Trip Pictures

We got in from California late Sunday night (around 3am) so we are all struggling to catch up on sleep and get adjusted back to the real world. Full trip recap/highlights/stories to follow at some point. In the meantime we've posted all of our pictures from last week. Enjoy!

Bike Cali 2008 Pictures

Eating Through San Francisco

After our trip through silicon valley yesterday (we got kicked off google's campus-no visitors allowed) we have been eating our way through San Francisco. We went to the ferry building yesterday after shiping our bikes back home. Last night we went to a bar near the hotel and ended up at a carls jr later that night which was not a good idea. We are sitting (very satisfied) in the in-n-out burger at fisherman's wharf right now. This place is seriously amazing and needs to come to the east coast! Weather is beautiful and Jesse and my legs feel much better.
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Defeated, Deflated, but the Trip Continues

As you all know by now we rented a car yesterday at the Montery County Airport.  We were able to fit all of our bikes and gear in there and continued the trip by car.  I wanted to go on and finish the trip but I realized that our vacation was becomming more of a hassle than it was a fun time.  The winds were brutal and the mountains were getting steeper and the legs were in lots of pain.  We did ride the 5 miles from the campground at the top of Monterry to the car rental site.  After picking up the car we headed to Pebble Beach and 17 mile drive which was unbelievable.  We ate lunch on the 18th green and then walked around the course and obviously went to the store to buy some unnecessary and expensive memorabolia, but that's what memorabilia is for.  We continued on up The 1 as they say in California and headed for Santa Cruz which we all thought was a big dump.  I wouldn't recommend anyone going there.  We stayed at our scheduled campground last night which was pretty much as nice as you can get for a campground.  We started a nice fire and ate at the 5 star restaurant they had at the campsite.  This might be the most expensive vacation I have ever been on.  Just had breakfast in Half Moon Bay and we are at the Apple Store in Cupertino right now, and Jesse doesn't want to leave.  After this we are going to see the Google Campus and then onto Palo Alto to see Stanford.  Our final destination is San Francisco for the next two nights.  While the biking part of the trip is finished we are all still having a great time, and we realized we wouldn't have been able to do Silicon Valley or a lot of the extra stuff we have done without a car, so I guess in the end it was all good.  FYI Jesse is buying everything that has an Apple Logo on it, it's a good thing we have a big trunk.

Thank you Avis

Jesse posting

So last night at dinner in the fishermans warf in Monterey we decided we'd had enough of the horrendous and sometimes dangerous coastal headwinds that had been blowing us around. Also some legs were very sore (mine and mike's, I think mitch's are fine) so we rented a ford explorer and began driving the final 100 miles or so. Admittedly my legs are very weak right now and have been waddling around like a goofy penguin. For lunch this afternoon we stopped at the Pebble Beach golf course somewhere between Monterey and Carmel. The grounds were beautiful and so was my salmon sandwich. Currently, we are driving around Santa Cruz looking for UC Santa Cruz.
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Monterey

Today was supposed to be an easy 40 mile day. Almost immediately we realized that wouldn't be the case. Our friend, the wind, was out in full force all morning. At mile 15 Mitch and I waited for Jesse in a freezing, windy area we later found out is called hurricane point. I'll let Jesse fill you in on the details but he never made it...he took a bus to Carmel where amazingly he met up with us again. We stopped at a bike shop in Monterey to fix a broken spoke on my back wheel. The owner recommended a great burrito place. Monterey is really nice. We are going to head to fisherman's wharf for dinner in a little while.
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Sleeping with the wind

Last night it was pretty windy, at least twice I thought my tent cover was going to blow away. Luckily I set it up like a champ (mad tent setting up skillz).

Apparently, and I'm not sure if this is true, for the second night in a row Mike has had something stolen from him by something without thumbs. The first night candy by a bird (or as I suggested a monkey with thumbs), and last night his brand spankin' new tights by only god knows what (I'm snickering to myself while typing that).

We're about to embark on day five. Legs are a little sore, but spirits are not.

