Originally uploaded by MarkFitz.
Last fill-up!
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Originally uploaded by MarkFitz.
Cropdustin'!


EDIT: Unfornately this one didn't turn out as I hoped (that's what happens when you're driving an overloaded truck and trying to moblog all at the same time, I guess). There was a cropduster flying over the highway, seriously buzzing us - it must have been only 40 feet off the ground. It was pretty cool. I must have missed it.
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Originally uploaded by MarkFitz.
I call it: bugs on the mirror.
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 Not much time... 6/28/2005 07:35:00 AM
We're in Blytheville, AR, and D's in the shower. There is detritus on the floor of the bathroom from an (ahem) overflow, so we're in a big hurry to get the heck out of here. Otherwise, not bad for a Holiday Inn motel - free wireless, so I was able to transfer funds from savings to checking so the check I wrote the guy who drove D's car down to our new place for us is not going to bounce. That's nice.

Today, our goal is to get about 20 miles into Texas and stop. That way we can get up about the same time tomorrow, and hopefully arrive in Houston by noon. We'll grab some lunch, unload the truck, and return it, and begin to unpack. I'll try to continue the moblogging to keep updates coming.

We were able to check Pablo and Scott's pics on the web (from the wedding). When markanddana.com is updated post-wedding, we'll link to those and the online images our photographer is providing.

We had a great time at the wedding, and all reports are in support of the opinion that everyone else did to. Thanks to any reading this for all the help and support (and understanding!) you've shown us through this whole process.

Now, on to Texas!!!
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Originally uploaded by MarkFitz.
Damn!
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Originally uploaded by MarkFitz.
Jesus!
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Originally uploaded by MarkFitz.
Effingham!
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 CNN.com - Buy off your 'car guilt' - Jun 21, 2005 6/21/2005 02:39:00 PM (See what I'm talking about)
CNN.com - Buy off your 'car guilt' - Jun 21, 2005: "For $160 you can turn a Hummer H2 into a zero-emissions vehicle. No tools or mechanical ability are required."

I like this idea. Christmas gifts for all my friends!

I don't think I took the time to blog about it earlier, but when I signed up for utilities in Houston, I selected an energy provider that is 100% pollution-free, 100% renewable power. I figure we're going to be using a lot of power anyway, and this way I won't feel TOO guilty about cranking the air up. (or cooking, or doing laundry, etc).

Oh, and yes, I'm way too busy to be blogging, but I'm just sitting on a conference call and have to KIND OF pay attention - too much attention to do work, but not too much to blog. Shows how much thought I put into my entries, no?
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 N24HC Results online 6/21/2005 12:48:00 PM (See what I'm talking about)
Do a search (link above) for year '05 and males age 25-29. Now I really want to do more mileage next year. I came in (tied) at the bottom of my age group. That ticks me off. :)
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 157.9 miles... 6/20/2005 08:05:00 AM
...but let's just call it 160 - that's easier.

The first loop (~125 miles) was, I guess, both harder and easier than expected. Harder because for about the first 20 I just didn't feel right on the saddle, but my legs felt strong and form was good. Apparently Matt and I went about it all wrong, but as newbies what do you expect? He has a faster ideal pace than I do, I think, and that may have had something to do with it as well.

Anyway, at about mile 80 I was feeling pretty well spent, and wasn't sure I would be able to make it all the way. Add to that the fact that Matt and I were resting longer than anybody else at the rest stops, and that we were leaving each rest stop as they were closing for the day (meaning if anyone came in after a certain time, they would be pulled from the course), we weren't sure our pace was alright. When we left the final rest stop, at about mile 97, we weren't certain we would finish in time at all (eventually we found our own pace and Matt pulled in to the finish a few minutes ahead of me, I pulled in a few minutes before the big loop was closed).

After that, about a 30-minute rest (a luxury considering how we felt rushed after the first stop), and then continued on the second loop, about 23 miles long. This one wasn't such a challenge, as we knew that halfway through the loop there was a checkpoint/rest stop we had to hit, so it was really (in my mind) two 12-mile rides - not too bad. We got in a small paceline at the beginning of the loop, but after a couple miles I dropped off because I didn't want to burn myself out, and was committed at that time to finishing this loop and moving on to the short overnight loop.

