Home again

Over the weekend, I became an unofficial member of the RAAM Team Type 2 crew. This is no surprise to me, as I had been contributing from afar from time to time during the race--Jenn would call me to get my perspective on this or that problem, figuring that I was not as tired and thus (or so the hope had it) more able to think the problem through clearly. Hey, some of my input actually helped!

After the fun of meeting many of the crew members and racers Friday morning in Bloomington, I flew to Maryland (via Southwest Airlines) to witness the finish of the team's ride and the joy of their accomplishment.

There were folks who didn't think the team would finish the event. Psh! These guys planned on finishing, and did. They didn't plan on being the first team across the line--their companion squad, Team Type 1, had that plan, however, and executed it nicely--they hold the new RAAM record for 8-man team time! Team Type 2 planned to finish. Their finish was better than they planned--they beat another team. Through it all, however, the ethos of the event is that all teams encourage all other teams.

I was at the finish line for the finish of a couple other teams' rides, and in keeping with this ethos, made lots of noise to congratulate them. It's a hell of an accomplishment to ride 3000 miles in one stage, regardless of how many are on the team.

Jenn repeatedly says she wants to crew again for them next year (when she is awake, that is--sleep deprivation is a hallmark of RAAM). She has quite a few stories from the event, and even more pictures. When we get them online, I'll provide a link on this blog as well.

RAAM heats up

Solo RAAM leader board

Team RAAM leader board

Jenn's parents and I drove up to Bloomington to surprise her during the team's squad changeover. We arrived around 0330, and the team RVs were on site, as was the utility van Jenn has been co-driving a good part of the week. Crew members were moving around, doing their thing, save for a few who were getting some much-needed shut-eye. Jenn was part of that last little group.

A few minutes after we arrived, the team rotation van arrived. Five or ten minutes later, the racer of the moment and the chase car arrived, to much applause. His family was gathered on the sidewalk near the entrance to the time station, which had to be a morale booster for him.

The applause woke Jenn, and I was ready. I watched her stirring around, and moved so that I was partly hidden by the front roof pillar of her van. By the time she opened the door, I was almost in the door zone and greeted her with a big hug--a surprise for her, especially since she had just awakened. She introduced her parents and me to everyone on the team and crew--some more than once in her excitement that we were there.

As one would expect, they have become a very tightly-knit crew over the last several days. This is to be expected, given the intensity and duration of the event, but it's still fun to see, even from the outside. It was also fun to watch the coreography in the set-up and break-down of the equipment used for feeding the team, allowing them to shower a bit, and so on (They don't want to use the lavatory in the RV, as they would then have to dump the tank, which takes too much time).

Jenn's teammates and crewmates appreciated our visit. I'm glad we went.

And I'm flying up to watch their finish tomorrow. Their ETA was something like 0400 Sunday at one point, but has moved up to 0100 Sunday, then 2100 Saturday, after a few fast legs of the journey. They may even beat that ETA, although I suspect the mountainous terrain of western Maryland will make that difficult.

Here it is, Thursday!

I rode the Vanguard to work today, after driving yesterday due to time constraints on the after-work side. I rode the Raleigh Monday, took off Tuesday to ride the Strada, and intend to ride the Vanguard again tomorrow.

I felt faster on the Vanguard than I usually do. I'm not sure why, but I'll take it. The bike felt smoother, somehow. Maybe it's simply that much more comfortable than the Raleigh...

Last night was the fourth and final meeting of the Confident Cycling class I've been teaching. The group started out as twelve folks, a couple couldn't make the last two meetings for various reasons, a few simply dropped out without telling us why, and one had some work issues get in the way, with the result that I signed four certificates last night. I enjoy teaching these classes, but it's also good to be done with it for a little while.

I will be out at my folks' house for a while this evening and tomorrow evening, doing some yard work in preparation for the September festivities being held there. I generally dislike yard work--while it's far more natural than working on bikes or cars, it just isn't me. However, it's worth doing sometimes, and this is such a time.
Edit: change of plans...Jenn is going to be at the RAAM time station in Bloomington Indiana about 0400 Friday. I talked to her today, and she said something along the lines of inviting her folks to come up and watch what she's been doing for the last several days as a crew member. When I mentioned that their ETA in Bloomington was 0445 or so, she figured that neither her folks nor I will make it to see them while they are there. Hehehehehe Of course, it means leaving the house at something like 0100 to meet her folks at 0130, drop off my truck at the office, and drive up to Bloomington, visit for a few minutes or a couple hours, then drive back down.

