New 15 Mile Route

Well, today I turned left instead of (my usual) right at the end of Toddville Road and found an interesting road that crosses I-380 somewhat north of the Toddville exit (where I usually cross on my standard training run). Then it hits Center Point Road and I can ride back home on the final third just like the old route. The difference is that the new riding route adds about .8 miles so now it's almost exactly 15 miles in length. This is a very nice number (although it's not prime ). And I tried out my new wireless Mavic Cyclocomputer today ... it worked fine. However, when I installed it (yesterday), I found that it was not communicating with the wireless cadence counter. So I sent that back and they're sending me a new one via UPS. Hopefully it will be here tomorrow. I thought about removing the front (lowboy) rack today but I think I'll leave it on for awhile yet as I haven't given up on the idea of doing another century this weekend and I'd want to put bags on the front for that. I'd like to do the 100-mile ride just because I have more experience now and I'm in much better shape after RAGBRAI, so it would be interesting to compare it to the first one I did earlier this spring. One good check mark in the experience column is that I've learned how to relax my neck and shoulder muscles while riding. On short (1-2 hours) rides it doesn't matter much but when going more than 50 miles I start to notice a "pain in the neck" ... and I figured out how to keep that from happening while on RAGBRAI.

NewsFlash! Ryan sent me a note that BestBuy has the last two Matrix DVD's on sale so I went over there after work and, sure enough, they were there and for only $3.99 each. I guess they're trying to get rid of DVD's as they want to make shelf room for HD disks. By the way, in the long run I think that Blu-Ray will win the format wars but it'll probably get to be a pretty cheap option to have players that handle HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. However, I expect that people will likely be stuck with renting, for example, only Blu-Ray from some rental places and only HD-DVD from others (and maybe both from yet others). Well, we'll see. But Blu-Ray has more storage space and allows for more encryption/content control capability, so that's why it'll probably win. From a TV perspective, 1080P is going to be tops and the latest LCD TV's are coming out with 120Hz refresh rates, which is great for action movies, etc. I think Samsung is one of the manufacturer's there and those latest feature TV's will probably cost more (maybe close to $3000 for 40-inch) for awhile.

Well, quiet night as I've worked out and then went out to Pei's to eat dinner. No golf today as Larry is sick and Scott (the other guy in our league 3-some) is on vacation ... so I'll probably see if Larry and I can play on Thursday or Friday afternoon. And I'll have my new driver by Thursday (look out Tiger!)

Maybe I'll take a look at the Matrix Reloaded movie.

Good night ...