A 'lil HooHaa

Messing with the blogging world since 2005

bike riding

Day Zero Project: Completed No. 2

A Day Zero Project goal of P.J.’s has been completed!

Goal completed: Go bike riding for a day.

Date completed: April 6, 2011.

Number: 2  (remember, these goals will not all be done in order. It’s a random list where the numbers actually are).

Description: I’m trying to get myself into a healthier lifestyle and trying to exercise more. Being I’ve always liked biking a bit, I figured this would be a good one to add to the list.

Why I wanted to do it: To exercise, not rely on the car so much and to help get myself on the path for a healthier lifestyle. And, honestly, because biking can be fun and it’s a good way to get out and see things a little differently.

How I did it: Two of us went geocaching in the Poughkeepsie area, doing caches along two rail trails. We biked more than eight miles that day and picked up 20-plus geocaches on the trails. It was a wonderful thing and it has me looking at other bike trails around the state that might be worth considering a day trip to go, ride and cache, and come home. Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of these in our area, but there is one I plan on checking out a bit more once the ground dries a bit more (it’s not a paved trail like many of the other ones). I would encourage any geocacher to try this for a day. It’s really quite fun.

About P.J.’s Day Zero Project: Day Zero is a project where people come up with 101 things to do over 1001 days. I started the project on Oct. 10, 2010 with an anticipated finish date of July 8, 2013. Goals will not be revealed until they are completed. A private list is at the Day Zero website and the list will be made public upon completion of the project. It’s my thoughts that if things are kept private, should I not do them, change or find a way around it, I’d only be cheating myself.

Geocaching: On a bike and fixing things up

I’ve found a new way of geocaching and I like it — with my bike. I know others have done this and all and it’s not some new way to cache, but for me, it’s a new way to do it and I really like it.

And being my bike has been tuned up recently and with gas so expensive… this seemed perfect.

Last week, Brent and I headed to Poughkeepsie to do some geocaching. The idea was to hit two rails-to-trails, which were nice and paved and would be beautiful for a bike ride. The total biked would be more than eight miles. Pending time, we were also going to try and get one cache at the Walkway over the Hudson, then bike the distance of that for some photo opportunities.

Unfortunately, we got a late start as Brent had some things he needed to take care of. We then got to the first spot, put my new bike computer on my handlebars and were soon off looking for our first cache. This trail, which would be about four miles round trip, had eight caches on it.

We didn’t get all the caches, but had to stop at the halfway point because they are doing some work on a bridge, so we couldn’t go any further. Instead, it was back to the car and to another parking area so we could finish the trail. We decided to pedal out to the cache that was the longest distance and work our way back. Unfortunately, we had to go with two DNFs (did not find) before finally getting back  to finding a few. We finished that trail and with the time and possibility of rain coming, we opted to skip some others and head off to the other rail trail.

That one was excellent.

About four miles round trip with 12 caches, including two really good multi-caches.

It was highly enjoyable and a good ride. The final stretch, I pushed a good pace to get back to the car. That felt good. Brent had some issues with his bike, so he came in a little slower. Dang handlebars of his were coming loose. Kind of nuts to watch it happen. But we still found the caches, which was cool.

We added a few more finds, but didn’t get over the Walkway, which stinks. But that’s OK — it’s all the more reason to go back to the area. I’m searching for more bike trails like this as it’s a nice way to get out and geocache — on the bike. Or even some bike-friendly areas/towns to be able to cover some ground and do some caching.

To make things a little better, I ordered a bike mount for my Garmin 60CSX today in the hopes that I can pay attention to my riding a little better when out using the bike to cache!

As for the rest of the day, we did a few more caches (including getting three letterbox hybrids on one of the trails; and three virtuals — one at a covered bridge!) and Brent got his 1,000th find. Now I have some planning to do in regard to a golden ammo can for him. In this area (and others I know) we hide a golden ammo can for the person when they reach 1,000 finds.

MAINTENANCE RUN

Part of owning geocaches is taking care of them after placing them.