I'm flying up to Annapolis Saturday morning, to watch the arrival of some of the RAAM teams. I can't wait. It will be my first flight since getting my CPAP machine that helps me manage my apnea, and dealing with that ought to be fun.

Played hookey

I have ridden RAIN for five of the last six years, and had been planning to do so again this year. I've been worried about my long mileage legs, though, as it seems all my riding is commuting--lower speed, lower cadence work on fairly flat terrain (my biggest climb in my commute is Payne Street) for few miles (and less than an hour each trip), compared to 160 miles of flat to gently-rolling terrain at high output for nine hours (well, eight and a piece, plus breaks).

In an effort to get some long miles in, to see if I can do RAIN without pain, I took a personal day today and went for a club ride out of Vettiner Park. The schedule showed a sixty mile ride, but the captain opted to shorten it a bit due to the heat. We went fifty miles.

The route had some good rollers, and a couple of medium- to stout climbs (the largest two being on 1633 just north of Taylorsville and on Seatonville Road just southeast of the end of Billtown Road). My usual RAIN ride partner, Larry Preble, was on hand today, on his *gasp* Trek 2000. He rides the Trek on Tuesdays, usually considering Tuesday his recovery ride day--he doesn't plan on riding hard.

Larry and I have ridden together for several years. One thing that always happens when we ride together is that one or both of us will plan and state intention to ride slower than normal, but we get caught up in trying to keep up with each other, and we end up going fast. One wouldn't know that from my average speed, which was something like 16 or 17 miles an hour, unless one were to look at the grade profile and see all the times I was going five or ten miles an hour instead of twenty-five or my maximum speed of 44.

I went in to this ride looking for information on myself. I wanted to see how my "burn" felt--how my fuel is working for me these days, as I haven't used Perpetuem this year (haven't ridden far enough). I wanted to see how my legs would perform. I wanted to see if I remembered how to pace myself.

It's sort of like riding a bike. You don't truly forget. I'm a bit rusty, but things felt quite smooth today. I sometimes express how my body does during a long or hard ride in terms of fuel burn. I feel a clean burn, or a dirty burn, depending on several factors--what I've eaten that day and for a couple days before, how much I'm drinking and of what during the ride, how clogged I feel--it's a sense that I cannot quite quantify. My burn today felt almost clean, but not quite. It was good, given my time off that bike. Riding to work is surely helping, and more than I thought it would.

If I can work it out, I will take off a few more days between now and RAIN to get some long miles on the bike. My riding partners for RAIN this year, Larry Preble and Ed Scharfenburger, are both very strong riders. It's good that we are on closely matched bikes (Larry has a Bacchetta Corsa, Ed a stock Strada).

Last year, we played leapfrog with a group in matching jerseys, and they were clearly upset that we would take longer breaks than they did and pass them out on the road (darned recumbents aren't supposed to be faster than a wedgie pace line!). We had our own pace line going much of the time, and now that Ed has a full year on his bike (he had had it three or four weeks when we rode RAIN last year), we ought to be able to keep tighter formations for better advantage.

I can't wait!

Seasonal milestones again

I noted another seasonal milestone the other night: Monday or Tuesday evening, I saw my first lightning bugs of the season. In the course of walking the dog, I saw probably fifteen or twenty.

Last night, I had to have seen a hundred of them. It was neat to see.

I was reminded of a couple nights one summer ten or fifteen years ago. I was working for UPS, unloading airplanes for the Next Day operation. When I got off work, I would often go wander in one or another of the local parks for a while to unwind before going home to bed.

One such night, I was in George Rogers Clark Park, across Poplar Level Road from Audobon Hospital. The park has some lovely slopes on both sides of a small creek. I was near the top of one slope, and looking across the creek, there was a veritable wall of trees. In front of that wall of trees, from my perspective, was a shimmering curtain of lightning bugs. It was a wonderful sight.

