times (my protests at the repetitions fell, of course, on deaf ears). Finally, agent number 6 (this was at almost 9:30 in the evening) opened the Mac network window and added two new DNS IP addresses. And, lo and behold, it suddenly seemed to be working as the MJ displayed the correct number and indicated "Ready to call" in the center icon area. Although I tried to get an explanation as to why this should make any difference, the tech was unwilling (or unable) to supply one. But it was working!

OK, here are the two IP addresses for the new Domain Name Servers as entered by the MJ tech during the screen sharing session (I saved them for possible future repair work): 67.107.71.186 and 67.90.152.122. If you're not familiar with where this is entered on a Mac (this is an Intel Mac running the latest Snow Leopard OS X operating system), just open System Preferences > Network > Advanced. Under the DNS tab, click on the "+" at the lower left of the "DNS Servers:" box just before the line that says "IPv4 or IPv6 addresses". Add the first one and then add the next. After this, restart the MJ via its "Menu > Advanced users > Restart" option and you will have done exactly what made mine work.

After that, everything else was just playing and setting up my phone(s) in the house the way I wanted to. And I have to say that it really works very well. My broadband connection is ADSL with 1.5Mbps down and .75Mbps up, supplied by Qwest. The voice quality is very good and I have 3 or 4 different phones it works just fine with. I also have a switch in the line to allow me to use a FaxModem when necessary and, as far as I've been able to tell, software faxing (I'm using PageSender but I think the standard OS X fax program would work too) is working. This is nice as I have occasion to fax things several times a year but not nearly enough that I feel compelled to pay for internet fax or a landline to accomplish the task. While MJ does not advertise faxing as a standard feature (and I'm not sure how reliable it will be), it's a pleasant surprise to see it working.

There have been a few other issues, though. If anyone's generating a list of phone's that work or don't work with MJ, I've found that two old standard phones (with actual bell ringers), an AT&T two line phone, a Sony 900MHz wireless phone, an AT&T wall phone and a US West wall phone all work great. But a Panasonic DECT 6.0 phone (model KX-TGA820B) doesn't work (well, it rings and will answer, but there is no audio). Another disappointment is that none of the phones that displays callerID gets the callerID from the MJ. I've tried the 100K resistor trick but no joy. I wish callerID would work, but it's certainly not a deal breaker. Chat time with the tech's got one out of two to confirm for me that callerID is *not* passed on to the attached phone. Sure seems like a shortsighted thing to have it designed that way.

Another thing, from a Mac perspective, is that I like to suspend (enter "Sleep" mode) the computer when I leave the house and don't need it to be running. The Mac version of the MJ software is certainly not very elegant about handling the sleep process. It shuts down instead of suspending itself but it doesn't eject the MJ drive. So when the system starts up again there is an OS X nasty gram about how one should be sure to eject a drive before "removing" it. Also, the program seems to have some startup problems after it has been shut down this way. What I've found is that it seems to be best to just close the MJ program (in this case the drive ejects properly on its own) and I unplug it. That's a little annoying since, otherwise, the suspend for a Mac is a very quick and painless thing to do (I just tap the power button). As far as MJ is concerned, I'd like to just push the button to put the Mac to sleep and when I "wake" it again, the MJ should just start itself and carry on without missing a beat. If this could work smoothly it would be a very positive step. I haven't checked out how MJ handles a full shutdown, while it is running, so no comments on that ... yet.

But with MagicJack I can talk on the phone, send/receive faxes and use the MJ with about 3 phones hooked up via my house wiring. I would give MagicJack about a 4 out of 5 stars review. Additionally, I've had it running on my PC laptop (Windows Vista) and that's working smoothly. The contacts list is not saved in a common portion of the MJ drive so when I add contacts on the Mac, they don't show up when running MJ on the PC. I can manually save the .xml file that has the contacts in it on the Mac and then load them when running the PC, but that's the only way I can see to do it. It would be nice to at least have a simple way (i.e. in the MJ menus) to synchronize contacts between the two computer types with having to resort to a laborious manual process.

Anyone that has a solution that will let me see callerID on the MJ phone when running on the Mac, I'd appreciate hearing that as well. I'll write more on MagicJack when time has passed and I see how reliable it is and if any updates for some of these issues become available.

Toyota Recall Bruhaha

2010-02-05T10:52:00.004-06:00

I don't know what it is about this country sometimes. There seems to be such a hue and cry about the "Toyota Tragedy" that awaits Toyota car drivers (notice even the Secretary of Transportation's recommendation to not drive your car if it's a "recall" Toyota model) that it seems all perspective has been lost. By the way, regarding Ray La Hood's comments (which he did later withdraw), could they be because the U.S. government is now in the car business ... and Toyota's a competitor? Hmm.

If Toyota has a true problem, it seems to me that it primarily swings around their apparent disbelief that they could even have a quality issue with their vehicles. And, actually, that's based on decades of excellent production quality and customer satisfaction ... so it's not the worst problem in the world to have. And it's one that can be easily overcome. At any rate, the initial shock seems to have worn off and they see that there's a problem and they're addressing it.

But back to the point I started this article on ... perspective. It seems that about 19 people in the past decade have been killed in Toyota's where it is "possible" that the recall issues (the accelerator pedal & floor mat stuff) were a factor. Please also note that being "a factor" does not even mean that the recall issues are the primary cause of the fatalities. Doing the math, that's 1.9 fatalities per year (with 100's of millions of miles of Toyota driving involved). Now, some contrasting perspective:

1. On average, 90 people per year are killed by lightning (in the United States alone).

2. On average, there are 120 airplane crash fatalities per year.

3. Over 2000 people die every year in Toyota's due to vehicle crashes totally unrelated to vehicle production quality failures (related primarily to incompetent, impaired or otherwise unsafe driving as well as some health problems like heart attacks, etc.).

Now I know it's different if you or a loved one of yours happens to be one of those 1.9 fatalities ... but get real people! There is no reasonably complex device made by mankind that does not have a non-zero probability of some kind of a failure due to inferior design, parts fatigue, etc. And it's the way of the universe. It's certainly the way of every species on the planet. Nature builds and then rebuilds in infinite repetition to get to the solution that allows survival. Our cars have evolved as early designs have been superseded by better ones and, to build a safer and greener vehicle, more complexity has been added. It's life ... and it's progress. I own a Camry, my son owns a Corolla and we both are very pleased with our vehicles. I wouldn't hesitate to buy another Toyota and I'm sure my son feels the same. These are good, well-built cars and the company that builds them deserves to remain in business, providing jobs and excellent products around the world, including the United States.

So the next time there's a big news article on the latest regarding current (or future) Toyota recalls, just remember that this is a very safe vehicle and the problems are being fixed by the company. And think about writing to the producer(s) of the article to request the "other side" of the story, part of which I've presented here (like, you're at least 45 times more likely to be killed by lightning, in the U.S., than by any Toyota recall problem). Basically, let's focus on stuff that's really important, like people talking on cell phones or texting while driving ... those, too, have caused far more fatalities than Toyota's recall issues. I also think Toyota will redouble their efforts at quality control ... which doesn't bode well for the "big 3" in the U.S. Oh, and, if you get a chance, you might take advantage of the bright side of this whole craziness ... buy Toyota stock.

2010 Has Arrived

2010-01-01T11:22:00.009-06:00

At the close of 2009, I feel it's good to reflect back on the year and consider what happened. Bicycling-wise, not as many miles pedaled as in 2008, but that was largely due to not taking part in RAGBRAI this year. Total miles ridden reached 1927 with a riding time of 121 hours (just under 16mph for an average riding speed). In addition, I decided to take a daily walk and accomplished that for 358 days of the past year with a total distance covered of 1161 miles in approximately 303 hours.

On a personal basis, my height is 70.25 inches at 162.1 pounds for a BMI of around 23.3. I like to shoot for a BMI right at 23.0, so there's a little work to be done here in January to get my weight back to 160 pounds or a little less.

For the first time in many years, both Ryan and Scott were in town at the same time as they flew in for their step-sister's wedding in June. That was a great time ... even as an arrow flew into the air and fell to earth we knew not where. We also took in the new Star Trek movie.

Last March my Aunt Elaine died and I went to the funeral. She was a nice lady and I miss her. Uncle Don and I went out to try to get a deer (I used a bow) this fall but we never saw a single one close enough to shoot (even with a rifle) in several days of hunting (in North Dakota). Our best guess is that they were all still hiding out in the corn fields, which had not been harvested due to the extremely wet fall weather.

Only 22 books read this year but all of them very interesting, including the auto-biography of George Carlin. I still use the Kindle to get most of my books but occasionally I do buy a paperback or get a gift of a book that I can hold in my hands and turn the pages of. And whaddya know ... reading real books still feels kinda nice. Nevertheless, I'll be looking into getting a Kindle 3, if they ever come out with one as the Kindle 2 isn't compelling enough for me to move on from my (rather primitive) baseline original Kindle reader.

Started learning more about digital photography and using Photoshop CS3 and its associated software tools. Pretty cool but it's a very big subject so it will take awhile.

This year I focused quite a bit more on energy and natural resources conservation. While the results are fairly good, more can be done if I can move to using solar and geothermal (Ground Source Heat Pump) renewable energy. Compared to 2008, the utility usage change I was able to accomplish breaks down as follows:

Heat (natural gas): -12% used, -34% cost at 47.7 Therms/month in 2009.
Electricity: -7% used, +.22% cost at 370.5 KWH/month in 2009.
Water: -46% used, -16% cost at 941.7 gallons/month in 2009.

Looking forward, I estimate that my natural gas usage will drop to <10 Therms/month (used by the gas dryer) if I can install a 4 ton geothermal heating/cooling system in 2010. My best guess is that electricity use will not be reduced further until I add solar power (a 2KW system, perhaps in 2011). In fact, electricity use may increase somewhat with the geothermal system as I'll probably switch to electric hot water heating with that installation. Finally, I expect to see a further 18-20% reduction in water usage with a 0% cost reduction (utility charges are very regressive which is not conducive to conservation) or, more likely, a cost increase.

And, as I do every year, I wonder what the new year will bring.

Health Care and Climate Change ...

2009-12-14T21:21:00.005-06:00

Many are the prognosticators out there and I feel like joining the group. The truth is that there will be no health care bill from the U.S. Congress nor will there be anything meaningful from Copenhagen regarding climate change.

Both will be victims of the same disease ... self interest and acceptance of the status quo and "things as they are". Basically, the world has too significantly high a percentage of conservatives (e.g. Republicans in the U.S.) to do anything meaningful. To them, energy reform means "drill, drill, drill" and global warming is a world wide scientific hoax. The sad part is that there are so many dittoheads that actually buy into it all without making their own assessments of the real data available. Of course, that part of it is just like religion ... very few "believers" ever objectively evaluate what it is they believe in, they believe what their parents and peers have told them to, it's family tradition and it's unchanged for the big three monotheistic religions for at least 2 millenia.

Neither climate change nor health care will be able to get "60 votes" and so a minority along with a subset of the majority will ensure that we do not make any progress in providing health care at reasonable cost nor will there be any new renewable energy industry, at least not in the United States.

