I think I am in over my head

For a little change of pace I decided to try something that I haven't done in a while (maybe ever). I was a little bummed about my mountain bike being out of commission (that's another story...maybe later) and I just wanted something to do as I watched the recently released DVD of Season2 of The Chappelle Show, so why not a puzzle.

I was in the puzzle aisle at Toys R Us and there was a decent selection...Kids puzzles, 3D puzzles, Adult puzzles (That's 12+, not puzzles of nude ladies!). The serious puzzles started at around 500 pieces, then there were 750 pieces and the uber puzzles were 1000 pieces. Well, I felt like I would be a punk if I didn't go with the THOUSAND PIECE PUZZLE! The age was 12+ (and I am way older than 12) so I figured "How hard could it be?"

First, here is what the finished product should look like.

I knew I was in trouble when I had to break out a steak knife to get the box open.

After about an hour, I finally got most of the pieces flipped over so I could get an idea of what the heck I was in for. By that time Homer was really interested.

Yay, first two pieces connected! It only took about four and a half episodes of Dave Chappelle to get this far...not bad.

By midnight (started around 9) this is how far I had gotten.

I am going to guess about 50 pieces, maybe. Two hours of puzzling ( I am not counting the hour of setup) and 50 pieces...at that rate it should only take me another 38 hours to get the remaining 950 pieces put together.

I hope I get better at this.

Hiking with a hand truck

So I had an interesting morning... It all started off pretty normal, I woke up, at some cereal, made some phone calls about rides for the day and I figured I had a some time before any rides were going to happen so I decided it would be a good chance to mow the lawn.

I have been trying to get the house back together since Lodi so I figured I should take advantage of what little time I had.

Anyway, I start mowing the backyard and after about three passes, the mower sputters to a stop. Nothing too hard to figure out, I was just out of gas. Also not a surprise is that the gas can is empty. no big deal, I had my car keys in my pocket, I decided to drive the 1/2 mile to the nearest station and fill 'er up. While I am there I figure why not fill my car too. This is where it gets wierd.

As I am filling the car I see two people walking down 5th street pushing hand-trucks, you know, dollies. The dollies are very well packed with duffle bags or backpacks and systematically secured with lots of bungee cords. There was an older man, maybe 40's or 50's and an overweight woman who were wheeling these neatly packed dollies down the street. This was too strange to ignore. I had to see what it was all about. (I at least needed another look!)

So I hook a left (away from my house) to drive by them one time and get a good look. It was just like I first thought. Two people (somewhat ragged looking) pushing dollies on the sidewalk.
At the same time I saw some youth group washing cars to raise money to go somewhere and I figured I wasn't going to wash my car anytime soon and I would love to have it washed so I pulled into the gas station where they were washing cars to get my car washed. That was going well (they actually did a pretty good job) when I realized that the dolly-toting pair also stopped at this same gas station. I decided that it was a strange enough thing that I had to go over to them and ask them what they were up to. I didn't know how to start, but this is kind of how it went.

me: hey how's it goin'
dollyman:hey
me: So, are you guys headed somewhere
dm: Yeah, we are trying to get to Waynesboro (about 30 miles West)
me: Where are you coming from?
dm: ??? County, Georgia
me: Holy Cow! Are you walking the whole way?
dm: (he signals with his thumb) Nah, Hitchin'
me: Huh!
dm: Yeah, we are going to try to get to a church in Waynesboro to see if they'll put us up for the night,(he motions to the woman) she's pregnant.
(I look at the overweight lady and she barely acknoledges my presence as she takes another puff on her cigerette)
dm: We are trying to get to New Hampshire so we'll go to Waynesboro and head up 81.
me: Well, too bad I'm not headed that way, good luck though.
dm: Sure, no problem, thanks.

So, just to give you an idea of what they were carrying, I managed to snap a picture. You will have to forgive the image quality, I was driving at the same time. Here's what I managed to crop out of it.



Here's another part of the same picture. I noticed that I barely got the guy in the frame too.


In the end, I don't know what they were up to. The woman didn't look pregnant, and I would hope that she wouldn't be smoking if she was, but what do I know. I could have looked like an easy mark and maybe playing the pregnancy card is what got them to Central VA. Maybe they hit a hard patch and have family or a job in NH that can help them out. Maybe they spent all they could scrounge on two (heavy-duty) hand trucks and a sack of bungee cords and decided to try and hitch thier way over 1000 miles to the promise land we call New England.

I just don't know.

Lodi Pics

Well, I promised some pics when I got them and here they are. There's this guy Bill who's a bike shop mechanic that likes to take pictures. He started this website buffalo2step.com to store all of his pics. Bill was at the race and he got these two completely awful shots of me.



I think these were taken at about 4 AM. Here's a really bad one.


There may be more to come...

Here's one more that I found. Not too bad...This was a NASTY descent! SCARY!!

12 hour mountain bike racing

I don't know why I decided to do it but I talked a couple of friends into joining me on a three person team for an endurance mountain bike race. It's a 12 hour race that starts at midnight and goes until noon the next day. Some people do it solo, some people will trade off laps with one partner, some trade between three riders.

If you think about this for a second, you will start to realize a couple of things. First, the race starts at midnight, this poses a couple of problems.

1) It's dark at midnight.
2) I am not usually awake between 12 and 6 AM so why is it a good idea to ride a mountain bike in the wee hours of the night?

The dark part isn't so bad. There are some pretty good light systems out there that are made specifically for mountain biking at night. Being a gadget-guy I have a couple of sets and for the most part riding at night isn't much harder than riding in daylight. It's a little rougher because you can't adapt a prepare for the finer details in the trail, but sometimes that's better.

As far as riding, I'm sorry, racing, in the middle of the night when you are usually asleep that is a killer. I don't do well in general with sleep deprivation. My stomach gets all irritable, I can't focus, etc. So you can imagine what this means when it's 3:30 in the morning and I am trying to negotiate tight twisty trails with wet roots, rocks, logs and streams while trying to keep away from the guy behind me and catch the guy in front of me.

After that lap is over, you have to get out of your dirty (and probably wet) biking clothes, clean your body, clean your bike, fix anything that you may have broken on the previous lap, make sure you eat something so you will have energy for the next lap and then you have try and get some sleep because it's all going to happen again in just a couple of hours.

I was able to get a short nap from 12:30 to 1:00 and another one from 6:15 to 6:45.

I didn't take any pictures since I forgot my camera, but I'll try to find some and post them when I get a chance.

In the end Megan, Mark and I did pretty well. We all turned some pretty strong lap times to get a total of 12 laps in and we finished around 12:40. It came down to the very last lap but we won our category and I think we placed pretty well in the overall standings. The most laps completed by any of the teams was 13, so 12 laps for a trio of riders that decided to do this race only two days earlier is not so bad.

Would you buy one of these?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4504393.stm

I think it's a decent idea, but I will hold out on the rest of my comments until someone else chimes in.