The Recovery Ride Will be a Walk in the Park

After looking for the really nice shot of Russ in the stream at the local park for 20 minutes, I settled on this random and unrelated photo of Russ being his larger than life and larger than BigFoot self.

We took our grandson to a Saturday practice for his mountain bike team on Yonah Mountain. Rather than wait, we went over to the hiking trail and did as much as we could in the seriously limited amount of time we had before returning to pick him up. The walk reminded me that one reason building up my cycling mileage was easier the first time is that I was hiking regularly at the time. I had been thinking about the negative reasons more, like aging, but that’s not the whole story.

Sometimes my lightbulbs are a little slow to switch on, but while hiking up Yonah mountain the lack of shoulder issues and the attitude of my saddle free hips brought this decision clearly into focus. The recovery cardio needs to be a true recovery in several senses of the word, and the focus needs to be physically and mentally restorative, not the opportunity for additional video footage I was thinking of at one time. One or two centuries a week will really provide quite enough video, and we need to vary more than just our body positions on the bike. We’ll get significant benefits that keep us riding if we vary the activity as well. Recovery should be the primary purpose of recovery cardio, and with the amount of time we’ll have in the saddle, cross-training is the way to do it best.

Leita Thompson Park in Roswell GA

There is a pleasant no drive option, so making the switch is not just ideal physically, it’s easily doable.There is a park with a trail near my house. Walking there and doing the loop inside then walking back is just under 5 miles. We may venture out to other places for some variety if there is available time. We live in the Georgia Piedmont Region with reasonable access to Lookout Mountain and Valley, the southern terminus of the AT and the the Blue Ridge. Some of those trails might be doable before or after a photography day which would open up some location options for the still photography.

That was the easiest decision I’ve made for the project.

Tuesday Trippin’ Aug 30

August has been full of doing things rather than writing things that are ready to post. The riding has been going well. One day I went out and was hit by three stinging meanies, on my shoulder, on my chest, and the last one was in almost the exact same spot on my lip as the sting I wrote about in my last post, but I did not get stung by any of them. I held my breath a bit each time until I realized I wasn’t hurt, but never had to pull out the benadryl that’s now part of my everyday kit.

It’s been humid southern riding. Moving or removing my bike shorts has been worse than a wet swimsuit on some days. I haven’t suffered much with overheating, and that feels good. A guy came up to me in the parking lot one day as I was loading the bike. I had passed him earlier. He said “You didn’t have to make that hill look so easy!” I thought “What hill?”, but what a I said was that he was on a mountain bike and I was on a road bike (which is easier) and I talked about how much it meant to me to be riding and regaining strength over the pandemic. On the way home, I decided I must have passed him on a long slow hill that I walked up when I first started riding the Silver Comet. back then there was an intersection and you had to stop at the bottom. Now there is a trail bridge and momentum takes half the load. It was a small thing, but it felt good to be in a different place than I was a year and a half ago. I’m probably passing 80% of the riders I see going in my own direction now. That doesn’t mean I’m fast. Fast riders get on, get done and get off. I never even see those riders if they started in front of me. I still can’t call myself a good rider, but I am much stronger than I was, and I’m good enough to complete the project I want to do. It’s a level of accomplishment that feels good, feels on target.

I’ve also been adjusting to changing commitments and getting some personal things done. I have more time available and I’m trying to get my mind and my house ready to shift into full time mode. Part of that is that we just made some major renovations to the house. Another part is working on the Etsy store and getting it ready for the busy season. I’ve been struggling with it, as have a lot of vintage sellers. I’m in a funk. I have a lot of stock, and I’m ready to just give it all away, clear out the basement and Marie Kondo the side gig. I can’t really afford that though. And when I say that I can’t afford that, I’m still fully aware the increasing overhead by way of fees and shipping costs is killing me. I still have a 5-star average review, I’m just working harder than I should be to accomplish it, and… Then every once in a while there’s that one customer, and I just made such a difference for them. That thing that I found and rescued was that thing that reminds them of someone they love and they’ve been looking for for so long.

I’m making a push toward paying a lot more attention to the photography because however much I personally want to do the project on muscle power, it will always be completable on electric power, but there will be few fixes for photography fails. I’ve watched a lot of photo editing videos as well and will watch many more. I’m sure the level of editing I’m willing to do will evolve, and at the same time be different for different projects. To some extent the point is moot. I don’t have editing software yet. In fact the only reason I’m looking at editing instruction instead of photography instruction right now is that I need to choose the editing software. I may end up with the obvious Adobe products, but if I do, I want that to be an educated choice.

Until next time…

Glorious Connection

During the first wave of the pandemic, Russ, in the landscape industry, was officially considered by the Georgia Governor’s executive order to be an essential employee. That was a flood of mixed feelings. In the beginning we stayed home except for work and groceries. We didn’t go out to feel the freedom of empty roads with little traffic in those early days. I really enjoyed not buying gas. But, one day, for what reason I don’t remember, I took Russ to work. On the way we saw Santa Claus on the side of the road. How random is that in April? He had signs leading the way, thanking essential workers and encouraging people. And there he was, waving and dancing. After the initial delight, I want to know the backstory when I see something like this. Who was this guy? What motivated him?