I went out for a short ride tonight (1.85 miles) to check in on a couple of my nanos and try and think of a few places where I could place a few more. The idea would be for people who come to the town, they could park and ride their bikes to pick up several caches. Or at least those of us around here who bike could do that to check in on things here and there.

Our town doesn’t get hit too often by geocachers, so it would be nice to make it so people could come and get several without having to worry about the rising gas costs.

I’m looking forward to doing some of these bike runs, too, in some towns nearby. Hopefully over the next couple of weeks, I’ll get out and do all the maintenance on the rest of my caches. Some will be getting archived (I have those picked out) including likely at least one puzzle cache and one multi-cache. But it will open some areas, which will be fun to hopefully have some new caches.

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com.

Whipped!

Whew!

I’ll likely  have more about this — with a few photos — sometime soon. But I just wanted to throw out a quick post about today.

Two of us took advantage of the decent weather today and headed down to Poughkeepsie for some geocaching. We hit up two rails-to-trails spots and they were great. Paved and beautiful for riding bikes. However, the first one had some work being done about halfway through, so we had to split it in two.

That trail had eight caches, but we DNFd two on there, so not too bad. The second trail had 12 and we found all of them.

All told, we biked 8.18 miles today! It felt really good to get out, ride and do some caching. The final 3/4 of a mile on the second trail, I really kicked it up a little and sprinted my way to the parking lot, which felt good.

Unfortunately, something was going on with Brent’s bike and his handlebars were wacky, so he couldn’t do the sprint as well.

In the end, we finished with 28 caches. That 28 is an important number, however, as Brent got his 1,000th find on the final cache of the night. A great milestone indeed!

Today’s adventure featured a breakdown as such:

  • 3 virtual caches
  • 3 letterbox hybrids
  • 2 multi-caches
  • 20 traditionals
  • Only two DNFs (both nanos, one on a train caboose).

I like that breakdown.

I also left several of my new signature items as well.

Can I tell you why it’s great to have golf pencils as signature items? If you have several in your pocket, you can sign the log for a good cache and leave your signature item as well!

Anyway, including some walking to caches, we did a shade under 9 miles today, which is nice. That being said, I’m whipped now. It was very windy at times, which is hard to pedal into. I’m going to try and log everything tonight and grab the travelers I picked up and then debate bed!

Overall, one heck of a day. I’ll look forward to setting up out own bike caching series (three of us are talking about doing one that will stretch about 12 miles on a rail-to-trail area) and finding other bike trails where we can land several caches — especially if they have more than micros!

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com.

Caching failure!

At least I got a workout, even without a find!

Fail.

Seriously.

Fail.

The plan for this afternoon, after I had done some applying and job hunting in the morning, was to go get a cache. But because I took my time with some of the job things, two of us kind of rushed into action.I didn’t load my GPS, figuring I could do it on the spot after getting info from my phone.

The first stop was to the local bike shop because something was off with my rear wheel. I had taken it in to get tuned up a week or so ago and the rear wheel was rubbing the brake. I brought it in and they did some quick adjusting of the spokes and I was good to go. I’m thankful about that, too, as I hadn’t messed with it and am glad I didn’t.

A couple other errands needed to be done as well and it ended up with Brent purchasing a bike. That was going to make it a lot easier for us to do the distance needed to get two caches — a multi I have and one neither of us have.

Off we went to the spot where we needed to park. My phone app with the Geocaching info wasn’t working, so Brent used his. He gave me the coordinates and something seemed off. The cache was only .13 of a mile away. That should have been the light to go off. Instead, I thought nothing of it.

See, I knew the ratings for this cache. I also knew that not many people had done it because it’s a big hike. But .13 of a mile from a spot you can park? Many people would have done it.

So we did the multi puzzle so Brent could get it. It was fun doing it again. Then we headed back to the car, stopping off at an old, run-down and abandoned house to explore a bit. (That likely be tomorrow’s blog post as I have some cool photos).

