646 - Three Reasons to Ride a Bike - 2012-05-18
May is Bicycle month. To celebrate, there are many official biking days such as the Bicycle to Work Day, which is, by the way, today - May 18, 2012. Since I work at home, I thought I'd write about biking instead.
I love to ride a bicycle. It is such an efficient machine. You pedal a bit and then coast. Pedal more and coast even more. Feel the wind and the freedom. Most folks learned to ride a bike when they were young. Learning to ride was a significant milestone of our youth. Most adults still remember how they were taught to ride and even how old they were when they first pedaled on their own. Then our lives changed and the motor vehicle becomes our means of transportation.
Well, I still like to ride and I guess you could say that the bicycle is my primary ...
645 - Panther on the Prowl - 2012-05-17
Saturday, I rode the Stones River Greenway in Murfreesboro on my Schwinn Panther. Panther is a single speed cruiser with large, slick tires. Underneath the cruiser-like appearance, the Panther is light and quick.
The goals of my ride were to gather pictures and a GPS track to use for a map and Adventure Guide for the cloudhiking.com site and to just have fun. My riding style is to pedal leisurely at a moderate speed and then to stop to take pictures or mark the GPS. After I had finished documenting the southern leg of the path (from Old Fort to Barfield Road), I continued to ride to the northern terminus of the path at the Thompson Lane Trailhead.
I exited the greenway and entered the parking area. Stopping for a brief rest, I took a few pictures, drank a sip of water, and then turned Panther around and headed back toward Cannonsburg. It was a great day for a ride.
At the Thompson Lane Trailhead, I had noticed a couple of bicyclists standing by their vehicle. They were dressed ...
644 - Sewing with an Awl - 2012-05-16
In order to do simple gear repairs, you need to know how to sew. I learned
the basic sewing skills as a Boy Scout (my mom instructed the troop on how to sew.) We didn't get a merit badge for
our new
skills, but we were able to sew our merit badges and other patches onto our uniforms. Sewing is an important skill.
Later in life while sailing, I learned even more about sewing and in particular, how to mend a sail with an awl. If you sail very often, you are repairing sails very often.
Sewing with an awl is not very difficult, but it does take a bit of practice to learn ...
643 - Stones River Greenway - 2012-05-15
Saturday, I went to Murfreesboro to have a vehicle serviced. Instead of waiting on the service to be completed, I planned to ride the Stones River Greenway. A couple of years ago, I rode the greenway and had recently been looking for an excuse to return.
To access the greenway at Cannonsburg Village, I had to ride on Church Street for about a half mile. The road was very busy, even on a Saturday morning. No one was walking on the sidewalks, so I decided they were the safest passage. I was riding my Schwinn Panther, a sleek, single speed, cruiser, so the rough sidewalks were not an issue.
Obeying my Goggle Maps directions, I left Church Street and weaved through an industrial area, to arrive at Cannonsburg Trailhead. It probably was not the best route, but on Saturday, the businesses were mostly closed. Historic Cannonsburg Village is a ...
642- Blisters - 2012-05-14
On the approach hike to Mount Robson in the Canadian Rockies, a friend of mine was wearing large leather mountaineering boots and carrying a heavy pack. As he worked his way up the trail, the heavy pack took it's toll. Sweat rolled down his legs soaking his socks. He changed his gait to try and ease some of the load of the pack. Soon he was walking with a noticeable limp. I didn't think much about the limp, but assumed it was caused by carrying the heavier than normal pack. We were all struggling.
When we finally arrived at Berg Lake, my friend took off his boots to cross a stream. He had huge blisters on both heels. I had never seen blisters like those before - they were at least three skin layers ...
641 - Sunscreen Conspiracy - 2012-05-11
In the spring of 2011, we began planning for our summer trip. We had the general idea that we wanted to visit Rocky Mountain National Park, but we first had to find a place to pitch our tent. We were hoping to find a campsite in a campground near the areas where we were planning to hike. But, as anyone who has ever tried to reserve a campsite in a popular National Park knows, often times it is difficult to find any sites open, much less ones you want.
We started planning early and surprisingly there were still plenty of sites open at one of our favorite campgrounds, Glacier Basin. From past trips, we had notes to remind us of which sites were the best. Going online to the www.reservations.gov site we found most of the secluded sites on the outside loop of the campground were still available. We snatched the sites up immediately. Wow, we not only reserved sites, but we reserved two good sites ...
640 - Gearaphobia - 2012-05-10
As my wife, Amy, was leaving for work this morning, I stopped her and said, "we only have three weeks before we leave!" Both of us smiled.
Over the last several weeks, we have been slowly getting ready for our summer trip, but now is the time to buckle down and finish the job.
As we begin to pack, we know that we have a problem. It's called gearaphobia - the fear of needing something that we decided not to pack. More than likely, we would be able to continue the trip without the vital piece of gear, but it might not be as comfortable. So we tend to have too ...