It's a sad statement for humanity and humankind. And we will continue to pay the price on healthcare and on the lack of global climate reform. It should be mentioned, regarding global warming, that the wild card, the elephant in the room, is *not* CO2 emissions from developed and developing countries, bad though that truly is. It is the release of methane gas from, for example, the melting permafrost. Methane is many times more powerful than CO2 at trapping heat on our planet and it is not yet well represented in super computer climate models, but it will accelerate significantly in the next decade. Regarding climate change, we are not dodging away from a slippery slope, we're already on it, gathering speed. With healthcare, I'm sure we'll probably muddle through, as desired by Republicans, but it seems that you can only be the "do nothing" party for so long before it catches up to you. Hmm, what am I saying, after all ... Bush was elected ... twice. But as Albert Einstein said "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

Photoshop Examined

2009-09-25T18:43:00.005-05:00

Since I'm totally convinced that I'll never have enough time on the planet to learn all the things I'm interested in learning, I try to keep picking up something new to work on in fairly rapidfire order. This year I started with learning how to shoot a compound bow and make my own arrows. Hopefully, those skills will prove to be useful when I head up to visit my Uncle Don in Fargo this November to go deer hunting (something I've never done before).

But before I get up there, I've decided that I want to really find out what Photoshop can do. My original goal was to get skilled enough to let me convert a particular picture of Larry and Gary Green into a "masterpiece" that is both fun and interesting. To do this, I've acquired 4 new books, completed one and have scanned the other 3 as I start on the second and third books ... and they're really great. First I got "Scott Kelby's 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop" and I've completed the 21 lessons in that book. It's a bit more than an introduction, but it gives extremely straightforward steps using Camera Raw and Photoshop to update good pictures with varying flaws. That gave me most of what I needed to make my new picture ... but it also got me interested in digital photography, raw files, DNG and really understanding how it all works.

The other 3 books I have, that I highly recommend, are "Camera Raw With Adobe Photoshop CS3" by Bruce Fraser and Jeff Schewe, "The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book For Digital Photographers", by Scott Kelby and the "Photoshop CS3 Bible", by Laurie Ulrich Fuller and Robert C. Fuller. The only problem I've had so far with these books is minor. It concerns the "humor" that Scott Kelby interjects into his work. It gets to be a little too much. But I already was aware of this when I bought the second Kelby book ... also filled with practical applications of Photoshop ... and the fact that I bought it (anyway) means that I think it's got many fine teaching examples to offer. Of course, the "Bible" is primarily for reference, which I'll need quite a bit of, I'm sure.

Not wanting to leave things half done, I've now also ordered a Nikon D5000 camera so I can take pictures in raw format and go from "A to Z" in the Photoshop process with some of my own shots. Another experiment in learning ... about to take off. We'll see how it goes.

Fun Golf Day

2009-09-20T21:21:00.004-05:00

The last 3.5 weeks of weather here in eastern Iowa have been very much like San Diego. Highs in the low to mid-80's with cool nights. Many days have seen highs in the upper 70's. I suppose it's about to come to an end as we also have had no measurable precipitation for almost 4 weeks and it would be nice to get a little moisture for the lawn. At any rate, the weather has been perfect for ... well, just about anything outdoors. So today I took part in a 4-person best shot tournament at St. Andrews (Cedar Rapids, IA) golf course. Great weather and a great time. We shot 58 (12-under par) and took 2nd in the championship round. That was meaningful since it meant we got back $60 each in prize money. Also, I'm feeling better about another tournament coming up the first Friday in October as I was able to hit the ball pretty well today (I was a bit anxious since it was my very first round of the year), which bodes well for 2 weeks from now.

At the end of the round I took a nice quick bicycle ride as the golf was with golf carts and just not much of a workout. But the weather was just great with light winds and about 75 degrees with some clouds.

Of course, the Vikings and the Hawkeye's winning this weekend also put a positive spin on the entire day. And how 'bout them Bears, beating the Steelers! Who'da thunk it ...

Those of you with sharp eyes may have noticed that my Photoshop training has paid a few dividends as I've updated my profile (and website) pictures (of me) with new versions taken in September. This month and the next are going to be filled with studying Photoshop CS3 and learning how to do more with all the (untouched and un-retouched) pictures I have on my computer. Should be a good time.

So many things to do on this earth ... so little time. Well, at least I'm not wasting what time I do have on the supernatural fantasy world of religion. If I'm going for wasting time with fantasy, it'll be with Lord of the Rings or King Kong or Star Trek or Star Wars or Stargate, etc. At least I won't be deluding myself since I both understand and admit that they're *not* real. Enjoy yourselves, folks, because your time can be over far more quickly than you could ever imagine. And it's what you do while you're here and what you leave behind that matters ...

Hiccups Cure

2009-07-18T10:38:00.012-05:00

Most (perhaps all) of us have been in a situation at one time or another where we've had the hiccups. When they do strike, one hopes that it's not at a critical time, such as immediately before or during the making of a presentation. But, of course, that isn't always the case, as Murphy's Law will attest. Furthermore, hiccups are uncomfortable and are annoying to have for any length of time greater than about 1 minute. Well, there's good news ... hiccups are easily curable ... read on.

On at least 3 different occasions with 3 different people (including myself), I've found that there is one sure cure for the hiccups. I'd like to give credit for this idea but I cannot remember where, when, or from whom I acquired it. Regardless of the original source, it's simple to try: gulp down one 1-ounce shot of Rose's Lime Juice. This is a sweetened and concentrated lime juice with extreme "pucker power" (i.e., you won't like it but it's better than cod liver oil). Best known for its use in various alcoholic beverages (Cosmopolitan, Martini, Margarita), this mixer is not alcoholic ... just very effective at eliminating hiccups, immediately. I don't know if the same results may be had when taken in its diluted form, as in a tasty Margarita, but that may be something to try, if you've a mind to. But if the Margarita doesn't work, well, at least it would probably have been fun to try and, afterwards, taking the "straight" stuff might be quite a bit easier on the palate.

So next time you have the hiccups and are at your wit's end about how to get rid of them, try Rose's Lime Juice. It really works ...

Lefty?

2009-07-14T19:42:00.003-05:00

I didn't know that Barak was a lefty. However, he did make a pretty good (if a bit wussyful) throw from the mound to home (Pujols was the catcher) to open the All-Star game in St. Louis tonight.

On the bicycle riding front, I have been given a new respect for riders that use single gear bikes. This happened because of an encounter I had yesterday on my usual 14.2 mile circuit with a 30-ish guy riding one. We rode together for about 7 miles and I ended up ahead of him ... but pretty much only because I was able to gain a lot of ground on the downhills, where my higher gears took the day. He was a bear on the uphills, although he did them all standing on the pedals. Tough guy. Well, it was a competitive and fun ride and I ended up with a 2009 best personal time of 46:38 for the route (about 18.2 mph) even with a fairly stiff easterly breeze.

1998 Camry Spark Plug Replacement

2009-07-01T10:56:00.003-05:00

I had an interesting time replacing the spark plugs on my 98 Camry (4-cylinder) last week. Based on comments from the dealer (who had done some work for me about a month ago), I knew it was probably time to replace them. Sure enough, a records check showed that it was close to 70,000 miles since I'd put in the last set. I like to use the Bosch Platinum-4 plugs, which are gapless and seem to last a very long time. The Toyota recommended plug is the Platinum-2 but I think you get more spark with the -4.

The engine has recessed openings (spark plug "wells") through the valve cover with a rubber boot at the top covering the wells. At the bottom of each well (about 4 inches down) is a spark plug and, in this case, there are 4 wells. First disconnect the plug wires (they run through the well coverings). Then take a few minutes to blow compressed air down each spark plug well to clean out any possible debris so it doesn't get an opportunity to drop into the engine cylinder when the plug is removed. Removing the plugs is straightforward. Using a 5/8" spark plug socket (with a rubber grip in the middle to hold onto a spark plug), they are easily turned out. The grip in the socket will hold them tightly as they are removed from the individual wells.

The tricky part comes when the new plug is installed. If you choose to try to put the plugs in using the same 5/8" spark plug socket, it will seemingly work fine. But after finishing tightening the plug, the socket will stay at the bottom of the well, firmly holding onto the newly installed spark plug, while the extension and wrench are removed. The problem is that the rubber grip of the spark plug socket is "too good" ... it's much stronger than the holding power of the extension rod that is inserted in the socket to reach the bottom of the well, so the extension rod simply pulls out, leaving the socket. The solution is simple. The installation job requires a deep well 5/8" socket that is *not* a "spark plug" socket. This means that it doesn't have the rubber grip insert to hold the spark plug. You can either purchase an additional socket or use a needle nose pliers and remove the gripper (temporarily) from the spark plug socket you already have. If you remove the gripper, re-installation is aided by rubbing a bit of dishwashing soap on the outside of the grip rubber before pushing it back in to the socket.

At this point, there is concern that the socket might not hold onto the spark plug enough and it might be difficult to reacquire it (the plug) if it drops into the bottom of the well. One solution is to put a 1/4" wide piece of duct tape (what else?) vertically down the outside of the socket, terminating around the bottom edge on the inside. This gives the socket just enough additional grip that it easily holds on to the spark plug as it is inserted into the well. For a new engine block, the specified plug torque is 15 ft lbs. For replacing spark plugs in a used engine (the normal case), use 11 ft lbs of torque. Replace the plug wires (you'll hear a firm click) and make sure the well coverings are in place and the job is done.

Father's Day Re-visited

2009-06-28T01:24:00.005-05:00

Nice day today. Later in the afternoon (of 6/27), high pressure moved in and a dry northerly breeze provided some welcome relief from the humidity and heat. The Cubs lost to the White Sox and I took a little nap. But I did sing today at The Villages as they were having a big "picnic" ... that ended up being held inside due to the temperature and humidity still in place at noon. Rousing myself, after my nap, I went out to a Mexican restaurant for an enchilada, chips and some salsa ... very good. Then I stopped out to sing at a friend's karaoke show downtown and left there to find a place to dance. Unfortunately, the only nearby place to dance, a bar called the Red Lion, had music that was *much* too loud (DJ problem, not the equipment itself) ... so I quickly gave up on that and decided to come home and finish a book I'd been reading. After the book, I was re-energized and went out to listen to some singers and then, about 12:30am on the 28th, I got home and decided it would be good to watch my Father's Day present, Gran Torino. It's a great movie that goes well with coffee, Hot Tamales and M&M's. So I thank my sons (again) for that movie ... and I'm sure I'll watch it again as time goes by.

Well, tomorrow (later today) I need to do some work on the bicycle and also change plugs in the car. We'll see what else transpires to make it another great day.

363 Days to Father's Day

2009-06-22T22:42:00.004-05:00

Yesterday was my 31st Father's Day ... it was a good one, although Tiger did not play very well at the U.S. Open. I spent the day walking, riding bicycle, walking some more and watching the U.S. Open Golf Championship. The boys sent me a BluRay movie, Gran Torino, which arrived today. And it's really getting warm out ... good thing too, since it's already the 2nd day of summer! On today's bicycle ride, the heat was palpable as I heard and felt the road's tar bubbles under the tires. Good sweatin' weather. This evening I had dinner at Carlos O'Kelly's (Mexican restaurant) and watched the fireworks show (right out my back window) over at Hiawatha Hogwild days. I tell 'ya, it's really exciting around here!

