100 Miles of Nowhere!

OFF TO NOWHERE
I signed up to race the 100 Miles of Nowhere, a charity race to raise funds for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Also, the most ridiculous race I have ever heard of: Ride 100 miles, wherever you are, as fast as you can with as little movement as possible - brilliant! Over 400 people around the world signed up. As it turned out, the race was the same weekend we were going to the ranch in Lemhi, ID...aka the Middle of Nowhere.

RACE REPORT
Saturday I woke up at 4:30 a.m. and began riding at 5:00 a.m. on my home-made rollers (which were fashioned from irrigation pipe off my father's ranch in the other Middle of Nowhere... La Sal, UT). I quickly realized that my rollers were not fully efficient, with the belt (an old tube) slipping back and forth and off the drums about every 10 minutes. After 25 miles of getting nowhere while riding nowhere in a barn in the Middle of Nowhere, I decided to get outside and do the backup loop to nowhere.

The backup loop to nowhere was composed of three distinct stretches: The Farmhouse Stretch was 0.5 miles long and had the steepest grade of the ride...about 2%. The Highway Stretch was 1.2 miles long and was basically level, chipsealed, rough asphalt. The Backroad Stretch was 0.9 miles of gravel road including washboards and no less than 2 cattlegaurds. Wind (a constant 8 to 12 mph) raked straight up the Highway Stretch and down the Backroad Stretch, leaving the steep-graded Farmhouse Stretch relatively neutral.

So...in the final 75 miles of the race I completed 29 laps on the backup loop. This included 58 cattlegaurd crossings, 1 tube repair, 4 bottles of CarboRocket, 4 bottles of well water, 1 'What the CRAP!?' moment when my bike computer stopped working, 1 'Ohhh CarboRocket is not good on the bike computer' moment when I figured out what was wrong, 3 times passing the same horse riders on the Highway Stretch, 1 yell at the dog moment when it marked my bike while I was repairing a tube, 2 times chasing cows on the Backroad Stretch, 4 times passing ranchers on Farm Bikes with shovels mounted across their handlebars, and a lot of strange looks from country folk who have never seen (nor probably cared to see) a man wear lycra.

Stats? 100.6 miles ridden. 7 hours in the saddle. 9 hours total. 1 weekend thinking how nice it would be to live in the Middle of Nowhere.

SAPPINESS
It took my thick skull until mile 72 to finally think about what in the world I was doing this for! From that point on, the race changed for me. I thought about the great people in my life who are battling or have battled cancer. When I hit mile 80, members of my family began cheering me on every time I passed the ranch house. Every interaction I had with them between laps was a real treat! I realized that these uplifting, motivating interactions were most likely very similar to a phone call or note written or visit to anyone who is struggling in that epic battle of cancer. Then I remembered how lame I am at such simple acts...here's a little physical token of my appreciation for your courage, love, and friendships!

Project Rollers - Take 6

I finally got back to it this past weekend and cranked out the last (almost the last) manufacturing processes for my rollers. The last step was to build the rail frame. The rails needed to be smooth, so every screw was countersunk to be flush when installed.

My, I'm glad to have a drill press!

Always the case, when I broke out the portable drill to screw everything together, the batteries were mostly dead. After a night's charge, everything went together quite well.

Checking fit, now that the skateboard axles have been trimmed...

Apply bungee chords to each end. These will centralize the rollers on the rails between lunges.

Here is the video of my first trial ride. (Please disregard my poor dismount...I don't know what I was thinking!) The rollers were much more forgiving on the free-floating frame. It may not be very apparent, but I stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down, accelerate while sitting, and then stop and fall off. When the rollers were only on blocks, my entire concentration was dedicated to just staying upright. Standing would have been possible, but dangerous. These are going to be a sweet ride option when I don't feel like braving the weather!

Now I'm just doing some final touch-ups on this project. The rollers are currently disassembled to centralize the bearing spacers. I hope this will reduce some of the vibrations that I'm getting, but mostly this is to protect the bearings. I'm also going to remove some of the precipitates that accumulated on the drums in their previous life as sprinkler pipes. This should also help to remove some of the vibrations.

I'm eventually going to use a couple of these little contraptions:

...to provide adjustment to the front roller drum. I've got a few friends that want to try these out, and I highly doubt their bikes are the same length as mine. I'll be sure to share this process when it happens!

Cool Kids

Here's a few shots of the girls...Grandpa's been asking for these.

Jamie loves her animals, and goes crazy any time there are any to pet!

She's also very interested in this play-food lately. She get's the little knife and exerts herself cutting every piece up. She grunts and pushes until the velcro releases. Then she gets upset at Dad if there's not another piece of food in line. She's pretty good at pretending to eat it too.

Summer is for swinging!
Caitin is always up for more tricks. She can ride the glider forwards, really high, backwards, and sideways!

Summer is also for throwing rocks and getting wet!

Mapquest

I headed out on a 48.7-mile ride on Friday. It was a beautiful cool morning, after a bit of rain the night before. That rain ended up saving me. I had previously mapped out the ride using mapmyride.com, which uses mapquest for its base map system. I've never been a fan of mapquest, but it works pretty well in that application. The reason I bring any of that up, however is that using an internet map is no substitute for previewing a ride.