We made it

Jesse posting


Currently, we're sitting in the lodge at our campsite relaxin. We just ate an enormous delicious dinner. (I had a salad Ma) Today was one of the most insane days ever and definately the hardest ride i've ever finished. 70 MILES!!My favorite part of the day had to have been when we stopped to watch actual elephant seals in their habitat. (layin in the waterand on the beach). They were massive. Think size of a 70's Buick Also, in the same area as the seals were tiny squirrils (dad I took pictures). Oh also before I forget dad instead of commenting you have been emailing mike.Hardest part of the day was everything after ragged point around mile 20. I was pretty sore today.All in all great day. Took a while almost 10 hours in the saddle (guestimate) but worth it.

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Finally in Big Sur

After waking up at 5:30 am to try to get ahead of the winds and starting our journey to Big Sur we finally made it almost 12 hours after we left. We climbed hills and descended into valleys and saw the most scenic views the Pacific Ocean has to offer. Its too bad we couldn't stop for longer and take some more pictures but we had mountains to climb in order to cover 70 miles to get to our destination. The best part of today was the elephant seals we saw right outside San Simeon (pictures to follow). The last part of the day was rough, climbing up to 1,000 feet from sea level but it was made all the more rewarding with a downhill of 3 + miles averaging about 37 mphs on the way down. It was quite the exhilarating feeling and made climbing too the top all that more rewarding. We are in the biggest hippy bar in the USA right now in Big Sur where we are going to enjoy some food and drink and rest before we start onward to Monterry tomorrow. Time to drink!!

Almost in big sur

Soooo tired...we rode 63.5 so far. Nothing on the road today. More to come in a bit. Thank god no wind today! California is awesome.
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update...made it to fernwood campground after 69 total miles. Tomorrow should be a nice easy 40 miles to Monterey.

San Simeon State Park

We made it to San simeon state park a few min ago. 58 miles of riding. No reception by our tent. Mitch and I are waiting for pizza delivery by the campground entrance haha. Today was brutal with the wind but we went through some great placess. Morro bay and pismo beach are amazing. Tomorrow is our longest day riding to Big Sur.
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Wet burritos in morro bay

After a quick repair and leg warmer purchase (its freezing in the mornings) in san luis obispo we are almost in morro bay. Bike shop workers recommended wet burritos at a mexican joint which I'm really looking forward to. We rode 26 miles so far.
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Day 2 Complete

Day 2 Complete
Originally uploaded by mjschwimmer

Day 2 is complete. We rode 47 miles to Pismo Beach State Park. Wind was brutal. The picture below was taken just before we left this morning in Lompoc.
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I conquered my fear

I made it over 2 railroad tracks today don't worry gram...saw friend from airplane, lots of wind and Jesse was lost in the woods somehow. We had dinner with our new friend Fred, a british biker going from vancouver to san diego. He eats more than Mike. Now we are sleeping on the beach

Posted by Mitch

Onward to Pismo Beach

We left Lompoc after some quick bike repairs at home depot for Jesse. Amazingly in Lompoc we ran into our friend Sharon from the flight to sba. Weather and views are beautiful. Mitch and I just completed the 2nd highest climb of the trip and are waiting for Jesse at the top. Over and out. We will be in guadalupe for lnch in a few hours hopefully.
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Lompoc

We finally made it to Lompoc (48 miles of riding today) and had some fosters freezers for dinner thanks sharon for the tip...climbed some monster hills. There were huge wind gusts and a scary tunnel. It's kind of chilly here so we all bought UCLA hats to stay warm on our walk back from dinner. Jesse twisted his ankle slightly walking in the dark but is fine thankfully and somehow managed to break his rack. We will stop at a bike shop first thing in the AM.


Posted by Mitch

We have arrived

We finally made it to cali after a nice delay in salt lake city. Met a local lompocian on the flight to sb who didn't know where we should go or what we should do when we get there tonight. I did get a great lesson in the pronunciations of every place we are going. We are already making friends and we haven't even started biking!
After getting to the hotel we found our bike boxes already in the room and we went right to unpacking. Found out that my chain was messed up and no trip computer. To put me in a better mood we made a late night run to dennys for the grand slam breakfast and then we headed back to sleep.
Now we are off to fedex to ship everything and head out. See you in lompoc where we will hopefully be in a few hours! Check out the views from our hotel

Posted by mitch
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Getting ready to head out

Getting ready to head out
Originally uploaded by mjschwimmer

Just had breakfast in lovely Goleta. Awesome view of the mountains in the background.
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Landed in Salt Lake City

We just landed in Salt Lake City. Gonna be cutting it close to our flight to Santa Barbara. I watched most of the first Lord of the Rings movie and played this awesome trivia game on the seatback tv screen against the other passengers. Mitch, Jesse and I dominated.

