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April 2008

4.26.08 Well, things have gone downhill here! Brenden is now out of work again, Joni still is, and ...

Thursday morning I crashed my car. At the bottom of the ramp on the way to work, exit 52, I was behind the lead car waiting to right turn onto 16th. The car in front of me went, I looked left at the traffic (right lane was clear, a truck was coming down the road in the left lane) and stepped on the gas to go, and- WHAM! the guy in front of me apparently decided to STOP at the last minute and not make the turn. I jumped out of the car and yelled "WHY did you stop? WHY?" There was no reason for him to stop, but he babbled something about the truck in the left lane looking like it was going to change lanes. The damage to his car was simply some scuffing. My car? His bumper corner went into my quarterpanel and hit my tire- the car would not drive so some damage to the tie-rod, front drive mechanism or ball-joint is damaged. The car had to be towed to the shop in Grandville. I suspect that due to the age and mileage (1999 and 150,000 miles) that the insurance will total the car.

The car did have needs- new windshield, tires and rims leaked air and needed replacement, brakes are leaking, and the air conditioning is depleted. So, either get another much newer car (with payments)- or get a cheap used vehicle ( I am leaning to this).

Work trip Friday with a rental car-
Trail school today with a good group from Allegan. They have their work cut out trying to do trail stuff in the Allegan Game Area. There are two trail days tomorrow (Luton and Ionia) but with transportation issues, I will end up taking a pass on them- I already inconvenienced the family today using Joni's car to go to the trail school.

4.23.08 Had to go to Rockford this afternoon for work, so I put the bike on the car at lunch with the plan to hit Cannonsburg State Game Area after work on the way back home. I got to the trailhead and there were only a half dozen cars. I suited up and headed out - the ambitious goal to do four, wow, maybe even five laps! Not to be. I did a good lap #1, hit the lap button on the Garmin and promptly went out on lap #2. When I hit Dursum Rd after the first quarter of the trail, I hear a voice behind me.."Hey, Dennis, mind if I ride with you?" Danielle Musto was there, having ridden from her home on the north side of Grand Rapids. We completed my lap #2 (her lap #1) and she stopped at the trail head to make a phone call as I went out for lap #3. She caught me again, of course- she's an elite racer :) and we continued the circuit. She could have blown by me but she was just doing easy riding while working an a recuperating knee. I decided by the last quarter of lap three I would not do a fourth lap. My legs were tired. I'd already put in 65 miles in the previous two days, so the 22 miles today on the trail was quite enough with the 1600 feet of climbing involved. I will do an easier spin tomorrow, perhaps ride with Joni down Kent Trails, then take Friday off.

4.21.08 Well, I decided to shake up my rides a bit and take a different pathway within my usual travels on the bike in order to reverse my path on some of the road ways. So instead of Kent Trails first, I went to Butterworth, then Maynard to OBrien and turned toward downtown to reach John Ball Park. But halfway down the last big hill toward the park, I came across the rest of the Founders race team heading up the hill- the A group followed by the B group.

I haven't rode with the team on the Tuesday rides because I don't have a road bike and I don't always get home in time to meet up with them. Anyway, instead of heading onward toward my initial ride I decided to turn around and hook up with the team. I had to wait for a truck to go by and when I did, the B group was nearly to the top of the hill. I tried and tried to catch them. At one point they were perhaps a half mile in front of me when they were crossing Wilson on OBrien. I'd also slowed down to wait for what I thought was straggler rider, only to find out he was just some other cyclist that saw a team go by and decide to try to hang... Though he had a road bike I soon pulled away from him and chased the B group into Ottawa County. But with the rolling hills, the higher resistance of my wider mountain bike tires caused me to lose time to them every up and down of the terrain. I eventually lost sight of them and turned north on 24th Av in Ottawa County, to Lake Michigan Drive to do more of my standard ride. I ended up with 33.41 miles in 2hrs/12min and 1054 feet of climbing. That brings my total for two days to 65 miles.

I do think I can ride with the B group, even on a mountainbike, and especially if I take Rick's suggestion and get some skinnier tires for the bike- perhaps 1.7 or 1.75's.

Weather looks great for Wednesday and Thursday with rain on Friday- perfect.. Friday's a good day to take time off the bike!

4.21.08 Whew! Yankee race is over, now I can concentrate on other things- like RIDING! Speaking of- I got in a great a 32 mile ride with 1300 feet of climbing tonight.

