ClubJuggler

My packet came in the mail yesterday. As of now, I'm an official member of the:


Now I just need to have the local patrol coordinator fill me in on how actual patrolling goes and then I can have at it. :-) Should be fun! Yet another excuse to get out and ride. :-)

Apparently I missed Drive your Bike to Work Day[1] which was yesterday. But, today I have my bike on my car. I was planning on going biking after work, but since I managed to forget the box with all my bike supplies (you know, little things like helmet, shoes, gloves, glasses....) I will instead be going home before biking, so for me, today might as well be Drive your Bike to Work Day. (Check out the pictures of the hazards of low clearance!)


[1] Yes, it's satire. Since this is Bike Month and this week, specifically, is Ride your Bike to Work week it's not too surprising. :-)

Went biking at Little River Regional Park today with David. We did about 6.5 miles. Here's our tracklog.

Had quite a bit of fun on the trail. If you notice a sort of round spot on the tracklog near the lower right corner, that's where there was a a large drop-in that when it came back up there was a ramp that had been built that went up to the top of a fallen log, and then another ramp after the trunk of the log that pretty much went straight and to the ground. I did that a couple of times. The first time, I went about halfway down the drop in with my brakes on, then let them go and rocketed down the hill and the back up, onto the ramp and over the tree. It was fun! I tried it again a second time a bit later, and that time, since the first time had gone so well, I unconsciously let off the brakes much higher up the drop-in hill and as a result when I hit the ramp I was going correspondingly that much faster! Couple that with a not quite perfect line on the ramp and things got a bit interesting! Luckily, I managed to stay on the ramp going up and just ended up going off the side of the exit ramp after the tree trunk. Since that was a fairly short and level ramp anyway, there was no harm done except to get my heart rate back up! After we got back to the parking lot, while David waited at his SUV, I went back and got the last connecting trail (basically the beginner's trail) so I would have a complete tracklog.

Complete stats are here:

( Bike Log )

Headed home on Friday evening to watch over B while jklgoduke headed to a rehearsal for her choir (who had its "Spring Oratorio" today).

On Saturday, I first went by to look at a new (to me) bike rack I had seen on craig's list. My new bike doesn't fit on my old Yakima Lockjaw bike rack, so I found someone on craig's list selling 4 Yakima King Cobra for $75 each. He sold the rack bars and 2 of them before I called, but since I already have the rack and only needed one, I was able to pick up what I needed. (Now I need to figure out what to do with the extra Lockjaw I don't need.)

After that, I headed over to CarolinaCon to hear the presentation "Enforcing the GPL" by Sapna Kumar (who sings in the Duke Chapel Choir with jklgoduke and who I got to know on the Chapel Choir Spain trip over new year's). Her presentation was incredible. She's going to be presenting on the GPL version 3 at the TriLUG meeting in June and I wondered how she'd handle the TriLUG audience (which can be demanding of speakers at times). After seeing this presentation, I have no doubt she'll do fine at TriLUG. :-) I'm definitely looking forward to that meeting.

Headed home not too long after that and stopped by the grocery store to stock up on things. The bluetooth headsets my mom gave jklgoduke and I for Christmas really help when the shopping list is at home and she's reading it to me as I traverse the store!

Today, B and I headed to Duke Chapel. B was very good during the service, but unfortunately we ended up sitting next to another little boy that kept, unconciously I belive, scooting closer and leaving us very little room. I don't believe it was malicious. Just as we stood up and sat down during the service, each time we lost a bit more room. B has only been coming to the entire service since this past January and most of the time he will spread out his coloring book or note pads and color or draw while "listening" to the service. It's a start, but it can be challenging when things aren't what they normally are. But, aside from a little bit of grumbling to me, B was really good and didn't bother anyone. (Yay!)

After the service, jklgoduke had a limited amount of time to eat lunch since she had to be back by 2pm to set up (since she's the chapel choir concert master). Our good friend Rob was visiting from Johnson City (to see the concert) and we ended up going out with him, another friend Russ who's wife and daughter were in Salisbury picking up their son from a weekend camping and two other choir members Amy and Jen (I believe I got the last name right). We headed over to Tylers in Durham and had lunch outside. The weather was absolutely perfect even if the service was far from it. Besides messing up my order slightly and then messing up our bills, the waitress wouldn't hurry at all until jklgoduke finally told her she was leaving! As it was, I dropped her and Russ off at the chapel at 7 minutes after 2pm which I thought wasn't too bad.

Afterwards, B and I came back home. I had given him several options for things to do this afternoon, ranging from biking to working on the play fort we've been building for him but we finally settled on Slip-n-Slide! :-) He did that while I alternated between watching jklgoduke's concert on the Internet and working on the play fort. (I had to pull off a floor joist that was severely warped and then figure out how many boards were needed to space the joists about a foot apart so we can put synthetic flooring diagonally on it.)

After doing that for a while, I came back in and watched the second half of the concert while B did craft stuff on the back porch. I had the windows right between us open so we could talk while he was working on his "pine cone critters". (I'll have to see if I can post some pictures of those. They're really quite creative!) After that, we ate supper and then went out to clean my car. We gave B a "dust buster" style vacuum cleaner for Christmas and he loves using it everywhere he can. So, between that and our regular vacuum, we managed to clean out my car. We had thought about washing it too, but by the time we finished the cleaning, we had about 20 minutes until he had to go to bed, so we settled for just rinsing the car. B, of course, availed himself of the opportunities to get extremely wet. :-)

So, a pretty good, if fairly busy weekend. I'm fairly psyched about having a rack that will work with my new bike. I was getting pretty good about getting it into the wagon, but this will make it a lot easier. In fact, I'm hoping to ride both at lunch tomorrow and after work! If anyone in the area is interested in going mountain biking sometime, please let me know! I'm hoping to get out to the Little River trails next Saturday and then I'd like to start going to other trails in NC. I got out my Mountain Biking North Carolina book this evening and was flipping through that. Hopefully this summer I'll have some time to get out and bike.

Anyway, that's all for now.

( Bike Log )