How many miles did I say I was going to ride this year?

Posted on 2006-03-11 by frank

Back in January, I set a goal of riding 3,000 miles this year. Today is the warmest day so far this year with the mercury marking nearly 83 degrees fahrenheit, and with Andrea and Elizabeth out of town until late tomorrow, going on a ride today was a really easy choice.

I will admit I was a little glum when I got back from my 33 mile ride and logged my miles. Only 99 miles so far this year? That’s a long way from 3,000! It’s actually bad, but not quite as bad as that — I didn’t touch the road bike until 18 February, but did manage to get in 110 miles on the new mountain bike by then, so my total so far this year is 209 miles, 199 farther along than I was this weekend last year. Still, I think I need to step it up in order to make some solid progress towards my goal.

I’m trying something new this year, which is taking it easy early in the season. Last year I got a heart rate monitor to help me figure out how hard I was working when I used my indoor trainer, but I actually find it just as useful out on the road or the trails. I have a tendency, I think left over from my years of swimming, to want to work really hard, especially when I’m riding around other people. My neighbor, who also rides, was talking about his “base miles” and keeping his effort moderate rather than hard to build a good base of fitness without breaking down lots of muscle.

That really got me thinking about how I ride, how I feel immediately afterwards, and how I recover from a ride to get ready for the next one. I admit I haven’t been doing this on the mountain bike mainly due to the exuberance of trying something new, but on the road, I’ve been pretty careful to try to maintain a moderate effort. It’s still early in the year and I don’t think 209 miles is enough to draw any conclusions about the method; my pace is about 30% off its peak last summer, but I’m a lot less tired when I’m done with a ride, and I’m ready to go again the next day at the latest. On days like today when I rode earlier in the day, I even want to go again!

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What could possibly be wrong with riding today?

Posted on 2006-03-05 by frank

It’s early March, the days are noticably longer, and on good days like today, the sun is shining brightly and the temperatures are lifting up in to the 60’s. With the family out of town, it’s the perfect day for a right, right?

Well, yes, but I’m still going to find something to complain about. Today is a perfect day for a ride, but it’s also a perfect day to recoup a few of those burned calories downing my favorite fancy coffee drink, a small mocha with no whipped cream. Too bad there are no coffee shops along any of my bike routes!

I could ride the road bike out towards Appling then loop back in towards Evans, but then I’ve got to ride a while on Washington Road to get to either of the open coffee shops I know to be open on Sunday, and I don’t recall seeing a bicycle stand at either of those places.

Or, I could ride the mountain bike down the canal towpath to Augusta, but of course, with Augusta sucking as much as it does, there isn’t an open coffee shop down there, either.

If I were in a beer mood, I could ride to Mellow Mushroom and grab an appetizer and a cold one, but I’m just not in a beer mood today.

I think the best option would be to make my way to Serendipity by riding up Gibbs Road from the neighborhood across from the Government Center complex. That way I’d only be on Washington for a short block. That doesn’t solve the bike rack problem; I wonder if the owner would let me take the bike inside?

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Migrating from Blogger to WordPress

Posted on 2006-03-04 by frank

Yesterday evening, I moved Andrea’s weblog from blogger to WordPress on auroralux. She’s got her own database and install location so we don’t have to upgrade at the same time if we don’t want to.

I figured it must be a common desire to eventually want to migrate away from Blogger. I can think of lots of reasons for it, but two main reasons stood out: I wanted no questions about who owns her content and I’m too lazy to read Blogger’s EULA; and I wanted access to the web server logs.

I used two methods for the forwarding. For the Main and Archive pages, I just used a simple HTTP redirect to send the browser to the new location:

<MainOrArchivePage>
  <meta HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh"
      CONTENT="1; URL=http://frickchen.auroralux.net/">
  </meta>
</MainOrArchivePage>

I borrowed code to handle redirection of specific articles. The referenced snippet just searches the new site for the title of the article from the old site and displays the results.

I investigated some more complicated methods of rewriting the URLs using javascript, but didn’t make much headway before I discovered these simple solutions.

Andrea also looked through a bunch of wordpress themes; there are a lot out there but it didn’t take long to find one! The wordpress themes are usually covered under a Creative Commons license or the GPL, so it’s nice to know we’re legal using them. So far, her new theme has required slight modifications to style.css to make it work for her, but that’s another advantage of migrating: if I’m going to have to learn CSS and a blogging template system, I would rather learn only one and be able to handle both our blogs.

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Feminism: Take Dooce

Posted on 2006-02-28 by frank

I’m not sure if that can qualify as a pun but anyway…

I don’t watch morning or daytime television, not because I think it’s wrong or I don’t have time because I’m too busy working, but really just because there’s no television in the areas of our home where I spend my mornings or daytimes. Thankfully I missed a Good Morning America interview with law professor Linda Hirshman where she said it’s a mistake for educated women to stay at home with their children. Also thankfully, Dooce has summarized it for me so I can seethe about it at leisure instead of in real time.

When Andrea and I were deciding what sort of parenting to provide Elizabeth, we read a lot about this subject, and found quite a few studied opinions that contradict Hirshman’s advice. It makes sense to us as parents that we are the best people to care for our daughter, that we should appreciate and take advantage of the financial situation that allows Andrea to provide nearly full-time care for Elizabeth during these first few years of her life, and that starting our daughter’s education this way is in fact the very best way that we can contribute to her future and to ours.

So, Dooce, I join you in giving the big middle finger to Linda Hirshman and her brand of feminism. I definitely prefer yours.

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Bon Appetit – from the 1970’s!

Posted on 2006-02-20 by frank

Andrea probably won’t post about this because it’s kind of outside the scope of her blog on parenting, so it looks like I get dibs. She’s lately taken up this admirable hobby of cleaning out our lives of some stuff we no longer need or want, only instead of donating it to Goodwill or a similar organization, she’s joined a local Freecycle mailing list. Our attic and garage are much less cluttered, with the notable exception of a stack of back issues of Bon Appetit she couldn’t resist picking up. The earliest one I saw when I rifled through the pile was from 1976, and contained a fascinating recipe for a flambé salad. No, really, I’m not making this up.

Her excellent idea is to pick several likely-looking recipes from the 1970’s issues, and have a 1970’s dinner party. I suppose it would be like a pot luck wouldn’t it? Maybe a cocktail party with 1970’s appetizers would be fun, too.

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