Sweet Success!

Another successfully completed race in the books for me: Aramco Houston Half Marathon, January 17, 2010.

My good and faithful friend Keith was again my support person, picking me up at my house, clear on the other side of town from where he lives, and driving me to start line, where I hopped out of his car with the few last words of encouragement from him and my assurances that I'd see him at the pre-designated meet-up spots along the route.

It was cold - about 40 degrees - but perfect, with temperatures remaining in the 40's throughout the morning, very low humidity, and clear sunny skies. This is all in sharp contrast to the weather of the previous 7 days. Record-breaking low temperatures in the high teens and low twenties gripped the Houston area for several days. Then a warm-up that brought rains into town near the end of the week, right up to Saturday before the race.

Time passed quickly as I waited in my designated corral for the race to start. The first wave of runners took off at the 7:00 AM gun, the second wave 10 minutes later. I don't care what anyone else says, the first four miles of this route have some hills. Not big hills, but long inclines that will take the starch out in a hurry if done too quickly. Within the first half mile is the long steady 1 mile incline up the Elysian Viaduct. Three miles later the bridge up and over I-45 is deceptively long. Then there's the 1 mile long incline along White Oak Bayou into the Heights district of Houston. It's flat and smooth through the heights and back toward I-10 where the route dips sharply under the overpass and back up the other side. It's steep but short. Then it dips again to go under Hicks Street and then a railroad bridge, and this uphill is longer and steeper. The route is then mercifully flat through the Montrose section of Houston. But then there's the first mile on Allen Parkway, headed back toward downtown. A long gradual incline, not even noticeable by car, seems to never end when running it on foot. I know from running the full marathon several times, that the killer hills are the Westpark bridge just west of Weslayan, and the long killer incline on Memorial Drive east of I-610.

Friend Keith was waiting for me at mile 5 at the corner of Michaux and 11th in the Heights, camera in hand. While he waited, he caught the front of the pack, the elite runners, as they streaked by. First the half-marathon elite runners, then the full marathon runners.

He's such a great friend!

He was there again at mile 8 at the corner of W. Gray and Montrose, again with camera in hand, as well as a banana and some GU for me. We half-marathon runners continued south on Montrose for another mile, turned around and came back up the other side of the boulevard which gives all spectators a second chance at seeing friends and loved ones slogging along. For Keith this meant grabbing a donut at Christi's Donut Shop and then easing across the road to the other side to wait for me at the 10 mile marker.

I'm home free at this point, with only 3.1 more miles to go, so a wave and "see you at the finish" and I didn't even slow down. It's a thrill to run along Allen Parkway, the Houston Skyline in front of me shining in the early morning sun, and knowing that I'm on the home stretch. Running the half marathon gives me a unique opportunity to run along side (be it ever so briefly) the elite front-of-the-pack full marathon runners as they pull ahead of me quickly toward downtown and the finish line.

The crowds this year were phenomenal! Larger than I've ever seen before in the 8 years I've been running this event. All through the Heights and along Montrose the spectactor crowds were heavy. Coming into downtown the crowds grew until they were several people deep along the last 1/2 mile of the route. The noise was deafening as I neared the finish line. I hope they all realize how encouraging and uplifting that is to hear!

The bands were just super, providing non-stop entertainment all along Studemont and Montrose! The best was the DJ stationed somewhere near Alabama. His commentary was great! The Cancare ladies in their yellow foam BIG HAIR wigs were there, as they always are, near the finish line. And those Biker Chicks (ConocoPhillips Rodeo Run) at the 10K mile marker are the cat's meow!!! Lotsa noise goin' on!

Such a great feeling to cross the finish line feeling good about the day, the run, my physical condition...just everything!

It Must Be the Endorphins

What else could it be? Or maybe I'm just teetering on the edge of insanity.