I think I saw him maybe 3 times total, but it was every time I passed by. It wasn’t always a Santa costume. By the time I was driving that road often again, I wasn’t driving it during commute hours and there were only signs beside the road. I wanted to take a photo back while he was still out there, one with the sun rising behind him. Time got away from me. Then I wanted to photograph just the signs. Then there was only one sign left. It was the smiley face attached to a traffic sign. After missing the previous photo opportunities, being in a rush, not having time, not making time, I finally stopped to take a photo of the smiley face sign before it too was gone.

I didn’t want to park in turn lanes, so I pulled into the neighborhood next to the sign. There wasn’t a great place to park, so I parked across the street from a driveway, but it was a narrow street with houses on only one side. There was a little less room than normal street parking. When I came back to the car after taking the picture, there was a man in the driveway looking at me like he was wondering what I was doing.

I said Hi, and told him that I had stopped to take a photo of the sign and apologized if my parking had bothered him. He introduced himself. He said he was the guy! He put all the signs out there and stood there waving and smiling at passers by during those dark early days of the pandemic, and then he kept it going. The person to get the backstory from was standing right in front of me, and he was talking to me about the whole thing. I guess I picked the best time to stop after all. His name is Jerry and he’s a professional Santa. Santas had a rough go of the pandemic too, BTW, but Jerry didn’t say anything about that.

Jerry was out there at 6AM every day, then cut it back to two days a week. He was out there for a total of 6 months waving at people and thanking them for being essential workers. One day his wife asked him how many people he thought he had an impact on. His guess was 25 per day, but then he decided to count reactions, and realized that he could count 150 positive reactions a day, and sometimes he was in the dark, he wasn’t even sure that he could see all of the reactions. On top of that, people stopped to talk to him and thank him, to tell him that they shared what he was doing with co-workers and it cheered them too. He was really having an effect, making a lot of smiles and laughs. His big message for me was that his effort was totally worth it. He let people know that they mattered, and the cool part is that they let him know that he did too.

Jerry’s big focus was on the more essential jobs, from healthcare workers to waste collectors, but he made a difference to everyone who was out there driving by, and the Georgia list of essential workers was pretty big.

Russ was out there commuting every day, caught in a fog, grateful to be employed, grateful to have income that we needed, while also wondering if it would cost him his life. The official governor’s executive order was a cruel Catch-22 with no good options for high risk workers who actually needed their income. Russ’ company instituted new procedures to limit contact between crews and did everything they could to make it as safe as possible. At the same time, it’s hard to wrap your mind around beautiful landscapes as essential work. Bad things do happen when landscape maintenance goes by the wayside. Vandalism and vermin increase, but it’s not at the forefront of what people think about when they think of who’s job is essential.

It was and still is a struggle for everyone. But, it’s easier for some of the essential workers to know exactly why they’re essential, and harder for others. If you’re saving lives everyday, you know that risking your own is worth it. The more removed your work is from saving lives, the harder it is to see it as anything but risking your life for a paycheck. The pressure and opinions through the pandemic were and are still relentless, most of them dictated by what the holder of those opinions feared most. One day I asked Russ if he (Santa Jerry) was still out there. He said “What?, oh, I don’t know.”

WHAT!

There’s was a row of signs like you’re coming up on a Stuckey’s or Rock City and at the end of it Santa Claus is jumping and dancing and waving and Russ didn’t know if he was still out there? At the time that I asked that question, Jerry was still out there, and Russ was too distracted to see him.

I just said that Jerry mattered, and then I said, for all his effort, he still faded into the background for Russ. But, the thing is, both are true. When people are that stressed out, the Jerrys of the world all matter. The guy on the Silver Comet telling people to have a glorious day matters, even when you are no longer consciously aware of them, even if they become background noise, the noise is good. It matters that there is good background noise. People who love people redeem the rest of us.

I went to a funeral service for Russ’s Uncle Woody a few years ago. The pastor built the entire sermon on Uncle Woody’s favorite greeting, “God loves you and so do I.” Woody would say that and offer his hand. I never saw him do it. I met him at a family reunion and he didn’t do it there. Apparently he did it everywhere else. I love the unconditional love that gesture conveyed. I don’t know how to offer my own version of it to people. I want my own version. I want it to be inclusive of different belief systems. I want something just as warm as Woody’s, but universal. It’s harder now. We’re still in the middle of a pandemic and I’m really ready to leave handshakes behind forever, but the elbow bump feels more trendy than warm. I just don’t feel it. When I was active in ballooning, we all hugged a lot. Not everyone, because not everyone is a hugger, and that’s way too up close and personal for the pandemic era. What puts your mind and body into a greeting like Woody’s for today? I’m not sure.

Extroverts like Jerry have figured out how to reach out to people. And, we are all better for it. Not everyone can be a Jerry, not everyone should. People are different. Some are introverts, some are distracted, some are having a bad day, some have the weight of everything precious and ephemeral on their shoulders. But, reaching for the connection, however you can is a good thing, and even when people don’t respond noticeably, we get that strangers care enough to get out there every day and work for nothing more than a smile. When that happens, we’re in a world with a more beautiful backstory. When the world is crushing, the compassion and the connection are the background music that gets us through. And sometimes when we see or meet a Jerry, we smile, inside or out, and our heavy thoughts are replaced with lighter ones for just long enough.