I stopped at the checkpoint (at this point I had ridden about 140 miles for the day), and just stopped to have them mark off my progress, have some water, and moved on. I got in from this loop with about 30 minutes to spare (making up time, actually), and from there we were shuttled to the final, small loop (a distance of 7.5 miles).

My goal, to complete one of each loop, was met 12 hours and 58 minutes after I started at 8am that morning (just before 9pm I got off the bike for good). My computer said I had gone a shade over 160 miles, so I guess it needs a little calibrating, but overall not too inaccurate. It also tells me I spent an actual 10 and a half hours on the bike, which adds up to about 1.5 hours of rest (which makes sense). Not too bad.

But you should have seen some of these people. I felt like I accomplished NOTHING - people literally would stop an hour after I got off the bike for good for "lunch". Eat, shower, put on some fresh clothes, and then pedal through the night. Truly remarkable.

Time to begin training for next year. :)

PS: Matt met his goal of 200 miles, coming in, I think, at about 205. Congrats, Matt!
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 Lesson learned... 6/16/2005 10:08:00 AM
So, you know how "they" say you learn something new every day?

Yesterday, I learned that a 40 of malt liquor (Steel Reserve) and a poker game do not mix well.

BUT, the same 40 of malt liquor (and company at the game, of course) allowed me to forget, for a short while, all that is going on in my life. It would have been easier if I wasn't asked every 10 minutes how everything is going ("How's the wedding stuff?" "How's the move coming?" "How's work?").

Overall, nice night.
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 Things left to do... 6/15/2005 12:01:00 PM
OK, so the wedding is 10 days from now. That's not so bad. What's really getting at me is the damn move, two or three days later.

So, here's a list of what I have to do before getting married and moving across the country, 10-12 days from now:


  • Update my address with the bank

  • Update my address for work Update: will also have to notify work of my change in marital status after arriving in Houston

  • Schedule a hitch install for D's car (1/2 wedding present) Not necessary anymore. We won't be driving her car.

  • Try out Hutch's bike rack to make sure it WORKS on the hitch Again, not necessary. See above.

  • Order the bike rack for D (other 1/2 wedding present) Ditto above.

  • Finish updating our wedding website

  • Start writing Thank You cards for wedding gifts

  • Figure out the detailed schedule for the wedding weekend

  • Confirm with tux rental place that they haven't massively messed up our order Nope. Only mostly partly messed up.

  • Finalize the ceremony

  • Write my vows

  • Ride as far as I can over a 24-hour period. Addition: pack and prep for this event. Done. 157.9 miles in 10.5 hours

  • Finish a brand-new, untested program for work before next week. This is as good as it's going to get!

  • Meet with the photographer

  • Give the band our detailed schedule and finish paying them That was a big check

  • Pay everyone else

  • PACK

  • Re-pack gifts that came straight from the store (As opposed to being shipped), since they're not packed well enough for a cross-country move.

  • Switch my renters' insurance

  • Cancel cable modem, return to Cocmast

  • Balance my checkbook (ha!)

  • See if we can get our confirmed rental truck one day early (right!) Nope! Closed Sundays!

  • Find a driver for our truck (fun!) Found: me!

  • Get everything we need for the ceremony (candles, coins, etc). At least we have the rings already!

  • Pay the stationers

  • Get a haircut

  • More packing

  • And, as everyone is so keen to tell me, Have fun! I'll have fun when there's nothing left on this list. In fact, maybe I'll update it as I get things done.
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Originally uploaded by MarkFitz.
Aah, the laundromat. Meeting someone for dinner straight from work tomorrow, then likely staying out for poker night afterwards means must wash underwear tonight. Gave me an excuse to ride around in this beautiful weather and spend some quality time with the fixie, though.



Sure hope flickr posts this thru to the blog.



