road miles

first week of training done and finally a real bike ride outdoors... weather, work, health, and travel had all consipired against me for the first couple of weeks of the year and as of this friday i had yet to do a real bike ride outside in the elements. this weekend took care of that with a good long road ride in the sun on saturday and a shorter ride in the rain on sunday. saturday was a great day -- good pace, just the right distance for this time of year, good weather, and a great group. sunday was a short solo recovery ride, wet and cold, but it felt good to be out there braving the elements instead of giving in and riding the trainer, and it's not so bad when you've got a nice warm house to come home to.

trans wales update for the metric challenged

got an update from the trans wales organizers this morning with updated stage details... i had to find a metric/english conversion site to get numbers that i could understand, so i thought i'd share my numbers...

Day 1
Stage 1: Builth Wells to Nantyarian - 47mi; 7709' of climbing (Link^*)

Day 2
Stage 2 : Nantyarian - 9mi; 1017' of climbing (Race^*)
Stage 3: Nantyarian to Machynlleth - 19mi; 2608' of climbing (Link)

Day 3
Stage 4: Machynlleth to Coed-y-Brenin - 40mi; 6824' of climbing (Link)
Stage 5: Night stage at Coed-y-Brenin - 11mi; 984' of climbing (Race)

Day 4
Stage 6: Coed-y-Brenin to Penmachno - 38mi; 5412' of climbing (Link)
Stage 7 : Penmachno - 12mi; 1804' of climbing (Race)

Day 5
Stage 8: Penmachno to Machynlleth - 47mi; 7709' of climbing (Link)

Day 6
Stage 9: Machynlleth - 9mi; 1115' of climbing (Race)
Stage 10: Machynlleth to Hafan Forest - 39mi; 6724' of climbing (Link)

Day 7
Stage 11: Hafan Forest to Builth Wells - 42mi; 5413' of climbing (Link)

Overall that's 313 miles of riding (with 47318' of climbing) in 7 days... should be interesting, should be fun...

* - why are the stages marked as being "Link" or "Race"? the race stages are optional, but you need to do them if you want to compete, and they contribute to your overall time. the linking stages don't contributing to the overall time, but the goal is to not exceed the time limit for the day, otherwise you get penalties added to your time from the race stages.

NYC...

wandered around midtown and up to central park, hung out with steve & dave in brooklyn, had pizza at grimaldi's by the brooklyn bridge, got entranced by a video installation at MoMA, shot 6 rolls of black and white film, walked around times square with heather, paid too much for breakfast, drank, ate... up at 4 this morning to catch a 5:30 train back from new york to take the metro straight to work.

pics will take a few days to make it up on to the website, seeing as they're on that old-fashioned film stuff... picked up some b&w developer and fixer so that i can process this weekend's film myself... haven't done that in years.

i'm still suffering a bit from this cold and cough, but i managed an hour on the trainer this evening with some good LT intervals... walking around new york city in the cold yesterday didn't help matters, and i've developed an addiction to ricola throat lozenges.

the city so nice they named it twice...

not much going on here as i've been a bit under the weather this week and still am a little... heading up to NYC this evening to hang out for the weekend.

i've decided to take a break from digital for the weekend and take along a film camera, a couple of prime lenses, and a few rolls of black & white film. i'd been hoping to have a old manual camera for the trip, but the used FE^* that i bought from one of the big New York camera shops hasn't arrived yet. i had fun going analog in boston last year, so i thought i'd try it again...

* for any camera geeks out there: i know the FE has an electronic shutter and auto exposure, but it's a lot less 'auto' than my F100

mt. kenya mountain bike challenge...

i wish i knew about this before... the 10 to 4 mountain bike challenge on mt. kenya. maybe next year...

everything old is new again...

web 2.0? - from alistapart via slashdot

nikon is gutting it's line of film cameras to concentrate on digital - only the F6 & FM10 will remain in production. getting rid of the p&s film cameras and amateur level (N-series) SLRs makes sense given the shift in the market to digital, but i'd have thought it would have been better to keep the FM3 going instead of the cheap-o FM10.

another night on the trainer... 10/20s; 1 leg drills; 30/30s

snowbird panoramas...

the view from top of the tram and from the bottom of mineral basin

the on season?

the off-season is over... i've taken it pretty for the last month - easy since the end of the cyclocross season - and managed to make it though the holidays without any major weight gain. i hit the trainer for the first time this year last night for a quick workout (45minutes w/speed drills) and tonight i'm heading to the gym to get started with some proper lifting.

marah is not the last rock and roll band...

ok, this is one of those posts that got started but i never got it finished, so i'm just going to throw this link out there with a little commentary...

i saw marah for the first time between thanksgiving and christmas when they played their annual christmas show, this time at the TLA on south street, a bigger venue than usual.

heather is friends with most of the band from her college days, and her housemate is one of their backing singers, but all i'd heard going into the show were a couple of tracks from 'if you didn't laugh, you'd cry'.

the show was great and i picked up copies of 'if you didn't laugh, you'd cry' and their christmas cd - 'a christmas kind of town' - the next week. their music has a fun rawness to it, a bit of old school rock 'n roll with catchy hooks... and how many bands invite the entire audience to the after party?

marah
cnn.com article about marah

to paraphrase the question that a lot of people ask about them... why aren't these guy's huge?

(apologies to people who's thought's or phrases i've ripped off in writing this entry)

still kicking...

yeah, the blog's been pretty dark recently... i was up in philly with heather for the new years festivities and the mummer's parade and then spent a couple of days out in utah skiing at snowbird... more details and photos coming soon.