Update...made the flight to Santa Barbara!

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And We're Off...

Today our adventure starts. We are leaving at 5:10 pm from Newark Airport and barring any craziness we should arrive in Santa Barbara around 10:15 p.m. PST. Our bikes have arrived in Santa Barbara so we will be doing a bit of organizing in our groggy states when we get in tonight. We hope to be on the road by 10:30 a.m. tomorrow on the way to beautiful, Lompoc. Well I hope its beautiful...no one has ever heard of it before and it's California so how bad can it be. Got to finish up some last minute things at the office...see you on the road!!

Worst shape ever (maybe)

So I went to the gym yesterday, because I decided it was time to start training for the trip which begins Friday (technically the riding begins Saturday). I ran/walked (mostly jogged) 3 miles and was dead. This trip is going to be very interesting and my current level of fitness, if anything, should make for some very funny blogging.

I am currently thinking about selling my bike and buying one of those trailers used to haul babies behind bikes. It might be more fun for me to just chill in the back of a trailer attached to the other guys bikes, I can take pictures, take naps with my hair blowing in the breeze...all in all would be a good time.

In case you were wondering if I would shave my head again for the California Bike Trip

Yup that's right...3 days to go!

Can you feel the excitement!!

Well Memorial Day Weekend is officially here!! That means that we should have been leaving for our bike trip today except for Jesse's snafu. It's all good because next week we will be ready to rock and roll!! I haven't checked out the forecast for next week, but I'm sure it will be filled with nice weather, lots of scenic views, unbelievable amounts of giggling, and awesome times. I now I am excited and can't wait to hit the road again.

Bikes are on the way

As you can see from the picture below we dropped our bike boxes from aircaddy.com off at Fedex tonight. Apparently the shipbikes.com shipping function (with their discounted shipping rate) is not working yet so we had a few moments of agida before our friend Bob, at shipbikes agreed to meet us halfway and reiumburse part of our shipping cost so we don't have to go broke paying to ship our bikes across the country twice.

A huge thank you to Marlene at Fedex in Hoboken for putting up with the antics of Jesse and I for over an hour tonight.

Watch the shipping progress here

Almost packed and ready to go

11 days from today we'll be on our way to Santa Barbara to begin our trip. After yesterday's debacle of a training ride (see Mitch's post below) we figured we might as well lick our wounds and pack up our stuff rather than attempt another ride in NJ.

I put my AirCaddy bike box together last night and took apart my bike. It was every bit as frustrating as assembling a piece of furniture from Ikea. There was lots of sweating and cursing but finally I got my bike in the box. On Wednesday night we will drop our bikes off at Fedex and we'll officially be on our way.

I came, I saw, I road, I fell...I fell again

Wow a day today was. Woke up early had a horrible softball game then came back in to get a nice training ride in before we ship our bikes out later in the week. Today was going to be my first ride with clipless pedals and cleats. I had been practicing on the trainer throughout the week since I got my clipless pedal system. I was ready to bring it out on the road. Turns out the rainy day was not the day to start using the new system. I was a little anxious at first getting out on the road but I was able to clip in and out fairly easily. We had ridden about 1.5 miles until we came across some diagonal train tracks (a biker's worst nightmare). If you know Hoboken you know Madison St. is not the best place to ride as its filled with potholes and lots of other junk in the road. Basically I got to the train tracks and didn't ride straight over them but instead to the side. Mistake...head over heels I was in the air and all I got was a cut thumb. My bike went flying and my cleats disengaged like they should. It was pretty amuzing. Too bad Mike didn't take a picture of it. We decided to ride a little more afterwards and then to come back over the train tracks as it was a psychological thing to overcome. I even disengaged my pedals before I went over the tracks this time. It was to no avail as I was on the ground again. No serious injuries to report but I got a little road rash...the initiation to the bikers club.

