A 'lil HooHaa

Messing with the blogging world since 2005

biking

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.

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!