RoadSkater.Net skating, cycling, charity, life! join and share!

Going way off-topic here but I think there are at least a couple of fellow motorheads out there in Roadskaterland, and perhaps some of this technology might find an application in other fields of interest...

My username is a misnomer.  Rabbit, hah, more like a turtle.  But whether anyone believes it or not, I have come a long way in the past 4 months.  And more importantly - I am having fun doing it and making lots of wonderful new friends.  I was so excited today to discover that I actually have a class designation among cyclists. I kept searching for the ranks and how to determine A versus B versus C.  And were there any other classes?

Driving down from North Carolina late at night, I asked eebee to post a note to the APRR (Atlanta Peachtree Road Rollers) list inviting people to join us for a long slow distance skate the next day, or perhaps the day after. We had earlier this year done our favorite 62-miler from Mile 0 near Nickajack Elementary School to mile 31 at Brushy Mountain Tunnel and back.

Locations

Much like the night before the 2009 Carolina Century, I found myself sat bolt upright in bed at 3am on Sunday, worrying out loud about that day's inclement weather forecast, and our intention to skate 94 miles. Except this time I wasn't listening to the wind howl or acorns rattling on the roof, but wondering just how warranted the dangerous air quality forecast and excessive heat advisory were.

"We're all going to end up in the hospital!".

Locations

[I posted this (with minor edits) for ShabbatSam who is making his way to Canada as I type. If you found it here and decided to donate, please let ShabbatSam know RSN sent you. No we don't get anything but skateylove out of it if you mention us...and that's plenty. Congratulations in advance, ShabbatSam, for your effort. We have at least one Roadskater.net skater, SkateyMark, who will be intensely interested in your progress. --Roadskater]

My Dear Fellow APPR Skaters and A2A Lovers:

Location

Nothing to do with skating, but thought I'd pass this along:

Since beginning to use Firefox 3.6, I've been bugged by the way that new browser tabs are opened. Starting with that version, when you use the "Open Link in New Tab" context menu option (or hold down the Ctrl key while clicking on a link) the new tab opens to the immediate right of the tab being viewed. In prior versions since the introduction of tabs, newly opened tabs went to the far right on the tab bar.

I postponed some color madness and jersey decision and indecision for awhile in the hopes of some laps with pals at Country Park. On the way I realized that the party might be somewhat small in number, but that was OK, methought.

Location

Roadskater and I skated about 34 miles at the Lewisville, NC Cycle Therapy Tour to Tanglewood training ride this weekend. I hadn't skated the majority of the roads on this route before, and was pleasantly surprised to find them relatively traffic-free. Even as we plodded back into town, there was only a minor amount of traffic, with no (audibly) angry drivers.

Location

Raise your hand if you can name the road that is paved with good intentions. I’ve taken that to mean that in most cases, my actions are far more important than my intentions or my words. But when it comes to my diet, I’ve learned that “intentional eating” is the single most important part of my success.

Location

http://tblooming.blogspot.com/2010/07/july-4th-tradition.html

Locations

My journey through 28 days of caffeine rehab has led me to discover Teeccino as a viable coffee substitute. I aim to be completely caffeine-free/withdrawal symptom-free in about eight days' time.

Team MSFits is a Research Triangle Park, NC cycling group that has grown to such a size that they now put on their own events to benefit MS, about 6 times a year.

It's Day 88 of my brain/body makeover journey, and I am enjoying a relatively quiet morning after several days of action-packed family adventure on Hatteras Island.

Location

Sooo, I was the lonely only skater at the Challenge of the Centuries.  And that was fine because it left all the comments of “what you are doing is amazing” all for myself.  Ha!  No, the bikers where great there, and even the traffic was very considerate.  I had a good time talking to people, and felt very welcome.  I almost brought my camera on the road with me, and now regret I didn’t.  So many cool things.  And so many lessons learned.

Location

Are you sitting on the couch wondering how to get started? Would you maybe get out there if you could get out there with people like you instead of people who were like you a few years ago and now are all obsessed with speed on bikes or skates and have mostly forgotten the idea of leisure or beginner or restarter rides and skates? Well, Greensboro is lucky to have a guy who's doing what I would do if I were a cyclist or could get them to come out and ride with the skaters: 

Sparky's not getting faster at these rides, and that's the point.