I sang using my new Fender PD250 amp system this evening ... and it worked really well, according to both me and the audience. That was my test run in preparation for Saturday's show where I'll be singing outdoors. Frankly, I think it's probably not the greatest idea in the world to have an outdoor party in 90+ degree weather at a rest home ... well, ours is not to question why ... I just hope the audience is successful at *not* keeling over .

It'll be a fun time ... good night.

Terminator ... Goes On

2009-05-25T15:54:00.006-05:00

Memorial Day ... always a good day to take in a movie. Today I went to see "Terminator Salvation". In the (seemingly) never ending saga of Skynet and Terminators and John Connor, it's a pretty good action movie that puts interesting pieces of the story of the future together. Don't hesitate to see it, but it will often not make sense to you unless you've seen at least the first two Terminator movies. And even where it does come through, it will be all the better for seeing the first shows. For example, in one scene John Connor says "I'll be back" ... with different inflection than Schwarzenegger, of course, but it did elicit a few knowing chuckles from the audience. And the first appearance of the T-800 (Schwarzenegger style) Terminator is impressive (but, no, it's not actually Arnold). There is one confusion point here as, in the original (1984) movie, the Terminator was described by Kyle Reese as "Cyberdyne Systems Model 101". I can only guess that the model (T-800) in this latest movie is just a very advanced version of the Model 101 (because it looks like the same unit, i.e. Arnold). So maybe they didn't have one available to send back (to 1984) to kill Sarah Connor in the original movie. Note that the next model shown (in Terminator 2), was a T-1000, so the T-800 appellation *does* make some sense ... but it's still a puzzle and, maybe, an error in the latest film.

It's also a good movie to wait for the DVD/BD to arrive on store shelves, especially if you're complementing your existing set of movies at home ... but, either way, it's a good show, if long on action and short on character development. Of course, the characters were largely developed in the 80's and 90's. As a completely separate aside, I recommend against buying anything to eat or drink at the theater, since they are just mind-bogglingly high in price. Even a small soda at the local first-run theater here in Cedar Rapids is $3.75 at a size of about 8 ounces. Decent eats (still just junk food, remember) and a drink at a movie cost more than a meal at a good restaurant ... that's just wrong.

Perfect Day

2009-05-22T22:21:00.006-05:00

Today was about as perfect as days get here in Iowa. Mid-70's with a light easterly breeze and a clear sky, full of sunshine. The kind of day that makes it into books where readers lose themselves in lilac laden breezes and in the drone of bees, overloaded with the promise of honey.

This all prompted me to take my usual walk of 3.2 miles and then mow the lawn, after first raising the blade 1/2". The lawn looks pretty good but it's almost time to start working on the fence area out back as well as the edging around the front bushes (also trimmed today).

I also decided to stop in to see the doctor about losing my voice as it's turned into a bit of bronchitis now and I want to be sure to be over it before next Wednesday. Got some antibiotics in case it's a bacterial type infection but I think things will be well in a few days.

Sure would be nice to fire up the grill and make a few burgers on Memorial Day. It's been quite awhile since I've done that. I suppose I will if I have a friend or two around ... otherwise, it doesn't seem to be much fun. We'll see what happens.

Should be a good weekend for motorcycle riding as well ... hmm, so many things to do, so little time. Next thing is to get a few new singing gigs ... need to expand my exposure a bit. But, no rush there, I'm sure there'll be plenty of time to accomplish that, even though I sometimes wish I'd started earlier. Well, you just do what you can do with what you have.

It's a good day to watch Clint Eastwood in Pale Rider ... my kind of preacher.

Finally, today would've been the 60th anniversary of my Uncle Don and Aunt Elaine. She only made it to March 27 but I really wanted to dance with her today at their celebration in Fargo. Have to figure out when I'll make it back up there to see my Uncle. It's about time for him to buy me a beer ... eh?

Of Hamburgers & BLT's

2009-05-21T20:02:00.003-05:00

Almost *had* to head up to Toad's in Cedar Falls for a BLT this evening (they have the best!) but ended up doing some riding on the bicycle and then stopping out for a quick burger. My voice is slowly returning and I really hope to be singing again by Memorial Day ... if not, then by Wednesday of next week.

Anyway, I decided that it might not be a bad idea to log some stats at the "beginning" of the riding season (or 2 months into it ... ) so here's where I stand today:

Weight: 157.5 lbs.
Height: 70"
BMI=22.6
BP: 113/66, Pulse=55
2009 Miles Ridden: 560
Age: 56.17 years
Resting heart rate: 46
Eyes: Blue, still twinkling
Smile: still there ;)

And tonight I have a couple of movies to watch and some cherry licorice to consume. Well, I'll also be gargling with warm salt water and having a warm tea/honey/lemon drink. Slowly but surely, the voice is returning ...

May Flowers

2009-05-19T21:35:00.005-05:00

Such an interesting month, May. The mirror of September with its warmth, but not too warm, cool nights and sunny days ... better, though, as the window to summer instead of the doorway to winter. As of this May, it appears I have a new mom, one of my best friends turned 80, and I'm really having more fun singing than I ever thought possible. Last Friday I sang for a crowd of about 300 at a local hotel. It was a 45 minute performance but it seemed to pass in about 5 ... so much fun, ending with a standing ovation, an encore and even a request for an autograph (honestly! ... I know, weird, eh?). Fortunately, by the way, my speaker stands arrived just the day before (whew!) ... they were an essential part of the setup.

Almost as important, I worked on my pumpkin bread recipe and, after 4 attempts, ended up with something that seems to be pretty good. Quite a few people tasted and enjoyed it ... I now feel ready for the next potluck dinner .

So May has been interesting, even though I haven't finished cleaning up the fence area in my back yard ... that will come ... and even though I haven't finished sealing my deck (but it's still not even summer yet, so I have time).

Right now my voice is gone but I hope it returns soon ... so many songs, so little time.

New Microphone, Misc News

2009-04-16T15:56:00.004-05:00

My new Shure microphone arrived today. It is an SM86 and requires separate (phantom) power but there is a significant difference in sound between it and my (old, reliable, Shure) SM58. So I'll take the SM58 along as a spare but plan to use the SM86 for performances. The phantom power supply box I bought is a Rolls (Mic Power II, PB223) which handles up to 2 microphones (48 volts). I'm not sure if the Rolls is the best power supply but it is a switcher and is supposed to be very "quiet". Plus it was also available from zZounds and I therefore got free shipping as the mic already had free shipping and they just threw them both in the same box (nice).

For singing gigs, I've decided to transfer all my equipment from my (smallish) carry bag (open at the top and made of heavy cloth) to a spare duffel bag that's not doing anything else right now. That will give me room for the extra equipment (mic, power supply) as well as space for an additional XLR cable and, whenever desired, video hookup equipment to drive a separate monitor/TV.

In other news, now that the bathrooms are updated (whew!), I donated the two old toilets to Habitat for Humanity and got them out of my garage. Next on the agenda is to clean up the front entrance with a fresh coat of paint and then clean up a stack of old wood off the back walkout. Having braced the two 4x4's at the ends of the deck earlier this week, I think the house will then be in pretty good shape for company (well, except for an incredible amount of vacuuming, etc., on the inside). Even though I'm not terribly domestic, I'm confident I can get the inside cleaned up if I just pace myself ;) ...

Next week I have 4 singing gigs and can't wait to use the new mic ... plus I talked to a hospice worker last Monday who asked for several of my cards to pass out to places she knows of where they might like to have a singer from time to time. Right now the only new place I have coming up is at Mercy Hospital towards the end of May. It's all fun ... and it does help keep me off the street, hehe.

Garmin Streetpilot 2820 Settings

2009-04-15T09:56:00.011-05:00

Having resolved an interesting issue with my Garmin 2820 in the past 10 days or so, I thought I'd publish a few notes here on my observations, problems and steps taken to resolve them. This unit is one I've had for a few years now and I've been very happy with it, overall. While I'd like to say I bought it because my older (Garmin Streetpilot 2610, now discontinued) receiver was "adopted" by my (then) girlfriend, I confess that I also wanted Bluetooth phone capability and, well, it's always fun to play with new toys, eh? Plus I was making good money as a systems engineer and so the price wasn't a big factor ... enter the Streetpilot 2820.

All that said, my experience with commercial GPS receivers is that they are usually quite user friendly but there are settings in the units that sometimes result in receiver outputs that are unexpected and/or difficult to understand. By the way, one of the most useful settings (to me, anyway) is found by going to the Settings>Navigation 2nd page. There you will find "Off-Route Recalculation:" and in a great step towards eliminating unnecessary noise in the cockpit, you can set it to "Auto (Silent)". Without doing this, anytime you are navigating a route and make a turn that is not "correct", according to the Garmin, it announces "Off route, recalculating", repeating it ad nauseam until you "return to the path". By setting it to "Auto (Silent)", two things are accomplished simultaneously: anytime you leave the route a recalculation automatically starts and the voice announcing the recalculation process is (mercifully) silent. In a recent examination of a (newer receiver) Garmin Nuvi 750, I did not see a similar setting, so perhaps that's one thing that they've missed the boat on (although I didn't examine all the Nuvi settings in detail, so maybe it is there ... somewhere).

Back to the main point of this article ... on the same page, Settings>Navigation 2nd page, there is a setting called "Avoidance Setup". On its 3 pages of options, entries are made to do one of three things, Prefer, Avoid, Don't Avoid, for various road conditions. The settings are applicable to driving situations you may find yourself in, including 9 preset categories and a 10th called "Custom Avoids". The 9 preset categories for Avoidance setup are (in order): Major Roads, Medium Roads, Minor Roads, Traffic, Unpaved Roads, U-Turns, Toll Roads, Carpool Lanes and Ferries. Then, under "Custom Avoids", there are two subcategories: "Add New Avoid Area" and "Add New Avoid Road".

To touch briefly on Custom Avoids, this is a nice feature for (primarily) local operation but also, for example, if you are traveling to another city and are made aware that there are specific neighborhoods or streets that are to be preferred or avoided. The two subcategories allow the user to make selections by generating a 4 point "blocked off" area or simply by selecting beginning and ending points of a specific street. This is done directly off a map display. I have not used this feature but mention because it could easily be overlooked and it is pretty cool.

The original problem I ran into involved the first 3 settings identified above. For Major Roads, Medium Roads and Minor Roads, I had set Prefer, Prefer and Avoid, respectively. The reasoning being that I'd like to be on "better" roads than not and "Minor" roads felt like they would not be as good as the other two types. Additionally (although not related directly to this problem as far as I can tell), in deference to my motorcycle's performance and preference for dust/rocks/dirt avoidance, I had set "Unpaved Roads" to "Avoid". I do not know what the internal (to the receiver) definition is for these various road types but I have had multiple times where the Garmin would try to direct me in crazy directions and I never really suspected the road preference settings. Usually, as I now recall, the issues did involve minor vs. major roads and that should have tweaked me ... alas, live and (finally) learn is all I can say. Anyway, I had been again given the runaround as I tried to get to a somewhat "out in the country" address. The 2820 wanted me to go around an extra 1.5 miles or so when I was only .5 miles away via (what I would call) a "minor" road. Having finally had enough, I resolved to pull over and check out my preference settings. In the process, I changed "Minor Roads" to "Prefer" so that it now agreed with the other two (Major and Medium) road settings. To my surprise, it recalculated the route correctly, making me a happy camper (er, driver).

