Weather what?

I rode my commute plus this morning. I am only 1 mile from work but I want to get a workout in before I start my day, so rolled out about 6:10 am and did about 50 minutes. I hit the sandcreek bikepath on 10th street here in Newton and rolled south into the hefty 20 mph wind. Rode south to 1st street and turn west for a bit and then south again through the "not a public road" BNSF railroad yard. It was pretty cool in the dark and turned east on SE 14th to Old Main. Took that back to first to Main street all the way through downtown to North 12th and then stumbled around a couple of miles and then headed to school. 10 miles to start the day really wakes me up. I really wish my commute was farther just so I could get more miles in each morning. I took the Raleigh but I have got to get another set of rims or true the heavy bastards that I have now. Feels like I am dragging rocks behind me...more later.

Riding Goals

I have had a great month! October has brought me closer to my yearly goal of 1000 miles. I hit 200 miles for the month and now I am over 600 miles for the year. Rode 23 miles yesterday in cold spitting rain. The 20 mph north wind was a killer for the first 11 miles. The NW wind kept us from going very fast and also kept us in low gears. We avg less than 10 mph for the first half of the trip. We went north out Newton toward Old Dutch Ave. 6 miles north of town and then took turned west toward Hesston, KS. We were still into the wind but not just in our faces. Temperature dropped 9 degrees or so in the first hour of riding. We turned south at Ridge road and WOW the flight took off from there. We avg over 20 mph the next 6 miles south. Only problem was the cold for as it was easier to ride, it took less effort we got cold. Turned back to the east on 12th street rolling back into town. Today we were both really sore and needing a day of rest. Now, I want to go ride just thinking back over the ride yesterday. I rode with Ray Olais. I was on my 84 Raliegh capri and Ray rode his cannondale r400. This was the first time to ride this route on rode bikes for us. More later.

Putting It All Out There

Putting It All Out There

WOW cannot believe this.

Bike for Sale $80.00

I am offering this bike for sale on craigslist. If you came from craigslist. welcome to my blog read or just see the bike pics. I got this for my son but he doesn't want to ride or learn to ride. Could be so much fun for him but oh well.

Bikely

I found another cool mapping java base bike mapping site. It doesn't do a lot with the workout info but the mapping feature is easy to work with on my netbook.

Newton Outlet Mall Loop

Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

Ride details

Hello all blogger fans and random folks stumbling onto my ramblings about whatever pops into my head. So in this blog post I plan on talking about the debate results from the past couple of tournament, recent ride details and my new baby...ie laptop netbook.

So Newton debate is having a great season so far. We have 2 dci (debate coaches invitational) bid invitations. This means at very competitive tournaments we have broke to elimination rounds and one team all the way to finals. I have only qualified 1 team ever to DCI and now we have two. We have broke at both big tournaments and this past weekend was my day off. I got a call from Tyler B. and told me he and Anna E, went 4-1 and got 2nd at the Lyons invitational. This is Anna's first open tournament and she has been a little slow to get going this season. She has also had some other distractions but I was so happy to see these two have success. It is great when some of the kids that have always done well excell but these kids have struggled in several ways. Tyler has really tried to get better and he has. He has really improved at Lay judge adaption. Anna has an attitude to say the least but she is very passionate about whatever her position is. She needs to work on the flow but Tyler is better at that now while she is better pure speaker.

Debate has been eating up so much of my time, my riding miles have suffered. I need to do a better job of balancing family, debate and my riding/healthy eating program. I did about 31 miles this weekend but that is not nearly enough. I need to start getting 10 miles a day no matter what. Rain or shine, early or late tired or not. I have to try do a little each day so I can try to reach my 1000 mile goal. Yesterday's ride was so beautiful I could not wait for my riding buddy since he had errands to run in Wichita. I put in 15 miles on an amazing fall day in Kansas. Hardly any wind and sunny with a temperature of about 65 degrees. Rode my Trek 3700 south to the golf course. Sand Creek Station is a great course and one section has a bike path running through it but most of paths are for "golf related activities only" in other words no bikes. From the golf course hit the road through wheatridge housing edition and then to Walmart to Kansas Ave. or 81 highway. Took 81 north to the access road by Dillon's south store. The 14th street access road connects to Spencer via under I-135. Took Spencer north to 24th street north in North Newton. Some of this was on gravel road. I also saw a couple riding their bikes at the SPencer/24th street. He was riding a sweet Fuji mtn bike and she was on a trek hybrid of some kind. We talked for a second. They were in town for Fall Fest at Bethel College. There was also a HUGE auction going on on Cyprus near Anderson rd. Everything was for sale. That was about the end of Sat ride as I cruised the last mile home. Felt great.
Today I called Ray Olais and he was up for a ride so I cruised over to his house. We road south to the bike path. Here is a link to mapmyride map of my route I took today. It will make it clearer what route I took. Sunday's ride is almost the reverse of my ride Saturday. Cool thing today hit my all time fastest speed. It was going downhill and wind aided but I hit 36.6 mph. I want a road bike so badly so I can start racking up more miles with less effort. My mtn bike is great but the tires are wide and nobby. I am trying to talk the wife into letting me order new slick tires foor the mtn bike. I will also be able to ride on a trainer this winter if I have slick tires. If I get my road bike then I can ride that. I want an old Schwinn varsity or Raleigh. I like the older Bridgestone, and Centurion's. I need a 55 to 58 cm frame. I prefer the handle bars to be a little higher than the seat level. I hope i can find a project bike to fix up. Of course I would like to pay nothing for it but that is not very likely.
I am typing this post on my new Asus Eee Pc netbook. I love it. I am still getting used to my smaller keyboard but I am adjusting. It has a 40 gb sshd. This means it is all flash memory with no moving parts and does so well on battery life. I get about 8 hours of battery life. It also came with Lynux operating system. The xandros version was aweful. I put ubuntu for netbooks on it and I love this thing. This is not for saving music or video. Small Solid State HD (sshd) prevents those applications but for flowing debate rounds and for doing grades it is perfect. It also has 1 GB of memory that runs pretty fast. Still getting used to Ubuntu but after a bit, I didn't miss windows at all. Wow I have typed for too long. I now need to start linking. So more later maybe.