On Two Wheels

A little update

2008-12-05T18:32:00.005-05:00

Senior Design is finally over, at least for the next few days until we get feedback. For now I'm mountain biking.

A little playtime between my apartment and campus :) makes for a nice ride to classes!

From mtb

At Lake Crabtree yesterday

From mtb

Sunset at Crabtree

From mtb

That's it for now. Possibly snow biking tomorrow morning!

To Alaska

2008-08-02T13:18:00.001-04:00

I'm off to Alaska with the whole family for a week. Here's a short video of us on the first paddle.

Flotation! Finally!

2008-07-29T22:51:00.004-04:00

It's been a month of hard work, and tonight we finally took it out for the first test paddle! Verdict: she floats!

There was no leakage either! Tonight definitely had the thrill of satisfaction

Call it, Friendo

2008-07-27T17:54:00.002-04:00

We're done! For now at least. We glued the decks on this morning, and then coated the inside twice and let it dry up for a while. It also started raining just as we were cleaning up from epoxying the inside, so we quickly threw the tarps on and ran inside. We didn't have paddles, so we headed up to Dick's Sporting Goods. They have cheap wooden paddles for $30. They actually look really good, and should hold up for a while.

The sun was shining when we got back from the store, so we decided to go ahead and flip the boat, and apply the last coats to the bottom of the hull. Just as we were finishing up, we were hit by another downpour. We put the tarps up again, probably in the best configuration yet. It's basically a really big tent that's staked out over the whole boat. I'll get some pictures up later tonight.

We're going to let the epoxy cure for two days, then go for a test paddle/fishing trip on Tuesday night. We would probably do it tomorrow night, but our grandma's birthday is then, so no go.

Getting there...

2008-07-26T21:48:00.002-04:00

Alright so now it looks like a canoe!

It's got seats! We took apart old folding lawn chairs that have these sweet teal webbing in them. We built a box frame for the seats, and then wrapped and stapled the webbing to the frames.

This is the storage bucket in the stern bulkhead. It has a nice lid that's hinged. We still have to put the decking on, but this is pretty much what the rear will look like.

Another look after the gunwale clamps came off today. We put the rest of the gunwales on first thing this morning, then took the clamps off around 6. The canoe doesn't look straight or square in this picture, but it is... somewhat.

Nice, level gunwales. Tomorrow we install the decks on top of the bulkheads, which we've cutout already, then coat the boat in epoxy! Almost done! It might get a float test tomorrow :)

Gunwales

2008-07-25T18:23:00.003-04:00

Yesterday we installed one side of the gunwales, and the bulkheads. In some of the pictures below you can see the rectangular cutouts in the bulkheads. These are for the hatches we are installing for storage.

We thought we could install all of the gunwales, but we didn't realize how many clamps it would take, and how few clamps we actually had! Will install the rest tomorrow.

We also tried to make an end pour at the front, for installing a rope handle. The directions we have make a poor suggestion of making the end pour 'frame' out of cardboard and taping it in place. Bad idea! The large amount of epoxy melted the tape, and started to leak out into the nose of the boat just in front of the bulkhead! DOH! It turned out to be a huge waste of epoxy, but we did manage to scoop some of it up and onto the sides of the hull that need to be covered in epoxy anyway.

Frames In

2008-07-22T23:10:00.004-04:00

A rope around the hull to keep it tight

We filleted the frames to the hull with wood filler, then fiberglass taped them.

We've got an idea to implement some buckets with lids into the bulkheads. The lids will almost be flush with the bulkhead. I'll get some pictures of them tomorrow once they're sanded down. We need ideas for seats! Nylon webbing or something else??

Stitching done

2008-07-20T23:25:00.002-04:00

I didn't get a chance to post what we did on Thursday. After we had glued the seams and waited for them to cure, we had taken out the stitches. Once these were out, we sanded the seams down to nice curves, and then fiberglass taped two of the four seams. We were running out of time before we got to the last two seams. Our dad has been helping out lately, too. He's always wanted a canoe, so I think he's hurrying along so he can ride in it! Sorry, no pictures, this was a messy night.

