New Wheels

Just over a year ago I bought my first road bike from a friend on mine. The deal was just too good to pass up, and I rode that bike a lot last year, in fact the picture at the top of this blog is one I took of my bike on a nice long evening ride heading out west at some point last summer. [May have to take an updated shot in the coming months to reflect the recent upgrades to the bike!]

Anyways, I'd been thinking about picking up a new aero wheel set for my bike that is both lighter and far more aerodynamic that my previous wheels. I wanted a set that I could still use on an everyday basis and also be able to swap over to a tri specific bike for triathlon races if I wanted. What I decided on [with the recommendation of a friend of mine] was the new Bontrager Aeolus 5 D3 Carbon Clinchers. These wheels are 100% carbon fiber and have a dish of 50mm. Basically they're much lighter, stiffer, and will cut through the wind much easier than my previous set. They came in last week but I didn't have a chance to swap them out until last night. Too bad the weather isn't looking so good for this weekend, cause I'm anxious to take them out for a nice long ride, esp now that I can hop back on the bike since my marathon is done! Here's a simple picture I took of the bike last night....and yes, I know my bar tape is dirty and I need to re-wrap the bars with some fresh tape! But those wheels....oh lawwwd those wheels!

It just looks fast!

Here's a stock image of the wheels so you can see

what they look like a little more up close.



Snow & Ice Filled Outdoor Weekend

Ha Ha Haaaaa, I laugh in the face of inclement weather!

On Friday night this past weekend, the DC area got hit with a small snow and ice storm. This kind of weather isn't really new to us, and really we got a lot more ice than snow. That didn't deter or stop me from being outside all weekend training though!

On Saturday I got up and decided to get my long training run in despite the conditions, and braved the icy, snow covered paths for a 17 mile run. Also, I decided to use my trail shoes for the run to provide a bit more grip and traction than either of my road running shoes could provide. That turned out to be a very good choice, because running on the ice and snow in those shoes worked a lot better than I anticipated, and I only had one close call! I did however manage to land my right foot into a big icy puddle that was hidden by snow with 4 miles left in the run...that was not so fantastic.

On Sunday I got talked into going on a long ride with a friend of mine out in the Leesburg area. The ride covered 43 miles, and the terrain was 90% snow/ice and 10% muddy gravel, all on rolling country roads. Due to the surface conditions the pace was far slower than any other ride I've done, and by far the sketchiest ride I've ever done as well. It's pretty hard to steer and stay upright when your tires have little traction and you're sliding all over the place! I fell twice, but they were both pretty low speed. In fact almost everyone on the ride fell at least once, and it was more comical than anything else because we were going so slow, and then all of a sudden, someones rear tire would go sliding out from under them and down they went. We did get in some decent climbing though, and were also able to really test out our cold weather gear to see how it held up in the elements for 4-5 hours.

I'm pleased to say my gear and brand new jacket held up great, and I was perfectly fine the entire ride. Everyone else on the ride was shocked at how clean my bright red jacket was compared to how dirty everyone else's clothing got. I guess it does pretty well at shedding mud in addition to its waterproofing characteristics. My feet and legs got really muddy though, and my bike looked like a frozen brown popsicle when we were done. All in all though, I had a great time, met a lot of new people, and got to ride my bike for 4 hours! We followed the ride up with some pizza and beer at Fireworks Pizza in Leesburg, perfect end to quite an adventure! Here's a ton of pictures from yesterday's snow/ice ride, don't let inclement weather keep you indoors, enjoy! [Click the pictures to see the bigger versions]

Some of the group [and part of my glove] about 10 miles in.

Me, before I got all muddy.

The group cautiously heading down an icy hill.

[I'm in the red jacket]

Nice rolling snow covered terrain.

The snow-plow driver probably thought we were nuts!

Climbing a muddy section.

More climbing.

My dirty shoe covers afterwards.

But my jacket was clean! [Except for the zipper, I can't explain that]

My muddy, ice covered bike afterwards!

Again, muddy ice had formed all over the place!

