9.4mi

May’s been a big month of changes for me, and two milestones have been passed.

The first was in cycling. With tonight’s ride, I’ve put 121.4 miles of riding under my belt this month. It’s been over 25 years since I’ve cycled, so I count that as a great success for me. Beck asked tonight if my brain “turns off” while I’m riding — I have a problem with having my mind settle down, which causes me sleep problems, and some level of distraction when doing tasks. However, when I’m cycling, my brain stops floundering on all the things at work or home, and I get very focused on my pace, my music and the ride. That alone would be worth all the effort, but I’m also finding that I sleep better and that I sleep all night. Both of those are great improvements in my quality of life.

The second was here on the blog. Akismet crossed over 10,000 spam-kills today. That’s amazing. This blog gets so little traffic, and yet I appear to have made the cool spam lists, based on the number of spambombs I get nowadays. If I hadn’t turned on Akismet, I’d be sifting through soooo much junk. Again, a quality of life impact, as monitoring this thing so closely is not as required. I can spend time cycling, massaging photos and living my life while writing about it.

Yes, May was a good month.

So, goals for June?

The first would be to put another 150 miles of cycling behind me. I think that’s very doable, as I’m riding about four times a week, with my average ride being about 10 miles.

I’ll also start tennis again this month. We move outside on Thursdays, and I expect to be rejoining my tennis folks tomorrow, weather-permitting.

I also hope to see some weight shed in June. I think my weight hasn’t changed dramatically this month, despite all the hard work. Beck believes that I am moving fat to muscle, and that’s why the weight hasn’t changed dramatically. There’s probably some truth to that, but I expect to see some changes in June.

My last goal has to do with my photography. I need to be shooting more, and I would like to have my images ready for the August show at Stage Left before June escapes.

Good goals, I think. Stay tuned, and we’ll all see if it happens!

I had intended to go riding tonight, but after talking with Casey, I wanted to check a few things out.  I’d talked with Casey about tires for the bike, and what kind of tires might be better suited for riding the Katy Trail.  I was convinced that my tires were too soft, and were making my riding tougher.  He had some good suggestions (knobby on the edges, slicker in the middle, and ones with much higher air pressure than what I currently have), but one of his suggestions was to make sure that my brakes weren’t dragging on the rims.

I decided I would go home and see if that was case.  Sure enough, the front and back brakes were both dragging the rims through part of the revolution.  I decided to try to fix it.

That was a bad move.

So, I wound up at West County Cycles, and John took care of my “handiwork”, as well as truing the rims.  His belief is that this will make a huge difference in the feel of my bike.  My rides have felt like I was riding through mud, so I’m hopeful of a dramatic improvement between these two repairs.  Tomorrow is our weekly group ride, so it’ll be a good time to see if the changes have helped.

Beck and I also talked with John a little bit about new bikes.  Beck doesn’t own a bike, so she has some interest in getting one so she and I can ride together.  And, frankly, my bike is an el cheapo from a sporting goods store.  Nice enough for what it is, but it could stand some upgrading.  I figure if I keep doing this level of riding (30-50 miles a week) for another month or two, then I might consider a new bike.  ‘Til then, I’ll keep the Huffy on the trail, and see where it takes me.

9.4mi

And today is the day we celebrate Memorial Day.  While I have thought about my fellow vets, and been reminded of them with all the flags around at half-staff, I did follow recent American doctrine, and shopped a bit.

I finally got a CamelBak, a closeout Cloud Walker at Sports Authority.  They had most of their CamelBaks on sale today, so it seemed a good time to run off and get one.

We also stopped at West County Cycles, where Beck bought me a helmet.  It’s a nice helmet, with plenty of ventilation on top, and plenty of clearance for my iPod headphones.  Pretty cool.

I just had to try the new gear out, so I set up the CamelBak, loaded it with water, and took everything to the trail today for a little ride.  I had designs on riding from Weldon to Augusta (10mi each way), but the heat was a little much, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to hang around in that for that long, so it was just to Matson and back — about 4.7mi.

So how did the gear do?  Well, the CamelBak is awesome, with enough storage for keys, iPod, cell phone and other goodies.  And, I only emptied half of the 70oz reservoir across my hour ride — about the right amount.

As for the helmet, I didn’t actually try it out — I kept the helmet on my head, and my head above the ground.  However, I feel pretty comfortable that it’ll protect me if I do end up feet-over-head.

This morning, Beck and I, along with Katie, Matt and Anna, went to the early church service at First Baptist Church of Ellisville.  We’ve been going there since we moved into Ellisville, and I really like the place.  Nice people, good message, and quite reminiscent of the churches I attended in the South.