Completion of stitching and hull tack welding

2008-07-16T23:41:00.006-04:00

We worked well into the night, about 11pm. Long night, and we even got started early...

Stitching the frames on, now you can see the curves of the canoe.

Frames in place now.

Putting the top panel on. We decided it would be easier to stitch the ends of the top panels together, then spread them and start stitching from the middle out to the tips.

Check it out! we've got a canoe!

View from on top of the deck.

Gettin kind of dark...

Here we're putting the epoxy/wood filler mix into the seams. This is the 'tack welding' process. Once these dry, we can take the stitches out and fill in their holes.

Back under the tarps for the night

Stitching

2008-07-14T22:14:00.006-04:00

Tonight we moved the workshop outside since the basement windows/doors are too tight to get the canoe out once assembled. We threw together a simple table instead of saw horses, and it's a lot sturdier.

It looks like a canoe! Almost there... It's curved downward in this picture, and obviously it's supposed to curve the other way. That's because the side panels aren't pushed out as far as they will be in the end, and the wood needs to be pushed out at an angle, hard to do when you're air-paddlin.

It was getting pretty dark, we didn't make much progress because we had to build the table, too. We usually start around 7, right after dinner, which doesn't give us much time. I need to start going to work earlier and getting off before 5.

We finished up around 9:30 tonight. The flood lights in the backyard don't provide too much light, and some of the bow is in the shadow of the deck. Also, it's not supposed to rain for at least a week, but we put two tarps over it just in case. We don't need any bird poop on it.

A bit mo work

2008-07-09T20:56:00.004-04:00

Ok, so I've been out of town the past weekends/weeks on vacation and such, so we haven't had a chance to get some quality work knocked out. The other night we glued the panels together, then fiberglassed over the seems.

These panels are looong
I'm about to head down and pull off the plastic to see how well we fiberglassed the seems.

Tomorrow we are planning on starting to stitch the hull together! We have to move our operation outside, though, because the canoe, once built, won't be able to fit through any of the windows or doors in the basement. We're going to setup a large tent in the backyard to work under, and hopefully you will see this thing floating soon!

More work

2008-06-08T22:51:00.004-04:00

We got a lot of work done on the canoe today. We finished tracing all the parts onto the plywood, then started cutting them. It took us a good 4 hours to do all the cutting, ugh. It was a hot day, too, but it was fun.

The builders, the brothers

Matt stopped by so we could borrow his saw horse, which turned out to be about 2 ft. high. Not good for two guys over 6ft tall, haha.

A lot of "This one goes over here" "Uhhh no we should cut like this"

Something was funny here...

First injury, bro had to get a kiss from mommy before continuing.

Haha, woops, too heavy for the swing seat

Finishing up before the sun sets, it looks like a canoe! kinda.. maybe?

Well you just have to add the rest of these parts.

A New Adventure

2008-06-05T22:19:00.002-04:00

My brother and I started talking about building a canoe for over a year. It finally began tonight. Apparently being at school puts a dent in your hobbies.

We're building a 18' canoe from some free plans we found online. It's called the DK Touring Canoe. Just google the name and you can see the basic shape of it. For now, it looks like this:

It uses a stitch and glue technique, and fiberglass tape on the seams. Since my brother and I are cheap, we just bought exterior plywood, not marine plywood. We are planning on being very careful when epoxying, to get the whole boat encased in epoxy, so the type of wood shouldn't matter. I've had enough experience with epoxy, so I don't think will be too bad.
Last weekend I was in Raleigh, and picked a windsurfer mast from a friend and drove it up with my civic. It's actually the last mast from the set of 3 of Team RAF's boats of the EC.

After the canoe is finished, we'll make a bracket to clamp onto the gunwales for the mast, like the other sailing canoes around.

