Fair warning that I'm going to wax a bit philosophical here, so you might just want to skip a few paragraphs. I brought my bike to my LBS today to have it boxed and shipped out tomorrow. I miss Jonas already, and I suddenly feel as though I haven't biked nearly enough to prepare for the trip that's... one week away? It's always amazing to look back at the start of a journey when you're reaching the end of it, see how the world's changed and see how you've changed yourself. Even though the actual trip hasn't started, getting to this point has been a journey in its own right. Comparing myself back when I dreamed up this trip and the person I am now, it's like looking at two different people. I'm stronger, faster, and more knowledgable than I was nine months ago. I didn't think I'd change so much before I even got out on the road. There's going to be a noticeable void next year, without something of this gravity to look towards. Sure, there's graduation and the real world. But I think I'd rather do this again, maybe as a leader. Or take that walk around the world. But before I digress too much.
I did one last long ride yesterday with a few friends to Spokes in Vienna. It was a great trip, although as usual I was fighting headwind coming and going. The spot for my favorite moment on the ride is split between seeing the old man carying a dog in a basket on his bike, and the fair. Vienna was celebrating Memorial Day in style, complete with carnival rides and about a million food vendors and pedestrians. It was a bit annoying having to hop off my bike and walk through the crowd, but I contented myself knowing the car traffic was a million times worse. I treated myself to a pair of Specialized Armadillos at Spokes, the best flat protection I could buy for the trip. I rode the rest of the way back home with my stock tires slung over my shoulder. Climbing out of the saddle was a bit of a pain, since the tires kept sliding between my arms and the seat, but I got a lot of practice dexterously unweaving my way out of that. I also got a lot of grins from the seasoned cyclists I passed. It was great.
The ride was followed by a poolside BBQ, or as I have affectionately named it, "Mark's Memorial Day Carbo Load". I didn't stop eating from two o clock until midnight, effectively negating any health benefits my ride gave me. I have a feeling that yesterday's binge is something of a precursor for the rest of my summer. I'm looking forward to it. I'm also glad that my clothes will stretch a bit.
Wish me luck, the long haul's almost through! My next post will probably be after orientation, or the night before I head out to Providence.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Bike and Build is a harsh mistress
Traveling is hard. I feel like that's just the simple truth of the situation. Especially in these days of high-traffic on the roads and increased airport security. Traveling with sports equipment is addmitedly even more of a pain. I've found that out, in bits and pieces, as I've been trying to orchestrate my trip to Providence. Thankfully, the worst of it is over.
When I started planning for this trip, I had no idea just how many people I'd have to communicate with. Even taking out the hundreds of people I've spoken to about the cause, raising funds from, learned about cycling and affordable housing from, the number is still astronomical. I've done a lot of wheeling and dealing with bike shops, shipping companies, and airlines this last week. I've also been more in touch with HQ and my trip leaders than I ever had before. When you're looking at it from a distance, it seems pretty simple. Get myself, my bags, and my bike to Providence by the start of orientation. When you get down to the nitty gritty, it took hours, days, to coordinate everything.
Thankfully, the worst of it is over. I've got my plane ticket, a shipping company that guarantees and insures that my very important parcel (bike) gets where it needs to be on time, and found a bike shop that will break down my bike and pack it for shipping in the size package it needs to be in. I've also figured out exactly where the bike needs to be shipped, gotten the lion's share of my gear purchased, finished my fundraising, and started planning a long ride with some other riders. I'm really excited for that; should be something like seventy or eighty miles when all is said and done.
I still have more to do before the start of the trip. I haven't even started researching for my presentation, let alone talking to the other people in that group. Wish me luck, and pray that I don't miss out on the opening leg of the trip because my bike gets shipped to Timbuktu.
When I started planning for this trip, I had no idea just how many people I'd have to communicate with. Even taking out the hundreds of people I've spoken to about the cause, raising funds from, learned about cycling and affordable housing from, the number is still astronomical. I've done a lot of wheeling and dealing with bike shops, shipping companies, and airlines this last week. I've also been more in touch with HQ and my trip leaders than I ever had before. When you're looking at it from a distance, it seems pretty simple. Get myself, my bags, and my bike to Providence by the start of orientation. When you get down to the nitty gritty, it took hours, days, to coordinate everything.
Thankfully, the worst of it is over. I've got my plane ticket, a shipping company that guarantees and insures that my very important parcel (bike) gets where it needs to be on time, and found a bike shop that will break down my bike and pack it for shipping in the size package it needs to be in. I've also figured out exactly where the bike needs to be shipped, gotten the lion's share of my gear purchased, finished my fundraising, and started planning a long ride with some other riders. I'm really excited for that; should be something like seventy or eighty miles when all is said and done.
