Bike Cycling

Dear Everyone,

Sorry for the lack of posts! We still do fun stuff but we haven't kept up with the blog lately. We'll try to do better since I know you all are checking in regularly.

Here's a photo from Bryan's recent 65 mile bike ride!

Bryan & Aly

Sometimes you just need to camp

It's been a long, icky sort of week, so we decided this weekend to camp at Lake Ouachita State Park. We planned to stay in the campground and go for a couple of bike rides from there. Mandy's had a bad cold, though, so the 25-mile route Bryan had planned for Saturday was scrapped in favor of just exploring the state park.



Since the park's mostly oriented toward fishing and watersports, it's very quiet in the wintertime. It was nearly deserted on Super Bowl weekend. We took the outermost walk in tent site, on a little peninsula, and had the whole place to ourselves. The water was glass-smooth and the woods were completely silent. It was almost like backpacking, but with a lot less work, and a warm bathhouse.



We call this 'Still Life with Camp Shoes and Kleenex.'



Mandy spent a pleasant, chilly evening sniffling and poking at her campfire. We had grilled brats and chips and beer and cream soda, which felt like a special treat compared to our usual fare of freeze dried backpacking dinners.



The low overnight was around freezing, and the morning didn't warm up as expected. This, combined with Mandy's persistent cold, meant that we cancelled our Sunday ride and rested after breakfast instead.



It wasn't a weekend of high adventure, but we enjoyed the quiet lake and the winter woods.

2009 Activity Summary

Click on the image to see it larger (i.e. readable!)

In January 2009, we set some goals for ourselves to make sure we kept participating in the outdoor activities that we love instead of sitting on our arses getting fatter. The chart above shows the goals we set as well as what we actually achieved.

We decided on three categories to track last year: nights spent sleeping outdoors (bag nights), miles hiked and miles biked. The hiking miles and bag nights were educated guesses whereas the cycling mileage was a totally made up number... which may explain why we didn't achieve that goal!

But it's good to set goals that make you stretch a little, eh?

For 2010, we've bumped up our bag nights by two or three nights but we left the hiking mileage at 100 miles. We've set a more realistic cycling mileage (600 for Bryan, 300 for Mandy and Aly) and we hope to have another active year.

PS - As far as the not getting fatter... "Ha!" and "Yeah right!" I'm (Bryan) the fattest I've ever been and that isn't a good thing. Maybe I need to add a year end weight goal to my portion of the chart? (c:

Attack on Mt Magazine

A few days earlier, I had received an email from the Arkansas Bicycle Club with some of their upcoming rides listed and one of them was a ride from Danville, AR to Havana and then up Mt. Magazine.



When I first read this idea I joked to Aly that we should do that. We laughed and time marched on but later in the week I found myself thinking "ya know... I think we actually could do that."



When the day arrived, Aly didn't feel good so she stayed home to try and fight whatever bug she had off while Mandy and I packed up our tandem recumbent trike and headed to Danville.

In addition to riding up the tallest mountain in Arkansas, we would have a ham radio and GPS unit on the bike which would sent our position reports every two minutes. This was our first time trying that out and Aly would be at home monitoring our progress off and on throughout the day.



In the photo above, you can see the GPS unit and radio. If you click on the photo you'll be able to see notes explaining each of the parts.

So... recumbents aren't known to be good climbers and trikes even worse so... and we had a tandem recumbent trike! This would be the tallest and longest climb for either of us, over 2500 feet of climbing and ~21 miles from the bottom to the top. That 21 miles includes the 10-12 miles of "warmup" ride to get to the start of the climbing as well as the rolling hills in the last 3-4 miles on top.

Here's an elevation profile for todays ride...



The group waited for us at the gas station in Havana which is about 9 miles from the starting point. With the warm-up over, we turned off Highway 10 and headed for the top of Mt. Magazine.



I'm extremely proud to say that Mandy and I grunted and groaned though the next several hours and climbed that bitch at an average of 3 mph. We never did dip below 2.0 mph according to the GPS but we did get pretty close! It got to the point that if we were able to go over 4 mph then we were pretty darned happy (c:

As I mentioned, this was an ABC ride but everyone else was on their two-wheeled-skinny-tire-go-fast bikes so we didn't see them once the climbing started. They made sure we got to the top (about two hours after they did) but then they all headed down and back home.

So this "group" ride was more of a solo outing for Mandy and I with a few people in the vicinity that we knew.

Once at the top (about five hours after we left our vehicle), we stood in line for the lunch buffet at the Lodge and my legs were so week I had to keep sitting in nearby chairs!

After about 30 minutes in line, we were finally seated and lunch could actually begin. We took our time, enjoying the cold water and comfortable seats. After eating we found a sunny spot and a couch to sit on and rested while our bodies processed the food.

While waiting we watched a wedding take place outside, hang-gliders floating above the Lodge and we flipped through a photography book about Oklahoma.

As we were leaving, we had a nice lady take our photo and we answered her questions about our ride up. She was familiar with recumbent trikes because, get this, many people in her retirement community have them!



The ride down was a blast, we wore our rain jackets to cut the wind and kept the speed under 41 mph! The bike was super smooth and stable at that speed and we arrived at the bottom only 40 minutes after leaving the Lodge!

