Pictures from Sunday's ride!

Available here...

White socks. I'm so ashamed.

Due to a laundry miscommunication, I was forced to ride my 36.8 miles today in white socks. The horror was almost too much to bear.

On the plus side, it was quite a nice ride. I warmed up by riding up the Hart/Montague trail, then in New Era (11.5 miles into the ride) turned left and ground up the Garfield street hill. Boy, that fat cat sure is popular if he's got streets named after him in small town America!* Anyway, it's a nice hill, with three steep sections separated by relative flats. At the top, I felt good, turned around, and rolled down, intending to coast back in to town. Halfway down, a minivan backed out of a driveway, well ahead of me. First, I was annoyed, but quickly realized it was well clear of me - unless I sped up!

The minivan instantly changed from a vague obstruction to a target of opportunity. Up into the big gears, down on the drops, and off I went in search of a draft. I got within about 15 feet, then saw the driver check his mirror. HIs eyebrows went up, he sped up, and I gave chase. We all got up to 41.5 mph, a new record for Ruby, before we both had to acknowledge the stop sign at the bottom. The driver actually let me pass him on the main street; I'd guess this was his first experience being chased by a big guy in a green, yellow, and white jersey (the 2005 Herman Miller jersey) on a bicycle.

Anyway, back on to the trail I went, for a mile or so, then left again for a different road up the same hill. This was Stony Lake Road, aka M20. This climb was steady and smooth, with a clean shoulder as wide as a traffic lane, and over a mile long! Once back at the top, I coasted down the other side, crossed the highway, and headed back home on a fairly hilly road.

Eventually I ended up going back home past the Old Channel Trail golf course, and then to another familiar, fast hill, so I went for it again, and got even higher this time - 42.5 mph, an all-time, all-bike record for me. Wheeeee!

These are, unfortunately, stubby little Michigan hills. I've gotta wonder how I'll hold up on the roads around Asheville...

*yeah, yeah, yeah, President Garfield, yada yada yada.

A nice long group ride

55.5 miles with the JDRF group - a record-distance ride for at least four of those present! Until today, our longest group ride had been a rather tepid 41 miles, but today we had hills, headwinds, and mileage that really displayed how much folks have progressed in the last few months of riding. And I think we've just about got Tom convinced to go shopping for a new road bike - his wife Mary broke out an old but capable Schwinn roadie and was promptly comfortable at a couple miles an hour faster than she had been before. Yee hah! Go for it, Tom! Give in to Bike Lust! It's clearance season at VeloCity...

The Junk-o-Matic little digital camera came along for the ride; in general the results were a bit better than last time, but still mediocre (my wife the pro is ready to throw it at a wall, but her patience for mechanical things is highly limited). I've got them on my work machine. This is not that machine. I'll get 'em up as soon as I can.

did

31.8 miles, straight into the doghouse

31.8 miles, of an intended 50+.

The last time I got a flat tire on my bike was during the Reagan administration. I don't think I had my driver's license; my Dad had to come rescue me in the tornado-diminished town of Fandon, Illinois. Naturally, I got that flat at roughly the turn-around point of that ride, some 13 miles from home.

Today, I again flatted near the turn-around point of a ride, this time in Hart, MI. I swear, I looked over the back tire when I left home and thought it looked fine; by the time I was sitting by the roadside trying to fix the flat, cords were showing and air leaked out all over the place. Oh, I was prepared; I had a spare tube, tire levers, and a CO2 inflator with three cartridges. Well, the tire levers worked nicely, and I suppose the CO2 did it's thing, but the spare tube was a bust - the valve core somehow disappeared, apparently IN to the tube, so it held air about as well as a colander holds water. Going back to the old tube, I had no way to find the leak (I did have a pach kit along), so I bought some Slime tire sealant at a hardware store. It is only barely possible to get Slime through a presta valve (which no one outside the world of bike-shop bikes has heard of, and there's no bike shop in Hart, despite it being an otherwise very nice little town right on a bike path); I got maybe an ounce into the tube, squeezing so hard I actually squeezed it right through the threads on the Slime bottle's cap.

