AgentScotty

Thursday was a great day to ride, but I'd already ridden over 100 miles over the course of Monday-Wednesday, so I stayed in and went to sleep early (I wake up at 4-430am to be to work at 6am).

 

Today looked like crap most of the day, but brightened up in the late afternoon, and I got out and did 35 miles, riding from Nashua through the Fort Devens area and back.

 

http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/4852/0514001806.th.jpg

 

I'll probably do a very short ride on Saturday (if I ride at all) as I signed up a night or two ago for the Charles River Wheelmen Spring Century, which is this Sunday. At a minimum I'm doing the metric century, and I may do the full century if I feel up to it. I've already downloaded the cuesheets, and am thinking of mapping out early exits so that I can start the full century, but know where to turn if I want to bail out at 75-85 miles.

 

As I only have 464 miles on the season, doing the full 100 (if I'm up for it) will add 21% to my current miles.

I managed to dodge work tomorrow (I've been standing around watching the clock too much lately waiting for orders to come in), so I'm planning on doing around 60 miles tomorrow (Salem NH to Hampton Beach and back to Salem). The temperature will be a bit cool for my taste (48F at 9am, heading up to a high of 62F after noontime), but heading towards the beach always charges me up. I'm not looking forward to the crosswinds and the uphills on the way back, though.

 

If we get slammed with a bunch of orders later in the week (it always seems to be feast or famine), I'm hoping to make up the day off with some 10-11 hour days so that I don't have to burn a vacation day on it.

 

I did a 22 mile ride tonight with the local cycling club (55F down to 50F) but it didn't feel too cold, as there hasn't been enough hot weather for me to acclimate to the summer yet. Once that happens, anything below 70F will feel cold to me.

QUOTE (Queen of Megadon @ May 5 2010, 11:17 PM)

Hey WAW...nice to meet you! Welcome! Been a fan since Signals...The shows this summer will be #23 and #24 (your screen name is familiar, have i seen you on other sites?)

We're finally getting some nicer temperatures now.

 

I did about 35 miles in early April when the temperature went north of 90F, but the temps and the weather have been mostly abysmal since then until recently.

 

Today I did a very hilly 45 mile ride with the temps in the high 80s-low 90s. I felt like hell at the end of it, but overall I'm getting my legs back faster this season than in previous seasons.

 

One of the guys I sometimes ride with has already bagged 3 centuries this year. I'm probably 2-4 weeks out from being ready to do my first one.

 

I'm hoping to do a few centuries a month during the nicer months once I'm up to that level. I may look at taking one vacation day a week from mid-June through mid-August to give myself more time, as 6-7 hours in the saddle puts a pretty big dent in the average weekend.

What was the filename of the first pic?

 

As a veteran of the internet, I have already surmised that the filename of the second pic was "blowout.jpg"...

Was that W NH -to -Hampton an official century, or a do-it-yourself ride?

 

I've ridden the GSW Tri-State Seacoast Century every year from 2006 - 2009, though I only did 50 miles last year, due to the 35F temperature at 7am. Even riding from noon to 4pm, the warmest it ever got was 59F.

 

I'm in Nashua, so riding Nashua - Hampton - Nashua is a pretty good do-it-yourself almost-century. I think I got 98 miles out of that last year. If I didn't bonk as badly as I did, I could've tacked on a few more miles to make it official.

 

I think my favorite of the area Centuries is the NSC Blazing Saddles. I had to drop out after 60 miles in 2009 due to severe thunderstorms, probably the worst I've ever seen on a bike.

Although I live in a city with lots of busy roads, I'm lucky to be close to a lot of small towns, so I can ride a few miles down the busy road I live near, and then turn off into areas with a lot less traffic.

 

That's a bummer having to drive to get to safer territory, but it beats getting hit, getting the horn and/or the finger, cans/bottles/trash thrown at you, etc. Yeah, there are a fair number of jerks and nutters in my neck of the woods, so I try to stay off the busy roads whenever possible.

 

I did my third ride of the year this afternoon, and my second in two days. I had to grit my teeth for 4.5 miles before I could sit down properly. The first time riding two days in a row is the hardest part of starting the season for me, but now that it's "behind" me, the rest of the season should be easier.

 

My average speed on the early rides is a lot better this year than many prior years, so hopefully that's a sign I'll be up to speed more quickly this season.

 

I'm glad I made it out today: The weather was originally supposed to be nice Thursday through Sunday, but now that's been cut back to Saturday. Saturday will be 70F and clear, but Sunday will now be 52F and cloudy, with rain later in the day.

I didn't know there was a bikini biking thread here. I guess I'm not the only peep to misread that.

 

I did a lot of biking as a kid/teenager, but lost sight of it when I turned 18 and started working.

 

I got back into it in my early 20s out of financial necessity to get out of debt, but it also got me back into great shape.

