I just finished reading this book while on vacation last week. Don't confuse it with the book "It's Not About the Bike" which was written by Lance Armstrong about his comeback after fighting cancer to win the Tour de France. This book is written by a man named Robert Penn, who apparently has ridden his bicycle almost all of the way around the world. (If I remember correctly, he made it to India but decided to stop for some reason) He often refers to his experiences on his ride throughout the pages.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Book Review - It's All About the Bike
I just finished reading this book while on vacation last week. Don't confuse it with the book "It's Not About the Bike" which was written by Lance Armstrong about his comeback after fighting cancer to win the Tour de France. This book is written by a man named Robert Penn, who apparently has ridden his bicycle almost all of the way around the world. (If I remember correctly, he made it to India but decided to stop for some reason) He often refers to his experiences on his ride throughout the pages.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
My First Century Ride: ULCER 2011
This post is long, and there's only one picture, and it's a picture of a computer. I will not be held responsible if you read the whole thing and then feel like you wasted your time. It's not my fault that you wasted your time reading this. Just saying...
For all of you who have been in contact with me over the past few months, you may have heard about the ULCER. ULCER stands for: Utah Lake Century Epic Ride. A "century" is what bike riders call a ride of 100 miles, as you may have guessed. My friend Garrett, my brother-in-law David, and I all signed up to do the ULCER, which was held on August 6. It cost about 60 bucks to register, which made it easier to make myself prepare for it (even though I really didn't do all that much) so that my money didn't go to waste. As you may know, it is now after August 6, which means that the ride is over. This post is a description of my experience on the ride so that you all can read about it.
The people who registered to ride as a team were allowed to begin leaving at 6:30, and after all of the teams left, individuals were allowed to leave. We made it to the starting area right as they announced that individual riders could leave. They started out approximately 100 riders every 5 minutes or so, and we got to start in the first group almost exactly at 6:45. There were a lot of people surrounding me as we rolled out under the starting banner where the antennas attached to our rider number officially started our time. Luckily I remembered to reset the odometer on my bike computer so that I could get a real recording of my ride statistics.
The first 10 miles, or so, of the ride were pretty much a blur. With so many other cyclists around you, it's harder to stay with your friends than you would think. Dave went a little slower at the start because he wanted to give his legs some time to warm up before getting up at a quick pace. Garrett jumped ahead of me and I was content to stay in between them (mainly because I didn't have a tire pump with me, so if my tire popped I would need one of them to stop and let me use their pump). Riding in a large group was some of the most fun I've had in a while. There were always people passing people and resting behind people. Pretty soon, I jumped in behind a group of riders and off we went. I passed Garrett sometime and before I knew it, we passed the first rest stop at 16 miles in. I pulled off a little bit and waited for Garrett and Dave to catch up.
Garrett spotted me and pulled up next to me, but when Dave showed up, he was apparently warmed up because he just flew around the corner and was out of sight. I took off after him and Garrett followed. Eventually I caught up to him, and together we pushed on to the rest stop at 25 miles. There, we all got off of our bikes and rested for about 5 or 10 minutes. I helped myself to a few quarter peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, some grapes and some Gatorade and water. We all still felt good, so we jumped back on the bikes and set off again.
After a few minutes, we again got separated and I think that I ended up between Garrett and Dave. This stretch of the road took us out of the semi-inhabited neighborhoods between Lehi and Provo and down next to Utah Lake. Again, I jumped behind another rider, this one wearing clothes announcing himself as a fat cyclist, and started passing people. It was around this point that we passed the first photographer out on the course. I was going to pose, but I still felt like a newbie rider and I didn't know if posing was looked down upon. So I just tried to make myself look like I had done these long rides several times before and I rode on.
I don't remember much about the ride from here until the next rest stop except that I ended up getting there first. There was a big line to refill water bottles, so I started waiting and as I waited, both Garrett and Dave rolled up. We didn't take long at this stop because we were all still feeling good. I believe the stop was at about 38 miles and the next would be at 48 miles, just under half-way through the ride. I decided to stick back with Dave and not worry about going fast, something that I would decide several more times over the remainder of the ride.
As we set off for this leg, the large group had somewhat dissipated. Some riders were registered for the 35 or 60 mile route and had turned off the 107 mile route and the rest of the group was beginning to string out along the road. I hung back and took it easy for a bit, but when people started passing me, I jumped in behind them and rode on their wheel so I wouldn't have as much wind resistance. This was good for me, but again I ended up on the road without either of my friends. I just hung out behind a guy who was doing a pace that I liked and pedaled along. About this time, I realized that I hadn't put any sunscreen on and that the left side of my body was getting a lot of sun (since we were riding South, for the most part).
Friday, June 17, 2011
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
New parts
Thursday, May 26, 2011
My Next Project
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Disc Golf - Spanish Fork Course
As I stepped out onto the course, I was met by gale force winds. Immediately, I realized that I was the only one on the course because the wind was blowing at around 30 miles per hour. It turns out that I picked the exact wrong time to go to that course. The chart below shows the average wind speed at the mouth of Spanish Fork canyon by season as a function of the time of day. And as you can see, 7:00 am is right at the peak of the wind speed curves for each season. I don't know if it's spring or summer right now, but the wind almost knocked me over at times, so I would assume the wind on Saturday was summer wind. It's no wonder they installed a bunch of wind generators there.
