Sunday, August 28, 2005
Hotter than Hell 100
This weekend I participated in the Hotter than Hell (HNH) bicycle ride. This is a 100 mile bike ride that two buddies and I have been planning on.
My friends live in Dallas and work has me in Dallas so the travel logistics were pretty easy. Kyle (who I work with), Brent, and I planned to make the 2.5 hour drive to Wichita Falls, TX on Friday evening after work. Our original plan had us camping out the night before as no hotel rooms have been available for months, but Brent came through and got reservations at a Baptist outdoor camp. More on this later. Well, Kyle and I took off work a little early and drove our cars to his house.
This was the first part of the adventure. Kyle is a fast driver and part of our trip was over the George Bush tollway. If you don't spend much time in Texas you will find it hard to imagine the freeways. At some point the GB tollway is seven lanes each way. This is added with some toll booths being on the entrance to the tollway and others at the exit. The crazy part is at some of the roadways where you enter. After the tollbooths you have four or five unmarked lanes merging into three lanes of the road. Needless to say in Dallas it is mad sprint of vehicles diving for the highway lanes. Luckily we made it though and arrived as Kyle's house an hour later where Brent was waiting for us. We loaded the Yukon and headed out.
The drive to Wichita Falls was fine with some sharing of driving duties. On the drive I considered one of two possibilities. With this ride having over 8000-10000 participants, full hotels, and an estimated economic benefit to city of over $10 million, I thought the regional police would be lenient on speeding. The opposite could also be true with the highway patrol looking to share the economic advantages. Apparently, the later was true as we saw several people pulled over. Thankfully we stayed out of trouble.
We arrive in Wichita Falls and promptly drove to the convention center. This is where the ride registration was and the HNH bicycle expo. The expo was a large collection of bike retailers, bike related companies, and car companies hawking their wares or marketing their product. We spent about a half an hour cruising the expo with each of us buying something at a great deal. I bought some new sunglasses to wear on my motorcycle.
At this point we each indicated that we were hungry and wanted to get dinner. My optimism was not up as what I had seen of Wichita Falls was not inspiring. Think of Topeka, Kansas for my Kansas friends. But, Brent indicated that he had looked up a "italian" place called Pasquals. He had directions and shortly we arrived. Imagine our surprise when the "joint' was located in an older, upscale residential neighborhood. Think old, country club rather than chain-restaurant. My first reaction was that we were severely underdressed in t-shirts and shorts. But, this being Texas we went in. The hostess (owner?) was very pleasant and had us wait a very short time while they got our table ready. While waiting at front we perused the daily dining menu. We were very surprised to find no pastas and only gourmet entries. Despite the average price close to $30, everything sounded very good. The hostess took us to our table. Shortly thereafter our college-aged waitress, came to start our order. At this point one of us asked if there was any pasta available. While the waitress indicated that the daily page was the entire menu she was sure that that the chef could make us something. We said thank you and very, very shortly the chef came to our table. It was hard to describe the chef. He was very large, overweight, wearing the normal chefs' hat and kitchen coat, and black shorts and birkenstocks. The chef seemed entirely excited to see us and asked what we would like. When we indicated that we were in town for the ride and wanted to carbo load, he suggested that he had several pastas and recommended the spinach linguine. Brent requested the spinach linguine with chicken, while Kyle and I both elected the spinach linguine with sea bass (one of the daily entrees). The chef indicated that he would take care of us and went back to the kitchen. All of us were very pleasantly surprised when our meals arrived. In addition to very healthy portions of spinach linguine each, topped off with out meat, the chef sent out a heaping tray of roasted vegetables (asparagus, tomatoes, mushrooms, zucchinis, etc). The meal was prepared very nicely (think 4 star restaurant not Macaroni Grill) and wonderful. The chef came out later and asked us if our meal was satisfactory and talked with us for a short time. You had to be there, here was a very Texas (twang and all), young, gentleman who describe his restaurant as a "French-Texas thing". On our part we could not have planned a better meal. To put in perspective this was probably my best meal in Texas this year.
After dinner, we headed to the Baptist camp to get to our sleeping arrangements (bunk beds in the camp facilities). At the camp after eventually find out the check-in location we were checked in by a very attractive young lady. Now as the only single one of the bunch it took some willpower to not hit on this girl. But honor and more commonsense (remember this was a Baptist camp) had me minding my manners. After all we all commented on how awesome the stars were, we headed to our lodge. The view of stars in parts of Texas like this outside of the city are an incredible sight. The sleeping experience was what to be expected of a a bunch of cyclist before a big ride. Mostly everyone was asleep early and no partying took place. Only a couple of idiots. One was setting his watch (with many beeps) and later one took a cell-phone call.