Did I mention that my wife had a wedding to photograph later in the afternoon? She was not pleased to have to pack up the kid and come fetch me. At least it's a straight shot on the highway to get to Hart; I was waiting by the end of the exit ramp, and she had plenty of time to get to the wedding. It actually seemed that the slime did more or less seal the tire, so without a time constraint I probably would have made it home.

Dane and I went to Village bike shop (where I got the bike) for it's last warranty tune-up (including truing up the rear wheel, which had a couple-millimeter wobble), a new tire, and a couple of new tubes.

And to think, tomorrow, Coach Mike is going to give us tire-changing lessons. Snort.

Piccies from August 21...

Available here!

Next group ride is August 28, and promises to be a pretty good-sized group, possibly with the occasional hill. My legs are pleased to have today and tomorrow to catch up with the week's mileage - I'm already up to 138 miles for the week, with Saturday left to add to the total.

I finally got my last paperwork in to the JDRF today, so I'm totally committed!

(Feel free to make jokes about me being committed at your leisure...)

A quick non-bike related note...

Hey, all y'all out there who set up wireless home networks - take a few minutes and learn how to secure them! I brought home a wireless-enables laptop last night, and was able to connect to at least one home wireless network. I'm nowhere near mean enough (or, for that matter, savvy enough) to go in and do damage, but jeez, there were no barriers as far as I could tell. From what I can tell, it's a simple process to turn on some basic encryption to at least keep out the less motivated naughtyspawn out of your personal digital life.

We have a wired network and Macs. That's about as secure as it gets...

A bit of recovery

32 miles, up the bike path to Shelby and back. No hills, sheltered from the light wind, minimal effort expended.

It was a day to just spin some life back in to my legs, after the oh-so-satisfying abuse they took yesterday. I forgot to grab water on my way out, so I stopped at the Wesco station in New Era (about 11 miles up the trail) for bottled water. Ya know, for all the sturm und drang (apologies to anyone out there who actually speaks German; who knows, maybe this blog is a huge hit in Bavaria) about gas prices, bottled water still costs more. The king-sized Nutrageous bar went down well, too, in any case.

So it's really, really time to get serious about fund-raising. I think I'm going to drop letters in all the neighborhood mailboxes, as well as some emails and letters to folks further afield. I find it so much harder to ask people for money, even for a worthy cause and a worthy charity, than to just ride my keister off on the bike. Feh.

It's hard to draft behind skinny people

34 miles with the Herman Miller Tuesday Afternoon group. Average speed: 20.2 mph.

That's a good 2 miles per hour faster than I've ever averaged for any significant distance. That may have something to do with having been in a line cruising at 22-25 mph while we were going upwind, and adding a few more to that speed once we turned back downwind. Any hills we encountered did me in after the first 15 miles; I managed to claw back to the group on the downhills and flats for the next 8 miles or so, and that was it, until one of the guys dropped back and pulled me and the other big guy (who held his own on the hills far better than I did) back to the pack. Once they had a straight shot back to where we started, though, that was it, we two clydesdales were staring at five skinny butts receding in the distance. We paced each other back at what I would normally consider a very fast pace, but today going 18-23 felt like a crawl.

The pace obviously got to be too much for me, particularly on any significant hills, but ultimately I was quite pleased with myself. I felt like I was able to recover after gutting up hills, and after a bit of coasting down the back of the hill, I'd be able to maintain a good pace by myself, and as long as the group didn't hammer, I could pull back. Of course, at one point, I looked up, and they were all out of the saddle sprinting. "Not us, nuh-uh, we ain't doin' that" said the legs to the brain, and the brain replied "I wasn't going to ask you to, now shut up and pedal!"

I'll do a recovery ride Wednesday, then a couple of days off, then miles this weekend. Should be a big week.

