Three other Pedaling Professors

If you Google “pedaling professor,” you’ll get three hits beside me. The first was not a transcontinental rider, but the supposed inventor of mountain biking. He was killed by an ex-con who he hired to be his gardener. Not relevant to my story. The second is Yoshi Haga, an art professor from South Hampton College. He took a lot of pictures and raised $8,000 for a scholarship fund. The last “pedaling professor is Louis Mendoza, from the University of Minnesota, who peddled to study the Latinoization of America. There you have it, there are four pedaling professors. Three of us are still alive. : - )

Miles ridden in April = 684

IAQs (Infrequently Asked Questions.) Send in yours and we’ll put them on the list.

What’s the farthest you’ve ever ridden in a day? 130 miles
What’s the fastest you’ve ever gone? 46.5 mph. Downhill, but that’s still pretty fast. I tried to break that with a goal of 50 mph, but at some point over 40 mph, the bike started to shimmy, shake, and went out of control for 3-4 seconds. That seemed like a long time. I don’t care if I beat 46.5 anymore.
How much weight do you lose on a ride? It depends of how far and how fast I go. It’s not hard to burn 4-5,000 calories in a day. But then again, it’s not hard to eat 4-5,000 calories in a day. On some rides, I have gained weight.
How many miles per gallon do you get on that? (Usually yelled by a guy in a pick up truck at a stop light.) 1,050 mpg (They teach you how to do these calculations at MIT). The 1,050 assumes 15 miles per hour and 35,000 Calories in a gallon of gas. I use this calculation to teach my classes that a calorie is a unit of energy. Unfortunately, when one factors in the cost of a food calories vs. a gasoline calorie, it’s still cheaper to drive.
What are you riding? I’m riding a full carbon Motobecane Immortal Pro (love the name). It's shown above, but you can see a bigger picture and get all the details at http://www.bikesdirect.com/products/motobecane/immortalpro_08.htm
For folks like my mom, it’s black with red lettering and has been accessorized with red handlebar tape and matching twin red water bottles. I top this off with a red helmet, red gloves, a red jersey, and for special occasions, black and red cycling shorts.
What’s the best part of a ride? Getting off the bike at the end of the day.
What’s the most surprising thing about cycling as a hobby? That chains are “consumables.” How many people are in your group? Where are you staying? What kind of support do you have? Etc. See the America by Bicycle web site.

A non-riding day

April 28 It didn't start to rain until I was home and made supper for Matt. Rain is one thing, but rain and riding in the dark is another. So here's some miscellanea,
Bob pointed out that the Delaware Raritan Canal is more correctly The Delaware and Raritan Canal. Build ~ 1830 by Irish immigrants, it's 36 miles long and 50 feet wide. The longest thinnest state park in NJ. The canal carried coal from PA to NYC (ok, the boats on the canal carried...) and had more traffic than the Erie Canal. A map is included. The red lines approximate the route of my 85 mile ride a few days back. Another correction, Kevin doesn't "giggle," he "jiggles." Hoever, out of context, I think he'd rather giggle than jiggle.

A cool blog feature: If you click "terr" on the map, you get the terrain. By using the + or minus you can zoom in or out. The arrows move the map up down, left or right. You can use this fun feature to find how far I've climbed on a given day. If you haven't figure it out, the red line is the rides route.

