that which rolls

I got video of a whole lot of my commute to & from work yesterday. The battery got tired in the morning just before I reached my destination (I think I got about 7.5 miles of the 8 mile leg) but after resting all day it felt a bit rejuvenated and I managed to capture about 6 miles of one leg of the trip home.

This is kind of a preview of what I’m putting together as a whole. I still want to capture the other bits of my usual ride and maybe clean up some of the transitions and with luck make it into something that doesn’t suck too much. I was having fun with it though, and really wanted to put it online now so here it is…

Unfinished Video of My Bike Commute: Revision 1

I was going to try to capture the rest of the video today but…

I had the panniers all packed. I was on time. I went out to the shed to get my bike and the tire was completely flat. Not just soft. FLAT. Suck. Grr. Went back in the house. Woke up Brian. Changed into work clothes. Caught a ride to the bus.

Marge asked where my bike was. I told her about the flat and then somehow that started a big conversation with one of the other bike commuters. He’s a really nice guy… even though he has stolen my prime spot on the rack. He takes the bus to work every morning and then rides home from there. It was funny, he started telling me that thing that a lot of bike commuters seem to say after a while. “I just don’t feel right if I don’t ride at least 3 times a week. People ask me if I want a ride home and I say no because I wouldn’t get to ride the bike if I did that.”

It looks like I’m not getting my spot back any time soon. I’ll have to get on after he gets off. That’s ok. Riding a long way in the morning is a lot more pleasant in the summer than riding a long way in the afternoon.

A lot of the time when I’m listening to music I’m thinking, this would be a good soundtrack to the bike video I’ve never made… that I’m going to make… any day now.

Seeing the d-i-y camera mount post on Rocbike the other day made me think I should actually dig out my gorilla pod from wherever it was hiding and make a video. I wholeheartedly recommend the d-i-y method, but if you want a slightly more expensive alternative that works out of the box, I recommend the gorilla pod (depending on the size and the size of your camera the stability will vary.) I always tie my camera strap to the handle bars for extra insurance but haven’t had any problems with it coming off… it just jiggles a bit.

I went out and did a loop around the neighboring block with my camera in video mode to test it out. It went pretty well. I did speed it up, compressing the 22 minute ride into less than 3 minutes, so in case you weren’t sure, I’m not actually a bike racing superhero.

Handlebar Cam video from a loop around my block>>

I plan to do some video of my commute now that all I have to do is slide the camera into the gorilla pod mount quick release thingy.

I’m feeling very frustrated with bike commuting. It’s really the bus situation. I should be happy that so many people are using the bus with their bikes. I think that’s great. I would be happier if I didn’t have to ride home and drive to work when there’s no room for me. I know I am being over dramatic and selfish but I’m frustrated anyway. I could ride the crappy bike and lock it at the bus stop for the whole day. But then I’m riding for a total of 35 minutes and I’m on the bus or waiting for the bus for 2.5 hours. Brian pointed out that I could lock my good bike there & if it gets stolen I’ll have a better excuse to buy a new one. (I won’t have to explain to him why this bike is different enough from this bike that I need both bikes.) “It’s way more awesome” did not count as a valid argument.

I could wait until the bus arrives, see if there’s room, and lock up at the stop if there isn’t, but it’s tricky to take the time to lock the bike once the bus has arrived. You end up making a whole lot of people wait. I don’t think they should have to wait… though bus people are far more patient than car people.

But I guess 7 miles a day is better than zero. Maybe I’ll just try to have a better attitude about the whole thing, ride to the bus stop, and ride home if there’s no room. I don’t save any money if I end up driving but I still get a bike ride in.

Someday I hope to be closer to all the places I need to be… but that won’t be tomorrow morning.

I should rename this blog “Bikes, Cows, & I wish I was on Vacation.”

I know… more cow pictures. But here is another picture of Trillian. ‘member back when she was just a few days old and running around? She has grown. She has a fancy ear tag now. It says she’s number 1.

Anyway, someone actually asked me to post this… so I am.

