Thursday May 08, 2008
May is Bike Month, and here in the Austin area Bike to Work Day
is Friday, May 16. I've only ridden my bike to work once so far
this spring, and intend to ride on May 16, possibly another time
before then too.
One of the activities this year is
Tree to Tree: The Parmer Commutes. This ride starts in
Cedar Park and heads down Parmer Lane and beyond to the
Arboretum area in northwest Austin. It just so happens that I
commute on part of this route, so I intend to join this group at
Lakeline and Parmer at 7:10 and ride down to Music City Cycles
and then beyond to Sun. The ride map shows the group going
along Riata Park Circle, right next to Apple and a short
distance from Sun.
If you live up north in Cedar Park or Round Rock somewhere near
Parmer and work somewhere towards northwest Austin, consider
joining the ride.
Monday Apr 14, 2008
On Thursday April 10 I decided to join a local cycling group,
the Georgetown
Cyclopaths, for one of their evening rides. I really love
that name!
There were eight of us that met at Berry Springs Park
and Preserve and headed out. One of the riders had an
idea for a route, so we took the lead from him. We ended up
getting in about 24 miles before finishing back at the start.
This was a nice rural ride, going in a loop to the east, then
north, west to Walburg, and back to Georgetown. I recorded the
ride with my Garmin
Forerunner 305 and uploaded it a couple of places:
Another interesting feature, at least to me, was the amount of
poultry I heard while we were riding, since we have 13 chickens
ourselves. I'm pretty sure I heard chickens, and I saw a sign
about a guinea fowl crossing or something like that. I need to
take Karen out there, since she's the person in our family who's
really into poultry.
I enjoyed the ride, and will join the Cyclopaths again when I
can.
Wednesday Aug 22, 2007
I'm a member of a summer
cycling group with Rogue Training
Systems. We started in mid July and will finish in mid
October. The goal is to work up to riding a century (100
miles).
On Sunday August 19, we rode from Bee Cave to north Austin to
downtown Austin and back, 40 miles. I hadn't ridden 40 miles in
a single day in at least a couple of decades. I uploaded my
Forerunner 305 (GPS)
data to MotionBased. While my
motion time was 2:58, for a 13.5 mile per hour average, I also
had 31 minutes of rest time.
This coming Sunday, we'll be riding the Krause Kruse out of
Krause Springs for 4 to 4.5 hours. At 13.5 miles per hour, I
can probably just do the 60 mile loop. But there will be an
opportunity to bail out and do a 43 mile loop instead, if things
aren't going well. So I'll be playing this one "by ear" as they
say.
Monday Jul 02, 2007
I took off from work a couple of hours early on Friday, as I'd
had it for the week. In my wanderings around north Austin, I
came upon Performance Bike and remembered I'd been meaning to
visit, so I stopped in. I looked around the whole store and
then came back to the pedal section.
I've been riding with some pedals I bought for my old mountain
bike years ago, with toe clips. This has been good, but I've
been wanting to try the so-called "clipless" pedals. Really
this means pedals with space for cleats, along with cleats on
your cycling shoes. Problem is, the bike I ride is pretty much
the only bike I ride, both for longer rides for
training and transportation, and for riding to school with my
kids. I really didn't want to add cleated pedals to my bike and
be forced to ride with cycling shoes. I found what I think is a
good solution for me: The Forte
Campus pedal. It has the space for a cleat on one side of
the pedal and nothing on the other side. This allows the best
of both worlds.
To install the pedals I had to go buy a pedal wrench to get the
old pedals off, and some grease for installation, as called for
by the brief manual that came with the pedals. After
installing, I added cleats to my cycling shoes. Then I tried it
out on my block, worked pretty well once I got used to getting
my feet in and out. Sam and I took a short ride in the
neighborhood, and I was feeling pretty comfortable. On Sunday,
I went for my third ACA ride, Pfinally Pflugerville, riding the
24 mile option. The pedals worked great, and seemed to help
with leg fatigue, as I really felt good after riding 24 miles.
So far I'm pleased with my new pedals, and it was nice to find
something really useful on my first stop at a new bike shop.
I'm not so thrilled that Performance Bike is a national chain,
as I'd rather spend my money at local bike shops, so I'm not
sure how often I'll go back there. But so far I'm a satisfied
customer.
Monday Jun 04, 2007
On Sunday I rode my first Austin Cycling
Association group ride, the Cedar Park Fever. The
newsletter said there was a choice of a 15 mile ride, but when I
got there I was told it was only 13. Additionally, I drove the
route on Saturday afternoon, based on a ride map from the ACA
web site, and it certainly felt like less than 15, though I
didn't time it.