Anyway, being the Sunday before Memorial Day, much of the service and hymns focused on honoring our veterans.  One by one, the pastor mentioned groups of vets, and had them stand:  WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf Wars.  And when he was done, I was still sitting.  I served during none of those conflicts.  I wasn’t offended, as this oversight is frequently and easily made, especially with the nation focused on the war in Iraq, but there’s a big chunk of folks that served between the end of the Vietnam Conflict through the beginning of the first Gulf War that held the fort for 28 years of relative peace.  I figured I’d drop him an e-mail later, not to complain, but just to remind him that there are others that served during relative peacetime.

While the pastor thanked them for their service and what they sacrificed, Becky explained to the Colorado Days that I was a vet too, having served during the Cold War.

So with all these vets standing, he encouraged us to find vets close by, lay our hands on them, while he led us in a prayer for them and those that didn’t return.  As we sat there, heads bowed, my arm around Becky, I felt the most wonderful thing:  hands on mine.

You see, Katie, Matt and Anna reached over and prayed for me, presumably in thanksgiving of the service I’d had in our nation’s armed forces.  I was moved so deeply and profoundly… there’s no way for me to even try to explain it.

Shortly into the service, the pastor realized that he’d left out my group, the peacetime volunteers, and he publicly recognized that, and asked us to stand.  Both of us.

There was no need for an e-mail, and there was really no need for any kind of recognition, but I felt good that this omission had been fixed.  I wasn’t looking for glory by any means, but I’ll take all the prayers I can get! 

9.2mi

Tonight was another ride on the trail. This time around, I turned left rather than right, and ended up going to Defiance, and on through to Matson. This was a nice ride, and a change of scenery for me. Defiance has this biker-bar, and come this time of the year, it seems like there’s always a group of bikers and their hogs sitting around, drinking, smoking and cutting up. Today was no exception.

This ride was a smidgen tougher, as it seemed like I was climbing a small grade for most of the way out. The GPS seemed to bear that out, as the rode rose about 10-15 feet over the 4.6 miles out to Matson. The only weirdness was on the way back.

I was riding with my music cranked, as has become my habit lately, and a kid stopped me to tell me that his friend had taken a spill up the road a bit and was bleeding all over. He really emphasized for me to be careful. As I went on up the trail, I found three bikes and riders strewn all over the trail, along with their packs of stuff. And, yes, his friend had shown signs of going head over handlebars — scuffs on his back — but seemed to be ok otherwise.

However, this pointed out to me some of the folly of the way I ride. I’ve not been wearing a helmet, having had repairs supplies with me, nor had first aid materials with me. That’s just plain dumb for someone who is so focused on being safe and having what’s needed to keep me safe. I expect this weekend, I’ll get the helmet situation squared away, and perhaps next weekend, get the first aid and repair materials needed for a good, safe, self-sufficient ride.

Another thing on my list is a Camelbak. I tried to find one yesterday, but Ghisallo was out of them and Target tried to sell me a camping shower as a substitute. While taking a shower while riding my bike is an interesting idea, I’m not convinced that’s the right answer! Dick’s Sporting Goods was suggested, so I’ll try there maybe this weekend.

I also found a couple of very interesting bike challenges today. One of them I’m not ready for, and the other I signed up for right away. The first is called the Katy Trail Ride. This takes place in June, and is a five ride across the whole length of the trail — all 225 miles of it. There’s support teams, and folks to carry your luggage, so it’s not quite such a big trip. But, it’s billed as 35-68 miles a day, and I’m just not quite ready for that yet. My goal is to be ready next year for it, though, and take the time off to do it. No glory, just a goal for me to strive for, and a sense of accomplishment for having done something good for myself.

The other trail event is the Katy Trail Challenge, and it’s much more my speed. For this event, the goal is to ride twice the length of trail — 450 miles — over the next year. You don’t even have to ride on the trail. Riding in parks, neighborhoods, and stationary bikes all count toward the total. This is a very achieveable goal for me, and one I think I can knock out before the summer is done. As a measure, I’ve put about 95 miles of cycling under my belt this month, and that’s with not trying very hard for the first half of the month.

So keep watching, and I’ll start trying to figure out how to put some totals for the Challenge on the sidebar of the blog so you can ride along with me.

10mi

Tonight was my third ride on the Katy Trail. Last night, my bikemates went on the usual Wednesday night ride. Beck wasn’t feeling well — migraine — and I came home to take care of her. Since I missed my ride, I figured that I better get in a ride while I could.

It was a hot 90 degrees outside, but the humidity dropped off significantly compared to last night, and that helped quite a bit. Still, after 3 miles, I thought I was whipped, but found a little burst of energy to get to my preplanned turnaround point and head back to the truck.

It was a nice ride, with the music of Queen blaring from my iPod. I’m still taken aback at how beautiful the trail is, and the fact that exists it all. How could I have not been enjoying it all these years? I am now, and that’s a very cool thing. Tonight, the algae was that same bright green that I enjoyed on the first ride a couple of weeks ago, and nature was showing off a bit with baby birds, small lizards, and a four-foot long black snake scooting across the trail.

