Beach Cruisers - Great Gift Idea

Do you know anyone who needs some beach cruiser bikes? These things start out at $79 and is a GREAT deal. Check 'em out!

beach cruiser



Here's a photo of what these look like:



If you live in a warm winter climate or know of someone who is wanting an easy going cruiser bike, these looks like a pretty safe way to go. Looking at their website, many of these bikes are $80 and I think that's cheaper than Wal-Mart! How can you beat that? I'm sure if you live in Florida or California, you know some folks who could use one of these for Christmas. Have it shipped directly to them as a gift!

Either way, it's win-win.

Night Flying - Finally!

It's been so long since I've done any take-off or landings at night I can't even remember when it was. Luckily, LogShare remembers and says it was 6/16/07 when I did one night landing and 6/11/07 when I did three of them. Let's see -- that means it's been almost five months. Yikes!


All things considered, they all went pretty smooth tonight as I parked the airplane at Lima in hopes of a breakfast flight to MFD in the morning. I did one landing at Bluffton and then the final two at Lima with the last one being without the landing light. You know; just in case.

Here is the video of all three take-offs and landings using my Canon SD550 with an SLR Gorilla Pod latched onto the glare shield. (The quality is pretty poor, but not terrible considering the camera at night.)

Am I A Mutation?

I was browsing through a skydiving website that I used to frequent back when I was an avid skydiver and saw the company who owns it is listed as D4DR Media. I clicked on the link and saw the following statement on their site:

"If you have a mutated D4DR gene, chances are we'll meet you on one of our sites."

Considering all the different activities that I thoroughly enjoy (flying, skydiving, skiing/snowboarding, downhill mountain biking, etc), I think I may be afflicted with this "disease". At least now I know it's not ALL my fault.

More on the D4DR gene: Wikipedia entry.

Cold Weather Riding

This morning when I walked outside for my ride, the temperature was 38F and the wind was out of the south at 10mph. Brrr! At least I was prepared after a trip to Bike Works in Sylvania a couple weeks back. I bought a few items that I was very glad to have today.

I biked a little over 20 miles which took me from home down to the river walk and then I headed north to the beginning of the trail at Schoonover Park and then turned around and headed all the way south to the trail head in Heritage Park. The trail is right at 7 miles each way. Not too bad for our town. Unfortunately, when I made it there and I was really jonesing for some Gatorade, I realized that my water bottle fell out somewhere during my ride. Dangit! Of course, there was not a water fountain to be found either.

I headed back home and stayed relatively warm. Special thanks to Joe Reger for the tip on cutting some old wool socks to keep my feet warm in the light, holey Diadora cycling shoes I bought. They worked pretty well. Here was my setup for the cold ride today.

PayPerPost's Newest Member

Am I selling out my personal site so another site can possibly make millions from me? Am I giving in to corporate pressure to make a few bucks on the side? Am I adding stuff to my site that I wouldn't otherwise do if a little cash wasn't involved?

Yes!

Why am I doing this on a family blog? I have read some blogs of people that I've been reading for years (personal and business) who've been doing the PPP thing for awhile now. As long as you can write the English language with some readability to others, you can make a few (hundred? thousand?) bucks on the side just for sharing your own space, thoughts and opinions with some reviews and other text based articles that you pound out in a few minutes on the keyboard. Do you have to read them? No. Will I care if you do? No.

They wanted to know if I made any friends or learned anything by signing up and waiting weeks to get approved by PPP. Well, no and not really. I lied. I learned that when you insert a line of HTML code into Blogger and hit "save", Blogger automatically changes it into something it likes. I haven't really made any friends through PPP either because I don't know what else we'd have in common from the get-go besides wanting to make a few extra bucks on the side. I'm sure none of them would want to have a quilting party.

Interested in checking it out? Go ahead: payperpost

We'll see how good this is and if it really brings me some extra cash for, say, flying or more triathlon equipment. If so, great! If not, well, I gave it the ol' college try.

Kaden (and Dad) Dressed for the Weather

A few shots of Kaden dressed for the weather when it called for it (warm = no shirt and cold = underwear to keep head warm and/or grandma-made stocking cap).

First Swim Session

After receiving my shipment from Speedo this past Friday, I knew I couldn't avoid it much longer. I bought a new suit, goggles, rubber cap and some nose plugs. I headed to the Lima YMCA this morning at 6am and was in the water by 620. (The picture on the left is the actual pool in Lima.) I didn't set a hard goal, save to do as much swimming as possible. The first time I tried this over a year ago, I was only able to manage four laps (1 lap = down and back once). That was a feat and required a stop or two in the middle of the pool from powerless arms.

After about three laps today, I decided that I'd shoot for nine laps which equaled 450y; just a hair over a quarter mile (440y). I made it to the end of my ninth lap and I was pretty well satisfied with my effort, so I took a soak in the hot tub.

I do need to make some goggle adjustments since it is an hour and a half after I finished as I write this and I can still feel where they were pushing my eye sockets in, tempting to pop the eyeball straight out.

Today was a very promising start to swimming. Going from four laps a year ago to a fresh start with nine, I know that my running and biking conditioning played a role in it. Now I just need to start building up to 50y at a time and so on. I have months to train without any race. Hopefully I can stay with it.

I can.

Kaden Cruises in his Jeep

While mommy slept this afternoon, Kaden and I headed out back for a little "Jeep time". He cruised around a lot. He loves driving around the house and weaving in and out of the new pine trees.

Dave and Egg Visit for Lunch in the RV-6

I headed to the airport and saw the new Cessna 172 with G1000 parked on the ramp. Pretty! At $125/hour, it's a little rich for my blood to cruise at 110knots, but it would be neat to get some G1000 time someday.




Dave G and Egg flew up in the RV-6 today for some delicious lunch at Skyline Chili. Since Laura has damaged taste buds (i.e. she doesn't like Skyline), I don't get to eat it very often, so any excuse is a good excuse. They flew in after a fuel up at MadCo and did a pretty nice (fast) fly-by and then a perfect, squeaker of a landing. (I couldn't tell looking through the view finder.)




We headed to Skyline and watched a little bit of the OSU v. Wisconsin game (OSU ended up slaughtering them). After filling up on cheese, noodles, hot dogs and chili, we headed back to the airport where Dave and Egg fired up and blasted off into the beautiful skies of Ohio.




Thanks for visiting, you two!

Bike Upgrades

Well, now that I'm doing more riding solo than anything in preparation of some duathlon/triathlon action in 2008, I wanted to get my bike better suited for it. In this kind of riding, being in an aerodynamic position for extended periods of time is crucial since you aren't drafting behind other riders like you see in road racing (i.e. Tour de France). Since I bought the wrong kind of bike (road vs. tri), I ended up going to Bike Works in Sylvania, OH for some after market parts (thanks to Steve and Ben for the help) and a proper fitting from John.

I added some aero bars and Look pedals to the bike and some more apparel to my collection including some Diadora road shoes. Sweet. After about an hour on the bike with John, he got everything down to the correct angles for my legs, back and other parts that need to line up just right to product the maximum amount of power while still being comfortable and leaving room to breathe.

After a 22 mile ride today, I can say that being "aero" really makes a difference when you're pushing through the wind. I rode a rolling, country road the whole time, so I was on and off the bike a lot and on and off the brakes and shifters quite a bit. I would love a flat, smooth road where I could just stay down and see how it feels. Either way, I know this was a step in the right direction.