Running With the Foghorn Leghorn

I left Wyoming with cruise control set on the speed limit+3mph and didn't turn it off until the second I crossed the midpoint of the water gap.

NJ/NY/CT have their own driving which instead of a steady flow is more like a beach with surging waves. 65, 90! 55, 83! 20, 70! ZERO.

Did you buy fireworks in Ohio? They put you in the system and you need to sign papers that say you will get them out of that state within 48 hours.
 
The Heckler said:
I left Wyoming with cruise control set on the speed limit+3mph and didn't turn it off until the second I crossed the midpoint of the water gap.
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78mph across wyoming/nebraska/iowa...etc...god I would go insane. Last time I did the Utah to NJ drive was in my 90 mustang GT....I found out that the cruise control would not allow me to exceed 120mph....keep pushing "plus" button...no longer plus'ing
 
jShort said:
Wrong, yes. Funny?

If you think a 4 year old falling out of a window and dying is funny your a piece of shit.

But I'm sure you don't really think it's funny.
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There is different kinds of funny. This is dark, edgy funny. No one thinks a child falling to his death is funny however we do have the ability to make light of the darkest situations. The key is in the timing. If Luke made this joke the day after Clapton's child death, it would not be funny. Enough time has passed to go there.

If you have a 4yr old at home you may not think its ever funny. Wait until they are 17, then you may want to push them out the window. (that was dark humor, please forgive me).
 
UtahJoe said:
78mph across wyoming/nebraska/iowa...etc...god I would go insane. Last time I did the Utah to NJ drive was in my 90 mustang GT....I found out that the cruise control would not allow me to exceed 120mph....keep pushing "plus" button...no longer plus'ing
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I actually spent a lot of time at 83 through Wyoming, Montana and South Dakota. The fuel mileage really suffered in the South Dakota winds at 83..
 
Friday, July 31, 2015

There is something to be said about sleeping in your own bed. In my experience, when someone says "there is something to be said about..." something, they usually don't actually know how to say it. Here is what that something to be said is: Oh fuck yes!

July has been a pretty crazy month and I think at this point I have earned my merit badge for Gypsy Living. It's great & fun & exciting and all. But I think I need a break for a little bit. Of course, I'll need to put that on hold as we'll be going up to 909 this weekend for the Taconic race. At this stage, I have zero interest in racing so I won't even be bringing my bike. But D wants to race, and a bunch of people from the team will be up there. And Julia wants to camp. So up to sleep on the ground we go yet again.

Today was almost a day back to normal but of course there never seems to be normal anymore, especially with kids and summer. The boys are off to Canada at the moment, spending 2 weeks in Toronto then 2 in Montreal. Not exactly but close enough for the sake of this conversation. We'll join them at the end to wrap up the summer right before school starts. Man, crazy to think of school already. I'm not even ready for that. Anyway, ahead of myself.

After a wonderfully comfortable 7 hours of sleep I wake up on the soft bed and just lay there. Eventually I get up and the day starts. Kids all off to camp then me back at the house, trying to work. This project is new so it's sort of shaking the bushes and seeing what this is really all about. I have to admit I'm a bit nervous right now because this seems almost blindingly easy. I say that for 2 reasons. The first being that I'm afraid it's not really easy and I just don't see the "gotcha" yet. Second being that it really allows me to goof off and pick up and rush it all through at the end. Today was a sort of mulligan, at least in part. After this week I deserved it though.

Topped off the 31 day challenge by driving the rental van to Enterprise, riding the MTB from the store on 22 to Chimney Rock, then through CR to D's work. I stopped up near High Tech and tried to do some work on the downed tree but my portable saw is no match for this thing. @woody wasn't kidding about the PI. These are not vines, it is a PI tree. It choked it out and killed the tree which is why it fell. I tore out some of the brush so that when it is time to chainsaw it, it'll be a bit easy to get to.

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Rode my way down yellow, across the road then around the reservoir and out Middlebrook towards Crim School. That OSM or BSM or LGBT map or whatever the fuck it is told me there was another trail behind the school so I looked around and found that I could ride another few miles on pseudo-dirt and avoid Washington Valley even more. Got to D's work and grabbed the car, since she is going to ride home from work today. And thus 31 days is complete. I managed 81.5 hours for the month. And now I am cooked for it.