And here's the ride summary [click 'view details' to view more]

Punkin Chunkin 2011: After

As I mentioned previously, this weekend was the annual Punkin Chunkin event up in Delaware. Every year, teams bring their various contraptions made for throwing pumpkins into a field, and square off in each category to see who will be the next champion. I had never been before, so I didn't quite know what to expect, and as with any first time event, you learn quite a bit about how to better prepare for next year.

The first lesson, is to either camp out at the grounds the night before, or get there verrrry early in the morning. My friends and I camped at a campsite about 30 min away, and by the time we everyone else was up and moving around, it was already noon. I was all for camping out at the grounds using tents, but I was outvoted and the cabins 30 min away won. The reason you want to get there so early is because there is one road heading into the site, and thousands of cars trying to get there and park. The event was only about a 30 min drive from our campgrounds, but it took us almost an hour once we were there to drive up the one remaining road and park.

Second lesson, make friends and get invited to join an AWESOME tailgate section! We totally lucked out with this one. Our group drove in two cars, but we got split up in the whole parking thing, and cell phone reception was really bad. Luckily for my half of the group, we had the cooler full of beer, and the folding chairs to bring into the grounds. My friend Pete has a friend named Ryan who lives up in the area, and Pete invited Ryan to join us for the chunk [both of whom rode in my car]. Ryan has some co-workers who found out he was finally going to attend after years of bailing out, and insisted he come and join their tailgate. So Pete and I [and our cooler full of beer] tagged along and got to join a great group of people, right near the front who had gotten up at "zero dark hours" to get out to the field and start cooking and setting everything up. They had an awesome spread of food and were begging us to eat everything so they didn't have to take anything home. [It didn't take much for me to agree with their wishes] I made friends fast and we ended up having a fantastic day watching all the events, and people, all while enjoying hot chili!

Below is a brief photo recap of the day, and a quick video compilation of some of the shots. The video is really short though, because by the time we got there in the afternoon all the trebuchet, and catapult machines had already fired once, and they were onto the air cannons. Now the air cannons were very impressive and fun to watch, but half the time you couldn't even see the pumpkin coming out, or you had no warning that they were about to fire, so I missed a lot of video opportunity because of that. We waited around until dusk for the 'free fire' when the whole range opens up and teams just start launching pumpkins left and right, that was the highlight by far. So here's some pictures and video, and be ready for more punkin chunkin adventure next year!

At the site of our new friends and tailgate section.

Pete and I enjoying our new spot!

The buffet table.

Check out this awesome plate of food!

If I didn't know any better, I'd say that was a real

battlefield there in the distance!

Spitfire!

Man your battle stations!

There was some excellent people watching available as well.

In this shot you can see the guy [who I called Lance] powering

up their human-powered machine with his bike.

The fun machines.

View from the distant parking lot.

[Punkin Chunkin 2011]

Snomecoming 2011

This past weekend was my 5th homecoming/reunion up at Albright. [Holy cow, it's been 5 years already?!]  This was certainly a memorable one, and not just because there were a plethora of new babies around, but because of the rare October snow that came to join ruin the party! Well, I shouldn't say ruin, but the turnout was definitely lacking when compared to all the other homecomings I've been to.

We awoke Saturday morning to find the snow flying sideways, but neither my buddy Steve or I thought anything would stick. About 2 hours later we were trudging through slushy sidewalks as we made our way to the luncheon/tailgate that got moved inside the rec center. I had heard there was some rare snow in the forecast, but certainly didn't expect anything to stick, much less stick to the streets!

Despite the snow, and frigid tailgating conditions, it was still a lot of fun to be back up there and to see some friends who I hadn't seen in quite some time. I also made my way into the natatorium to relive some memories from the thousands of hours spent in the pool during my time at Albright. I took a picture on my old starting block and tried to get one of the record board, but unfortunately it's down right now for updates, but my friend informed me that my college roommates and I still hold the pool record for the 200 IM relay. Here's some pictures from the weekend, enjoy!