Tuesday Trippin’ July 20

The weather hasn’t been completely peachy. Last week we had siding replaced on the back of the house, soffits and fascia underneath the gutters with Hardie board and it’s rained enough that there hasn’t been a paintable day since. Fortunately, It’s easier to get a rideable day than it is to get a paintable day. I got up this morning to see if the forecast was as grim today as it was last night. I clicked and got excited, then realized it was showing me Panama City Beach. We visited my Mother for the first time in a year and a half a few weeks ago and went a little out of the way to drive through Wewahitchka for some Tupelo honey and walk down the beach. I’m not sure why the widget reverts back to the fun thing you checked once or twice instead of going to show you the place you’ve checked dozens of times since, but I’ll choose to be grateful for the reminder that I got a walk on the beach and a long awaited visit with my mother

The morning percent chance of rain moved inside my parameters here too, and the thunderstorm forecast disappeared completely. The grim bedtime forecast converting into a bike ride happens often enough that I never rule out a ride until the morning of, and really kick myself if I forget to re-check. More to be grateful for.

The ride was nice, not too wet. I was dragging at first, but energetic and getting my head into the right place before it was over. The Y was more crowded last time I went. I hope that was a reflection of the time of day rather than changing norms. I didn’t get the muscle soreness after, so I’m getting used to being back. My bike feels like it could use tightening up, tuning up and adjustments everywhere. For that matter, so did my body earlier this week.

I’ve been writing a good bit, things for this blog, both published and not, as well as other things. I’ve also started getting ready for the seasonal uptick in sales for the Etsy store. I need that to flow smoothly for at least the next 6 months and everything I do now will save some really irritating oops from happening later.

That’s it for today. Have a glorious day, and try to remember what you’re grateful for.

Cameras Part Deux

Sometimes I chide myself for focusing on the wrong thing at the wrong time. I have to get funding before camera decisions decisions matter. At the same time, I need credibility as someone who has what it takes to get the job done. My blog pictures need to start looking better. So now is not too soon to make instant hand camera decisions.

I’ve spent some time now and then over a few months considering what to carry instead of the Nikon DSLR for expected stills while riding the trail. Once there is a recumbent, I may take the Nikon from time to time, but as a rule, it’s just too risky, and you know those amazing things will happen too fast on the days I have it, and there will be really glorious moments on the days don’t have it. For that quick access I’ve thought of a point and shoot or a better phone camera. I wasn’t sure. The phone cameras keep getting better and you’re more likely to have your phone handy when something happens quickly. My decision was partly made for me.

I love the Samsung Galaxy 8 Active that I had, but it was tired before I ran it through the washer and the dryer in my yoga pants pocket. The $9 a month I’ve been paying in insurance since it was new was going to get be a Galaxy 9 (not active). After the deductible, it was going to cost half the retail price to get a dated phone. The only reason I have the cell phone carrier that I do now is that it has good signal coverage in rural south Alabama where my mother lives.

I thought there was a nest in our hydrangea this spring. The bush was damaged and the empty nest exposed. This unedited image is the first one taken with my new Galaxy S21 Plus.

I’ve mentioned my luddite tendencies, but that’s just because the budget is king in my life. If I had a more well funded lifestyle and didn’t avoid dealing with my current carrier like the pandemic, I’d update at least twice as often, probably. The current Galaxy phone is a S21 Plus. It seemed like the thing to have for a project that needs a good quickly accessible camera at the touch of a whim. A lot of the tech savvy people who participate in funding crowdsourced projects won’t relate to this, but buying the Galaxy S21 Ultra was a leap of faith, especially since the reviews said it wasn’t even as rugged as the S20. My last 2 phones were active models because I AM going to drop it. The temptation to get rid of the overpriced and useless insurance was tempting, but the phone was really expensive. I couldn’t quite make myself do it.

One of the things I love about this phone is that you can turn on “Make a RAW copy” (actually, I found out that I could have done that on my 8 Active too). That means that you can use the .jpgs for all those things that .jpgs are good for, but if you want to play around with RAW, you have that option. I haven’t bought the software for that yet. I’ll probably go with Lightroom because it is widely used, but I did see some software that was rated higher and was a one time fee, not subscription. Decisions! And, miles to go…

I hear that the next Galaxy will bring Active models back. It’s not the first time I waited through model after model to update, and finally hit critical mass just before the model that suited my uses better.

Tuesday Trippin’ June 29

New Bike Shoes, Flat, Stiff and Wide

I ended up buying new shoes just before the century. My go to pair is getting worn, making my tingly toes worse. Breaking in a new pair of shoes is not something I’d normally do for a big event, but it was time and I don’t really remember noticing a “break in” period on bike shoes.

I don’t like clips. I’m afraid I’ll forget to release in an emergency and wrench an ankle. My MTB riding grandson had mentioned I might like flats a while back. Then when we stopped by the recumbent store, the owner showed us extra large flat pedals and said that that they were good for preventing tingly toes. I hadn’t even mentioned that was an issue for me. They look a little clunky. Apparently he recommends them often and his customers love them. They’re not sleek, but I’m all about functionality and plan to follow his advice.

Flat pedals for the recumbent bike

I was already thinking about flats when I ended up using my spare shoes. I keep my, new old stock Keens that are too narrow for me in my car for emergencies and noticed that they are wide enough in the summer with no socks. The stiff sole feels good too, but if I wear them a few times in a row without socks, they’ll start to leave rub damage on my skin. All signs were pointing to flats.