A cut thumb, road rash, and a little hurt pride and some bent handle bars was all I have to report. That was my first fall in almost a year since I began riding. Let's hope California doesn't have any perpendicular train tracks or else I don't know what I'm going to do. Time to get back on the trainer and make sure everything is alright.

Update 5/19/08...still alive and since I looked like a cow yesterday flying through the air I'm thinking about getting this jersey. I will definitely fit the part with this jersey.

Training Ride at the SBP

First, congrats everybody on the half marathon! Everyone's times look awesome!

This morning I went on another (I think my fourth) ride on the Schenectady Bike Path (SBP), which, as usual was awesome. The segment I ride is 14 miles, which I now believe to be true because I had my new bike computer hooked up and working (installed it myself as usual). I've decided that the Cateye Velo 8 was the easiest and cleanest install i've done to date on a bike.

The path was not crowded but there were more people than the last few times that I was there, which was nice to see. Similar to the Jeep Wave, I enjoy briefly greeting all of the people coming at me and yelling "On your left!" to the people I'm passing.

I was pretty pleased with my cadence and seemed to be riding around 15mph for most of the time, because with stops my speed was around 10mph. My top speed was 23mph which is pretty good considering there are no big hills. The bike handles beautifully at high speed.

I love that on this bike I'm able to use the drops because they are more upright than my 1500 was. Today, I was in the drops and pedaling hard and not looking up in front of me and almost didn't realize there was a huge deep ditch coming up, and the path curved around it. Luckily, (very much so!) I looked up and saw it just in time to hit the breaks and skid to a stop, avoiding the fall (which would have hurt ALOT).

Half-Marathon

Finally ran that half-marathon today that I have been constantly talking about in Long Branch, New Jersey. I'm still waiting for my official results to come out but by my estimations I clocked in at 1:54;31 we will see how accurate that is. For my first half I was pumped that I was able to go that hard and I know that I can go harder my next one. The weather was cool and a little bit of dampness in the air but it was perfect running weather and not too hot. I can't wait for the next one to run in.

Now that the half marathon is over its going to be a lot of biking from here until our trip. I'm actually thinking of doing a triathalon now, I'm going to test the limits of my body. My bike is in the shop until Thursday night being tuned-up for the trip. Once I get my bike back I'm planning on doing a lot of riding. Mike and I are already planning on long rides (25-30 milers) for next weekend. Hopefully we will be in shape and ready to rock and roll in three weeks!!

Long Branch Half Marathon Pictures
Official Team 11 Cooper Ave Race Results:

Air Caddy It Up

I apologize to all my loyal blog followers that I haven't been posting regularly, but I have been busy training for the half-marathon which is now only 17 days away!! Today I bought the Air Caddy to use for transporting my bike across the country for our trip. Apparently the company is changing specs on the Caddy due to the shipping companies concerns over the high price of fuel so the companies wanted smaller boxes. Anyway the Caddy should be here by mid-May. Also as Mike previously posted we went on our first training ride two weekends ago. It takes awhile for your ass to heal after being in the saddle for 28 miles and the first ride of the season. It was a good ride until we saw the steep hill signs and knew we would have to climb back all the fun hills we went down. Hopefully after the half is over I hope to ride 3-4 times per week (work permitting). Also, big thanks to everyone that has supported Mike and my efforts to raise money to find a cure for Juvenile Diabetes. If you haven't donated and want to there is still time left. The links to our rider pages are provided in Mike's post below. Thanks again for all your help.

TREK 520 Info

Below is a link for the spects on my new wheels.

http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/2008/road/520/520/

NEW BIKE! (Duh)

If you don't already know, the Trek 1500 is no more. I've sold it as last week I've moved on to bigger, better, slower and heavier things.

Last week after going on a ride through the Schenectady Bike Path along the beautiful Mohawk River in Upstate NY, I decided to go to a local bike shop (LBS) that I had heard about. I walked into the shop and was immediately impressed by their huge selection, the warehouse style shop was several thousand square feet filled with different types of bicyles and more so they were the brands that I love, Trek, Cannondale, Giant, etc.