I still have more to do before the start of the trip. I haven't even started researching for my presentation, let alone talking to the other people in that group. Wish me luck, and pray that I don't miss out on the opening leg of the trip because my bike gets shipped to Timbuktu.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Conquering Mountains
So a lot has happened in life recently, particularly in the cycling department. At the moment, I'm fresh from a fifty-plus mile ride from one bike shop to another. It was fun, but that's not really what this post is about. Mostly this post is about how I biked up a mountain. We're talking eight miles of uphill. This time I won't leave it up to your imagination, because I took pictures! Well, three of them. I'll get to them after a little narrative. Well, except for the obligatory bike and build shot to the left there.
My roommate Chris and I wanted to say goodbye to Harrisonburg properly. Chris decided that I was ready to tackle Reddish Knob, the highest point in Northern Virginia, apparantly. I've been up Reddish before; it's paved, so you can drive up all the way to the top. Or bike up it. And well, it's pretty high, and steep, and sometimes cars have trouble getting up it. Chris has this lovely habit of taking me on rides that are way out of my depth. But I felt up for the climb, so we loaded the bikes up on his car and drove to Dayton. Normally we'd bike there, but we were on a time crunch and neither of us felt ready for a fifty mile round trip, plus eight miles of straight uphill. It's a good thing, because Reddish Knob is a hard.
Not a whole lot of detail to give on the climb. It was hard, and for most of it I did not like it at all. I've met a lot of cyclists that love climbing. They say it's meditative and they're right, it is. But that meditation is punctuated by a great deal of pain and discomfort, and the demoralizing fact that you're essentially going walking speed. On the plus side, it was beautiful. The real low was reaching mile four, realizing we had another four miles to go, and feeling like there was nothing in the tank. But all the bad feelings were washed away the second I saw the summit, and realized that I had beaten the mountain. I screamed harder than I think I ever have when I reached the end, and probably thoroughly freaked out the group of guys in their pickup that beat me there.
The descent down made the grueling climb all worthwhile. We clocked speeds of fifty mph. I'll probably go faster, and I know that I'll climb and descend higher mountains this summer. But I got a taste of what beating a mountain pass feels like, and it was awesome. I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again. The strength you gain from doing something truly monumental is more than just physical. We should all of us experience it.
But musings aside, it's time for the photographs.
Here's a visual of Chris, for those of you who don't know him. Yeah, he kicked my keister up the mountain, and he did it in a double chainring.
There were a couple awesome overlooks on the way up. This one was truly epic, although the photograph doesn't do it justice at all.
This is another of the top. I wish my photography skills were greater, cause a panoramic from the summit would be truly epic. You can see the entire valley for miles and miles around, assuming there's not much haze.
Annnddd that's it. I've gotta say, the picture posting's a bit of a pain. I can't make it look pretty like everyone else. Ahh well, practice makes perfect.
Peace Out Hombres!
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Wow, Summer's Upon Us
I'm in the library presently. I really should be finishing the ten page paper that I haven't researched for and have only written two bad pages for. But I'm not going to. It'll get done, and reflection is good for the soul. I know this isn't really bicycle related. There's not much going on there at the moment, what with finals and my procrastination. I'm very much looking forward to getting home and being able to spend all my weekends and as much of my weekdays as possible in the saddle.
It's hard to believe that in a few short weeks, I'll be heading up to Providence. Thinking about it makes me realize how much work I still need to do. There's my fundraising to top off, my presentation to prepare, and all the odds and ends with the bicycle and gear like re-instaling my cyclocomputer and buying biking socks. It's somehow exactly how I envisioned the last few weeks being and not at all what I'd hoped for. The stress is still motivating, however, and that's a comfort. The second it gets to be more hindrance than help is when I start freaking out. Stress seems to be the order of the week though, with the end of the year at my front door. The sobering fact that I'm coming up on my last year of university life makes the prospect of biking monotony and sublime scenery and fellowship with young people all the sweeter. Reflecting on how the summers following this one will be indelibly different from all the summers I've experienced in my life so far also makes it special. Bike and Build is, really, the death knell of my young, carefree summertimes. But what a glorious end it will be.
Peace Out Hombres!
It's hard to believe that in a few short weeks, I'll be heading up to Providence. Thinking about it makes me realize how much work I still need to do. There's my fundraising to top off, my presentation to prepare, and all the odds and ends with the bicycle and gear like re-instaling my cyclocomputer and buying biking socks. It's somehow exactly how I envisioned the last few weeks being and not at all what I'd hoped for. The stress is still motivating, however, and that's a comfort. The second it gets to be more hindrance than help is when I start freaking out. Stress seems to be the order of the week though, with the end of the year at my front door. The sobering fact that I'm coming up on my last year of university life makes the prospect of biking monotony and sublime scenery and fellowship with young people all the sweeter. Reflecting on how the summers following this one will be indelibly different from all the summers I've experienced in my life so far also makes it special. Bike and Build is, really, the death knell of my young, carefree summertimes. But what a glorious end it will be.
