2004
Getting Ready for France
Tammy and I dropped our bikes off at Erik’s Bike Shop tonight to get them packed in the Trico Iron Cases that I got on eBay what seems like forever ago. I had also just gotten a tune-up on my bike and replaced the chain which led to the unfortunate issue of realizing my rear cogs were all worn out so my new chain was slipping (always take some test rides!). So, new cog set is going on and I’m taking the opportunity to go from a 12-23T like I usually ride to a more “Alpe d’Huez friendly” 12-27T. I think I’ll be very thankful for those four additional teeth when suffering up the climbs.
Will pick the bikes up on Thursday. Rest of packing will be happening soon. Need to download French and Swiss maps to my eTrex Vista GPS (yes, I will be posting some GPS data as well – I can’t help myself). Fly out on Saturday!
I also got one of my books to read during the trip. Amazon delivered Heft on Wheels today by Mike Magnuson. Looks like fun reading, and probably some stuff I can relate to.
Mother's Kitchen Demolition
Tammy and I went and helped my mom today with the demolition of her kitchen. She’s been working on her new house for the last year and this is the start of probably the biggest project, but also the one with the most impact, a new kitchen. We went over to help her gut the room to the studs and got plenty dirty in the process.
Learn to Row Pictures
I took my camera gear to rowing class today and went with our coach Lauren in the launch (motor boat) to have some fun shooting pictures of our Learn to Row session.
See All 8 Row! and Learn to Row.
ALARC Legends 5k
Tammy and I did the ALARC Legends 5k this morning. Tammy has just started taking a running class with ALARC and they had an included pancake breakfast after the run which was enough for me to get on board. 🙂
Tammy ran it in 25:13 and I around 26:30. It was a nice run, a little humid and I was glad it started at 7:30am to avoid any heat.
This run is called Legends because they invite a number of Minnesota runners that have had an impact in the running world. A number of marathon record holders were there as well as a 90 year old dude out running with all of us. I hope I’m so energetic at 90!
All 8, Row!
We had our second “on the water” session in our Learn to Row class tonight at MRC. Tonight was significantly better than the first night. We did a much better job of setting (leveling) the boat and we had a more authoritative coxswain (she said it was her first time, but I find that hard to believe) which gave me more confidence. We did a number of drills tonight. First we rowed four at a time. In this configuration either the bow four or stern four will row while the other four level the boat. This is nice as even if you really mess up the four that are leveling will keep things generally stable. We then did six at a time, which is the same story just with six rowing and only two leveling. I was in seat 6 tonight on port side. I liked that spot better than seat 5 that I was in last time (the bow seat is seat 1 and the seat in front of the coxswain is seat 8). Tammy was stroke seat or seat 8 tonight and did an awesome job setting the stroke for the boat.
At the midpoint of our class we actually started rowing all 8! That was very impressive. The first stroke that you all make together just launches the boat forward. It wasn’t pretty at all times as we are very, very green but it was pretty good. Apparently our class is progressing fairly quickly.
Tammy and I are both enjoying the class. I really like the team atmosphere of rowing. It reminds me in many ways of riding a pace line on the bike. I find the technical terms enjoyable (again, like cycling) and I like how you work together to create such amazing speed on the boat. We are both interested in continuing into the novice program at MRC which allows you to row in eights for the season. Who knows, maybe we’ll get in a league. 🙂
See first class and rowing pictures.
Learn to Row
Tammy and I are taking the “Learn to Row” class at the Minneapolis Rowing Club. Tonight was our third class which was our first class to really get out on the water. We are taking the class with 10 people and learning to row a sweep eight. We will also have one day where we will scull which is the one-person boats.
I got a little uneasy when the boat got wobbly (not set). Our instructor reassured us that it is very hard to flip an eight, but I wasn’t buying it.
Rowing is pretty fun so far. I’ll try to get some pictures on our weekend classes.
Watermelon Ride
Every year TCBC holds it’s annual 4th of July ride called the Watermelon Ride. It’s aptly named since there is a lunch afterward where large amounts of watermelon are made available. Tammy and I had not done this ride in the past but had wanted to. It is a great route, very flat which makes it a very managable fun ride for the holiday weekend. Two ride options are available with milage of 25 or 55 miles. We did the longer route. Couldn’t have asked for a nicer day on the bike to get some comfortable miles in.
The (Not So Good) Taste of Minnesota
Tonight Tammy and I planned to cap off a really great 4th of July weekend with a trip to the Taste of Minnesota, also known as “the taste”. We hadn’t been to the Taste since 2002 when it was at the state capitol for the last time. Taste is usually a fun afternoon of food that is fried and should not be consumed on anything approaching a regular basis with a good background of outdoor music and sunshine.
