Employee Ski Day

The boss at work decided that he would take everyone skiing at Bridger Bowl yesterday. I had a great day, and rode more laps that I have in a long time at the hill. I rode from 9 when the lifts opened until 330 I think. One hour break for lunch and the rest was riding time. It was really fun. I spent most of the day with Mark and Miles who I work with. We pretty much stuck to Pierre's Knob and did a lot of cruising in the trees. Pretty mellow and fun. I brought the GPS and got a lot of paths out of it.

Data:
Time: 5:45
Max Speed: 41.9
Total Ascent/Descent: 26197 ft
Distance: 34.25 miles.

No wonder I fell asleep at 7:30!

The Ringing Rocks

For my Easter I went mountain biking. What a surprise! I went solo as all my riding friends were otherwise occupied. I just really needed to get outside for a while, and very often my Sunday routine is a solo pursuit of some sort. It is good to have a break from people and town and just be out in nature for a while. I think it recalibrates my spririt from the hectic workweek down to a more natural relaxed state. The slow rhythms of the wind and the sky and the sun. . .
I cruised around in a new area near Pipestone and explored the whole lower area and ended up at the Ringing Rocks. I didn't ring them but apparently they make a neat sound when you whack them. It was a big pile of red boulders and looked totally manmade but is totally natural.

Ride Data courtesy my Garmin 305. I can export the data to Google Earth, as you can see above. Pretty sweet!

Time: 1:41
Distance: 12.47 miles
Avg HR: 147
Max HR: 173
Total Ascent/Descent: 2268 ft

Athletic Fact of the Day

Miguel Indurain, a cyclist and five times Tour de France winner, had a resting heart rate of 28 beats per minute, one of the lowest ever recorded in a healthy human.

Datafest

I got home today from work and there was a box waiting for me patiently by the front door. I opened it when I got inside and there sat my new Garmin GPS unit. I had to charge it before using it so I plugged it into the wall and then went to pick up my KLR at the motorcycle shop after it's spring service. I got new handlebars to replace the my bent old ones, and Progressive fork springs. Holy crap do those springs make a difference! At the first stop I immediately noticed how I didn't have a ton of fork dive when I used the front brake. The bike for the first time felt balanced front and rear, somewhat firm at each end, instead of being excessively mushy in front. It just stabilized the whole ride, no rocking back and forth, it just felt way more solid on the road. It was cold and windy but I had to go rally around the dirt roads for a bit before going home. For about 100 bucks I don't think there is a better upgrade for that bike.

I got the GPS running and then got myself running, literally, to test it out. A half hour later I plugged the thing into my computer, and got the data into the Garmin program, and saw all kinds of neat stuff: graphs, numbers, little maps, oh boy!! Data: 2.5 miles, Avg heart rate 152, Max HR 178 (I sprinted for a bit to see what would happen), and a cool map of my route. I found an option to export data to Google Earth, but that will have to wait till tomorrow, as I have to go to bed. The damn thing seems to work though!

March 9, Pipestone

The first team mtn bike ride of the season took place last weekend on Sunday. We loaded up the van and headed west to Pipestone. It was super wet but we had a good time anyway especially with our post-ride soak in the Jefferson River hot spring. The whole day made me feel like summer-happy just cruising around in the sun and having a good time. It was also the first day of the time change so we were just hitting sunset around 7:30 in the hot springs. Totally great day. Here are some photos.

Geek Toys

For a long time I have kept records of my activities of all sorts. I have a notebook for weight training, I always write my excercise down on the calendar, and I keep a bike log. I like recording information I guess. So in pursuit of recording information about excercise I just ordered a Garmin Forerunner 305.

I think things are going to go to the next level. I will now have distance, speed, a map of my route, heart rate, and a bunch of other data. Should be pretty fun.

Too Busy

Sorry no posts for a few days. Too busy with a full weekend of riding road, snowboarding, and mtn biking. And this week a lot of work. I'll try and get updates this weekend.

Up at 4:30 am

I woke up at around 4 and couldn't sleep any more for some reason. So I got out of bed and fired up the computer and started importing some cd's to Itunes. I just migrated my entire library from my mac harddrive to my PC (since my mac died). There are a number of discs that I haven't put on there yet so I did some catching up. I had an idea last night that I would get up early and put a batch of chili into the crock pot before I went to work so after some importing I went to the kitchen. Vegetarian chili was prepared and put into the crockpot on high. I will turn it to low before I go to work, and by tonight we will have some tasty business!
My Team Muleterro buddies and I had a meeting with the Gallatin Valley Bike Club last night. We are going to handle PR and advertising for their main fund raising event: The Spring Bike Swap. We just got added as a team to their umbrella nonprofit status so we have to do some work with them. I am heading this up as I did a bunch of event promotion when I was doing movies with my buddy Erik at Stormshadow Productions a few years back.