I asked the REI sales rep for something stiff and wide. I expected him to show me flats, but I was leaving the door open to learn something new. Flats it was. I needed to buy the pedals as well. These are much more comfortable to walk in too. Ask me how I know!

New flats after the flat. The cleats on the new flat pedals are sharp!

Training and the Hospitality Highway

I decided early in the week before the century (link is not my video) to give the Y a shot. I was riding down the Greenway thinking about driving to the Y nearest the house when I got home, but I was almost at the Y on the Greenway. So I parked my bike and went in. It was time to start going, or to stop paying for the membership after a year and a half of not using it. (It did open back up months before I decided to go.) Under current conditions (the crowding level I experienced this week, combined with the risk level of the current Covid variants status locally and my status being fully vaccinated) I plan to go weekly, hopefully 2-3 times. And, I’ll try not to get too burnt out on the chore keeping up to date with current conditions (has a variant blown through the vaccine?). I’m looking forward to getting back to strength training. It should help my shoulder, back, knees and hips, and keep me riding through more adverse circumstances. I was surprised that my knees hurt after the workout, I didn’t push it at all. I wondered if strength training after so much time without it was part of what made me feel so bad through the rest of the week, but I think it’s more likely that I took my opening to ride almost every day all month in climbing temperatures without having managed to reach an optimal weight. I’ve been busy too. I hardly know which thing to write about.

Highway 400 is apparently called the Hospitality Highway. I learned that when we picked up our t-shirts. The ride (link is not my video) was fun, the week leading up to it was not. I had a flat on Tuesday, a really difficult and draining ride on Thursday and felt bad Friday and Saturday. It wasn’t my best training week at all. I had spasms in my leg, which according to the internet could have been stress, exhaustion, dehydration or the beginning of rare and horrible things. I’m leaning toward stress and exhaustion because I’m pretty good at hydrating.

I was a bit nervous at the start of the ride. It was raining just enough to make the roads slippery. This crowd was full of energy, but crowds in general aren’t my favorite riding situation and the busy roads in areas with high population density aren’t either. I was having a little bit of that nervous feeling I had just before that time I was getting ready to rappel off the side of a waterfall. “Am I really going to do this?” was floating around in my mind, and I was remembering the time I flipped over my handle bars. Flying through the air, I wasn’t scared, I was angry. I thought I was about to miss things I had planned to do because I did something stupid. If I were to have a wreck in this pile of 1650 people, how hard and long would it be to recover? That’s the thing. It’s not the immediate pain, it’s the time you loose.

Near the start line, pre-crowd compression. Our email from the organizer said there were 1650 riders, including some who did volunteer work so they could ride for free.

There was a young man in a Georgia Tech jersey going over safety rules with a man I soon learned was his father, saying things like “Go across the seams between lanes at an angle, don’t let your tire get a tire stuck in the crack).” I was tuned in to hear what ever I might have forgotten to think about. It was a family activity. The parents were celebrating their 39th wedding anniversary, on the day of, by participating in the ride with their sons.

The ride was good. Were were in a midlin’ good position. As we went under the overpass that was in about the middle of the freeway section, there were already large numbers of riders crossing it, and by the time we got to that place ourselves the police cruisers were pulling up the rear, one to each lane. I didn’t see this effect in any of the videos I watched, but, where I was, there were large numbers of riders with bright tail lights ahead and, from a bright red lights standpoint, it looked much like rush hour with cars on the road. I heard other cyclists remark about it too.

We crossed the Chattahoochee River twice. It was beautiful. The rain wasn’t falling at that exact moment and the early morning fog was rising from the water. I didn’t feel at liberty to give it more than a seconds worth of attention, but I made sure to appreciate that it was there for longer. There were plenty of cool sights to file away. At least one person did wreck. Russ saw a cyclist who had an accident and said there was a lot of blood coming from her head. That really surprised me because helmets usually keep that from happening.

I went up some hills with confidence building ease. We loaded the instructions for the 43 mile ride. It would pass nearby our house at the 30 mile point and we could stop if we wanted, or ride it on in if we didn’t. The last hill before the nine mile route ended is called “Mother-in-Law” (no, none of these named hills were named for men). I walked half way up Mother-in-Law and asked Russ at the top what he wanted to do. The conversation took a little longer than necessary because neither of us wanted to say it, but, we were wiped. I stuttered around and said “I only got 4 hours sleep last night.” We went home and showered and napped, then went back to listen to bands and cheer the 100 milers in. Like most things I start thinking “Am I really going to do this?”, I was glad that I did. After I work my way through this video project, it would be fun to look for some other challenging centuries to ride. I’m sure this particular century will have a new home by then.

Tuesday Trippin’ June 22

Crickets

“Crickets”, people say that to indicate a lack of response. Shortly after moving back home for a bit, my son asked me if we were playing cricket sounds in the bedroom. I laughed. We are. I’ve been falling asleep to the sound of crickets for months now. At our old house, only 8 miles away (and almost every other home I’ve lived in) the real crickets outside were really loud. We had an exchange student once, she asked what the noise was. The background noise was so constant that she had to take me outside and point at nothing in particular before I understood her question.

At our current house, where the phrases “front yard must be bermuda or zoysia grass” and “open like a golf course” are in the HOA Guidelines, the neighbors use yard chemical services and the crickets are now faked on a meditation audio. (The reasons I moved here were good, but the fit wasn’t a natural one).

