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.