Something about silently riding the fixie around at twilight just turns me on.
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 WIRED NEXTFEST 6/10/2005 11:48:00 AM (See what I'm talking about)
Dana, we don't HAVE to get married this weekend, do we? :)
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 Friendly service providers? 6/10/2005 07:33:00 AM (See what I'm talking about)
OK, I've worked in IT for longer than I care to admit at this point, and my first proper job (not talking summer/winter break gigs here) was at a dinky little ISP out in Northbrook close to oh, 8 years ago now. If you recall, in the dark ages (aka 90's), it was extraordinarily difficult to get broadband, as it was the "hot new thing" at the time. DSL was brand new and spottily available, cable was just coming into its own, and nobody except 20-something geeks like me actually had high-speed internet, let alone knew what it was.

At this old ISP, we were a DSL re-seller. I can't tell you the number of problems we encountered in trying to prequalify and actually get lines installed - it was a complete nightmare. Add to that the fact that my boss was pretty much a scam artist (bouncing paychecks, anyone?), and you can see why I only stayed there for about 8 months.

Fast-forward to now. I, as the astute reader knows, am moving to Houston in three weeks (scary!). In doing so, I've had to deal with all the standard moving crap: cancelling and signing up for new utilities, forwarding mail, the works. Since I'm going to be working from home, and still employed because of my geek-worthyness (say what you will about VB, it pays the bills), broadband isn't just a no-brainer - it's a necessity.

So I searched for broadband providers in the Houston area. In Chicago, we dropped cable TV in favor of DirecTV (needed to see le Tour, yo, and no OLN on Cocmast), but retained the cable modem because we didn't want to spring for a phone line. In Houston I'm going the other route, because again, since I'll be working from home, I'll need that phone.

And I came across Oplink (see logo at top of this post). I can't recommend them enough (so far - I don't actually have the service yet, natch). They were the highest-rated DSL provider on broadbandreports/dslreports.com, so I decided to check them out. I emailed support with my situation, and got an email back the same day from a PERSON who, it seemed, ACTUALLY READ MY EMAIL and, hold your breath now: ANSWERED MY QUESTIONS.

Unbelievable.

They not only reassured me that as long as my phone line was live (and address was prequalified) they should be able to turn on my service in a few business days. Boo-ya. They also recommended I go with VOIP for long-distance (I'll be giving it a try alongside our standard Long Distance, boys), and told me how to get the lowest-cost possible, unadvertised bare-bones "Measured Rate" service from the phone company, SBC. This is a line that costs about $12 a month. Just a phone line, 25 included local calls, nothing else. But we need that phone line for DSL, you know? So I did that. They probably saved me about $30/month with that tip.

The only thing I was worried about, they handled not only well, but in a manner that FAR exceeded my expectations. I was concerned that since I was ordering service before I actually LIVED in Houston, they would send the DSL equipment to my house when I wasn't living there, and it would either bake in the sun and be no more than a bubbling mass of plastic and silicon upon our arrival, OR would be "borrowed" by a neighborhood kid and burned as a sacrifice to the pyro gods in a forest preserve somewhere. Or just sold on eBay, you know? Kids these days are different than Scott and I were, I guess.

So what do they do? They ship it out YESTERDAY, the day of my order, to me here in Chicago. The thing is, they haven't even put my order in the system yet, since my phone line doesn't go live until the 15th (if SBC is to be trusted, which, as mega-corporation service provider, we all know they are not).

If their DSL service is half as good as their CUSTOMER SERVICE, I'm in for a treat. AND, I won't have any problems with VOIP to boot.

Thank you, Oplink. Thank you for giving me hope in the era of "skimp wherever so we can save a buck".

But please still get my DSL working by the time I get to Houston. :)
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 Google mapping SF (and other major cities) in 3D 6/09/2005 08:34:00 PM (See what I'm talking about)
OK, so apparently Google is on a mission to map and serve up the world (according, at least, to the Silicon Valley Watcher).

I am all for this.

Disclaimer: I should REALLY be working on the wedding website right now, but I honestly just don't feel like it. Sorry, Dana. Geek attack.

Anyway, I had this idea (I'm not going to bother looking for the blog post about it from ages ago) about hooking up an optical sensor to my bike trainer (all the parts are still right here!) so I can determine speed during winter training sessions. This all became much less of a priority when the weather in Chicago got better and I realized I was moving to Houston, where there is no winter.

