To the Parade and Back

Sunday was a true day of rest after the roofing project.  I lost 8 pounds in the last couple days, certainly all from sweat.  Thankfully today is Memorial Day and a day off work.

So... there's a little race called the Mohican 100 coming up.  Am I going to do it for the fist time this year?  I think so but I have not registered yet,  Thursday is my deadline.

With the roofing project behind me, I headed out

for a little road ride.

The event of the day is the Memorial Day parade in Shreve.  We have taken Daniel to this parade the past several years and this year would be Ellen's first.  I decided to ride down to Shreve and meet the family for the parade.

Onward... to the Mohican 100?

With my chosen route it took me a little over and hour to get to Shreve.  I found everyone and took up a nice shaded spot along Main Street.  It was the start to another hot and humid day but the crowd was still out for the parade.

Front row seats.

After the parade I took another one hour route to get back home.  It felt good to be pedaling after all the bending over and roof walking.

Roof Complete

Saturday morning brought some more helping hands, Dave and Zeb joined in on the project.  While the rest of the guys got to it on the roof, I worked from below.  As project KT and I wanted to install a new bathroom fan as the old one was weak.  I cut a hole in the roof to access the attic space and made what seemed like 15 trips between the roof and bathroom to install the new fan.

Bathroom exhaust upgrade in progress.

Meanwhile, the shingles were being laid.

By lunch time we had worked our way most of the way up the back of the house.  The only valley on the roof was flashed and complete, we were past the roof penetrations, and it was hot, really hot.  The shingles were soft and easily damaged if walked on too roughly.  They were sticking immediately upon being laid.  After lunch we finished up the last several rows of shingles and got off the roof before inflicting any more damage.

Once again, having so many helping hands was a blessing.  We were nearly done and decided to finish up installing cap shingles and ridge vent later in the day.  About 5pm we headed back up for the final touches.  Wow, it was a lot of work but we got it all done in two days and an evening, and the new roof looks great!

Capping the hips.

Nailing caps onto the ridge vent.  Ten minutes after

this picture the roofing project was done!

Laying the New Roof

Jim, Ryan, Dad, and I began work right away Friday morning.  We finished installing the underlayment and cleaned up the flashing around the chimney.  Within ten minutes of being done and ready for the shingles, the delivery truck showed up.  Good timing.

Sure beats carrying them to the roof!

 38 square of shingles for our "little" roof.

 Next up was replacing the roof boots, including the one on the incoming power mast, and laying down the starter shingles.  With measurements made and chalk lines snapped, we began laying shingles.

 Nice to have a licensed electrician on the job site.

Keeping them straight.

 

Covering it up.

It was hot work.  The temperatures were close to 90 and it was challenging to stay hydrated.  Every time I thought I was thirsty I'd chug a bottled water.  We went through a lot of bottled water.

By the end of the day we had covered the north and south hips as well as the entire front side of the house.  The job was over 50% done by my estimation.  Falling asleep tonight will not be hard.

Raise the Roof

Our roofing project began tonight with the arduous work of stripping off the existing shingles and felt paper.  The dumpster was delivered yesterday to the driveway.  After work my crew arrived to get down to business.

Filling it up.

Ever seen a wheel barrow used on a roof?

The goal was to have the whole roof stripped before the sun went down.  Thanks to the nine of us working away, we got 'er done.  For peace of mind I really wanted to have underlayment on the whole roof before calling it day.  We had the underlayment down on all sides but the front when we ran out of light.  It was about 9:45 when we called it a day.  Many thanks to the all the helping hands!  It would not have been possible to get as far as we did without them.

Nice, sunny skies to work beneath.

 Daniel came up to check out the work.

The desired outcome, a full dumpster.

Mohican: my first double

While I have not registered for the Mohican 100 it's still in my mind to tackle it this year.  Last night some motivation kicked in and I planned a long mountain bike ride for this morning.  The thought was I better prove to myself I can ride a mountain bike for a longer distance without breaking.

At 6:05 this morning my alarm sounded and I set my plan into action.  Start the coffee maker, put on clothes I set out last night, grab food from fridge, pour coffee, and out the door at 6:20.  My bike and gear were already in the car.

Morning light in the parking lot at Mohican.

The plan was a loop at Mohican followed by... more.  How much more?  That was the question.  I wanted to ride two loops but was not sure if that was doable, having never ridden more than a single loop.  After eating two eggs, a banana, and finishing my coffee I hit the trail at 7:02.

I love riding in the woods in the morning.  The low angle light and damp forest have a great effect.  It was 45 degrees when I left the car with arm warmers installed.  I eased into the ride thinking this was the first of two opening climbs today.

At the first road crossing I stopped for an Espresso Love Gu.  I continued to drink regularly as I rode onward.  At the covered bridge I stopped for some almond and cranberry trail mix I had packed along and it was then time to climb.  I rode steady up Mount Doom and soon reached trailhead 2 where it was time to lose the arm warmers.   In about 2:50 I finished the first loop feeling a bit fresher than usual.  Conserving where needed, attention to food and drink, and back stretching seemed to work well.

Throughout the ride I snapped quick pics for time

markers, none of them particularly interesting.

At this point I knew I was headed out for some more.  Back to the car for a Cliff bar and refill of my hydration pack.  And here was a mistake, I only had water for the refill and not enough to fill my hydration pack.  I drank 70oz of diluted Gatoraide on the first lap.  I'm guessing I only had 40oz on my back as I started the second lap.

A met a couple other guys who were out riding laps in prep for the 100 miler.  Chris and I started our second laps about the same time.  While I was hoping to ride at least through Mount Doom, Christ was planning to ride "3 or 4" laps today.  That's tough.

