Well, I rode to the polling site, a church ten miles away from my house, but I rode there from Tiffin U, since I’d commuted in to work today. I’ve commuted at least three or four days each week all semester (we are now in week 11). The only days I have not ridden have been due to rain. It is a beautiful warm November day so biking more than the commute couldn’t be passed up!

Anyway, I google-mapped a route to the church polling place in Fremont but I goofed up and turned on CR 38 instead of 37 and ended up way out in the farmland somewhere… I passed through Green Springs and just kinda hacked my way back north and west and eventually found Smith Road and made it to the church to vote. It was supposed to be 19 miles from TU, but I added miles since I got off course.

I did see my friend Dave riding back from Fremont Cycle to Tiffin, so that was cool — I saw a “real cyclist” (you can tell by bike jersey, shorts, and bike) approaching and then saw that it was Dave! Awesome. I think his daughter is in choir on Tuesday afternoons so I’m sure he was headed home to get her to choir practice. Kind of funny to happen upon a good riding buddy way out in the cornfields (some harvested now, but many still standing).

I ended up with over 50 miles on the day, so that was a big plus. The wind was out of the SSW today so parts of the ride were a little harder but at least when I got off course I was still benefitted by a tail wind and not battling a headwind. Last week when I rode from Tiffin to the Fremont Cycle shop it was stupidly hard since the NNW wind was so strong!

This afternoon after voting, I headed home although I’d been thinking of going to the bike shop, and got in just before sunset. Super nice ride and got to explore some new roads!

Well, today the wind was out of the NNW so for once it blew me in to campus, but man, that 20 mph headwind was rough on the way home!

I’ve commuted 88 miles so far (in Fall semester 2011). Last Friday my pump malfunctioned and I ended up with two flats (it was letting all the air OUT of the tires instead of pumping more air in) so I had to drive (not enough time to fix the flats PLUS no working pump except for my on-the-road frame pumps). Went to the shop and with Dan’s help got my Topeak Joe Blow Pro pump working again. The other reason I drove Friday was the temp (98° F, felt like 107° according to the weather channel). So, since I had the car, I did some errands that need a vehicle such as taking in the recycling materials. It was all good. I was just kinda bummed at not having gotten to ride to and from Tiffin every work day the first week.

Today is Labor Day, and of course, TU had classes, so I Labored, I guess. I got invited on three different long-mile rides today but of course had to pass on all of them since I still had to work, although I still rode my commute. I’d pretty much forgotten about the whole Labor Day holiday thing since I knew I’d be at work as usual, and when the guys in the bike shop asked if I could go on the 7 AM holiday ride, I just looked at them and said, “What holiday?” D’oh.

It cooled off nicely today. Low 60s on my afternoon ride home. Nice change from the high and humid 90s of the past few days. Actually wore a jacket riding in this morning.

I am getting back to riding more, finally. This recovery from the October 2009 Hilly Hundred bike crash has taken a long time. A lot of people do not understand why I would continue to bike, but it’s what I love and is the ONLY fun thing (other than work) to do around here! Last year was too much time spent in the car commuting. (Rochelle and I drove 7000 miles on our camping vacation out to the west coast in July, but hey, that’s another thing entirely.)

Two Sundays ago we went on the Flatlanders Tour and did two of the four loops, so I ended up with 73 miles on the day, which was fun.

Mike, Karen, Dave at lunch in Elmore

I did a century this summer (drafted my friend Dave for 98 miles, seriously) on the Portage River Tour. Dave (orange jersey) and I rode to Elmore from my house, did the ride which was a metric century and went through Bowling Green, and then rode back, so I got in my 100 miles for the day. And it was my first big Tour event on my single bike since the Hilly where I crashed. Mike M in gray is the Elmore shop mechanic and he rode with us too once we got to Elmore. He was bemused my all my RAIN stuff… until I explained that it was the BBC club’s event (yep, I’ve got T shirts and jerseys, and have ridden RAIN 3 times, but worked it as well, so I gotta advertise with the jerseys. He will have to meet Dave T some day to meet a real RAIN aficionado.)

