An accomplishment

This week I did something I that has been on my to do list for a long time - probably 12 years or so. I learned something called drown proofing.
First a bit of background:
Most times in the late fall and early winter I'm trying hard to rack up miles on my bike to meet my goal of always beating my prior year's bike mileage. This year with Eldon and my ride to PA, I'm going to pretty easily beat last year's 4000 miles and I don't want to get too much more than 4000 or I'll make it really hard for myself in 2011. Still I wanted to do some exercising so I decided to try to learn so swim. I used part of a $25 Border gift certificate to buy a book called Total Immersion.
I have two problems that make it hard for me to swim. The first is that I don't have a lot of fat which makes me float low in the water. Then the second and more significant problem is that when I flutter kick, I go backwards. Not being interested in adjusting my stroke to also go backwards so we're at least working together, I thought the kick would be the first thing to work on. Now you have to understand that the Rec Fitness Center where I'm trying to learn early in the early morning is populated by people doing laps at about 20 mph and a life guard that probably is 40 years younger than me and looks fascinated by this old codger thrashing around. I'd much rather do this in private somewhere.

Then in addition there's the unfixable problem of being 58 and having Nafziger-Kennel genes which I must have some kind of mutation that prevents being good at any sport. (Remember that broken nose resulting from sprinting toward an easy line drive coming straight at me at a Hess family ball game and my brain miscalculating the trajectory by about an inch so the ball came over the top of my glove?)

So after a couple frustrating attempts and not making much progress, I remembered this ancient goal I had to just learn to stay afloat for 20 minutes. It's also called a dead man's float. The proper technique is supposedly to lay face down in the water and every 10 seconds or so get upright enough to gasp for some air and go back to floating. From the drown proofing website, I learned to just stay upright and every 10 seconds or so push my arms down to my side and while my mouth is out of the water to a quick exhale, and fresh gulp of new air and relax back into the water for the next one. It worked! I stayed afloat for about 25 minutes in about 5 feet of water. Next I want to try it in the deep end.

Trip to PA

This was my 5th trip to PA for the year and Lois's 6th. The main reason for going this time was Millie and Wes's wedding. The wedding was lovely with the weather cooperating wonderfully for the outdoor reception at the park in Millersville.

A Mariachi band performance at the reception added a special cross-cultural touch. I really enjoyed a song that I think I had copied to 8 track tape from an LP that Eldon owned with a song with the phrase "Ala capa tin tin tin esta noche vaya ver" - that's an attempt at spelling out what I hear. When Herman was about 4 years old he used to go around singing that song.

We did the all too familiar 3 day trip - drive in on Friday, spend Saturday there and drive back on Sunday. Abby went with us helping to curb the tedium of the long drive. We also covered many miles listening to a 19 CD novel "Cutting for Stone".


On the way there we stopped to see David and Martha Clymer. David is fighting a recurrence of his stomach cancer. He seemed pretty good but is undergoing chemo which on some days leaves him with no energy at all. Unfortunately, the long term prognosis is not good but then when he had the original surgery 8 years ago they didn't expect him to last this long either.

We took Grammy back to Landis Homes after the reception and while heading back to Dave and Jane's through Lancaster on South Prince Street we were waiting at the light at Vine street when a pickup truck coming from our left made the turn on to Prince and hit two young pedestrians crossing Prince. We saw it all happening and couldn't quite believe it. The driver of the truck was clearly in the wrong so we stopped, called 911 as the one girl was not getting up. We gave our names to the police as witnesses. Fortunately, it was a fairly low speed accident and the pickup stopped before running over anyone. Neither girl appeared to be seriously injured although they were preparing to take the one on the ambulance as we left. I thought it would only make the police log but Jane let us know that it was in the Sunday paper so we found this picture and short description on line. You can see Lois and Abby clearly in the picture. I'm partially hidden by Lois.

Trip to Purdue

We visited Jonathan at Purdue yesterday. Although we had planned the trip before he got the news, it was nice to celebrate with him his passing the doctoral program qualifier exam. This was his third and last chance but he passed with a comfortable margin. His hard work the last year has paid off. So now the road ahead for the next 5 to 6 years is a little clearer for him. He's also working with a professor doing research in Density Functional Theory that will likely lead to the crucial funding needed once he finishes his formal masters courses.

This semester Jonathan and a friend are renting an unfinished apartment off campus so we took down his homemade bed frame and a few other essentials like large speakers and a worn deck of Tichu cards.

This is my first blog not related to my bike trip. If any of you want out of the automatic emails generated by this blog posting, please let me know.

The end of the ride

This is a long blog so if you're in a hurry, go to the bottom for a quick summary.