After a few minutes of walking around I asked an employee if they had any touring bikes for example the Trek 520, (which I had been lusting after for months). He informed me they did have one that they got in last week. And he showed it to me. As I had done my research and knew that I was likely to best fit the 21inch frame as that is a 53.3 cm frame. To my delight they had that frame in stock. I immediately took it for a test ride.

Upon my return from the test ride, It was of course obvious that I had to have the bike. I attempted to trade in my bike for the new one, but the shop was only able to offer me $100 so I kept it (and eventually sold it the following day on Craigslist). Even so, I haggled a bit with the store employee and reached a price that was acceptable to me and bought the bike.

Since the purchase I have taken the bike out on the streets of Albany, and am loving the 700c X 32 tires as they are much thicker than the ones on the 1500. The bike is heavy steel and doesn't flex or give when I hit a pothole. The riding position is more upright and I can even comfortably use the drop handlebars. All in all it is amazing. More observations to come.

First training ride of the sesaon

Earlier today Mitch and I went out for our first training ride this Spring. We rode from Fort Lee, NJ, near the George Washington Bridge, up to Piermont, NY and back. We rode a total of 28 miles through mostly rolling hills and some steep ones once we entered Rockland County. We were going to ride all the way to the Tappan Zee Bridge but once we started seeing those "trucks use low gear" signs we saw all over Vermont we figured since it was our first time out we shouldn't kill ourselves and turned around.

JDRF Ride to Cure Diabetes September 13 Whitefish, MT

Mitch and I signed up for the JDRF Ride to Cure Diabetes in Whitefish, Montana in September. We plan on riding 105 miles near Glacier National Park. I know you're probably thinking "Montana? Why Montana?" Valid question, but when else would we ever have an opportunity or the desire to go to Montana? By the time we complete our California Bike Trip we should hopefully be in good enough shape to be physically capable of riding 105 miles in one day (without all the gear we'll be carrying in California.) The JDRF Ride to Cure is a weekend long event focused on raising money to find a cure for Type 1 Diabetes. Mitch and I have committed to raise a total of $8000 between the two of us. My family and I have participated and fund raised for JDRF walkathons for many years. Last year when I first heard about the JDRF Ride to Cure I immediately knew it was something I wanted to do no matter how intimidating the actual ride sounds or how difficult it might be to raise all of the necessary money to participate. I'm looking forward to a great weekend in September. In order to maximize the impact of everyone's donation I'm looking to pool together as many donations as possible since my employer will match my donations. If you are interested in donating please consider sending me a check so I can submit a matching donation to JDRF. Otherwise below are the links to mine and Mitch's rider donation pages.

Mike's Biker Donation Page
Mitch's Biker Donation Page

Other Necessities

and don't forget the purchase of a digital camera to record many outakes we will undoubtedly have on this trip.

We've got business cards

Last year on our Vermont Bike Trip we realized business cards were a necessity. A lot of the people we met along the way seemed to be very interested in our trip and asked for the blog address. We figured we'd make things easy by creating custom business cards to pass out to our fans we meet along the route in California. Plus these will be quite the collector's item someday. Next on the list of improvements for this year's trip...custom bike jerseys and bike hats.

When will the snow in Albany stop?

So, I'm sitting in the basement of the library at school with a window right above me and its still horrible weather out. Its almost March. We probably (I'm totally guessing) got 6 inches of snow yesterday and right now its snowing/raining. I'm pretty sure that it didn't do this last year. This may be the most days of a winter that I've seen snow in my lifetime. Now normally, I don't mind it, and to be sure my car can drive over it like its not there, but I can't ride my bike in it. I don't feel comfortable riding even if there's no snow but might be ice. SO WHEN WILL IT END?

On another note, it IS almost March and we all know what day March 2nd is.

I'm Still In!!!

So thanks to the rallying of my teamates as well as my Dad's generosity, I'm back in the game and extremesly excited. I didn't have to punk out as I thought I would for most of the week. The website we used to book our flights is called cheaptickets.com, and thanks to my poor planning the tickets ended up being anything but cheap.

The trip will now begin on Friday May 30th and we will be returning on June 8.