We made plans to go to the Taste with our good friends Tracy and Jeff. We arrived early and started to explore the new venue. The Taste is now on Harriet Island instead of the Capitol grounds. That’s a big change but we were left a little surprised by all the other changes.
The Taste has gotten a lot bigger. A lot of new things have been added and none of them, in our humble opinion, have added to the event in a positive way at all. Tammy and I did a quick trip around after wading through the new fair rides (what are those doing here?) and the sea of “interesting” people and were dismayed at everything.
We decided to call an audible and get Tracy and Jeff on the cell phone and change our plans at the last minute to go to the Downtowner Woodfire Grill which was nearby. We had a great dinner and conversation saving a near disastrous evening at the now pathetic Taste.
We’ve removed the Taste from our summer calendar for good.
A hint to the committee that organizes the taste. We already have one State Fair, we don’t need another. It seems that the Taste is just trying to become another fair with none of the legacy of the Butter Heads in the Dairy building to make it fun. Instead, it’s turned into a dirty, grimy mess. We’ll consider going back when the event gets back to its roots.
Stillwater Fireworks
I lived in the Twin Cities for a number of years without anyone ever mentioning a thing about the fireworks in Stillwater. Maybe most people don’t know, but Stillwater has some amazing fireworks. It is on par with the best fireworks I’ve ever seen. The first time we saw them was 2002 when we ended up in Stillwater on a whim and decided to check them out. We both left thinking the show was awesome. I cannot remember off-hand why we didn’t go back last year, but this year we were able to enjoy them. They last a little under 30 minutes with music accompanying them. Adding to the fun are all of the boats that line up on the water to watch. There are thousands of people that line the shore and vendors even setup concession stands. Warning: getting an ice cream cone right before the fireworks can take quite a while! Anyway, highly recommended for your 4th of July planning in the future.
Two things really stood out to me though while I was doing some people watching before the event. Have you all realized that well over 90% of teenage girls are now wearing flip-flops and a decent proportion of their male counterparts as well. All these girls were walking by and essentially every single one (with minor exceptions) had flip-flops? Who finds these comfortable? Who would ever want to walk a mile in these things. And why are they all wearing them? Perhaps it’s some sort of flip-flop plot to cause some counter-insurgance in the country.
The other thing I wondered is are more people smoking? Sure seems like there are more people lighting up lately than there were even two years ago. Have we gone completely insane?
Of course, one could write-off both of these observations with my sample set. Perhaps both flip-flops and smoking are a craze exhibited only in pickup driving towns with teenagers overloaded with hormones. Perhaps. Or should I say I hope.
Canon PowerShot S500
We recently added yet another camera to our collection of digital cameras. There is absolutely nothing wrong with my current Canon EOS Digital Rebel. I find it to still be a great camera and I’m having a wonderful time figuring out how the different lenses can give me different shots and how to really work the camera. The goal is to not just happen upon a great shot here and there, but really start to understand photography better. At some point I would like to take some classes to get some formal training in it.
Additionally, my old camera (or Tammy’s camera as it’s known now) the Canon PowerShot G3 is also still working great. It’s prosumer point & shoot qualities make it a great camera for your average day of shooting. It’s also nice that Tammy and I can go shooting together and we’re not sharing a camera. At some point, we’ll get another digital SLR body and we can just start sharing lenses.
However great both of these cameras are, especially the Rebel, there is one thing that neither of them are and that is light and portable. With our upcoming trip to Europe I found myself really wanting another camera that we could take for just whimsical shots around Paris or more importantly something I could have on the bike with me and take shots while riding in France. I read our tour guide and as it mentioned all these great sights from our ride I knew more and more I wanted a camera that could make the trip with me. (As it turns out, I’ve gotten a handlebar bag that is big enough that I could probably fit the Digital Rebel in it if I wanted, so I may have options.)
We purchased the Canon PowerShot S500 for both of these qualities. I’ve shot about a hundred pictures with it and so far I’m very pleased. We previously had made a trip into the small & portable digital line with the Canon PowerShot S230 and returned it because the pictures were horrible. This camera hasn’t had any of those problems. Pictures are crisp and clear, focusing is good, color quality seems nice and shooting a 5 megapixel image means we can still get really nice prints if wanted. Important as well is the case. This camera is built like a tank and I don’t think twice about just sliding it in my pocket and forgetting about it.