BUT, one of the things I thought about doing with my little toy was somehow hooking it in to a 3-D environment so that instead of staring at the wall, or music videos or boring sitcoms or what-have-you while on the trainer, one could look at, say, actual routes based on the distance they were travelling. If Google is indeed 3-D-ifying the whole world, this task would become much more simple (assuming, of course, they're as lenient with the applications produced to utilize it as they have been with the google maps hacks floating around. My favorite is the craigslist apartmentfinder hack).

I also posted about wanting that neato "extreme" flash-based videocamera for the same kind of thing.
In the Slashdot parlance:
1. Record video,
2. digitize,
3. play back at variable speed depending on speed of trainer,
4. Profit!!!

Another thing I want to do with this mystically-cool cycling vaporware: play back music with certain BPMs based on pedaling cadence (would need, of course, a cadence sensor as well for this bit of magic). That way, you've always got the perfect sountrack!

Ah, well. It's nice to dream, no? Perhaps I can do this in the time I save by not commuting to work this coming year?

That is, unless we're outsourced. Then it makes little difference. (BECAUSE I'LL HAVE ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD!)

And, as always in the words of Matt Fasana: "PATENT PENDING!"
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 UDDER Century - COMPLETE 6/06/2005 08:37:00 AM (See what I'm talking about)
Well, the last remaining training hurdle (and really the ONLY planned hurdle, other than riding as much as possible leading up to this) has been completed prior to the 24-hour challenge.

From the time we began riding (8:30am) to the time we finished (just before 4:00pm), took about 7.5 hours, but I think our time on the bike (left my cyclo-computer at home) was more like 5.5 - not bad for my first Century. For the first 80 miles we maintained an average of over 17mph, but the last 20 (really the last 40, I'll explain later) were windy as all get-out, and dropped our (my) final average speed to just over 16mph.

There were rest stops every 20 miles. At the first stop, Hutch peeled off and went on to complete the 32-mile route (bad stomach problems and having not eaten anything the day before, we lost sight of him at mile 3). The rest stop at 40 served as our longest break of the day, and we HAULED from the stop at 40 to the stop at 60 (we had the wind behind us or a crosswind for most of the first 60). At the 60-mile rest stop I realized I hadn't had much water to drink (it was HOT, and I finished about two bottles each 20 miles prior to that), and also didn't take in much food (which turned out to be a big mistake).

As we left the 60-mile rest stop, we gained a fourth ("we" being myself, Matt Fasana, and Ryan Dunn), a guy named Dale who we had been see-sawing with all day. As the four of us left the rest stop, we noticed a group of about 8 who had left just prior to us about a minute down the road. We formed a paceline (Wikipedia definition: "A paceline is formed with the riders all drafting one another. Riders will take turns at the front to break the wind, then rotate to the back of the line to rest in the draft. Larger group rides will often form double pacelines with two columns of riders.") to catch up to them, doing so after a couple miles. Then the 10-12 of us did our best to form a double-paceline into the roaring winds (these were 20-30 mile steady winds directly against us. The gusts were unbearable). After probably about 10 miles with the group, I just couldn't hang on anymore and was dropped. I bonked.

Catching up with them at the 80-mile rest stop (which doubled as the 40-mile rest stop as well), I grabbed a banana, ate a CLIF bar, and took on some more fluid. Stretched and got up with the group, and hung with them for another 5-10 miles. I was trying so hard to stay close to the wheel in front of me (for the maximum aerodynamic benefit) that after a while all I could see was the wheel and the blur of moving ground. I felt I was a risk to the rest of the group (because I was so worn out, I couldn't process everything else that was going on around me), I told Matt I was out.

Of course, Matt's a HS football and track coach, so he was able to keep me with the group (with his Jedi-like mind control powers) until we reached a leg where the wind actually wasn't against us, and I dropped.

Matt and Ryan fell back to stay with me (I told them not to, but they insisted, thank god), and we finished it out together.

Of course, there are more details about that last 10-15 miles than I've already relayed, but alas, I'm at work and have to get to it. Perhaps more later.
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 Couple weds on top of Mount Everest 6/03/2005 08:45:00 AM (See what I'm talking about)
Well, it's another option, anyway. If we had planned from day one, it probably would have cost about the same, too.

Maybe next time, D?
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