Fifteen Miles of Good Stuff

Tracking for Very Small Part of Today's Ride

I had intended to start riding earlier in the day today, but as usual, I got sidetracked by trying to do something else first.
I worked on a couple of electronics projects:
First, I tracked down what the trouble was with my APRS / GPS Radio Tracker on my recumbent 2-wheeler.  It was the antenna joint where the coax feedline is soldered to the matching point on the antenna.  Since this flexes and rocks and rolls in the wind, it is a frequent failure point.  It actually lasts several months between repairs so it's not bad, considering its effectiveness both as a radio antenna and attention-getting device with Jacque's colorful banners whipping in the wind.
Second, I repaired a radio/GPS/APRS tracker for Jacque's car which died a few days ago.  Another 20-minute job that turned into a frustrating half day worth of work.....
I finally saddled up just a few minutes after 4:00 PM.  Thankfully we're currently in Daylight Savings Time which means the sun goes down about 7:30 - 8:00 PM so I had time to get in a "decent ride" of a few miles.
I decided to do a mail run and then ride the loop I rode Sunday back the other direction.  This actually turned into a wise choice since the breezy wind was gusting the opposite direction today. 
I'm never crazy about riding on quasi-major roadways mixing it up with traffic, but Route 66 has been recently re-paved and has a marvelous new wide shoulder that gives cyclists plenty of smooth, wide shoulder to ride on, so far clear of the rocks, trash, and other junk usually cluttering up such areas:

Lovely, right?  Unlike many new paving jobs nowadays, the new asphalt goes clear to the edge, with no nasty ridges to slew autos and cyclists alike from side to side.
Considering this time slot is the everybody's-going-home-from-work time, the ride wasn't bad, even though parts of Sedillo Hill Road dead ahead have no shoulder at all.
I sorta mostly thought this route would put me well past the 20 mile mark.  I should have looked at the Sunday trip where it clocked in at only 13 miles.  I added a few more miles today because of the mail run side trip, but it was nothing to brag about.....

Trip Started:  4:07 PM    Trip Ended:  6:31 PM
Beginning Battery Voltage:  13.4        Ending Voltage: 13.0
Lowest Temp  62 F      Highest Temp:  70 F
Stats from the GPS:    Total Miles:  16.39
Overall average speed            Moving Avg               Max Speed
  7.1 MPH                                8.8 MPH                    32.3 MPH
Total Trip time                       Moving Time             Stopped Time
2 hours  18 mins                    1 hour 51 mins          26 mins 42 secs