Before the ride, the ride leader/organizer talked about all the
places on the routes that might be an issue. The route I was
going to take had a low water crossing with 6 to 8 inches of
water over it, so the folks leading my route decided to skip
that. So I actually cut off and turned about, and it turned out
to be only 12.5 miles. On one of the longer routes, there was
talk about water at about 24 inches over a low water crossing,
so an alternate route was offered.
Only bad thing about the experience was I was the only person
doing the 13 mile ride, so I rode back to the start point
alone. Not a big problem, but not as fun either.
I've been looking at the ACA rides page
for future rides I might like. I think the Tour de Austin on
the 17th looks good (according to the map, it's 21 miles) but
I'm not thrilled by the 1 p.m. start time. There's also the
Inside Austin ride on the 24th at 8 a.m., which looks similar
but has a different starting and ending point. And finally,
Pfinally Pflugerville on July 1.
Thursday May 17, 2007
This is Bike to Work Week and Friday 18 May is Bike to Work Day
here in the Austin area. As an added incentive, there will be
breakfast available for bicycle commuters at various
locations around town from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. I'm planning
to bike to work on Friday and stop at Buck's Bikes on Jollyville
just north of Oak Knoll.
I hope to continue to bike to work at least once a week for the
next several weeks, but I may have to bag it if the weather is
too hot in the late afternoon when I'd be commuting home. We
typically have temperatures around 95° F. in the afternoon in
Austin in the summer, so that makes the risk of heat stroke a
bit high. In the past when I've ridden home from work on hot
days, I've been okay until about one or two miles from home, at
which point I felt quite ill. So, I've got to watch that. It's
one thing to stay healthy by riding my bike to work, but getting
heat stroke when riding home from work negates the benefits, I
think.
Friday Mar 09, 2007
So, I've discovered that my blog isn't worth all that much. And
whose fault is that?! Oh yeah, mine. Gotta post to make it
worth something.
So, the boys' spring break started about an hour ago, so I
thought I'd take a break with them. Here are the plans:
- build a chicken coop
- attend a seminar on chickens
- visit Crater of
Diamonds State Park in Arkansas and find, we hope,
diamonds and other gems.
- get a training ride in for the Red
Poppy Ride. Nick wants to ride the 30 mile loop this
year, and since the longest he's ever ridden is 14 miles (at
last year's Red Poppy Ride) we need to do some training to be
sure we can ride 30 miles. I'm pretty sure I can
ride 30 miles, as I get within a few miles of that riding my bike to
and from work.
- Convert my old mountain bike to a single speed
You may wonder about the first couple of items. Karen suggested
we raise some hens as pets and to have fresh eggs. Once she
convinced herself (and me) she wouldn't get into trouble with
the homeowner's association or the city of Round Rock, I
agreed. I also promised to help build a coop when the chicks
got old enough and large enough so they could be outside.
In the meantime, the chicks have been living in Nick's bedroom,
with occasional forays to an outdoor enclosure where they can
eat anything they think might be interesting :).
Karen and Nick will attend the seminar, while Sam and I do
something else, not sure what. The seminar is at Boggy Creek Farm in
east Austin. We visited there a few weeks back, just before the
regional science festival where Nick and Nate exhibited their
science fair project. The kids really loved the fresh carrots and
the bread we got, which was actually from Sweetish Hill
Bakery and Cafe. It was also interesting to see an organic farm in the middle of an urban
area.
As for the 30 mile loop of the Red Poppy Ride, I hope Nick can
complete it. I will definitely be impressed, since Nick is only
nine years old. I suspect he'll finish it but be tired and
sore. The first big ride I did as a kid was a 50 miler, but I
was 12, and I was pretty sore. We'll see how it goes. Part of
the training is to see what Nick thinks about going beyond 14
miles.
Finally, about converting my mountain bike. I've never been a
big fan of the off road aspect of the mountain bike, I bought it
because it was new and trendy in 1985 and I was sick of bending
the rims on my Schwinn Sprint when I went over railroad tracks.
Since I have another bike with 24 speeds (though some of those
are unusable, really), I don't necessarily need a mountain bike
with 15 speeds, and the single speed idea intrigues me. Looks
like it may be somewhat easy since my 1985 bike has a freewheel
rather than a cassette, so I can replace the freewheel with a
BMX single speed freewheel. Getting the chain right will
probably be the tricky part.
I hope to take pictures of some of these activities, but our
digital camera no longer takes pictures. I can still view the
pictures I've taken, but I get a black screen when I want to
take pictures. Time to get a new camera, since I don't really
want to pay to fix a camera that was free and is now a few years
old.