The next morning we woke up early and got ready to drive to the ride. The ride started at 7:00 am. We arrived at the convention center around 6:00 am. Kyle did some bike maintenance (replacing a tire) with much good-natured abuse. A well-known rule of cycling being that you don't change your equipment right before a big ride. We rode to start well before 7:00 am and were still about a third of the way back. I can not describe what it is to be in crowd of cyclist covering two lanes for possibly 10 city blocks. When the start gun went off at 7:05 we didn't make it to the start line until 20 minutes later. Probably five miles later, the three of us started motoring is small groups passing slower riders. I was and am incredulous that we continued to do this for well over half and hour and still were always riding in large groups of people. We were probably going 23-25 miles and hour with the slower riders going 15. Shortly later we came upon our first bad accident. Some guy was on the side of the road (very bloody). Thankfully I did not see his bloody face but I heard about it later. Over the next hours of so I saw several accidents. I was being very careful as we we continually involved in "trains' of cyclist in pacelines motoring past slower cyclist. These pacelines would go for 3-5 minutes before breaking up for one reason or another.
While, Kyle, Brent, and I consistently riding faster than most, I came to a new observation. My past generalizations has been there are basically two types of riders on these rides, newbie and very inexperience riders (Yahoos) and experienced "pro" riders. The Yahoos (while I applaud their effort) are to be avoided lest they crash you. On the HNH, I came up with a new designations, serious cyclist ("pro") who are Yahoos. These riders while very well equipped and fast are erratic and liable to get you into a crash. Generally, these riders would get into the pacelines then do something crazy. This included the "start and stop" riders who would go very fast, pass lots of rdiers, and then come up to another group and just stop the paceline. these riders would generally start up later, using lots of energy to get farther no faster. A second tactic was the riders who completely avoided the right side of the road (leaving it empty sometimes) to ride just left of the center line. There was plenty of passing on both the right and left side of riders. While this was necessary, I was passed several times on the right when I was in within two feet of the side of the road with the entire left side open.
Each of the three of my riding group has different riding styles and eventually we broke up with Kyle being ahead and Brent and I trading place being the last in the group. After losing Kyle, Brent and I decided to speed up and catch onto him. Kyle left us shortly after it started raining (when I slowed down to put my digital camera in a baggie to protect it from the rain). It rained for about 20 minutes. Shortly afterwards we caught up with Kyle with Brent blowing past him and me in his trail. Then Brent slowed down and I took the lead. Shortly after, Kyle caught up and the three of us were riding together. At this point Kyle sprinted off again (he being on a personal record mission). I caught on shortly after and we both enjoyed drafting other riders. At this point the best riding of the day started. We caught on to a group being lead by a tandem (man and woman). The tandem rider were very fit and leading a small group (them and three-four) riders at over 30 mph! This lasted for a long time with the tandem team refusing offers of other taking a pull (if they could!). We were all disappointed when later the tandem team stopped at one of the rides rest stops. Kyle and I continued on with Kyle once again sprinting off the front to catch a fast group. I decided to let him go with the expectation that I could catch on to a fast group behind me and catch him later. I was also hoping that Brent would catch up to me.
After riding with several different groups for a long time I chose to stop at one of the rest stops and use the bathroom. I hoped I might see Brent and be able to ride with him for awhile. After my short stop I took off again with no sighting of Brent. Maybe 10 miles later I came upon a bike on the right side of the road with no rider. About 30 yards up the road I saw a pickup talking to a couple of riders. As I came upon this, imagine my surprise as Kyle waved me down. He indicated that he had been in a wreck and his bicycle was "messed up". He walked over to show me his bike. The rear wheel was crushed and the bike was out of whack. Kyle indicated that a rider had cut across his path and knocked him down. A following rider ran over his bike. The bike was unrideable, but Kyle indicated that he was sore but okay. He planned to catch a ride back to the last rest stop and SAG to the convention center. I felt really bad as this ride was a specific highlight on Kyle's ride calendar and he had been specifically training for it. At the same time, Brent came riding up. We where about 80 miles into the ride by now.
Brent and I decided to finish the ride, riding together. While it appeared that Brent would have been able to ride faster, I was pretty gassed by this time. My options were to ride fast (and end the ride hurting) or finish at a somewhat slower pace (but no worse for the wear). After confirming with Brent that a moderate pace was okay (as he would still be finishing the ride with a personal best), we finished the ride without incident. The end mileage was something like 106 miles in an elapsed time of around 5:21. This included rest stops so the average was over 20 mph. Brent and I arrived at the finish and called Kyle on his cellphone. We were surprised to find that Kyle was not back yet but expected to be in half an hour. Kyle was getting a ride with the "angel of mercy", a kind woman who was not officially associated with ride (a spouse of a rider) but who was stopping and helping riders. Kyle later told us of his first ride (the pickup) where the driver immediately offered him a cold beer after picking him up. Only in Texas!
