Missed Opportunity

What a beautiful day! Unfortunately, I missed my colleagues and was stuck with myself and the MuVo… Up King’s Mountain Road, then down Skyline and 92, back on Canada. All in all a short ride, since I drove to Woodside. Still, it was a wonderful biking day, and everybody and their dog were on Foothill. I need a haircut, right now, but when I come back – how about another ride? Continue reading

Long Ride

I am getting ready for an all day ride with my coworkers. We’ve got plenty people seriously into biking, and once in a while we all get together to start a longer ride. It’s usually a lot of fun, with people that are not engineers like me and hence automatically seem to get more fun in life. Speaking of fun: it wasn’t fun to ride home on Thursday. A very strong wind was facing me almost all the way, and it felt as if it would have been faster if I just had pushed the bike. Continue reading

Bike Tours

Looks like a bunch of guys at work decided to fly out to France to follow the Tour. Now they are frantically trying to get in shape for the Mont Ventoux etappe, and I am afraid to say, I would have loved to be amongst them. Well, I still get the benefit of people at work biking more in expectation of things to come. We used to have a really nice biking ‘team’, but two of the main actors left last year and the dynamic disappeared. Continue reading

Commuting in the heat

Well, the first weekend of summer was a bit of a disappointment, but the first day after it ended was surely hot! I was very tempted to throw my corporate clothing and disappear for a long ride to the beach and enjoy the lower seventies out there. Commuting on my bike is really a wonderful way to start and end the day. i wish more people did that, especially some of my coworkers that need to have more fun in life! Continue reading

Up La Honda - Or Not?

Well, not… Strangely lame today, despite the gorgeous weather. I got all the way to Woodside, decided to go straight ahead to La Honda (instead of on Kings Mountain, which had been my first choice of the day), waited there for ten minutes and then… Gave up. I made it back to Portola and up Alpine, but somehow I felt like a total loser. Is a three day weekend just too much for my legs? Continue reading

Dreary Day - Good Ride

Unexpectedly the weather turned dark and cold. Since it is Labor Day weekend, that’s not exactly what everyone was hoping for, and consequently the roads were empty. Amazing how a few clouds can sour the whole biking thing. I rode off and got a decent workout, an hour and a half around little Alpine, but somehow I was not really into it. People were friendly, though; there is something magic about bikers that are not in a hurry. Continue reading

Reading HRM Files

Finally got the HRM filter to run! Well, it was pretty much just busy work, and I am sure I still missed a million things… But I finally got the software to read the HRM files I generate! I integrated the calls into the usual workout.c file – now it checks the first two bytes – if they aren’t what it would expect for a srd file, it checks if it can find the string Version=106; if so, it reads the file as Windows HRM. Continue reading

Massive Fun Ride

I felt really ill last night. And of course I was bummed, thinking I wouldn’t be able to ride today. ;( Then, this morning, waking up, there was this weird buzz in my legs, they just couldn’t wait to spin. I waited till nine, swung onto Ti (after pumping up the rear tire – somehow I must have done a really poor patch job last week) and started riding. There was a bit of immune reaction I could feel. Continue reading

Fellow Commuters

Now that we reached the summer, people are starting to flock to work on their bikes again. That is wonderful, since I am not required to be the only fool that tries to avoid cars. And there is an element of shared fun when I am trying to draft on the windy corridor to 101, or to chase someone that is much better than me. There is something strong about the way bikers can interact with each other without exchanging one word. Continue reading

Accident Prone

Yesterday, a minivan. One of those brand new, huge elephants of transportation. Grant Road, in front of the hospital. Pulls up beside me, then accelerates, finally swoops right in front of me into the driveway to the facility. I slammed on my breaks and barely stopped in time to curse the driver, who couldn’t possibly have missed me. Whenever I see a police car stopping a biker, as I frequently do on Foothill over the weekends, that’s my only thought. Continue reading