Today's Surprisingly Good Tracking via Ham Radio APRS
Today's title is solely a ringer to attract attention. My recent activities have nothing to do with whiskey but a lot to do with Tennessee.
We parked for a few enjoyable days at Steve & Jess's lake resort. Tagging along on a couple of their powerboat rides was more than fun. Steve is 40-something and does amazing acrobatics with his wakeboard... Stuff that most young punks would be reluctant to try. We then on and parked more permanently (more than a week is quasi-permanence for us nowadays) at Bitner's RV Park along Route 68 not far from Spring City. I've gotten in several good rides in the last week or so but the ham radio coverage is a bit spotty so my tracking has been less than useful. I was shocked, SHOCKED today to find my entire ride had good tracking points from the system along the way.
Where we're parked now is a lovely area, but TN highway 68 is a two-lane road with no shoulder, populated with heavy traffic and heavy trucks routing around the Tennessee River and Watts Bar lake, including especially the big, noisy, and dangerous logging trucks hauling ratty looking logs back and forth to various processing facilities. All my life I have heard stories about how dangerous loaded logging trucks are, and how they can unexpectedly dump their loads when a chain or restraint breaks and the load of logs pressed tightly together "explode" onto the roadway, crushing anything within range . I've never seen it happen, but I've heard about it over and over, and I refuse to ride on a road with no shoulders with those big boys popping up every few minutes.
So, instead of arising early and getting in a shady early morning ride, I've been loading up the trike on the Ford Exploder and hitching a ride with Jacque driving me the 4 miles to nearby Route 27, which is a 4-lane divided highway with wonderful wide shoulders.
I've ridden this highway back and forth for 3 days now and, though a bit boring since it is mostly flat and straight and not much changes from day to day, at least it's still a nice safer area to ride and get my legs limbered up.
I've had to do a bit of work on the trike recently. I mentioned before about my front derailleur shifter sleeve not working. At first I thought the control cable had broken, a most common occurrence with frequent riding and shifting. I kept riding it with only the largest gear ring engaged, leaving 9 speeds on the rear cassette to get up and down the mild hills around here. In Illinois I noticed it wasn't the cable at all, but the shifter itself. The spring return was not working, and I finally realized the spring stop had broken off the Shimano cast aluminum housing. Non Repairable.
Trying to locate one to order online was frightful: The only replacements I could find anywhere required me to purchase a full gearset, costing a LOT of money. Having tossed all my spare junkyard donor bikes when we moved into the RV full times, I had no such devices available. I assumed I would have to find a good bike shop with a good stock of used parts in their back bins, and bike shops are not very plentiful here in the "Smoky Mountains" of Tennessee. I finally found one via Google with good reviews up in Cleveland, TN, of all places.
Trailside Bicycle Company has the mojo, people. Within 5 minutes of taking the Catrike into the shop for examination, the youngish owner/proprietor handed me a brand spanking new shifter, bolt-on replacement for my broke one, in the box, for the whopping price of TWENTY-FIVE dollars and change. WOW. A smoking good price, making the more-than-an-hour pilgrimage well worth the trouble. Add me to his list of admirers and great reviews.
Now I need to deal with my left disc brake, which intermittently starts dragging and squealing, not only irritating but actually slowing me down. I'm slow enough already, and every day I forget about it until I get riding, and then when I get back to cool off I'm in no mood to work on it immediately, meaning in a few minutes I get sidetracked and forget about it until the next ride. DUH
We've also been blessed with quite a bit of rain these last couple of weeks. Today was cloudy and cooler, but the weather forecast was for "slightly cloudy" with no foretelling of rain. I was doing fine until I got about halfway home and I noticed the clouds building up and getting darker and it began to sprinkle lightly. This mainly got me slightly wet but cooled down nicely I was thinking I could just finish the ride with no worries, when suddenly it started to REALLY come down, and I was soaked and looking for shelter. I spotted a building up the side of the hillside with a small overhang and geared down to Grandma Gear and frantically rode up, hoping there would be room to take shelter for both me and the trike. It turned out to be a small Lutheran church, with a small covered porch on one end, and YES! A wheelchair ramp leading up to the porch. I steered around the wetness and rode up right in front of the entry door and parked, wondering if anyone was inside on a Tuesday. I noticed a pickup parked in a slot labeled "PASTOR", and within a few minutes the very nice gentleman opened the door and offered me a couple bottles of ice cold bottled water. I started to explain to him I already had bottled water on board, when my foggy brain registered "COLD WATER!" and instead of stupidly rejecting the offer, I thanked him profusely and accepted the kind gift. Lutherans are a definite minority out here in Baptist Country, but this one proved himself a Christian indeed.
The rain finally slowed to a misty drizzle and I rode away from my tiny shelter and soon I was back close to home. Jacque called me on the cell phone and informed me she was already waiting at the pickup point, and since I was only 3 or 4 miles away, she agreed to sit tight and wait.
Even though I've been riding for years it still surprises me how much my metabolism changes after even one ride of more than a few miles. I have to lower my insulin pump's basal rate for the rest of at least a 24 hour period - even after eating a bit more than usual to satisfy the hunger pangs after a ride.
I mentioned the nice wide shoulders of Route 27 here. They ARE wide, but as with most road shoulders of any size, they are dotted with debris of all kinds. Lumber and wood chunks of various sizes from the logging trucks, bits and pieces of cars, and worst of all, tire debris.
Cyclists everywhere bemoan the regular flats caused by the tiny wires scattered about from worn and bursting tires.
When by themselves they are almost invisible, but they can ruin a tire when they work their way through the tire casing:
This is a small example of a sliver of tire carcass with the fuzzy rusty steel wires protruding. They are found by the dozens, nay hundreds, every mile of most highways. I slowed my ride today by slowing down, even occasionally stopping, to pick such junk off the pavement and heave it off the roadway into the weeds. I often get sidetracked while riding by picking trash off the path as I pass by. It's not hard to do since I sit so low on the recumbent trike that I don't even have to bend over to reach the pavement alongside me, I just extend my arm and snatch it and fling the offending item.
I did several miles of such one-at-a-time road cleanup but finally had to stop it: I wanted to do a 20-miler today and if I continued to stop or slow for every piece of junk in the road I'd never get back before dark. I got to the outer limits of Dayton, home of the infamous Scopes "Monkey Trial". I turned around at the city limits for the return home and found Jacque waiting for me with a fresh icy mug of Diet Barq's Root Beer. What a Woman.
3 days ago:
Stats from the GPS: Total Miles: 9.26 Overall average speed Moving Avg Max Speed 4.2 MPH 7.1 MPH 16.7 MPH Total Trip time Moving Time Stopped Time 2 hours 13 mins 1 hour 18 mins 55 minutes
Yesterday:
Stats from the GPS: Total Miles: 20.21
Overall average speed Moving Avg Max Speed
6.3 MPH 7.7 MPH 28.6 MPH
Total Trip time Moving Time Stopped Time
2 hours 9 mins 1 hour 27 mins 52 minutes
Today's Ride:
Ride Started: 10:41 AM Ride Ended: 1:52 PM
Beginning Battery Voltage: 12.9 Ending Voltage: 12.8 Lowest: 12.7
Beginning Blood Glucose: 250 Ending BG: 72
Lowest Temp 75 F Highest Temp: 82 F
Stats from the GPS: Total Miles: 20.21
Overall average speed Moving Avg Max Speed
6.3 MPH 7.7 MPH 28.6 MPH
Total Trip time Moving Time Stopped Time
3 hours 11 mins 2 hours 37 mins 34 minutes