Thursday we left the Comfort Inn in Huntingdon at 7:09 AM. Eldon had the great idea of getting rid of our luggage on Dave and Martha Clymer. They live about 20 miles away but it happened they were coming to Huntingdon that morning so we just left our luggage there at the hotel for them to pick up. Mary and Wishart were stopping in to see them on the way here so they brought it along.

We had about a 6 mile stretch where we rode illegally in US322/22 limited access. There wasn't actually a "Motor vehicles only" sign where we got on so we would have used that as an excuse if we had gotten stopped but still I was nervous.

Eldon was feeling very tired. We stopped at a McDonalds where we shared a McFlurry, a fruit smoothie and a coke but it didn't seem to help for very long. Eventually in Mifflintown at just over 42 miles we stopped at a Burger King and he decided to call his son Herman to come pick him up.

"Parting ways at Burger King"


I went on following old US 22 as much as I could but there are two places where there's no other reasonable place to go except back on to US 322/22. Both places there were "Motor vehicles only" signs. The first stretch was only 2 miles long and I sprinted through it at 20 - 25 mph on adrenaline. The second one was longer and I was so nervous I twice got off at exits that didn't lead anywhere so I had to get back on. Fortunately, no state trooper saw me.

I don't think my actions qualified as civil disobedience. What I was doing felt another order of magnitude safer than some of the legal riding we did earlier in the trip in western PA where the traffic was heavy, the shoulders narrow to non-existent and twists and turns severely limiting visibility.

After Clark's Ferry there are sections again where I rode on limited access but there it is marked as "Bike route J". All it would take for the state of PA to make it safe for bicyclists is to stop being anal about giving special treatment to gas consuming vehicles and put up a couple dozen signs.

Lois and Jonathan left Goshen in the morning about 6:15 AM and were racing me to Dennis and Rachel's. (I was the only one that knew it was a race.) They were following me on Google Latitude during the day. We were also in cell phone contact several times - technology can be really handy. By the time I got to Elizabethtown, they were close by and decided to get off 283 and wait for me on 230. I had to come to a rapid stop at the red light at Rheems and decided to call and find out where they were. They had the fun of telling me to just look ahead where they were waiting for me.

Jonathan took this picture outside the window as they drove by. Obviously, they won the race. He labeled it "Some crazy biker"

Following the good directions that Eldon gave me I rode into Dennis and Rachel's before 6:00 PM. 128.25 miles, 8:03 riding time for just under 16 mph average speed. I was getting tired but had none of the utter exhaustion I've gotten before on century rides. It was probably partly the exhilarating 10 - 15 mph winds out of the northwest, partly guzzling soda and other sugary drinks, partly having a relaxed pace for the first 40 miles for a solid warm-up and perhaps a week of intense training helped.

Thinking back over what I ate, I didn't eat that awfully much. I had fairly big carb loaded breakfast, one and a half bananas, half a McFlurry, and a small hamburger from the dollar menu at McDonalds late afternoon. What I'm not counting is the sugar laden drinks. I think between the soft drinks and my Nashbar bike drink mix that I added to my water bottle I had over two and half quarts of sweetened drink. In addition I emptied my 2 quart back pack water tank twice and so I probably had close to 2 gallons of liquid.

Lastly, here's a list of the things to be thankful for on this trip.

1. Safety! Sometimes I when I lay awake at nights I wondered why I was taking the risks of the roller coaster like down hill thrills.
2. No rain. Eldon and I think we had a total of 2 dozen rain drops on the ride. We did have some fairly heavy mist - enough to mess up glasses one morning and several rainy periods at night but that's it.
3. Tail winds almost every day and particularly my last day
4. Technology. My Blackberry, Eldon's GPS, my laptop all helped immensely in planning and executing the ride.
5. Supportive friends and family especially Lois who not only fully supported our adventure but kept in touch every day. It was fun to get calls and text messages just checking in to see how I was doing.
6. Eldon's countless hours ahead of time planning it and then navigating the 633 mile trip. He had done it alone 6 years ago and once before the opposite direction and has an amazing ability to remember details of the road. We didn't follow the exact path he did either time but our route overlapped with those several places.
7. No flats for the entire trip! Eldon had just one. No other significant mechanical problems either.
8. A substance sometimes called "butt butter". It helps immensely when sweat and constant rubbing of the skin on my biking shorts caused a rash.
   

Summary for those in a hurry:
I MADE IT.

Getting close

We had major climbs and descents again today. Our distance was 83 miles from Indiana, PA to Huntingdon. I lost count of how many hills I topped 40 mph but it was at least four and twice I hit 45.1 faster even than yesterday. As I climb the long grades prior to the descent, it reminds me a bit of sledding as a kid. Long pulls up the hill and a short thrilling ride down but I've had enough of those thrills. If there's no traffic 40 doesn't feel too bad but 45 feels too fast even with no traffic.