Case in point: Right at mile 22 the pavement turned to gravel. I thought, "Not too bad. I know at one point this meets up with pavement again, so it's probably just a short section." Washboards on the road bike are a bit tricky, but they are better than loose gravel, so I was doing OK. At about mile 24.5, the gravel phased to sand.

Geotechnically, I would describe it: "Brown fine to medium SAND with occasional cobbles, moist to wet, medium dense". The "moist to wet" and "medium dense" became key here, as I am running 100+ psi tires that are only 23 millimeters wide and have no tread. Without moisture I would have certainly been toast. As it was, I was able to track and even climb pretty well. There was only one short section that was not well compacted where I had trouble sinking in.

Had the scenery been different, I most likely would have turned back. But with the very determination to find my way that has often put me on Sarah's blacklist, I pedaled on. This is what it looked like:

Here is one of the puddles left over from the rain. For the most part I was able to ride around the edges of the water. I did have to go through one puddle, though, and it was about 4 inches deep...enough to make me cringe the next time I touched the brakes and heard sandpaper grit against my aluminum rims.

At slower speeds, I chanced taking these pictures...for your viewing pleasure. :P

Like I said...slower speeds. The sand lasted until about mile 26.5, phased back to gravel, and then finally intersected with pavement at mile 27.25. Wouldn't you know this was the first ride after giving my bike a thorough cleaning. Sweet.

No Excuses

Alright...we know there are several of you out there that have wanted to come visit, but have been deterred because of the lack of parking at our house.

"We love our car too much to park it on the street." -- you may think, or "I'm pregnant, and the street is too far from the bathroom!" (Hi Brittney!)

We are no longer accepting excuses...

It took a bit of poking and prodding of the contractor to get them to do this work while the street was still under construction. The major worry was that they would not be able to widen the curb drop once the new pavement was down. Friday they finally got to it (paving will happen Monday), and they did a great job! (I know because I watched them like a hawk!)

This adds 8 feet to the width of the driveway and about 12 feet to the entrance off the street. Happy birthday, anniversary, mother's day, easter, father's day, birthday, christmas, and...uhhhh...labor day to us!

Eater-Mae

So we've been a little bit worried about Jamie's eating this week...

She got sick about a week-and-a-half ago. She vomited over and over for two days, and could only keep down a few crackers and some soda. After a couple of days, though, she regained her constitution.

For the past week since then she has been a very wary eater. (She's usually a strong eater...like a tank!) For breakfast she'll eat about two bites of cereal, drink the milk, and be done. For lunch she eats a bite of sandwich and a handful of goldfish crackers. For dinner, it seems the best we can do is a taste of the meal and some bread. She is drinking plenty of fluids during and between meals.

At dinner last night we had potato soup, which she has previously eaten fairly well. We had french bread with it, and that seemed to be all she was interested in. We tried feeding her the soup, and she licked the spoon once, but that was it.

What's going on with her!?

I have this little theory...I think she has an aversion to food because she was so sick for those two days. (In fact we each got sick, and this is how I felt for a couple of days.) I think she is indeed hungry, but her mind does not let that hunger play its natural role. I assume it's like an eating disorder - it's difficult to eat properly because the mind overpowers the body (albeit for many different and harrowing reasons) causing even the thought of eating to bring on the gag reflex.

So after a few little fits at the table last night, we gave Jamie bread crust and encouraged her to dip it in the soup. She did it! We coached her along and congratulated her for eating more dinner. We'll take it slow, give her encouragement, and not get upset.

Oh by the way, there's still one thing she'll eat plenty of...sweets.

Anyway, have any of you experienced this type of behavior with your kids (prolonged, and not just stubbornness)?

Project Rollers - Take 5

When I get close to finishing a project, I get giddy like Christmas morning. I stayed up until midnight on Wednesday to assemble my rollers. I tested them at that time by putting my bike on and cranking by hand, but it wasn't enough, so I strung several rubberbands together for a makeshift drive belt. (Remember, it was midnight...) That worked for the bike alone, but when I got on it just slipped and eventually snapped. I didn't really expect that to work.

Here's a shot of the conventional roller assembly sans belt.

I will next build a wood frame that the angle iron rails will sit in. The roller frame will rest on the rails via the skateboard wheels (note that the skateboard wheel axle bolts will have to be trimmed). It will look roughly like this.


Last night I convinced Sarah to come down and help me for a few minutes. Sticking with my recycling theme, I cut up an old bike tube to make a belt. It was a bit long, so I just strung it around all three rollers instead of just the closest two. This worked great!

Sarah was really giving me the wary eye as I mounted my new ride. I balanced against her for a minute and then put both hands on the bars. At this point she grabbed the camera. It was like the first time riding a bike...awesome! I immediately felt the difference between riding and training, and recognized that my forward and backward motion was restricted. Within a couple of seconds my mind compensated for the restricted movement and my balance came back. (The free floating frame will restore forward and backward motion, and create the real ride feeling.) For the next minute or so I rode with only one scare (at about 12 seconds on the video), and I was really stoked that my creation worked!

Now I really can't wait to add the frame and complete this project! IT WORKS!!!