Driving through the one day blizzard!

The football game.

The water cooler got a little lonely.

The seats weren't quite as filled as normal either!

My friend making good on her bet. [She's a huge Giants fan]

"Gentlemen, 100 yard freestyle, take your mark....."

Run For Your Lives, Zombie Cam & Report!

Sorry it's taken a little more time to get this one up, but I kept running into some technical issues....but those are resolved now....so we are good. As most of you know, last weekend I headed up to MD to volunteer at a 5k obstacle course race, but I was dressed up as a zombie and placed out on the course to try and pull people's "health flags" [read: flag football flags.] If they lost all of their flags, their time at the end was recorded as a zombie time instead of a human time. I was out on the course for about 5.5 hours chasing people, pulling flags, and attempting to pull flags when I wasn't being hit, slapped, punched, shoved, or cursed at. Needless to say it was quite the experience.

I left at 4am to make the drive up, and when I got up to the event site, I made my way over to the volunteers area to get zombie-fied. They had professional make-up artists there to paint our faces and destroy our clothes in a believable manner. I had also brought along my white contacts to complete the effect. There were plenty of other zombies around that commented at just how freaky I looked with the eyes. Here's a picture of me as a zombie when I got my make up done that morning. And the video of my point of view of the race.

Ready to eat some brains!

[Run For Your Lives, Zombie POV Cam]

After the event I decided it would be worth the effort to drive home in all my make-up [while trying to avoid being spotted by other drivers] to head over to my parents house to try and scare my mom. And scare her I did! [Most of you have already seen the video but I'm posting it again because it's just too funny.] Also, it was my younger sisters homecoming dance that night, so we thought it would be fun to take some pictures we all of us dressed up.

It was quite an interesting drive home!

[Scaring Mom As A Zombie]

All dressed up.

Happy Zombie.

She's so proud.

New Bike....Again!

Ever since I figured out the paths and trails to take to get me into work via bicycle, I've seriously considered commuting by bike full time. The wheels in my head started spinning this past summer, but it wasn't until recently when I put my plan into action. Part of that delay was because the bike model I had my eyes on was discontinued, so I needed to find something similar to use. Eventually I ended up deciding on the Trek Ion CX Pro. 

The CX stands for cyclocross, a form of bike racing usually held in the winter months, and on bikes that very closely resemble road bikes, except they're built for more abuse and off-road usage. I wanted a bike that I could still go really fast on if I wanted to, but it also needed to be able to stand up to the abuse of commuting, have spots for a rack and bag, and fenders. Last week, when the time was right, I placed my order for the bike and to my surprise the bike shipped really fast and arrived at the shop the other day. So after work yesterday, I headed over to the bike shop to build up my bike and outfit it with a couple accessories for commuting. 

My goal is to commute a minimum of 3 days per week....in all weather conditions...year round. If I stick to that goal, it'll be over 100 miles per week that I'm outside riding my bike vs. sitting in rush hour traffic. Can't beat that! I ordered a bunch of cold weather riding gear too, so the upcoming freezing temperatures won't derail my plan. I'm sure I'll have some interesting updates on how that goes in the coming months. I'm very much looking forward to this challenge, and come spring time I know I'll be in fantastic riding shape, and ready to put in a solid season of races. On with the pics!

Trek Ion CX Pro [with added rack]

With the bag for commuting added on.

Mmmm, carbon fiber

Stock tires which I plan on swapping out to an all weather road tire

The Bike Lane, best shop in all the land!

Zombie Run Update

Early last month, I had posted about a new adventure type race that I found out about called Run For Your Lives, and wanted to be a part of. Well, instead of running in the race, I'm actually going to be volunteering instead, AS A ZOMBIE!! That's right, I made it through the zombie volunteer selection process and am officially a 'chaser' zombie....meaning I get to actually hunt people down and kill them [not for real though, I just have to pull the flag football flags they'll be wearing...good thing I play defensive back in my flag football league!]