I’m thinking about even adding another night or two of riding to my schedule. Tonight, I got to the trailhead around 4.30, and was done with my ten miles by 5.30, and that’s a schedule that doesn’t interfere with mine and Beck’s time together.

Tonight was the American Idol finale.  I’m glad, as I need more addictive TV around like I need alligators snapping at my trousers.  It’s far too easy for me to be sucked in by stuff like that.

Anyway, just before watching it, I noticed that there was some strange stuff going on on the TV.  Channel 3 had some BBC news broadcast on it.  BBC over the air means PBS, and that meant for some searching.  It looked like the stray signal was coming from Florida based on what I could find after cross referencing the stations and their schedules at that time.  So, we watched Idol with the split screen showing that and channel 3.

A little before 8pm, something on channel 3 started getting stronger and stronger, complete with color.  And then it was clear — it was Fidel Castro, giving some kind of speech.  Now I don’t speak Spanish, and even if I did, the E-layer clouds only aligned for about two minutes, so I don’t know if I would’ve had any context anyway.  However, I did snap a bunch of photos.  Cool stuff.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen TV from Cuba.  The last time that I remember was when I was a kid, maybe around 1978.  I was living in Chattanooga at the time, and there was a particularly strong Es opening, with signals from both Canada and Cuba beating each other up.  That was cool stuff, and was a precursor for showing me how much fun the VHF bands, and 6m in particular, could be.

Nowadays, it’s just a passing thing, a kind of novelty, to catch these stray signals from far away.  It’s still facinating to me that while folks can explain what happens to make these far off signals hit my antenna, no one can accurately predict the occurrence.  When the magic’s there though, it is magic, and it’s loads of fun for me.

6.4mi

Not sure what’s going on tonight, but the spammers have been hitting me crazy hard tonight.  The funny thing is that Akismet (first line of defense) isn’t catching them all.  I’m sure there’ve been ones that haven’t been caught by Akismet, that have magic words that cause them to magically go away (second line of defense).  But there’ve been about 50 that have made it into moderation (third line of defense) that I’ve had to deal with directly.

Dunno how Akismet does its thing, but it seems there must something new and/or different about these that it’s not seeing.  Oh well — that’s why I have so many layers to my spam trapping.  One is simply not enough!

6.8 mi

It’s kinda a shame that the Cards are in San Francisco at the point in time when Barry Bonds could surpass Babe Ruth’s home run total.  I expect no pitcher for the Cards would say that avoiding being that pitcher is on their mind, but I’ve gotta think it’s in there somewhere.

Do I think Bonds has been juiced up for at least part of his career?  Absolutely.  Do I think anyone’ll be able to prove it and yank his records away?  Probably not.  However, time will fix that.  Someone will surpass 73 homers in a season — Pujols is on a pace to do it — and even if Bonds passes Hank Aaron on the career homerun list, someone else will eclipse him one day.

What’s funny to me is how the fans in San Francisco didn’t show up for what could be the big night — it wasn’t a sellout.  Had a Cardinal player been chasing Ruth, the stands would’ve been full, with folks standing around outside the stadium just to be part of the magic.  St. Louis is a baseball city, and I’m reminded of that when I see the response of the fanbases in some other cities.  Tonight’s just good proof of that.

This morning, I got up and was pawing through some stuff lying dormant on the hard drive, and found an old page I’d written to monitor various ham radio propagation pages. When I took a look at it, I saw that there’d been a bunch of band openings overnight, and there was still some activity going on.

Not having any radio gear, I did the next best thing, and sat myself and my camera up in front of the Sony upstairs, watching for anything out of the ordinary. As it ends up, there must’ve been a tropo duct between here and Kansas City and slightly beyond, as well as as little bit of enhancement to the east. This is first time I’d been able to watch stations from KC, and they were booming in. In fact, the local channel 9 was really torn up by channel 9 in KC. That was fun to see.

Alas, it didn’t last long for me — maybe an hour or two — but there was plenty to see:

• WSEC-DT, Jacksonville IL (76 mi)
• WPSD-DT, Paducah KY (153 mi)
• KCWE, Kansas City MO (210 mi)
• KRCG-DT, Jefferson City MO (78 mi)
• KCTV-DT, Kansas City MO (214 mi)
• WDAF-DT, Kansas City MO (214 mi)
• KMCI, Kansas City MO (210 mi)
• KMIZ, Columbia MO (103 mi)

The downside was that I couldn’t just tune to a digital channel on the Sony — I had to let it find the DT stations, and then I had to figure out what it had found. Not too cool, but still, it was a fun event, and fun to play with. There were other stations that I had suspicions about, but didn’t see ID slides for. I’ll catch them some other time.

The bummer is that in a few years, the fun and ease of chasing analog broadcasters will be done, as everyone will be required to be DT. I think the signal level needed at my antenna to pull a DT out of the mud is much higher than that of the analogs, and I fear that this kind of signal chasing will long be gone.