Hawk Mountain 200k Permanent - The ride of the psycho chicken

On Saturday, I rode the Hawk Mountain Permanent with Chris from PA. He's working on his R12. 

This will be my third 200K in as many weekends, with a few 100's tossed in for good measure. After Friday morning's pre-work 100k, I'm a little tired but, the big ride in August is getting closer and it starts with lots of climbing. I want to be ready. 

Hawk Mountain has 8500 feet of climbing. That's why I chose it.

Friday Writings for Randos - Tension and Compression

{Friday Writings for Randos - A weekly post that features pieces from other writers that touch some facet of the Randonneuring experience, even if that was not the author's intent. It's stuff that's best read out loud - slowly.} This week it's:...

An excerpt from:

The Bicycle Wheel

3rd edition


by Jobst Brandt

Bicycle wheels don't work the way people think they do.Wire wheels are pre-stressed structures, with built in stresses that are reduced when they are subjected to loads.

Shore by Night 200k

The NJ Randonneurs "Shore By Night 200k" began at 10 pm. Fourteen of us would take an overnight bike ride from Cranbury NJ to the Jersey Shore and back - 130 miles. A simple description of a simple event. So why was it that doing that simple thing felt so dreamlike, surreal, inverted?

Philadelphia to Phoenixville

Philadelphia to Phoenixville is a 102 Kilometer RUSA permanent (#1472) that begins in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia and loops through Center City, Philadelphia,  before going through Valley Forge to Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. The mostly flat course has a few climbs (one pretty steep) mixed in to keep it interesting. It uses bike lanes, bike paths and low trafficked streets.

These are a few pictures taken during my ride of the course on Sunday July 22, 2012 (click on any picture to zoom):

Friday Writings for Randos - Where is man's truth to be found?

{Friday Writings for Randos - A weekly post that features pieces from other writers that touch some facet of the Randonneuring experience, even if that was not the author's intent. It's stuff that's best read out loud - slowly.} This week it's:...

An excerpt from: 

WIND, SAND AND STARS

 By  Antoine de Saint-Exupery
(1939)

Everything about mankind is paradox. He who strives and conquers grows soft. The magnanimous man grown rich becomes mean. The creative artist for whom everything is made easy nods. Every doctrine swears that it can breed men, but none can tell us in advance what sort of men it will breed. Men are not cattle to be fattened for market. In the scales of life an indigent Newton weighs more than a parcel of prosperous nonentities. All of us have had the experience of a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming - a joy so thrilling that if it was born of misery we remembered even the misery with tenderness. All of us, on seeing old friends again, have remembered with happiness the trials we lived through with those friends. Of what can we be certain except this - that we are fertilized by mysterious circumstances? Where is man's truth to be found?

Hawk's Nest 200K - Playing in the street.

Today, I went to the mountains to play in the street.

Ted saw a black bear. He took a picture of it. The  picture shows the black bear standing, nose to ground, next to a white swing set. Its body seems half the height of the swing set.  Thick, rich, black fur. Either Ted has very good zoom or that bear was close.

Ted saw the black bear on the long climb on Route 390 toward Promised Land. I made the long climb toward Promised Land but I didn't see the bear. Maybe it wasn't there when I went by or maybe I was just focused on climbing, turning the pedals, passing the bottom of the ski lift and the "antique store" where "antiques" fill the front yard like a mashed confusion of history's droppings.

Ted showed me the the picture at the next controle, an Exxon Mini Mart:

Friday Writings for Randos - Breath and Spirit

{Friday Writings for Randos - A weekly post that features pieces from other writers that touch some facet of the Randonneuring experience, even if that was not the author's intent. It's stuff that's best read out loud - slowly.} This week it's:...

An excerpt from: 

Running after Antelope

by Scott Carrier

In the beginning God inhaled and created all life. This is the Hindu creation myth. They have the same word for breath and spirit, as did the ancient Greeks. 

Heat index and other imaginary numbers

Some imaginary numbers annoy me. Just on principle. 

Like the "heat index." A weather forecaster stands there and pretends that a high temperature added to high humidity equals an even higher temperature. That's simply not true. Wet heat and dry heat are different. Hot and humid can be sweltering, it can be steamy, but it's not like hot and dry. It's the difference between a desert and the tropics. One ain't like the other and inventing a "heat index" don't make it so. 

Friday Writings for Randos - What if it all felt perfect?

{Friday Writings for Randos - A weekly post that features pieces from other writers that touch some facet of the Randonneuring experience, even if that was not the author's intent. It's stuff that's best read out loud - slowly.} This week it's an excerpt from a blog post titled:

  
What if it all felt perfect ?


by John Romeo Alpha*

What if I was riding my bike, and it all felt perfect?

Passing thoughts

To the guy wearing

the black and white skin suit

riding
the carbon fiber Pinarello

on aero bars
and pencil thin tires

on the bike trail 

at 20 mph: