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Proud as a Peacock?

Want to be proud as a peacock? Bragging has rather a poor reputation. But riding all the way across a state gives a person bragging rights, I\’d say. They do it in Georgia. Maybe other states have their own \”flavor\”. Oh, of course! Iowa has RAGBRAI! Lots of home-made pie, it is said. They ought to call it Rag-PIE! And Kansas. If you do that one, be on the lookout for Dorothy and Toto. There\’s even a bicycle ride across Louisiana. Be careful you don\’t run over a crawfish, and don\’t try to tangle with an alligator. Earning those bragging rights means training up, of course. You don\’t need to be able to sustain Grand Tour velocity for hours on end, but you do need sufficient endurance to ride up to 80 miles a day for however many days it takes to get across Georgia, Iowa, or whatever state it is. Then, when you roll across the finish line, you can be proud as a peacock! I\’ve wondered often enough whether my current fitness level is up to such a ride. I can put them on my bucket list, of course; but not having a car would make it hard to get to such events. I\’m reluctant to pester somebody else to drive me to Iowa or wherever I want to go. Flying there would be costly enough if it were only me. Add transporting a bicycle by air, and the cost would skyrocket. One never knows, though. Maybe one of these days a miracle will happen!  

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Keeping My Palate Busy

I\’ve been keeping my palate busy by trying out new foods! Yesterday I rode to the salvage store, this time hauling the trailer. It\’s amazing how much drag that trailer added even when empty! Once in the store, I made the usual beeline for the make-your-own-grab-bag bins. I filled up a small and a large grab bag. Sixty-three snacks for $8! So what if they aren\’t always the freshest. They\’re still edible. I saw Capri Sun Sport Grape Blast, a pack of ten 6-oz pouches. It cost $1.50, far less than the usual price, so I decided to try it. Pretty good! I also found 6-packs of V8 +Hydrate. Six 8-oz cans for $1.50. It\’s an orange-grapefruit flavor, and I must admit that I\’m not very impressed with it. But sometimes I need to try new stuff, partly to report on it for my web site! I decided to order pickle juice shots. It\’s too late for tomorrow\’s long ride, but I want to try downing one of those shots halfway through a long ride, to see whether it will keep me from getting post-ride orthostatic hypotension. And how would it be to get the pickle-juice kick ice cold? Maybe one day I\’ll try Pickle Ice Freeze Pops! It would make an interesting change from ice cream, wouldn\’t it? Today I tried a new food: goodnessKnows bar. I like the flavor, but the chocolate coating on the bottom of the bar got quite messy. It was HOT out there! Keeping my palate busy need not be expensive. In fact, it can be quite cheap!  

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Le Tour Question

I\’ve got a Le Tour question. We read of many aspects of the TdF: what riders do when they need to \”go\”; eating during a race, and what not. What I\’d like to know is when and how they reapply sunblock while whizzing along at twenty-some mph. Do they have a special sunblock that lasts for five hours? Or perhaps, with their bike-handling skills, they can pedal no-hands while slathering it on. When I rode today, I sure needed lots of sunblock. It was clear, with no relief from the sun. I felt unaccountably tired; on the way home, I had to stop numerous times. Even in Zone 3, I kept feeling out of breath. Possibly it was that most of the time it felt like I had a headwind, and was pedaling at a higher cadence than usual and in a lower gear. It could have been the heat. It was only after I was back home that I learned that there\’s a heat advisory in effect. It said the temperature would be about 100 degrees! I drank lots of water; a gallon or so of it. That\’s about one quart per hour, and I was starting to feel bloated during the last few miles. I also guzzled over a quart of electrolyte drink. Now, over an hour after reaching home, and even with compression stockings on, orthostatic hypotension is creeping in. I\’d like to know exactly what causes it. It better not force me to give up riding! And I still don\’t have an answer to my Le Tour question.    

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Wanna Go Car Free?

Wanna go car free? There are some good reasons to do so. A car is very expensive. Even after the monthly payments are finished and the car is, at last, really your own, the expenses are far from over. Gasoline. Oil changes. Maintenance checks. Insurance can cost an arm and a leg, plus a finger or two. You\’ll have constant worries  about the car being broken into, crashed into, or even stolen. And what does it cost to park the blasted thing? Even if parking is free, can you find a spot for your car? The neighborhood where I live seems to have been developed before a car for every household was the norm; much less several people in the same household each owning a personal vehicle. Most cars have to be parked on the street. I\’m so glad I don\’t have to take part in that battle. The author of this book tells about his decision to get rid of his car, and his realization of how much money he was saving by not owning a car. The various chapters discuss ways to live car-free, or car-light: using public transit; renting a car for the few times a year when you truly need one to get somewhere; using a motorcycle; and — of course — riding a bicycle. I had been without a car for some years before finding this book, but I still enjoyed it. If you wanna go car free, I suggest this book!  

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A Day for Yellow

This is a day for yellow! Today is the Grand Depart. Of course, in honor of the big race, I\’m wearing yellow. Later we\’ll see pics of the peloton riding past vast fields of sunflowers. Or lavender. Lavender is supposed to be calming, but I\’m not really fond of the smell of lavender; so I\’m glad I don\’t have to pedal alongside it for who knows how many miles. Incidentally, is it possible that the route is deliberately sent past all that lavender to calm the racers? As I type this, the first stage is already over. Already there\’s been at least one crash! A Dutchman won the yellow jersey. A \”local favorite\” took the polka-dot jersey. Getting back down to the more mundane, I hitched up the trailer and rode to the salvage store. I brought home quite a load, too, including some things for taste-testing. A pile of 63 (yes, that\’s sixty-three!) snacks for eight bucks, or about 13 cents each. Some of them are a bit stale, but I don\’t care: some of those items normally cost over two bucks apiece. That load made the going feel very hard. I wonder if I was actually getting a tad dehydrated by the time I got home, even though I had water (two bottles) with me. But I made it, and soon I\’ll be browsing the online pics of Le Tour! As I said, it\’s a day for yellow.

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Parlez-vous Tour?

Parlez-vous Tour? Yes, it\’s that time again: the Tour de France is underway! Any field has its own lingo, not excepting Le Tour. Want to hang on, or merely understand what they\’re talking about? Check out this list. Little old me versus a pro Tour rider? No comparison, that\’s certain. As followers of TdF know, it\’s not all glamor; not by a long shot. We see news footage and \”stills\” of the crashes that take place. Riders who crash wind up with torn clothing and skin that resembles raw meat; and sometimes broken bones, too. I remember seeing in a video several years ago how one rider involved in a multi-bicycle crash went somersaulting over and over (I think 3-4 times!), while his bike went whirling through the air behind him. I\’m amazed that he didn\’t break his neck. I don\’t envy the riders the cobblestone stages, or those hors categorie climbs. By one account after another, it\’s hard for TdF riders to eat enough. They burn so many calories that they have to eat just about all the time that they aren\’t asleep, and getting enough food down becomes a chore. I fact, they\’re likely to become catabolic towards the end of a multi-stage race. I think I\’ll skip it. I\’m looking forward to enjoying the online pics of the race. I don\’t have TV, so I won\’t be watching it in action. Probably there\’s a way to get it on my laptop, but I have other things to take care of. Parlez-vous Tour? Allez, allez, allez!  

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This Isn\’t Wichita Falls!

This isn\’t Wichita Falls, but you don\’t have to be doing the Hotter\’N Hell 100 to have heat-related cycling problems. About a month ago, I did a long Sunday ride of 45 miles or so. An hour or so afterwards, big-time orthostatic hypotension set in; and it felt like my heart just wasn\’t slowing down. I didn\’t seem to be cooling off, either. My apartment is poorly insulated at best; and a hot, sunny day wasn\’t any help.   Sun sleeves are a big help. When I first put them on, they feel hot; but after I start riding, and begin to work up a bit of a sweat, the wind from my own motion keeps my arms a little cooler. Even better, sun sleeves eliminate the need for sunblock! Some cyclists include leg sleeves in their hot-weather riding gear. I haven\’t tried them, but I suspect that they\’re worth having. Getting back to my ride, did I need to drink more water? Should I have downed more electrolyte drink? Was I insufficiently acclimated for the pace I was trying to maintain, which wasn\’t really that fast? Was I tired to begin with? Here are some tips for hot-weather cycling. We began to get heat indices over 100 degrees before the end of June. Maybe I should aim to start those long rides at 6 am, not 7 am, so as to finish by 11 am at latest. I know this much, I\’d better get used to riding in the heat. We\’ve got about three more months of this! And this isn\’t Wichita Falls!  

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HAPPY FOURTH

Happy Fourth of July! Oh, how nice it was to not have to get up until past 7:00! And to be able to take the time for a longer ride. Oddly, it felt like I had a headwind, even though the breeze was only about 3 mph. It\’s not as though I were blasting along at 20 mph, either. I don\’t know what was going on there. Back home, I mixed up a batch of hot dog tikka masala* and set it in the fridge to marinate. I\’ll have some for lunch. Yesterday morning I saw a weird sight. I\’ve gotten used to seeing the gleam of alligator eyes in my headlight\’s beam, but never before have I seen  a gator\’s eyes reflecting in the water as well as gleaming. That would have been great for a Hallowe\’en post, but Hallowe\’en is months away! If hot dogs are the standard Fourth of July fare, my Fourth of July musical fare of choice is Sousa marches. I especially love Hands across the Sea. Happy Fourth of July! *Hot Dog Tikka Masala (a variation on Chicken Tikka Masala, from The Feed Zone Cookbook) 1 cup plain, low-fat yogurt 1 cup tomato sauce 1 cup thinly sliced onion 12 oz hot dogs, thinly sliced crosswise 1 tsp salt 2 Tbsp curry powder Mix all ingredients well (adjust salt and curry powder to your liking). Marinate in fridge at least one hour. Bring to bubbling over medium heat, turn heat down to a simmer, and let cook until onions are tender, stirring occasionally. Good over toast or brown rice or potatoes — or just on its own. Enjoy!    

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Bikecentennial

BIKEcentennial? The year, 1976. The United States was celebrating its Bicentennial. A group of cyclists rode across the country in celebration of this event, with some four thousand riders taking part. Bikecentennial eventually was renamed Adventure Cycling Association, and the rides continue!   The Greg Siple Award for Young Adult Bike Travel eventually grew out of this. Some of the participants in the original Bikecentennial are still members of Adventure Cycling; but \”AC\” wants to encourage more young people to travel by bicycle. After all, the riders from the first Bikecentennial are now in their 60s (or even beyond), and they want to see more young riders out there. The year 1976 also saw some special Baskin-Robbins flavors. I think there were as many as five or six of them. One involved chocolate (naturally!), and one was something crunch. One of them was Yankee Doodle something-or-other. My favorite was Red, White, and Blueberry. It was Neapolitan with blueberry replacing the chocolate part. Now that we\’ve enjoyed our ice cream, we can get back on our bikes and burn off a few of those calories. I\’ve pored over Adventure Cycling\’s \”ride catalogs\”, all but drooling. Three-week \”epic\” rides! \”Inn to Inn\” rides! Fully supported rides! For a newcomer to the bicycle touring scene, I guess a fully-supported trip would be the wisest choice. It certainly would be for me. It probably is better to \”learn the ropes\” when you aren\’t trying to haul a lot of gear! Happy riding! HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!

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Let’s Head for Utah

Let’s Head for Utah! Let’s head for Utah, and the Moab Rocks Mountain Bike Stage Race. The Moab event takes place in late March. I hope all the riding keeps the participants warm enough. Late March can still be pretty chilly even here at sea level. Don’t forget to pack along cold-weather riding togs; for example, a pair of lobster gloves. The city of Moab is 4,000 feet up, and the course tops out at over 10,500 feet. Merely thinking about that altitude leaves me gasping for breath.  If I couldn’t get my hands on a hypoxic training mask, I’d have a very hard time trying to ride the Moab course at all; never mind making a competition out of it. I’ll bet the scenery is exhilarating; but the course also looks scary. No guardrails; and precipitous drops. No sightseeing for pleasure, that’s for sure. Apparently it’s watch your every move, or go over the edge. The info I’ve read states that Moab Rocks is fully supported. Does that mean that riders who need to shed layers of clothing as they go can put those layers somewhere other than in their Camel-Bak’s pockets? I know that my Camel-Bak’s pockets have scant room for clothing once I’ve stuffed in cable lock, tube of Chamois Butt’r, and  roll of bathroom tissue.  For off-the-trails riding, you might even want to carry along a snake bite kit. If we think we can manage that high altitude, let’s grab our MTBs; and let’s head for Utah! This blog/page may contain affiliate links. “We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.” ABOUT ME © This website is the property of its author. DISCLAIMER I am not a cycling coach; nor a health professional. This site is based on my own experiences, opinions, etc. If you need help, please consult the appropriate professional. FRESH FROM MY JOURNAL ✍🏻 Facebook Twitter Youtube INTERPRETER

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