There is a training truism that you need to train in all kinds of weather, hot, cold, wet, windy, because you’ll undoubtedly have endure them on The Ride. So today was a wonderful training opportunity, it was cold, windy and driving rain. The training trifecta. (My brother Bob told me not to worry about using fragments in my blog.) If I went out right after church, I could get 3 or 4 hours of cold and wet in! But alas, at the end of church, they made the announcement about the “work day” (which I had forgotten about even though I’m on the property committee) that afternoon. Being on the property committee and a member of the church council, I decided to sacrifice my ride for the love of God and for the good of the greater church.
First Kevin took me up a lot of ladders into the church’s attic to replace a burned out light bulb in the ceiling. When Kevin jiggled it, it went back on. Oh well. At least I know the secret passageways now. Then we went over to the Christian Ed Building to replace more light bulbs. I know what you’re thinking- how many professors does it take to change a light bulb? Well there was only one professor, so I had to take 13-times longer to do it. Finally, we replaced ceiling tiles that were damaged in the last driving rain. (Yes, we *did* have the roof repaired before replacing the tiles.) We finished around 2:30, left the building, and lo and behold – God had acknowledged my sacrifice! She parted the clouds, let the warm front come in, and adorned my path with singing birds and deer frolicking in the meadow.
-Does anyone know the emoticon for tongue in cheek?-
Well, ok, the ride was cold, damp and cloudy. 28 miles, 16.2 mph (ave), 85 rpm. Saw a goose with a slew of chicks next to the canal. Kind of cute, when she saw me, they all scooted underneath her and she did the hissing thing.
Today’s road kill: Deer- 3 by sight, 1 by smell. 1 snake by the feel of it under my wheel. I’m not sure that the snake should count since it’s a cold-blooded invertebrate, but don’t want to be accused of specie-ism.
The picture shows Pastor Jeff in front of our “we love everybody who loves anybody” sign. (We a Reconciling in Christ congregation, but I think that love sums us up.) See www.emanuelnb.org

Technically bumbling along

Today was Ag Field Day so I cylced down to campus and took the long way home. It's always good to see former students after they've grown up....

But today's magic effort is pulling photos off my phone. With any luck, you'll see "my canal" (the Delaware Raritan Canal, with the falls and my finger) and the C & O canal in D.C. Damn, my "file is corrupt or in a unusable format." Yea, I've never seen a .bin which saved as an html neither of which is one of the four formats this blog site accepts. I should stick to riding a bike...

45 minutes later- I think I have the work around solution. Copy the impage, paste it into powerpoint, save as jpeg and up load. Let's see if that works. Yipee!!!

My first "all day ride"

Any training session should have one or more purpose. Today’s were: 1. to get out of bed and ride. My usual drill is to get up, make coffee, have breakfast, do some chores and roll out around ten or eleven. On the Big Rides, the drill is get up (at 6) get dressed, eat, and be on the road by 7 or 7:30. Today, I gave myself some slack, got up at 6:30 and was on the road at 7:30. There is something special about the crispness of the air in an early morning ride that makes it worth it. 2. work on posture. This is a continuing goal, Jay (remember Jay?) pointed out that I ride hunched over limiting my lung capacity and hurting my neck. Part of my problem is core (trunk) strength. I haven’t been taking care of this since breaking my ribs. Guess it’s time to start doing those sit-ups. 3. endurance The only way to gain endurance is to spend a lot of time in the saddle. Today was the first day this season that I’ve spent all day on the bike. 4. Hills. If you avoid them, you’ll never get good at them. And I expect lots of hills riding across country this summer. If you seek them out, you start to love them, and they become not such a big deal.

So I did great on three out of four. Rode 84 miles at 15.7 mph ave through rolling hills. North Brunswick through the Saurland Mountains to Lambertville, up (literally) Rt 29 on the East side of the Delaware River to Frenchtown (had a nice egg sandwich for lunch there) to Rt 12 to Flemington, around a few traffic circles (which I had hoped to avoid) and then back on 514, aka, Amwell Road. Oh yes, according to my cyclo-computer, I burned 5,375 calories!

Tomorrow’s Ag Field Day at the College. I’m going to wear my Rutgers cycling jersey and try to convince some alums to donate.

Dilemma and Dining

Remember yesterday's clothing dilemma? Well business causal works just fine in the box seats, as do blue blazers and white shirts and even suits. (Suits to a ball game? Yea and that guy was drinking Scotch, not beer.) No tee shirts in this part of the park. The Washington National's stadium is only a month old, all the staff people are still happy to have jobs and are nice. The Mets won. (There were lots of Mets fans in the crowd.)

Mikes Famous Harley-Davidson Showroom and Road House Restaurant. Remember that. You've probably seen the big Harley sign if you're going north from Delaware to NJ. Forget about all the God forsaken food and insipid crowds at Maryland House. Go just a little further north and stop at Mikes. It's *just* before the Delaware Memorial Bridge, but is a very easy off and an equally easy back on. The Road House is funky and features food like pulled pork sandwiches, Buffalo Wing sandwiches, burgers, fried shrimp, road house food. All cooked to order and mmm mmm good. You have to walk through the Harley show room to get to the bathroom (increased traffic = increased sales?), but if you're doing the pee-pee dance on the way in, take the time to look on the way out. Since it's about motorCYCLES, this blog isn't off topic.