I rode the Vanguard to work Monday, and the Raleigh Tuesday. The rain Monday left the roads wet enough and the parking lot wet enough that I opted out of having the students do the emergency stop parking lot drill and subsequent bike ride. We did talk about the drills a bit, though, so that the students could at least tinker with the ideas at home.

I was watching the weather forecast Tuesday, but not quite well enough. I had in mind to leave the office early, to beat the heavy weather coming our way, but people kept coming by to see me over one thing or another, and it was after four by the time I left. I got out of New Albany before the rain started hitting me. By the time I crossed 131 from Providence Way to N Clark Boulevard, I was hearing thunder, and seeing an occasional lightning flash. By the time I got to Jeffersonville, I was seeing frequent flashes of lightning, closer than I really like (but not so close I felt endangered). The rain was also falling much harder. By the time I got to the bridge, visibility was hampered.

As I crossed the bridge, a motorist (in a small SUV, no less) kindly kept traffic off my back by driving behind me at a good distance with her four-way flashers going. I'm normally a little put-off by this--I feel I'm pretty visible most of the time. However, I also realize that she was doing so because she was not in such a hurry that she couldn't do an extra bit to improve road safety for all of us. I, of course, waved happily with all five fingers in a clear "thank you!" gesture when I neared the traffic light at the Kentucky end of the bridge and she went past me.

I had to stop a couple times on my way home to get the sweaty rainwater out of my eyes. By the time I got to Payne Street, though, the rain had eased off, and I started making better progress.

Of course, by the time I got home, the next band of heavy rain was arriving. It quit raining soon after I got home.

Yesterday, I had to drive to work--I had a bunch of stuff to haul. I also was on a tight time line after work, as I am teaching one of the Confident Cycling classes this month. I'm on a tight time line this evening as well, as I am presenting a session at the Bon Air branch of the Louisville Free Public Library this evening.

As I type this, Jenn is at the airport, getting ready to fly out to Oceanside California. She is on a support crew for RAAM riders (Team Type 2) who are riding to bring attention to the fact that folks with Type 2 Diabetes CAN be active and healthy--indeed, being active helps one be healthy, a truth that seems to escape too many in our society. Anyway, it means that I'll be following their progress with a bit more interest than I have in prior years--I have more friends in the race this time.

Friends and family have been half-jokingly wondering how I'll get along without Jenn at the house. I think I will manage, somehow. =-)

Hardly rode over the weekend

It's getting to be a bad trend. Here it is, well into June, and I haven't done any LONG miles since last year (long miles being bike rides over 50 miles in length).

This past weekend, for example, included a day at the stock car races (and tailgating near the speedway before race time). Jenn's father takes her and her two brothers to the Nationwide Series Meijer 300 at Sparta as a family get-together thing, and I was invited.

It was fun, I suppose. I've not quite caught the bug for the game "Corn Hole," although I tossed a few bags of seed corn at the boards that day. We socialized over a beer or two, or tea, or sodas, depending on the person. We wandered up to the main gate at the track, and the vendor area spread out in front of that. There were a couple booths offering samples of tobacco products, one selling what I presume to be a male-enlargement product (of what I also presume to be spurious value with a bikini model in a cute suit that, even if were not engaged/involved, I probably wouldn't find interesting on a date), various "collectible" trinkets (like anyone is going to buy these things ten years from now? How much for a 1980 Cabbage Patch Doll?).

It was fun to see a big-league race again. The last race of this caliber for me was the Southern 500 at Darlington S.C. on Labor Day weekend of 1978. I don't remember tons of what happened at that race, but I think that somewhere in my various stashes of keepsakes I have a spark plug I picked up in the pit area after the race. "Those were the days," to borrow the title from All in the Family.

While it was fun to see a super-speedway race, when it comes to auto racing, I'm still a short-track guy. Watching cars travel a mile and a half per lap is tough to do--that is a LOT of territory to watch. On the other hand, short tracks present their own challenges--often the track management does not seem as big on safety at smaller tracks, for example.