I think I got some really good pics/video of Tuck (the bull) kicking up dirt and mashing is face into the dirt. I have yet to pull them off the camera so you may or may not ever see them. I know you’re just waiting to see more cow picures.

On Saturday I started riding toward Geneva. My goal was to end up at the Geneva Bicycle Center. I needed a spare tube but mostly I thought I needed someplace to ride, a destination. It’s about 14 miles away so there and back seemed like it would be a good ride. I passed Cress road and started thinking that I’d never been down it & wasn’t sure where it went, made a u-turn and was off on a little explore. I covered a lot of uncharted territory in empty space between Lyons, Newark, and Phelps, an area formerly thought to be occupied only by sea monsters and steep hills. It turns out that the steep hills part is correct but the sea monsters were actually just cows. Lots and lots of cows.
 

I never did make it to the bike shop. I just wandered the back roads for a couple of hours until I remembered how little breakfast I’d eaten then spent another 40 minutes singing to myself about my plans to eat a sandwich while I tried to find my way home.

I never love biking more than when I’m exploring new territory… and there’s so much unexplored territory right under my nose even though I’ve lived here forever… well, almost forever. What’s hiding down that side street that you just cruise by every day?

Early in May we took a trip to the Adirondacks for my birthday. I turned 35 in case you’re wondering. I had grand intentions of finishing this and posting it weeks ago but I have been a strange combination of busy and lazy. (This picture is of my friend Leslie and me. It’s from around 1990 on Wright Peak)

Photos from our Spring 09 Adirondack Trip>>

We drove up to the High Peaks Resort in Lake Placid as soon as I got out of work on a Wednesday and got there around 10:30. We did a few k turns before we figured out which building we were supposed to check in to. I was relying on the gps & laptop more than my eyes. The room was really really really nice. I felt like I won the lottery getting it for about $40 a night.

We didn’t get up super early Thursday morning. Eventually we wandered out to get some coffee. It was drizzly but but nice. We still hadn’t decided what to hike and the weather seemed to suggest something not-a-mountain. We ended up hiking to Rocky Falls from the Adirondack Loj. Unfortunately I left my camera in my car so I didn’t get any photos. There were TONS of wildflowers and birds along the trail. The trail was easy, the falls were impressive, & it was neat to be hiking at a time of year without leaves on the trees. Everything has a much different character in that light.

While we were out on the trail I got a twitter message from @HighPeaksResort saying they might be able to extend our reservation for the whole weekend but reception was mostly nonexistent and I’m bad at direct messaging from my phone so I couldn’t sort it out until we got back to the hotel. It turned out we could stay but we had to switch rooms. “Oh the horror… we had to switch to a lakeside room… at the same rate.” So, it was like I won the lottery twice. We ended up switching rooms that night because I wanted to get up early to hike to Wright Peak on my birthday.

The theater in Lake Placid was showing Star Trek that night, the day before it was supposed to open so we decided to go if there wasn’t a huge line. There were only about 10 people there so we went, loved it, and I spent the rest of the night making shooting sounds. Pew pew.
Friday morning we headed back to the Loj to hike Wright. Both days when we parked at the loj there were only 5 or 6 other cars there. It was so weird. I’ve never been there before and not had the lot be packed. When I was planning this hike initially I thought ‘hey maybe if we still have energy we can do Algonquin too’. (I kind of don’t want to admit that now because Wright really kicked my butt. I had an even more insane plan earlier that Brian talked me out of. I’m not going to confess it right now because I can only take so much honest self evaluation in one sitting.)

I have climbed Wright many times–but not since I was 17, which was a very long time ago now. I think of it as my favorite mountain. It still is, but it’s not my favorite trail. We’ve been avoiding the core of the High Peaks for a long time. There are usually so many people and there are so many other great places to hike, but I missed my mountain. It seemed like my birthday was a perfect day to do it.

