Bicycling

It’s Digital Cable Month 2010

Stopped off at the cable place on the way home from work today. Saturday the Tour de France starts and to get Versus, the network that carries the race, we have to upgrade to the Digital Plus tier. It costs and extra $20, but it is worth it for the three weeks of Phil Ligget and Paul Sherwin narrating the bike race and watching the beautiful French countryside glide by. While my CSR was filling out the “paperwork” I picked up a channel guide and noticed something called “Value HD” which offers most of the usual cable channel’s HD versions. I asked her how much more would that be, $4.95 came the reply. What the heck, we have a HDTV this year, it’ll be worth the extra five spot to try it out.

We got home and quickly realized that we had no real place to put converter box. It is a lot larger than last year’s model which fit on top of the tube TV. At first I figured I’d place the flat screen TV on top of the converter box, but it was full of holes for cooling and I didn’t want to melt the TV’s plastic base. Even if there was room, I couldn’t place the box sideways because there were holes there as well. Next we thought that we could just place it on the floor in front of the armoire, it’s only for a month. I doubted the remote would work with it there without having to hold it high over our heads to get the proper angle to clear the coffee table. Didn’t matter, the cables weren’t long enough. It ended up on the empty shelf to the left of the surround sound/DVD player, the only down side to this is we have to keep that door open when watching TV. Small price to pay.

The remote they gave me didn’t match the instruction sheet they gave me, so at first I couldn’t program the cable remote to operate the TV. That meant we now needed two remotes, one for channels and one for volume. I did a internet search for the model number of the remote and found several helpful sites that would offer me the manual – for a fee… But then I decided to RTFM and there on page 3 of the cable company’s booklet were instructions for the remote. Now we are making progress.

I then started surfing through the HD channels and of the approximately 40 available it seemed like every 4th or 5th was viewable. That’s no good. So I then checked to see if we could get Versus, the whole reason for getting the converter box, and we could (unfortunately it isn’t offered in HD though.)

As always the Digital Plus comes free with the half dozen of each Encore and Starz movie channels. I checked them out seeing if I could find something to watch and as I surfed them I kept on going past and discovered that I could also watch all the premium channels, HBO, Cinemax & Showtime.

So, should call and complain about the missing HD channels and take the chance that when they correct that they will also yank the free premium movie channels? or should I keep my mouth shut and enjoy the movies and learn to live without the missing 2/3s of HD channels?

Started up, went down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 710

Me & the Tin Man

There is a building along the northwestern section of Our Fair City’s bypass that started life as a hardware store. That lasted maybe a couple of years and then an auto parts store moved in. It lasted maybe a year. It sat empty for a while before becoming an auto paint store which I bet didn’t last 6 months. It has sat empty for a half dozen years since, probably because no one else wanted to take a chance of their new business only lasting 3 months…

I don’t don’t know when this tin man showed up, but it seems like it might have been there since the very beginning. It looks like the perfect place for a geocache, so this morning Donna and hopped on the tandem to ride over and check it out, plus grab some breakfast at the somewhat nearby Dunkin’ Donuts. We ended up riding for a total of 15 miles.

After the bike ride we hopped in the Emperor and picked up a couple items at Lowes, a few things at Walmart and did our weekly grocery shopping at Krogers. Tonight we made a return driving trip to Lowes for something completely different and had dinner out at Chik-fil-A. With all that driving I think we might have equaled the mileage covered via bicycle in the morning.

Started down, went up, back down, back up, still up.
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Geocaching Trifecta

I have often spoken here of hitting the trifecta, but that is in reference to eating out all three meals in a single day. Today we hit the Geocaching Trifecta. We hid a cache, found a cache and we DNF’d a cache.

In other Tri news our neighbor the ultra-marathoner saw us dragging out the tandem for our caching adventure and mentioned that she had gone for bike ride yesterday and has given some consideration to maybe trying Triathlons.

This prompted Donna to say later in the day we had done our own triathlon today, we rode 14 miles on the bike, took a 1/2 mile walk checking on a cache and then taken a shower.