We had our team photo with the new jersey's yesterday at the event. We have the COOLEST jerseys and the best beer LOL. Brenden is fourth from the right- I am second from the left, wearing regular shorts since I was working the race and not riding this day.

4.16.08 Finally- some riding. Juggling duties and responsibilities, I needed to meet up with my friends Kim & Jon to buy from them an old 1992 Olds Achieva for Brenden to drive (to replace his old Monte Carlo, which threw a rod). Joni had a meeting with some of her friends in the later afternoon, which meant we'd not get to Kim's house until 730pm, which Kim said was fine. So I decided to go riding in this mid-60 degree weather. Then I thought- instead of riding my usual loop, then Joni and I driving out in a car to Kim's, only to drive two cars back- I can just RIDE to Kim's. It was twenty miles. It was a windy day and any turn to the south or southwest resulted in riding into a headwind-but otherwise it was a very pleasant ride. It took me 1-1/4 hours to make the twenty mile ride. I chatted with them a while then drove the car to Hudsonville to leave it with Brenden- he then could take it home at 1100pm when he got out of work. I chit-chatted long enough that my bikeride from Hudsonville to home (seven miles) was after it was getting dark- and I had no lights. Luckily most of the ride was in a wide open shoulder of road and my lack of illumination or reflectors was a minor issue.

Brenden and I rode Yankee tonight- he needed to dust of his single speed!.. He hasn't trained at all since last fall's races- yet he powered up all the hills on his single-speed no problem. Jeez. He may not top out in his class, but he won't have a problem racing.

4.15.08 No riding still- getting rid of a cold and trying to shake the last bit of congestion.

The planning for the Yankee race intensifies- I will be happy when Monday rolls around and the race is over- I can then move on to other things.

________________

During my on-going philosophical discussions and debates with a colleague, I ended up with an exposition today. I post this below in an revised version and am also putting it on the philosophy page

There are essentially two world views struggling for supremacy in modern society. The rational/empirical versus the supernatural. (there are other views- nihilistic views, and such- but these are of smaller impact)

Many people believe in a worldview that is based on supernaturalism- There's been no empirical proof of supernatural explanations for a anything- ever. Period. So the ROOT of this world view is simply unproven. And given the thousands and millions of believers and the heavy hand which religions play in all societies and yet this proof isn't evident- there is simply no reason -no rational logical reason- to expect that supernaturalism can answer any questions about existence or morality or ethics or meaning.

I rest upon a worldview based on a naturalistic explanation for existence - The fact that this naturalistic explanation has not answered every single question ever devised by men is no reason to doubt this approach- the naturalistic approach HAS answered far more questions -empirically- than a supernatural approach. There's a track record and a more rational reason to accept a naturalistic view for resolutions and solutions.

So the choice is between a naturalistic explanation for existence and such- or supernatural.

It really doesn't matter whether you want to classify someone's view as agnostic, atheistic, or whatever- or whether you want to get into the "I live by unprovable things and so do you" tit-for-tat. That's all wordgames and blahblahblah. Cut away at the blather and we are reduced to those two simple positions. The theist really likes to dig into this manner of debate and discussion... it allows for sophistry-oriented wordgames, attacks on the other persons' positions - the whole approach is to "level the playing field" in order to make their (supernatural) argument the same as your (empirical) argument.

No, naturalism hasn't answered EVERY question. Some questions may simply be unanswerable- or the answer so far in our future of discovery as to be unknowable to humanity for the foreseeable future. Typical of this type of "created" question is: "Why are we here" and "What is the meaning of life" ...

The answer to the first can be another question- or questions- why is the dog here? the protozoa, the ficus plant? do those biological entities go through the thought-exersize of "why am I here." There's no reason to presume that they do. Which brings me to my own statement: Just because man can consider a meaning to life, doesn't mean there is one.

Supernaturalism of any sort - well, they are all the same in my view. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, shinto, Hindu, animism, santeria, voodoo- simply all the same- with an at-root view that supernatural forces can and do intervene and that supernatural entities have some sort of personal view or interaction with the world and can (and do) alter the laws of nature or physics or biology.

There is no difference between believing that sticking a pin in a doll will cause pain in a remote unknowing person and accepting that a supernatural deity created an embryo in a teenage girl.