The trail was almost entirely rock hopping with some scrambling and there were some stretches of ice covered trail. Bad decision 2 was wearing my spare hiking boots, which were dry and very waterproof but I had forgotten how much they hurt my feet. We got to the top in about 3.5 hours which wasn’t bad time for me. I’m very slow. The clouds were looking ominous so we didn’t stay long but It was as great as I remembered it up there. It took another whole 3.5 hours to hobble back to the loj. I was exhausted.

We didn’t really even have the energy necessary to go sit in a restaurant after that. We each ordered pizza from the 3 Bears across the street and sat by the lake, watched the clouds float by and drank some beers. I don’t totally remember falling asleep that night but I think it was pretty early. I was happy that I was still able to move when I woke up the next day.

We had breakfast at Charlies the next day. Somehow I mentioned to the waitress that we hadn’t decided what to hike that day but we were defeated by our previous adventure. She kept coming over with good ideas for us.  We ended up attempting to climb Pitchoff mountain. The part of the trail that we did was great. There were wildflowers everywhere and no rock hopping. It started raining pretty hard when we got to some very steep sections of rock and decided that it would be best to try the hike another time. Things were getting pretty slippery.

We hung out in the room for the afternoon and read and watched thunderstorms roll across mirror lake. Eventually we were forced to find food. I needed spaghetti. We ended up going to some place called Jimmy’s 21 because they served pasta and they were close by. There was a really pretty view but the food was not transcendent for the price. I wish that Lake Placid had a really good Indian place. Somewhere you can get a mind numbingly hot curry. Of course, it has to taste good too.

After dinner we walked around Mirror Lake. We didn’t mean to go the whole way we were just walking and then we realized it would be further to turn around than to keep going. When we were almost back to our hotel I heard someone yell my name. I was semi-confused, being the slow thinker that I am. It was TourPro, who comments on this blog frequently providing helpful bike fixing tips and other info. It was his blog that actually tipped me off about the great hotel deal. It was weird/cool to meet someone in person that I’ve known only through the web. Unfortunately I couldn’t think of anything amazingly witty to say and we forgot to take a picture.

Always had a rule about avoiding the Adirondacks until July because I’d heard that the blackflies will skeletonize you in under 15 minutes. I have decided that is wrong. We didn’t see any blackflies (though I was prepared and still would have had fun if we did) and there were very few people up there. I may make this an annual birthday weekend trip if I can afford it.

I give this weekend getaway 5 stars out of 5. I would give it 6 if I had been able to follow any of my hikes with spicy vindaloo and/or strongbow on tap.

I seem to have done something mysterious to my leg. It hurts a lot to walk. A lot a lot. I stagger around looking like a drunk… which I”m not before 9pm, thank you very much. My boss suggested I get a cane. I think it’s just a pulled muscle. According to a body building site (the first site that google found base on the search ‘anatomy of leg muscles’) it is one of the hamstrings. Mmmm ham. Perhaps if I put a piece of pineapple and a cherry on it, it will help.

However, by some miracle, it doesn’t hurt at all to ride my bike. So if they will just let me ride my bike inside the office so I can get from the copier to the mail room and to my various meetings I won’t need a cane at all. I wonder if my doctor would write me a note to say that my bike is a medical device and I need it with me all the time.

After skipping a week of bike commuting for reasons I have yet to reveal to myself, I’m back on board.

Of course, this morning didn’t go perfectly. I felt like I was going so slow. I was operating in easier gears than usual. I was fighting imaginary headwinds. Somehow despite all that I was the first person at the bus stop. I was still the only person there when the bus pulled up. Both racks on the front were taken already so I resigned myself to wrestling with the luggage compartment. It seemed to be stuck & I thought it was locked but somehow I got it open… as soon as it opened I realized that this was not in fact the luggage compartment but the access panel for the engine or some other important mechanical bus stuff. And now, it wouldn’t close.

I don’t know if I opened the wrong compartment because I was so tired or because I was approaching it from an odd angle. In my defense, they look almost identical.