Before I even learned to ride a bike, I loved cars. By the time I was eight, my father realized the value in taking me to the speedway not far from where we lived at the time for father/son stuff. I knew who the drivers were, and had favorites. I vividly remember one car rolling over in a crash there, and seeing the guy with another similar car the following week. He apparently lived around the corner from us, as the wrecked racer was in front of a house near our subdivision for a couple days later that week (for what it's worth, the cars were 1958 or '59 Chrysler products, probably Plymouths).

When I was a kid, my heroes were race car drivers. Race car drivers wore seat belts. When I was eight or nine, we as a family got a newer car for Mom, to replace the 1956 Chevrolet she had been driving. That car had shoulder belts, relatively new to mainstream cars. There was a tag on the belt that included something along the lines of, "Do NOT use if wearer is less than 4'8" tall."

I couldn't WAIT to grow that last two inches!

I fully realize that there is some sort of double-standard in my fondness for auto racing. I don't get to indulge myself in the enjoyment of watching good short-track racing often, though, as I have so many other interests these days.

Anyway...

Yesterday was time for an early celebration of Jenn's birthday. Her birthday is later this week, but she will be out of town, working on a crew supporting Team Type 2 on Race Across America.

After the celebrations, I had to attend a Club officers' meeting, so I at least rode the few blocks to that from the house. Once that was done, I could then get geared up for another exciting week at the job with no glory.

Hey, at least I rode to work today.

Not enough cycling

It's been tough to really get on the bike of late.

After a month of rarely getting to ride to work, I'm out of the habit of doing so as much. Add to that that I'm teaching two days a week this month, with the time constraints of those schedules, and I've not ridden enough to warrant any kind of good mojo.

I rode to work today, and got to ride to work Tuesday, but drove Monday, Wednesday and Thursday (that last due to oversleeping/having trouble motivating myself to get up and ride in the rain). EDIT: David reminded me that I did, indeed, ride to work Monday. I rode the Vanguard, loaded as it was with teaching stuff, so that I could go directly to the Monday evening class at Waterfront Park after work instead of going home and then back downtown. Note to self: Do my blog entries more often so that I don't forget stupid stuff like this.

The Vanguard is loaded with teaching stuff--a stack of halved tennis balls for parking lot drills, sign-up sheets, clipboards, hand-outs of various sorts, and a small pile of tubes in case students get flats while in class. Rather than switch the load every other day, I rode the Raleigh Tuesday and today.

At this rate, I'm not sure I'll be able to enjoy doing RAIN, which is coming up in four or five weeks. I also need to get with the other folks who want to ride it, and see who is ready or who is unable to go this time.

I finally got to ride again

After three or four weeks of work life being in upheaval over a "must-pass" inspection, life is hopefully returning to normal, meaning I get to ride to work at one work site, with stops at the main office on my way to or from my own office. The main office is a couple blocks off my commute route, so stopping there is not an imposition.

Repair Affair is this weekend and next, though. I'll be part of that tomorrow, helping support volunteer teams that are working on houses for the beneficiaries of the program. Repair Affair is a neat program. Volunteer teams from various places (church groups, clubs, groups of folks who work together, neighborhood associations, and so on) do handyman "neighbor helping neighbor" stuff for low-income elderly or disabled homeowners--paint the house, clear brush from the yard, build ramps, install grab bars or handrails, make other minor repairs to the house with an eye toward "safe, warm and dry." Magnificent things happen for the homeowners.

My part of it this year is to drive a one-ton flat bed truck to haul stuff from place to place. To prepare for this, I'll have to fetch the truck this afternoon, and park it closer to where I can use it tomorrow morning.

To make that easier, I rode my bike to work today (ain't it great that I can say that!). I don't have to get a ride to where the truck is--I can toss my bike in the cargo area of the truck.

Since it was a cool morning, I rode wearing my office clothing--a kilt and a shirt--and I don't have to change clothes in the course of my day.

Jenn's doing the MS Bike the Bluegrass tomorrow and Sunday. If you haven't donated toward this cause, she could use some donations to get her to her fund-raising goal. I didn't do anything with the ride this year (too many other obligations), although I've captained some preparatory rides for it in years past, and worked the ride as a roving bike mechanic a couple years when I was working for one of the ride sponsors. It is a great cause, and a great ride.