Flutterby™! : Biking update 2006-05-03 06:19:31.340949+00

Biking update

2006-05-03 06:19:31.340949+00 by Dan Lyke 3 comments

The data from the GPS of yesterday's bike ride around the Tiburon loop is awful, jitter that looks to be a quarter mile or so off course. I think what happened is that I didn't give the GPS enough time to acquire the satellites. So of course this morning, for the Pine Mountain/Alpine Lake/Mount Tam loop I got there a few minutes late, pressed the button and tossed the unit in my pack without double-checking anything, and... it didn't get turned on.

Bummer, 'cause I was riding with some strong pedalers, we averaged 14MPH despite the extensive climbing, and I'm starting to get more confident on the descents, there were a couple of descending hairpins that were... interesting. A good ride, I feel like I'm moving up a bit both speed and skills wise, although a few early break-aways followed by total bonking and still not being sure that I'm not accordioning the line when I'm in the middle of it mean that I'm still hanging towards the rear of the front pack.

Except for that one day when Charlene and I were on the tandem on a Marin Cyclists "A" ride around Tiburon loop... Tandems move...

Hundred miles on Saturday, I think I've met the group I'm going to try to ride with, if I'm comfortable with them I'll worry more about hanging with them than going for speed, but it'd be nice to be under six hours (elevation is roughly the same as today, which means that I should be able to up my speed considerably).

And the discussion with the folks I'm keeping up with now has turned to 200 milers...

#Comment Re: made: 2006-05-03 15:03:44.722368+00 by: ebradway [edit history]

Asha and I were in Boulder this past weekend looking for a place to live. The only road construction we saw was where a bike tunnel was being run under a busy intersection. The attitude about bikes in Boulder is completely upside-down from anywhere else I've been (even Marin!).

Here's a overhead of the new place outside Boulder. Note the winding path to the East. These interconnect all throughout the county. Of course, there are marked bike lanes on every street but you also have separate paths available.

And if you're interested in climbs, from the new place, a century can take you up to 12K feet and back to 5K more than once! It's enough to make me want to start riding...

And on the GPS: turn it on when you get in the car and leave it on the dashboard. By the time you get to the start of your ride, it'll have figured itself out. If you are more than 20 miles from where you turned it off, choose the "new location" option when turning on. It'll sync up faster.

Very cool! Road topology like that can make a place more accessible to human power than to cars. I like!

I assume the paths are multi-use and not bike only? Not that the former is bad, but I don't like mixing moms & strollers with 20MPH bicycles, and on at least one stretch I find that cyclists use the multi-use path rather than the road, with the result that we just piss off the pedestrians. On the other hand, with as much distance as a layout like that saves...

I've been trying to just turn on the GPS when I get there because it's easier than going in and clearing trackpoints and setting a waypoint and massaging that data later. And it's really a matter of needing to build some smarter software to deal with being able to say "this waypoint is the start, this waypoint is the end, all trackpoints in between".

But between running flat out on Digital Fish (up 'til midnight last night), biking, keeping a life going (including the food thing today), and yet more potential work on LID

, more time in front of a monitor is not high on my list.

The paths are used by bikes, peds and horses. Many are concrete, so the the horse use is minimal. Unlike other parts of the world, the peds in Boulder *expect* to share with bikes and you're just as likely to get passed by a jogger pushing a stroller as you are to pass walkers with strollers. The Daily Camera had a big article about the problems with over-exercise - which is a bit of an epidemic in Boulder.

First chance you get, you'll have to come out our way. It's a 2-day drive from the Bay Area but an easy flight into Denver. It's 40 minutes from the new condo to DIA and I can take the bus for free with my student ID.