I love Itunes

Man do I love Itunes! I just rescued my music library from my external hard drive that used to run on my Mac, which crapped out on me two months ago. I found a utility to let me mount the drive on my PC which I did, and copied my itunes library on to my PC. So after a good two or three months of no itunes I am back in business! I also just put some new stereo stuff into my truck which made it about 100 times better to listen to music in. So my daily commute is much more enjoyable. And, after having Itunes since it came out years and years ago, I just figured out how to make smart playlists! What is wrong with me that I didn't know that before!!!! I have been manually adding music to all the playlists I make and it always pissed me off! Now I can easily make a playlist for all one genre, or artist, or whatever and it autofills for me. Wow. I must be getting old that I don't know how to use the features of a computer program that are very basic. hmph.

Last played artists:
Miles Davis
Sebadoh
Folk Implosion
Lou Barlow
DJ Krush
Darkest Hour

In the Dark

Sunset ride tonight out Gooch Hill and back. I didn't get on the road until 5:45 so I put my blinky light on my camelback so I wouldn't get run over when it got dark. I am trying to ride really slow and aerobically the whole time which I gather is known as Base Miles in the proper roadie lingo. Riding road is so different from mountain biking! All I think about the whole time is my pedaling and how it sucks and I want it to be smoother and more even around the stroke.
I have noticed improvement even in the ten hours I have been out this past month. (Lifetime road bike total: 20 hours) I think I had my seat too high as well until yesterday when I lowered it about a half-inch. I was starting to bounce a bit when my cadence got up. It is better after changing the seat height. Now I think I need to either shift the saddle forward more, or tilt it up in the front because I am sliding forward too much and having to really push with my arms to get my butt to the right spot. I will adjust before the next ride.
Looks like big snow on the docket for tomorrow with a winter storm warning for the area. 6-12 inches in the mountains though so I may get to skip work on Wednesday and go ride Bridger and hike the ridge a few times. I would like a few good days on the board yet this winter.

Dogde the Snow Cloud

Today's Road Ride:

Time: 45 min.
Distance: 11.3 miles
Temp: 37
Wind: 10mph

Had to cut today short due to being surrounded by snow clouds in all directions. I was going to drive west of town to ride where it is usually warmer but after I got in the car and started driving I could see it was snowing out there. At my house it was an island of sun, so I came back and rode out from the house. The Gallatin Range to the south was topped with clouds dropping snow and the same with the Bridgers to the north. So I could see a wall of snow creeping out of Gallatin Canyon and I knew my ride may need to get cut short. And it did. I got about 35 minutes out and could see the weather closing in. I got caught in the fall in a total blizzard and do not want to repeat that so I turned around and headed back.
I have been riding on these roads lately that got chip sealed late in the fall and they are extremely rough. I didn't realize how rough until I rode out Stuckey today and it was chip seal halfway, and then turned to good smooth normal pavement, and I started to go WAY faster. It was a big difference.

A short essay on animals and cyclists

This morning I woke up and hit the road on the bicycle for an hour and a half. Same loop I have been doing out Gooch Hill road and coming back on Cottonwood. 20 miles plus or minus depending on how you connect the two roads. Today I was cruising along in ipod-land and was shaken out of my reverie by a barking dog blasting towards me at high speed from a mobile home next to the road. I started yelling at it and pedaling like mad and fortunately he stopped chasing me in short order. Very stimulating though... Then two more ranch dogs were charging across a pasture at me not too far down the road, but a good "NO! GO HOME!" got them squared away. Ranch dogs are trained to herd things, and I am sure they think I am some wierd type of cow moving quickly down the road, obviously escaped from the fence. Livestock also get confused by the me on a bike. One day a herd of cattle started running towards the road as I went by. I don't know what they thought, maybe I had food or something. Then in the same pasture a different day there were yearling cows, younger, and they all ran away when they saw me. Wierd. Today some horses got startled and started running away, until I spoke to them whereby they stopped, realizing I was a human being.