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Archives for December 2013

Happy New Year!

12.31.2013 by Ray Niekamp // 1 Comment

I had to get one last ride in during 2013, and finally got some free time today to go. I was out for a little over an hour, just 16 miles in the neighborhood. The temperature started falling, and I wasn’t as comfortable as I was when I started out.

When I got home, I added the day’s mileage to my spreadsheet, and discovered that I ended the year with 3,391 miles. That’s the lowest annual total since 2009.

So it’s time to do some reflecting on the past year, and where my biking has come. Perhaps, where it’s going.

One reason for the low mileage is that I haven’t been riding very far this year. As I look back over my stats, I see that my longest ride was a whopping 48 miles. When you ride only three days a week, as I generally do, the miles don’t mount up. I have always relied on longer weekend rides to keep my totals higher. For some reason, I’ve found it easy this year to ride 20 miles instead of 25, 15 instead of 20, and 25 instead of 30. Heck, in 2011, I was contemplating riding a metric a month. It worked for about three months, then stopped.

I know I’m something of a weather wimp. I don’t ride when it’s below 40 degrees (4C), but over the summer when I got home in the afternoon, I found it easy to skip rides when the temperature was past 100 (38C). I don’t ride in the rain, if I can at all help it. So, all that cuts into ride possibilities.

Then there are some health-related things. I wrote about my gout in September. Thought it had been handled, and I’m now on medicine to lower the uric acid levels in my blood. But I got another gout attack over the weekend. I rode, except for Monday. The attack has subsided, and I feel fine now. But I’m going to have to be more aggressive at combating this, because gout attacks are no fun.

One way to combat it is to lose weight. I was a bad boy during both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Lived high. Gained weight. Not good.

So, looking ahead to the coming year, what are my resolutions? I don’t make resolutions. But I am going to set some goals. One is to peel off the pounds (I won’t say how much, but I have a specific course of action I’ll be taking). One is to ride more, and farther, than I have this year. I’ll target some specific rides, which I haven’t done this year, in the hopes that preparing for them will help me reach those two other goals.

I’m looking at 2013 as something of a setback. I won’t lose my drive, however. Like a football team that has a bad year, I’ll just rebuild in the coming one. I hope the new year sees you reach your goals, too.

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Categories // Records & stats Tags // long distance, mileage

Cedar Fever

12.27.2013 by Ray Niekamp // 5 Comments

Bike Noob is back from a Christmas hiatus. What, you didn’t notice? That’s okay — readership of this blog always drops way off during the winter months, when people who live in a four seasons climate tend to think less of cycling and more about keeping their walkways clear of snow.

Meanwhile, here in Central Texas we’re not in a biking mood, either. Cedar fever season has hit. The so-called Mountain Cedars (They’re really part of the juniper family) pollenate from mid-December until early March, and they hit their highest levels starting about now. The north wind blows pollen off the trees in clouds, and pollen counts run as much as 40 times higher than what is considered a high level.

Mountain cedar trees with the Austin skyline in the background.
Mountain cedar trees with the Austin skyline in the background.
Cedar tree pollenating. From http://www.hay-fever-relief.com/cedar-tree-pictures.html
Cedar tree pollenating. From http://www.hay-fever-relief.com/cedar-tree-pictures.html

My wife was the first to sense it. She started sniffling on Christmas Day, then came down with a low-grade headache. My symptoms hit the day after. Our beagle is miserable, spending every waking minute scratching, and sometimes even whimpering in agony. The vet says to give her Benadryl. Doesn’t help.

I was getting antsy after not riding for nine days (first too cold, then family in for Christmas), and I figured things couldn’t get any worse if I rode the bike than if I just stayed indoors, hacking and snorting. I was right. A 15-mile ride through the neighborhood got me reinvigorated, and the only side effect was that I spit more than usual (sorry for the unpleasant image). At least it cleared the sinuses — for about as long as I was on the bike.

Back home, I popped a Zyrtec, as did my wife. Zyrtec helps just a bit. But you’re not supposed to drink any booze with Zyrtec. I think a better course of action for me will be to stop the pill and dip into that bottle of Glenlivet I got for Christmas. It won’t ease the allergy symptoms, but I won’t care.

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Categories // Odds 'n ends Tags // allergy

My Haywire Bike Computer

12.17.2013 by Ray Niekamp // 10 Comments

The other day, I was out for a ride when I noticed something odd. My bike computer was behaving very oddly. It registered speeds twice as fast as I was going, then suddenly dropped to half the speed. After I’d ridden about four miles, it showed that I had done closer to nine.

Now, when you’re as OCD as I am about keeping stats, that’s a very uncomfortable feeling. I could still enter the mileage, because my route was one I ride all the time, so I know how far it is. I missed such important stats as average speed, maximum speed, and time of ride.

After traveling about half the route, I pulled over to the curb and adjusted my speed sensor on the bike’s fork. I made sure it was within two mm of the magnet, and I turned the magnet a bit to make sure it was positioned perfectly. Then I hopped on the bike and started pedaling.

Nothing. That is, nothing had changed. It still had me racing beyond my ability one moment, and in the next, wasn’t registering speed at all.

Back home, I reasoned that my headlight could be the culprit. I had installed the headlight just before the ride, because the sun is low in the sky and casts long shadows these days. A headlight on low beam would let me better be seen by drivers, especially if the sun is in their faces.

But I remembered that last winter when I had the light on the bike, the computer ran just fine. Hm. That couldn’t be it, then.

Just for the heck of it, when I rode the next day, I took the headlight off.

The computer worked perfectly.

“Magnetic anomaly!” said one of my biking friends.

That was it, all right. And I recalled that one thing had changed since last year. I have a new computer. The old was was wired. The new one is wireless. The wired computer wasn’t affected by the magnetic field thrown off by the headlight, but it sure plays havoc with a wireless unit.

I guess I’ll just have to make it a point to ride before dusk for the rest of winter.

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Categories // Accessories Tags // computer, headlight

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