The point here is that the Avoidance settings may have unintended consequences and if you find yourself regularly routed down non-optimal roads, take a look at them and see if some changes might be in order. Perhaps "Minor" road avoidance might be important for, say, a large Recreational Vehicle. But it really was not a problem for my Camry or motorcycle. I am glad that there are categories for both Minor and Unpaved roads, however, as I do want to avoid Unpaved roads, if possible. Again, the "human in the loop" often has a better idea of the correct road to pick than the GPS receiver ... so don't hesitate to use your instincts from time to time. After all, GPS can always "rescue" you if you do get lost somewhere. And that can be a part of the adventure of it too. Happy navigating!

Water Use Efficiency-UPDATE, 5/23/09

2009-04-08T08:41:00.012-05:00

Another little project of mine is seeing how much water I use and how to cut back on that (I know, I know, not something Rush would approve, or even think, of ... sadly enough). I noticed that my water usage increased last year when I retired. This makes some sense as I started spending more time at home flushing toilets, drinking water and generally using more resources at my own residence instead of at work. In fact, my water usage went up from 1283 gallons per month in 2007 to 1450 gallons per month in 2008 (I retired at the end of March, 2008). This is a 13% increase and it's probably more like 15-17% since I only had 3/4 of the year where I was home in 2008. As a part of that higher 1450 gallon average, I used 1800 gallons or more in three of the last six months of 2008, a trend that I didn't want to have continue.

My goal is to consistently be under 1000 gallons a month in water usage, with a challenge of 900 and a super challenge level of an 800 gallon per month limit. In terms of daily use limits, 1000 gallons per month equates to a bit less than 33 gallons per day, 900 gallons is about 29.5 gallons per day and 800 gallons is just over 26 gallons per day. My 2008 average of 1450 gallons per month was over 47 gallons of water per day.

Data will almost always provide the answers, if you have enough of it. So I started looking at how all that water was being used in my home. With standard toilets each flush was about 3 gallons of water at a rate of perhaps 9 or 10 times per day. So right there was 27-30 gallons per day. The clothes washer is a front loading high efficiency unit and some measurements via meter read show that it uses 10-25 gallons of water per load, depending on the size of the load and the wash cycle selected. By the same measuring method, a shower could easily take 15-25 gallons of water. The dishwasher, interestingly enough, uses only about 9 gallons of water for the entire cycle.

By my last water bill (March, 2009), water usage was down to 1200 gallons and it will go down further as I get better at this, but here are the conservation steps I've currently implemented:

1. Watering the lawn is out if water conservation is a serious goal, so that's something that's straightforward to do (and I've never done much of it anyway) but I may allow for a little of it from time to time if the grass is really dying. A better solution here may be to put in grass that is extremely hardy and so will easily survive (as much as 2 months) with little or no water.

2. Wait longer to do laundry. Since the washer is easily capable of handling very large loads of clothes, the logic is that it should take less water to do one large load than two smaller ones. This seems to be true and I find that I can easily do laundry every two weeks instead of every week, except the bedding is every week. OK, I will confess that I had to buy some extra underwear to make this one work ;) ...

3. Showers are now "sailor showers". This means that the water is on to wet down, then it is turned off while applying shampoo and soaping. The water is then turned back on to rinse. It's easily possible to take a shower with less than 5 gallons of water using this approach. A bonus here is that this significantly reduces the amount of hot water needed, saving (electricity and natural gas in my case) on running the water heater. Additionally, less time spent under hot water means less dry skin ... especially important for dry midwest winters. Also, when washing hands, it's not necessary to let the water run while the hands are not under the faucet, so turn it off while rubbing the soap in ... every ounce adds up.

4. Run the dishwasher only when it is completely full, in my case about 3 times a month instead of 4 or 5.

5. Install High Efficiency toilets, in my case, 2 toilets, Toto brand, Drake and Gwyneth models. These require 1.6 gallons and 1.3 gallons of water, respectively, per flush. This reduces the water for toilet usage to under 15 gallons per day. Also, it's not necessary to flush the toilet after every use so a few additional flushes can be saved. Installing the high efficiency toilets is no doubt the number one water saver in my home, certain to be even more helpful with a large family. I'm saving between 10 and 20 gallons of water per day with this change alone. If you're "flush" with cash or have really big water bills, look into installing a compost toilet. These are quite expensive for a good one, but water usage is zero and there is a great fertilizer benefit for your garden.

Results:
To test the efficacy of my water conservation steps, I've been collecting meter read data at the same time (9am) every day since March 19. After 20 days, I'm averaging 24.8 gallons per day of water use (about 756 gallons per month). This is well within my set goals and I'm happy with the results so far. It's really a fairly easy change to make in lifestyle (especially for a single guy living alone) but, like many things, one has to be intentional about doing it consistently. Like dieting, it will only last if it becomes a lifestyle choice. For families with children, there seem to be very good reasons why everyone should be taught conservation from an early age. In the long run, it is certainly going to be easier for individuals if they have "always done it that way" and it will definitely help both current and coming generations to have the planetary resources they need to live both comfortably and inconspicuously. Now that's being a good steward.

UPDATE: 4/19/09-After one month, I've used 718 gallons for an average of 23.2 gallons per day (31 days). This is less than 50% of my water usage (average per month) rate in 2008. Gratifying ... and I now see no reason why I shouldn't be able to consistently continue to achieve using 800 gallons per month or less (at least for those months when I don't have any company, which is most of the time, hehe).

UPDATE: 5/23/09-In the second month (as of 5/19/09) I used 662 gallons for an average daily use rate of 22.1 gallons per day (and 22.6 gallons per day over the running total of 61 days). With the exception of times when I have visitors, it now looks like it shouldn't be a problem to stay at between 22 and 24 gallons per day. This means that the (average month) upper limit on my usage of water should be around 30.5*24 or 732 gallons per month. I'm using just 50% of the water I used in 2008 ... gratifying and quite simple to do. All it has seemed to take is spending some time thinking about what I'm doing and then figuring out how to do it better. It did cost some for the new High Efficiency toilets but, as a single person household, I could've gotten by with only one new one instead of two. Otherwise, it's just being conscious about what it is I really need vs. what it is that I'm actually using. Try it ... you may like it.

End Of An Era

2009-03-27T19:28:00.003-05:00

My Aunt Elaine passed away today in Fargo, ND. She was a nice person and a good friend to me. I will always remember that her voice was uncannily like my mother's. I saw her several times in the past year, the last being on March 6, 2009. I was hoping to dance with her at her and Don's 60th anniversary party in May. She did good things during her time on earth ... it was great having her here and I will miss her.

Nice Weather Again

2009-03-21T14:11:00.002-05:00

Good riding day today as I now have about 65 miles in on the year. And my butt is starting to not notice the bicycle seat anymore. It was never too bad but I certainly have been able to feel it. By the middle of this upcoming week it will be just a distant memory. Yesterday, my right leg was sore and I think it was because I was generally riding in too high a gear. Today I got back to paying attention to the cadence meter and kept it around 80 rpm. Along with a little stretching before the ride, the leg feels good again. Who knows, maybe I'm getting old(er) ... ?!

As I now clearly recall (after eating quite a bit of it), I really do like pumpkin bread. Maybe that will be the "treat of the year" for 2009 (well, along with my favorite ice cream). Especially because it's so easy to make.

Spring Is Sprung

2009-03-20T19:47:00.003-05:00

There's probably nothing to write about today that overshadows the fact that it's the Vernal Equinox, which marks the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. Very nice weather, too. I had an opportunity to test out a Garmin Nuvi 760 GPS navigator today and it's a pretty good unit. Only time will tell if it holds up well.

Today I stopped in and had lunch with my boys' grandma, Betty. Then we played a few games of cribbage. It was a nice time. Oh, and I also made her some pumpkin bread ... after all, I ate her pumpkin bread for many, many years. Hope she likes it.

And then I had a nice bicycle ride, not to mention a great sandwich at Milio's on 1st Avenue.

The Ides of Biking ...

2009-03-15T18:55:00.003-05:00

Feels so good to ride the bicycle again. Went out and spent 3 hours replacing the wheel bearings and chain today and didn't really plan to ride as it was then quite late in the day. But seeing as how it was 58 degrees out I simply couldn't resist. And so it begins ... again. Seems as though spring is really here this time. The forecast is all the way up to 70 degrees for my parade on Tuesday .

In the past few weeks, I also ordered an arrow saw and materials for making arrows and then learned to make them myself. The first 6 that I made were pretty much a failure as the fletchings all fell off after only a few shots. Back at the drawing board I realized that I had to clean the arrow shafts much better (using hot water and Comet cleanser) and then ensure that I didn't touch (contaminate) them before gluing on the fletches. Success was finally achieved as I've now shot them dozens of times losing nary a fletch! But a few of the inserts (for the arrowheads) ended up pulling out of the shafts and were left in the targets. So the same attention obviously needed to be paid to those and I also switched to a gel "Super glue" (fast drying and very strong) for the inserts. So far so good, but not a lot of experience with them using the indoor range targets (where they originally pulled out). Eventually, the sure answer will arrive, but I'm feeling pretty good about them right now. It's a great experience to make and then shoot your own arrows.

And, good news, NDSU is playing in the NCAA tournament (first game, Friday the 20th in Minneapolis). Besides all that, the best news is that I'm going to see my Aunt Elaine and Uncle Don again at their 60th anniversary party on the 22nd of May.

Dock-N-Talk Works Well-How To Use Line 2

2009-02-17T21:15:00.026-06:00

As is (or should be) well known by now, I recently dropped my land line telephone in favor of cell phone only. Of course, I have some pretty good phones in my house that display Caller ID and have convenient locations. But they're not very useful if I'm always required to use the cell phone for calls. Segway to today's subject, Phone Labs' Dock-N-Talk device ... and let's call it DNT for short.

The DNT is a device that connects to your cell phone and then ties in with either a single phone in your house or your house's phone wiring. If tied in to the house's wiring, it must be on a line that does not have telephone company (TelCo) service. In my case, although I no longer have regular phone service, I have a DSL broadband connection coming in from TelCo on Line 1 (L1). I hooked up the system to L1 and it allowed me to make outgoing calls but it would not connect to incoming. Since this kind of trouble was not unexpected I immediately yielded and switched over to Line 2 (L2). On the DNT, this is as easy as flipping a switch. However, without an L2 capable phone, provision must be made to bring the L2 (outer two) conductors of the phone cord connector to the center (inner two) lines so the L1 only phones can "talk" on L2. I installed an L1/L2 capable phone on the kitchen wall and used an idle L1 to L2 "Two-Line Splitter" (Radio Shack part number 279-432) adapter to connect my Panasonic KX-TG8231 phone base to L2 and everything worked ... yours truly was quite happy.