For the first time we were on a rail to trail section for 16 miles. That was relaxing but my pleasure didn't go to infinite as it should have with 0 traffic by the formula I proposed yesterday.

Tomorrow we'll head toward our destination but since Harrisburg would make a decently long day and we don't feel like getting a motel there, we are probably going to get picked up. Me by Lois and Jonathan as they catch up to me heading to the reunion this weekend and Eldon by Herman.

Eating, math, science with a Biblical quote, road artifacts

We have learned that eating enough is a very important part of making a good day on the bikes. Today after a large continental breakfast, lunch at Arby's and after doing several long climbs we went into a convenience store with good intentions of picking up a 6-pack of granola bars but they didn't have any 6-packs so we got these pre-packaged pies. The "nutrition" information is below. Biking takes approximately 35 calories per mile so the calories below were all used up in about 14 miles.

In addition to the pleasure of biking being related to the calories consumed, I decided today that it is also proportional to the tail wind and the square of the width of the road shoulder as long as there's not too much debris. But the pleasure is inversely proportional to the road kill per mile, the traffic and especially truck traffic.*

Today was our hilliest day so far. We only covered 65 miles. I hit over 40 mph on 5 different hills. For quite a while 40.9 was my peak and I was braking on that hill! Later, that was surpassed by a maximum of 41.9 however, the average today was 11 - our slowest day so far. Why does our day of highest speed also come with the lowest average you ask? Because (and here's the science lesson) what you gain in speed down the hill is mostly eaten up by wind resistance with no way of gaining it back up the other side. More technical explanation below.**

I entertained myself today on the long, long climbs by watching for interesting things along the road. Here's what I found today that I could easily put in my pockets:

I have no idea what's on the DVD - I've already pitched it. The Sharpie actually works, the dime might buy me a piece of gum. The switchblade was probably used in a crime and then abandoned :-). You probably can't read that it's quality steel from China.

Then there was this that I didn't want to put in my pocket:

We see so much road kill. I've seen 4 snakes, a cardinal, a whole family of raccoons, the bloated carcass of a dog and of course the usual deer, skunks, groundhogs, rabbits, squirrel, mice, moles and many unrecognizable flattened remains as above.

Footnotes:
* for Jonathan and actually anyone else with at least some memory of high school math it could be expressed this way:

P = k W² * B * C
           t * T² * D
Where:
P = pleasure
k = some constant
W = Width of the shoulder of the road
B = Breeze on your back
C = calories consumed
t = car traffic
T = truck traffic
D = debris on the shoulder


**I actually worked the science of this last night. It's high school level so bear with me. When going down hill your wind resistance is proportional to the square of your speed so you never have anywhere near enough momentum from whizzing down the hill to take you even a short distance up the next. For example: suppose you have a 10 mile level course that you need to apply a constant 2 pounds of force to overcome the wind resistance (a reasonable number according to the almost encyclopedic mechanical data in my brother's head). So over the 10 mile course you have done 20 mile pounds of work. (Remember from high school science that work is defined as force time distance, usually expressed in foot - pounds.)
Now suppose instead of a level course you go down 5 miles at four times the speed you go on the level (like me today). The force it takes to go 4 times the speed is 16 times as much (4X4 since wind resistance is proportional to the square of your speed). So for 5 miles it takes 5X16 or 80 mile pounds of work. The force behind that is almost all supplied by gravity but eaten by the wind. Now when you go back up the other side, you have to lift the whole gross weight of you and your bike and luggage back up against gravity with no help from the momentum gained going down. Ecclesiastes 5:16 And this also is a sore evil, ... and what profit hath he that hath labored for the wind?

If you read this far I have one question for you. Don't you have anything productive to do?

Monday crossing into PA

This morning we had cloudy weather for the first and even a bit of mist - just enough to fog up glasses. Just after noon we crossed into PA. Our mileage for the day was 81 miles, 6:22 minutes of biking time, averaging 12.6 with almost 5000 feet of climbing. We had quite a few miles of somewhat uncomfortably heavy traffic with not much of a shoulder. The most work was between miles 65 and 75. It started with a precipitous descent into a river valley that warmed up my brakes like never before which of course inevitably led to a long climb interspersed with short twisting descents.

I haven't suffered at all from the total exhaustion I get when doing the Pumpkinvine century. Part of it might be that I'm kept to a more even pace and part of it may be the constant eating. We had 4 meals today starting with a big continental breakfast at 6:00 at the Best Western then on to a stop at McDonalds, a meal at a Subway and a full meal at a Lone Star Steakhouse here next to our Super 8.