We then headed back to where the cache was supposed to be.

Turns out it was one across the highway in another park. This was a cache Brent didn’t have. So we find it. Guess what? The cache is a mile back on the trails. It was getting dark, I was tired and hungry and didn’t want to turn around and head back.

No find for me today.

<sigh>

So, while it’s disappointing that I didn’t end up with a find, I got out for a good haul on the bike for the second straight day. It felt good. I had to walk it a few times (even though it’s a mountain bike, there were certain parts I wasn’t comfortable riding on… not yet anyway!), but overall it was nice. Plus, it gives us a reason to bike back here again to make this find. And explore a little more. I’d like to bring my tripod with me as there’s a cool view of the Southside Dam from the trail, so that would be a cool photo, I think.

I’ll look forward to getting on the bike again, though Mother Nature seems to really want to mess with us. Apparently, our area could get upwards of 3-8 inches of snow late Thursday night into Friday. It’s odd how the storm is tracking, however, so we’ll see. I’m hoping to head to Albany to play in the disc golf league Thursday — maybe beating the story — but I’ll have to see how it all tracks. Damn this snow. Enough!

Anyway, maybe there will be some caches and discs being thrown in my future. We’ll see!

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com.

Notes from my noodle: March 16 edition

It’s funny, a year ago today I was looking forward to my trip to Ireland and was gainfully employed.

A year later, I’m searching and applying for jobs and wishing I was back in Ireland! How fun would it be to be in downtown Dublin for St. Patrick’s Day? Wow. I couldn’t imagine the fun.

And the Guinness. Oh my!

I’m having problems writing cover letters. I don’t know why. I’ve spent so many years of my life writing about other people. Why can’t I write about myself to sell a potential employer on what I can do for them? I can’t figure it out. I’ve gotten decent feedback from people who have read my covers who said they are pretty good. But, I’m not getting calls. I don’t know if it’s a time thing. Or the cover. Or my resume. Or something else.

<sigh>

I’ll keep plugging along. I am close to getting one application out today. I have several jobs printed out and want to have covers and resumes sent to each one by the end of the week.

But these covers… ugh.

***

So I’ve slacked on the Couch-to-5K program.

That’s one of the reasons I didn’t set a certain date for finishing or a certain 5K I wanted to run. Instead, I kept it in my head that I just wanted to be able to run 5K and maybe do one by the end of the summer.

I still think that’s doable.

But the reality is, I can’t be doing this C25K on a treadmill, which is what I’ve been doing. It’s boring. It hurts my feet. I get annoyed and I start counting down the times that I’m on there.

The gym, for now on for me, will be used to use the elliptical machines, maybe a warmup on the treadmill and lifting.

Running has to be taken outdoors.

So as soon as the weather changes for good for the better, I’m going to start taking the C25K outdoors and hope I can complete the program. I might do a couple of the things on the treadmill between now and the better weather, but not the three times a week. It just kills. I know if I do it outside, it’s a lot different.

Speaking of cardio stuff, I’m taking my bike over to the shop sometime this week to get a tuneup. I imagine I’ll get it back in a week or so and then I’m going to get riding it several times a week. I want to get a bike computer (I found a pretty good Schwinn one for about 15 bucks on Amazon) to keep mileage and such like that, so I’ll be looking into that.

***

Turns out something is up with my domains.

I got an e-mail today from the company I host several of my websites through. Apparently one of the domains, of which I haven’t done anything with in a long time (it was for our caching group in this area, but nobody ever really went to it) had somehow been hacked and was being used for spam.

So they sent an e-mail of a warning.

Then shut me off.

I had to go through a bunch of e-mail exchanges and such to try and get my site back. In the end, they lifted the suspension and I deleted the said domain and everything else off my account. I was going to let the site expire soon enough anyway, so no biggie.

I just hope I don’t have to deal with that again.

***

I think I’m going to cut this one short right now. Just not into it tonight. Had a few other things come up and my mind is all over the place.

More later!