Saturday, January 10, 2009
Longest Week of my Teaching Career
If you'll recall, I gave up coffee as a New Year's resolution. I might have picked the worst ever time for it. I take it one day at a time. I actually first stopped the day after Christmas, and didn't have any caffeine until New Year's eve. That one mocha on New Year's completely messed up my system again, and the head aches came back for a few days. I feel like a junkie.
Plus finals are coming up. No Caffeine + lots of work = no time to ride.
Of course, that means Jillian is completely killing me in the thousand mile challenge. I think she almost feels guilty getting to ride for an hour or two during the day while I'm at work, but I'm all for it. The better shape she's in the faster we'll go on the bike - and the less for me to do :-). Plus I have almost enough outdoor riding gear to comfortably ride in 30 degree weather. Apparently the trick to keeping your feet warm is to double up on socks and wear plastic bags between the two layers. Keeps the wind out. When I do finally have some time, I can hopefully catch right back up.
And speaking of bikes, we sat down last night and had a real talk about how we're going to afford everything. Expect me in all my nerdiness to run a spreadsheet at some point in the not too distant future. We took a look at some other bikes that might be as much as half as expensive, but decided we'd still rather stick with the Pino. It's a pricey bike, but we hear fantastic things about touring with them from other owners, and we still think the ability to sit in two different positions will prove invaluable to us. A lot of the cycling journals I've read have featured people that don't ride more than 60 miles a day. We're still shooting for 100, and more if we can. We just don't have a lot of time. But 100 miles a day is a lot more time in the saddle, and two different seating positions could really alleviate some pain.
I've also decided that I will not be taking my pocket slippers on the tour. They're too big. If they fit perfectly then I might consider it, but I get the impression that if they fit perfectly then they wouldn't be pocket slippers. So I'm pulling those from the gear page. Instead I'm going to head down to REI some time and look at the Keen Commutes. Hopefully my feet won't be too wide and they'll fit perfectly. Put some low profile cleats on them and I hope to be able to wear them pretty much all the time.
I hate random update entries.
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| posted at: 14:19 |
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