OBX

December in the Outer Banks is great. Most businesses are closed for the season because no one is around. This is great for bikers, very little traffic on the road and great hotel prices!


The ride from Nags Head up to Corolla and back was very quiet and relaxing.

Next we rode down to Hatteras and took the free ferry to Ocracoke. It was a long beautiful beach ride.

Warning!

Never tie a scarf around your handlebars. It might get caught in the front wheel and your face would end up looking like this! Doesn't look too bad, but it hurt for quite some time. =) I face planted within the first 5 miles of our ride, but had to finish the 68 miles we scheduled for that day. I caught up on Jill's blog last night and was pumped for a long ride!

This was our final ride for 2008. We finished with 2,276 miles! What a fun year!

The Weight of Snow

Trin got up many times throughout the night to the sound of footsteps all around the house. The sound of slamming doors was disconcerting, for him anyway, I slept through most of it.We woke up to six inches of white – our first snow fall of the year. The trees are crying from the weight of heavy wet clinging snow. They are relieved only by the occasional breeze that releases the weighted white coating. It hits the ground sounding like running heavy weights.

I stood on our back porch listening to the thunder of trees breaking followed by the waterfall of snow pounding the ground leaving a cloud of white mist to settle.A tree in the back yard was doing a back bend over the house. Trin donned a helmet and planned his attack. He used a log to hit the lower trunk of the tree, giving it enough vibration to loosen some of the snow. Each ram brought the tree up about an inch. It is now upright; I think it will make it through this storm.The road is closed, so we can not drive to work and our internet connection is not working so we can not work from home. Vacation day! Trin can enjoy his new heated toilet seat - he just installed it last night. And I’ll finish my book! Every hour or so we check out the latest crash to see what tree nearly missed our house. So far huge branches have fallen on every side; some have shaken the house, but no major damage yet. More firewood for the winter! =)

Finger Lake Tour

I hope he doesn’t point right I thought as we climbed the hill at mile 69. The right turn looked like a steep hill. Trin and I parked yesterday morning near Watkins Glen. He carried the cue sheet and navigated. I followed along and enjoyed the scenery as we rode up along the east side of Seneca Lake to camp at the top in Waterloo. It was a gorgeous day with beautiful views the entire way.We started this morning with a nice pancake breakfast donned our jackets and headed for the west side of Seneca Lake down to the Keuka Outlet trail. The Keuka outlet trail is a beautiful single track along the outlet connecting Kauka Lake to Seneca Lake.

Keauka Lake is shaped like a snake’s tongue. When we reached it we followed the bluff (the land mass between the fork) along the lakeside. There was very little traffic, the trees provided shade, and the view of the lake was prominent. At the bottom of the bluff – where the lake forks we encountered our first large climb of the day. In a little over half a mile we gained 200 ft elevation. The benefit was a gradual coast almost the entire way back out of the bluff to the top of the West fork.

Next we turned south again to follow the outer west side of the lake down to Hammondsport. It was at Hammondsport when we cut east back to Watkins glen that we encountered our largest hills of the ride. Yes, he signaled right. The first hill at the tip of Kauka bluff looked small in comparison. Each time I thought we were almost to the top it was just a turn in the road, a turn that took us higher, 500 feet higher in one and a half miles. The view was beautiful from the top. The next 17 miles would take us up and down in elevation. At mile 80 the road again seemed to stretch to heaven, our legs felt like they were in hell and our pace had slowed to the point where a snail could fly by. We stopped at the top out of exhaustion. We both drank all our water and ate the rest of our food as we gazed at the sunset reflecting off the lakes way off in a distance down on the valley floor. We still had six miles to go and it was getting dark. If the hills continued like this it could be very dark by the time we reached our car.
We hopped back on our bikes feeling refreshed. The rest of the hills didn’t seem so bad. The last three and half miles were all descent. The wind was cold as we coasted between 30 and 40 mph, but we reached Watkins Glen just after dusk. The once totaled maxima gleamed under the Wal-Mart parking light – what a beautiful sight.

Cake on a bike blog? I need a goal!

Trin and I reached our summer biking goal and haven't ridden since. Instead I've been working 14 hr days and spending time on other hobbies like this baby shower cake.

We decided today that we needed another goal to give us that extra ump to get us out the door doing something. A number of times we got out and rode just because we needed to rack up some miles. Almost every time, once we were on the road we loved it. It turned out to be a great summer.

A few of us at the lunch table decided we would have a walking/ running contest. Whoever books the most mileage by the end of each month wins. This should help get me off my butt since I love competition.

Steroid Happy!

My rotator cuff has been bothering me since the mishap on Mt Washburn. So today my doctor gave my shoulder a steroid shot. I've never had any type of steroid before. I wasn't aware of any of the side effects (except big muscles).

I got back to work and just started smiling. I wanted to skip - and on a Monday! Since normally Monday's are just so so I found this odd. So I googled "steroid happy" and found that steroid users are often happy while using.

I hope to not need another shot for a very long time - never would be fine with me, but I might as well enjoy this one.

These are the things that crossed my mind on the way back to work, my favorite things.

• A good downhill tuck
• Trinity singing in the shower
• Starting down a technical hill scared shitless, realizing I could make it halfway down, and whooping at the end if I'm still on the bike with no injuries
• Exploring nature on a bike far from civilization
• Finding a way to cut the time of a process in half
  
• Drinking with my friends
  
• Finding new features in Excel - actually anything in Excel
• New cool widgets get me excited
• Talking to my sister
• Saturday mornings
• Seeing new places

Oh so many more things. Next Monday when I have a normal humdrum Monday I'll read this again. Maybe it will bring the smile back.

We reached our BHAG!!!

Last year we decided to set a goal to ride a century (100 miles in one day) by Aug 2007. We set up a training schedule to get us ready, stuck to it, and did it! In total we biked 1,000 miles for that summer. This year we decided to set a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) of doubling last year’s mileage.

We started this three day weekend only 65 miles short of our summer goal and hoped to finish before going back to work on Tuesday.

This morning it rained and thunder showers were forecasted intermittently through out the day. When the sky cleared around Noon we decided to get at least 15 miles in. The weather held out and on mile 30 Trin looked at me and said, ”Want to make it a metric century and finish our goal today?" All I could think at the time was that I was hungry, but I did want to finish. We stopped at a nearby convenient store to get some food. I got a turkey sandwich, which for some reason I have been craving all year, and continued our ride. We climbed a few hills, got in a number of great downhill tucks - up to 50mph today, and completed our miles!

Tonight we CELEBRATE riding 2,000 miles for the summer of 2008!!

Finishing our Ride around Lake Champlain

Day 5:

By early Tuesday morning our one man pup tent was sagging very close to us. Movement was a coordinated effort as it was, even more so now. Puddles had also collected along the sides of the tent, but did not soak the sleeping bag (yes, to save on weight on the bike we just brought one). The downpour started as soon as we got into the tent the night before and rain continued till morning, but we stayed dry. In the morning as soon as we heard the rain taper off we quickly took everything into the campgrounds laundromat so we would have room to roll up the sleeping bag, tent, and tarp, and get packed up and ready for a rainy day. Providence/Luck (I don’t know which to say these days) was with us, not another drop of rain fell during our ride. The trip turned out to be perfect, we had the excitement of a thunderstorm in a tent, while staying dry and not having to ride through a bit of rain the entire trip.

Our five day route ended on mile 244.