The Houston marathon/half-marathon is just 4 days away and all of my energy and positive thoughts should be channeling toward that event. I've been the healthiest I've been this close to this event in several years. A nagging and chronic foot injury had been plagueing me for 3 years, causing me to drop down to the half-marathon in 2006 and to miss it all together in 2007. It hobbled me in 2008 but was noticeably on the mend in 2009, although a really bad chest cold slowed me down anyway that year. A long rest after the 2009 event - no running, only cycling - seemed to do the trick and by Memorial Day weekend I was ready to start the long process of regaining stamina and endurance after such a long lay-off.

So the other day I was "surfing" the Runners World website after entering my day's run stats into their handy-dandy online training log when I noticed they were promoting their 2010 Marathon Challenge. I missed out on it last year due to the self-imposed long recovery layoff I wanted to give myself. But this year, maybe...

So I clicked on the link to see what marathons will be included in this year's challenge. The first one of the year will be the Flying Pig (http://www.flyingpigmarathon.com/index.shtml) in Cincinnati in May. I've always wanted to do this marathon! Not only the name but the route has always intrigued me! Hmmm....that's 4 months after the Houston event, enough time to recover, then start ramping up the distances again before it gets too hot. Cincinnati is just a day and a half's drive away and I can make a long weekend out of it. Runner's World is offering lots of additional "swag" to those who enter the challenge, including a special event t-shirt, VIP areas before the start, training plans, advice from Bart Yasso, and the opportunity to meet the RW staff at the event.

Before I registered for this, though, I did a little background research to see if it would be feasible. I looked at hotel options within walking distance of the race start/finish. I looked at what restaurants were nearby within walking distance. I checked out parts of the route using Google maps street level and satellite views. The coolest part of this race is that within the first 3 miles it crosses two bridges over the Ohio River and near the end runs along the river for some of the route. I am so on this!

I booked a hotel room in downtown Cincinnati and went back to the Runners' World webpage and registered for the challenge. Excellent! It will give me a reason to keep my long-distance running schedule going (with all the perq's that come with it, like being back to weighing 108 lb and being able to eat cupcakes, ice cream, chocolate without guilt).

So then I turned my attention to the dilemma of when to fly back to Hawaii to visit my son and daughter-in-law. They're expecting their second child, a girl - and my second grandchild - in early April. I was just over there in late November-early December, and wasn't sure I wanted to return to Hawaii so soon. Part of my decision was made for me when they called to tell me that her parents would be visiting shortly after the baby came. Her aunt will be visiting later that month, as well, and my son's dad will be spending nearly the entire month of June with them. That's a lot of company in a short period of time, with a new baby in the house and all.

I decided that September would be a good time to visit. The month is wide open for me, as far as scheduling goes, and the rates might be lower, since kids will be back in school and all. I got on-line and looked at the possibility of getting a first-class ticket using my frequent flier miles. I was unsuccessful achieving this for my flight last November, succeeding only in getting a first-class upgrade to a paid-for ticket on the return flight. Keying in some dates, I couldn't believe my luck! I was able to book a full roundtrip first-class ticket using some of my accumulated miles and had 24 hours to change my mind and reschedule or cancel without penalty should I need to.

As I did when I visited in November/December, I checked the running race calendar to see if there would be any races on the island that I could enter while there. Maybe a 10k or longer race, since I'd be in training at that point for the Houston. Nothing of interest came up on the search results for Oahu, but what's this? The Maui Marathon and Half Marathon would be held in Kaanapali on the weekend that I'll be in Hawaii. Maui is a 30 minute flight from Oahu. It would be 4 months after the Flying Pig and 4 months before the Houston race, nearly perfect! Hmm...

So, call me crazy...I went ahead and registered for the Maui half-marathon and made a hotel reservation in Kaanapali just to be sure. The room can always be cancelled. But I'm hoping this works out that everyone can come with me, or at least daughter-in-law and the kids. We'll see...

End of the Year Ride

It wouldn't be December if I didn't find myself riding across I-10 toward Florida.

An annual tradition, Stagecoach RTE, was sitting out there on my calendar of rides, begging me to come on over. I missed Wizard's Wild Weekend in early December, being in Hawaii over Thanksgiving, so Stagecoach seemed a fitting and suitable December-end destination. And off I went.

