Tag Archives: cycling

Life at 35,000ft

Personal stuff, Tdf trip planning, ,

The plan was to have all the loose ends tied up early so I could get to bed at a reasonable hour and do the regular Thursday morning ride before leaving for the airport. That plan was laid to waste by the big sale that starts Friday; way too much stuff to get done, and just when I was about to write off one of the biggest tasks (new hangtags for every bike on sale) I had an epiphany.

Seriously. A real live epiphany. As in, I’d been fighting this one for some time, it really seemed beyond my technical abilities, and then, at 9pm, I realized I had already written an SQL query that was doing almost the exact same thing! And thus began a three hour ordeal in which I did get the job done, but got to bed sometime past 2am.

And I have to get up for the ride at 7.

So I went to bed thinking Kevin would appreciate the opportunity to sleep in (I always have to wake him up) but at 7:03am there he is next to the bed, saying “Aren’t you getting up?” And for the briefest of moments I was thinking, 4 hours sleep, but how can I rationalize missing the ride? Then I remembered that I’d forgotten to bring my bike back home from the shop (I planned to pick it up around 11pm, naively thinking I’d be done by then). Saved! But Kevin went on his own and had a very nice ride.

I got going earlier than I wanted to, not really sleeping after Kevin left, but clearly not coherent because on the way to the airport we realize we left the cytomax at home… Not quite fatal but close… and then after checking out bags Kevin asks where the backpack with the camera gear is. Um, er,… Quick call to Becky who does another round trip to the airport and delivers both camera bag AND cytomax, literally saving the trip. We might be able to live with a substitute for Cytomax (although we didn’t want to find out!) but it’s not like we can go out and buy $2000 in extra camera gear.

And why is the camera gear so important? Because if it’s not documented in words and photos, it didn’t happen. Simple as that!

Turns out to have been a good thing we didn’t get to the airport early and catch the earlier flight, since that flight was delayed an hour and we wouldn’t have made our connection at Dulles. So maybe my lack of a brain this morning worked out for the best. Although it was more an issue of preoccupation with work stuff that messed things up. Hey, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

9:55pm Made it on plane to Frankfurt and had enough time to set up mobile hotspot and send files from laptop. Close but worked! Bye until Frankfurt- Mike

Kevin does Kings under 30 minutes, Big group, NO RAIN!!!

Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride, , , ,

I’m ready to declare the end of rain. From now through November, it’s clear skies and warmer temps. Windbreakers are to be left at home, the rain bike can be safely stashed under the house, and you no longer have a good excuse for continuing to carry around your “hibernation fuel” around your belly. Good times are ahead!


And a very good time it was this morning, perhaps one of the last times that I have to head up the hill a bit ahead of the group when riding with Kevin (my son Kevin, not the pilot). Kevin’s wanted to break the 30 minute barrier up Kings Mtn for some time; Tuesday he missed it by 15 seconds, and today, for the first part of the climb, I thought he’d be lucky to get 32. We hit the traditional half-way timing point at just over 16 minutes, not a good sign. In fact, the three timing points I use to gauge my progress on the first half of the climb were all looking pretty bleak, with each successive one being further off the mark than the one before. My theory is that Kevin had eaten way too much way too soon before the ride (a very large bowl of cereal) and was seriously bogged down.

But then something clicked. Kevin claims he started doing his new chant-

Never stopping,
Never sleeping,
Never eating,
Always riding.

It worked. On that nasty steep section in the middle, before the open part, Kevin kicked it up a notch. Or two. We hit the “open” timing point (road marker that says 1.41 on it, the distance in miles to the top) at 20:30, still below the 20 minutes “required” for a 30 minute time at that point, but still accelerating. Normally, if you’re going full-tilt, it’s 4 minutes from the last hairpin (at the archery range road) to the top, and you really do have to be pushing to pull that off. We were, if I recall correctly, just outside of that. But by the time we got to the penultimate timing point we had pulled even with a fast pace, at 28 minutes. Just two minutes left, and as long as he didn’t die, he had a chance. Let me tell you I had a very tough time staying on his wheel on that final stretch, and he finished in 29:42. 18 seconds to spare.

But the ride wasn’t all about Kevin. This was our largest group to date; not even sure how many, probably a dozen or so, and a good opportunity to edit an all-around video of the entire ride, which you can see below. You’ll notice it has the same soundtrack as the video of Kevin’s climb, and actually starts out showing Kevin finishing Kings (and then the rest of the group coming up behind; we had a 5 minute head start on them).

Sorry about the blotchy screen in the lower-right corner for the last couple of minutes; a bit of crud kicked up from a rider in front and stuck to the lens. Obviously, the answer is to ride in front of everybody, but that fails on two counts. First, I’d have to be faster than everyone else, and second, a video without bikes in it is hardly worth calling a video, is it?