10 - Mile Desperation Ride

Okay.  Today's excursion is called a Desperation Ride since I was DESPERATE to actually squeeze in a ride somewhere, somehow, NOW.
Tax Time sucked up a couple or 3 full days trying to file the dern tax baloney.  I hated to miss those days riding but time was running out toward April 15.
My SUV also had a bad front axle bearing, requiring time and labor to reduce the projected cost of 400 bucks for our favorite mechanic to do the job.  The part cost me $118 and a couple days lost time.  On Ford Exploder AWD (All-Wheel-Drive) vehicles  the bearings are part of the larger hub assembly and thus cost a lot more to replace.  Since I'd never done this hub replacement before it meant it took a lot more time than a simple wheel bearing might have involved.
That, plus the infinite amount of time required for all the sorts of diversions and time-sinks faced by most humans, has kept me off the bike, even though I always feel better, eat better, sleep better, and have better control of my metabolism (in my case, mostly blood glucose).
Today was the second full day devoted to putting the Exploder back together.  I got done and cleaned up about 1:30 PM or so and decided I was going to get in at least a short ride on the recumbent 2-wheeler.
By the time I got loaded up and a couple of minor honey-doo's done, it was after 2:00 PM..... and I had to be back in time to clean up and leave with Jacque for a meeting at 5:00 PM, meaning ideally a return time no later than 4:30 or so.
The weather today was a bit cool and cloudy, with gusting breeze and wind.  I thankfully encountered little in the way of wind.
My tracker did not work today, only reporting one position as I approached home climbing the goat-path road to the house.  Gotta spend some time figuring out what's wrong with that....
I stopped atop a hill at about the 3-mile mark along Frost Road to check the APRS/GPS beacon system, and as I fussed with the electronics, a cyclist approaching from the other direction hailed me and acted very friendly.  He was so outgoing and friendly he actually crossed the road, turned around, and came up to visit with me.  It took a minute or so to recognize him:  Spencer, a young teen friend of ours from church who lives nearby.  He had ridden his bike from his house to the mailboxes along Frost Road to pick up the mail for his family, had spotted me parked about a quarter mile away, and ridden over to say Hello.  What a great guy.  He rode down to his mailbox, and we turned back on Frost Road together and rode down the lane toward his home.  He pulled in at his house and I thought that was the last I'd see of him for the day.  About 2 miles from his house, at the junction of Entranosa and Mountain Valley, I stopped for a blood glucose check, water break, and as a result of the low glucose reading, a cookie break.   I turned my back to watch some water tanker trucks loading water from a fire hydrant, and when I turned back around there was Spencer again.  He had dropped off the mail to his Mom and took off after me again.  We enjoyed yakking and riding around the loop back to Frost Road and when we got to the road leading to his house he thanked me for "riding with him" and turned off to go home.  A 12 or 13 - year old thanking a 67 - year - old for riding with him.  What a nice guy.  His older brother just achieved Eagle Scout rank and Spencer will doubtless be next in line for this achievement.
I was by now running a bit short on time (story of my life) and tried to hustle to make it home in time.  I made it back about 4:38 and barely had time to wash my face and smelly pits and change clothes, but we made it to our meeting on time.  Thankfully.

Trip Started:  2:13 PM    Trip Ended:  4:38 PM
Beginning Battery Voltage:  13.2        Ending Voltage: 13.1
Lowest Temp  57 F      Highest Temp:  63 F
Stats from the GPS:    Total Miles:  10.42
Overall average speed            Moving Avg               Max Speed
  7.6 MPH                                9.3 MPH                    25.4 MPH
Total Trip time                       Moving Time             Stopped Time
1 hour  22 mins                      1 hour 7 mins           14 mins 58 secs

Sunday Rider

Partial Track of Today's Ride via spotty Radio coverage

Today was General Conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, so we watched the sessions from home via the internet.  The sessions were broadcast from 10 AM to 12 Noon and 2 PM to 4 PM.  I originally thought I'd sneak in at least a short ride right after noon and make it back in time for the afternoon broadcast but Jacque wanted to snuggle and who can resist that?
After the last session ended at 4 PM I decided to take my ride.  We ordinarily don't ride on Sundays because we seldom have time before or  after meetings, although some months ago I rode my bike home from Church by carrying it there on the car rack.  Jacque had to leave early so I chained my bike to the flagpole (no bike racks at our chapel, unfortunately)  and rode it home, tucking my dress slacks inside my dress boots just like I knew what I was doing.
The reaction from those who saw me saddling up on the bike was pretty funny.  It's only 11 miles or so from Church to home but they thought I was insane and repeatedly offered me a ride, trying to save me.  I would love to ride TO Church but have not figured out how to arrive un-stinky with sweat and road grime, and I know of no showers to help overcome such obstacles.
Anyway.  Today.  I worried a bit because, as usual, "spring breezes" were gusting today, along with being a bit colder than usual.  Howsomever, as I've noted before, if I wait for perfect weather I would be lucky to get in a few weeks of riding per year instead of the other way around.  So I took my usual load of windbreaker layers and varied thicknesses of gloves, etc, and took off.
The wind was surprisingly cold and blustery and when I got down to the pavement of Frost Road it was even worse.  I wanted to ride east a few miles and back but didn't want to face that howling wind on the return trip.  So I rode a route I've done a couple times before;  riding east to Sedillo Hill Road, going under I-40 just west of Sedillo Hill, then west on Route 66 to Zuzax, across the I-40 bridge to the North Zamora Frontage Road, then west maybe a mile to Gutierrez Canyon Road, then wandering that road north back to Frost Road and then the last mile or so back to our goat-path turnoff and the last difficult climb up the gravel and ruts mile to our house.
This ride is not bad, and much of it was partially protected from the wind.  The biggest complaint I have with it is its terrain:  It's deep in the bowels of Tijeras Canyon, Gutierrez Canyon is a box canyon that severely blocks radio signals, and it is difficult to talk on the radio OR get my GPS positions effectively transmitted to any relay stations.  Thus the abbreviated display on my APRS tracking.
At times I thought I was gonna freeze, then the wind would abruptly slow and I'd warm up again.  All in all a ride I'm happy to have undertaken, even though it was great to arrive home and get out of the cold breeze again.  I can stay reasonably warm while pedaling but standing still in such wind...... sucks.