This is a tough time for me to travel since it's so close to the Houston Marathon in January. I must weigh the "fun" factor of the trip against the possibility that I'll miss getting some running miles in. Packing space was therefore allocated to running gear: Shoes, cold-weather leggings, top, windbreaker, socks, gloves, hat. And then there was that forecast for cold, wet, and cold-and-wet all across the I-10 corridor.

But, if I continued on to Pensacola Beach for a day or two, the weather would improve (at least not be so wet) for my return trip back to Houston. So that was the plan: Join in at the Stagecoach RTE, depart for US-98 for a meander over to Pensacola, visit the History of Navy Flight Museum, and then spend a couple of nights at Pensacola Beach. I visited this museum in 2004 and have always wanted to get back.

Cold and cloudy Houston weather on December 29 meant a chilly departure, but soon I could see a sharp line between gray clouds and blue sky, demarcating the leading edge of the front that was pushing through east Texas, and the rest of the ride all the way to Satsuma AL was under sunny blue skies. Cold, but at least sunny.



This year's Stagecoach RTE would be different from past events. Apparently riders have been arriving earlier and earlier so the organizer arranged for the restaurant to serve a breakfast buffet for the early birds. I was one of those early birds, arriving at 8:45 AM. But I wasn't the first to get there! At least a dozen bikes were already parked in front, including a group just arriving from south Florida and a group of four, one of whom was from Texas.



Stagecoach RTE day was forecasted to be cloudy, rainy and cold. Not great, but better than what many other riders would be experiencing to get down to Stagecoach from more northern climes. Many who are regulars to this event had already posted on the various forums that they were snowed or iced in. Attendance will no doubt be down this year from past years, when upwards of 600-700 riders have come in to Stagecoach.



Breakfast with friends, a bit of parking lot chat, and I was off, headed toward Pensacola by 10:30-10:45. I wanted to see what US-98 would be like, having never ridden it before. It was a nice alternative to interstate and moderately scenic though slow going.

Arriving at the museum it dawned on me, when I saw the packed parking lot, that kids are out of school and this might not be an ideal day to come. But I lucked out and immediately found a driver backing out of a spot, so I backed in, left my helmet and jacket on the bike and covered it all with the motorcycle cover. My new Canon DSLR in hand, I headed for the museum, eager to pick up where I left off more than 5 years ago.

The lobby was teeming with people. One of the things I really wanted to do was see one of the IMAX movies. The lines were long and, eavesdropping a bit, I learned that they were selling tickets to showings that were a couple of hours later in the day. I wasn't sure I'd be here that long so didn't buy a ticket. Darn! Well, I'll just have to get back here and next time it will be while kids are still in school.

I roamed the halls, taking photographs, reading the displays, and generally people-watching. My most favorite display is the atrium where four Blue Angels planes fly in formation, suspended from the ceiling.



There are so many planes on display, they're layered from ceiling to floor, creating a giant play mobile effect with some really great and interesting juxtapositions of wings, propellers, cockpits, insignia.



What can seem so small from just a short distance away, readily reveals its innate power and force even when standing still.



Three hours later, I was ready to go find lunch. The Cubi Cafe was packed and had a waiting line, so I decided the best option was to leave the museum and head toward Pensacola Beach, check into the Hampton Inn on the beach, and strike out on foot for a late lunch/early dinner. It had just started to rain as I was leaving and the rain became steady as I rode through Pensacola onto 3-mile Bridge, across Sea Breeze and onto Pensacola Beach's barrier island.

I love this hotel. It's location is nearly perfect, sitting on a white sand beach, within walking distance of many good restaurants and with a paved jogging trail that runs for miles. Parked, checked in, changed into street clothes and it was off to find a good greasy burger and a Blue Moon beer to wash it down.