(You can tell I have a thing for Canon. I find their cameras to be particularly intuitive and the overall design is well done. I appreciate Nikon’s lens variety and camera quality, but their firmware on the camera is just not intuitive and has caused me frustration nearly every time I’ve picked one up. I’m sure I would get used to it if I worked at it, but I’m stubborn.)
The Tour is On!
It is really a treat to be a cycling fan in America these days. As little as 4 years ago it was hard to get any coverage on TV other than a weekly melodrama that CBS or NBC would air giving you 30 minutes of coverage for an entire week of racing – and that includes the boring “story” pieces.
These days courtesy of OLN and the popularity of cycling thanks to Armstrong you can get a full, heaping plate full of Tour de France coverage. Simply put, it’s awesome.
Today the business of the 2004 Tour de France got underway. It was a nail biting prologue with Lance putting seconds into his biggest rival Jan Ullrich. However, he didn’t take the prologue. Instead that was courtesy of a 23 year old rider from Switzerland named Cancellara in his first tour. He was in tears as he realized he would be wearing the yellow jersey on the first road stage of the biggest bike race in the world.
The excitement of the Tour is now on and it’s so fun to watch. This year has a special tone since in only 14 short days Tammy and I will be there on our vacation watching the action go down as the race goes into the high mountains.
Internet Oddities
I ran across this Tron suit page and was stunned, confused and frightened. Just had to share it.
The Terminal
Tammy and I went to The Terminal tonight. I gotta admit that I liked this movie a lot more than I expected I would.
You start with Tom Hanks. Granted he’s one of the best actors alive today. He’s right up there with the greats, but he is Tom Hanks and for some reason I don’t have the desire to see him in a movie like I do Al Pacino, or Marlon Brando or even William H. Macey! But every time I do see him in a movie I really enjoy it. Spielberg is also a great director but falls unfortunately into a similar category as Hanks.
Anyway, the plot sounds really boring, a guy stuck in an international airport terminal, however it is really fun and enjoyable. You leave the movie feeling good and happy, which is sometimes exactly what you want a movie to do.
Race Across America
The hardest sporting event in the world is finishing up right now. RAAM (the Race Across America) has concluded for another year and there was a bit more excitement this year with teams getting close on the road and even some espionage between teams. It’s amazing what happens as you pedal yourself across the country without sleep.
This animated progress map for RAAM is a nice way to see the race progress.
More Bandwidth, Same Price
I called up TimeWarner today about my cable modem service. I’ve had it for a couple of years now and wanted to see if there was a better deal I should be on to save a few dollars. Turns out I was able to upgrade my service at no cost and get a 4x increase in download bandwidth. Yeah! So now I’ve got 3 mbps down and 768 kbps up.
I was doubly impressed that they had this done and in place in about an hour. I was able to do some speed tests to verify it, plus it actually feels a lot more zippy.
Rain and the Average Cyclist (Tour of Saints)
Here is the scene…
You’re sitting in your car watching the rain drops steadily hit the windshield. It looks cold and is obviously quite wet out there. You’ve been up for a couple of hours now, even though it’s only 8 a.m. right now, and to top it off it’s a weekend. You look up through the sunroof on the car and see the bikes that you put on the roof rack the night before mocking you as they drip with water. The car is telling you it’s a little over 50 degrees out. It really is cold. Is this actually the end of June? Man, Minnesota is a downer at times.
You scan through the radio stations for a while trying to get some read of the weather. If only you had an Internet connection in your car! Doppler radar surely would give you the answers your looking for. Of course, if you weren’t a wimp you would simply walk out in that rain, get your bike down and scoff at the world for thinking twice about riding and getting a little wet. However, last you checked you weren’t wearing the yellow jersey in the Tour de France nor were you putting food on the table by winning bike races. No, you are just an average Joe, weekend warrior out for his fix of adventure.
You spend a few minutes cursing the weatherman. 70 degrees and sunny? I mean really. How can you be that far off. Sure, 60 degrees and cloudy would be no problem. Wouldn’t fault the weather services in anyway. But 50 degrees and raining? That is a far, far cry from 70 degrees and sunny. How do these people stay employed? But, given the summer you’ve been having so far it seems that it’s time to build an arc and don’t forget your fleece because the sun just isn’t gracing your presence.
You get outside and just feel it. Yeah, this is no good. Here is where you have a real battle. You may actually leave. Really, why are you here after all? You don’t have to do this. Just go home. But you drove for over an hour to get here. And really, how can you just leave. So, after a lot of internal debate you decide that the war stories are worth the suffering and get on your bike and start to pedal.