We got back from getting the wood around 8:30 tonight, and drew up all the reference lines and one of the bottom sections by 9:30, then my brother had to go to sleep. More to come on the weekend!

Rider 629: DNF

2008-04-21T14:18:00.004-04:00

DNF = did not finish... These two pieces are supposed to be connected together

Obviously my bike is not as extreme as me.

The Cohutta 65 went down like this. I missed the start of the race by about 3-4 min because the clock on my speedometer was off by a few minutes. I lined up near the middle of the pack with the 35-milers, but soon realized this was the wrong starting pack. I made my way through them and sprinted up the first climb of the race. This climb was about 900ft up over 3 miles. I caught up with the back of the pack as we hit the top of the mountain and entered the singletrack.

This is where I made my first mistake. I assumed the line of people I was behind was the main pack. I could not see far enough ahead because of the mist and twisty trail to see where I stood at this point. I figured it was just a long line of riders so I did not bother passing anyone for the next ~8miles. At this point, the 35milers started catching up, and I realized I was just behind a pack of very slow riders. Once we were on a straight section I finally passed them all and took off. This is where the battle really began.

We crossed the river and hit the more technical singletrack. At about 15 miles in my legs were not feeling great, I hadn't really eaten or drank anything. I also noticed that one of my bottles of cytomax had jumped out, probably on some of those huge 4" roots down by the river. I had only about 45 minutes of fuel left in my remaining bottle. I'm hoping that 1st aid station comes up quickly...

Some of the scenery
With a bad front derailleur, the single part of the singletrack was fairly tough stuff. Wet roots made the climbing worse, but I only had to dismount 2 times in the first 18 miles. At the top of the single track climb was aid station #1. I took about 3 minutes to rest because my legs were cramping up, I didn't have much time to drink on the single track sections. My nutrition plan for this race was already falling behind :(

From then on out to where I got the mechanical failure was all fire roads. My speedometer was also working intermittently, so I didn't have a great idea of when the next climb was coming other than by attacking it when it came. I started taking down the nutrients after mile 18 and started feeling great. I made up huge time on the climbs, which is somewhat surprising because I didn't have my granny gear to use. Remember? I'm running 1x9 in this race.

I rolled through aid station #2 (I think it was 2...) and spent the next few miles by myself. I thought I had taken a wrong turn. Anyway, I didn't expect the next climb. I suffered through it, but caught up to another rider at the top. I was glad to see another racer. Turns out he's from Cary and rides the same local trails as me. Small world... We stayed together for the next ~3 miles until we got to station #3. He got out of there quickly, and shot down the next few downhills. He was faster on the downhills, but I caught up to him and flew past on the climbs. This was on the next big climb at mile 33. This was a ~700ft climb over the next 3 miles. At the top of this climb I was spinning out the legs minding my business when it happened.

A small stick got lodged in my rear derailleur, pushed into the spokes of the wheel, and the rest is history. The wheel locked up before I knew what happened and lurched me off the bike. The derailleur was sticking straight up, towards my seat. Ugg. Curse words ensued....

I pulled the derailleur out of the wheel, and it broke right off. There not much I could do. I thought about converting to single speed, I had a chain tool and everything, so I lined up the chain but it didn't look like the right tension. So I started hoofing it back to aid station #3. Mind you this down the mountain and across a gap about 5 miles back. At least I could roll downhill...

Dave from Scott's Bikes was awesome help back at the station. Unfortunately he didn't have a derailleur I could throw on. He said the sweep rider was coming through after the last rider and I could see if he had the part I needed.

Waited 1.5 hours or so, I lost track of time.

Nope, don't have the part, but did have a power link. Dave was bored and I let him mingle with my bike and the power link, and he got a mediocre chain tension, but the wheel axle was not really in the dropouts.

I tried riding it for ~.5 mile, but it was skipping all over the place. I walked back to the station to receive a DNF...