Next morning started out cloudy but the sun started peeking out around 9:00 AM, turning into a gorgeous day. I headed west on the barrier island toward Fort Pickens, one of the units of Gulf Islands National Seashore. This Fort has been closed ever since Hurricane Ivan struck in 2004. They had just re-opened it when Hurrican Ida hit in November 2009, closing the road once again. The road was just opened the Sunday after Christmas, so I was very fortunate..timing is everything!

This is a beautiful road, passing through unspoiled gulf beach, with the turquoise surf pounding just yards away from the road at some points. Huge drifts of white sand had been freshly plowed off the roadway, the plow marks still visible against the mountains of sand that had been moved out of the way. It took only very little to imagine that these could be drifts of snow. Even the sand that covered the roadway in patches here and there was eerily similar to how patches of snow can cling to the pavement after a plow passes by.

I lived here in the late 50's through the mid-60's as my dad was stationed here as a Navy pilot. I can remember this road and the enormous sand dunes that lined the road, hiding the beach view from the road and providing great places to tuck a blanket and belongings to get out of the wind. These giant dunes are completely gone now, torn away by hurricane Ivan. They'll rebuild eventually, as wind and other forces of nature move the sand around into natural drifts and berms.

As much as I wanted to pull into some of the turnouts to take photos, the prodigious amounts of sand remaining in these paved areas kept me on the roadway. In a few months, they'll have these turnouts cleared.

The fort is such a formidable and sturdy structure it withstood these hurricanes - and many before them - all these years. The cheery park ranger and I chatted a bit...she and her husband moved down from Chicago and now love living in Pensacola Beach.

I roamed through the interconnecting rooms of the fort, taking photos and reading the self-guided tour sheet. The fort had been in near-continuous use since its first ramparts were built in 1834 until 1947.



I climbed to the top of one of the bastions to see the Rodman cannon emplaced there.



It's a compact fort and after an hour or so of wandering about, I was ready to leave, take a ride over to the Naval Live Oak unit of the Gulf Islands National Seashore, then continue on to Navarre, cross the bridge, and ride back to Penasacola Beach along the gulf barrier island.

The perfect footnote to the day was being awakened at midnight - New Year's eve - to the sound of fireworks. Getting out of bed and walking over to the window, I was treated to midnight fireworks being fired off from the pier right next to the hotel.

New Year's Day and I was on the road heading home to Houston.

100,000 Miles on BMW Motorcycles

When I first started riding a motorcycle, I had no vision of the future and where it would take me. I could only look far enough ahead to pass the MSF course, get that "M" endorsement, and screw up the courage to go shopping for my first bike. That was August 2002.

When I finally got out to the various dealers to shop for a new bike a month after getting my endorsement, I only looked at small cruiser-style bikes. Being short, I felt it was the only option available to me. And even with low, low seat heights - 24, 25, 26 inches - I was intimidated by every single bike I sat on. But I needed to just do it before I chickened out forever. And so I bought a small Yamaha cruiser.

The shortcomings of a cruiser motorcycle became obvious to me only once I outgrew the large group day rides and yearned to go beyond the 50-mile, all-day rides to a greasy spoon lunch spot 30 miles outside of Houston. This is when I realized that a 130-mile gas range was hugely inconvenient. And it's when I came to realize that the cruiser "feet forward" riding position was uncomfortable and impractical for more than 100 mile trips.

When I approached my 2-year anniversary of riding, a friend started pushing me toward a motorcycle more suited for the kind of rider I was evolving into. He convinced me I was ready for a BMW. Until this point, I never even considered what options were out there besides Harleys and Harley-clones. I had no knowledge of "standard" and "sport-touring" mounts. I only knew about cruisers and crotch rockets.

But he was right. I was ready in theory, just not ready in practice, not ready to tackle a completely different style of bike. However, a year later, a trip to Laconia - four 500-mile days strung together back to back on interstates in pouring rain - was the turning point. I'd put 31,000 miles on this Yamaha V-Star 1100 in 2 years. That sounded like an outrageous amount of miles to me and indeed it sounded like a lot of miles to prospective buyers as well.