Peace Out Hombres!
Monday, April 21, 2008
Obligatory Rant Post: Helmets
I'm afraid I don't have any real spectacular news to report of late, but I did want to update. For anyone out there that might get some sort of amusement from my sardonic humor, you might do better to wait for another post, because this one is mostly housekeeping, and then a dash of indignation. We'll start with the housekeeping.
I'm pretty much there, on all fronts. That's pretty cool to be able to say. At the moment I have about four hundred dollars left to raise for the trip. I still have a few people that I need to solicit, and I chose the word solicit intentionally, from like Jake and his parents and my Brother and possibly his girlfriend. And I have at least two donations that're heading towards the mail as I write this. That said, with those donations, I'll either be all the way to four thousand dollars or so close that I don't mind dipping into my own wallet to close the deal. So that's pretty cool, although it'd be wicked cooler to be able to say that I was done with fundraising.
I also scheduled a physical for the fourteenth of May, probably the last time I'll see my family physician before he moves his practice out west. I'll miss you Dr. Mugol! The only thing left besides buying a few more necesities is to get crackalacking on my presentation for the trip, which is on government housing. I know next to nothing about them, except that they haven't really worked. Now onto the long part of the post... the angry.
I don't understand why people don't wear helmets. Not only on my college campus, but in the world at large. My cyclist roommate doesn't even wear his helmet unless he's out on the road. A lot of girls tell me that they don't want to ruin their hair. I get the feeling that people feel... ehh, dorky, unfashionable, etc. wearing helmets. Well, I can tell you, there's nothing uglier than a head split open on the pavement. I've seen it. For me the trade-off isn't worth it.
I started really thinking about this whole issue when I went on a ride with Jamie out onto 33, and she had no helmet on. We were going like thirty miles an hour down a hill. I'm no physicist, but I get the feeling that your skull would break if it hit concrete at that speed. She told me later that she doesn't wear a helmet because that way I won't ride too far ahead of her when we go on rides. It's true, I don't. Because I don't want to have to call 911 while I'm out on the road. The fact of the matter is, helmet or not, I'll probably have to make that call or have that call made for me at least once if I continue road cycling.
Cycling is inherently dangerous. Most sports are. Then again, most sports don't involve cars. The argument that wearing a helmet still doesn't guarantee you'll survive a wreck is a valid one. There are plenty of other things that can kill you during a bicycle wreck than just head trauma. But it's the exact same thing to say that even if you wear a seatbelt you could still die in an automobile accident. Yet everyone I know wears a seatbelt in the car, but I almost never see a bicyclist wearing a helmet. So where's the disconnect? I'll chance a guess and say that it's because there's a law in Virginia against not wearing a seatbelt. It took me seeing a neighbor hospitalized for spilling his brains out on my pipestem to keep me in a helmet every time I got on a bike.
So, long story short, seeing a cyclist without a helmet on really grinds my gears. Cause you're pretty much asking for brain damage. If that's what it takes, that's what it takes.
Peace out Hombres!
I'm pretty much there, on all fronts. That's pretty cool to be able to say. At the moment I have about four hundred dollars left to raise for the trip. I still have a few people that I need to solicit, and I chose the word solicit intentionally, from like Jake and his parents and my Brother and possibly his girlfriend. And I have at least two donations that're heading towards the mail as I write this. That said, with those donations, I'll either be all the way to four thousand dollars or so close that I don't mind dipping into my own wallet to close the deal. So that's pretty cool, although it'd be wicked cooler to be able to say that I was done with fundraising.
I also scheduled a physical for the fourteenth of May, probably the last time I'll see my family physician before he moves his practice out west. I'll miss you Dr. Mugol! The only thing left besides buying a few more necesities is to get crackalacking on my presentation for the trip, which is on government housing. I know next to nothing about them, except that they haven't really worked. Now onto the long part of the post... the angry.
I don't understand why people don't wear helmets. Not only on my college campus, but in the world at large. My cyclist roommate doesn't even wear his helmet unless he's out on the road. A lot of girls tell me that they don't want to ruin their hair. I get the feeling that people feel... ehh, dorky, unfashionable, etc. wearing helmets. Well, I can tell you, there's nothing uglier than a head split open on the pavement. I've seen it. For me the trade-off isn't worth it.
I started really thinking about this whole issue when I went on a ride with Jamie out onto 33, and she had no helmet on. We were going like thirty miles an hour down a hill. I'm no physicist, but I get the feeling that your skull would break if it hit concrete at that speed. She told me later that she doesn't wear a helmet because that way I won't ride too far ahead of her when we go on rides. It's true, I don't. Because I don't want to have to call 911 while I'm out on the road. The fact of the matter is, helmet or not, I'll probably have to make that call or have that call made for me at least once if I continue road cycling.