If you’ve ridden a bike for a few years, you’ve been through this scene (you maybe didn’t drive away, Tammy and I did this morning though!). We were excited to go do a new ride that leaves out of St. Joseph, MN called the Tour of Saints. It is billed as a very nice “fun” ride with great food stops and wonderful roads. However, the weather was miserable. The ride offers both a 35 and 50 miles option. We embarked on the 50 miler but the weather turned it into a 35 miler. Given the weather forecast we didn’t come geared up for an entire day of riding in the rain which only combined to make matters even worse. I rode for a long time just dreaming of the cache of gear at home that would make this ride fine. Booties, leg warmers, full-fingered gloves. All just sitting there in a nice dry bin at home doing me absolutely no good here. Tammy gets the absolute trooper award since she did the entire thing in her sandals with nothing more than a soaked pair of DeFeet socks.
After riding a few miles we finally got warmed up and it got a little less miserable. We bypassed the first food stop at 12 miles, that’s too soon anyway in favor of the stop at 29 miles. In hindsight we should have simply rolled all the way to the finish, it was only 6 more miles but Tammy really wanted to warm up a bit so we stopped. The food stop was nothing to get excited about but we did get to sit inside for a bit. Here is the thing though, when we walked back outside it felt 20 degrees colder. And getting going again on the bike was incredibly frigid. I hammered up a few hills just to get some body heat going.
Among the more amazing sights today though we saw a guy riding in blue jeans. In the rain! Riding in blue jeans! That’s insane!
As several riders veered off for the extra 15 miles we sprinted into town to get out of our wet clothes and go get some hot food. It was miserable. But as suspected, the war story was worth it. :-)
Music Nirvana Achieved!
Anybody that has talked to me about music recently knows that I’ve been working on a huge project to move all of our music to a home media server in MP3 format. A couple of months ago I completed ripping and tagging all of our CDs to the recently built Teraserver (home server with a total of 1.4 terabytes of disk). That was a huge milestone as it involved going through nearly 1,000 CDs.
However, still in front of me was my (relatively small) collection of records – good ole’ vinyl. Well I just completed ripping, splitting into tracks and tagging all my vinyl as well to the media server so I have now completed my project. :-)
Minnetonka 8k
We did the Minnetonka Summer Festival 8k run this morning. This is the first time we have done this run (two years ago we did the 2 mile fun run that is part of this event). The course was fairly hilly and challenging but an enjoyable run nonetheless.
The pancake breakfast afterwards was a bit cheesey but very good and exceptionally cheap.
Fahrenheit 9/11
Today was the opening day for Fahrenheit 9/11 (there was an early opening in New York on Wednesday). Tammy and I have been planning on seeing this since we first heard of it and were excited to finally take in the movie.
First of all, you know that the movie you are going to is not just “some random film” when on your drive home you see a person with a bed sheet that has “Fahrenheit 9/11” written on it draping it over a freeway overpass. This is a charged movie that takes some very serious political stances.
Secondly, I am fully aware that Michael Moore is as left as they come. If you turn the dial all the way left, push until the dial breaks, and then keep going left you may get to Michael Moore eventually. However, even with this fact this is still a very good film.
Put simply for anyone that may not want to read a lot – you need to see this movie. Really, I’m not saying you should see it, I’m saying you need to see it. If you pay $1 in taxes. If you care at all about our troops. If you care about our country in any way. You simply have to see this movie.
There, I got that out of the way. I wont try to give a review of the movie, there are plenty of places that will give you that. I can tell you that the film is heart touching and made me incredibly pissed at the same time. All of Michael Moore’s movies are a wake-up call, but this is a totally different level. Watching George W. sit in a Florida school room after knowing that the World Trade Towers were hit 5 minutes earlier for a PR visit is enough to make a person ill.
I do want to take a moment to thank George W. though for one thing and that is waking both Tammy and I up. After seeing what can happen we will both take note to be more active and see what we can do to further the causes of groups that we approve of and simultaneously limit the actions of the “Bush Dynasty” and their cohorts.
Occasionally people clap at the end of a movie. This film nearly got a standing ovation. I was smiling with a grin from ear-to-ear as I left the theater though and saw that the showing after ours had sold out, as did ours, and there was a line of people down to the lobby waiting to see Fahrenheit 9/11. I hope you all see it. I hope everyone sees it.
What is that yellow thing on your wrist?
If you are curious it is a Live Strong wristband. This is part of the Wear Yellow fundraising campaign from the Lance Armstrong Foundation to raise money for cancer research. As many of you know I’m a fan of professional cycling, and as almost any US fan of american cycling I’m also a fan of Lance Armstrong.