A new BMW R1150R that summer of 2005 changed my riding forever. A short learning curve and a change in my habits and riding style, and I adapted to the radically different riding position and the much higher seating position. And then, 6 months later, I discovered and got active in a "virtual" riding group called Motorcycle Tourers Forum (MTF).

In March 2006 I did a SS1000 to become a member of the Iron Butt Association (IBA) and thus began my long-distance riding career. I put nearly 90,000 miles on this first BMW in just 3 years, crisscrossing the continent to attend MTF events, participate in IBA events, and visit every National Park within easy reach of an interstate highway.

But suddenly I had a motorcycle with almost 90,000 miles on it. 5 sets of tires; 15 oil changes and valve checks; 3 alternator belts...one well-traveled companion to adventure. And just 10,000 or so miles away from earning the BMW Motorrad USA 100,000 mileage award.

While I was accumulating these miles, I wasn't conscious of doing so; it wasn't about the miles at all. The BMW was an excellent conveyance to parts of the country I'd always wanted to visit and see: Mt. Rushmore, Acadia National Park, the great plains of the midwest, Rocky Mountains, mid-Atlantic seashore. It was about escape. And about satisfying my wanderlust and need to travel.

I found a willing buyer of this very high mileage BMW in July 2008 and ordered myself a new 2009 R1200R BMW. This new mount arrived the end of October and I took my first trip on it the first weekend of December - to Cedar Key FL. By May, 2009 I had accrued 100,000 miles combined on BMW's: My first one, the R1150R, and my second and current BMW, the R1200R.

Throughout this BMW "era" a second motorcycle has always shared garage space with her. First a Harley 883C Sportster, then a Yamaha FZ6. They accumulated their share of miles and - including those first Yamaha cruisers - another 80,000 miles' worth of rubber have been burned in the interest of riding enjoyment.

The BMW Motorrad USA 100,000 mile award was presented to me on December 19, 2009 at the Gulf Coast BMW dealership.

Back in August 2002 did I imagine I would have embraced this sport the way I did? I didn't imagine anything, truth be told, except learning to ride and getting past that scared, neophyte stage.

Holiday Things

What was I thinking???

A trip to the grocery store late this morning resulted in more than I ever imagined coming home in the trunk of my car....much more. But let me start at the beginning.

Feeling somewhat "bah humbug," I decided to get outside and put the lights up on the front bushes. It's been so dadgum cold and wet this past week, I've hated the prospect of getting out there in it. So procrastination took over ever since I returned from my trip to Hawaii over Thanksgiving.



All of the outdoor lights are stored in the garage in a cardboard box on one of the shelves. It's really quite painless to get out there and do this task...when the weather is nice. I have maybe 6 or 7 strands of outdoor lights and every year I end up replacing half of them. This year would be no different. The "plug-in" test showed three of the strands wouldn't light up; one or more circuits were dead. I've learned -finally! - after all these years of trying to find the bum bulb, that it's easier to just buy a new string. Heck! They're only $3.00 or $4.00 each at a discount store (including Walgreen's) so it's just not worth the hassle. I wrapped the front foundation plantings with what strings of lights still worked and then went inside to clean up and get ready to head to the grocery store. I added "lights" to the shopping list, since the front row of hollies were now 3/4 lit and 1/4 unlit, the working strings of lights being not quite enough to make it across the front of the house.

So here's where the trouble began. I had the usual list of groceries, needing to re-stock after being away for more than two weeks, and having depleted the fridge and pantry contents sufficiently prior to departing on that trip, not to mention that it took me a full week upon returning to finally get to the store. The list had the usual suspect items on it: fresh fruit, salad makings, bread, sandwich meat, Cheerios. But on the way to the sandwich meat and bread section of the store, after leaving the produce department, I cruised the aisles in the meat department. Boy, that turkey sure tasted good at my son's house at Thanksgiving. And I don't get turkey very often. And did I mention how good that turkey tasted? Magically, a 14-lb turkey just jumped into my shopping cart. Just like that.

