First Trip with a Camera.

I finally made it out on a ride with a camera. It took me so long because I never before really went on a ride purely for the sake of just riding. But this time I did, I had no distance goal, no planned sprints, no overall time target, just a plan to go out, enjoy myself and take some pictures of the bike with stuff. Honestly, I was kind of inspired by the whole Flat Stanley thing, not that I was about to flatten my bike and mail it to people though.
Just now thinking about how I'll be writing this I realize that I should have tracked the mileage per each photo, but oh well. Anyway, even with the master plan to not plan any real 'training' into this ride, I still went 62.57 miles (100.7 km) and a max speed of 41.3 mph (66.5 kph) - I couldn't resist doing at least one sprint. But, it did take me almost 5.5 hours to do, so at least I stayed relaxed with the overall speed.

Maddock rides his bike!

This is awesome. He's growing up so fast!

Now of course the cyclist in me says two things: 

1. We need to get him little clip-in pedals because he (mentally) learned how to ride by watching me. I have clip in pedals on both my bikes, this allows me to push forward when the pedal is at the top of the rotation without dropping my heel to maintain contact with the pedal. That's why the poor little guy's feet keep coming off the pedals. (I find it really really cute!)
2. Stupid left pedal fell off because it has a right hand thread. The right side is supposed to be right hand thread and the left be left hand thread. This was, as you spin the cranks the pedals constantly tighten themselves to the crank arms. Well this one constantly loosens itself, until it falls off...  maybe Gampa can put a tack weld on it so it stays there forever.

I just wanted to share this with everyone real quick cause I'm working 12 hour shifts right now and Kassy (wifey) put it up on YouTube for me to see.

First Coat!

I find it to be absolutely amazing that the Japanese can make such good products and not even promote them. Krylon say's that they are known world-wide, but they are nothing to this paint. I don't know how to say what it is called or tell you any real details about it, all I know is that I asked a very polite older man who worked at the store about the paint and he explained it to me as I asked questions. Turns out, this stuff is water based, requires no primer and sprays great. I did forget to ask him how long to wait between coats and how long it had to set before I could sand anything. Oh well, I bet 4 hours is a good guarantee.

Babysitting

I got back to Okinawa yesterday to find that my friend that had borrowed my van wile I was gone, is now in Korea; and left his bike in the back of my van. Of course I can't just leave it in there the whole time that he's gone, so I brought it up to my room. Now I have three bicycles (one road, two mountain) in my room. It also gives me some time to work on his bike; there have been so many little things with it that have bothered the both of us and he could just never find the time to bring it by for me to tinker with it.

PostSecret

Form time to time I look over the PostSecret blog. I really wish I'd have found out about Post Secret a long time ago, it fascinates me. Anyway, I read this just now and thought it was sweet:

"At my college we have a bulletin board inspired by PostSecret. One day a photograph of a sunset was posted. Written across the photo in white ink it said "sometimes I wonder if anyone would care if I didn't wake up in the morning". 

A few weeks later another photograph was posted. This was a photo of a sunrise. In white ink it said "yes, I would". . . I wish I could tell the person "thank-you" because the sunset was mine."