Bicycling

Yucca Valley

Yucca ValleyWe saw no yucca plants on the Yucca Valley trail in Hitchcock Woods when we traveled it yesterday. I would tell you how far we walked in the woods, but I can’t because our GPSr is broken and hopefully in Olathe, Kansas by now.

This morning we got up early-ish and rode a big loop ending up downtown to pay bills. Unfortunately the New Moon wasn’t open so we couldn’t get a muffin for breakfast. Ended up at Waffle House.

After breakfast we drove over to Augusta to take a picture of a hockey puck in front of the James Brown Arena, which is as close to geocaching as we could get. Have I mentioned our GPSr is broken?

On the way home from Georgia a line of birds started to waltz out out in front of us way out on Pine Log Rd. They got part way and turned around and then as soon as I got by they came back out and completed the trip.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 382

The End Of Reality

We were up early this morning to ride the tandem to work, but as we started down the drive way something was wrong. The back tire was flat. Seeing as this ride was optional, we just parked the bike and Plan B was implemented, drive the car. Because we were early instead of finishing breakfast and heading right to the Bogardusmobile there was some time for TV watching.

During a break in Sportcenter I surfed the channels until I stumbled on VH1 playing an old Beatles tune, “With a Little Help from My Friends.” Wow, VH1 is back to playing music. They, like their big brother station MTV, seemed to have abandoned playing music videos in favor of other crap, including “reality” shows, nice to see them back to music videos again.

Wait a minute, that’s not the real John, Paul, George & Ringo, its a computer generated facsimile. Turns out it is a video-slash-commercial for something called Rock Band, which as best I can figure is a cross between karaoke, air guitar, your TV and an expensive gaming console. So much for back to reality.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKRyKVDvO6U

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 347

Historic 1940 Tour de France Picture

Historic 1940 Tour de France PictureBecause folks know I bicycle and that my wife and go out of our way to get the cable upgrade just so we can watch the Tour de France every year, I have received this picture via email from co-workers 3 times in the last two days. Ha, ha, ha.

We toke a hike in Hitchcock Woods this evening and hid our third geocache. This one is called “No Horses Allowed” because it is placed along one of the two trails we know of that are closed to horses due to erosion concerns and or steepness. We have got a couple more planned for placing in the woods and then we are going to have to find some other locations. Not that the we are getting anywhere close to having caches too near each other, within 500′ is the limit, but when we are done with those two there will be an even dozen in the Woods and that is probably plenty.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 302

Another DNF

Nope, didn’t go geocaching today. Nor yesterday either for that matter. The F in this case stands for finish, not find. We started to watch a movie from 2001 called Happy Accidents that stars Marisa Tomei and Vincent D’Onofrio, but stopped after 15 minutes. It seems like we are on a streak here with not finishing movies. In the last six weeks we have received 16 discs from Netflix and we have DNF’d 6 of them or almost 38%. The ratio is even worse because there were 6 discs of West Wing which are golden to us, so if we forget about WW the ratio jumps to 60%!

The search for good movies for us is kind of like geocaching. The stars of the movie are the coordinates and the blurb on the Netflix page is the cache description. Roger Ebert’s Review is the hint and all those reviews on the Netflix movie page equate to the logs of fellow geocachers. With all that information, finding a good movie should be easy, but sometimes you just can’t see it.

The car has sat in the garage all day because we rode the tandem around town early this morning paying 3 bills and saving $1.32, so I was going to title this post “The Emperor’s Day Off”, but there is now a possibility that we may have to make a run to the store for some essentials that were missed the other day when we did our weekly grocery shopping.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 292

Untitled

Stage 8 of the TDF resulted in zero change at the top of the leader board. Old Man Lance is still in third place 8 seconds out. We are in the Pyrenees Mountains, but today and tomorrow’s stages are the kind that probably won’t determine who will win the Tour, but can decide who will lose it. While there are two or more big ass climbs on the stage, they don’t end at the tops, there are 30 to 40 miles of downhill & flats before the finish line allowing any of the contenders who is dropped on the climb to catch back up.

Appears that some of the blog’s theme CSS conflicts with the theme stuff that is produced by the stats generator and I’m not smart enough to know if there is an easy fix and don’t want to spend the time, so I took the easy way out. Just click on this link – Geocaching Statistics

I guess it is OK to blog about this because the FRS apparently don’t need me to jinx tonight’s victory over the supposedly lousy Kansas City Royals because right now their relief pitching is busily snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. When John Smoltz left the game after pitching 5 solid innings they had a 9 to 1 lead. KC scored 5 runs in the sixth. Now after a solo homer in the 7th they have a men on first and second with nobody out, so now the current batter represents the go ahead run!

At the pool party with the MMC this morning it was pointed out to me that I had misspelled retirement in my countdown widget in the right sidebar. What happened here, either all of my readers are as bad as I am when it comes to spelling or you all enjoyed watching me humiliate myself with the Internet equivalent of toilet paper stuck on the bottom of my shoe.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 292

Unfried Side

At what point does too much advertising about a new product tip over into negative feeling towards said product?

Finally, after being not literally, but figuratively rained out all last week and the first 80% of this week we got to ride the bike into work today.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 218

National Bike To Work Day…

…is Friday, May 15th. Donna and I won’t be riding to work that day, I have a doctor’s appointment across town, so we are riding tomorrow. Which is OK because it will be smack in the middle of Bike to Work Week and it is pretty near the middle of National Bike Month.

I just hope the roads aren’t crowded tomorrow.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 190