Well, since there's now a turkey in my cart, I might as well back-track to the produce department for some fresh cranberries. I have a recipe for cranberry salad - it was my mom's recipe - and a turkey dinner just isn't the same without that salad. So this meant a couple of additional items just got added to my shopping list in order to complete the recipe.

Recovering lost ground, I continued on over to the cracker/cookie/cereal aisle and resumed my shopping. But wait! While I had pumpkin pie at my son's house, no holiday ever passed me by without my making my signature pear galette. So...back to the produce department to buy 3 lbs of fresh Bartlett pears. Now this has added a couple more items to my shopping list: the ingredients for my secret pie crust recipe, none of which I currently had in the house.

This was becoming a two steps forward-two steps backward shopping expedition, since the produce department is right next to the entrance to this store. Okay! Moving right along...

Next it was on to the baking goods aisle to get the remainder of the salad ingredients and some flour for the pie crust. Forward progess at last!

This is nuts! What am I doing, buying a 14 lb turkey, the ingredients for cranberry salad, and the fixings for a pear pie??? It's just going to be me, myself, and I home alone for Christmas eve/day. I will have leftovers coming out of my ears! Oh, who cares!! As I continued to work my way down my shopping list, I worked hard at convincing myself that I was doing the right thing: It might be nice to have half a leftover turkey lolling around in the freezer somewhere down the road.

I continued to work on my list and progressed through the store aisles until I came to the area set aside for "seasonal items." This would include Christmas wrapping paper, ribbon, boxes, ornaments, wrapping tape, tree stands, and the like. Four boxes of multi-color lights, 100 bulbs per indoor/outdoor strand. $2.39 per box. Perfect! I only need two of these strands to complete the outdoor lighting and will have 2 boxes of new lights for next year's inevitable off-season death of Christmas lights.

I made it nearly to the cash registers and oops!! I forgot the Cheerios! Leaving the cart, I dashed back to the cookie/cracker/cereal aisle to grab a box. Can I count this toward my weekly run mileage?? This is a giant HEB grocery store. Easily a quarter mile back there to that aisle and then another quarter mile back to my shopping cart!

Now I think I have it all and proceed to checkout. The store wasn't too crowded and I gloated at finding a register with no one ahead of me. I further gloated at having gotten my Christmas dinner shopping done a full week earlier than most others will. The interior of this store will look totally different a week from now.

Groceries put away, freezer rearranged to accomodate the turkey, I headed outside to get that last string of lights put out on the front row of hollies. That was, afterall, the start of this whole thing, wasn't it?

The Strangest Things on I-10!

Okay, I've ridden this stretch of Interstate between Houston TX and points in eastern Florida many, many times. I've seen some pretty strange things, too. Like 18-wheelers down in the median, cars pointing the wrong way, a car crushed up underneath the backend of an 18-wheeler. Like odd loads on trailers being pulled by pick-ups and cars, animals dodging traffic across multiple lanes, truck fires, cars on fire, and a strange-looking, possibly not street-legal dune buggy going 45 mph in the left lane.

But yesterday's incident really took the cake. It happened just east of the MS-AL state line, and just after I returned to the interstate after a gas fill-up. When I'm in the left lane, I always ride the right-hand track so that I can see well down the road and keep my eye on what the traffic in front of me is doing. I also do it so that I'm visible in the side-mirrors of the vehicles in the right lane. So anyway, As I'm going along I see the most improbable thing happen.

About 5 or 6 cars ahead, in the right lane, there is a white pickup truck pulling an open trailer. On that open trailer is an old car, gray with Bond-o and primer paint, a major project car if I've ever seen one. One minute everything is normal, the next minute I see a wheel leave the axle of the trailer and start rolling along the middle of road between the lanes. I can't believe my eyes! It just backed its way off the lugs and parted the trailer, like a ghost had decided to grab the wheel and pull it off.

Somehow, magically, the wheel crossed the left lane without any cars hitting it, and proceeded to roll down the left shoulder for a bit, before it took off across the deep gully in the median and then up the far side toward the oncoming traffic on the other side. Improbably, the tire was still rolling across that rough and grassy ditch. Not only that, it seemed to gain momentum from the downhill incline and was making good speed up the far side.