Of course, happiness can be very fleeting and, in this case, I remembered that I still had an older "Trimline" phone in the basement that I wanted to continue using. To avoid a severe case of "engineering unhappiness" I decided I needed to make a trip to Radio Shack for another "Two-Line Splitter". Alas, more unhappiness awaited me there as I found out that this simple little device appears to be what Radio Shack is trying to use to carry it through these tough economic times. They charged me $8.47 (tax included) for this thing ... and I reluctantly paid it and made my way home. On the way, however, the engineering mindset quickly took over, attempting to steer me back to Nirvana. It occurred to me that I might be able to fashion a simple Line 2 to Line 1 swap cable out of home telephone wiring supplies I already had. My supplies on hand comprised a standard RJ-11 stripping/crimping tool, RJ-11 connectors and flat 4-conductor phone cable (all purchased long ago at Menards).

The process is pretty straightforward, as outlined below. As usual, though, the devil is in the details, so let's first go over a little introductory information on the standard RJ-11 connector and home telephone wiring. The RJ-11 connector form factor has six pins and so it can handle up to 6 conductors. Typical home operation uses only 2 or 4 of those conductors. The RJ-11 connector pins have a numbering scheme that will be useful in the discussion below. Holding one up with the connector tab facing away from you and the "business end" of the connector facing up, the pins are numbered 1-6 from left to right.

We will be discussing a common home wiring scheme that uses 4 conductors located in pins 2 through 5 (the outer 2 pins, 1 and 6, are unused) and flat 4-conductor cable with conductor insulation colors of Black, Red, Green and Yellow. Note that more recent telephone wiring that you may buy may use a different conductor color scheme, typically as follows: Black becomes White with an Orange stripe, Red is now Blue with a White stripe, Green becomes White with a Blue stripe and Yellow is now Orange with a White stripe. But regardless of the color scheme of the wiring you use, just translate as necessary (and be consistent throughout) as I will use the "old" (Black, Red, Green, Yellow) colors in this writeup.

In a typical home phone wiring installation, Line 1 (L1) is run through the center two conductors of the RJ-11 connector. These are the Red and Green conductors located on pins 3 and 4. Similarly, Line 2 (L2) is connected through the next most outer pair, pins 2 and 5, using the Black and Yellow colored conductors. The outside 2 pins, 1 and 6, as mentioned earlier, are typically not used. With this background in mind, our goal is to take the Line 2 connection at the wall jack (pins 2 and 5) and make it come out of the Line 1 pins (3 and 4) of the RJ-11 connector at the phone end of our swap cable. Let's look at the details of one way to accomplish this:

Supplies needed: Standard RJ-11 stripping/crimping tool, at least 2 RJ-11 connectors that accept 4 conductor flat cable and a length (as needed for your specific project) of flat, 4 conductor telephone cable.

Detailed steps:

1. Use the stripping/crimping tool's outer insulation stripper twice to obtain about 1/2" of stripped flat telephone cord on one end (i.e., there will be about 1/2" of the 4 conductor wires showing, and note that the individual conductor wire insulation, colored Black, Red, Green, Yellow, is still in place). For discussion purposes here, this is the end that will plug in to the telephone and we'll call it "L2" (since the two center connectors will have become the Black and Yellow "Line 2" conductors, instead of the normal Red and Green "Line 1" conductors, when we're through).

2. Strip the other end to the normal length (1/4") as defined by the tool. This is the end that will plug in to the wall jack and we'll identify it here as the "L1/L2" end (since the two center conductors, Green and Red, will have the L1 signal and the two outer conductors, Yellow and Black, will have the L2 signal ... note that this is a standard RJ-11 wiring convention).

3. Addressing the L2 (more complex) end of the wire first, carefully twist the Yellow/Green pair together so that Yellow conductor ends up in the center. Then twist the Red/Black pair so that Black similarly ends up in the center right next to Yellow. Looking at the 4 wires, you should now have them laid out as Red, Black, Yellow, Green (or Green, Yellow, Black, Red if you're looking at it from the other side).

4. Hold the wires so that they are parallel at the ends and insert them into an RJ-11 4 wire connector (6 wire connectors work too, just be sure to leave the outer two slots in the connector open). The conductor/connector pin relationship should be as follows: Pin 2-Red, Pin 3-Black, Pin 4-Yellow, Pin 5-Green (see Photo above). I found that it was easy for them to "untwist" during the insertion process and I had to redo this a few times to get it right. Another hint that might help is that I noticed some of the leads (for example, the Black wire in the Photo above) were a little longer than others so, just before inserting them into the connector, I made a single cut across the ends to make them all "just right" with a total length (from the end of the flat insulation) of just under 7/16". This seems to be very good for the crimping process but you might be able to shorten it up even more to, say, 5/16" as this would put the flat insulation a little further into the connector, which seems like a good idea. A caution, though, to not trim the conductor wire ends until you have successfully gotten the wires twisted together as it's much more difficult to do that with shorter conductors.

5. Before crimping the connector onto the wires, check carefully (one more time) to be sure that the Black and Yellow conductors are in the two center pins and the Red and Green conductors are in the two outer pins, as described in step 4. We don't really care about the Green and Red conductors but if done as described here, you should also find that L1 from the wall jack is interpreted as L2 at the "phone" end of the cable (just like the Line 2 wires from the wall jack are connected to the Line 1 pins at the "phone" end ... which is our goal). When you're satisfied, use the tool to crimp the connector in place.

6. Addressing the wall jack end of the cable (per #2, above, we're calling it the "L1/L2" end), note first that the connector can be put on the cable in either of two ways. But only one of those two ways is correct. Based on our understanding of the pin numbering scheme of the RJ-11 connector (see introductory material and the first photo, above), the conductor/pin relationship at this end of the cable should be as follows: Pin 2-Yellow, Pin 3-Green, Pin 4-Red, Pin 5-Black. Double check that this is the case (again, remember the old adage, "measure twice, cut once") and, finally, crimp the L1/L2 connector and you're done!

7. To test your new "Wall Jack Line 2" to "Phone Line 1" swap cable, plug it in to the wall and the phone and see if it works as expected. Note that the cable can, in fact, be plugged in either way ... the identification of "wall jack" and "phone" cable ends, above, was done only to facilitate the fabrication process while noting that the "L1/L2" end is the "simple" end of the cable and the "L2" end is the more complex. So if, when you've completed your project, the cable is not right (i.e., your phone test fails), just cut off the offending L1/L2 connector (the simple end) and put a new one on with the opposite orientation with respect to the 4 conductors. This will work if the L2 end was properly built, so if it doesn't work you will probably have to redo the L2 connector. In my case, the 5' cable worked first time (total cost, about $1.65). One final step I took was to use a fine point Sharpie to label the cable "L1-L2 Swap" so I wouldn't confuse it with any other phone cords and so I wouldn't be tempted to cannibalize it for another application. Here's a photo of the finished cable ends:

Using nomenclature from the above description, the L2 end is on the left and the L1/L2 end is on the right.

Now getting back to the DNT, the setup for my cell phone (Nokia 6085) is to synchronize it with the DNT via Bluetooth and then just leave the phone sitting a few feet away. With my new L1-L2 swap cable installed on the basement Trimline phone, every phone in the house can be used for phone calls using the cell phone connection. The DNT handles the interface to the cell phone and supplies dial tone to the rest of the house phones through the local wiring. When a call comes in to the cell phone, all the phones in the house (including the cell phone, if the ringer is active) ring and I can pick it up on any of them. Also, the CallerID is passed along so it appears on whatever devices have the capability to display it.

The DNT will coexist with a second land line phone system as well. So one could have a land line connection on Line 1 and still use Line 2 for the DNT with a cell phone. As you can imagine, this almost cries out for the phones in the house to be capable of 2-line operation ... but it's still nice to know that it would work (might be a great thing for a home business).

Drawbacks of going all cellular:
1. 911 does not have an automatic "go to" address and GPS may not work indoors
2. Burglar alarm systems typically require a "tip & ring" land line connection (and even if you could get one that worked with the DNT/Cell phone hookup, you'd have to leave a cell phone at home, turned on, just to support the Burglar alarm ... I'd say just get/keep a land line in this case).
3. Cell connection is a bit more noisy than a good land line
4. Fax will not work with cell phone connections and DNT
5. Devices like "Dock-N-Talk" are not free

Positives:
1. Cheaper (saves $25-30/month for same features in Qwest land line)
2. No loss of phone features/use at home, even voice dialing works from extensions in the house
3. Payback on Dock-N-Talk is less than a year, then 100% savings on land line cost
4. To turn off all phones in the house just turn off the cell phone
5. "Feels" good ... and you may even learn how to make an L1-L2 swap cable

Let me know if you have any questions about making this work for you. And tomorrow I need to return my "Two-Line Splitter" to Radio Shack ... ahhh, Nirvana.

A New Page Has Been Turned

2009-02-16T10:21:00.005-06:00

Interesting day today as I've now joined the ranks of those that have dropped their land line phones. I'm going to install a system that lets me hook up my cell phone to the existing house wiring, though, so I can use the phones in the house with my cell connection. I'm sure I'll have some interesting problems pop up since I still have DSL service coming in on line 1 but I'll figure out how to work around that, if it really becomes an issue.

The second thing that's new today is that I've canceled my Dish service. It's really quite far from being a necessity and I don't feel good about that money going out the door with the economy like it is today. The customer service representative asked me why I was dropping Dish and I told her that there were two reasons:

1. I don't feel that I'm getting good value for my money (like having to subsidize a gazillion shopping channels) and;

2. I contacted (in person, at their office) my local installation representative last October and told them that I was considering dropping my land line (which is also connected to the Dish receiver and is used for things like ordering pay-per-view, etc.). I asked what that might do to my billing and what my options would be. I was told that my options would be to pay an additional $5/month or drop Dish service. I said "are you sure?" and they said "yes". I just smiled and said "good luck with that business plan" and left. So that was my other reason for dropping Dish, I'm not going to pay an extra $5 when I just dropped my land line to save money.

Interestingly enough, Adrianna, the Dish Customer Service representative handling my cancellation order, then told me that, due to the large number of customers that were switching to cell phone only they added a billing option to allow for individuals that no longer had a land line to *not* be billed the extra $5. Of course, too late for me as my mind was made up and also, the hodge podge of junk channels that I felt I was also paying for was not being addressed at all. And don't get me wrong, I knew that I could have set up my own channel list to "just have" the channels in it that I wanted, but that doesn't change the fact that I feel I am subsidizing them and if I could just pick a 10 or 15 channel satellite dish "package" (which does not exist) then I could get something useful for about $20/month. That would have been very nice. Apparently, that's never going to happen. And so I did my part by parting company, which leads to the next interesting development.

Adrianna then told me that I'd be receiving some shipping boxes and labels at my service (home) address in the next 5-7 days. I would then need to follow the (enclosed with the packaging) instructions to remove and pack up the dish antenna and bracket as well as the satellite receiver and associated connection material. So I said, "well, why don't you just have the installers come out and 'uninstall' it all?" ... to which idea she was very cold and simply said that that wasn't how it was done. So I said "OK, so what if I uninstall it and then drop it off at the local Dish installer that put it in?" She said that I "could" do that but that I should beware because it had to be received "somewhere" by Dish within 30 days or they'd "charge it back to the customer". I couldn't help myself as I broke out laughing right there. I said "well, you could do that but it wouldn't be a very good PR thing and, of course, I would make sure I had receipts for the equipment I delivered, so you could "charge" me all you wanted to ... I would have legal paperwork showing I did what was required and then you'd just have to 'go after your installers' that hijacked or resold that equipment." Dead silence from the other end. So I ended the call with a smile and a laugh and said "you're just proving that I'm doing the right thing by canceling Dish and I'll follow your desired procedure of shipping everything back by UPS ... thank you and goodbye."

