The coyote buys from Acme

That damn Road Runner is elusive as ever! Ole Wil-E Coyote goes out, gets a Super-Stretch rubber band from Acme, straps it up, and launches in an effort to catch Road Runner. Alas, the poor bastard goes too fast, misses his opportunity, and crashes miserably into the rut of life he is accustomed to. That is how I feel of late since I'm lacking motivation to do anything.

I've gotten behind on a few things recently so I've had to catch another gear. Like the Coyote, I build up a fierce determination, go rushing headlong trying to attain my goals, but in my haste I overlook a few important details and miss some excellent opportunities. When I do slow down, I crash back into the Ruts of Acedia. The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth, so I guess its shit or get off the pot time.

Catching up a bit...

Since my last post, I've only ridden a few times and the heat has been the biggest enemy since I need to regain some cardio as well as endurance. Not happening in 100+ temps! We did have a great ride this past Saturday, however, and yes the heat got to me at the end. The fact that I ate rare prime rib the night before and it didn't get fully digested didn't help matters. My body was busy with that beef and wasn't too concerned that my muscles were screaming for water and nutrients.

Class, today's word is BONK. Can you say "BONK"?
B-brutal
O-over exersion
N-not gonna make it
K-kill me please, so the suffering will end

For last Saturday's ride, I chose a route of some familiar roads as well as a few new ones that would give us roughly 65 miles and a hair over 3,400 ft. total of climbing. I'm not sure if it was the heat, but several of our regular riders were not keeping up with the 18 mph pace we were doing on the flats. We weren't hauling-the-mail so it puzzled me as to why they couldn't stay in the pack. These particular riders can easily do a 19mph average over similar distances and tougher climbs. Mark and I would be talking while we were climbing the small hills of the gently rolling farmland roads, but when we'd glance back the rest of the pack would be several hundred yards back and struggling to catch up. Like Mark stated, "steady pace means different things to different riders." Mark is 100% on that, and it is the same story with our group: a few of the strong riders will be on the front, in the wind, putting down a steady but fairly moderate pace that all can handle, but when one person in the pack slows the rest are either too lazy to come around and take up the pace making to help that weaker rider or they pass by the ones struggling in an effort to catch the leaders. Either way, people only want to "wheel suck" others and then blow the pack away at the end. In racing, that will work once but you'll earn an asshole status quickly just like you do in our group rides. Training rides on Tuesday and Thursday are different because everyone knows that we're going to keep the group together until we reach a certain point and then the attacks begin, and everyone becomes pirates.


At the start of tomorrow's ride, I plan to discuss the particulars on pace line etiquette as well as what we should be doing on our Saturday and Sunday group rides to help each other keep pace. These are not training rides, or hammerfests, but we ride to get a good workout and enjoy the company of other riders. Anyone wanting to piddle along should announce such intentions at the beginning of the ride so we don't waste time waiting unnecessarily. I think that's fair.

I attended an avionics training course in New York this week at CES Laboratories. It was more intense than I expected....way more intense! It was also a very humbling experience for me since I thought I had a good grip on avionics systems. Well, I used to have a decent grip on the fundamentals apparently and this course was motivation for me to study up regularly to keep sharp. Reading binary codes when troubleshooting modern avionics systems will put a hurtin' on the gray matter for sure. My instructor, who is an Electrical Engineer, was able to do the "cut-off frequency" formula in his head, while poor me took 10+ minutes to work it out on paper (without a calculator of course). Scary stuff to see someone that good do it not once but five times with me picking the inductors and capacitors at random. I would build the circuit, find the voltages and frequency using an ocilliscope, and then do the math to confirm the frequency reading. Perry, my instructor, would simply ask what components I would be utilizing, think for less than 10 seconds, write something on a piece of paper, flip the paper over so I couldn't read it, and he'd walk away while I began building the circuits. After 20 minutes of working to build, test, and confirm my readings working the formula out, Perry and I would discuss what I did. He would then ask me to flip the paper over to reveal the same answer I worked so hard to achieve. Damn this guy is smart! Got to be magic or something............


Tonight, Diana and I will be going to a local campsite to set up the new camper as a dry run before Santos. We hope to get the routine down, make notes of what is needed and wanted, and see what kind of time we need to do specific items. I'm building a couple of pre, during, and post camp checklists to ensure we don't do something stupid. Well, at least not dangerous. Its me afterall and I put the "A" in accident prone!