I have commuted to Tiffin University all three days this first week that I’ve taught, and the weather has been cooperative. It’s an 11 mile flat country route, which I did not used to even bother counting as training, but I guess I will now since my riding is so limited. I am back on my single bike although I’ve still been out several times recently on the Red Rocket Trek tandem with Tom. He has upgraded her to belt drive which is way cool and will be putting on a carbon fork and bars for himself (he gets tingly/numb hands so we need to cut down the road vibation.) I’ve been riding Kaz’s bike to TU, so his 5500 is now my nice commute bike.

It is kind of funny but the Elmore bike shop people passed my name along to a writer who was doing a newspaper article on bike commuting, and she interviewed me by phone while I was out in Seattle on my vacation, and then came over and took photos of me last week for the article. It will be in the Genoa OH paper. I got all rigged out in my commuter gear: had the Ross, complete with fenders, locks, taillight, and wore my Trek commuter backpack, so hopefully my poster child moment will live up to the story about bike commuting! I realized how weird I am when she asked when I’d started to commute… well, gee, junior high school?! I used to ride Lake Shore Boulevard in Euclid to Shore Junior High school, nearly, and leave my bike in my friend Andrea’s garage. I guess I took the city bus in the winter, but I got started on the bike commuter thing early. Apparently most adult bike commuters came to it after some period of driving (I did not even get a driver’s license until I was 19 and did not buy a car until after college.)

Trek Madone 6.9 New Bike

And my new Madone 6.9 frame, which I’ve built up with the 10-speed Dura Ace stuff off Kaz’s bike, has turned into quite the sled –feathery light, and has very cool Mavic Ksyrium SL wheels, courtesy of Mike G. and Jeanne Smith of my old place of employment, Bikesmiths. It took me a while to build due to the internal cable routing — very slick, but I gotta wonder how the pro team mechanics deal with that stuff — it took me hours to get the rear brake and derailleur cables routed. It’s a fantastic ride and I totally LOVE it. I still miss my crashed silver and black 5900, though but at least I have the older 5900 still.

My commute route to TU is flat, through farm land, and usually has very few cars but today 11 cars/trucks passed me as I rode home — heavy traffic day to be sure (I was riding home about an hour after my class ended and probably hit a shift switch time at the local factories.)

I’ve made it through six classes so far and 7 office hours: one more day and then I’ll have survived the first week of TU classes. I really really really hope that I can do what I need to do and not work every waking moment like I did last year. That was rough. 14 weeks to go plus a week of grading final papers, and another semester will pass. Many of my friends are no longer here — other jobs and maternity leaves, so campus is a bit bare of friends for me these days.

More later: I will blog more this year as the biking in the flatlands thing is happening more regularly again.

Recovery is progressing. I have been riding on my trainer and today went out for a 38 mile ride on The Red Rocket tandem with Tom Beres, the mechanic from the Fremont Cycle shop. It was windy and high 50s so I was glad to be wearing my arm warmers and vest. I miss my Pearl Izumi Vagabond jacket with the zip off sleeves. I have ridden on my indoor trainer the past couple of days and my knee definitely feels better after riding. I can’t really notice any difference after doing vision therapy but I am sure that it’s helping.

I started to wear my Sidi shoes today for the ride but noticed that the right cleat is loose, no doubt from the accident! I guess I’ll have to tighten that cleat up and see if it holds. I was kind of surprised that the shoes looked unscathed, but a loose cleat at least shows that something happened in the accident. I guess I can replace a cleat if I need to. I am just glad the Sidis are OK.

We had a good ride, and stopped a few times to stretch/rest. We rode south towards Tiffin then turned east and went to Clyde, and came back via the bike path. The last few miles I was feeling really tired.

Shared the butter pecan pie that I made with Tom and Dad. So it was a sweet, fun-filled day.

Well, I’m working two half-days each week at the Fremont bicycle shop, which has been great in terms of helping me get some of my bike skills back. I still can’t do everthing I used to, since I can’t see well. But it’s a start, and I think it’s helping Dan, the owner, out too. So far I’ve just been working the floor and doing some bike building. I can’t wrench well enough yet to work on other people’s bikes. We are now booking for June 2 on tuneups and stuff! Pretty amazing. I’ve been building a lot of Electras and a few Schwinns, plus a couple of Trek kids’ bikes.

I went out again on Thursday on the Red Rocket with Tom. We rode 22 miles and enjoyed nice weather after work. It was good to be outside. I’ve been riding my trainer (over 200 miles now) but it’s not nearly as fun as being outside, so the tandem rides are a bonus. Tom swapped saddles and pedals for me, too, so now I can clip in. It’s all good.