Whew! Was I glad that was over. So last night was spent reprogramming my Harmony One universal remote to drop all usages of the Echostar Dish receiver and revert back to my good old antenna (only) for the HD TV. After that I put the converter box on my second (analog, 27") TV and then I reconnected my house cable wiring to pick up the antenna from a splitter and feed all the cable jacks in the house. Everything works fine.

Finally, a recommendation to all those folks that have been given the scare treatment (accidentally or, in most cases, I think, on purpose) by cable and satellite signal providers that they "may not" be able to watch their TV anymore unless they get (you guessed it) cable or satellite service ... just don't do it. In most cases, you'll be able to pick up a good digital signal, although I know there will be some folks in fringe reception areas when a snowy analog reception can be had but no digital signal can be found at all (this will be the exception, I think). So just get a converter box and hook it up (or have a relative, friend or neighbor do it for you). The money you save by *not* paying the cable/satellite companies will soon (less than a year, typically) allow you to buy at least a small High Definition Television, complete with its digital (ATSC) tuner and then you can even get rid of the converter box. You'll be glad you did ... and just in time for those stations that switch their broadcast signal to digital only tomorrow (although not all stations are doing that).

I have a recommended antenna if you've been wondering what to try. This antenna has both tuned elements for UHF channels 14-69 and a dipole antenna ("rabbit ears") for VHF channels 2-13. It's amplified (i.e., it needs a place to plug in power as well) and I've found that I can just leave the rabbit ears neatly folded and get all the HD signals in my area by pointing it in the appropriate direction. The model is the Terk Amplified HDTVa Indoor Antenna and it's available at Best Buy for around $75. A bit pricey but it really works well. I've also recently seen it available on Amazon for under $50, if you can wait for the shipping time. This is not to say that I've tested out a lot of antennas ... but this one works very well for the HD broadcasts I receive in the 20-30 mile range. I also recommend that you log on to www.antennaweb.org to find out where the broadcast signals are in your area. This will help you pick an optimal pointing direction for whatever antenna you choose. One drawback I've seen lately is that this antenna, being indoors, does not have very good capability for picking up the lower (below channel 9) VHF stations. So if you have an HD transmitter broadcasting on channels 2-8, it may not work unless you are quite close to the VHF tower ... and in this case, the rabbit ears would definitely need to be extended.

In the archery department, I need to get my bow draw weight adjusted up a bit as I get stronger from shooting and I'll be doing more of that after joining the local archery club Wednesday evening. It's all fun and I'm going to organize my thoughts on what I've learned about being a first time compound bow purchaser and post them here sometime soon.

Happy Birthday Kyla ...

2009-01-25T18:28:00.001-06:00

Happy 19th birthday ... I hope you have a great one.

Good Flick ... Gran Torino

2009-01-11T16:31:00.003-06:00

I admit that I do like almost all of Clint Eastwood's movies (even those he is not acting in, like "Letters From Iwo Jima") but Gran Torino is really a good show. The ending is something that is a surprise but it's also a movie where you laugh, cry and live. Highly recommended.

Good skiing (cross-country for me) weather here in Iowa today. Looks like it's going to be quite cold over the next week or so. Nice that the days are getting longer though, so it won't be long until the "real cold" days are just a frigid memory.

Yesterday was one of the nicest I've had for quite awhile, and certainly the best of this year ... hmm, maybe the full moon was in control there.

Looks like I'll have at least 10 singing engagements in February, so that'll keep me busy. Would like to get another PC for backup use but it's very difficult to get one with WinXP anymore (sigh). I won't buy a PC with Vista so looks like "the wait is on" until at least Windows 7. Guess I'll have to see what develops there.

Ice Walking

2009-01-04T17:04:00.002-06:00

Very nice coating of ice on all the sidewalks (and streets) today. Well, not so nice if you have to be out driving. But for me it was a great opportunity to add some test walking time on my "Get-A-Grip" footwear. They worked very well as almost the entire 3.2 mile route was an ice challenge. This product was just a good purchase decision and stands head and shoulders above the YakTrax.

Watching the Vikings right now it seems as though they may be wanting to do all they can to hurt themselves as the end of the first half approaches. Well, perhaps they'll have luck and will win despite themselves (or Philadelphia will try to give it away ... hehe). Thus goes Wildcard Weekend in the NFL.

Resolved ...

2009-01-01T10:38:00.007-06:00

Gotcha! No New Year's resolutions here. My goal is to just keep on keepin' on. In a reminder (for me), as 2009 starts, at age 55.79 years, I weigh in at 159.875 pounds standing 70 inches tall. My blood pressure is 120/68 with a heart rate of 60 and a resting heart rate of 46.

New Year's Eve wasn't too exciting as I went out early to sing but then got tired of the noise and headed home by 10:00. Of all things, I then found a nice pedometer (OMRON HJ-112) online and ordered that. During the winter I do quite a bit of walking, since the bicycle is mostly retired with the advent of ice and snow, so I figured it'd be fun to keep track of things like "steps per day" for awhile. As people reading this blog are probably already aware, I've abandoned the YakTrax for "Get-A-Grip" Advanced to allow fairly safe walking on ice and snow. The Get-A-Grip product really works well and I've updated my review comments on Amazon.com to reflect that. YakTrax just doesn't hold up ... too bad, as it's a fairly decent device.

Quite a few dates scheduled for singing at Retirement homes in the Cedar Rapids area already. One is on the 25th of February (a late Valentine's Day party).

Anyway, in 2009, it seems that Ryan has a girlfriend now. Her name is Christina and she may actually come to Iowa this summer. That would be fun.

As I reflect back, I'm glad that I got to know Larry's mom, sister and step-dad during 2008 and, of course, the many people I've met at Rest homes and in the course of singing, biking in RAGBRAI and going to the occasional dance. But I have to say that I'm glad 2008 is finally over. And it was one of the longest years ever since there was an extra day added for leap year along with 2 leap seconds (one in June and one in December). Overall, 2009 has to be a better year.

Interestingly enough, for the first time in at least 20 years, I don't already have a calendar for the New Year. And it came as a total surprise to me this morning when I went into the kitchen to turn the calendar. Then I realized that I always bought a calendar as a part of something to give to Larry for Christmas ... and that didn't happen this past Fall ... sigh. Well, I plan to head out to Barnes & Noble to get a new calendar today.

As far as resolutions, really, I just hope I can let as many folks as possible enjoy hearing me sing this year. With luck, I may get in to most of the Retirement homes in Cedar Rapids. They enjoy it, I enjoy it and it gets me practicing many new (old) songs as well as allowing the residents to hear some more recent vintage tunes. So it's a win-win.

Have a Happy New Year.

Christmas Vacation

2008-12-27T19:43:00.006-06:00

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

2008-12-20T14:45:00.003-06:00

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

2008-12-19T19:26:00.003-06:00

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

2008-12-16T13:40:00.002-06:00

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

2008-12-10T12:40:00.002-06:00

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

2008-12-05T18:07:00.004-06:00

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

2008-12-04T15:14:00.003-06:00

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

2008-12-02T19:57:00.005-06:00

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 ...

2008-11-30T13:28:00.004-06:00

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 ...

2008-11-23T16:10:00.003-06:00

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

2008-11-18T19:30:00.002-06:00

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

2008-11-16T12:55:00.003-06:00

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

2008-11-11T16:17:00.006-06:00

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 ...

2008-11-09T14:56:00.005-06:00

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

2008-10-05T21:25:00.003-05:00

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 ...

2008-09-19T08:36:00.004-05:00

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 ...

2008-09-10T09:53:00.006-05:00

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?

2008-09-06T09:56:00.002-05:00

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 ...

2008-09-04T14:54:00.007-05:00

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

2008-09-01T10:39:00.003-05:00

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 ...

2008-08-28T22:23:00.003-05:00

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 ...

2008-08-26T20:14:00.005-05:00

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 ...

2008-08-21T12:33:00.004-05:00

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

2008-08-19T13:43:00.003-05:00

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

2008-08-14T09:58:00.008-05:00

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

2008-08-13T10:45:00.003-05:00

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 ...

2008-08-07T13:44:00.003-05:00

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

2008-08-04T08:25:00.007-05:00

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

2008-08-03T16:18:00.007-05:00

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

2008-08-02T16:41:00.003-05:00

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

2008-08-01T10:59:00.005-05:00

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

2008-07-31T07:47:00.004-05:00

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

2008-07-30T12:46:00.009-05:00

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

2008-07-29T19:40:00.016-05:00

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!

2008-07-27T21:24:00.009-05:00

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

2008-07-18T18:38:00.002-05:00

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

2008-07-17T16:08:00.004-05:00

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

2008-07-17T07:55:00.003-05:00

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 ...

2008-07-15T16:37:00.006-05:00

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

2008-07-13T21:48:00.004-05:00

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 ...

2008-07-07T13:35:00.008-05:00

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 ...

2008-07-04T09:30:00.002-05:00

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

2008-07-01T22:33:00.003-05:00

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 ...

Another Windy Day!

2008-06-29T11:38:00.002-05:00

Well, today's wind seems to only be in the 20's but it was a tough ride for all that. Noticed some tree branch and siding damage out there today so yesterday's wind gusts must've been fairly strong (maybe quite a bit more than 40mph for peaks). And it looks like I'll hit 1300 miles for the year before the middle of the upcoming week. I feel like I'm about ready for RAGBRAI so I think most of the rest of my riding between now and July 19 is pretty much gravy.

Not much happening today although it seems that Scott may be around for awhile with some friends as they play cards. Probably have to make a grocery run for that as I don't have any kind of snack stockpile that would support a lengthy game. We'll see ...

Windy Afternoon

2008-06-28T14:10:00.003-05:00

Very windy this afternoon. I think it must be 40mph or more (from the west). Good thing I got my ride in early this morning. Had lunch at Pei's with my pal Bob and since then haven't done much but get a few groceries.

Might be a good afternoon for a BLT, I'll have to consider that. Scott's here but is running around with his 10-year reunion events. I think they're touring the high school and then there's some kind of outdoor thing at Noelridge Park (good luck with that in this wind!).

Nothing much is going on in my life beyond sleeping, eating, riding, singing, dancing ... then do it again. And it feels kinda good.

Best book I've read in a long time ... Vincent Bugliosi's "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder". This is real, published in May, and it's very well done. Just have to make sure that the next President (Obama?) doesn't pardon that lying SOB first. Get the book, you may be surprised in the reading of it.

The other good book I'm reading right now is "The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy" by C. Dennis McKinsey. Published in 1995, it should be out there in paperback. Between this and Bush, you really start to wonder how gullible people (large numbers of them) can be when organizations like religion and government set out to purposely deceive them.

Later ...

Storms Movin' In

2008-06-26T12:34:00.002-05:00

Looks like a rainy 24 hours coming up so I got my ride in fairly early this morning. Great temperature and low wind speed though so it was a fun ride. Also, I managed to survive two vigorous blackbird attacks ... boy, those birds need to get a life (hehe)!