 

I was off the bike for about 10 years until a few years ago when I walked off a soul-destroying job ("Employment-at-will" cuts both ways ), turned my time off into a 6 month sabbatical, bought a Cannondale, and put in over 3000 miles in 6 months. I lost a ton of weight, and ppl were surprised to see me 6 months later (I went back to the old job after a buyout / management change), as I had lost 8 inches, 40 pounds, and 5 years.

 

Unfortunately I've put that weight back on (particularly during the winters) but I try to put on as many miles as I can in the spring/summer/fall. Last year my part of New England had a lot of poor weather and cold temps during biking season, but I have high hopes for this year, as temperatures tend to average out over time. We've already had more nice days in March this year than I can remember in the last few years. I've only been out twice this year, but I'm hoping to make it out Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, before the temps head back into the 30-40F range.

 

If I can work up the conditioning for it, and find 2 hours of time for it (my commute would go from an hour to 3 hours a day) I'd like to dump my car and use my bike for the daily commute (48 miles round trip by bike, 52 by car). If I could do that 3 times a week, I could probably get back to the shape I was in in my 20s. The ride in at 4:30a-6:00a would be tough (I should probably buy bear spray as a precaution) but the ride home from 2:30p-4:00p would be nice.

 

I don't have a pic of my own bike, but this is the bike I bought in 2006: http://www.cannondale.com/gbr/eng/Products...2044-6RR7D-R700

The link has been changed, so sextuple-nested quoting isn't preserving anything.

lol, but Pumpy would probably post "Go pound salt and sand" if he saw that post...

QUOTE (Mr. Krinkle @ Mar 18 2010, 12:21 PM)

Maybe TRF is going to gain 6,000 new members?

Making matters worse, that last storm became major enough in the late afternoon (after everyone thought it was safe to go out) to cause hours-long commutes and lots of accidents for us peeps up in New Hampshire.

 

Luckily I'm just over the border, and was able to take back roads home, but someone I work with needed 2-3 hours to get from Nashua to Manchester, which was on top of the 45 minutes to get from Billerica to Nashua.

QUOTE (DotS @ Feb 22 2010, 05:26 PM)

hiya MizzAyann! what's this i hear about a "major nor'easter" coming NE's way for friday and sat.? is that so? i was almost hoping to get 'trapped" down here in fla for another week- looks like i'll be heading north ahead of the storm tho. darn. oh hey! i was on the raft in the lake and saw 2 gators. i have to tell Rain if she's on here. wouldn't peeps love it if a gator dragged me under and permanently shut me up?

EDIT: Nevermind, went to most recent post, but didn't realize there were two pages after it...

QUOTE (Tony R @ Feb 14 2010, 04:47 AM)

Just checked out the C.I.N and apparently the old board has been completely lost. Welcome to 2006.

QUOTE (ouchithurts_2112 @ Feb 14 2010, 05:01 AM)

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe sUndie did a complete backup prior the *cough* "upgrade"

Maybe some progress:

 

CP is coming up with an "Offline" message (as it was yesterday) but now it's version 3.xx rather than 2.xx.

 

Previously, I had only seen the "Offline" 2.xx, and the infamous "IPS Driver Error".

QUOTE (Mara @ Feb 7 2010, 09:36 PM)

Cupid can cram his arrows up his fudge tunnel.

I switched from Vista to 7 RC back during the summertime, and installed 7 Pro as soon as it was released. I bagged 7 Pro at the discounted price during the summertime preorder window.

 

Although I didn't hate Vista, it was a pig (had to upgrade from 1GB to 3 GB of RAM just to get things to run well) and was prone to performance degradation. After 12-18 months, performance was bad, even after uninstalling all unnecessary software and manually de-crapping the registry. I benchmarked, wiped, reinstalled Vista, and benchmarked again, and verified that performance had degraded 30% over that 12-18 months of my first Vista install.

 

Hopefully 7 is like XP in that regard: Although I wiped and reinstalled XP a few times due to major hardware changes and the occasional suspected malware, I never got a performance boost by reinstalling XP. I hope the same is true for 7, if I ever have to reinstall it.

Atlas Shrugged:

 

"It was worth whatever it's cost me. I could afford the price of that show. If I had staged it intentionally, I would have beaten the record of the Emperor Nero. What's burning a city - compared to tearing the lid off hell and letting men see it?"

 

Oh no, I outed myself as a Randroid: Let the flaming commence...

QUOTE (BaldiePete @ Feb 13 2010, 04:31 AM)

The legacy of NickSlikk strikes. I originally typed "sep.poes" (without the ".") and it changed it to Americans.

QUOTE (Mystress Aynn @ Jan 20 2010, 01:51 PM)

...for tearing the lid off Hell and letting them see it...

Wide-Angle Watcher on CP.

I haven't been to CP in like a month, and the one day I decide to go there...

^^^ Enjoys rolling around naked in cow manure.