The streak itself is not hard. I've ridden 100+ in a row several times and I'm sure I'll do it again. It was the hours that added up, plus the heat and the camping, KT, race, Ohio, etc. I have to say when I look at the month of July as a whole, it's pretty freaking crazy what it all looks like added up. I put it on the 31/31 thread so if you care you can go check that out. I think the most crazy stat is that I slept away from home 14 times and rode away from home 17. 5 states ridden in, 6 visited, with West Virginia being the non-ride state.

So for this weekend I'm going to pretty much not ride my bike. Is that an absolute? Who knows, probably not. But I have no plans to ride and if I get 0 miles I will not care a bit. Time to take a few days to rest up and then try to morph myself into some sort of race shape for cross season. I'm pretty sure I'm not racing anymore MTB this year, though I guess you never know what's going on next weekend. Having said that I'm pretty sure my next race will be a cross race.

But that seems so far away. The heat is unbearable right now and I think it has taken a toll on my body. I think the dehydration is harder to recover from when I do this repeatedly every day. Like Monday that ride in Ohio was a big one. Then Tuesday I did it again and after 2 days I had done 93 miles at an average temp of 206. Since then I have felt what I can only call "obliterated". I think when I super-dehydrate, it takes me more than 24 hours to truly hydrate again.

Anyway, enough of that riff raff. I could use a margarita tonight. Anyone want to join?

This is where I have chosen to do this project:

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absolutely right. raystown while fast/fun is not kingdom, not even close. remember those steelers teams when we were kids? imo, that was a great decade for football in general.
 
On our way home from Va-k this morning, we were behind a guy with Vermont plates. Wife was like - "you'd like Vermont". My mind went right to Kingdom Trails.

Since I rode Raystown for the first time this year and had a blast and reading the comments about Kingdom + other stories i've heard, i feel like next year will be the year I ride those trails - shit, maybe this year depending on CX season...

May even make a family weekend of it.
 
Saturday, August 1, 2015

I wake up and you know what, F the bike. I want nothing to do with it today. We bum, around the house, doing stuff that is of little to no consequence, and just enjoy the morning. D eventually makes crepes because J likes them. We eventually pack the car for the weekend and saddle up for another weekend of gypsy living. Up to Taconic, to his the first stop.

We make it to the park and D rides a lap of the race course while J & I walk around a little bit. This is more or less the equivalent of walking through the woods with someone shooting me in the face with a Complaint Shotgun. She has been with her mother too long, and combined with the fact that the boys are not around, every little everything makes her complain. The vast majority of this is the bugs. She imagines she is being attacked by bugs like she is China and the bugs are the Japanese and it is WWII. In reality it is really tame in regards to bugs.

We head to the campsite, set up the tent & the chairs, then head to the beach. It is simply a beautiful day.

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Then we took a shot at diner based on the directions from the park office. We get there and it looks less than incredible. But in the end, the food was pretty decent and we all ate everything they dropped in front of us. After dinner we head off to the market to buy some bagels for breakfast.

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That night we sit around the fire eating marshmallows and drinking wine. Well mostly me on the wine. Today I drink wine. I do not ride a bike. We all head to bed sometime after 10:00.

Sunday, August 2, 2015

D wakes me up at 7:00 and we pack up camp as quickly as we can and head out at 7:50 am. The drive is about 30 minutes and we are far from the early birds today. But D doesn't much need to warm up so we have plenty of time. She goes up to register and J & I set up camp at the first turn in the course, basically the shortest distance to walk. Mary (Mrs. Iggy) joins us later and we watch people shuffle in & out for the next hour or so.

D finishes up and comes down and we all head up to the top where the S/F is and hang there for the rest of the day talking to people as they roll in & out. Despite the fact this is in like Glacier Bay, Canada, there is a decent showing from the team and we have a lot of people we all know there much of the day. On top of that it is not hot, which makes everything a lot easier.

We roll out after the cat 1 race. By the end of the day there is like 1% of me that is itching to race but the vast majority is thrilled to not be on the bike for this. We stop at a random chance place on the way home which is a bit more of a modern diner, and the food is fine. As I pay for the bill John Arias walks up to pay and we talk a little bit. Then we all roll out back to NJ.