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 580

15 Years Ago

I didn’t have a blog back then, so my creative writing outlet was the Aiken Bike Club’s newsletter. I tried to add a little humor to the meeting minutes and the ride reports, but the most fun came from making up the Ride Schedule. Find an obscure event that happened on a particular day and spin a title and text from it. Here is the December 1994 Aiken Bicycle Club Ride Schedule:

Sat Dec 10 – 10:00 AM
SHOOT the ROCK, BAY-BEE! Ride. 98 years ago today in New Haven, CT an event happened ensuring that Dick Vitale wouldn?t have to try to make a living selling cars. Wesleyan University played Yale in the first inter-collegiate basketball game. Yale won 39 to 4. Doug Walker is today?s ride coach/announcer. (40 miles/M)

Sun Dec 11 – 1:45 PM
Christmas Parade Ride. Once again the club will ride in the Aiken Jaycee?s Christmas parade. Deck the bikes with boughs of holly, garland, etc. The tackier the better and meet at Weeks where we will ride to our starting spot, do the parade thing and ride back home. (10 miles/E)

Sat Dec 17 – 9:00 AM
Saturnalia Ride. The masters and the slaves will ride the same trails on the first day of the festival in honor of the Roman god of agriculture, Saturn. Meet Brian Bogardus with your ATB on the car rack for the trip to the trailhead. (8-12 miles/M)

Sun Dec 18 – 1:00 PM
Extol the Ride Leader Ride. Today?s route will will be fairly circuitous as ride leader Donna Bogardus takes the group to every drive-up window on the southside of Aiken to compliment the employee behind the sliding glass window on the first day of ?Tell Someone They Are Doing A Good Job? Week. (10-15 miles/E)

Sat Dec 24 – 1:00 PM
Christmas Eve Ride. If you are not too busy assembling tricycles put some warm spiced, not spiked, cider in your water bottle and go for a ride with Doug Walker in search of roasted chestnuts. (30 miles/M)

Sun Dec 25 – 1:00 PM
I Got Some Really Cool Stuff Ride. Nobody volunteered to lead this ride, but if you want people to see those new bike related presents, show up and show off. Bring a $1 grab bag type gift for swapping. (10-15 miles/E)

Sat Dec 31 – 5:00 PM
First Night Aiken Non Ride. Meet some of your fellow club members at this family oriented New Year?s Eve celebration on Laurens Street. Starts at 5:00 PM and runs ?til the New Year starts. To purchase admission buttons ($5, kids six and under are free) or for more information stop by the Aiken Center for the Arts <641-9094> at 112 Laurens St.

Sun Jan 1 – 10:00 AM
New Year?s Day State Park Ride. Steve Nolan is up as ride leader for this Bike Club tradition. Start out the year the right way! Ride to Aiken State Park, eat some cookies, and ride back. (45 miles/M-D)

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 508

Yucca Valley

Yucca ValleyWe saw no yucca plants on the Yucca Valley trail in Hitchcock Woods when we traveled it yesterday. I would tell you how far we walked in the woods, but I can’t because our GPSr is broken and hopefully in Olathe, Kansas by now.

This morning we got up early-ish and rode a big loop ending up downtown to pay bills. Unfortunately the New Moon wasn’t open so we couldn’t get a muffin for breakfast. Ended up at Waffle House.

After breakfast we drove over to Augusta to take a picture of a hockey puck in front of the James Brown Arena, which is as close to geocaching as we could get. Have I mentioned our GPSr is broken?

On the way home from Georgia a line of birds started to waltz out out in front of us way out on Pine Log Rd. They got part way and turned around and then as soon as I got by they came back out and completed the trip.

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 382

The End Of Reality

We were up early this morning to ride the tandem to work, but as we started down the drive way something was wrong. The back tire was flat. Seeing as this ride was optional, we just parked the bike and Plan B was implemented, drive the car. Because we were early instead of finishing breakfast and heading right to the Bogardusmobile there was some time for TV watching.

During a break in Sportcenter I surfed the channels until I stumbled on VH1 playing an old Beatles tune, “With a Little Help from My Friends.” Wow, VH1 is back to playing music. They, like their big brother station MTV, seemed to have abandoned playing music videos in favor of other crap, including “reality” shows, nice to see them back to music videos again.

Wait a minute, that’s not the real John, Paul, George & Ringo, its a computer generated facsimile. Turns out it is a video-slash-commercial for something called Rock Band, which as best I can figure is a cross between karaoke, air guitar, your TV and an expensive gaming console. So much for back to reality.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKRyKVDvO6U

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Historic 1940 Tour de France Picture

Historic 1940 Tour de France PictureBecause folks know I bicycle and that my wife and go out of our way to get the cable upgrade just so we can watch the Tour de France every year, I have received this picture via email from co-workers 3 times in the last two days. Ha, ha, ha.

We toke a hike in Hitchcock Woods this evening and hid our third geocache. This one is called “No Horses Allowed” because it is placed along one of the two trails we know of that are closed to horses due to erosion concerns and or steepness. We have got a couple more planned for placing in the woods and then we are going to have to find some other locations. Not that the we are getting anywhere close to having caches too near each other, within 500′ is the limit, but when we are done with those two there will be an even dozen in the Woods and that is probably plenty.

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