Disappointing, yes. The ride back was what made it though. I rode in the back of Dave's pickup in a recliner patio chair taking pictures of riders we passed on the way back. I saw some familiar faces from when I had to walk my bike back. But, I recognized one from TV. Floyd Landis, 2006 Tour de France winner for the non-bikers out there, was racing a nice Mooto-x. Baller!

He said he wanted to ride in the truck, and I said back to him "Break your bike like I did. Or, I can ride your bike for you!" He chuckled and kept riding up the hill. Cool dude, made my day :)

I did not get to ride his bike though.

I asked Dave from Scott's Bikes to send me some pics of me and Landis, expect those soon. Getting a used X-9 derailleur tomorrow to get back on the bike. Also need another spoke

It was a muddy ride, too. Thunder-stormed the night before the race, still a happy rider though.

Suckers. I got a "Finisher!" mug even though I rode in on a truck

363 days to stare at this mug and earn it for real....

Another Round of Weekend Training

2008-04-16T09:03:00.005-04:00

Well it was an exciting weekend. A total of 156 miles on a mix of the road rocket and mountain goat. Friday afternoon was a mtb ride through Umstead forest, doing some climbing loops, which led me over to Lake Crabtree. I did a loop and a half there because I was feeling great and for some reason I was on fire through the turns. It felt like every turn was the perfect speed, you know that flowy feeling? Especially while listening to some great music. Sadly I didn't have great gps reception and the bike computer wasn't working properly, but I'm guessing between 40-45 miles for the day. It was definitely longer than my last enduro ride which was 34 miles through the same areas. Needless to say I was cramping by the end of the day because I left from classes with no sport drink.

Sunday, I left North Raleigh with some other members of Team NORSA (Mike, Alan, and Adam) to head up to Virginia on road bikes. We were headed for the small town known to locals as Virgilina. This small town straddles the state line, and beware of dogs if you try to make this trip!

Upon entering the town, we were immediately greeted by the locals at the (you guessed it) Baptist church yelping at us. Apparently they've never seen men in spandex before.

Check out the GPS track of the trip. 116 miles, 5,300ft of climbing... rather flat ride I'd say. You can view it in Google Earth following this link.

All in all it was a great trip. We were moving for a little over 7 hours, averaging about 16mph. The Cytomax I bought the day before works great! I felt fresh all day long, except I should have brought some Ibuprofen, my shoulders and back got a little sore. I'm definitely going to be using cytomax for the Cohutta! Which is this Saturday!

Anyway, check out the pictures from Sunday, the writeup on Team NORSA's blog.

Virgilina

Virgilina Trip

2008-04-10T08:45:00.001-04:00

Team NORSA will be making the Virgilina trip this weekend, on Sunday. I'll be joining fellow NORSA riders Adam, Alan, and Mike on this ~103 mile trip. Should be a good training ride before next weekend, which is the Cohutta enduro! Which should be an interesting race, need to figure out logistics of getting there on time and what's going in my dropoff bags... time to do some elevation hw...

Are you kidding me?!

2008-04-02T00:20:00.003-04:00

APRIL FOOLS! I hate weather reports. Didn't rain at allllll today. highs were in upper 70's, ahhhhhh! Will ride to class tomorrow...grrr, this day feels wasted. Though I did get a good amount of schoolwork done.

I may skip out tomorrow after class and get a long ride in...hmm 40 miler to and around umstead for hills training?

Go away rain

2008-04-01T10:29:00.002-04:00

Can't ride to class today. Same thing happened yesterday. Day before that was Sunday, rained that day too, so all the trails were closed. :( Its supposed to rain every day of the week now... It's not that I don't like riding in the rain, I just hate getting to class soaking wet and muddy.

So what's up?