What had taken nearly four hours to climb up, took only 40 minutes to ride down. I've ridden my bike down the other side of Mt Magazine but this ride was so much sweeter since we actually earned it (instead of driving to the top).

The GPS data for this ride can be downloaded from here.

50+ Miles...

Aly and I rode our tandem recumbent trike on what is my longest ride ever today... 51.4 miles. Even though the tandem is rather comfortable, after that long in the chair stuff still hurts if you aren't used to it.

We're glad to be home... that post-ride shower and Quizno's were just what the doctor ordered. Time to take some Vitamin-I now and go to bed.

Benton-Haskell-Poyen-Tull Loop

Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

2009 Tour de Meers

On Memorial Day weekend, we headed west to the Wichita Mountains in southwestern Oklahoma. We arrived at Camp Doris much too late to stake out a camping spot, so we went on to the pasture doubling as registration area for the annual Tour De Meers bike ride. The next morning, cars parked all around us as we staggered around our campsite, changing our clothes and cooking our breakfast. We set out to ride the longest loop, 67 miles, which would have taken us through the wildlife refuge and up through the country north and east of the park; we were turned around at about fifteen miles, though, by a bad thunderstorm. We were disappointed that our ride was only thirty miles long, but happy that this change meant we got to ride through the refuge twice.

It was a warm day, but we had plenty to drink. We have to remind Mandy to drink enough; it helps to keep powdered drink mix to make the water taste better.

Whose idea was it to give the little kid the number 69? It wasn't ours; we each got a bag full of goodies with tshirts, water bottles, ink pens, tourist junk, and our race numbers. The bag that said "Mandy" included a tag with her number on it.

One of the Wichita Wildlife Refuge's big attractions is the buffalo that range across big portions of the park. The entrances are protected by cattle guards, which means that the huge animals roam freely up to and across the roads within the refuge. We rode up about fifteen feet from this fellow and another male buffalo; later in the day, we counted nearly sixty females with their calves on a hillside as we passed. Every time we visit we have a buffalo encounter; last time it was a big male heading toward us on a trail in the parallel forest. (We stepped politely aside to let him pass.) This time, the night after our ride, we finally found a place to camp at Doris but unwittingly set up our tent in a favorite buffalo supper spot; Mandy and I ended up stuck inside the tent as we watched a big male buffalo crunching his way slowly toward us. We sat stock still in the tent door and listened to his breath against the grass; he came within about five feet of us before calmly moving on.

There's a long-abandoned rock bungalow along one of the roads in the refuge, complete with a cellar, this outbuilding, and what appears to be the remain of a roadside stand of some kind. The shade of the porch made a good picnic spot on Sunday morning, and the hill behind the house proved excellent for kite-flying and lizard-watching.

Just a we tucked the green kite under our arms to return to the car, a rangers' truck pulled up into the driveway. Two very serious people came across the yard toward us. "Is everything all right?" I asked. "Is this a non-kite-flying area?" They weren't sure how to respond to that; apparently not, they supposed we could fly a kite here, but most people don't, and they thought we might be digging up cactus or something. Apparently we just looked suspicious. I've never been almost arrested for flying a kite before.

On Monday morning, before leaving for home, we left our camp set up and climbed up Little Baldy, a short hike with a very impressive view of the Wichitas including a lake or two and the visitors' center. We always leave before we want to.

Here's a little guy we met on Monday morning. The warm pink granite boulders in the Wichitas shelter lots of lizards, and they tantalize Mandy; they're friendly enough to be interesting and ALMOST slow enough to catch. Also on Monday, I frightened a snake sunning itself in my path; he slithered quickly up a nearby tree and almost lost himself in its branches. Another favorite of Mandy's is the prairie dogs in the "town" near one of the roads; she could sit, stock still, and watch them for an hour or two if we'd let her.

Commute to Work

Well... I've ridden my bike home from work before but today Aly is riding her bike to a work related training session at the 4H Center ~17 miles north of here. Yay her! This is why she's leading her office team in the Walk Across Arkansas challenge and she'll do this today and tomorrow.

Did I mention there was a chance of rain today? Hopefully she makes it up there sweaty and not rainy.

A quick ride before dinner

Today, Mandy and I took the GTT out for a ten mile ride around town. This ride pushed me over 100 miles for March :-) We've been trying to ride every day and we're hit and miss. We'll get the whole weather + cooking + chores + homework + riding thing down though.

Our new clipless shoes work really well... I didn't realize how much effort it took to keep your feet on the pedals without them.

Ho dam! I gots to get me one of dem!

Well... we did it

A few days ago we noticed a Greenspeed GTT for sale on 'BentRider Online and we decided to go test ride it because, ya know, we'd never get a chance to do so again and it looks like a really fun bike.

So we went and tried it out. And that was our biggest mistake since we REALLY liked the bike. We asked more questions, did additional research online and decided we wanted it. We haggled a bit and got the seller to show us how to adjust a few parts and pieces and then paid for the bike and loaded it into our truck and headed home.

And we've been grinning ever since.

Below you'll find a few of the photos of the bike that the seller had posted online. The last photo shows the handlebar, brakes and shifters and how they relate to the seat.