Locations

Every good Catholic knows that confession is good for the soul. Before I take any more credit for the succes in my weight-loss journey, I must stop and share a secret. I've been working with a personal trainer since Day No. 1 of this journey. The first day, which ended with my talking myself out of working out by about 2 p.m., included a phone call to my local gym and setting an appointment to work out with a personal trainer.

Location

I confess. I love Brett Michaels. It's Day 73 of my Brain/Body Makeover, and I'm in the middle of Part I of the Celebrity Apprentice Season Finale. I'm working through a backlog or recorded shows. I can only manage about an hour a day of TV now that I'm active and feeling healthy.

If your weight is keeping you on the couch and off your bike (or skates), I've got the ride for you. Thanks to the wide reach of the Tour to Tanglewood, an annual skating and cycling event that raises money for Multiple Sclerosis, I met a group called "The Taters" a few weeks ago on a Sunday afternoon when I was unpacking my bike to ride at Greensboro's Country Park. Roadskater and eebee were out of town and I was determined not to miss a chance to ride on one of the first sunny and very warm days of spring.

Location

It's Day 71 of the Brain/Body Makeover and I've become one of those very annoying morning people. I've been in Bellefonte, PA, since Thursday evening, visiting my oldest and dearest childhood friend and her family. Their experience of me pre-Brain/Body Makeover was one of tip-toeing around in the mornings so as not to wake "Aunt M" from a deep and often loud (my brother says I snore like a farm animal) sleep. This morning, I was up before my alarm -- it was set for 7:15. I had my tea kettle on by 7 a.m. and danced around in the kitchen while I waited for my water to boil.

Location

It's Day 67 of my brain/body makeover and I'm happy to report a 20-pound weight loss as of today. Hitting my first major milestone seemed liked the perfect time to kickoff my blog on roadskater.net.

Frustrated with the very high cost of prescription sunglasses I opted to check out www.zennioptical.com and found some really good deals, especially on performance shades.  My dilemma is fuzzy sight at distances over six feet.  Close up reading distance is fine.  Is that far-sighted or near-sighted?  I don't know,,,,can never keep it straight.  I just know that further = fuzzy.

This year's Tour de Lions was a hot 'n' bumpy one!

Roadskater and I opted for the '40' mile option, which turned out to be 44 miles by my Garmin Forerunner 305. I thought those few rounds at Country Park were sufficient preparation for the Tour de Lions hills, but just like clockwork this May the Tour de Lions reminded me how far I have to go to be ready for A2A in October.

Well life was too good so I complicated it by working on doing major upgrades to the Roadskater.net (rsn1.net and rsn2.com). Here are a few things of note:

After some celebrations earlier in the week and some skating (including one day that was slow and not such great fun due to some exhaustion and burnout), we decided to get some rest and plan a long day out on the Silver Comet Trail outside Atlanta, near Smyrna, GA. We put out the word late as usual, and got regrets from TomB and JonK but had our plan and perhaps some company.

Locations

OK it's raining and my muscles are fine with another day off so I was checking out some ways of stopping on skates. Lots of these are not so much for speed skaters with grippy wheels and grippy asphalt, but for freestylers or hockeyites on smoother surfaces. Having said that, there are certainly those who can do these moves in speed skates. 

Nice parallel slide stop video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTiW14M4obc

If you've lost text you were writing in create/blog or create/events, especially when you clicked "Disable Rich Text" or "Enable Rich Text," my apologies! I've switched built-in editor code for the text areas from WYMeditor to CKEditor, so it will have a different look. Thanks to eebee and timv for signaling their loss of work as nicely as possible.

Kind of been out of the loop for a while, but am determined to get back into it.  I have been procrastinating getting started me training for a triathlon that my wonderful wife signed me up for in June.  I have known about this since my birthday in November, but have come up with every excuse in the book to not train.  Something to watch on tv, too cold, too hot, blah blah blah...we have all heard it.  Well  the end comes today for me.  No more excuses!  This is where the challenge comes in.  Post here what you did for the day as far as exercise.

Location

After twelve years driving my 1998 Saturn SL with manual transmission, the poor thing finally died at about 240,000 miles. I have spent the past three months immersed in the car-buying process, having never gone through it entirely on my own before. About halfway through it I felt like a horizontal asymptote: forever approaching the point of zero but destined never to actually get there.

I'm no mathmetician, certainly, but music and basketball are two of my favorite applications of mathematics in understanding or perhaps delightfully confusing the world. I enjoyed studying physics in part because it gave meaning to math for me, even if I didn't understand it all still!

Location