Russ and I have been skipping around with guided and unguided meditations. His default often goes to unguided abstract music, but as I’ve read more articles about the benefits of nature sounds and coming across articles about forest bathing I thought about crickets. They are the background music of my life. And, I have been sleeping better.

The Rides

I’ve been riding at Big Creek because the streambed is cooler and it allows me to ride at more different times of day. The leftovers of a tropical depression are drifting by though, and the weather service flood warnings started 2 days before the rain actually got here. Urban flooding is a problem in Atlanta and the surrounding areas. Really it’s a problem in all places where there is a lot of impervious pavement. It’s a problem for Big Creek too, and, while many people who walk short distances will get to use the Greenway there sooner, I won’t ride there or even check the conditions again for at least a week after the rainfall stops. It takes that long for the waters (which during flooding sometimes contain sewage overflow) recede in more places.

Watching the weather is something I didn’t come by naturally. I’ve alway been the “Yes, there’s weather.” girl who didn’t pay much attention, but it’s something Russ and I both do frequently now. Russ does it for his work. I started when I got into ballooning, continued through a few Georgia droughts, and I do it now for the bike rides. Often the local weather forecast will be for more rain or greated chances of rain when I look the day before a ride, and by the morning of the ride, things have changed enough to meet my parameters for a ride. I recently had a week when I didn’t think I’d be able to ride at all, and rode nearly every day. They weren’t all dry rides, but it was fine. Not getting rain that was in the forecast has been something I’ve noticed frequently over the years. Forecasts that that always seem to change in the same direction make me wonder if Heat Island effects on precipitation are being fully accounted for in the model.

Regardless, today I’ve got the weather when it wasn’t expected, so, I can write about everything else later. It’s time to stop writing and start riding.

The Sisters, 400 and Me

There is the matter of that century I signed up for… the 400 Century. The first 3 miles are on a large limited access divided highway. That’s what even the 9 milers are signed up for, to get to go faster down that stretch of concrete on their bikes than they do in their cars. Those who finish the whole ride will also do 97 miles of local roads that I choose not to ride on under any other circumstances, after having made a few exceptions over the last 30 years. If getting chased by the Great Dane was the worst of it, I might ride these roads normally. It’s more the near misses and the times I got yelled at because drivers don’t want to share the road (and you know the kind of profane ugliness that comes with the road rage of the frustrated American driver). I only signed up for the century because it was the last time there would be a ride on 400 due to construction and it’s on that pesky bucket list of mine. It’s so hard to watch a bucket list item go away and do nothing.

In truth, conditions have improved with the advocacy of groups like the ABC, Bike Cobb, Bike Alpharetta, Bike Roswell, and others, but it hasn’t been too long since I went to a town meeting where a planning official was being abusively berated at length by an angry driver that didn’t want bike lanes. We still have far to go. Rage is a dangerous thing, more dangerous when you’re not the one in a 3000 lb vehicle. I’ll be safer in a large group activity with support, but riding these roads is not my comfort zone.

To prep for this discomfort that I not only willingly signed up for, but also dragged Russ into, I decided that on days when I don’t ride (the trail), I should go out and practice “the sisters”, those challenging hills on the century that are right out my back door. So, I went over to Big Sister. Usually when I’m on that hill, I’m walking and it’s easy to forget how long the hill stretches out. I ride flat rail trails and stream beds. I deal with hills by building momentum. But, you lose momentum at the stop sign, and even if there wasn’t one, momentum doesn’t last through a long slow grade.

After walking up Big Sister with my bike, I came home to check published elevations to see if I was initially wrong when I guessed the Big Sister was not a higher climb than Trash Mountain (The biggest elevation change on the Silver Comet, graced by the scent of the adjacent landfill. It’s built in a place where railway right-of-way wasn’t available during construction, so it’s the “real hill” on the Silver Comet). The Big Sister and Trash Mountain are comparable in elevation gain, the whole difference (to me) is in the distance the incline is spread across on Big Sister.

I noticed something else while I had the elevations up. The Sisters didn’t really stand out so much on the graph. There are a lot of hills on the ride. It’s just that the sisters come nearer the end when riders are tired.

When I first started to write this piece, I was talking about needing to train a lot and maybe even completing the whole century. I haven’t really done that level of training. I kept riding through the family trip and the musical bike repairs pretty well, but it turned out to be maintenance, not century training. In most ways, this century is irrelevant to the video project. The timing and requirements are different, but I thought throwing it into the mix would make me a stronger rider. Now, I’m looking at the ride being next weekend, and it’s taken a lot of effort just to ride at all. On top of that, there’s time of year. If you look at a temperature graph of Atlanta, the highs peak right about when the ride is scheduled, stay high through July and start to break around the first week in August. Heat is not my comfort zone either.

Of course, I knew this, and was remembering this, when I signed up. Awareness doesn’t keep it from being a pretty big deal though. I can’t just ignore it. My biggest limitation in riding is heat tolerance. When I get overheated, I get a migraine (unless it’s actually heat stroke, IKR?). I have a tell. When my face looks red, I’m still fine, but when it feels red, when I feel intense heat on my face, that’s when I need to quit and take aspirin, or suffer. I got right up on the edge during a ride a few weeks ago. I stopped when I needed to. It happened to be at the end of my ride. I didn’t take the aspirin though. My face had just started to feel red. I didn’t feel like the terrible symptoms were coming. They didn’t. That made me feel pretty good. I hope it was because I’m more fit (or maybe I just stopped at the right time).