Trip Started:  4:23 PM    Trip Ended:  6:24 PM
Beginning Battery Voltage:  13.2        Ending Voltage: 13.1
Lowest Temp  46 F      Highest Temp:  57 F
Stats from the GPS:    Total Miles:  13.77
Overall average speed            Moving Avg               Max Speed
  7.0 MPH                                8.4 MPH                    27.9 MPH
Total Trip time                       Moving Time             Stopped Time
1 hour  58 mins                      1 hour 38 mins         19 mins 41 secs

FINALLY Back on the Bike

Mail Run Tracking, Same Old Same Old

I have been off the bike and pretty much out of action for the last 3 weeks.  I started out with what I thought were allergies and a tickle in my throat, but it quickly degenerated into a nasty coughing wheezing chest cold.  I looked up my symptoms on the Internet and they fit perfectly into the pattern of the common cold.  EXCEPT the "common cold" supposedly lasts a week without treatment and around 7 days if you get medical attention.
Jacque came down with it after my first week of suffering and went to the doctor and got some expensive syrups and pills and a breathing inhaler and she's able to sleep at night now without choking and gasping all night but the crud seems to be clinging to her about the same length of time.
My recuperation has made a wimp of me.  I've been wanting to get back on a semi-daily biking routine but the last several days it's been cold and windy and I've lacked the motivation to get out and ride, although I fully realize if I wait for great weather I won't ride very many days out of the year.
Today also turned out cold and windy, with some pretty stiff headwinds gusting me in the face as I headed uphill, east, toward the Post Office.
As usual, it was great to be out riding anyway.
After I got home - hours later - I was again shocked at how much my metabolism changes after just one short but stiff ride.  My blood sugar dropped and stayed low, and it will last at least the rest of the night if history repeats itself.  Now if I could just get back into the habit of at least 15 miles a day 5 days a week maybe I could get back into my skinny pants......

Trip Started:  12:48 PM    Trip Ended:  1:49 PM
Lowest Temp  50 F      Highest Temp:  60 F
Stats from the GPS:    Total Miles:  5.51
Overall average speed            Moving Avg               Max Speed
  5.4 MPH                                8.0 MPH                    28.1 MPH
Total Trip time                       Moving Time             Stopped Time
1 hour  1 mins                       41 mins 15 secs          19 mins 45 secs

