Memorial Day Weekend 2006

Today is Memorial day and the close of a nice long weekend. I took Friday off from work, and we've just been kickin' back most of the weekend. Eighmee's been in a sort of slow gear for the past week as shes pinched her sciatic nerve and hasn't been able to get around very well. She's gone home sick a couple days last week, and is just now starting to look and walk normally again.

I've been doing regular bike rides, about 10 miles a day still, and got out yesterday for a grand 60 mile ride. We'll call it my longest self-supported ride to date, even though it was only semi-self-supported. I headed north, and stopped by moms around noon or so, then continued on up Thornton Road though the little town of Thornton, once again to the Cosumnes River Preserve where I had lunch of an apple, granola bar and water. Then back south to Thornton, and then west out on Walnut Grove road though Walnut Grove, and up to Locke, Ca. where I took a short break to watch the water skiers on the Delta and the motorcyclists on Locke Road. Then around and back home the way I came. On the way back I stopped at moms again for lunch: a bitchin ham, egg, and cheese on croissont sammich where I got to see Bella and relax a bit.

I other news I've more or less completed Oblivion. All the faction quests complete except the Fighters Guild. I'm level 35 with 125 hours into the game. And, well, that's about it.

My Current Local Map Coverage

For the past year or so I've been able to log all my biking tracks using a Garmin ForeTrex 101. It may not show you your pedaling cadence, current gear, or instantaneous speed, like lightweight cycling computers, but in pure functionality, and practicality it absolutely blows away any simple cycling computer IMHO. From my understanding Garmin also makes a line of mini-GPSRs that are optimized for cycling called Edge, but my little ForeTrex has been a fantastic workhorse, and is fun for other activities such as GeoCacheing.

While a GPS alone is a lot of fun, combining it with computer mapping software opens a whole new range of possibilities allowing you to log and compare all your trips. There are many software apps all specializing in different activities and uses, and after testing a lot of shareware, and looking at screenshots of other pay-for GPS mapping apps I finally settles on Expert GPS by Topografix. Expert GPS allows a time-limited trial period, and registers easily online for $60 for a personal use license.

So between the two of these I've been logging all my rides, and attached you'll see a map of all the land I've covered around San Joaquin county. Fun stuff.

The Cosumnes River Run

Yesterday I rode the longest self-supported bike ride I've ever done. 44.6 total miles from home north up Thornton 22.3 miles to the Cosumnes River Preserve, turned around and 22.3 back. It took somewhere in the neighborhood of three hours to complete, and when I finally made it back I realized no one was home and I hadn't taken keys. :o( Eighm had gone to Yen Du to pick up dinner so I got to sit on the lawn for about 15 minutes. Legs burned like hell but it was a damn good ride, but I'll issues these things as lessons learned:

• If you're going over 30 miles in heat bring more than one bottle of water.


• If you're going over 15 miles, stop every 15 or so miles, get off, stretch, and walk a bit. It'll hurt a lot less in the long run.

Mothers Day 2006

We had two nice Mother's Day parties over the weekend. Saturday Eighmee worked on a couple picture collages for her mom while I went to my grandma's. I stopped by Hallmark and picked up some nice Prescious Moments figures for gifts on the way there. We had a nice day basking in the sun and swimming after dinner which was bulk enchaladas with all the fixin's from Tio Pepes.

Sunday Eighmee and I slept in then headed up the Valley Springs to see her folks. It's been since about Christmas since we'd been up and it was fun seeing the dogs, and all the great work they'd done on the house since we'd been up last.

One of those evenings (yeah it escapes me), we caught up on watching LOST. We cooked episodes 19, 20 and 21. Absolutely fantasitic show. While we were at Eighmee's parent's I caught part of a Discovery Channel show on 'The Real DiVinci Code' that looked pretty good, so I torrented that last night and it'll probably be our entertainment this evening.