Regardless, I’ve been pushing my heat tolerance all month because the century will be hot. That push is beginning to wear on me. Some days I’ve been tired enough not to do anything very physical except my ride. It’s time to go back to riding in the cooler temps and quit pushing the heat limits. This century will be cool at 7AM when it starts and will heat up later when I’m tired. I’m going to have to treat this as a fun diversion and make sure I don’t stress my body on a level that will cost me in the end. It would have been nice to make this last (and my first) 400 Century Ride a full century for me, but as I look at it from a week out, I’m having to face that for this ride on this day, that’s not going to be the smart choice. That’s ok. It will still be a glorious day.

Tuesday Trippin’ June 15

It’s been a musical bikes week. The Hybrid just needed adjustments. The stem had been tightened down so much that it interfered with the bearings. That was a relief.

We found a chain for the road bike on the internet and took it back to the shop, then they finished earlier than the earliest date we had been given. That was a pleasant surprise. More down time passed between switching bikes in the past. I was without the road bike for some time before I went down to get the hybrid back from my mother’s house. When I was down there, I was on hilly roads, so I expected it to be harder. This time it was back and forth without even a day between riding one and riding the other, and I really noticed how much easier a ride the road bike is.

I also noticed that the Brooks saddle isn’t for me, again. Perhaps it’s because it’s a men’s saddle. There isn’t supposed to be any difference between the men’s and the women’s Brooks saddle except for the length of the nose. Maybe that difference made the difference. The discomfort though is going to make me give things a rest for a few days, and I’m not going to be excited about exploring Brooks possibilities in the future. I’m afraid I may have had some vein pressure, and that could get ugly.

Russ finally got new handlebars for his bike (the crash last November bent them badly and he’s bee riding at an angle ever since. The really big guy at the bike shop told Rus to get a wider bar than what he had, and he’s enjoying that advice. He watched a video and did the replacement himself. It was good to see us (him) moving in the direction of being able to do more ourselves. We took a class on bike repair and maintenance several years back, but I didn’t use any of the information soon enough to remember it.

The weather has been hot. I’ve been riding at warmer times in prep for the century. Overheating is a significant risk for me though. Riding has been draining, but manageable. I’m not feeling very confident about this hilly suburban century I signed up for near the peak of summer heat. I’m not sure whether I should push it as hard as I can, or just enjoy getting to ride down an interstate type highway with 1 or 2 thousand of my closest strangers for, probably, the only time in my life. When I ride through the hottest months of the summer for the project, I’ll have been riding centuries for months (if I’m riding centuries at all), and I’ll be able to start very early.

This week has been a long line of obstacles, both mentioned here, and not, but we managed. The obstacles have been tedious, but the continuous movement forward in spite of them felt good.

Budget Items: The Needed Things

I’ve agonized over the budget. A good understanding of the real cost of having or doing a thing started young for me. My first job wasn’t babysitting, It was keeping books for Mom at the wholesale grocery business that my parents took over from her parents, and I’ve had more than one micro business over the years. I didn’t expect to redo this budget so many times.

That this budget is higher than I expected makes me nervous. If people think it’s padded in the wrong way, they won’t want to support it, and if it isn’t padded to some extent, in the right way, we don’t have a buffer to deal with expected inflation, or with the UNexpected, whatever that may turn out to be. Advice to include every little expense shows up over and over. There are no budget do overs for this. We just get the one shot at project funding.

I thought the cost at Goal (the Lowest level) would be about a third of what it is, but for good reason. Most of the excess is because I shifted some fairly big expenses down to the lower levels based on some reading about successful Kickstarter features. I hope that was good advice. It smooths out the progression of the budget across the goals, but it puts some expenses before they are technically needed, which is totally irrelevant in the end if everything gets funded.

The budget is also higher at the top Super Stretch level than I expected. That’s partly about some research I did on successful Kickstarters, but also about shifting my project mantra toward “If I’m going to work this hard and put myself out there, I need to spend the money it takes to do it well and make it matter.” I have more redundancy built in than I need to meet the minimums for this project if everything goes right, but, sometimes redundancy is the reason you made your goal when things didn’t go right. The expense of extra cameras on Russ’s support bike are pretty low cost insurance. Any day that my cameras fail for whatever reason, his provide back up.

That’s not the only opportunity they could provide. I hope to get enough quality video to do a follow on project too. I’m not very specific about what that follow on project is because I haven’t decided for sure exactly what it will look like. I need to get through this project first, and do things in a way that leaves doors open to as many other potentials as I can. So, yes, I’ll be ecstatic to meet my top goals, and at the same time, I expect myself to exceed the goals I’ve promised for this project in a way that allows me to be in the best position to pursue a second one.

In some ways, the budget is exactly what I expected. I expect the budget to be solid, on target and justified every step of the way. I’ve trimmed, then remembered something else and those dollars go right back into the plan. I’m afraid to trim too much. There’s no saying “Oops I need more” and I want successful completion of the project.