Unwillingly Riding in Snow

No Tracking Today since there's No Radio Coverage in Tijeras Canyon

We had planned to ride early today but it began raining almost immediately and continued until around noon.  I loaded up the trailer and hauled trash to our local transfer station and by the time I got home the sun had come out and everything was sunny and mild.
I told Jacque I thought we could still squeeze in a trike ride and she quickly changed into her riding duds.  By the time we drove off it had clouded up a bit again but it didn't look threatening.  We decided to try a different route than we usually do.  We thought about driving through Albuquerque and riding our favorite Bosque Trail but it seems silly to drive 20 miles so we can ride 10 or 15 miles on the trike (Athough we do exactly that several times a year).
We decided to park in Tijeras and ride old Route 66 into Albuquerque and then come back.  (I was reminded after we got home to look at our Internet track that there is rarely any beacon coverage through that deepest part of Tijeras Canyon, and there was no coverage today.
As we rode west from Tijeras to Albuquerque, we could see some clouds building up out west of Albuquerque.  The closer we got to Albuquerque the closer and darker these clouds appeared.  Just after hitting the city limits we turned around with great vigor, as President Kennedy used to say, and hurried as fast as we could go  to get  back to our vehicle and shelter.  Which wasn't very fast, since it is mostly downhill coming TOWARD Albuquerque and obviously mostly uphill going back.... and of course we realized we now had a headwind.  We made it a couple miles without much more than a drop or two hitting us and I thought we might make it safely ahead of the storm.  However, I noticed off to our right in the canyons and hills of the Sandias surrounding us almost a solid wall of white stuff, and within a few minutes we were getting an irritating amount of rain in our face.  Various businesses and homes were just off the side of the road but I noticed none with an open carport or overhang of any kind we might take shelter in temporarily.  As we topped one long slow hill I noticed a sandstone rock outcropping just next to the road and at first thought it offered little or no shelter for us but as we passed by it directly I realized it did indeed have enough overhang to at least partially protect us.  Passing it with renewed vigor and hoping to make it to the I-40 underpass just ahead (in which to shelter from the rain), it started SERIOUSLY raining... and snowing ... and SLEETING.  We stopped and I ordered Jacque to get off and walk quickly back to the overhead rock shelter, since it took a few more minutes for me to turn the trike around and ride back to the shelter with the doggies.  There wasn't enough overhang to protect the trike but the 4 of us (Jacque, Tinkerbell, Jazzy, and I) were able to stay relatively dry under the overhanging rock.  We decided the storm wasn't going to clear up anytime soon, so I tried thumbing a ride.  We were only a few miles from Tijeras where our vehicle was parked AND it was 4:30-ish quitting time and lots of traffic, but no one was interested in stopping for a soaked old biker with a soaked puppy strapped papoose-style on his belly.  I finally tried calling a few potential friendly rescuers and finally caught my son Jake still at work, which was only a  few miles from us.  He agreed to come rescue us and was there within 20 minutes.  The rain, meanwhile, had slowed and almost stopped and then started up again.  The trike and panniers and accessories were well soaked.  Jacque chose to stay with the trike and pups and protect them from all bad people and I rode with Jake to Tijeras.  It probably took me 20 minutes to get back to Jacque, and we loaded up the soaked trike and gear in jig time. 
We were disappointed not to complete our ride as planned, but we got several miles in anyway, and we absolutely cannot complain about rain and snow in our parched climate.
Trip Started: +- 2:00 PM    Trip Ended:  5:55 PM
Lowest Temp  37 F      Highest Temp:  50 F
Stats from the GPS:    Total Miles:  8.77
Overall average speed            Moving Avg               Max Speed
  6.7 MPH                                9.0 MPH                    39.7 MPH
Total Trip time                       Moving Time             Stopped Time
1 hour  19 mins                     58 mins 31 secs           20 mins 29 secs