DC Rides, DC Dilemma

The Capital Crescent Trail is as nice a ride as you’ll ever find. You’ll find it if you ride down “K” Street toward the Potomac and, when K dead ends under the overpass, just keep going. (The “under the overpass” is a funky place with shops and up scale places to eat, in what could be a Batman set.) At any rate, the paved path runs along the canal, which is quite pretty and flat. After that, there is a gentle climb through beautiful green forests along some streams, past what must be Dick Chaney’s country club, and then up to Bethesda. That’s probably the highpoint, very yuppie town, a very weird intersection that makes you wonder if you’ve lost the trail. Just follow the sign near the parking lot and choose any one of the crosswalks. (There is a bike shop on the right somewhere around here.) The trail goes on for a few more miles but is weird, going through what seems like an industrial basement, through an auto body repair shop, and then onto streets that lead to the Silver Springs Metro stop. This part of the trail could used some TLC.

The karma of the Capital Crescent Trail reminded me a lot of Boston’s Esplanade. There were lots of runners, walkers, folks with their kids, and of course, cyclists. All sorts of cyclists. (Yes, I know that’s a fragment, give me some poetic license.) There were decked-out cyclists with matching shorts and jerseys, huffing puffing cyclists determined to get some exercise, cyclists who just wanted to get out after work, and the commuters with their panniers, dangling ID cards, and 10,000 watt LEDs. The trip was 24 miles round trip from my hotel, just the right distance to fit in after work, but before dusk. This ride was reason enough to have brought the bike.

If you’re hungry, follow the students. I’m staying at the River Inn, near George Washington University. I followed the students to find my dinner. They led me to a pub, a Chinese place, a pizza joint and an Indian restaurant -all in the same block of Pennsylvania Ave. A bunch of Indian guys in traditional garb walked out, so I walked in. The lamb kabobs were outstanding!

The dilemma I’ve been invited to watch the Nationals play the Mets from the box seat of (sorry I can’t say who)(No, not George W, or even GHWB, or that multinational food company, so don’t guess). What do I wear? My wardrobe consists of business casual and cycle gear- neither are quite right for the ballgame. I guess a sports coat would be less bad than spandex and a fluorescent green wind jacket. I should have packed that cool sweater from Mexico….

April 24, 2008. Greetings from our Nation’s Capital

Yes folks, I’m working in Washington, D.C. this week. It’s for my day job. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a grant review panel that brings experts to this great city to decide who gets funded and who does not. As work related assignments go, it’s a good gig. The Feds always put us up in great boutique hotels that we couldn’t afford on my own. We get a few extra bucks (tire, tube, and jersey money) and it’s fun to work with some of the smartest people in the country. AND it’s a new place to ride my bike.

Washington is a great town to cycle in. Lots of folks cycle to work, cruising around the mall and the monuments. By commuting “to work” I feel like one of the natives. It’s not clear how my fellow panelists view this, so I use lots of deodorant. Cycling during the morning commute is a whole new way to see our Nation’s capital. It’s only a 3.5 miles from the hotel to work, but there are always opportunities for riding in the evening.

Trivial points: We have wireless at work, so I can blog during the breaks. The security guard is letting me park in the basement garage and didn’t make me put the bike through security. My bike for the week is my 30+ year old Motobecane Super Mirage. To think it was cutting edge in its day…