Update: We changed our Hotel reservation dates in Santa Barbara and San Francisco so the only thing changing are the dates, the price and the fact that we're flying in and out of a Newark instead of JFK (bonus!) Huge thank you to Terry Lubin for making this possible-Mike

Jesse May Be Bailing

We need all your help to convince Jesse Daniel Lubin to go on the bike trip this summer. Obviously in Jesse Lubin style he "forgot" he had a wedding in which he was in the wedding party the Sunday that we leave. Mike and I have been persuading him to come on the trip because the "three of us are a tripod and if you knock one of our legs out we all fall!!" Everyone leave your comments and start convincing Jesse to come on the trip we all know he needs a couple months to get his bearings straight. Plus, I went straight from a wedding last year.

Update...2/15/08...Terry Lubin to the rescue perhaps...stay tuned

Itenarary Update

Since we are travelling on Memorial Day Weekend we figured it was prudent to make hotel reservations for the trip well in advance of the trip. We booked the hotels on both ends of our trip this weekend. When arrive in Santa Barbara at 10pm on Friday May 23rd. We're going to stay at the strategically located Best Western in Goleta; it's less than 2 miles from the airport and the DHL store where our bikes will be shipped and it's along the bike route. Six days later we'll be staying at the Westin St Francis in San Francisco (thank you Accenture for the Starwood Points we'll be using for the 2nd year in a row.)
Next step is planning our overnights along the route...

P.S. Congratulations to the Giants for a great run to the Super Bowl Championship. I never thought I'd see anything that topped the NFC title game and Super Bowl back in 1990 but the games this year were amazing and topped the 1990 games. Go Big Blue!

Still Training

Training for the half-marathon and our bike trip is going relatively well. I've been hitting all my pace goals so far and haven't been overly stressing my body. I dropped a pound and a quarter this month and hopefully when I move out of my house and have to live on Ramen Noodles again I'll be able to lose some more lbs. I'm looking to follow Hal Higdon's half-marathon training guide and see how it goes. It provides for some cross-training workouts so I will get some bike training in along with the half training. I hope it all goes well. I'm also looking into getting a helmet camera for our bike trip this summer so we can update our fans with some videos when we get back and have endless hours of entertainment to relive well after this trip is finished.

Oh yeah, Happy Superbowl Sunday...GO GIANTS!!!

New Technology for California Bike Trip

Last summer on our Vermont Bike Trip we relied almost solely on the turn by turn directions of the Adventure Cycling Association map for navigation. Jesse brought his Tom-tom but luckily we only had to use it twice the entire trip. This summer in California we are upgrading our navigation techniques by using GPX waypoints in addition to the ACA map. The waypoints provided by ACA are pretty cool...they provide turn by turn directions and also list the services (gas stations, restaurants, motels) in each town along the route. Check out the waypoints for our trip on a Google Map:
Part 1
Part 2

American Gladiators Tryouts

Much to my excitement the classic 80s show American Gladiators has been revived by NBC. I'm a little disappointed with the reincarnated version with Hulk Hogan (Hulkamania Brother!) overall but I like some of the new twists like the water beneath many of the event obstacles. Tryouts for season 2 are February 9th in New York City. I knew it was a good idea to stay in shape broken thumb and all! I'm going to find a way to make mention of our bike trip in the ridiculously long application. I'm hoping to fulfill item # 5 on my list of top 10 things to do before I die by becoming a contestant on American Gladiators.

The Shipment has Arrived

Finally got my order in from Bikenash Bar which took almost 2 weeks to get here, apparently their policy is they won't look into the order delay until after 14 business days. I think that policy is pretty ridiculous, but my order arrived so no worries. I finally got my floor pump, hand-held bike pump, and speed lever, all of which I used this morning. My tires were flat and I wasn't able to ride at all this winter, although probably wouldn't have done much riding cause its so damn cold. I pumped up the tires this morning and mistook the presta valve for the schrader valve on the hand-held pump and ended up tearing the valve and had to use my last tube. The speed lever was great for taking the tire off and putting it back on, and the floor pump got me fully inflated. I also got some great chain grease all over my hands which brought me back to Vermont and got me excited for California. Time to watch football. Let's Go GIANTS!!