Windy Wednesday Triking

Today's Tracking via APRS and Ham Radio

Jacque and I squoze in a ride on the trike today.  It was a struggle to make time for it.... it's ALWAYS a struggle to find time for exercise of any kind, much less stress-free shock-free fun aerobic exercise (i.e., cycling).
Yesterday was sucked dry by a failing dishwasher that wet the floor and made a mess.  Monday afternoon was when this occurred and yesterday we went to town, spent a few hundred, and brought home a "new" GE dishwasher that had been sold and returned and declared to be totally functional.  Trouble is, the returned dishwasher had no box, it was shrink wrapped to a pallet so it couldn't be opened for inspection, and many installation parts were missing.  We got it for less than a third of the listed price so we were motivated to put up with a few shortcomings.  The water inlet was located in a different location, so I was unable to finish the installation and test the washer until today.  It seemed to start and run OK with almost a full load of dishes...... but it seemed to take forever to get through the wash cycles.  It had been running over  an hour when we finally left for our trike ride and ....... wait for it...... it was STILL RUNNING when we got home, for a total of over 4 hours.  Jacque turned it off manually and called the store and of course they told us it would have to be brought in.  Later today I remembered a weird thing I spotted when I was installing the monster:  A pair of wires leading to a thermal sensor that was not attached to anything;  it was just hanging by a plastic zip-tie to a part of the undercarriage.  I suspect it is supposed to be mounted somewhere that it can sense the dishwasher temperature to indicate when the temp is hot enough to continue the wash cycle.  Tomorrow I'm going to look into that before we take the machine back to the store.  I'm more than willing to put in a bit more labor to avoid having to pay more money for another "discounted" dishwasher.
Oh, Yeah, the Trike Ride.... it turned out to be windy-er and much nippier than we expected.  It was sunny and beautiful but COLD and sharp.  We didn't really suffer..... it was just not that comfortable to ride like we are spoiled to expect.
Jacque has a new bike computer mounted on her stoker handlebars that reads out speed, elapsed time, yada, yada.  It recorded us making close to 40 MPH today whilst we pedaled furiously in tallest chain-rings smoking it downhill.  My Garmin GPS recorded a max speed of slightly over 30 MPH.... I daresay I need to calibrate the bike computer.  It uses a magnet mounted on the rear wheel to count revolutions and is supposed to be calibrated to the 20" wheel diameter.  It may be a bit off.  I tend to trust GPS readings but I could be mistaken......

Trip Started: 1:48 PM    Trip Ended:  2:55 PM
Beginning Battery Voltage:  13.0        Ending Voltage: 12.9
Lowest Temp  45 F      Highest Temp:  50 F
Stats from the GPS:    Total Miles:  6.03
Overall average speed            Moving Avg               Max Speed
  5.9 MPH                                7.2 MPH                    31.2 MPH
Total Trip time                       Moving Time             Stopped Time
1 hour  1 minute                   50 mins 35 secs           10 mins 25 secs

If Only I Could Ride Every Day...

Today's repetitive tracking via APRS and Ham Radio

Jazzy and I just did a "mail run" and then a leg 'n loop to the east along Frost Road.   I lost my highest 2 gears for some reason on the recumbent bike... a cursory examination seemed to show the derailleur bracket may have slipped around to a poor position preventing shifting to those gears.  Will look more closely and see if adjustments or repairs can quickly fix it in time for another ride tomorrow.  (I just noticed my average speed is HIGHER than normal, in spite of not being able to get into higher gears, go figure)

But, hey, this may be a new record for me... 8 days straight without missing at least a short ride.
I DID realize that 4:30-ish is a terrible time to be riding a bike along Frost Road.  Hundreds and hundreds of hurrying motorists obviously coming home from Albuquerque, Sandia Labs, etc, etc, made life a lot more annoying than it needed to be.  No incidents, just lots of traffic with few openings to get in and out of the road, cross streets, etc.

Trip Started: 3:29 PM    Trip Ended:  5:50 PM
Beginning Battery Voltage:  13.1        Ending Voltage: 13.1
Lowest Temp  60 F      Highest Temp:  71 F
Stats from the GPS:    Total Miles:  14.43
Overall average speed            Moving Avg               Max Speed
  6.4 MPH                                9.2 MPH                    31.5 MPH
Total Trip time                       Moving Time             Stopped Time
2 hours  16 mins                   1 hour 33 mins            42 mins 5 seconds