2008-03-31T17:53:00.003-04:00

I'm building a small 20" wingspan flying wing, using the same wing cores as a few other friends. We're going to use them for some combat. Lars has already built his, but is using an edf with a feigao brushless motor as the power. I think all of ours are going to be similar except for the motor. A couple other guys are using a slightly slower feigao motor with props instead of the ducted fan, while I'm winding up a spare cdrom motor I had laying around

My vacuum bag system is almost completed. I'm waiting on some glue to dry right now. I had everything hooked up and powered, and the pump runs great, but is not powerful enough to turn over (its a piston pump) wiht a vacuum already established. The power supply would cut out when the vacuum switch would turn the pump on. I've added a smaller resevoir between the pump and the 1-way valve to remedy this. I'll know in a few moments if it works. Eventually, I want to vacuum bag the little combat wings I mentioned above.

The pump still has the same problem as before. I think I'll need a fairly large capacitor to prevent surging of the power supply...

DL50 Flying

2008-03-28T23:55:00.003-04:00

Wow these pics are ~1 month old too. Adam took some cool pics with his camera of me flying the DL50 out at Dorthea Dix.

Launch
DL50

Also the thought of doing the GDR next year after graduating has crossed my mind...

2008-03-28T23:39:00.002-04:00

OK so its been 2 months since I last posted. Like anyone's actually reading this garbage anyway. I mean c'mon, my last post included a picture that I didn't even take. Same with the one before that, I didn't even photoshop optimus prime in. Lame, I know. But seriously, school life kicked into gear and I'm dating a beautiful girl, so that's where my time goes now, along with aerial robotics stuff.

If youre just reading this blog, you'd probably think that I died in the wilderness of western NC on the extreme single digit camping trip I did with some friends in late Jan. Well, it was an adventure alright. Instead of doing a write-up, you can look at some pics that I escaped with from the wild:

Enjoy. My birthday was yesterday (21st), had a blast! Tomorrow is a pretty big joint party with another friend who just turned 21. So I'm taking it easy tonight and finally get an hour of spare time (first time in what feels like months) to write this jibberjabber.

On a related note, part of my birthday present was entrance fee to the Cohutta 100k race. No, not the 100 mile race! It was already filled up! DANGIT! I can settle for only 65 miles. I also bought some '08 aivd bb7's to put on the bike. I need to fix my front derailleur and get electro supplements dialed in before the race (3 weeks!).

Wintry mix

2008-01-18T17:35:00.000-05:00

I'm going out to Linville Gorge this long weekend for rockclimbing/hiking/camping with some friends from AR. Weather calls for snow and lows in the single digits. I'm packing up right now, and expect a writeup when I get back. Here's a teaser pic of the gorge.

Optimus Prime is a Badass

2008-01-16T12:38:00.000-05:00

Found this the other day

Transformers and bikes, a winning combo.

Subfreeze Hike!

2008-01-16T12:22:00.000-05:00

I did a subfreeze hike over winter break, and never posted the pictures from it. It was a short hike along the Billy Goat Trail on the Potomac River.

Yup, definitely freezing out

Walking on water

The Potomac

The bigger parts of the canal weren't frozen

I saw a bunch of woodpeckers which is unusual. Quirky looking fellows, really

Part of Mather's Gorge

There are alot of parts along the river with a 50 ft drop to the water

More building

2008-01-14T14:51:00.000-05:00

I've pretty much completed the horizontal stab, all except for the hinge slots. I'm waiting to borrow a hinge slotter tool from a friend to do that. Later tonight I will get the vertical tail built. The tail section is easy and fast to build, I am just taking my sweet time building this plane. I can't wait to start the wings, though.
Now some eye candy!

You can see the steed in the background
Here's a list of things to be done for her to be done:
Build vertical stab and wing
Sand all parts
Install hardware
Covering
Install electronics and engine
Break-in engine

Goodies!

2008-01-09T21:42:00.000-05:00

Went out to Home Depot to get som eclamps tonight. I really liked these Irwin Quickgrips. Expandable to 4". These are far better than using the weights. Also went to REI for the sale and got a rear bike light for $3.50! I almost got creamed today by a pickup, and I've been riding without lights for a while, so it's for the better. Also got a camping spork for the upcoming bikecamping trip.

