I'm on the second week of my biking vacation in Va Beach with my brother,
and having a great time. I thought it would be fun to share our regime...
When I arrived, Jay (the bro) had set up the garage to allow two bike stations
with a nice waist-high plank on wooden horses, upon which to lay out one's
biking gear. That was nice! I plunked my two boxes of biking paraphenalia on my
plank and propped the bike up in my own bike bay.
The day before a ride, we go to one of several Internet map sites. One of the nicer sites
besides mapquest and yahoo maps is:
Here you can pick several sizes of maps (top right "map size"😉, after you type in
your address, and you can use the 'get directions' feature to find the distance.
We find the route we're taking and do a "get directions from here" to mark it, then print
it out on the color Inkjet printer. After trimming, the map is put in a clear plastic page
protector. This map goes on my handle bars on a very small clipboard, along with a 'sharpie',
to allow notes and other annotations.
Just before departure, I get the weather report:
....and then skibble through the house like a nut, announcing the temperature and probabiliy
of rain, causing the non-biker members of the family to cringe; heh, heh.
Then at the respective garage bike stations, we don our 'Third Eye' mirrors, get a stick of
sugar-free gum, check the tires and brakes, and slip on the biking gloves, and check the
walkie-talkies (in case of getting lost). Then my bro, who rides in cut offs and t-shirt teases
me about my latest spandex bike jersey, to which I offer a raspberry'd 'jealous' epithet.
Our spouses mutter about 'acting like a couple of kidz', but we take it all in stride.
At the end, we race to the computer room to enter the mileage and comments in Excel. I
can usually be counted on for a good taunting comment on his page of the spreadsheet, which
he reads later and usually exclams 'hey, I did not dump the whole contents of my waterbottle
on my head on purpose...somebody didn't screw the lid on or something!'. ;-p
OK, goofy post, but believe me, it's the most fun I've had in years!
-Badger