Cycling equipment. Like most hobbies cycling can get expensive. When I started, I thought that all you needed was a bike, sneakers, a tee shirt and a pair of shorts. Ha! You need cycling shorts (have 6, lightly padded, heavily padded, warm or cool weather, black or decorated), jerseys (14, more than # of dress shirts)), water bottles (8, every event gives you one), water bottle holders (1 or 2 per bike), a Camelback (for my recumbent that doesn’t accommodate water bottles), “trunk bags” (2, for keeping things on a long ride), saddle bags (3, for tools and tubes on short rides) , Chains, they are “consumables” that have to be replaced after a few thousand miles (the gears are good for about 5,000 miles), a floor pump for your shop, a mini pump for on the road, a lock, a cycle computer, spare tubes (5 at the moment- make that 4, had my first flat today), a spare tire, a mirror, cycling gloves (7, two pair that light up, two pair that are heavily padded, and three pair that are junky), a patch kit, tire levers, cycling shoes, cleats to go on the cycling shoes, cleat covers for when you’re not cycling, cycling socks, a wind jacket, a rain jacket, a vest, a mini-tool kit for on the road, a chain cleaner thing, solvent to put in the chain cleaner, lubricant for the chain, `a work stand that elevates the whole bike, a rear wheel stand for minor repairs, power bars, sports drinks, front and rear lights, butt cream, pedals (4 extra pair) (did you know that high end bikes come without pedals?) sunglasses (5), leg warmers, arm warmers and skull caps for cold weather riding. 4 extra saddles (on the path to finding one that fit my butt), helmets (4, they get pretty raunchy after a year or two on a sweaty head), a drawer full of small parts (I take after my dad, who has coffee cans full of screws and nails, sorted by size in the garage.) Note that these items were accumulated over 8 years. Like my dad, I never throw anything away.

I picked up a cyclist with a flat about a mile from my house and brought him home to give him a new tube. When I went into the kitchen to get him a drink, he called someone on his cell phone, “I got picked up by a guy who has a bike shop in his garage… - It must have been the five bikes hanging from the ceiling.

Fundraising is harder than riding.

$38,000 is a lot of money. What was I thinking? Ten dollars a mile seemed pretty reasonable until I started doing the math. It will take 100 people donating $380 to reach that goal. I doubt that will happen. We could go after 1,000 people for $38 dollars each, but that’s a lot of people. Corporate sponsors (or donors) haven’t been forthcoming. (If you work for a company that might donate, let us know!) It will take a mix of all denominations from all sorts of people to get us to $38,000 dollars.

People are incredibly generous. It’s very humbling. A retired professor, who I know only in passing, e-mailed his encouragement and sent in a $380 check (only 99 more people to go!). Someone I worked with 20 years ago sent in another $380 check, as did a former girlfriend (97 people to go). A member of my church gave me $500 in an envelope. Students have walked up to me with $50 checks. On a student’s budget, that’s a lot - and these are not students in my class trying to influence their grades! I could go on, the acts of individual generosity are many.

Michelle, Elijah’s Promise’s development diva is dynamite. She set up the “kick off” event. It attracted not only the football team, but lots of press. This resulted in “above the fold” coverage in three papers. However one paper put my picture in the obituary section. I’m not sure what that means. When I write donor letters to my friends, Michelle gets them into a readable format, back to me to sign, and mails them out. She keeps track of the money coming in and all the thank you letters going out. Having raised funds for other rides on my own, I really appreciate Michelle. She lets me concentrate on riding, not fundraising.

$38,000 is a lot of money. We will get there.

A few words on training

How does one prepare for a 38,000 mile bike ride? Damned if I know. The organizers say to ride 1,500 miles before starting the ride. When does that start? I rode 6,000 miles in 2007. Does that count? I never really stopped, so is it a continuous loop? This week I reached the “1,000 miles in 2008” mark. I guess that’s pretty good.

What’s the difference between riding and training? My cycle computer tracks speed, rpm of the pedal, heart rate, calories burned, total feet climbed, and averages where appropriate. Those are all used to train. When you turn the computer off, it’s just riding. (Not that “just” is insignificant. When riding becomes “no fun” then one has to turn off the computer and just ride.)

When one trains, it’s for any number of specific purposes. There are “base miles.” In January and February, I rode 200 miles a month just to lay a foundation. I’d expected to ramp up in March, but broke two ribs skiing with Chris, so that got pushed back a few days. On different days, I train for speed, or for rpm, or for endurance, or to ride into the wind. One day, I drove out to my starting point only to realize that I’d mismatched my cycling shoes. It could happen on the ride, so I trained for mismatched shoes.

There is cross-training. In addition to my road bike, I have a recumbent that I can ride without getting all my cycling gear on. There is also a “beater bike” that I used to ride to and from work and a tandem bike for when I need an extra set of legs. I also own a unicycle but don’t know how to ride it. Now is not the time to learn.

There is mental training. On April 1, I decided to ride every day for two weeks. On the ride, we’ll go out in the rain, in the cold, when we’re tired of riding, and when we just don’t feel like it. So I vowed to ride every day, rain or shine, feel like it or not. By day 14, I didn’t feel like it and was glad to have a day off. I didn’t ride on the 15th. But I had a really rough day at work on the 16th and couldn’t wait to get home and go for a ride!