Fixed gear build

2008-01-09T12:09:00.001-05:00

I realized I never posted anything about the build of my fixed gear bike. This was a weekend project last spring (April 2007). I was walking around campus and found this old BCA bike in alright condition sitting by a dumpster. The tubes were flat, probably why someone ditched it. Whatever, their loss, my gain.

The frame is a good candidate for a throw-it-together-quick fixie. Horizontal dropouts, steel, just like every other old, cheap roadbike frame out there. Sizing was decent, 57cm when I ride a 61... good enough for campus cruising.

I took it over to the AR lab that night to do the dirty work. First job was to disassemble everything and grind off those unneeded brazeons.

I also had to think about what I was going to use for the rear wheel. To keep it in cheap fashion, I decided to use the old wheel with a welded sprocket. Went over to the design school and used their welding torch to do that.

Not a bad welding job!
After stripping down the frame, I decided to paint it safety color red, so those cars see me zipping through traffic on campus!

I came back the next day after the paint was done drying, and reassembled all the part. What popped out was this...

Ouuuu nasty seat, I know. That was what I had on hand at the lab. It was soon changed out for an old saddle I had layin around. Ok so, I'm thinking time for a test ride, right? It was past dark, but there were lights all along the road behind the building I was in, so Matt and I go back there to ride it around. Keep in mind this is my first time riding a fixie. I ride around for a few minutes, amazed that the welded sprocket hasn't given out along with the rusty spokes on the wheels, getting used to that 'fixed' sensation. I pass it over to Matt to let him try it out. "Not bad for dumpster diving" he says. Ok, initial rides, great! Time for some more speed. I ride up a hill trying out the flywheel effect, then turn around pointing downhill. Time for downhill trials... Start peddling, faster, fastER, FASTER. I see some headlights up ahead, a car coming in the one way street (I was going the wrong way here) Ok time to start those brakes...wait, what? Tim you didn't install brakes on a bike?!? By this point I wanted to coast... a big no no. The pedals shot my legs up like a kid on a trampoline, massive legs have a lot of momentum. The pedals bucked me off the seat, rear wheel popped up, lost control tail falling off to the side. When the rear wheel meets asphalt again, the bike is yawing probably 30 degrees to the side. Thigh lands on top tube, rear wheel tacos, but driver never bails! I didn't fall off the bike, after tacoing a wheel at 15mph, much to the amazement of Matt.

No problem, fun while it lasted. I went to the bikeshop the next weekend to look at wheels. I walked out with an extra wheel from a Fuji Track Pro, has Formula hubs, DT Swiss spokes, and I believe a weinmann rim. I of course got a new sprocket to go on the flipflop fixed/free hub, no coasting at all for this bike...

I eventually bought a front wheel (Performance Titan, yea nothing flashy here, remember, cheap is the keyword) in the summer since the bike looked horribly aweful with rusted spokes and rims. I'd say it looks very nice. It's actually a bit too small for me. I am looking to sell it because it gets little use now that I live off campus.

More construction pics below.

Back in Raleigh

2008-01-07T19:08:00.000-05:00

I just got back to Raleigh a couple days ago to get ready for classes. I also cleared off part of my large desk for the Tiger build. It's a little small for the plans, but they won't be on the table for much of the build. I'm continuing the fuse build, hopefully it will go faster now that I've got a comfortable place to build. This is recent, so I don't have any new pics besides this one.

More Tiger!

2008-01-01T21:24:00.000-05:00

Making slow progress on the build, mainly because I don't have a great place to build at my house. The downstairs workarea has been taken over by my dad for refridgerator repair, so right now I'm building the plane on the floor in my room... A few pics for now.

Happy New Year!

Airplanes and Injuries!

2007-12-29T12:13:00.000-05:00

So I've been having this pain in my foot after running, for the past 3 weeks. I don't notice it when not performing high impact activities, so I'm not really sure what it is. It could be a small stress fracture. Whatever it is, it makes my foot hurt alot after running, which stinks because my bikes are in Raleigh while I'm home for winter break. So running is really my only form of exercise for about another week. That's ok, because I have an airplane to build!

