Dan on Bike

Lake Lemon
I met up with my Internet buddy Apertome of Ear to the Breeze today for a ride around his turf in Monroe and Brown counties. We started out from the Unionville Elementary School parking lot just after 3:00 with little wind and a brisk 41 degrees.

It could have started better. I was about 10 minutes late arriving to the starting point. Then, when we left I noticed that I had forgotten my helmet about 3 blocks into the ride. To top it off, my shoelace came undone and got caught around the crank arm. Finally, I got my act together and we took off.

Now, I had no idea where I was most of the time. Luckily, my riding partner had a route in mind. We circled around Lake Lemon, and we saw many lake homes, wooded hideaways, and family farms. I only remember a couple of the road names we saw: Tunnel Road and SR45. Another road we didn’t take was Bolting House Road, as I was told it was particularly steep.

Odd Cottage
It’s interesting how different the terrain can be after traveling just a couple of hours south of West Lafayette. Brown County is very hilly, and instead of rolling past corn and soybean fields, we saw hills and valleys with lots of trees and pastures. I’m definitely not used to the kind of hills we rode. There were two where I was standing up while in the granny gear – a new experience for me. (I had to walk up part of the worst one, but ‘Ap’ waited until I was back in the saddle before taking a picture.) We saw some markings on the pavement from last month’s Hilly Hundred ride. Now that I’ve tried part of the route, I may consider riding that event next year.

Cow Confab, Bovine Board Meeting, Heifer Huddle, Angus Assembly, Cattle Call, Guernsey Get-together, (any more?)
The last half hour or so saw darkness descend on the area. We fired up the blinkies and headlights before we jumped back onto SR45 for the final leg of the trip. Most of the drivers were patient and gave us plenty of room. We got back to the school a little before 6:00.

Arty Shot

I was going to say that I worked hard to get this cool shot of us at the school in natural light at dusk, but actually I just fat fingered the flash setting while trying to use the self timer. Regardless, it looks kind of neat. (It must have been comical watching me try to tilt the camera up using a piece of mulch!)

Thanks to Apertome for a great ride and great conversation. Plus, he was patient and didn’t complain as I plodded up the hills and gingerly rode back down the other side. (I get the impression that his pace is a little faster than mine, but he didn’t complain.) I recommend to any rider that they give the Bloomington area a try someday.

Miles Ridden: 31.1

(Since Apertome rode to and from the school, his total probably neared 50 miles)

UPDATE: Here’s another recap of the ride

Thanks to some help from Noah, I now have danonbike.us pointing to this blog on blogspot using the Blogger ‘Custom Domain’ feature (as described in this post).

To summarize, he suggested that I remove my A record from DNS, and then create a CNAME record that directs the domain to ghs.google.com, the site used for Google redirects. Important note: a period is required after the host name for everything to work.

I then redirected some of the subdomains to my Google Apps account. I moved my email to the apps platform (GMail with my domain), and it comes with Docs, Calendar, and other Google goodies.

Oh, and I setup a Feedburner feed to track stats from those of you accessing this with a reader. (No need to change your feed)

Fun geek time!

The plan was to ride the long work route – in on the south route and home on the north, maybe even use the north extension. The ride in went fine, but I was greeted with a very flat rear tire when I came out to head home. I must have hit something on the way in (I’ll check it later when it is light outside).

My wife picked me up on her way home from work.

Miles Ridden: 4.9 (estimated)

Dan On Bike had a short outage while I messed with DNS settings with my domain registrar. (Perhaps you saw the Go Daddy parking page.) The project is to switch to Google Apps. I’ve got email working, but I’m still fussing with the web pages, along with Blogger custom domains. I understand the basics, but I don’t know how to configure danonbike.us to either go to the blog or to an Apps start page. Both want me to add a subdomain.

I’m sure I’ll figure it out, and I plan to do more research tonight. Anyone with experience with these products can feel free to offer advice, suggestions, warnings, taunts, and limericks.

The Management

I was reading the campus paper yesterday, and I saw an article in the back near the classifieds announcing a Cyclocross race to be held today at Fort Ouiotenon – just a mile from my house!