Tom hangs with the football team

This blog will chronicle my dad's journey across the country to raise funds for Elijah's Promise. He'll do most of the posting, but I'm kicking things off with some pictures from the kick-off fundraising event on College Avenue a couple weeks ago.  The event received coverage from all of Jersey's finest media establishments, including the Daily Targum.

Bike Fitting Day

My son Matt couldn’t get his head around the idea that I had an appointment for “a bike fitting.” It’s a new bike, I already had a few thousand miles on it, what needed to be fit? Well, I really didn’t know, but went down to Halters Bike Shop for my appointment. Jay put my bike on a stationary stand, and I started to ride. “I can fix that.” said Jay, and I knew just how my students feel when I look at the draft of their paper and say, “I can fix that…”.

Jay started from the bottom up. “You pronate. It makes you knock kneed. That robs you of power. Give me your shoes.” Jay puts wedges on the inside of my cleats. They make my feet flatten out and my thighs run parallel to the top tube. It’s better than it was, and I didn’t even know it was wrong.
Then it was the seat. The forward/aft positioning was straight forward. We argued about the height. Dogma says “higher is better,” Jay wanted to jack me up. But there are times when Dogma doesn’t hold. I’d developed an overuse injury after riding the 600 mile California AIDS ride two years ago. (Don’t know how that happened.) The physical therapist told me to lower my seat. I listened to the physical therapist, not Jay.

Having gotten my feet and butt squared away (so to speak) Jay attacked the critical issue of reach and height. “Reach” is how far the handlebars are from the seat post. “Height” is how high the handlebars are relative to the seat. With a short reach and low height, the effect is of a hunchback ready to dive into the pool. A long reach and high height has the effect of stretching to get something off the highest shelf. Obviously, I want to be somewhere in between. Without going into the details of how it was done, Jay found the right combination for me. Now when I ride, neither my back, neck, or wrists hurt anymore. It’s so comfy.

So in 90 minutes, Jay took my “off the rack” bike and made if fit me. That feels really great. I’m sure that on day 37 of the big ride, the bike fitting will be all the more special.
p.s. Now all of my other bikes feel like they don’t fit.

Who is that pedaling professor?

Here I am, a dad, a professor, and now an athlete. Who’d have thunk it? The dad thing gives me the most joy. Chris (29), Rebecca (26), and Matt (19) have enriched my life by teaching me all sorts of things - theater, computers, girl things, human insight, skiing, how to navigate New York City, the importance of having fun. Each of them is uniquely different from each other. Each has given me their own special gift. They also gave Nancy and I incentive to have an amiable divorce. (Note: not a reason to have a divorce, a reason to have an amiable one.) They are “adult children” now and are for the most part out of the house. Cycling takes the edge off of that.

Being a professor is a good gig. Rutgers has taught me a lot in 24 years, as Department Chair, Director of the Graduate Program, and as a teacher. My favorite classes are “The Science of Food,”and “Food Safety: Fads, Facts, and Politics.” They’ve earned me the coveted “Smiley Face” with a “hot” desigation on RateMyProfessors.com. It’s not what I expected when I left that little technical school in Massachusetts. I’ve gotten lots of research grants and professional awards, have published more than 100 papers and edited or written 7 books. But I try to remember the words of the Harvard theologian, Henri Nouwen: “When you die and stand before God, the question won’t be “How many papers have you published in peer review journals?” The question will be “What have you done for the least of your brothers.*” At any rate, this ride is dedicated to the least of my brothers (and sisters). Riding a bike to feed the hungry, pretty neat idea if I do say so myself. The athlete thing? That’s the part that suprizes me the most.

Ten years ago, I’d never have described myself as “athletic” let alone “an athlete”. But it’s hard to deny, I ride about 6,000 miles a year, have cycled through most of the East coast, and have thighs the size of big ass ham hocks. I am an athlete. Training for this ride has made me feel this accutely. I’ve lost my taste for diet coke and have started drinking juice. My cravings are for a juicy pear, not a bag of fritos. Sleep has become more important than the Daily Show (which I Tivo anyway).

*This may not be the direct quote, but you get the idea.