Schwimmer has Super Human Healing Bones

Well, its official, Mike is back to being stronger than me again. It was only a matter of time before the cast came off, but I was hoping I'd have a little more time. 

In preparation for the trip, I have been making an effort to eat healthier and have been living up to my New Years resolution laying off the pork product which, as we know isn't the easiest thing in the world for a pork product lover such as myself to do.  

On another note my brain got huge (probably from law school)!!!

Training Update

Mitch and I are getting in shape for our bike trip. Brett and Anna (pictured below after Brett finished the Nike Half Marathon in NYC last August) are getting in shape for wedding season. The four of us are going to run the Long Branch Half-Marathon on May 4th. Brett, Mitch and I are shooting to finish under two hours. I've been running a decent amount since that's about all I could do with a broken thumb. I ran 6 miles and felt pretty good last weekend. Brett and Mitch have been running 4 milers although Brett ran the NY marathon in November so he'll be fine. Anna has been staying in shape with her Sunday night tennis lessons and she already has a marathon under her belt; she ran the Marine Corps marathon in Virginia in 2002.

Will all this running help prepare us for the bike trip? Probably not but the race will be a lot of fun. We're looking to recruit a few more people to run with us so stay tuned.

Cast comes off early!

I went to the doctor today to have my cast changed because it was beginning to smell and the layer of soft padding was gone causing the hard fiberglass cast to irritate my hand. Just as I deep down hoped would happen the doctor took x-rays and determined I was healed a week and 1/2 ahead of schedule! My right forearm is a bit scrawny but I'm feeling much better after being freed from that horrible cast! After a few physical therapy sessions I'll be ready to get back on my bike and start training with the newly installed aero-bars. In case you're wondering if I had any assistance in healing faster than predicted, the only injections I took were insulin injections which were prescribed to me by a doctor for a pre-existing condition haha. No HGH here!

I'm here! (so simmer down now)

Happy new year all! After taking a bit of flak from the other guys (due to my laziness) I've finally decided to write my first Cali Blog. I am sitting in my room in Albany and have just gotten back from the gym (2nd day in a row!) and am working on this while virtually everybody else I know is at work (heh heh). I plan on spending the rest of the day writing cover letters and taking the VITA test to prepare taxes for low income families in the Spring. 

Yesterday I found out that I didn't fail any classes and will be back in school for the 2nd semester (WOO HOO!). Not that there was any doubt, but this stuff is hard as Mitch would tell you. So I will be in Albany for the Spring trying to get into some semblance of shape for the trip. Weighed myself yesterday and tipped the scales at around 220, so I'll need to do some work to remedy that.  I really would like to be better prepared for this trip as I know that in California there are many bull dogs and pit bulls that could theoretically chase me up a mountain and I'll need to be able to outrun them.

J. Lubes out fo now. 

Some numbers

Jesse is protesting blogging for the time being for some reason so Mitch and I will keep plugging away...Something about lots of reading and writing papers for law school..I'll try my best to keep you entertained.
Here's an interesting contrast in pictures from our trip last summer. The top picture is right before we started our ride at the King Street Bike Path in Burlington, VT. The bottom picture is on the ferry back to Burlington after we completed our ride. Look how grizzly and emaciated we are.

Here's some interesting numbers for you to ponder at 5:00 on a Friday afternoon:
-140 days until we leave for Santa Barbara
-101 days until I turn 27 (Can I still call that mid-twenties?)
-78 Wii tennis matches I've played in the past 5 days
-0 human opponents who have beaten me
-18 days 17 hours 58 minutes 23 seconds until this damn cast on my right arm comes off!!!!

That's all I got for now. Over and out.

New Year...Time to get working

Happy New Year!! Now that New Year's has come and gone, I am attempting to stick to my goals of better preparing myself for the Long Branch Half-Marathon on May 3rd and Bike California on May 23rd. I forced myself out of bed this morning and hit the gym early for my 4 mile workout. After having not run in a couple weeks, it actually didn't feel too bad. I tipped the scales at 201 and I'm going to be working my hardest to shave upwards of 15 pounds off by the time May gets here. This blog is going to give me extra motivation as I'll be doing monthly weigh-ins until May gets here. Hopefully everything works out and I hit my goal by the time the Half-Marathon comes.