But I’m done now. It will take something big to make me edit again before I put final totals out there to be seen. One thing that will help is that many of the costs are pretty equally exchangeable. As I shuffle through all of the potential scenarios, choosing one way of doing things has about the same final cost as choosing another. That’s a really useful feature. It gives us some freedom to make changes without jeopardizing the project.

39% of Kickstarter projects fund. That’s down a little bit from earlier years, but still sounds pretty good. Only 5.5% of launched Kickstarter projects reach the range of funding we need to complete this project at the highest level though. That sounds scary, super scary in fact. I’ve put a lot of time into this. It’s super duper scary, but many projects just cost less, some because they have much of their cost already taken care of from running inside an established company. Others only pay a portion of overhead because production is outsourced. Projects have so many different structures.

The first thing I’ll be hoping to do is reach 20% of goal. 78% of projects that reach 20% funding will be fully funded in the end. So, here it is, a write up of what is included in the budget items and, just to be extra thorough, what will happen if we reach the magic land of being over budget.

What’s in the Budget at Every Level

Cycle Clothing (kit) and Gear for 2 people. Our number is based on last year’s costs adjusted up to project level mileage and back down some because we don’t need as much specialty clothing on the recumbents. We also adjusted for clothing or gear that we didn’t need, or didn’t need much of last year (like cold weather kit) but will need for the project.

Maintenance: Repairs we can’t DIY, Lubricant, Tools, Tires, Chains, Cassettes, and other wear parts. We allowed last year’s expenses adjusted to project level needs, new equipment and increased trail mileage. Our numbers are a little low here because we are likely to get some bike features that require manufacturer maintenance, not DIY maintenance.

Automobile Mileage at the current deductible allowance (.56) multiplied by expected number of miles.

Safety Equipment Lights, Protective Gear, Emergency communication and fall detection

Tech Support, Web Services for Downloadable Rewards and other Technical Advice. Full disclosure: My tech guy is my son. He’s overqualified, working for a fraction of his regular rate.

Emergencies, margin of error for a change in inflation/conditions/the unexpected.

Streaming Cost

Kickstarter Fees and Processing Fees

Tax Liability for those expenses that cannot be paid or prepaid in 2022

What’s in the Budget at Goal Level

Photo Equipment: Multiple GoPros per bike, Mounting Gear for Everything, Sound Equipment and Buffers, Power Supplies and Batteries, Media Storage Drives, Motion Dampening, Memory Cards, On Bike Gear Storage.

Recumbent Bikes with shock absorbing and endurance features to provide ergonomic and cross training relief. The photography gear for the recumbents may be mounted on an overhead canopy. We will make a final decision on exact mounting after test shoots.

All those things listed as being in every level.

What’s in the Budget at Stretch Level

Stretch level doubles goal level time and production and some costs, but not all because much of the equipment bought at goal level works for both. I’m adding in the endurance bikes here to smooth out the jumps in expenses, and potentially a 360 degree camera or a mount for a series of GoPros to create the 360 degree affect. Most of the expenses here are additional equipment and adjusting up on expenses that are incremental.

Dropped Level

We had a comfortable in between-level here where we were started doing full rides on both trails, but monthly instead of weekly allowing Russ to maintain his regular employment. Having this level smoothed the progression in levels further and seemed like a great compromise goal at the onset, one that seemed to balance production and cost pressures, a logical sweet spot, maybe even the most likely level to fund.

The problem is, that when I wrote out the hourly requirements for this level, there weren’t enough hours in a week to sleep. This level was actually a trap that would cause us to fail. If all we were doing was riding, it might be tempting to try. Many people who would consider riding a century could do two of them per month without quitting their day job, but riding is only part of running the project. We also have to run the funding project, record video and maintain equipment, keep supporters updated (write the the Blog and/or stream) and produce 4 kinds of rewards. This level was reluctantly canceled to avoid the heartache of failure.

If our funding were to exceed the lower 2 levels, but falls short of the final Super Stretch level, we’d be trying to figure out the best way to adjust. It would be tempting to revisit this, perhaps do it in combination with partial employment. I’m afraid to even mention that, and I’ve almost deleted this paragraph more than once.

This is more complicated than a weekend of back to back centuries and employers want you to be available at their convenience, not when the weather is too bad for riding. We have hard commitments every other weekend. Scheduling and logistics could become overly complicated as windows of opportunity close. Rewards aren’t completely scalable either. The writing rewards are scalable work, but photo rewards are not. I will produce the same number of photos regardless of how many supporters download them. I know intellectually that I need to explore every potential, but landing here would be the limbo level where I will have to fight hard not to over promise. Overpromising leads to underperformance. If fate or funding lands us in a place to revisit some components of this option, making decisions will be difficult and avoiding the temptation to go bigger than we should will be hard.

Super Stretch Level Budget Items

This is it. The whole enchilada. This is where we video all of both trails in both directions every week for a year plus and capture the changing seasons with the best natural audio we can get. We will upload one video from each trip to Youtube and anyone with a screen and a connection can have hours of unique trail video every week for whatever purpose they choose: exercise, escape, meditation, wellness, biophilia, entertainment. At this top level of the project, where my heart is, things get real. Russ takes a leave of absence and a leap of faith to support this endeavor. This level includes:

Weekly overnight lodging in Anniston and related travel expenses at standard deductible rates. Support and gear by automobile backup is possible, but that is not less expensive, not low impact and it doesn’t provide the backup video from a second bike. We’ll only do it when we have to, maybe in the beginning as we are getting up to speed, or if some unknown like an injury makes it necessary. Because the cost of lodging versus the cost of automobile backup is similar, that gives us some extra freedom to adjust to unexpected events.