4.13.08 Poor week. Busy at work, then came down with a cold on Friday during a travel day for work. I continue to have a small upper chest congestion problem- so I spent the weekend basically huddled in, drinking water and juice and resting.

4.06.08 What a nice weekend. I spent quite a bit of time outside. 9am to noon at Bass River working with Tom's trail maintenance group where they put in 300 feet or so of bordered and elevated trail through mucky section- lots of wheelbarrow work hauling loads of sand. Today was trail day at Yankee Springs, where Tim had two reroutes plotted. Both were finished by 1230pm in time for lunch. I then rode the trail for one lap. 10.79 miles with 1071 feet of ascent in that one lap. I GPS'd it and have put that on my website. I intend to GPS every trail and put the pathway on this site. Go to Trail GPS page.

4.04.08 Thursday night- Hitchens vs Hitchens. Noted author Christopher Hitchens (God is not Great) debated his younger brother, Peter Hitchens on the war in Iraq and belief in God. Peter is against the war and for god. Christopher is for the war and against religion.

4.04.08 I've used my Garmin GPS unit twice now on the road- it's a pretty sweet tool. I did 26-1/2 miles on Saturday averaging 13.2 MPH and 1253 feet of climbing. Yesterday I rode 24.92 miles averaging 14.2 MPH and 1059 feet of climbing.

The climbing really depends on the specific loop path I take on my rides- you can see the path on the yellow line on the smaller screenshot- I typically ride the same roads each time, but the exact pathway may vary from ride to ride.

On Saturday I rode two hours. I cut the ride short a bit yesterday as I had an 830pm meeting so I rode only 1-3/4 hours.
But I felt I was riding faster and indeed the Garmin indicated one MPH faster average. I had been making a determined
effort to pedal harder on uphills and flats yesterday.

The hill that is behind behind John Ball Park I like to use to train is climb of 130 feet in elevation from bottom to top. The bottom 2/3 of this climb (the first 80 feet of elevation or so) is at a 5-6% grade. But the last third (approximately 50 feet or so of elevation) is at a 10-11% grade! I don't know the distance for sure, but I think this is a 1/2 mile hill, which means about 1600-1700 linear feet is 5-6% and the remaining 800-900 feet of linear distance is 10-11% grade

4.03.08 I used the Garmin Saturday and today- it works really well - except that I can't get the heart rate monitor to sync to it. Below is a screenshot of my Saturday ride with plotted points and elevation. My avg speed was 13.2 on Saturday. I did 26-1/2 miles in two hours. Today I rode only 1hour/45 minutes, but did 25 miles and my avg was 14.2... I felt pretty good!

4.02.08 Looking at last year's four-stage La Ruta results for the Master-B (40-49) category, 89 of 116 racers completed all four stages. The remainder completed one or more, but not all four, stages, in the allotted times.

The way the race works is- you must complete each stage in a given time- if not, your results are not posted for that stage and you cease to be considered an "official finisher" though you can continue to race each day. So you will see riders with results on Day one, no result for day two, then results for day three or four. Only racers with results in all four stages are considered official finishers. But just because someone doesn't have a result posted does not mean they didn't complete that stage- it just means they didn't get to the checkpoints with the correct windows of time.

The leader in this category, a Mike Charuk from Whistler Canada, did the four states- respectively:
06:43:12 / 05:08:32 / 04:43:49 / 06:02:46 for a total of 22:38:17 hours.
He didn't take first in any stage, but his overall time for the four put him in first!

The racer that took first place in Stage One didn't even complete the other three stages (at least, not in the allotted time). Winners of the other three stages placed 3rd to 7th overall.

The last "official" finisher of all four stages was a Clark Seadon of Canada. He did the stages in, respectively:
12:32:00 / 10:02:00 / 10:36:32 / 10:45:31 for a total of 43:56:01 hours
...nearly twice as long as the winner but still an official finisher!

I think I can do this- the climbing, especially on the first couple days, will be the toughest. But I have all summer to work on that climbing. The sheer endurance of riding that long (six to 12 hours) I already know I can handle.

4.01.08 Brenden's old car blew a motor. What to do. We are getting prices to put in another motor- so far we are at a total of $2200 ($750 for motor and the rest for labor- wow).

Our options are:
New motor in the 1998 Monte Carlo
Get different cheap car for Brenden
Me get a new(er) car and give Brenden my Kia

Still waiting for another quote on the motor replacement