The bus driver got off and was asking me how I got it open in the first place. He couldn’t get it closed either. I tried to help but that seemed futile so I put my bike in the real luggage compartment and then went back to attempting to help the bus driver. Then another cyclist rode up. This guy gets off after me… so I hauled my bike back out of the luggage compartment so he could put his in first and then shoved it back in and finally somehow the three of us managed to close the access panel.

I felt pretty cool right then. (Not)
Other than the bus fiasco it was a beautiful ride. I saw a king bird and was noticing just how thick the grass is and how green everything is all of a sudden. I love that bike commuting gets me out in to the world earlier than I would even think of leaving the house if I didn’t have a bus to catch. It’s a whole different world out there at 6 a.m. The light changes dramatically as the seasons change but it’s always a quieter, crisper, world that early in the morning, and it feels like it’s all mine.

Note: I still have not finished my Adirondack Weekend Getaway report but this is a sort of spur trail from that.

While we were climbing Wright and I felt occasionally that I was verging on death (while having fun of course–on the verge of death). I was reminded of a conversation Brian and I had on our first Adirondack hike of the season last year. We thought we should write a hiking guidebook targeted at the overweight and out of shape.

Sure, it’s impressive when Lance Armstrong wins the Tour de France or some mountaineer climbs some huge mountain but those people train all the time. They have people that help them decided what to eat and they bike or climb almost all day every day. They have top quality equipment paid for by some sponsor and they are constantly showered with stuffed lions, and kisses, and spaghetti.

Isn’t it more impressive when some out of shape computer dork that spends 16 hours a day for 50 weeks of the year hunched over in front of a keyboard in a dimly lit room ingesting nothing but coffee and vending machine food hauls their tremendous girth up a mountain (even if that mountain isn’t that big)? How do you measure that effort? It took us almost 7 hours to get up and down Wright… but we did it.

I don’t take steroids though my efforts are often fueled in part by caffiene.

Tour de Commute  (You’ve probably seen this, but I love it and I’m going to link to it again. You can’t stop me.)

I’m to tired to work on my post about the adirondacks which is growing stale rapidly. I seem to be too tired to play a video game. I was thinking i might not be too tired to mix myself a salty dog and fall asleep with my mouth hanging open while watching something insipid on the television. I thought I would postpone the inevitable by writing a rambling post with absolutely no direction. I’m good at that. I can do that whether or not I have something to say.

Probably.

Good riding today. Biked to the far distant bus stop to pick up the bus where the other cyclist gets off. Again… didn’t need to. If I go the short way tomorrow there’s bound to be like 4 people & I’ll have to drive. The canal was gorgeous this morning. Wish I could ride on the path side instead of the road side. People go too fast & they’re sleepy at 6 a.m.

The afternoon portion of the ride was bee-you-tee-ful too. Love west winds in the afternoons. It’s like having a motor on my bike. Feel like super-someone. I did 18 miles all together today. The canal path so much more pleasant than the road… but it takes so much more energy. There’s no coasting on the canal path.

I’m not sure why it is that people with giant strollers who are deaf to bells need to walk 2 abreast. But they almost always do.

I decided I need to take it easy & enjoy myself more often. Sometimes cranking out 20+ miles after working 8 hours is too much. I hear it might be better with gel shorts and other real gear. It’s funny. I’m a camping-gear gear-head. I do that for at most 3 weeks out of the year. I bike 10 months out of the year and I’m all amish about it. I’m not changing my viewpoint here, I’m just considering that there are other paths.

I started messing around with twitpic today. http://twitpic.com/5igcz I can’t seem to get it to take my subject lines. I would like to include a description with the picture link. I thought it would take my subject lines but it doesn’t seem to. Anyhoo, I’ll figure it out, sometime when I’m not so tired. Why am I so tired.That should have ended with a question mark. I suppose you think it would have been easier to fix it than type two sentences of metanarrative. This is metanarrative right? Maybe not. Hey… it’s been a long time since I’ve been in school.
Ok. If I go on any further, I know no one is going to read it. I should stop. Now. Though maybe it’s best if no one reads it.