I have been riding my trainer — I have about 175 miles on my cyclocomputer — and on Thursday I got the chance to ride with Tom, the head mechanic from Fremont Cycle, on his Trek tandem. We went at 6 PM and rode the bike path to Clyde and back, about 17 miles. This was my first tandem ride (except for some very short tandem rides in Bloomington). It was a lot of fun, and my first outside ride since the accident in October, so I was psyched. It was warm and sunny here, which helped. I couldn’t clip in because although Tom had put on Speedplay pedals for me, my cleats were not able to clip in. Whatever. I was still able to keep my feet positioned OK, but I wasn’t clipped in. I was in charge of signaling turns and ringing the little electronic bell when we passed kids. It was a mental adjustment to not have to have my hands on the bars! I enjoyed the ride, although my eyes still prevent me from seeing off to the side. Fortunately, the captain had things under control.

Well, I got into an accident biking in Indiana at the end of October. Now I am just riding my indoor trainer and trying to recover some fitness.

It’s harvest time here! I rode to work Monday and by the time I rode back home many of the soybean fields had been cleared and harvested. A few of the corn fields have been cut, too. It was a perfect fall day on Monday — really nice ride, but with a KILLER headwind. I’m still on the Ross because I have had NO time to complete the RWB 5900 overhaul. Basically it’s together, but I want to test ride it to check the BB adjustment and I should probably pull the headset out and overhaul the bottom HS bearing, which after these rain rides tends to seize up and get rough. Think this was my slowest commute yet of about 50 minutes, but I don’t have stats since there’s no computer on the Ross. Thought about turning around before I got to the first crossroad — but I was all dressed and packed and moving down the road, so I kept riding.

The wind flattened a lot of the cornstalks in front of my house. It was really strong overnight, tossing and blowing everything around. Fortunately this house seems a lot better in windy conditions than my previous apartment, although only real winter winds will truly show the difference.

Tuesday morning was another beautiful day, but rain was called for in the afternoon. I deliberated over the Weather Channel’s forecast before deciding to ride in (still on the Ross, fortunately.) The afternoon commute was another good one, although there was a decent SSE 8 mph headwind. The moon was full and beautiful last night so I thought a night ride home might be pretty… alas, the rain did fall during the afternoon and during my Novel class in the evening. I had a lot packed into the class, including showing the last half of the Dangerous Liaisons movie (Glenn Close and John Malkovich) and a quiz, which I did at the end, so some students finished up around 9:30 PM. By the time I got my stuff packed it was 9:45. Realized that my clothing choice was really stupid — black pants and a navy-blue jacket… I’ll have to remember that in the future! At least I have lots of reflective stuff and lights (front & rear on the bike plus a red LED flasher on my backpack). And once I leave town there isn’t a lot of traffic to worry about.

I scudded home ahead of the strong SSE tailwind, watching the moon go in and out of the thickening grey clouds. Although the roads were damp, I was dry and comfortable (fenders!) Approximately fifteen minutes after I got home I suddenly realized that rain was POUNDING the house! Total cloudburst. Weird. But I missed it, luckily.

Wednesday morning I went for a walk up to the Wolf Creek bridge (3/4 mile up my road):

Had to go in on Wednesday for an A&S faculty meeting. I brought up the wording of the TU student-athlete missed class policy. I don’t think the director of athletics is too happy with me. I want to propose a wording change that actually allows faculty to impose some sort of attendance policy on student athletes; my suggested change is that if a student misses more than 20% or 25% of a class that they’ll be penalized or will fail the course. Amazingly, BonnieT (who is our faculty athletics liaison) presented this idea in the Business school meeting and the faculty didn’t jump on board! As it is currently written, faculty cannot penalize athletes for missing class for sports competition during the season that their sport is in competition. The way the policy is worded means that they could miss any number of class sessions and faculty cannot penalize them. The Dir of Athletics wants this to be “handled on an individual basis,” but I think it needs to be stated clearly in the policy. I have one student in the Novel class who’s borderline for this already, another who dropped 141 because he was going to miss too many class sessions, and another instructor has a student who has missed 7 classes in the first 4 weeks of the semester (not all were his fault, but still…) I think TU has grown enough and has enough athletes that we need to formalize the policy and make academic integrity a goal. So now I have to attend the October Athletics-Academics Committee meeting and present my case. Hmmm. Making lots of friends here, indeed