Cycling is inherently dangerous. Most sports are. Then again, most sports don't involve cars. The argument that wearing a helmet still doesn't guarantee you'll survive a wreck is a valid one. There are plenty of other things that can kill you during a bicycle wreck than just head trauma. But it's the exact same thing to say that even if you wear a seatbelt you could still die in an automobile accident. Yet everyone I know wears a seatbelt in the car, but I almost never see a bicyclist wearing a helmet. So where's the disconnect? I'll chance a guess and say that it's because there's a law in Virginia against not wearing a seatbelt. It took me seeing a neighbor hospitalized for spilling his brains out on my pipestem to keep me in a helmet every time I got on a bike.
So, long story short, seeing a cyclist without a helmet on really grinds my gears. Cause you're pretty much asking for brain damage. If that's what it takes, that's what it takes.
Peace out Hombres!
Monday, April 14, 2008
Parts Paranoia
While I was climbing a hill today I noticed something disquieting. My bike's making weird noises. At least when I steer it does, and sometimes when I pedal. It's probably not a bad sound; no gears grinding, not the sound of something breaking. At least not yet. Right now it's just sort of squeaking with an eerie musical quality when I turn my handlebars and when I pedal. But like any new parent, I worry often, even over the small stuff.
I've been meaning to have the biked tuned up because at the very least the wheels need to be trued by now. You can tell that I've done most of my bike riding on a mountain bike by the way that I hop down curbs and hit bumps without even trying to dodge; sorry Jonas, for probably killing your wheels slowly! Somehow I haven't gotten a flat on this bike yet... but with my luck, I'll get one on the way home from class today. But on the tuneup, it's a great time for it. It seems like all of the local bike shops are doing cheap tune-ups for the Spring, and that's exactly what I want. Might as well, since the trip's only *gasp* less than two months away. Ohhh, and on the bye and bye, an old childhood friend donated today and told me that she'd sent the website to her mom so she might donate as well. Turns out her friend John's on the Northern Route and when she went to donate to him, she noticed I was on the trip and donated to me too! So thanks Laura for your donation, and thanks John as well. Because if you hadn't been on the trip, I might not have gotten any money either!
I've been meaning to have the biked tuned up because at the very least the wheels need to be trued by now. You can tell that I've done most of my bike riding on a mountain bike by the way that I hop down curbs and hit bumps without even trying to dodge; sorry Jonas, for probably killing your wheels slowly! Somehow I haven't gotten a flat on this bike yet... but with my luck, I'll get one on the way home from class today. But on the tuneup, it's a great time for it. It seems like all of the local bike shops are doing cheap tune-ups for the Spring, and that's exactly what I want. Might as well, since the trip's only *gasp* less than two months away. Ohhh, and on the bye and bye, an old childhood friend donated today and told me that she'd sent the website to her mom so she might donate as well. Turns out her friend John's on the Northern Route and when she went to donate to him, she noticed I was on the trip and donated to me too! So thanks Laura for your donation, and thanks John as well. Because if you hadn't been on the trip, I might not have gotten any money either!
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Mono Scare!
No, I didn't think that I had it. But when one of my roommates had a fever and a sore throat and achiness and lethargy, and the health center thought it might have been infectious mononucleosis... I flipped. "Sure," I told myself, "it's probably strep. I shouldn't even worry about it because our health center is dumb." But then I got into the what-if thinking. What if it is mono? What if I catch it? What if, after raising four thousand dollars and putting in the training and doing all the freaking work... I don't get to bike across the country? I turned into a germ nazi for twenty four-ish hours. I wouldn't breathe near him, I wouldn't touch half the stuff in the apartment because I knew that he might have touched it or coughed on it or thought sick thoughts on it or something. It was probably a little extreme, and he probably wanted to kill me since he was sick and all I really cared about was not getting sick myself.
So I'm selfish. Any strangers reading this blog now know this to be a fact. At least my selfishness was completely unfounded, because he has strep. And I can handle strep. Strep doesn't put you out of commision for like a year. I think I've got some apologizing in the form of chicken soup and roommately concern to do for my roommate Will. But at least this cloud has a silver lining. Which is more than I can say for the rainclouds outside.
Peace Out, Hombres!
So I'm selfish. Any strangers reading this blog now know this to be a fact. At least my selfishness was completely unfounded, because he has strep. And I can handle strep. Strep doesn't put you out of commision for like a year. I think I've got some apologizing in the form of chicken soup and roommately concern to do for my roommate Will. But at least this cloud has a silver lining. Which is more than I can say for the rainclouds outside.
Peace Out, Hombres!
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