Rough Ride

Gotta say, today's commute was far from the best I have ever experienced. Raining the entire way, which wasn't nearly as fun to ride in as I remember from last year. Add to that the fact that it was a bit cold and for some reason my muscles all being in great pain (along with the bits of my that sito n the bike) and I'm just happy I made it at all. The ride home was only very slightly less bad, I took the shorter way because I didn't feel like adding mileage to the commute from hell, I needed to be home to my wife by 8, and I am pretty sure I would get lost without being able to follow the route on my GPS anyway.

I signed up for the 2010 Terratrike Car-Free Challenge. So far only the commute today counts, for the rather simple reason that I haven't been anywhere since it started until today. A month of no driving is definitely going to be a challenge for me--one that my wife is helping enforce with an iron fist. She threatened to take my keys away from me to force me to bike, but I managed to talk her down. For now.

I just wish I knew why today's ride went sop badly for me--way more painful than it was when I started riding that route afer a few months of being completely off the bike. Maybe it was just a fluke, maybe not. Makes me kind of hesitant about riding tomorrow, but ride I shall. Or at least make a noble effort.

I decided to contact Garmin about the broken GPS (shattered screen). It turns out that they will replace it for $80, which is the same price they charge for replacing the unit due to a dead battery. And my battery was dying. So I guess it really doesn't turn out to be so bad, I'll just have to use my phone for ride tracking for a while, though it's not as accurate.

Some time when the weather is good I need to take a camera along with me and snap some pictures of my current commute, which is 100% road and 0% bike path. I liked the path, it was nice and straight and car free, but it also had no curves or hills and that made it boring to ride.

Hopefully soon I'll get my legs back in shape and my belly to retract a bit more and then I'll start loving the ride more.

100 55 Miles of Nowhere

So yesterday I made my attempt at the 100 Miles of Nowhere. Unfortunately, I had some bike issues at mile 55 or so, so I was not able to complete it. To add insult, my GPS died on me as well, so I wouldn't have been able to track mileage anyway.

It was a .24 mile loop around my office at work.....over and over and over. I lost count of laps at around 105, but I know I did at least twice that many.

Time to give credit where credit is due: My wife is the most awesome person ever. She came out to watch and support me, and made a "Way to Go Tommy" sign to hold up as I went by. She was also in charge of feeding me, refilling my water, and selling water balloons.

Water balloons, you ask? My fundraising idea was to let anyone who made a donation (of any amount) throw a water balloon at me as I went by. I would just like to say that for a fat guy, I am rather hard to hit. Also, it's best to not underfill the balloons, many of them bounced off me instead of properly breaking. Next year if there is a repeat, I will make sure the balloons get thrown while I go UPhill, that way people can be more accurate. Gotta make sure they get their money's worth.

Also, I am incredibly impressed by the generosity of my coworkers. I didn't really expect to get many donations for the ride, and I only told people about it on Thursday, but I managed to raise over $320 for Livestrong. I will have to wait until Monday to get the cash donations in , but $175 was given online. That's pretty awesome.

My wife also took some pics, of which this is one:

And here is what my GPS track looks like:

All told, I'm not happy that I failed to complete the ride....but I am reall impressed with the support I got and highly pleased with the amount of donations my coworkers gave. I can't truly call it a failure when I accomplished this much fundraising. Hopefully my coworkers who donated aren't too disappointed.

...now I need a new bike computer solution. This is especially distressing since I used the one I had for light navigation duties too. Maybe I can find a mount for the phone that I don't think is terrible, but that is not very good for navigating along predetermined paths. Oh well, time for that later.