Today's Tracking via APRS, GPS, and Ham Radio
Jacque and I decided to once again break out the Tandem Recumbent Terratrike and do an early ride. Trouble is, after a posh homemade breakfast including fresh homemade eggs and fresh homemade whole wheat bread made from freshly-ground whole wheat flour, saddling up and getting all the equipment and doggies ready....
Well, it was about the usual hour when we got going, almost 10 AM. We talked about going into Albuquerque and doing the wonderful flat no-grade Bosque Trail (it may actually have a 50 foot rise in 16 miles from the junkyards on the South Valley end to the north end at Alameda) but I griped my way out of that because of the heat, which would have been at least 10 degrees hotter in metro ABQ compared to our 6800+ feet of elevation. Jacque almost has me convinced that these hills we have to climb out here more than make up for the 10 degrees of extra heat down where the trail is level for miles...
There was almost NO breeze at all today so it did indeed get a bit warmish.
I have been chagrined to notice that when we get to Tumbleweed
Road our GPS positions are no longer picked up on the radio relay at the house. I looked at the surrounding terrain today to see what might be affecting this, and sure enough: a small but prominent hill blocks the view (and the radio waves) right west of Tumbleweed.
What frustrates me is that Sandia Crest and our Manzano tower are clearly visible from these same areas but rarely hear anything but the most powerful transmitters, which rest assured our battery powered systems on the trikes and bikes are NOT. The higher relays on such peaks as Manzano and Sandia Crest evidently are overloaded with data continuously transmitted from other mountain peaks within 150 miles or so and do not hear lower powered stations. So when my own Internet Gateway (IGate) is blocked from hearing, only rarely - if at all - are any of my positions successfully relayed via the high mountain top stations, which theoretically they were designed to do.
WHATEVER....
We had a fair amount of 2-wheel company on the roads today. About 10 cyclists in groups of varying size, including loners, passed us while we were dismounting our trike from the roof rack and lashing everything on board for the ride. As we turned north on the far end of our loop onto Mountain Valley Road a three-party cyclist group passed us, exclaimed over the doggies, and the male participant circled around for another look at our "rig" and some chat. "You guys on a long tour or....?" Which is a typical question, since we always travel with full panniers, dual flagpole/antennas, water bottles here and there, dogs in their perch under a shade custom built for the enterprise, etc, etc. We always answer "No, we're just riding around the neighborhood, but we like our STUFF!"
Minimalists we AIN'T. We try to carry more water than we think we'll need, and that stuff is heavy. We've run low a few times anyway, but we've never had to beg for water from passing cars by waving an empty water bottle in the air and gesticulating. We also carry supplies for ourselves and the dogs..... just because we're only doing a few miles doesn't mean we don't think we'll get tired, thirsty, hungry, or break down along the way. We carry a spare tube for the tires, CO2 cartridges to air them up again if they go flat, tools and spare parts which have come in handy both for ourselves and other broke-down cyclists we've encountered from time to time. So that helps, hopefully, to explain the bulkiness of our stuffings and the slowness of our trundlings.
We even went a few hundred yards off our beaten path to investigate a yard sale today and then brought home a prize or two.... that for which, luckily, we still had room to get it on board.
Ride Started: 9:35 AM Ride Ended: 11:53 AM
Beginning Battery Voltage: 13.3 Ending Voltage: 13.2
Lowest Temp 71 F Highest Temp: 84 F
Stats from the GPS: Total Miles: 9.77
Overall average speed Moving Avg Max Speed
4.3 MPH 7.1 MPH 32.6 MPH
Total Trip time Moving Time Stopped Time
2 hours 15 mins 1 hour 22 mins 52 minutes
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