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Neil Hanson

http://neilhanson.com

May Snow

Here we are approaching mid-May on the High Prairie, and the forecast is for snow tonight and tomorrow. It's cold and damp outside today.

The daylilies are looking so healthy and robust now, and the Iris are showing some fat buds. The Butterfly Bush are sending up shoots hoping for the warmth of summer to start sucking them faster from the ground.

But Mother Nature seems to be thinking about one last blast of winter. They're calling for a foot of snow at 6000'.

How strong will the daylilies and the iris be on Thursday I wonder? This is so sad, to see this forecast, and to know the fate that it holds for those plants who are betting on the promise of spring.

Mother Nature is a harsh mistress on the High Prairie...

Snow and saddles

For the last few days as we have had nice weather, I've been thinking about how nice it is for the plants to get a real spring this year - one where they aren't demolished by a late April or early May snow that makes them burn lots of energy starting over. How nice it is to see healthy plants exploding from the ground in April.

Then, woke up to snow this morning. Not a lot yet, but you never know. If it doesn't pile up too much, and the temp doesn't drop too far into the 20's, most of them should be OK.

It makes me appreciate the resiliency of the plants that survive here, and their ability to face each new spring with fervor, with no idea what will happen. They just keep moving forward, growing, blooming, expanding.

And then my thoughts fall back to the new saddle that I put on my bike last weekend. The old saddle worked OK, though I knew that it wasn't the greatest design around for keeping pressure off of critical nerve areas and certainly lacked comfort after many hours in it. But I never thought about it - just kept riding it because it's what I know.

A saddle is such a personal thing, isn't it? Each year I go through the process of getting the sit-bones broken in to the saddle. There is predictability to the saddle, the pain it causes, and how it fits. It might not be perfect, but I know it, and know how it fits. Recently someone asked me about my saddle, and my response was the same as it always is: "Sure the saddle isn't perfect - it's a pain in the ass after enough hours in it - but I know how it is going to feel and how we react to one another."

But I made the leap last weekend and bought a new one. Now I have to go through the pain of breaking it in to my butt, and breaking my butt in to it.

It's new and unknown. A little scary, a little exciting.

As I begin the journey through the middle years of life, I realize that there are many aspects of my life that are like this. There may be some comfortable things that are not necessarily the healthiest for me - some habits that I need to change, maybe some different perspectives that I need to gain.

But like the plants that grow here on the high plains, I need to have the courage to keep growing and blooming, and not be overly concerned about the weather that might surprise me next week.

Post Snow and Bailout Gears

Looped around Denver yesterday.

Once again, made me realize how lucky I am to live in a community that provides the sort of bike access that Denver does. Even though we got a couple of feet of snow last week in a couple different storms, the bike path was pretty busy. Amazing how well used that recreation infrastructure is.

Since the wind was supposed to turn around to the north, I didn't want to take the ride down toward the Springs and have to fight a north wind coming home. But as it turned out, it didn't turn until very late, so I could have done that ride. I had wanted to shy away from the bike path, because I expected there to be snow and ice at the edge of a lot of the underpasses like last week. But it was a bonus that there were very few spots with snow and ice.

Lunch at Confluence Park was just incredible really. Sunny and warm, lots of people watching, it was all I could do to get back on the bike and ride the last 40 miles home.

I've now done 2 rides on the new 7900 stuff. I have to say that the gearing with the compact and the 11-28 seems about ideal for me. I won't know until I start climbing about the climbing gears, but I've got to believe that I'll be able to hold that 28 tooth bailout gear in my pocket for that little extra sense of security on the long and steep ones - probably rarely use it but enjoy it just for the sense of security that it gives me. Funny how that works - when you've got that bailout gear in the back of your mind, it seems to help you exert even more and keep the effort and pace up even higher - knowing that if you really blew up, you could drop down into that tiny little thing and recover.

The Season's First Long Ride

Last week I got 2 days of commuting in. That's about 45 miles RT on each of those days. While that's an OK day total, it's not breaking the hind-end into many hours on the bike. I consider 4 hours sort of a milestone to get across to call it a long ride - one that is callousing up the sit-bones. I'm hoping to keep up something like that pace of commuting for the next many months - twice a week as an average.

But the real work of long base miles has to happen on the weekends, and this weekend I got my first longer ride in. Just shy of 70 miles takes me on a loop around Denver, from Parker to Chatfield, then downtown, and back along Cherry Creek to Parker. My best time for that loop is a little under 3.5 hours - averaging a little over 20 mph. That's in a state of good fitness for me.