Safety equipment like Fall Detection (probably an active watch) is most important while spending that much time on the trail. We will ride together for safety, and to get back up video for each other in case of equipment failures, but we’ll ride at a distance from each other so that we don’t film each other riding. Fall detection is how we will back each other up while traveling far enough apart to create backup video.

Storage expenses in Anniston One pair of bikes will stay in Anniston. We’ll ride to Anniston on, say the recumbents, then ride back on the endurance bikes. This will make for the greatest distribution of variety (in filming perspective, body dynamics and ergonomics).

At super stretch level we want the best barometric elevation data we can get. That’s primarily to keep the door open for a follow on project. GPS triangulates location very well, but GPS elevation has a larger margin of error. If I can correlate the video and good elevation data, a number of other projects might be possible, and they would become a great deal more economical once the video and data already exist. Some devices that measure barometric elevation also offer fall detection, so it is likely that we would choose one device for both features. One possible thing that could be done with good elevation data in a future project would be to match exercise bike resistance to changes in elevation on the trail.

Overnight Lodging has been figured at 2 nights per week, but we may be able to get an efficiency/studio apartment, an over the garage room for rent, or something similar at the same cost. If we have a base of operations work flow becomes much easier with a place to leave battery chargers and other equipment, wash gear, store bikes and so on. We also get the ease of always having it available when the weather changes. Last minute changes to a hotel room can be costly and knocking down unknowns and frustrations reduces stress makes success easier.

The last big expense at this level is that I have to pay Russ. He’ll have to take a leave of absence. It’s a big risk for him, which makes it a big risk for our entire household. I thought a lot about the appropriate salary for him, not just what I’d like for him to have. I considered what he makes now, I considered average for his job title, and average per capita for our zip code. I’ve settled on a Dan Price minimum wage, (which is the lowest of the averages I was considering, but easy to support). I decided on Dan Price’s 70K minimum wage because it supports his proposition that every worker deserves to earn enough to have a decent life. I believe that, and we can make that work. It’s not hard to defend, and it puts Dan Price’s ideas in front of anyone who reads this and clicks on the link. That could carry his ideas to new people, which could be good, even if my project doesn’t fund.

The Silver Linings

This is the beginning of the project as far as Kickstarter goes, but it is far from the beginning for me, for us. Being far from the beginning is actually our first silver lining. I’ve done a lot of research We’ve had some time to look back in hindsight. I’ve been able to confirm that some of my thinking was right, and to change what I learned was wrong. I know from business school that most ventures fail due to under funding. The silver lining is that we are much better prepared to succeed with less pain now that we would have been if I’d been able to start the funding portion of my project sooner.

What if We Get Funding Above Goal, or if there is Money Left Over?

The best problem to have, right? The rewards that require extra hours to produce in quantity are limited to amounts we can manage, so there is no level of support we wouldn’t welcome, but the potential does require thought.

Here is another place where I’m thankful for some of my reading. It’s not that I expect to need this section, it’s that I want to be prepared for whatever happens. I read two different types of articles about “extra” funding, or funding that surpasses the goals. This can happen at any level because the project could exceed a lower goal while not making it through the next goal.

One article I read was from someone who wrote in to an ethics column, I think, on what to do with leftover project money. I wish I had bookmarked it so I could reference it properly, but I was in investigative mode, not project writing mode when I read it.

Here is what I remember. The person running a Kickstarter project asked if a certain use would be appropriate for leftover funds. I thought the answer was an obvious yes. The columnist did too, sort of. The response was that the person’s idea was a perfectly reasonable thing to do, but since it had not been explicitly stated beforehand, it might irritate some supporters. I don’t want to irritate supporters, I thrive on my Etsy reviews that say “exactly as described”, and I want to carry that level of satisfaction through to this adventure. In honor of learning from my reading, here is a list of things that I / we will consider doing with any funding we receive over and above goal levels. Beginning with the obvious, they are listed in order of greatest likelihood.

  1. Cover unexpected costs and overages.
  2. Review the project for potential improvements beginning with any upgrades in equipment that would make the project (or future carry on projects) better (like 3D cameras, some type of mount that I didn’t know about before, or some feature or equipment we hadn’t thought of before that makes our video better suited to a more technologically ambitious 2nd project).
  3. Look for things that will make the project move more smoothly.
  4. Look for things that will improve rewards and deliverables.
  5. Reduce risk with things like additional safety equipment or health care coverage for the riders. No, sadly, the riders don’t already have that.
  6. Film one or several additional rides in a different location. Whether that is another rail trail, a trek around an island (like Kauai, The Big Island or Yakushima Island) that could provide Blue Mind benefits, or something like the End to End ride would depend on just how much was left over, if there were amazing travel deals in a particular location, Coronavirus status when that happens and other unknowns.
  7. Pay or Profit for Karen. I don’t object to compensation for myself. I just didn’t include it because I want the project to fund.

All those things are covered in blog posts like this one from Kickstarter, so spelling them out might not have actually been necessary. But, I’m big on transparency, happy supporters and learning from my reading.