30.8 miles north of Montague, hilly and windy.

The chipseal on Lamos road is now rideable. W00t! I can get to the lakeshore without cutting 8-10 miles off of a route.

A strong north wind made the outbound leg hard work; it wasn't helped by the hills on Lehman road. Turning for home, though, was a revelation. There's nothing quite as nice as a strong tailwind after working hard for 15 miles!

Tomorrow I ride with the Herman Miller Tuesday group. They have something of a reputation for animalistic, mid-to-upper-20's pacelines. I hope I don't get too brutally dropped...

Group Ride

41.5 miles south of Holland with some of the JDRF group.

Pictures to follow...

"I'm four years old and I have diabetes!"

33 miles with hills, 17.2 average.

Heading north, I caught up to a guy who turned out to have basically the same job as me, except at our competitor Knoll. He rides home almost every day, having been dropped off for work by his wife. He must ride 35+ miles every time he does that. I'm fairly jealous!

A more important meeting was with Alyssa, my "ride kid." The title of the post is exactly how she replied when I asked her how old she is - no hiding it for her! She's been on an insulin pump since last December, having done regular shots before that. I can't imagine having to give a 3 year old shots; it's bad enough having to get Dane though his immunization shots. Keeping a pump attached to a four year old must be a heck of a challenge, though. She seems fairly like Dane; she was chatty and confident the whole time I was there, despite my scary bike clothes and less than delightful aroma (when I got home Dane exclaimed "I smell buttness!").

Of course, dumb me forgot that I had my camera stuck in my back pocket. Another time, I guess!

did

It's chipseal season, apparently

33 flat miles south of Whitehall.

At least two of my regular roads have been rendered off-limits by the ever-popular chipseal resurfacing method. Grrrrrr.

Pics are available from Sunday's big group ride; look here.

Aaand we finally got my kid's 4 year pictures done. That's my monkey, all right...

Downtown Holland invaded by spandex-clad wierdos

39 miles between Holland and Saugatuck. No vicious bees invaded my jersey this time.

Gaaahhhd, but big group rides are fun! Between the Macatawa Cycling Club and the Rapid Wheelmen from Grand Rapids, we had 75+ riders pulling away from Velo City Cycles in downtown Holland. We rode en masse down 8th street, which was clearly a novelty for the locals; more than a few people were taking pictures. Once clear of downtown traffic, the faster folks took off on a paceline, and the rest of us sort of started grouping up by expected pace. I ended up with a 17 mph average for the ride, which included going over the Oval Beach hill and some slow stretches - at other times, we were puttering along on the high side of 25, and I was loving every minute of it. I don't think I've ever spent so much time on my 53 tooth chainring. Being able to pay attention to other people (either carrying on a conversation or staying in a slipstream) seems to suppress any effort-related discomfort I might otherwise have felt.

I wanna do that again, for a longer ride!

Bee: 2. Me: 1.

33 miles from the Herman Miller Design Yard to the south side of Saugatuck and back.

So I'm heading for Oval Beach, nearing the steep hill that goes over the dune to the beach. I'm plugging along nicely, looking at the boats, looking at the houses, feeling the wind, feeling the road, feeling OUCH! OWIE! What the...? I start yanking on my jersey near the bottom of my ribcage, where it feels like I'm getting a good sliver. And then YYYYEEEEAAAARRRGGGGHHHH! Right on the spare tire! It's hard braking with one hand while the other hand is fending off a vicious attack from an unknown assailant. Finally I get stopped, yank out my jersey, and see the corpse of a bee fall out. His/her/it's stinger, complete with the back end of the bee, is stick in my belly to the right of my navel, still pumping in venom. Little bugger apparenly got me twice before losing it's stinger and getting somewhat squished by my self defense efforts. Natually, this is about as far from my car as I'll be today, so I ride back to the Design Yard with a sore stomach. It still hurts, a few hours later.

