Waiting game...

Click to view Bob's Autobiography

Shipped the bike out on Thursday and the two boxes of my gear on Friday to the bike shop and hotel in San Diego....

Let's hope FedEx doesn't lose anything or I might be WALKING across the US of A and sleeping on dirt!!!! ;-)

The Blue Wild Expo for freediving and spearfishing is here in Ft Lauderdale this weekend and my buddy Bob Croft is here selling and autographing his autobiography and my dear friend Martin Stepanek will have the FII booth set up (before he moves to Kona next month!) so I am booked for the next two days and will probably get in no training but I WILL have a good time with my friends!

Life is truly worthwhile when you have great family and friends!

Two Weeks to go!

Well, V and I managed to spend a few days in Inverness last week and rode 120+ miles on the 46 mile long Withlacoochee Trail giving me 250+ for the week. If you want an absolutely beautiful, peaceful bike path to ride, this is the proverbial IT. Overhanging trees full of Spanish Moss, great places to stop, friendly people everywhere, all with not only NO cars on the trail but the road crossing are miles apart. This is a great bike trail, so far, our favorite in Florida. Inverness was a nice, busy, small town with lots going on.

Back home in Lauderdale now and riding as much as I can on the Habanero. I will be packing it up tomorrow (Wed, Feb 19) to ship to San Diego on Thursday the 20th. It will be going FedEx Ground so I have to ship it out early. I'll ride my Specialized RockHopper 29 and my Bianchi Volpe here in Florida for the next couple of weeks till I leave.

My packing for this trip is a lot like a Keystone Cops movie!  I pack stuff, take it out, forget what I packed where and then unpack it all again.
I also have to make sure that every item I have is marked with my NAME, just like summer camp!!!  Since our laundry will be done "Family Style" (meaning all in one huge load) we will all need to locate our clothes out of a big pile. I feel like a seven year old!

I am trying to be logical about all this packing stuff...
I am trying to set up three perfectly sized bags: one for Tent Stuff, one for Clothing and one for Spares. The spares bag will stay in the truck/baggage van while the others will be in the tent with me nightly.
I am trying for some serious organizational excellence here.
I am failing miserably! ;-)
Had they told me it all had to fit into four panniers, I'd be golden... as is, I am overwhelmed with being able to take far too much IMPORTANT STUFF ... (that I am SURE I will never use...)

Withlacoochee Trail (click to enlarge)

Honor System Jams and such (click to enlarge)

How quickly we become jaded...

So, please don't pay any attention to the guy behind the curtain below who said he'd never be able to fill his duffle bags for this trip. I mean, really, what does HE know?

I have (singlehandedly I might add) managed to fill MORE THAN FULL three LARGE duffle bags (well, a 24", a 30" and a 36" duffle) for this trip... Who knew?  It's like taking a kid into a candy shop.. well not really, no kid would be dumb enough to state at the get-go they couldn't eat ALL the candy in the store....

Seriously? I have to pare down?? Seriously???

The bike is all set to go: with brand new 700x28s Schwalbes, SKS fenders, Avid brakes, Jagwire cables, Dyad rims, FSA handlebar, Profile Design aerobars (for a thousand miles+ of truly fun headwinds) and new cassette, crank and chain.. Same old Ti frame, saddle and rack. She rides great and stops on a dime.  I'll take a pic tomorrow at PMP and post it on the Gear page.

I have arranged for the shipping box and shipment to San Diego (via FedEx) to arrive at the recommended bike shop a few days before I arrive on March 4th. I'll pack a few items in with the bike, ship an additional box to the hotel and take just one or maybe two bags on the airliner. Shipping a large box for $30 thru FedEx to San Diego will a be a LOT cheaper than that nasty, $150 highway robbery fee for the third bag!!!

At just under 5 weeks to go, I am getting in well over 200 miles a week of hard rides, intervals and moderate effort long rides so I should be as ready as I can without hills to train on. My neighbor has set us up to ride a charity ride in Palm Beach on Feb. 15th so those 62+ miles should be fun and good training but still flat.

Truth to tell, being a warm weather kinda guy, the COLD has me lots more worried than the hills. The other riders should thank me: I have bought enough cold weather clothing to virtually guarantee everyone that we will have a terrible heatwave every day across the southern USA for two months, not those high 20s/low 30s morning starts they had last year!
Doug