After loading the bikes we headed home. The drive was punctuated by a very hard thunderstorm midway. We stopped for a late lunch at Chili's with all of us being very hungry. Lunch was highlighted by our knockout, younger, Julia Roberts look-alike.
The HNH was a great experience. The ride route and terrain is very boring (being extremely flat) but the experience of riding with that many fast riders is cool. The dinner at Pasquals was one of those memorable experiences found traveling that can not be planned.
My friends live in Dallas and work has me in Dallas so the travel logistics were pretty easy. Kyle (who I work with), Brent, and I planned to make the 2.5 hour drive to Wichita Falls, TX on Friday evening after work. Our original plan had us camping out the night before as no hotel rooms have been available for months, but Brent came through and got reservations at a Baptist outdoor camp. More on this later. Well, Kyle and I took off work a little early and drove our cars to his house.
This was the first part of the adventure. Kyle is a fast driver and part of our trip was over the George Bush tollway. If you don't spend much time in Texas you will find it hard to imagine the freeways. At some point the GB tollway is seven lanes each way. This is added with some toll booths being on the entrance to the tollway and others at the exit. The crazy part is at some of the roadways where you enter. After the tollbooths you have four or five unmarked lanes merging into three lanes of the road. Needless to say in Dallas it is mad sprint of vehicles diving for the highway lanes. Luckily we made it though and arrived as Kyle's house an hour later where Brent was waiting for us. We loaded the Yukon and headed out.
The drive to Wichita Falls was fine with some sharing of driving duties. On the drive I considered one of two possibilities. With this ride having over 8000-10000 participants, full hotels, and an estimated economic benefit to city of over $10 million, I thought the regional police would be lenient on speeding. The opposite could also be true with the highway patrol looking to share the economic advantages. Apparently, the later was true as we saw several people pulled over. Thankfully we stayed out of trouble.
We arrive in Wichita Falls and promptly drove to the convention center. This is where the ride registration was and the HNH bicycle expo. The expo was a large collection of bike retailers, bike related companies, and car companies hawking their wares or marketing their product. We spent about a half an hour cruising the expo with each of us buying something at a great deal. I bought some new sunglasses to wear on my motorcycle.
At this point we each indicated that we were hungry and wanted to get dinner. My optimism was not up as what I had seen of Wichita Falls was not inspiring. Think of Topeka, Kansas for my Kansas friends. But, Brent indicated that he had looked up a "italian" place called Pasquals. He had directions and shortly we arrived. Imagine our surprise when the "joint' was located in an older, upscale residential neighborhood. Think old, country club rather than chain-restaurant. My first reaction was that we were severely underdressed in t-shirts and shorts. But, this being Texas we went in. The hostess (owner?) was very pleasant and had us wait a very short time while they got our table ready. While waiting at front we perused the daily dining menu. We were very surprised to find no pastas and only gourmet entries. Despite the average price close to $30, everything sounded very good. The hostess took us to our table. Shortly thereafter our college-aged waitress, came to start our order. At this point one of us asked if there was any pasta available. While the waitress indicated that the daily page was the entire menu she was sure that that the chef could make us something. We said thank you and very, very shortly the chef came to our table. It was hard to describe the chef. He was very large, overweight, wearing the normal chefs' hat and kitchen coat, and black shorts and birkenstocks. The chef seemed entirely excited to see us and asked what we would like. When we indicated that we were in town for the ride and wanted to carbo load, he suggested that he had several pastas and recommended the spinach linguine. Brent requested the spinach linguine with chicken, while Kyle and I both elected the spinach linguine with sea bass (one of the daily entrees). The chef indicated that he would take care of us and went back to the kitchen. All of us were very pleasantly surprised when our meals arrived. In addition to very healthy portions of spinach linguine each, topped off with out meat, the chef sent out a heaping tray of roasted vegetables (asparagus, tomatoes, mushrooms, zucchinis, etc). The meal was prepared very nicely (think 4 star restaurant not Macaroni Grill) and wonderful. The chef came out later and asked us if our meal was satisfactory and talked with us for a short time. You had to be there, here was a very Texas (twang and all), young, gentleman who describe his restaurant as a "French-Texas thing". On our part we could not have planned a better meal. To put in perspective this was probably my best meal in Texas this year.