Interesting observation today. My heart rate monitor uses my age, height, weight and resting heart rate in an algorithm to calculate calories burned during my workouts. What I've noticed over the past 4 weeks or so (following 3 prior months of consistent workouts) is that the calories burned result for the same ride, approximately same environment (i.e. wind, temperature) and same time of ride has been going down. For example, today's 24.7 mile ride in 88 minutes resulted in 745 calories burned whereas 5 weeks ago I rode the same ride in 86 minutes and burned 900 calories. That's 17% fewer calories burned. Right now my (non-scientific) conclusion is that the "machine" (i.e. me) is becoming more efficient at using the fuel provided to produce motion. It's interesting also that it has taken several months to see anything significant here. Basically, I think that improved efficiency means my heart rate average is lower and, of course, that means something like I may now be getting about 11.5 miles per hamburger rather than about 10 that I was getting earlier in the riding season ... (smile).

We'll see, as time goes on ... later.

Summer's Here ...

2008-06-25T22:22:00.003-05:00

Hot and humid today with more of the same expected during the week ahead. Yeah, it's summer alright!

More Perfect Weather ...

2008-06-23T19:40:00.003-05:00

So far, today is the greatest one of the (very short) summer season. A bit over 80 degrees with a light breeze from the north and low humidity. Had a great ride to Center Point today and, interestingly enough, encountered a second blackbird that felt compelled to attack and actually hit my helmet two times. The other bird is on my shorter (14.2 mile) regular ride and his (her?) attack is as predictable as the rising sun. Well, nothing much I can do about it but give them "the bird" (hehe).

Today was the third ride on my newly installed chain as I passed 1200 miles for the year to date. So before RAGBRAI, the primary maintenance will probably just be a quick chain clean and lube ... and that will be at around 1500 miles.

Also today I stopped in at the theater and saw Kung-Fu Panda. It's an animated film and it was pretty interesting. Many famous voices were used including Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Lucy Liu and Jackie Chan.

Well ... I'll remember this day as being this nice, which is sometimes hard to do, especially since it's the day after George Carlin died of a heart attack. I still remember seeing his show in Fargo when I was in college (around 1973).

Later ...

4 Weeks to RAGBRAI

2008-06-21T12:36:00.003-05:00

Four weeks from today (Saturday, July 19) is the beginning of RAGBRAI (although the ride actually starts on Sunday, the 20th). Should be an interesting ride this year and different from last year in at least two ways: first, there will likely be many more mosquitoes this year due to the standing water from heavy rains and flooding and, secondly, it will also be a more challenging ride because the route will have significantly greater elevation changes (i.e. hills) than last year.

Today I got a nice ride in and then mowed the lawn. Also went out to Pei's for lunch and talked with Bob ... haven't seen him for at least a month. Scott's 10 year high school reunion has arrived (how time flies!) and I expect that many of his friends will also show up this week. Should be a fun time.

The weather is great right now ... no complaints at all.

Later ...

Perfect Weather - 1113 Miles

2008-06-18T14:12:00.003-05:00

What a great weather day today! Light breeze from the north and about 75 degrees as I got in a nice 29 mile ride. One of those days when I can eat more since I burned about 1150 calories and need to replace some carbs (could be some Hot Tamales and M&M's, eh? ... of course, that would be naughty ;-)). Well, maybe a BLT day up in Cedar Falls. Haven't done that for awhile and the best BLT's are at Toad's ...

Anyway, it always feels good when the weather's nice and I hope everyone out there is enjoying the same. I had occasion to practice quite a few very old but very good songs this past weekend. I'll have to include some of them on my current singing list as it's always fun to surprise the karaoke hosts with cool but old/new songs.

Take care ... and don't forget that people can hear you smiling when you answer the phone.

1001 Miles Today

2008-06-11T09:19:00.005-05:00

The weather didn't look too favorable for riding the bicycle later in the day so I got in a quick early right this morning (windy though! at about 25 mph from the south). And I did break 1000 miles on the way in as the odometer is reading 1001 and 64 hours of riding time for the year. Feels kinda good.

I must admit I stayed up pretty late last night though as I started working on the Gateway laptop downstairs, installing Windows XP's SP3 update. Of course, once you start down some roads you have to keep going and this was no exception. I finally wrapped it up (successfully) at about 2:30 this morning. Now both PC's and the Mac virtual machine are running SP3 and none seem to be having any problems.

Huge flooding problems all over eastern Iowa as they say here in Cedar Rapids that it's much worse than even the flood of 1993. The NBC affiliate, KWWL channel 7, was even off the air for some time this morning so they may have pretty severe problems at their studio up in Waterloo. I know many people in Cedar Falls are not able to leave their houses because of local road flooding, even if they don't have water in their homes.

Right now, the creeks are still risin' and 1-3 inches of rain is forecast for the next several days with a break coming by the weekend.

Good news on the RAGBRAI front ... I got my rider's packet in the mail. I should have about 1500 miles in by the start of the ride. It will be fun and it will be interesting to see how things play out as far as getting a place to stay on a day by day basis. I think I'll replace the chain and tires on the bike about a week before the ride, but shouldn't need much in the way of maintenance beyond that as this bike is just over a year old and I keep it pretty well maintained. Checked at the bike shop and they seem to be too busy to take a look at it without keeping it for two weeks (not gonna happen!).

Finally, I should mention my just completed trip to Florida where I visited with Larry's mom and stepdad (Wanda and Sam) and played golf last Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It was great fun and they were gracious hosts. Have to do that again when it's a bit colder up here in Iowa. Sure is dry down in the Orlando area, though. Those folks really need rain ... now if there was only a way for us to export some of the Iowa excess ...

Later ...

Bailey's & Coffee

2008-06-02T12:58:00.003-05:00

Good day for a cup of coffee with a shot of Bailey's. While it is warm out, it's gray and cloudy with a promise of rain. Nothing like a little coffee to brighten things up, eh?

Just a Great Day

2008-06-01T13:21:00.002-05:00

Great day for a picnic ... it's a calm 80 degrees outside at 1pm and wonderful for just about anything. Today's bicycle ride was smooth and fun as I rode up to Center Point and tipped the week's riding mileage at 116 miles with close to 61 hours for the year. Yesterday I laid out some new riding routes that head up through Urbana, Vinton and Shellsburg along with an alternative road route to Waterloo. The road routes I have now encompass distances of: 14, 24, 40, 57 and 110 miles. So that ranges from less than 1 to as much as about 8 hours of riding ... nice.

Interesting Reading

2008-05-31T09:30:00.006-05:00

I've almost finished a book entitled "American Fascists" by Chris Hedges. This book will open your eyes to the ongoing attempts at creating a theocracy in this country. And, as noted on the back cover, it "reminds us of the danger to liberal societies when they tolerate the intolerant".

No matter where you stand, this book may enlighten you at least a little. Pulitzer prize winning author Hedges considers where we might be if fundamentalist Christians get their way. To me, the key issue here is not so much the Bible as it is the totalitarian system (that the fundamentalists are trying to create) that will force citizens to "believe" (and, by the way, fork over huge amounts of cash) or be marginalized, even summarily killed as the return of Christ (and the "rapture") is anxiously anticipated. No, not the stuff of moderate Christians and not related virtually at all to truly personal religious belief ... this is state driven religion as envisioned by Falwell and Pat Roberts and many more of their ilk as they reach higher and higher into all aspects of the political hierarchy (Judicial, Legislative, Executive) of the United States.

You don't believe this is possible in our country, right? Neither did I ... well then, you might just want to read this book ... see what you think after that.

Riding today was great with a temperature in the mid-70's and a time of 48 flat. Sweet! Although I'm at 919 miles today, it's unlikely that I'll reach 1000 next week as it will be a short week since I'm going to Florida to visit Larry's mom and stepdad. That should be a fun time. They also invited my girlfriend ... so I guess I'd need one of those to take along before that could ever happen, eh? As they say in North Dakota sometimes ... "oh well". Keep smilin'

905 Miles, 48:36 Ride

2008-05-30T11:02:00.002-05:00

Fun ride today as I broke 900 miles for the year and also broke 49 minutes for my standard ride of 14.2 miles ... the time was 48:36. My previous best this year was over 51 minutes, so I'm not sure where that comes from except that the wind was very mild. Of course now I'm feeling like it's time for lunch (which, turns out, it really is!) and tonight's going to be a fun night for dancing so I'm looking forward to a smoothly fun end of this week.

Later ...

Amazon Kindle ... Still Cool

2008-05-28T15:08:00.003-05:00

I've had my Kindle electronic reader for about 2 weeks now and I noticed in the news today that Amazon dropped the price by $40. So I gave them a call and they immediately and with no hassle at all issued a credit to me for the $40 price change. That's just good customer service. I've already downloaded and read 3 books on the Kindle and it continues to impress me. Again, if you're a big reader and you often buy books or want to take many more with you than you might have room for when traveling ... take a look at the Kindle. It might be just what you're looking for.

In other news (hold on, I know you're on the edge of your seat at this point!), I've reached 891 miles on the bicycle and will hit 900 on my next workout. That's a good feeling. I'm also thinking I should replace the chain now and then leave the bicycle at the shop to get tuned up while I'm in Florida playing golf. That way I won't even miss it being gone.

Went up to Cedar Falls and sang some karaoke at Joker's on Sunday night (May 25). Turns out that the karaoke hosting company posts pictures of the singers on their website. The base website is at www.ultimateentertainment.cc and you'll have to click on their pictures tab, etc., to get to it but I'm in the first picture. That was a fun evening.

Keep smilin' ...

Dodging Raindrops

2008-05-27T13:08:00.002-05:00

Cool outside (again) today as it was about 48 when I left for my ride at noon. There's rain all around and it was on the horizon at the start but near the end I just made like a mosquito and rode between the raindrops, which weren't too numerous. Always feels good to get that ride in.

Caught a little bit of Kathy Griffin on Bravo this morning ... that gal is very funny. So much so that I ordered a couple of her DVD's.

Looks like time to get some reading in and I need to pick up a few things at WalMart ... so better get a move on.

Later ...

Memorial Day ... Status

2008-05-26T11:55:00.005-05:00

Good day out for riding. It's about 70 and it's still morning, plus it's *not* raining (yet) ... go figure! Turned 852 miles for the year on the bicycle today with about 55 hours of total riding time. It was a nice ride up to Center Point ... although the bugs are starting to be more numerous (quite a few hit me in the face and I'm pretty sure I swallowed one ... but at least I can say that he got the worst of that deal!).

I was up in the Cedar Falls area last night right after the big storm (several tornadoes) went through and it looks like it too. There were videos this morning of the Parkersburg area, which was hit hard by a mile-wide tornado (probably F4). So far it looks like 6 people died there and several more in nearby towns. It looks like a huge bomb went off and flattened most of the town ... pretty sad.

I'm shooting for 1500 miles as a minimum of training before RAGBRAI on the 19th of July. I think it will be as many as 1750 or so but probably not 2000 unless I get really serious about more consistently doing 25-50 miles several times a week. I'll probably replace the chain in early July and also put fresh tires on ... maybe a tune up in June would be good too. Otherwise, most things are ready to go. Of course, I still have to figure out the logistics about how to get out to the start and then back from the finish ... but there's time to work that out.

