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:
mappoint.msn.commappoint.msn.comOpen ↗
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:
wunderground.comwunderground.comOpen ↗
...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