It's a Goldberg Tiger 2 kit I got for Christmas. I've only just started the fuselage build, so nothing great to show off. I did happen to get a gallon of Cool Power %15 glow fuel for only $15 at our hobby shop!
I've also got some pics from a flight session with Lars and JB before I left Raleigh for break.

JB got some good stick time on his Razor that he hasn't really flown before, and Lars is usually always out there with me.

Ahhh Winter Break

2007-12-26T20:41:00.000-05:00

So far I've had an awesome time relaxing and catching up with some friends and family this break. For Christmas, I got some clothes, a new RC plane which I'll build up soon, and some new egg beater pedals. But being a member of Team NORSA, I need another adventure soon. I haven't decided exactly what yet, but, I'm thinking something along the lines of this in western North Carolina right after New Years. I might be in Boone for New Years, and start classes again on the 9th, and am trying to decide what to do in the meantime. Camping is cheap, and I've wanted to try some bike-camping at some point. Will keep you posted...

End of Semester

2007-12-19T02:09:00.000-05:00

Weeeell it's been a long semester. I did not get as much mountain biking in as I would have liked, and didn't race this season in the ACCC. It's a shame, I really enjoyed racing and camping out on the weekends for the races. Yea, I am a fast biker, but the best mountain biker is the one having the most fun. This semester of school really killed that feeling. I think things are going to clear up a bit next semester, and I should be able to get to go to some road races and the Tsali trip so guys on the cycling team are planning. The Cohutta 100 is in mid-April, which will be right before the end of the spring semester, but that's what I'm aiming for. Hopefully another adventure race will pop up with Team NORSA too.

Speaking of NORSA, we had an attempt at biking to Virginia from Raleigh this past weekend. It was an awesome study break even though horrible weather stopped us halfway. Read about it on Alan's blog.

I need another adventure soon.... will make one over winter break :)

Little recap

2007-10-16T21:33:00.000-04:00

In between work the past few days I've managed to:
~Get pepsi can stove working properly
~Hang out with Lindsay
~Add a new steed to the stable:

Bear Island Sea Kayak Trip

2007-10-13T23:36:00.000-04:00

Today I returned from 3 days of sea kayaking! The whole trip was a lot of fun and was a much needed break from school. It was really amazing to be able to get away from civilization for 3 days and not have to answer the cell-phone/worry about ANYTHING. If that's what happens when you go kayaking...I need to get my own!

Alan, a fellow member of Team NORSA, let me borrow one of his family's many sea kayaks (their garage looks like an outdoors outfitter store!) and some equipment for the trip. The other two guys that came on the trip were Dan and Adam, both from the aerial robotics club (which is how we all know each other). Dan brought out one of his family's canoes while Adam rented a sea kayak from a shop out in Swansboro. Alan had his mom's (he's always been a momma's boy) Kruger Dreamcather, basically a REALLY nice kevlar canoe/kayak hybrid.
Dan
Adam
We played in the surf on the ocean side of the island a lot, got flipped over a bunch of times, Alan tried to teach me how to roll a bunch of times... we built kites out of those black trash bags and reeds that were growing around our camp site. The kite building actually turned out to be a little competition, since we're all aerospace engineers :) And guess whose was the only one, I mean two, to fly? Hehe, Alan and Dan couldn't get theirs to fly at all! Anyway, the whole 3 days were awesome, very well spent :) Be sure to check out Alan's (Sailing adventures of SOS) blog soon, I'm sure he'll have more pictures, too!