After dinner, we headed to the Baptist camp to get to our sleeping arrangements (bunk beds in the camp facilities). At the camp after eventually find out the check-in location we were checked in by a very attractive young lady. Now as the only single one of the bunch it took some willpower to not hit on this girl. But honor and more commonsense (remember this was a Baptist camp) had me minding my manners. After all we all commented on how awesome the stars were, we headed to our lodge. The view of stars in parts of Texas like this outside of the city are an incredible sight. The sleeping experience was what to be expected of a a bunch of cyclist before a big ride. Mostly everyone was asleep early and no partying took place. Only a couple of idiots. One was setting his watch (with many beeps) and later one took a cell-phone call.
The next morning we woke up early and got ready to drive to the ride. The ride started at 7:00 am. We arrived at the convention center around 6:00 am. Kyle did some bike maintenance (replacing a tire) with much good-natured abuse. A well-known rule of cycling being that you don't change your equipment right before a big ride. We rode to start well before 7:00 am and were still about a third of the way back. I can not describe what it is to be in crowd of cyclist covering two lanes for possibly 10 city blocks. When the start gun went off at 7:05 we didn't make it to the start line until 20 minutes later. Probably five miles later, the three of us started motoring is small groups passing slower riders. I was and am incredulous that we continued to do this for well over half and hour and still were always riding in large groups of people. We were probably going 23-25 miles and hour with the slower riders going 15. Shortly later we came upon our first bad accident. Some guy was on the side of the road (very bloody). Thankfully I did not see his bloody face but I heard about it later. Over the next hours of so I saw several accidents. I was being very careful as we we continually involved in "trains' of cyclist in pacelines motoring past slower cyclist. These pacelines would go for 3-5 minutes before breaking up for one reason or another.
While, Kyle, Brent, and I consistently riding faster than most, I came to a new observation. My past generalizations has been there are basically two types of riders on these rides, newbie and very inexperience riders (Yahoos) and experienced "pro" riders. The Yahoos (while I applaud their effort) are to be avoided lest they crash you. On the HNH, I came up with a new designations, serious cyclist ("pro") who are Yahoos. These riders while very well equipped and fast are erratic and liable to get you into a crash. Generally, these riders would get into the pacelines then do something crazy. This included the "start and stop" riders who would go very fast, pass lots of rdiers, and then come up to another group and just stop the paceline. these riders would generally start up later, using lots of energy to get farther no faster. A second tactic was the riders who completely avoided the right side of the road (leaving it empty sometimes) to ride just left of the center line. There was plenty of passing on both the right and left side of riders. While this was necessary, I was passed several times on the right when I was in within two feet of the side of the road with the entire left side open.
Each of the three of my riding group has different riding styles and eventually we broke up with Kyle being ahead and Brent and I trading place being the last in the group. After losing Kyle, Brent and I decided to speed up and catch onto him. Kyle left us shortly after it started raining (when I slowed down to put my digital camera in a baggie to protect it from the rain). It rained for about 20 minutes. Shortly afterwards we caught up with Kyle with Brent blowing past him and me in his trail. Then Brent slowed down and I took the lead. Shortly after, Kyle caught up and the three of us were riding together. At this point Kyle sprinted off again (he being on a personal record mission). I caught on shortly after and we both enjoyed drafting other riders. At this point the best riding of the day started. We caught on to a group being lead by a tandem (man and woman). The tandem rider were very fit and leading a small group (them and three-four) riders at over 30 mph! This lasted for a long time with the tandem team refusing offers of other taking a pull (if they could!). We were all disappointed when later the tandem team stopped at one of the rides rest stops. Kyle and I continued on with Kyle once again sprinting off the front to catch a fast group. I decided to let him go with the expectation that I could catch on to a fast group behind me and catch him later. I was also hoping that Brent would catch up to me.
After riding with several different groups for a long time I chose to stop at one of the rest stops and use the bathroom. I hoped I might see Brent and be able to ride with him for awhile. After my short stop I took off again with no sighting of Brent. Maybe 10 miles later I came upon a bike on the right side of the road with no rider. About 30 yards up the road I saw a pickup talking to a couple of riders. As I came upon this, imagine my surprise as Kyle waved me down. He indicated that he had been in a wreck and his bicycle was "messed up". He walked over to show me his bike. The rear wheel was crushed and the bike was out of whack. Kyle indicated that a rider had cut across his path and knocked him down. A following rider ran over his bike. The bike was unrideable, but Kyle indicated that he was sore but okay. He planned to catch a ride back to the last rest stop and SAG to the convention center. I felt really bad as this ride was a specific highlight on Kyle's ride calendar and he had been specifically training for it. At the same time, Brent came riding up. We where about 80 miles into the ride by now.