I've taken the past couple days off riding to recover from this past weekend's century. Finally got out last night and put in 18.5 miles around town which was remarkably an easy ride. I am starting to trip over the weight loss a bit. For the past several years I've idled around 175 lbs., but since the turn of this year as I started running initially, and now very noticably as I've started riding a lot more, I've gotten down to 154.5 lbs as of this morning. It isn't too big of a deal, but as I've been riding more, I've also noticably been eating a helluva lot more, but it keeps slowly going down. I guess I'm starting to understand the facination avid bikers have with high-calorie, high-carb foods like pastas and energy drinks, etc. I've never been too big on energy drinks, but from the century I got two free samples of e-Caps Hammer Heed supplement, and it's pretty tollerable. I might start using it.

Delta Century 2006

Today I completed my first metric century (60 miles) bike ride at the Delta Century put on by the Stockton Bike Club. I'd signed up online a couple weeks back to do the 30 mile, 50k, ride. I got up at 4:45am this morning, and headed to the start at the Robert Mondavi Woodbridge Winery just north of Lodi around 6am. Still intending to do the 30 mile ride, I find out during check-in that the 30 mile ride typically starts around 8am because lunch was being served around 1pm.

So I hang out for a while, and see all the l33t riders who are doing the full 100 mile century's taking off, and around 7:30 I say, "eff it" and hit the road. I'm more-or-less alone for the first 5 miles then find a pack with a pace similar to mine. 10 miles later we hit the first rest-stop at the Cosumnes River Preserve near Thornton, Ca. We enjoy snacks and drinks then I realize that doing the 30 mile ride I would be heading back from there.

Seeing the 'pack' that I'd arrived with pushing on for either the 100k or 100mi routes, I thought, "I can do this, and I'm not ready to head back yet." And what a great route I would have missed had I turned back. The metric century pushed on into Walnut Grove with great vistas of vinyard-after-vinyard, huge homes, and winding delta levee roads.

The second rest-stop was a nice grassy area in front of some kind of school. By this point I'd already gone farther on this ride than I've ever gone in a single ride (about 35 miles). I felt great muscle-wise, but my ass was killin' me. I called home to check-in with Eighmee and see how things were going and enjoyed some killer watermelon, and a rice crispy bar.

So I mushed on the last 20 or so miles back to the winery ending with a great, long straight-away down Woodbridge Rd. I immedidiately went to drop off the bike at the car and was bummed to find that the tailgate wouldn't open. It didn't look like anyone had backed into it, but something is wrong with either the hinge or the plastic 'spoiler' cap at the top of the tailgate as it was catching on the edge of the roof. I was able to play with it and get it half-open enough to get my bike in. I still need to figure out wtf happened to it.

I headed across the street to the winery and enjoyed a plate of penne pasta, salad, and bread. They also offered wine, but by the end of the ride Sprite looked a lot better than red wine. :o) Unfortunately, in hind site, the ride offered a 'free commemorative wine glass' which I didn't get probably since I did have any wine.

And that was it. I was beat. Drove home down hwy-99, got cleaned up, and slept for about three hours. I got a good sun burn, and now know I can pull-off a metric century. Woot. :o)

Today after work I put in about 19 miles on the bike. Then stopped by Home Depot on the way to Taco Bell for dinner to get a replacement filter for the air conditioner. I thought I was l33t last time I replaced it by getting the $15 uber-anti-allergen filter, to realize today the the uber filters (electrostatic to be technical) need to be replaced every three months. Our current one has been there for almost a year and was filthy. So that done we had burritos and watched some Sex and the City. Eighmee's readin' now and I just finished rewriting some new scripts for my website. The photo album and photo viewing scripts now do directory and file traversing so I no longer need to update web pages whenever I publish new pics to the site. w00t.

Eighmee and I took this past Friday off from work just as a chill out day. I rode 10 miles each day Friday and Saturday, and both days played a good amount of Ultima Online camping houses that were collapsing.

Saturday we had a birthday party for Mom, Bella, and Justin's girlfrind Jessica at Grandma and Grandpas. They made corned beef and cabbage, and we enjoyed the sun by the pool.

Sunday, yesterday, was a pretty lazy day. Didn't do any riding, and mostly played Oblivion. (I've chocked up 87 hours to date. lol) Ryan was over and has been playing a new Guild Wars factions expansion.

As for working out, I'd like to point out that Cool Running is a great site for tracking your running, swimming and cycling activities.