There are 'walker' zombies as well, which are more or less there just there to scare the bejeezus out of people, and I'm sure I will too, but my make-up probably wont be quite as intense since I'll be running the whole time. I can't wait, and I think I'm going to have a lot of fun too. I've been lurking the Run For Your Lives Facebook Page, and there seem to be quite a lot of overly confident people on there, and all I have to say to them is, if you can't run a 4.5 40 yard dash, you will be killed by me. Guaranteed.  

To help with the visual scare tactics of chasing people down to try and eat their brains, I ordered some white contact lenses to make my living dead getup a little more believable. They're really not so much contacts as colored pieces of plastic film, making them extremely difficult to put in and getting them to sit properly, but they work nonetheless. Should be a great race day!!

Humans, Here I Come!

Fatties Don't Stand A Chance

Redskins Home Opener, September 11th

About two weeks ago, an old childhood friend [actually, the older brother of an old childhood friend] got in touch with me on facebook, and was asking if I had plans to attend the Redskins home opener this year. He was surprising his sister by taking her, because he was out visiting for a little while from the west coast. The home opener this year also happened to fall on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

I started searching for tickets, and ended up buying one of my friends season tickets from him, and ended up sitting with him, and tailgating with his family, which all worked out to be really convenient. My friends who came down for the day came and tailgated with us as well. We had figured out that the last time we saw each other was in the summer of 1998 when my family came back to visit the States for a couple weeks [we were still living in Germany at that time.] So, it had been a long time since we saw each other and it was great to be able to re-connect and have them join us.

Obviously, being on September 11th, there was a lot of patriotism in the air, and there were some nice pre-game happenings, which you can see in my videos below. I was however disappointed by two things. The first is that not one player [for either team] came running out onto the field waving an American flag. I feel like every team has at least one player who does that anyways, despite the fact that it was September 11th. Meanwhile it seems as though there wasn't a single player on the Jets who DIDN'T have a flag. Redskin players, you let me down. The second thing that disappointed me, was the lack of a flyover at the end of the National Anthem. I was 100% expecting to get one, and it didn't happen. It was the season home opener, it was September 11th, AND it was DC and NY playing, if we didn't deserve a flyover I don't know who did.

Despite those two absences, it was still a great game to be at, and as a special added bonus, the Skins won! TAKE THAT G-MEN! Here's a picture of my friends and I, with me wearing my special home made, Americanized, Santana Moss jersey [I got A LOT of compliments, pats on the back, and high fives for that jersey], and a couple videos of the game itself. God bless the USA!

Hail.

Re-united with some old friends.

[God Bless The USA]

[Salute To Troops, Taps]

The greatest fight song ever.

[Hail To The Redskins]

Milestone Pt. 2!

2.5 years back I made this post about my car hitting the 100,000 mile mark on my way to work that morning [early 2009.] Well two and a half years later, August 19th 2011, on my way up to visit my friend in NJ this weekend I hit the 150,000 mile mark. And yes, I was totally prepared yet again.

Since Feb 4th 2009, 927 days have passed giving me an average of 53.9 miles a day driving, or 22,248 hours, which translates to roughly 2.24 miles per hour. In that time though, I've also owned two motorcycles and bought another car [but you all already knew that], so I wonder how much more driving I would've done in the Galant and how much sooner I would've hit the mark had I not gotten the other modes of transportation? Orrr, had I not bought the Challenger, would I even still have the Galant? [Probably not.] Either way, it continues to be a fantastically reliable mode of transportation, and whenever the time does come, I will be sad to see it go.

Couple interesting things about the video, [yes we have video this time!] I was actually right in the middle of the Delaware Memorial Bridge when it happened, so I was actually over water, and not land at all. Also,  if you listen closely to the background song, there's a cymbal crash right when the odometer clicks to 150k, not that I planned that at all, but I noticed it on the video afterwards and thought it was cool. Well that's about all I can write about a car hitting 150,000 miles, so on with the obligatory before/after pics, and video. Thank you Galant, for all the many miles of trustworthy service!

Almost......

THERE!

[Rolling Over 150k Miles]