The second lap was off to a good start.  I stopped again at the first road crossing for another Gu and seemed to be slowing in pace.  Chris caught up to me shortly after this and gave me some good hollerin' to keep working.  It helped as I picked up the speed until the covered bridge where I realized I was about out of water.  Uh-oh.

I hung back on the climb wondering how this would play out.  The temperature had risen, a good climb was coming, and I had no water.  I decided to ride very conservatively up the climb and either bail out at the next road crossing or hope to find someone else with water to spare.

At the first road crossing I was doing okay, though the temperature was noticeably warmer.  I continued on and reached the second trailhead.  Fortunately I found water and decided at this point to continue on, at least to the road crossing at mile 19.  I ate a hanful of dried apricots and clipped in.

By mile 19 I was feeling rough.  My legs were starting to cramp, probably from the prior dry stretch.  I made the choice to ride it out and complete the lap even if pedaling in low gear, and this I did frequently.

 My legs were far from fresh the last five miles,

but thankfully not this far gone.

Back to car I was a little ragged but not broken.  The car indicated 86 degrees outside, that's 41 degrees warmer than it was 6 hours and 15 minutes ago when I first left the car.  Full blast A/C, a chocolate shake, and foot long sub cooled me off and put me on a good path to recovery.  I came home and ran through the sprinkler with Daniel.  Well, he did the running and I just stood in front of it.

I was pretty satisfied with the effort.  Of course I wish I would have planned better with fluids on the second lap.  It was a good learning experience and memorable first 50 mile mountain bike ride.  I'm curious to see how the next couple weeks go.

C-dale Demo

While eating breakfast this morning I received an email reminding today is the Cannondale demo day at Mohican.  A demo ride sounded fun but a ride was not in the plans for the day... until two kiddos nap crashed in the afternoon and I headed south to Mohican.

Cannondale demo day, Mohican MTB parking lot.

Having never ridden a bike sporting a Lefty fork I was excited to see what it was all about.  The Cannondale guy eyed me up and pulled a carbon Flash 29er from the line of bikes for me to demo ride.  After a quick setup to fit the bike to me I headed out to ride the short loop.

Test ride #1: Flash carbon 29er 2.  $5000 of fun.

Link to Cannondale's web site.

I immediately noticed the bike was light and stiff.  Pedal strokes resulted in propulsion, no wasted flex detectable anywhere.  Most interesting to me was the feel of the Lefty fork.  Somehow it had attributes of both my Paragon's Fox fork and my Karate Monkey's rigid fork.  Like the rigid fork on the KM, it felt really efficient with no wasted compliance, and like the Fox fork it gave plenty of cushion as needed.

Fairly obvious why they called it a Lefty.

Coming down the last mile of the course I was having a lot of fun on this bike.  In addition to being stiff the carbon frame was soaking up the trail.  It was a softer feeling hard tail than I'm used to.  I arrived bike at the parking lot with a big smile.  I'd say that was the fastest mountain bike I've ever ridden.

Now the Cannondale guy wanted me to do a loop on the full suspension Scalpel 29er.  I mentioned not being too interested in rear suspension for the riding we do around here but was more than willing to take another expensive bike for a ride.

Test ride #2: Scalpel Carbon 29er 1.  $7600 of fun.

Link to Cannondale's web site.

Once again I tore out of the parking lot for a run of the short loop.  This time I kept my rear on the saddle as I bounced through the potholes on the way out the drive.  Yep, there's some squish back there.  At some point, after the opening climb was done, I realized I was riding it like a hard tail and focused on staying seated more often.  No doubt the extra suspension would have you feeling less fatigued after a long ride.

Full suspension, full of fun.

Back to the climbing, I tried to pay attention to how the Scalpel climbed.  It was also very efficient but I did feel some pedal bob from rear end a couple times.  It's just a different game on a full suspension bike.

Two short loops and $12.6k worth of demo bike later I headed home.  It was a good time riding bikes I cannot afford.

Disco Forest parking

This afternoon Ryan and I went down to Mohican for a ride.  To mix it up a little we parked at the Discovery Forest parking lot and started the ride from there.  There was no question what to wear, it was shorts and short sleeves weather.

 Food stop.

We caught up to a couple riders on the way down to the Covered bridge and passed a couple guys on break at the top of Mount Doom.  At trailhead 2 we stopped for some food.

Thankfully Ryan's head cold didn't

slow him down too much. 

To save some time we took the short loop connector and rode back to the Discovery Forest.  A young couple pulled in asking where to ride.  I was not too sure of their experience / skill level, so I directed them to the second trailhead and suggested they ride to the first road crossing and loop back on the road.  Hopefully they found their way and had a good ride.  It was a good day to be out.

Heading for the short loop connector.

Bike Boy

While I have been out for rides in the past couple weeks the bigger news is Daniel and his pedal bike.  He has made great progress in a short time.  The Strider bike seems to have set the stage well for independently riding his pedal bike, training wheels never  installed.

 Cruising up and down the street.

Earlier this week KT and friends went to Fredericksburg for a walk on the trail.  Well, the babies and ladies walked on the trial while Daniel rode his bike.  I was not too sure if this was a good idea because he has only been pedaling several times over the past couple weeks.   No issues for Daniel, he rode 1.1 miles before they turned around and he rode 1.1 miles back.  2.2 miles for his real bike ride at 3 years of age!  Wow, I'm impressed.

Dropping mommy and Ellen.

Today had a several laps up and down the street.  Daniel was literally riding circles around me in the cul-de-sac as I took some pictures.  All was good until we tried to have him use the brakes.  KT told him to "ride towards the mailbox then put on your brakes."  Well, he rode straight at the mailbox and crashed into without any braking.  Fortunately all was okay after some tears, enough bike riding for today.

Round and round is fun.