Do bee stings make you sleepy? I dunno. The only other times I've been stung recently I was mowing and stirred up a nest in the ground, and I was happy to sit on the couch for a few hours aferwards anyway. I can barely keep my eyes open now. Admittedly, that my have more to do with a certain lack of sleep in the last week, and missing my morning coffee because of a meeting.

I guess there's a downside to the jerseys that unzip to my navel; in scoop mode, I might get more than air in there!

Yyyyaawwwnnnn

38 miles yesterday, including going over Muskegon State Park's Blockhouse Hill twice.

Stupid power was out most of the night. No fans. No sweet, sweet white noise to give the brain something to listen to instead of itself. No water pump. No ability to flush, or wash hands, or get a drink. No refrigerator, no air conditioner in the bedroom window, no nothin'. No updating my ride log. And, of course, shortly after I drifted off at about 2:30 in the morning, the juice comes back. All the lights go on, the fans come on, the AC fires up. Awake again. Grrrrr...

Apparently some yutz hit a pole on Old Channel Trail, and knocked the lines down.

Burn Baby Burn!

31 miles, big pancake breakfast after 14. Gotta love riding with my folks; it's extra cool that my dad can do rides like that despite ongoing cancer treatment.

We just got back from the annual Coast Guard Festival fireworks display in Grand Haven. It's a really good show; I don't think I've ever seen such good coordination between the music (from the inimitable Musical Fountain) and the fireworks themselves, and the colors they create are really intense. It's a great show - generally better than the area Independance Day shows - and the attendance is commensurate. Arriving at 6:30 in the evening, we managed to find a spot to sit that was maybe 10 square feet, and had been a sort of unofficial walkway. The rest of the hill, even under trees, was solid blankets and bodies. And, of course, Carny food. What's fireworks without corn dogs and elephant ears?

This year, though, we were also treated to The Burning of Dewey Hill - falling embers from the display ignited multiple blazes on Dewey Hill, which is across the Grand River from the city and the huge crowds of people eating Fat Balls and ogling each other. By the time the show in the sky was done, the hill was burning brightly in a dozen spots on the side we could see, and there was a rather ominous glow over the top that soon revealed more flames. Whole trees were practically exploding; we're 8-10 inches low on rain this year, and the pre-show dousing from the fire department didn't apparently do much.

The bright spot (har, har) of the fire was that people didn't surge away from the waterfront as they usually do, but instead watched area fire departments do their thing, so we had less trouble than usual getting out of the area and headed homewards. It was kind of hard to leave, though; a big, largely uncontrolled fire at night is really amazing to watch. When a tree would go up, you'd see a sort of whirlwind of fire and embers rise high above it, and you could see the whole blaze marching uphill. Too bad we didn't have a decent camera along...

Ahh, lovely weather again

31 miles, averaged 18.7 despite some hills.

Temperatures have moderated; it was in the upper 70s instead of the upper 80s. Nothing new to report beyond that, though.

Yeah, hot.

27 miles, some hills, 90 to 95 degrees according to my 'puter, which I think reads a few degrees high. Yech, nevertheless, but otherwise I felt quite good

I missed Stonehenge! Phooey! Somehow I was looking down, and I missed the almost-full-size Stonehenge replica that sits on a farm east of Spring Lake. I guess an orthopedic surgeon got a hankerin' to have some monoliths in his yard; the blocks are actually stuccoed foam. Scroll down for a picture and more info here.

And watch out, Mr. 7-time-Tour de France winner; your record is officially in jeopardy. Dane got his first "real" bike from his grandparents - yeah, it's a $50 Meijer/Huffy thing, but he's already whipping up and down my parents' road (fully helmeted, of course!). He even had his first crash, with two skinned knees to show for it - it didn't slow him down a bit, not a tear in sight, he was right back on and riding. He's also learning to use a hand brake, as recommended by bike guru Sheldon Brown.

15 years ago today was Kirsten's and my first date. Egads!