Suffering... Late..

Rain + Waking up late = Pain

This is the equation I came up with today, I feel its about as accurate as 2+2=5 for extremely large values of 2.

I rolled out of bed today a bit late, well lets put that into perspective. My alarm goes off at 6:30am, I tend to get a few min of extreme anger at it before I have to move my very warm and lovie cat and go off to do thous things that have to be done first thing in the morning.

Typically I'm at my new parking spot at about 7:15 for a 35 - 45 min ride with an average of 11 to 12 mph over 7.8 miles

Today I got to my parking spot at 8:06, oh yea taking late to a hole new definition. Now luckily enough I work in an office where my being late does not really matter, but still, I DON'T LIKE IT.

So off I go with wild abandement and legs of fire... or should I say legs on fire. When I say I pushed it, I had the hammer down the hole way.

7.8 miles, in 28 minnuets.

Doing the math, and checking the cycle computer: 16.7 MPH average.

Wow the ride home tonight is going to S U C K!

Oh yea did I mention the weather.

I'm in Harrisburg, the little speck in the middle of the map.

Come on weekend...

What a week...

Well the week is almost over. Whewwww!

My legs are tired, and my butt is sore in about the saddle regions but over all it was a good week.

Number for today:

GPS.
Moving Time: 35:40
Moving Avg: 13.2
Stopped: 4:27
Max speed: 30.5
Trip: 7.83
Total Ascent: 136 Feet
Total Descent: 248 Feet

Cycle Comp.
Time: 35:17
Avg: 13.2
Max: 31.0
Trip: 7.8

By the end of today I will have ridden 66.98 miles this week. I can definitely feel that I'm putting in more miles as well as much more elevation change.

New Tires...

My new tires arrived last night, god I love my Amazon Prime account. All the fun of shopping online, no shipping costs and 2 day shipping.

After I got back to the house last night I enjoyed a very nice Troegs, Nugget Nector and sat out on my front porch and put the new tires on.


The tires I went with are the Avenir Streetster Tires 26 x 2.0. They are smooth with a extremely low rolling resistance. They were a monumental pain in the but to get on. But from what I have learned by reading online reviews the side walls are slow to cut from "hefty" riders. Seeing that has been a problem in the past I'm hoping that this will help to elevate the problem. They also have a Kevlar belt running under the tread to help elevate flats. All this for $19.00 each.

www.mtbr.com has no review for the product yet, guess I'm a trend setter.

Green Geek item of the day...

Allow me to start off by saying I want one of these. It is the NatureMill in Home Composter. I know what your thinking "Ewwww but the smell" well forget that, this thing is smell free. They range in price from $250 to $400. They also have a pet waist version.





Pet of the Day...

Now this is a problem I fully understand. Its amazing how little bed space you can end up with when you have pets in the house.





Why Helmets Don't Suck...

Kudo points on not only landing on his butt, but also getting the hand up for the "I'm OK wave" which is different from the "I need medical assistance" and the "That heart so much I don't know my own name" waves.






Sgt. Pezzer's Epic Fail...

Today's Sgt. Pezzer's Epic fail is a link to this video.

Click here to watch-Safe for work.

Please not that he receives extra points for falling on his skate board at the end. Classic.

Day Two...

First night time ride home - Complete

Second morning ride to work - Complete

Here are the numbers I came up with on the way into work today.

Cycle Computer
Time: 37:20
Avg: 12.5 mph
Max: 29.0 mph
Trip: 7.8 miles


GPS
Moving Time: 37:47
Moving Avg: 12.2 mph
Stopped: 2:04
Max Speed: 28.8 mph
Trip: 7.70 miles
Total Ascent: 120 feet.
Total Descent: 261 feet.

A hole new sore...

Wonderful web...

So the web has given us some data over the past 20 years. But one web page has come to my attention as being almost indispensable to the commuting cyclist. If your like me and tend to find out what the ride home is going to be like by sticking your head out your office window, this site may help your and your co-workers comfort levels. Just plug in your zip code.

www.weatherbike.com

New Ride...

Wow, that was harder then I thought it was going to be.

Over the past two weeks I have been riding fairly short rides 8 to 10 miles round trip per day. I was feeling good, really good, fast, agile all things not fat.

This has been my ride for the past two weeks.

This ride is safe, easy and best of all, I can sleep in a bit and still make it to work just fine.

This is the new ride.Still very safe, not easy, and about twice the time on the way into to work.

The Green path is what I drive to my parking area (Giant Parking lot). So the questions may be, why do I drive, and not ride that short distance. Well, I hate a hill between my house and the parking area. I really hate it on the way into work, but it sucks HUDGE on the way home.