Since I have orchestra on Wednesday nights I just drove in with the bass in the car and stayed in Tiffin until rehearsal. We still have a month to go before our concert — I think I’d be ready in a week, but the group is still really struggling with Beethoven and Brahms. The violins have a lot of notes in the Academic Festival Overture! We need more violas. Another bass might be coming, which would be nice. I certainly hope that percussion and brass might soon be rehearsing. I am enjoying rehearsing and practicing Brahms and Beethoven (always fun and challenging music); the actual performance will be decent. I keep imagining Geoffrey Simon or Larry Rachleff livening up the group and making some pithy comment that just gets the *music* out of everyone. We’re a little pedestrian at the moment.

Thursday morning was another day of deliberation, but I decided to ride. These days I have as much interest in the weather and wind direction as any sailor. It remained clear all day until my afternoon class, when it began to drizzle. Vince offered a ride, but it wasn’t raining much and I managed to scoot pretty quickly after class was over and was on the road by 4 PM. Although it was damp and drizzling a little, it wasn’t a bad ride (after the CFC 113-mile-rainfest, my standards of wet riding have been greatly altered!) The raincover on the Trek backpack works really well and I have everything in a plastic bag inside, too.

Friday and Saturday I worked at the Elmore bike shop to cover for the owner, who’s on a cruise out of Barcelona. I was by myself and kept busy building bikes. It rained ALL DAY on Friday; Saturday was really nice out, but I was too tired to get up early to ride to Elmore! Morgan woke me up 20 mins. early* (by early, I mean before I planned to get up, which has little relevance compared to Morgan’s programmed breakfast time) on Saturday to play the food game. She was quite insistent. There was a claw to the face involved — a delicate, yet quite sharp, invitation to get out of bed! I was very grouchy but dutifully threw food bits around the house for ten minutes.

Today was the first day I’ve biked this week. On Monday, following CFC, I was pretty tired and not really in the mood for riding (and my RWB 5900 bike is disassembled). It was also supposed to rain all day — good enough excuses not to ride! It was also very rainy on Tuesday… ditto. I’ve been really behind due to all of the work students have submitted this week which needs to be graded — taking basically a whole weekend off means I’m behind in a big way.

Anyway, no classes or meetings on Wednesday, so I stayed at home and got some work done (not nearly enough).

Today, though, I decided it was time to bike to TU again; I rode the Ross in sneakers since it’s rigged for commuting. On the way in three vehicles passed me: two pickups and a tractor. However, six deer ran across the road in front of me (pretty much the same spot near the little wooded area where I saw five deer a couple of weeks ago.) I think this deer herd and I are on similar schedules

I went to campus Friday to meet with three students, none of whom actually appeared at my office.
Had a migraine Friday afternoon, so didn’t get a lot done. In the evening was MiriamF’s A&S potluck — by the time the migraine wore off sufficiently I had mostly missed everything, but I caught the tail end and enjoyed some yummy food, and my very first game of cornhole vs. ToddT. I contributed the sweet potato and apple dish (to go with Miriam’s pork roast).

Spent the weekend grading madly and didn’t even meet up with the gang for biking. It looked rainy on Saturday AM when I awoke at 6:30 to check the radar, so I just went back to bed. My bike is sort of thrown back together, but not really checked out. I want to take apart my wheels and dump out the water from CFC so I put on the Ultegra wheelset in case of further rain.

Sunday evening I finally needed to get out of the house so I biked over to Wolf Creek Park and hiked the little nature trail; it’s only about a mile and a half long but it was nice to be outside. The leaves are just starting to turn. Ahh, fresh air.

Sugar Grove, Ohio to Marietta, Ohio, and back, with KazH, DaveS, JanaB, and LukeV

Just got back from doing the Columbus Fall Challenge 2009: 216 ultra hilly miles around the Hocking Hills area of south-central Ohio and traveling over to Marietta, OH, right across the river from WV.

We loaded up the bikes the night before. I swapped out DaveS’s cassette for a new 12-27 (he’s done this ride before.) I went with my 12-25 from Three State Three Mountain and my Sestriere lightweight climbing wheels, on the RWB 5900.

