Robot Journal : The Tour de Cure to Bear Mountain (no bears were hurt)

6/4/2012

Good morning y'all. 100 miles on the agenda for the Tour de Cure. Let's go. #bikenyc #tdc #NoDiabetes
— Rich! (@happyrobot) June 3, 2012

Diabetes Be Gone
I grew up with a little brother who was a juvenile diabetic and dealt with everything that came along with that. Mainly, I couldn’t eat as many cookies as I used to be able to. Since I like to ride bicycles and I also like to fight diabetes (punch!) the annual American Diabetes Association Tour de Cure seemed to be a perfect opportunity to fight bicycles and ride diabetes!

Money, ya’ll!
First, I had to raise money. I did that. I want to thank the many people who contributed to a good cause (diabetes research *and* putting a hurting on me).

Early Morning
I woke up at 4:15am. I thought about setting my clock for 4:20am just so I could guffaw when it went off, but then I realized that I probably wouldn’t feel like guffawing that early in the morning. Also, the guffawing might awaken my wife.

After coffee and a bowl of Energy O’s (is that an actual product? I bet it is. If only I had some way to search for it.) I mounted my lovable bike and headed off to the city. The Brooklyn Bridge at 5am-ish is great fun. You know who is on the bridge at that time? No one.
Apart from a few lovers watching the sun rise and a tourist or two.

5:30am on the Brooklyn Bridge is quite lovely. I yelled at the lone tourist I saw just for consistency. #bikenyc
— Rich! (@happyrobot) June 3, 2012

Then it was up the west side bike path to Pier 59. You know who is on the west side bike path at that time? No one. Glorious.

Lone

Some think of me as the “Lone Wolf” as I usually ride by myself. When I was a pup, I’d go on these long bike rides in the mountains of North Carolina. Not that this was before cell phones and GPS. Oh, and there would be rednecks who would make fun of your weird foreign get-up.

This fellow, Angel, rolled up next to me at the start line and asked me if I was riding with anyone.
“Don’t you know, I’m a lone wolf? Of course I’m not riding with anyone. Woooof.”
So, he and I rode the 100 miles together. How odd. What a novel idea: riding with another person. I probably rode it faster than I would have by myself - so that was fun.

Yesterday was a lovely day for the ADA TourDeCure ride up to Bear Mtn - Although we may have gone a bit too fast. Very sore today. #bikenyc
— Rich! (@happyrobot) June 4, 2012

Garmin

I love/hate my Garmin bike-computer thing. It’s the EDGE 800.
First, the software/website/upload routes part of it is a pain. Have you ever used Garmin’s BaseCamp software? Holy crap. Who designed that... RIM? Ha. I sure hate RIM.

After many, many tries, I was able to import the Tour de Cure route into the Garmin - and eventually it worked well. See, on the way back from Bear Mountain, they take us west for whatever reason and that always gets confusing. So, that was good.
But, oh boy, the whole interface is wonky.

Oh, and editing a workout? Can you do that anywhere?
For instance, I’d like to remove the 30 minutes of no movement at the beginning of the ride when I was hanging out at the start line. And I’d like to remove the stuff after the ride when I rode home at 5mph drunk on fatigue. My goal is to get the data for the actual ride and remove all the extra before/after stuff.

comments[4] | 6/4/2012 | perma-link

›bio: rich
›archives

«« (back)				(forward) »»
hola marfa: a trip to texas				marfa texas - film finally developed

Robot Journal

Previous Posts

›		Three Technological Advances I'd love to share with my teenage self

›		Seeing all these e scooters got me thinking

›		Mexico City

›		The time Chris and Stu drove to Milwaukee

›		What would be in a happyrobot cocktail?

›		What the world needs now is a think piece about the pandemic

›comments[4]
›all comments

›post #847
›bio: rich
›perma-link
›6/4/2012
›11:43

›archives
›first post
›that week

Category List

›		Apartment Buying in NYC
›		Bob Swanson
›		Cameras!
›		Cocktails
›		Cougars!
›		Election 2004
›		February Smackdown
›		Food and Drink!
›		Group Topics
›		Holiday!
›		I heart Brooklyn
›		Lists of things
›		Out of Context SMS
›		Rejected Love Stinks stories
›		Site News
›		Snap Wrap
›		Things I've Owned
›		This I believe
›		Wolves!