San Fran and Lookin good

Arrived in San Fran without a hitch. Interesting group of riders - a Swiss, Brit and S. Korean with his own film crew raising money for a charity in Korea. And a group of Floridians who swear their hill training consisted of hill repeats up overpasses since FL is so flat. Only 4 women. Staff seems nice. We start tomorrow. Biking to the ocean for the official rear wheel dunking and then inland to Vallejo. Bike is ready and unscathed from shipping. Weather is gorgeous - hope it holds.

very cool geeky Garmin feature

I finally figured out how I could use my Garmin forerunner to capture each day of the ride to map out the route via GPS and link it onto the blog. Mind you I've had this Garmin for over 2 years, and it's taken this trip to actually get beyond the basics of what it's capable of doing.

Providing I actually am disciplined enough to do it regularly (this is a long shot), I can download the exact route we take each and also capture nifty but not necessarily useful information like elevation gain and decent, heart rate, pace, etc. Sort of an online archive of the exact route with GPS mapping and fitness benchmarks. And it can be exported into Google Earth where you can do everything from take a simulated flight to zoom down to see the terrain.

There is a link on the blog now with some earlier training rides if you want to check it out ...

Getting ready

Amazing how many little tasks before heading out of town for seven weeks. Talk the postman into holding my mail beyond the 30 days allowed. Last minute aphid infestation kill in the garden. Trip to Home Depot to buy pipe insulation to protect my carbon fiber bike from the TSA folks who are notoriouosly careless when they repack your bike box after opening it. Trying to identify and prepay all the bills. And hooking up and testing my new keyboard for the blackberry so I don't have to bring my laptop on the trip ... A good idea for not working and not ruining my work lifeline at home. So this is the first test of doing an entry using just my blackberry and the keyboard ... Pretty nifty. More later ...