Spent the night at Vince’s since I had to be at Kaz’s for a 6 AM rollout. Luke and I rode with Kaz in the minivan. The drive to Sugar Grove took about 2 1/2 hours, and it rained pretty much the whole way.

We checked in at the Berne Union High School in Sugar Grove, chucked our luggage into the baggage truck, and finished getting dressed (for me this meant plastic rain jacket, arm warmers to keep the plastic rain jacket from sticking to me, even though it wasn’t that cold, my 19-year-old Avia Triathlon rain shoes, old socks, old helmet, red taillight, and an attempt at a good attitude when leaving the parking lot in a heavy rainfall and rolling through inches-deep puddles). We were the last folks around and picked up our armbands just before they closed registration at 8:30 AM.

For those familiar with Bloomington hills, this ride is kind of like going up Ramp Creek. Repeatedly. From both directions. Then repeat. Then go do Bear Wallow 6 or 8 times, followed by a couple of ascents/descents of Owl Creek, Nehrt, and Boltinghouse. There was at least one North Shore (from the 45-to-Anderson direction). Throw in about 4 Solsberry hills, your favorite Boat Ramps, and … finish off with a couple of iterations of Colin’s uphill TT course. At that point, you should be enjoying creeping up any uphill in your lowest possible gear, just trying to survive.

Day 1 had crappy weather — 113 miles in the pouring rain. It was so wet that all climbs had to be done in the saddle — the climbs were just too steep to get out of the saddle, because the tires were slipping, and there were wet leaves plus a few stupid drivers. At a couple of points I was so wet I felt like I’d just come out of the pool — my contact lenses were almost washed out of my eyes by the rain. Visibility was nil. Lunch/food stops were every 30 miles or so, and I was grateful for hot soup and hot chocolate. The ride is advertised as 200 miles; when I’d clocked 100+ and saw a sign saying Marietta was still 12 miles I was getting pretty pissed off! And for the last part of the ride I had chain/cog problems since I just switched wheels — the chain I’ve been riding all summer was apparently just s-t-r-e-t-ch-e-d enough by halfway through the ride that some gears weren’t working under load. Fortunately the 25 tooth cog was still fine, because I needed to keep moving.

We arrived at Marietta under grey skies but at least it wasn’t raining. The hotel was about a mile and half away, and I had to walk — I was just too tired to try to bike with my big duffel bag over my arms. DaveS and most others rode from the Y to the hotel. (Originally Jana was going to ride partway and drive our car over, so I thought we’d have a SAG vehicle; I didn’t pack for bike/luggage transport, and I had my computer in the duffel since I had lots of grading to do! I did spend an hour and half grading papers at the hotel in the evening, after a big dinner at Applebee’s.)

Day 2 started off wet and rainy as we rolled out of the hotel. I’d repacked the duffel so we were able to ride back to the Y to put our bags on the truck. The ride mechanic had a 9-speed chain (yay!) which I bought and he installed while I ate breakfast, which meant that all the gears worked for Day 2. Due to the chain install I was towards the back of the pack again, but steadily moved up during the first 30 miles. After a great breakfast at the Marietta College dining hall it cleared up and got steadily nicer, finally becoming a sunny and low-70s day (finally took off the plastic jacket on a major climb out of Malta, OH, and the arm warmers came off after lunch.) Again rode with JimS and Klaus from BBC for a bit.

Unfortunately, (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) at the first rest stop I made a quick stop, intending to keep going as I was feeling pretty good. When I got back to my bike, my rear tire was flat. I pulled SIX glass shards out of my tire and found a couple of gouges (but no glass) on the front tire, too. Changed the tube (and bought another tube to have as a spare from the ride mechanic.) I have NEVER had this many mechanical problems on any organized ride! I would have put on new brake pads, too, but he was out of cartridge insert pads.

Only 103 miles on Day 2 and more of the route was along the river, so there were some “flat” sections in between huge grinder climbs.I did kind of rediscover my climbing legs on Day 2, but not having trained on Bloomington hills all summer made the amount of climbing on this ride silly-hard!!

My bike is full of water and I just pulled the BB out to let it dry out some before I overhaul it AGAIN. I don’t know what it is about riding with this group — we keep ending up riding in these ^&&*)%$%$ downpours.

Here’s the route, as best I could reconstruct it from the map packet and memory:
CFC 2009