Today I took a minute to remember my friend, Larry. Along with other situations in life, this quote from Dean Koontz seems to say it best for me: "Loss is the hardest thing, but it's also the teacher that's the most difficult to ignore."

Later ... and keep on smilin' ...

Kindle ... Cool ... 800 Miles ... Crazy Love

2008-05-20T20:52:00.006-05:00

Well, I'm at 765 miles this year on the bicycle and should hit 800 easily during this week. But the big news is that I started using my Kindle electronic reader yesterday afternoon (and finished a book today). This device is sold by Amazon.com and it has it all over sliced bread (hehe). I don't like the "plastic" feel of it or the cheap feeling Kindle holder that comes with it, but Amazon really has got the logistics of getting new books into it down right. EVDO wireless is used and a computer is unnecessary to get a new book. Although the wireless will not work in Europe (which uses GSM technology for wireless) it's still all I need for the U.S. and GSM compatibility may be something that they'll update in the next release (which may be 6-12 months from now).

Problems with Kindle? Not too much ... but in the first complete book I read, there were 11 actual typographical errors. This is extremely unusual to me in a published book. Typically, with the printed books I have, it's rare to find even one such error. So I'm thinking they still need to work on the conversion process that takes a published book from print to the Kindle (proprietary) format. Additionally, there were numerous missing hyphens and spaces (many more than the number of typos, I gave up counting these). Well, it's neat to have this compact form factor as well as the simplicity and ease of getting new books to read. And, by the way, the non-backlit text is very easy on the eyes ... I have to say it's really no different than reading paper. So that's something no one needs to worry about. I'd say that Amazon needs to put in a few ergonomic refinements and lower the cost of the initial hardware investment, along with book prices ... but that will all come with time and more widespread adoption of the Kindle.

Oh, and there is no additional charge for the wireless download connection, so the user pays only the price of the book being downloaded.

And my new theme song is Crazy Love by Poco.

Later ...

50 Mile Ride, Over 700

2008-05-15T23:34:00.002-05:00

Very good riding today as I followed my road route up towards Waterloo for 25 miles. It worked very well and I also saw some additional riding loop options such as turning south towards Vinton and then coming back through Shellsburg and Palo. I think I'll take the motorcycle out and ride such a route to check the distance and intersection turn choices. The bicycle odometer passed 700 today, reaching 708 by the time I made it back home. Burned 1756 calories and I didn't really focus too much on ensuring adequate carb availability. But I did have a few Slimfast bars, three carb gel packs and a 20 oz. Gatorade. I'd have needed much more than that for a full 100+ mile ride but it was adequate for today. Time for the ride was 3 hours and 15 minutes ... for a 15.2 mph average. Fairly easy to do when not hauling a load (like on RAGBRAI) and it could've been quite a bit better if not for a fairly consistent 10-25 mph breeze from the southeast (which affected the ride home significantly, although it did help on the way out).

Trying some new (old) songs again as I re-discover many that I've simply ignored for quite some time. One of these is "You Can Sleep While I Drive" by Melissa Etheridge. Also I'm trying some of the old Jim Croce stuff like "I Got A Name" and "Lover's Cross". Finally, a new (for me) country song "A Fire I Can't Put Out" by George Strait.

Tomorrow is the Spring Memorial Golf Tournament at Saddleback golf course in Solon. It will be good to see everyone from work again but, of course, sad in the sense that Larry will not be there. I'm tasked with running the scoring spreadsheet to figure out the winners (6 flights) as everyone comes in from the course. Although I was going to go to a surprise birthday party tomorrow night, I've decided to not go there as the start of the party is too close to the end of the golf outing and I don't want to be rushed in any way tomorrow.

Later ...

RAGBRAI Prep

2008-05-14T13:25:00.002-05:00

Having traded in my tent for a Hennessey Hammock, the sleeping bag for a Hi-Tech blanket and eliminating the ThermaRest pad, I've been able to get all my sleeping gear in one pannier, all my riding clothes in a second and then the remaining stuff (first aid, walking shoes, sunscreen, etc.) in the front panniers with a little room left. Without having to mount the tent, etc., on the back of the bike I'm also able to now add back my regular rear rack top bag for some extra storage. With all that, the weight is currently at 36 pounds and I think I'll be able to keep it in the 40-42 range (this includes 3 20-oz. full water bottles) which compares to 55 pounds last year. We'll see, but I hope to be able to hit 40 pounds or less by the start of the ride.

Thinking about golfing today but I'd rather ride bicycle, so that's what I'm going to do. Probably up to Center Point, now that it's warmed up to about 60 degrees and it's sunny. I like the wind from the north too as that makes the ride back home "a breeze".

Ryan made it back to NC last night ... last week was a fun one with him here. I'll be taking some time off of riding in June to play some golf and to do some camping with Scott ... already sounds busy, eh?

Later ...

Fun Week, 1 Milestone, Ironman

2008-05-11T10:19:00.003-05:00

Well, it has been a great week. My son Ryan has been here (he's at his mom's this weekend) and we went up to North Dakota to visit my Aunt early in the week. Then we just went out singing (karaoke) and also worked on getting his birthday PC set up and ready for him to take back to school.

The milestone this week is that I passed 600 miles on the bicycle for the year (606, in fact) as of yesterday's ride. I'm thinking I'll have between 1500 and 2000 miles ridden before the start of RAGBRAI, so I should be in good shape for that. I've also done a preliminary map of a road route (i.e., non-bicycle trail) from here to Waterloo so I can try that out without having to worry about a muddy or overgrown bike trail impeding progress. The only drawback is that it's between 4 and 6 miles further to ride the road (i.e., the bike trail is more direct than the road) so that's 8-12 miles added on to the standard 104 mile ride. But it would still be fun to do and I know I can handle it.

Just talked to Scott (my younger son) and he's looking at doing a National Park tour in June and asked if I wanted to go with him (camping, driving from park to park all month). I do, but I might end up joining him in the middle (say in San Francisco or Oregon) for the last 2 weeks or so as I'm not sure I will feel comfortable with my RAGBRAI training if I take all of June off from bicycle riding. Well, we'll see what happens there but it would definitely be fun to spend a few weeks doing that, especially with the Hennessey Hammocks (I talked to him about that and he's going to order one as well since he was just trying to figure out what to do about a tent anyway). That would be good training for setup/breakdown of the hammock before RAGBRAI.

Not much else to talk about I guess, except for Ironman. Don't even think about not going to see it, this is a good flick.

Later ...

Great Trip ...

2008-05-07T20:56:00.002-05:00

Ryan and I just got back from a quick trip to Fargo over the past 3 days. We went up there to spend some time with my Aunt Elaine, who has been diagnosed with cancer and may not be around as long as we would like. Anyway, it was a great time and we also got to go out and sing some karaoke with my cousin and his son. Then on the way back we headed south on I-29 and went through Sioux Falls on the way down to Missouri Valley, IA ... the starting point for this year's RAGBRAI ride. We then went through several of the ride's following towns to get a feel for the hills involved and, believe me, there are *many* more hills this year than last. So it will be an interesting ride, eh?

Oh, while up in Fargo we also stopped in to see my senior creative writing teacher from South High, Gloria Johnson. Just said "hi" and chatted for awhile and then headed out. We also stopped out at Uncle Don's shop and played some 8-ball with him while chomping down some pancakes (and peanuts).

It was sad leaving this morning but we're hoping for the best for Aunt Elaine as she reads and uses her new book on fighting cancer with good nutrition ... which I think will be an eye-opener for her (I bought a copy for myself, I liked it so much!). Hopefully, today was not the last time we'll be able to talk to her and give her a hug.

Later ...

Good Timing ...

2008-05-02T14:58:00.002-05:00

Some strong but not terribly severe storms around here this morning. Then it cleared up around noon and the sun came out with a temp in the mid 60's. So, although I was planning on not riding today, I simply couldn't resist the call of the road. Now at 549 miles and 34 hours for the year, I'm starting to get in pretty decent shape.

Ryan arrived on time this morning from Raleigh. It was good to see him and he'll be back over here on Sunday as we prepare to head out to North Dakota on Monday. It'll be good to see Aunt Elaine again.

Think I'll take the afternoon off now and get a sandwich as I consider where to go dancing tonight. Decisions, decisions ...

Later ...

Nobody Knows, RAGBRAI News!

2008-05-01T00:16:00.007-05:00

Interesting night of singing tonight (the evening of April 30). I went to 3 different places, including one on 2nd street where Chance was doing a show. Seemed a bit melancholy, I guess, which is somewhat unusual for me. Anyway, the main things that happened tonight are that someone asked me to sing Jim Croce's "Operator" (which I did).

By the way, some good news on RAGBRAI. I got my "wristband number" yesterday, meaning that I am fully registered for the 2008 ride. Well, now all I have to do is find a way to get to the start and get home from the finish ... of course, I could ride over to the start and ride home from the finish ... but I'm not sure I'm *that* much of an IronMan (hehe). Of course, Ironman (the movie) opens tomorrow (May 2) in Cedar Rapids and Ryan and I are tentatively planning on seeing it on Sunday. Should be cool!

Tonight's singing (i.e., the evening of May 1) was much more upbeat than last night (see text in the 1st paragraph, above) and two gals asked me to sing duets with them, plus I found a new duet partner for one song. So it was very good. Gotta decide what to do the next two nights though as I want to go out singing but there are a few good dances to consider as well. So many things to do ... so little time.

Ryan will be in town tomorrow and will be at my place on Sunday, that will be fun! Looks like some storms coming in from the southwest tonight ... hope all that clears up in time for Ryan's plane to land tomorrow morning (9:35).

Well ... goodnight all.

Ken

Movin' On ... 475 Miles

2008-04-27T12:40:00.004-05:00

Well, I'm officially 195 miles further in riding the bicycle this year than in 2007 on this date. It's also high time for my life to move on ... and so it will.

Ryan will be here next Friday and we'll head up to Fargo on Monday, May 5. Time to visit my Aunt Elaine as she battles cancer. I'm sure it's been at least 5 years since I've been up there and I was thinking of making it a motorcycle trip until Ryan's visit came up. This would be one of his few opportunities to go there and so we'll just take the Camry (h-mmm, I need to change oil in it this week sometime).

Saw Marc and Lauren at the Red Lion last night. I guess there was some kind of costumed wedding party because a bunch of pirates and wenches showed up there around 10:30. I also stopped out to see Tom & Wilma on the occasion of Tom's 67th birthday. They're thinking of having a big party out there on the 9th so maybe Ryan would be able to go out there with me (but maybe not since he's leaving on the 10th to go back to Raleigh) ... we'll have to see.

While you'd never think this would be true, on the surface, I think the best place to get a smoked turkey sandwich (on whole wheat) is "BBQ This" on Boyson Road here in Cedar Rapids. They also have some decent sides (like homemade Kettle chips and really good potato salad) to go with the sandwich. Oh, yeah, you can also get plenty of things like barbecued ribs there ... hehe.

Well, I'm getting hungry now ... so better get going.

I've decided that it's pretty fun to watch a movie while eating a box of Milk Duds and drinking coffee. Very relaxing ... life really can be very good alone.

Later ...