Pepsi can stove

2007-10-08T21:26:00.000-04:00

Today after class I decided to try making one of those pepsi can stoves I've seen on the internet. It's a lightweight camping stove made from 3 aluminum cans, and it's really easy to make. The stove uses 90% isopropyl alcohol, which you can get at any drug store for $2 for 16oz. so it's reallly cheap (good for college students...) I'm going to use it this weekend on the sea kayaking trip, so it'll have some field tests. It only took me an hour to make the stove, and I was going pretty slow to make sure my cuts were right. I used these instructions if yall are interested:
PCT Hiker

And Alan posted a write-up about the adventure race this past weekend on his blog:
SOS

PS 10 points if you can guess what brand cans those used to be...

Been a long time

2007-10-08T02:25:00.001-04:00

Ahhh it's been a long time. Yes this blog was abandoned for some time. The last post was at the beginning of last mtb season... well it turns out I finished 2nd in my class. I won the last XC race of the season for double points which was really rewarding. But then I fell into a slump of bad parts and school and didn't get much riding done until spring time rolled around.

Anyway, on to new (recent!) things! This weekend I went to my first adventure race, a 12 hour beast located in the Uwharrie forest of North Carolina. I raced with 3 other guys from Team NORSA who go to State, too. This weekend, I got free admission into the coveted NORSA team based out of my hometown DC! SPRAGAW! In the raffle after the race, I won a nice floor bike pump that I needed since the carpump broke, and some Hammer gels, bleh. It was a lot of fun, and there should be some more coverage on their blogs. Actually, it's seeing they're active blogs that made me want to write something in here. I'll give you links to those soon! Here's a link to the race website, and you can see my name on the racer list to prove I went! HA!
Bushwhack Adventures

Next weekend is fall break, I've got two extra days for my weekend, and we're going sea kayaking! Should be fun since I've never been in a sea kayak before. A couple of us are heading out to the outbanks of NC to do some paddling around Bear Island. Three days til that happens, can't wait!

First ride

2006-09-04T14:16:00.000-04:00

Alright, so I finally got to ride with some team members and other new people yesterday afternoon, and, well, I now know how much faster I need to be/what bad shape I'm in right now. ERrr, I mean how much faster I could be. Anyway, we went to Lake Crabtree, which is a very rooty loop, and did 2 laps at 5 miles each. It doesn't like much, but this group was the fastest group I've ever ridden with. It will definitely help me out in the long run though.

Oh yea, I got to ride someone's full suspension Specialized Epic disc for a little bit, and it was sweet. I want one. now. It has an inertial valve so the suspension is locked out until it hits a bump, so there's no pedal bob :) Now I know their secret to being fast on the roots... And I still need to replace my saddle, which I bent the seat rails a while ago, so that was giving me some butt pain that wasn't needed.

Anyways, I need to get back to homework since I procrastinated for so long on it. I'll be back later.

Gettin started

2006-08-31T21:51:00.000-04:00

Alright, so I finally felt bored enough to make one of these blogs. Just to let yall know, this is going to focused on cycling. So yea, it'll probably bore the crap out of most of you, or if I'm feeling snazzy enough I'll write some fun stuff that might surprise you.

Anywho, for those of you who don't know, I'm going to start racing bikes this year. Yea, that's right, bicycles, two wheels, a chain, and muscle. The fall season is mountain biking season, so I'm going to be focusing mainly on that for the next few months. Starting February is the road bike season, and by then I am hoping to have saved up enough money for a roadie :) And then I'll start racing those...

So I started training and getting back into shape about two weeks ago when I got back to school. Obviously, I'm working mainly legs, but sometimes I have to put the other guys to shame and do the bench press every once in a while. Definitely have the biggest pecs out there... But in all seriousness the first mountain bike race is on Sept. 9th, which is only two weekends away!! AHH! Better get my wheel fixed and get back out on the trails tomorrow (broke a spoke my last ride :(

This is the bike I'll be racing. It's an '03 Rocky Mountain Trailhead with a Rock Shox Pilot c shock in the front. Last time I weighed it, it came in at a portly 31lbs I think (it was a while ago..) whick isn't bad for a 185lb rider.So over the next week I'm gonna be working on some cardio, toe raises, and leg presses. I've got some goals in mind.