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Traffic is mostly mild but it's starting already. We head to the park and Julia & I do a short ride so she can earn her dessert and I can hit 10 hours on the week. I want to say IDGAF about the 10 hours but of course I want to hit it. Plus it was a good way to get J on the bike, to swap dessert for a bike ride. She only complains a little all in all.

We head home, unpack, and clean up.

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I did a lot of those days, bring the lady to a race, make sure all is good to go and then hang with the kids. Good times for sure. Only thing different, I didn't have that lust to race, just hanging with old and new friends in the sport was enough for me...
 
I cruised home from Pawling after eating. Took the Saw Mill home to Tappan Zee, 287. No traffic, I saw a lot of folks sitting in traffic going the other way on 287.
Do you evah take a rest week?
 
pooriggy said:
I cruised home from Pawling after eating. Took the Saw Mill home to Tappan Zee, 287. No traffic, I saw a lot of folks sitting in traffic going the other way on 287.
Do you evah take a rest week?
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You also drive slower than a blindfolded 93 year old. ...so sitting in traffic for an hour, norm would still beat you home. 🙂
 
Under protest....Funny, on the way home from the 45...Im driving Bill's 2500 dodge that has no brakes, and no suspension left...its a pretty terrifying vehicle to drive...Im driving at about 65mph when I come upon Iggy in his focus on Rt87 and blow by him like he is stopped....Why were you driving 45 mph on a major freeway?
 
you ever wonder how those old juke box's with the console at each table worked? You can't exactly plug them into ethernet. This was like 1950.
like 5 people could put nickles in and it would que up the songs. It would play songs and continue to add some to the end of the line.
how would you do that pre-transistor? where's the memory!?
My co-worker phil can actually explain this is detail. It's pretty cool. I can't regurgitate that info though.
 
UtahJoe said:
Under protest....Funny, on the way home from the 45...Im driving Bill's 2500 dodge that has no brakes, and no suspension left...its a pretty terrifying vehicle to drive...Im driving at about 65mph when I come upon Iggy in his focus on Rt87 and blow by him like he is stopped....Why were you driving 45 mph on a major freeway?
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I posted why in the team wrap up thread. I'll repeat it again because you have special needs.

Mary drove the car up to Stewart that day(i got a ride w/Kirt), she said something was scrapping on the bottom. I look under the car and the plastic piece that sits under the radiator is hanging down. Its held up by torx screws and I don't have a torx driver. I kinda push the plastic back up and hope for the best. On the way home this plastic piece would peel back if I went over 50mph and then scrape on the ground and make this horrible sound. Thus I had to keep it under 50, which was not horrible on the thruway because traffic was backed up and you could not go fast. However once I got on 287 there was no traffic so I stayed in the right lane and kept it under 50mph. Even with that the plastic flopped down a few times and I had to pull on the shoulder of hwy and pull this thing up. Really scary pulling over doing this, cars are going by at 70mph. Anyway when I got home it took me 3 minutes to take this stupid thing off. I have not put it back since because Ford probably wants $500 for this stupid thing.
 
pooriggy said:
I posted why in the team wrap up thread. I'll repeat it again because you have special needs.

Mary drove the car up to Stewart that day(i got a ride w/Kirt), she said something was scrapping on the bottom. I look under the car and the plastic piece that sits under the radiator is hanging down. Its held up by torx screws and I don't have a torx driver. I kinda push the plastic back up and hope for the best. On the way home this plastic piece would peel back if I went over 50mph and then scrape on the ground and make this horrible sound. Thus I had to keep it under 50, which was not horrible on the thruway because traffic was backed up and you could not go fast. However once I got on 287 there was no traffic so I stayed in the right lane and kept it under 50mph. Even with that the plastic flopped down a few times and I had to pull on the shoulder of hwy and pull this thing up. Really scary pulling over doing this, cars are going by at 70mph. Anyway when I got home it took me 3 minutes to take this stupid thing off. I have not put it back since because Ford probably wants $500 for this stupid thing.
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I was looking for a dragging gif and this doesn't apply but seemed to fit
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