So today was the first time this spring I made the longer ride. My back side is sore, and my legs felts like they were going to fall off by the time I got to the car. But as they say, pain is weakness leaving the body. I must be very week, it was a lot of fun to be able to be on the bike for a much longer time, I'm sure there will be time in the upcoming weeks when I will want to slash my tires, but this is for the betterment of me and I'm excited about it.

Numbers of the Day:

According to my Cycle Computer.
Time: 40:25
Avg: 11.4
Max: 37.7
Trp: 7.7

According to my GPS.
Moving time: 40.30
Stopped: 2.22
Over all Avg: 10.6
Odo 7.59 miles


Geeky item of the Day...

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the ThinkGeek Annoy-a-tron.

This comes to us from one of my favorite sites, ThinkGeek.com where you can get such wonderful thinks like the One up mushroom t-shirt and the R2 fish training school kit. Today I would like to talk about the Annoy-a-Tron. This wonderful little device has crumbled the mind of two of my coworkers, go to the above link and read the letter ThinkGeek received.

So what does it do, it emits a random tone, at a random interval... All day...... They also have a new version that emits a buzzing sound. You know something like a cell phone on silent.

Pet of the Day...


I try to stay away from all the pet pictures with intentionally incorrect English, but this was funny.








Why Helmets don't suck...


I have three words, CRAP!!!! all of them.






Sgt. Pezzer's Epic Fail...

I would like to point out a where these two "men" went wrong.

A) WTF are they wearing?
B) SNOW! No pants, SNOW!
C) Crazy Person 1 (CP1) is standing on ICE, Crazy Person 2 (CP2) is diving into what they believe is water. CP2 really should have looked at CP1 prior to attempting to dive into a sheet of ICE.
D) What is CP2 wearing under their "toto" is it?
E) I'm not sure how much alcohol it took to get these "men" out here but for CP2 is about to not be enough.

There is a part of me that would really like to see how this turned out.

Sense of Humor?

Do you have one?

Have you used it lately?

Did it heart when you used it?

I like to think I'm a funny person, in fact most of the time when I laughing I'm laughing at myself. Today was one of those days. The last 24 hours have been rather crappy, job offer rejection, finical stress, and just over all me making a few bad decisions. After getting all that under the bridge and starting to put together a plan of action. I was ready to move on and get back to living life rather than planning how to live it.

What does that mean? LET’S RIDE!!!!

I have found that once my legs start to heart, and the sweat start rolling I forget all the things that give me "more" gray hair, and start just thinking about what I'm doing. Where I'm riding and what my next step is.

For some reason, this Zen like state is always accompanied with the amazement that they are my feet going round and round on the peddles. For whatever reason I get great joy out of watching my feet go around in circles.

Today while ridding into work, I was in one of those moments. Allow me to paint the picture.

• 7:45am, Harrisburg PA
• It rained all night, and the world looks clean, wet and slick.
• The water is rolling off my front tire and streaming up in the air, then bending from a slight breeze.
• My legs feel really, really good today, I'm averaging 15-18mph on the flats
• It’s 50 degrees out and I'm wearing the exact right amount of clothes.
• Stevie Ray Vaughan Pride and Joy is on the MP3 player

Its time like this that makes me get out of bed to go ride.

Then it all came crashing down...

It seems that god has a sense of humor as well, because he took all the water in the world and had it fall on me for about 15 min. It was raining so hard I could not see. I’m not talking I was having problems seeing, I’m talking if I rolled forward enough water was getting in my eyes I think I was a fish.

After rolling to an over pass, I parked there for about 20 min till the Harrisburg monsoon season passed me by and just started laughing. I was laughing at myself, but because of all the others that were getting caught out in the rain.

I was laughing because I just did not care.

You see here were all these people running and scampering to get out of the rain, trying to keep their suits and ties dry and all looking at me like I was nuts.

I realised that I did not care that I was soaking wet, I did not case that everything in my bag was probably wet at this point. I did not care, because IT does not matter.

In the grand scheme of things, getting poured on in the rain does not matter.

So while everyone else was huddling for cover, I took god up on his offer and went out and played in the rain.

By the time I got to work, I was in that wonderful I am a kid and just played in mud puddle state of mind.

Walking past my co-workers dripping wet, I looked them all in the eyes and said “Good morning” With a smile and a bounce in my step.

After getting to my desk, some of my staff started coming in and I asked if anyone got the message about it being “Extreme Casual Friday”

It’s going to be a good day.