Now bear in mind, this wheel, with perfectly good tire attached, was rolling along under its own power. The power of gyroscopic effects in action. And it was heading generally in the same direction as our side of traffic, only at a diagonal, to possibly meet its head-on demise on the other side of the interstate.

But, unbelievably, when it hit the pavement on the far side, the "edge trap" effect turned that wheel more than 90-degrees so that it was now rolling in the SAME DIRECTION as the cars and trucks on the other side of the interstate. Now it was rolling along the left shoulder of the interstate heading west. As I came up even with it, I watched it as a rain gutter grabbed that wheel and once againt the wheel took a more-than-90-degree turn to follow the rain gutter down in the gully in the median. Only now it's heading diagonally east, back toward our side of the interstate.

The downhill slope and the smooth rain gutter gave the wheel some added momentum and I watched it as it flew down the median gully and back up towards us. I did a quick visual calculation and determined that the wheel would make it back up into my lane and that it and I would cross paths in just a few moments.

A quick glance over my right shoulder showed a space in the right lane, so I moved over and then applied the brakes to slow down, because meanwhile, up ahead, the truck pulling the trailer noticed that something was very much amiss with his load and he'd been slowing down, enough to then pull onto the right shoulder.

I still kept my eye on that wayward wheel and sure enough, it bounced up into the left lane, right in front of the pick-up truck that was immediately behind me. This truck was pulling a small U-haul trailer and I'm sure he was panic-stricken. I doubt that anyone behind me was watching this saga as intently as I was, because I doubt that anyone behind me had seen the initial parting of wheel from trailer.

The truck-with-U-haul did a quick maneuver onto the left shoulder to avoid hitting the wheel, which looked like it had finally lost enough momentum to flop over and stop rolling. He managed to avoid it, but I'm not too sure about the pickup truck that was behind him. The driver of the pickup and trailer that lost the wheel were now safely on the right shoulder and I'm sure he was a little more than surprised at what had just happened. It was the rear wheel of a tandem pair on the left side of the trailer. It looked like the one wheel was still able to hold the trailer upright but at an angle.

I continued to watch the saga in my rear-view mirror as it disappeared in the distance behind me. The lack of any vehicles coming up behind me for the next few miles tells me that there was most likely a multi-car wreck as a result of that wheel.

That was the most bizarre thing I've ever seen!

Hitting the Road Again Soon!

It seems like eons since I've ridden, but that's because life has gotten very busy for me this past month.

First, there's the marathon training, which actually began end of last May. During the summer months I concentrated on restoring my base conditioning. After Labor Day however, it's been all about the miles. Long miles, that is. Getting those long runs in takes precedence as it gets closer to January 17, 2010. And it's hard to get those miles in while on the road traveling.

So there's that...and then there's the imminent new product launch - the main product - for the company I've been doing consulting work for. "Soft launch" was this past weekend at the American Association for Hip & Knee Surgeons national annual meeting, held this year in Dallas TX. It was a scramble to get the marketing materials done in time: booth graphics, brochure, price list, website, demo tools.

And then in between all this I've been in rehearsals for the musical, "South Pacific" since early September. Rehearsals every day, sometimes twice a day, plus meetings for costumes, makeup, and the like. The run is over, now, and this has freed up my time greatly.

Time for a road trip! I leave this Thursday for Florida and the Florida Coast2Coast ride, held annually to raise money for Leukemia-Lymphoma Society. I'll leave early Thursday, go as far as I feel like going, stop for the night, then arrive in the Tampa area sometime mid-day on Friday. The ride is Saturday, leaving Tampa, riding every teeny-tiny road between the Gulf Coast and the Atlantic Coast, and arriving in Ormond Beach by dinnertime.

I originally thought of taking the Yamaha FZ6 on the trip, but have changed my mind. The BMW went in for a major service interval (24,000 mile service, actually done at 26,200 miles) and she has new "shoes" so now I think I'll take her instead.

Stay tuned...