I rode over just before 1:00, and watched the riders warm up on the track until the race started at 1:30. Now, it seems that I need to learn the rules of the sport. I asked a spectator (one of probably 25) who is a member of the Purdue Cycling Team how many laps they will ride. He said that it is a timed race of 45 minutes, and the next one would be an hour. How does it end? How is the finish order determined? I’ll do some research before the next one.

… which is tomorrow. The article also mentioned a race today on campus (I forget where). If I can fit it in between work and the Purdue Symphonic Band concert, I may stop by.

Miles Ridden: 3.1 (I took the long way)

I saw this guy, apparently heading to one of the several liquor stores in that direction, while I was heading home for lunch. I’m not sure how the keg was secured, but it seemed to be solidly lashed to the rack. The rider looked to be mid to late 30s – older than most college students.

(Sorry for the poor picture quality. I used my cell phone camera.)

Dark, Cold, and Windy
I usually get out of the office by 10 after 5:00, but I got a late start today. So, instead of riding with my fellow staff and faculty members, I was tooling around in a sea of students who had just been released from their last class of the day. I remember those college days. My friends and I could be noisy, rude, and self absorbed, and today’s crop of college kids were doing the same. As I passed the bus stop, I saw a scooter with three passengers crammed onto the small seat lumbering off the curb and pull into the lane behind me.

Then, I heard a horn begin to beep continuously, along with some vulgar shouting from the scooter team. This went on for half a minute or so before the scooter passed me while the passengers still screamed foul insults. I couldn’t tell if they were yelling at the driver of the beeping car or me, so I assumed it was horn boy. However, the beeping continued.

I finally looked back, thinking that I had dropped my pannier. The SUV with the incessant horn was a couple of lengths behind me, but the driver didn’t wave or make any other motion towards me when I gave the “what’s up” hand signal. A few seconds after I turned back, the SUV passed me and I heard “(mumble mumble) THE ROAD (mumble mumble)” come from the side window.

So, apparently they were yelling at me. Oh well.

Just past the next light, a car pulled out of an alley on my right, and stopped blocking the lane waiting for a space to open in the oncoming traffic stream. No problem for me, as I was able to swerve around, but the cars behind me had to wait.

Another exhilarating ride.

Miles Ridden: 7.1 (estimated)

BTW, I forgot to mention yesterday that I passed the 2,000 mile mark for this year. That’s already more than last year’s total and my highest annual mileage ever. And I’ve still got six weeks to go!

When I’m in a good mood, a ride through busy traffic can be quite exhilarating. Sure, the gloomy photo of the foggy airport would seem to indicate otherwise, but I was feeling pretty up this AM as I rode to work.

I had a little extra time, so I took the South Work Route in reverse. After along wait at the stop light, I jumped onto US231 and took my place in the bike lane. There’s a lot of auto traffic at 7:45, so it took a little patience combined with a dose of intestinal fortitude to cross two busy lanes to make the left turn onto Williams. Because of the wet conditions after last night’s rain, I was wearing bike clothes instead of work clothes, so I felt more like a cyclist. Of course, that feeling helped me go a little faster up the hill.

After work, I took a quick detour down the hill on State to the cleaners to drop off my shirts. I know I’ve said it before, but I always love speeding down State Street Hill during rush hour (if you can call it that in West Lafayette). I had to get home quickly, so I rolled back up the hill and straight home.

Miles Ridden: 9.1 (estimated)

I was happy to be driving home in my Saturn last night, sheltered from the heavy rain and strong breeze. I almost always see a few students riding around in the rain, but one today caught my eye.

Even though it was getting dark fast, he had no lights or reflectors that I saw, and he was in dark clothing. He did seem to be taking the lane safely for his left hand turn at the light. What made him stand out was the fact that he was holding a full-sized red umbrella with one hand while steering with the other. I wish I could have taken a picture.

I’m riding to work today, as it looks like the best day of the week.

Happy trails!

I’m that guy that would post pictures of horses and talk about riding a bike over the same routes over and over. Now you remember? Good.

It’s been a week since I’ve been able to get out, and it was good to hit the familiar pavement again. Nothing special happened on the Montmorenci Route, although my legs took a little while to warm up. It doesn’t take long to get out of shape!

I’m planning a ride for T-day weekend with my Interweb pal Apertome, and I’m a little worried that the hills of Monroe County will be tough for me as I scale back my riding schedule. Keep it flat, buddy!

Miles Ridden: 16.6