Brent and I decided to finish the ride, riding together. While it appeared that Brent would have been able to ride faster, I was pretty gassed by this time. My options were to ride fast (and end the ride hurting) or finish at a somewhat slower pace (but no worse for the wear). After confirming with Brent that a moderate pace was okay (as he would still be finishing the ride with a personal best), we finished the ride without incident. The end mileage was something like 106 miles in an elapsed time of around 5:21. This included rest stops so the average was over 20 mph. Brent and I arrived at the finish and called Kyle on his cellphone. We were surprised to find that Kyle was not back yet but expected to be in half an hour. Kyle was getting a ride with the "angel of mercy", a kind woman who was not officially associated with ride (a spouse of a rider) but who was stopping and helping riders. Kyle later told us of his first ride (the pickup) where the driver immediately offered him a cold beer after picking him up. Only in Texas!
After loading the bikes we headed home. The drive was punctuated by a very hard thunderstorm midway. We stopped for a late lunch at Chili's with all of us being very hungry. Lunch was highlighted by our knockout, younger, Julia Roberts look-alike.
The HNH was a great experience. The ride route and terrain is very boring (being extremely flat) but the experience of riding with that many fast riders is cool. The dinner at Pasquals was one of those memorable experiences found traveling that can not be planned.
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Love my Duck!
It is still early, but I have to say I am really enjoying my new Ducati motorcycle. Very much like an Apple Powerbook at least half the allure of this motorcycle is style. Most everything just seems right. The performance is everything I can ask for. It is plenty fast and takes corners awesome.
The bike is beautiful and a joy to look at and ride. You really have to see one in person to get the full affect. As I ride it more I really appreciate the little details that Ducati got right. The instrument cluster glows a bright, cool, blue at night. Beside being very readable I can not imagine a more pleasing color. The hard bags look very good on the bike and just plain work. They are big enough for a helmet or my 15 in Powerbook (in a case). They are waterproof and easy to open or remove.
For motorcycle friends looking for a sport-tourer, do yourself a favor and look at the Ducati ST3/4.
I have to add a disclaimer. I know several people talking about getting a motorcycle who have never had one before. Without a doubt this is WAY too much bike for a newbie. Besides being a sure-fire way to ensure you get in a crash, there is no way you will be able to appreciate the performance of this bike without putting in some time on something more tame.
The bike is beautiful and a joy to look at and ride. You really have to see one in person to get the full affect. As I ride it more I really appreciate the little details that Ducati got right. The instrument cluster glows a bright, cool, blue at night. Beside being very readable I can not imagine a more pleasing color. The hard bags look very good on the bike and just plain work. They are big enough for a helmet or my 15 in Powerbook (in a case). They are waterproof and easy to open or remove.
For motorcycle friends looking for a sport-tourer, do yourself a favor and look at the Ducati ST3/4.
I have to add a disclaimer. I know several people talking about getting a motorcycle who have never had one before. Without a doubt this is WAY too much bike for a newbie. Besides being a sure-fire way to ensure you get in a crash, there is no way you will be able to appreciate the performance of this bike without putting in some time on something more tame.
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Ducati ST3
I have been thinking about buying a sports-touring motorcycle for some time now. I debated BMW RT, Ducati ST3, Yamaha FJR, and Honda VFR. Last year I took a test ride on a Ducati ST4 and loved it, but did not want to spend the money. i have ridden several BMWs but have been hesitant mainly because of concerns about the dealers. The Honda is a great bike but uninspiring. Finally the Yamaha FJR is the hotrod of the bunch but just doesn't seem to match up in fit and finish. All motor at the expensive of finish.
Well about a month ago I found a rockin' deal on a Ducati ST3 and purchased it. So far I am VERY happy. This motorcycle handles like it is on rails, is very racy, looks great even with the hard side bags, and just brings a smile to my face every time I ride it. And not the very least it is scary fast.
So this is just a quick update. I will post more details as I have more ride time. Ciao. (Did I mention it is Italian and like other thing very cool in design?)
Well about a month ago I found a rockin' deal on a Ducati ST3 and purchased it. So far I am VERY happy. This motorcycle handles like it is on rails, is very racy, looks great even with the hard side bags, and just brings a smile to my face every time I ride it. And not the very least it is scary fast.
So this is just a quick update. I will post more details as I have more ride time. Ciao. (Did I mention it is Italian and like other thing very cool in design?)
