Monday, February 2, 2009

Jan 24 ride to Lacey

Temperatures were in the low 30's but the air was still. I was a little nervous about the cold but felt my gear could handle it. I set out at 9:20 AM with a pannier full of geocaches to hide. Making good time I was quickly north of Centralia on 507 contemplating making a call to Centralia City Hall to ask them to sweep the shoulders to city limits. The bike lanes are hazardous due to the large accumulation of gravel from the snow and also the gravel haulers from the gravel pit at county limits.
I often think these thoughts while riding and then forget when I am not.
-- This blog is good for a reminder --
I just called the City Utilities (360) 330-7512 and asked. They said they would put in a work order for it.
-- Back to the Ride
Making the usual stop at Schaefer Park I observed someone painting out the gang graffitti. While having a goo packet, I thought there just might be room for one more geocache in the park. I quick check on the GPS and, yes one would just fit.
Continuing on 507 i crossed the Skookumchuck River and a few things in the road caught my eye.
There were coins all over. I got off the bike and started gathering them up. All told there was almost $13 of change in the road. That is a lot of road kill money!
As I child, I used to have dreams where I would find a penny and then just at the edge of sight was another. This would continue and escalate until I was picking up quarters and dollars all over. Then I would awake disappointed. This time reality imitated a dream and there I was picking up so much change, I had to dump a load to be able to pick up more. Last years road kill money total was $18.68. It is February 2 and I already have $14.53. There is a good chance that this year will win out over last.
After 20 minutes of money gathering, I was off again, I had not gone far when I saw some emu in a field and had to stop and look. I tried to get a picture but none turned out.
My riding was progressing quickly but the time was racking up, I made a couple more side trips to hide some more caches and found a bunch of stolen mail dumped on the roadside before rolling into Tenino. Here I planned to stop and have another gel packet, use the restroom and find a cache.
While throwing away the gel packet, I spied a on of those expensive art sketch books on top of the trash. Being a picker upper of such things, I leafed through it to see what art someone would discard. It turned out it was only half used and contained some high-shcoolers art work. I removed those and kept the unused half.
In going after the geocache, it turned out to be further off the path than I had time for, so I tabled it for another time and pushed on. The bike path included many stops to hide caches, look around and spot some watercress. I made a note of the watercress location for later harvest.
The ride ended at 1 PM. 40.23 miles in 3:11:25 ride time.

Monday, January 26, 2009

2008 Recap

I finished 2008 with a whimper. My goal of 5,000 miles was not met, I rode 4473.93 which I should still be proud of. I also learned that I need to be careful of burnout.
Mile goals for 2009:
  • 3600 annual miles
  • more miles on bike than car
  • 5 round trip to Portland
  • average speed does not matter
The biggest impediment to riding is finding the time to ride. During the week in Portland is the easiest time slot. There is nothing else going on and the only things in the way are work, daylight hours to some degree and weather to some degree.
My favorite ride however, are the long distance adventure rides. These are hard to schedule because the time I can do it would be on the weekends when I am at home and then they compete with family time.

A couple things on the Blogger tool. It is hard to find time to put posts on here as blogging also competes with family time. Work blocks access and I don't have a computer in Portland. Typing up posts on an iPhone is too much of a chore. Maybe someday the iPhone will support a Bluetooth keyboard. To make matters worse, sometimes Blogger will decide not to save anymore and my post will be lost. I need to work on using the email posting method to get them into the blog.

At this point I have only done the Chehalis to Lacey route from home and commuter miles in Portland for '09.