Saturday, for this ride, I needed to wait until about 10 to start, to let the temp get up to 40. That way, I can do the ride with a ls jersey and a windbreaker. Unfortunately, this meant that my timing of the loop, and the timing of the wind shifts during the day, would have me facing the wind for most of the ride. And in fact, this is exactly what happened.

That's OK though - I enjoyed the extra workout. And the big bonus for me was meeting my daughter downtown and having a nice lunch with her. It was a beautiful day. Total elapsed time was a little over 6 hours. Average speed 13.6 MPH. The new computer is nice, as it let me see that the total climbing for this ride is just under 2000'. I have always assumed that it was half that, since I start at 6000', then fall to about 5000', then climb back up. Just goes to show that the little ups and downs of a ride that feels pretty flat can add up more than you think.

Now, the forecast for this week sounds pretty iffy - I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Still working on coming up with a name for the big ride this summer.

Dave And Neil's Epic Ride (DANER?)

February, cold and snowy. Again.

Usually in February we have a few days where the weather gets very spring-like, but it looks like we'll get through this one without that little gift.

Not a big deal really, but it's funny how missing that little teaser in February makes us all feel so tired of the snow and the winter. Worse, March and April are the snowy months, so it could get lots worse before it gets better.

Of course, I selfishly want the warm dry weather for training, as the snow and cold make it hard to spend much time on the bicycle. But its more than that really.

Like a dance, where you move close to intimate contact, but are held at bay, providing the jolt of excitement at feeling a tease of what might come later, but not quite touching it. In the same way, that little February tease always brings me quite close to the wonderful feelings of Spring that are just around the corner, but I can't quite touch...

Fingers crossed for just a couple days...

The Cell Phone and DWAD (Driving While Attention Deprived)

Well, David at the FredCast on his 1/28/10 expanded on the topic of "safe operation" while attention deprived.

Specifically, we're talking about cell phones, and the idea of legislation to outlaw use of cell phones while driving. David's perspective is that we should NOT outlaw cell phone use - at least not hands-free cell phone use.

In general David, I agree with you. There are things that might not be wise, and might be slightly less safe than another way of doing things, but at what point do we stop short of legislating every detail of our life?

I do think that cell phone use - whether hands free or not - does reduce the attention that we are giving to driving. I think this happens to everyone - drivers both good and bad, skilled and less skilled. I think that getting into an argument about the degree to which this happens is frankly a pissing contest where nobody wins and everybody gets wet...

I think that it is very reasonable to expect that people give the appropriate amount of attention to the road, as required by the conditions at hand. Failure to do this should be an offense for which the driver is ticketed. There are many things that can take our attention from the road, as you so rightly point out, and the bottom line is that when someone is driving with less attention to the road than they should have, they should be ticketed.

Of course, this can be a sticky wicket, can't it? Who gets to make that judgement call? We have entrusted the local and state police with that authority, and while I am not always in agreement with the calls that they make, the bottom line is that we need to accept somebody's authority, right?

The reason for the lack of attention is not really important, is it? You are essentially driving while impaired, and most states have laws governing this. I can't tell you how many times I shake my head at someone who is driving along in the left lane of a multi-lane highway, completely oblivious to the traffic jam that they are creating by not adhering to the rules of the road and staying right except to pass. I wish these people would receive tickets to help them remember to pay attention. Or the soccer mom distracted by the kids in the back seat, or the animated conversation occurring on both sides of a front seat.

While driving down the road, it's easy to pick out the cars that are being operated by folks who are distracted by any number of things - I personally would like it a lot if these folks were pulled over and ticketed more often. If the source of their distraction was a cell phone - as it would often be - then perhaps the ticket will help them make better judgement calls next time.

And after all, it really is "driving while distracted" that we are concerned with, right?

I just get really tired of attempts to legislate every little piece of our lives. It's about responsibility really, and our responsibility to our fellow drivers on the road. When we fail to take that responsibility seriously and allow ourselves to become distracted beyond the point of reasonableness for the situation, then we should have our hands slapped for behaving irresponsibly.

I go back to the discussion of driving in bad conditions. An hour or two of driving on icy roads in white-out conditions will flat-out exhaust me. There's no way I would have ANY distractions in the truck under those conditions. However, to try and maintain that level of attention over an 8 hour drive would be absurd. We NEED distractions - we need to balance our mind out as we drive, right? And, part of being a responsible driver is knowing where that balance is for any set of circumstances.