So that was basically my day. The course I thought would be really fun if it weren't so windy. It was built around a gravel pit, so while down in the pit, the wind wasn't quite so bad. However, most of the tees and baskets were up an top of hills, which made it really hard to put and drive effectively. I was really happy with the pars that I did get though and I'd love to play there again without the wind.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Winter Driving Courtesy
1. Drivers don't knock off those huge ice chunks behind their wheels (see picture below). - First of all, those things look disgusting. Secondly, when you are driving down the freeway at 55 miles per hour on an icy road and you hit a pot hole those big chunks fall off. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FREEWAY. This leaves anywhere from one to four basketball-sized hunks of black/brown ice right in front of the Altima behind you. You may say, but if it's an SUV behind me, it's no big deal. However you would be wrong because eventually there will be an Altima behind you. And that Altima will have to either swerve out of the way (not a great idea on a crowded icy freeway) or hold its breath and hope the ice doesn't knock its exhaust pipe off. So next time you go to drive your car, kick those sick chunks of crap off of your wheel wells. Or park next to me, because I kick them off of cars I walk past too.
2. Drivers only scrape a basketball-sized hole in the ice on their windshield, like this guy. - I really don't get this one. There is absolutely no way the driver of a car like that can see anything but a round patch of pavement directly in front of their hood. I mean, they don't even scrape any off of the driver's window to look beside them. My guess is that they think their defroster will get rid of all of the ice during their 10 minute drive to wherever. But when the ice is thick and covered in snow, it doesn't. I walk to school for the most part during the winter. I see these cars drive by all the time and I stay as far away from them as possible.
3. Drivers don't scrape the snow and ice off of their whole car. This one specifically refers to when they are driving on the freeway. In the morning to drive 5 minutes on surface streets to school, I don't care about this one. But if you're going to drive on the freeway, I think you should clear the snow and packed ice off of your whole vehicle. Why? Because going 65 miles per hour, it all blows off anyway, on the car right behind you. Ice on your hood and roof also fall off, right in front of the Altima behind you. Mostly though, it's just a nuisance, making whoever is driving behind them use their wipers even though it's not snowing outside.
On a side note, I want to give thanks to the many plow drivers on the streets. Whoever you are, you do an excellent job, at least in Utah, of keeping the roads clear of snow. That job must really stink. You have to drive all night and all day back and forth over the same roads cleaning off asphalt that you already plowed 4 times. Kind of like cleaning up after children. You guys have my respect. Plow on, my friends.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
New Summer Project
Well, since Shanna and I still don’t have a TV, I am forced to find things to occupy my time after I get home from work in the evenings. Until about 6:30 or so, I think it has become my job to entertain and feed Calvin because Shanna does that all day. After he goes to bed though, I have a few hours where I can sit around or do something.
We found some old rusted bikes here at the place we’re staying, and I pulled a few into the garage to see how much work they would need to fix. They are the really cool old Schwinn cruiser style bikes. Both are very cool. I was going to fix up this one.
However, as I tried to take it all apart, I ran into some difficulty because a rusty bolt head broke off while the bolt was still in the hole. I tried to drill it out, but to no avail. Actually, I may know how to fix it now, but I’ve moved on to another bike.
The one I’m going to fix now is pictured below.
This is a pretty old Schwinn Black Phantom. It’s got a really cool front suspension with shock absorber, a front fender with a switch on light (which may or may not work right now), a sweet chain guard, and a really cool curvaceous frame. Here’s a better picture of the frame’s curves.
It’s missing some parts because it’s supposed to look like this.
You will notice that the one I found is missing the tank on the frame, the light cover, the seat, the chain, and the wheels(It’s actually only missing the front wheel).
Anyway, right now it’s just a hunk of rust, so I’ve been removing the rust and trying to get the bike all taken apart, which I finally succeeded in doing this evening. Believe it or not, I had it all disassembled before today except for the part shown below.
This part holds the handlebar stem on to the front fork. Unfortunately, this morning when I tried to take it off, it was rusted to the headset. I pulled and hammered on the bike trying to get it off, but to no avail. Of course I didn’t want to break anything though, so I was trying to be careful and forceful at the same time.
I read all of the information I could online about getting it out and tried the advice. I went to a bike shop and asked one of the old mechanics how to get an old Schwinn stem out of the headset. He said to use some Liquid Wrench which would penetrate the rust and allow me to get it loose. I don’t have any of that, so I used vinegar instead, which I read would work. I also posted on a bike website asking for help. Someone gave me a pointer and it worked like a charm. 5 hours after the vinegar was applied, I twisted the parts apart(And the tip I got online said I would need to wait overnight).
So anyway. Hopefully by the end of the summer I have a cool old cruising bicycle that I can ride around Provo in the fall. I hope you all have been following the Tour de France that started last week. Armstrong is around 19th place, and Schleck is around 5th I think.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
RC Airplane Demo
Hey everybody. You might want to watch this movie that shows my airplane all assembled and working because who knows what will happen when I go out and fly it for the first time. Maybe I'll have Shanna capture video of my first flight and then put it up here.
Two things about the video:
1. The plane is a whole lot louder in person than it is on video.
2. Sorry about the creepy smile at the end of the video.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Bird Watching
The house here in Idaho provides us with the chance to see some pretty birds. For example, today we were looking out the window when we saw about 3 or 4 western tanagers. Of course we didn’t know that’s what they were until we watched them for a while and then looked up what they were on the internet. (The internet is so smart!) If you’re wondering what a western tanager is, see below. This is not to be confused with the western teenager, which is shown here. (Although this specimen looks like she may be no more than a western tweenager)
This place also has an abundance of red-winged blackbirds, which look really neat when they zoom past your car.
Hopefully we’ll see some more neat birds before the summer is over.