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
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

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.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

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!

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

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: