Sometimes it all comes together

I go to spin class every Monday and Thursday evening. For non bikers, this is an indoor, intense session on a stationary bike done in a group to loud, driving (think disco) music. The teacher leads the class through a series of increasingly fast and difficult exercises that, if done properly, cram the equivalent of 2 1/2 hours of outdoor biking into one hour of sweat and strain. A lot of my progress in biking is due to these classes since I work during the day and can only ride on the roads on the weekends. I love the way I feel after a class; somewhat tired, stretched out and totally relaxed and at peace no matter how hard the day has been.

The Thursday before Christmas was the last class of the season. There were twelve of us including two young men who were fairly new to the class. At the end as we were cleaning up and putting the bikes away, one of them commented to the class in general that he was exhausted and stated that he guessed that since he had just turned thirty, he couldn't expect to do the kind of things he was able to do when he was younger. I should have kept my mouth shut but I just couldn't help it. I leaned over towards him and replied, "I know how you must feel. I remember how it was to turn 30.........about 30 years ago".

I know it was rude and a bit cruel but it felt sooooo good. Sometimes life presents you with the perfect line in the perfect scene and it would be a waste to let it pass.

Christmas Fiber Swap

My wife and I belong to the Tall Pines Spinners and Weavers guild in Spring, Texas. For the past two years we have done a double fiber swap for Christmas. The format for this year was that everyone brought in a fiber of some sort to the September meeting. These were swapped in a blind random draw so that we each walked out with a bag of fiber from an unknown member. Only the one member who organized this knew who's fiber was who's.


Between September and October, each of us had to dye their swapped fiber in some way we thought was interesting. Then at the October meeting, the dyed fibers were blind swapped again so that we each had fiber from at an unknown member, dyed by a second unknown member. We had to take that fiber and make something from it that we could give back to the original owner as a Christmas gift at our December meeting / Party. Its a challenge to be given a yarn of random type, color and thickness and try to come up with something as a gift for an unknown recipient.


My fiber this year was a ball of 100 yds of red and 100 yds of blue single ply generic wool. The fiber had been tie-dyed so there was some variation in the color at random intervals. Since I am not skilled with pointy sticks (knitting) or hooked sticks (crochet) I usually weave. Last year I made a woven tote bag. This year I decided to make a rug

The 200 yards of wool were certainly not enough for any reasonable sized rug so I raided the stash and found a white and a charcoal grey wool that were nearly the same weight as the the dyed fiber. I had a rigid heddle loom already warped up with some light wool, and with only one month of spare time work until the party, I took the lazy man's way out and used that. Now all I needed was a design. As usual, I let the rug make up the design as I wove it. My usual motif is Navajo so that is not as hard as it sounds. Everything is symmetrical in width and length so if you fill in one quarter, you know what the other three quarters should look like.

Also as usual, I just barely finished on time. It came off the loom at 8 this evening and the party starts at 10 tomorrow morning. I am reasonably pleased with the result even though the last 4" of the rug got away from me when some of the warp stretched out and the tension went bad. With a little ironing and a little blocking, it doesn't look too bad. The picture to the left shows me at the loom and the finished product is shown below. I hope that the anonymous member I made it for likes the work.








I'll post my return gift after the party so you can see what became of my fiber.

Independance Day Charity Ride

I participated in a charity ride today that the Schlumberger Cycling Club held to raise money for disabled veterans. Their aim was to raise money to fund and promote physical and leisure/athletic activities that enhance the disabled veteran’s physical and emotional well-being. This is the first year they have done this and for a first time, it went pretty well. They had a lot to overcome.

First, its not easy to organize a ride like this. They had the Knights of Columbus (parking lot and hall facilities), the VFW (food and drink), the police and EMTs from the three counties and five towns we went through, the Mayor of Wallis (civic support) and the US Army who supplied an Apache helicopter, just for the heck of it (see attached picture). On top of that, they ended up scheduling the ride on the 1st of December since that was the earliest date that did not have a competing ride somewhere in the area. December is an "iffy" month at best here in Texas.

They had planned on getting about 300 riders. By 6PM the night before, they had already had 400 sign up on line and, because the weather looked good, there were at least another 100 walk-ins the day of the ride. In spite of this superabundance of participants, the support staff did fairly well.

The start was a bit chaotic. With so many riders trying to get out of an over packed parking lot, there were bound to be a few bumps and thumps. At least one whole row went down like dominoes when a guy on the left stopped and could not get out of his clips (bike shoes clip onto the pedals like ski boots clip on to skis for you non riders).

Then there was the Apache. You remember the army helicopter that was brought in for the heck of it. Someone had the bright idea that it could lead each wave of riders out of the parking lot and down the road to the first turn about a mile from the start. Two small problems. First, an attack helicopter is noisy. Really noisy. Having it hover directly over the starter meant that no one could hear anything that he said. They ended up having to do the entire start by hand gestures, including some that were not so polite aimed in the direction of the helo pilot.

The second problem is that a helicopter stays up by blasting massive amounts of air downward at a high velocity. Bikes don't stay upright if their riders are blasted sideways by those same massive amounts of air. Do you see the problem? Neither the organizers nor the Army did. The first wave of riders took off, the helo screamed down the road at treetop level and attack speed and more than one rider headed for the ditch. Then, having reached the turn a mile ahead in about 6 seconds, the helo turned around and blasted back down the road toward the group. I guess someone on the ground was in radio contact with him because he abruptly stopped, climbed about 400 feet and slowed down to a more leisurely pace.

As an aside, I wish to point out that this was a fully outfitted attack chopper, with a Gatling gun and rocket pods fully visible. I can imagine that any auto driver who saw that first pass coming at them down the middle of highway 1093 at 100 mph and 50 feet altitude now believes that the city of Wallis is very serious about traffic enforcement and that speeding violations will be dealt with most harshly.

Luckily, I was in the third group to move out so I got to be a spectator rather than a participant in that little drama. I elected to take the shorter (42 mile ride rather than the 60 or 104 mile routes primarily because of the 20 mph gusting wind and the fact that I had done a fairly intense biking spin class the previous day. The ride was nice and smooth with a bit of climb and drop ( just a bit since southeast Texas is FLAT!) on mostly country roads with very little traffic. The support volunteers had scrambled to get extra fruit and water for the higher than expected turnout. The one thing that they couldn't get on short notice was more porta-potties.

Those of you who ride know that the first 15 miles shakes the **** out of you and there is a higher than average need for relief at that first stop. Our first stop had one and only one porta-pottie. The line was huge. However, the wait was not as long as expected. Come to find that the organizers had placed said facility directly on top of a fire ants' nest and said ants had migrated into the cabin. Needless to say, no one wanted to sit and think in there for very long.

The remainder of the ride went well with enough riders of my skill level that we were able to form a pace line of sorts and help each other out with the wind which was from the side or the front quarter for the middle 15 miles. We saw several flocks of migratory geese taking off from the harvested corn fields, forming up vees and heading south for the winter. We went thru the first capital of the Republic of Texas (San Felipe). We pounded out the miles.

The last few miles were the hardest. We swung directly south into the teeth of the gale. The SAG crews from Schlumberger were great keeping tabs on the weaker riders and picking up the "empties" (those being the riders who had run out of gas and needed a ride back to their cars). I was proud that my gym work, spin classes and weekend riding had gotten me in good enough shape to cruse in with a 16 mph average for the entire ride. Not bad for an old man.

The ride ended with a sloppy joe on a bun, potato salad, cole slaw, and a diet Dr. Pepper. Who could ask for more. I even got a tee shirt. And I beat the rain out of the parking lot by a good 20 minutes. All in all, a good day. As a parting shot, let me leave you with a photo of a Texas golf cart, imported to the ride to help the disabled vets get around. I'm not sure that you will see these on every golf course in Texas but it is indicitive of the patriotic feelings of our fellow Texans.

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On Starting a Blog

Yeah I know. I'm still in the stone age, blog wise. I read several blogs from my family and a few from others that I have met along the way and sometimes I even comment on them. Until today, I never felt the need to have one. I'm not really sure who, if anyone, will want to read my ramblings. On the other hand, I have never kept a diary either, and I guess if no one reads this, it will at least perform that function.

For those of you who stumble upon this blog, I hope that you find something here to interest you and tempt you to come back for more. I'll post a bunch about my rides because that's where I'm at right now, but you will also find things about my hobbies (where does he find the time???), about my family, and an occasional foray into commentary, criticism or outright rant as the spirit moves me.

If you don't find anything of interest, I hope that you can at least take away two things before you move on to greener pastures.

First, you are never too old to start getting yourself back in shape. I spent 57 years as a couch potato. Ballooned up to 275 lbs. Couldn't climb two flights of stairs without stopping to gasp for breath at the top. Today I did a 42 mile cycle loop at 16 mph into a 20 mph headwind and felt pretty good at the end.

Second, a bike is a great way to actually see the area you live in. I can go 175 miles in a car in the same time that it takes me to go 40 on a bike, but I will see more new and wonderful things in those 40 miles than I would see in 1000 miles of 70 mph blur. Today I saw a flock of geese take off from a field, circle to form a vee and start away on their next leg to their escape from winter . In a car I would have blasted past before the first dozen got off the ground.

Anyway, I'm off to the wonderful world of blogging. I hope that it works out and that I can keep it going for a time at least. Feel free to comment. You may even get a reply. I've made a few good online friends by commenting on their blogs and I hope that your comment may make me a few more.