Duck River Rendezvous

Yesterday was the “Duck River Rendezvous” 50-mile bicycle ride at Henry Horton State Park, which is about 30-miles south of Nashville. Unfortunately, I had to host a Nashville Palm Users Group meeting, so I was unable to participate in the ride. That didn’t stop Holly and my Mother though from deciding to try the ride. They’ve never taken part in a coordinated bicycle ride and both had never ridden more than 20 miles at a stretch, so both ladies were definitely exploring a bit of the unknown.
Normally I would put a link to a web site describing the ride, but unfortunately the only mention of the “Duck River Rendezvous” is in a year event calendar for the entire Tennessee park system for the 2005 year. You can find it at this link, but to save you the trouble, here’s what the entry said:

Not much to go on, but given that the event was free certainly nothing to complain about. My Mom works for State Parks and e-mailed Randy who explained that there would be full SAG vehicle support (No one knows what “SAG” really means or where it came from; in this respect it’s kind of like “Ham”. According to one definition, it is an abbreviation for “Support And Gear.” SAG Vehicle drivers pick up broken down bikes and tired riders.) So it sounded like a great ride and I was really sorry that I wasn’t able to participate.

Holly and Mom both registered and I helped them get their bikes ready for the event. I tried to get them to train some for it, but with only a week, there wasn’t a lot of time. Mom got in two 10-mile rides and Holly only had 1 10-mile ride. Even with very little mileage under their belts, both ladies were ready to go at 6:00am yesterday as I loaded them up. I learned later that they were a little nervous about the ride since I wasn’t able to go, but they showed no signs of it as they were leaving.

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2005 BRAT Schedule Is Coming Together

As I was lamenting on how long it’s been since I updated my weblog, a thought occurred to me to go check and see if there were any updates on the 2005 schedule for the Bicycle Ride Across Tennessee (BRAT). I rode a portion of the course last year and my plan is to ride the entire course this year, so I’m trying to plan ahead well in advance.

Looking over the site, it appears that they’ve made a lot of updates. Although everything is in Adobe Acrobat PDF format, they’ve posted the Release Form, the Daily Rider Registration, Route Description, details on the Accommodations, Food, and even a mini FAQ. The one item missing from the details is a decent map. Wanting to get some idea of the general route, I decided to make my own.

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A Letter To The Editor – Part Two

Much to my surprise, I received a response from my letter to Mr. Schoen regarding his article “Cycling is just not a big deal” yesterday. I certain was not expecting one given the fact that we all live in a busy society and e-mail has become less useful than it used to be. Yet, Mr. Schoen took the time to respond in detail and I post his comments for your perusal:

Mr. Ashby -

Thanks for reading and I appreciate the letter.

Please excuse me if I’m a little short in my response as I’ve been doing corresponding with writers for the last couple of weeks about this subject.

First, you raise several valid points, although I did make a concerted effort to watch the Tour on OLN and read several articles before my own “bottom of the barrel” commentary.

While winning the Tour de France requires incredible mental and physical stamina, which I respect immensly, it doesn’t change my opinion on the sport itself. Maybe by not caring for cycling you (and many others) perceive that as a slight toward Lance Armstrong.

Lance Armstrong has done more than anybody, including Greg LeMond, to raise awareness of cycling in the U.S., you are correct. Yet, it’s still a sport that many Americans only pay token attention to, and it’s 3 weeks out of the year.

If you believe that football is nothing more than “just a bunch of grown men playing grabass,” that golf is “nothing more than over-privileged men hitting a silly ball with a stick” and hockey is “really nothing more than a bunch of ballerinas on ice skates pushing each other around” that is every sports fan’s right, just as it’s mine to see cycling as nothing more than “riding a bike.”

Is winning six Tour de Frances an incredible feat? Absolutely. Physically, it’s much tougher than winning the Masters or even Wimbledon. However, I happen to believe that while it is certainly newsworthy, cycling is a fringe sport in this country and to call it the greatest athletic accomplishment in sports, as many have, is hyperbole.

Again, I appreciate the comments and I hope you will write again in the future.

dave

____________________________________________

“Eat your cereal with a fork and do your homework in the dark.”

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A Letter To The Editor

I normally don’t write letters to the editor. I guess it’s because I don’t see the point. I think that the author, or editor will never read it, or even if they do it won’t change anything. Besides everyone is entitled to their own opinion, even if it’s one that I don’t agree with. However, I came across an article written by David Schoen entitled “Cycling is just not a big deal” and I just couldn’t sit idly by. I felt I had to voice a complaint. Schoen goes to great lengths to tear not only Lance Armstrong, but the entire sport of cycling.

Just in case ANG Newspapers takes Schoen’s article off of their web site, here it is in it’s entirety:

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Dashed Upon The Rocks Of Reality

After the Natchez Trace Bicycle Tour, I made a vow to try and do two short bicycle tours a year. I didn’t have any clear idea of when or where when I made this vow, but I enjoyed being out on the open road so much that I just knew I had to get back out there as soon as possible. My thought was that I would do one bicycle tour in the Spring and one in the Fall. Money, time and energy permitting, I would try and do an extra tour in the Summer if possible. However much like Icarus, I have soared too high on my dreams of cycling and I’ve been dashed upon the rocks of reality – I’ll be lucky if I can get one tour in this year.

The first tour I had hoped to make was up to Milwaukee Wisconsin to visit my good friend Mike Rohde during the month of June. He and I planned on doing an extended weekend about like I had done for the Natchez Trace last year. I would fly into Chicago, he’d pick me up and then for the next 4 days, he and I would ride a large loop around his house. If we ran out of time, his wife could rescue us. We had the rough outline all planned out, but as is typical in this day and age, we simply didn’t have the time to make it happen. It was nobody’s fault, we just couldn’t get it scheduled.

With my spring tour cancelled, I set my sights on where I would try and go in the fall. “Ok, so I can’t make two tours this year, I can still make one”, I thought to myself. Ideally, I would get a bunch of friends together and we’d all go riding, but I didn’t limit myself to that ideal. I’m just as happy going solo, so I thought about where I could ride close to home.

While standing in my local REI store, I eyed a Hatch Show Print poster hanging on the wall in the bicycle section. It was for a ride called the Bicycle Ride Across Tennessee (BRAT). My interest was instantly piqued and when I got home, I looked it up on the web to learn more about this ride.

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BikeJournal.com

Maybe it’s the “yellow fever” of watching the Tour de France and Lance Armstrong win his 6th Tour, but I’ve taken a renewed interest in cycling this summer. I’m on the bike every chance I get, rain or shine, and it’s been an absolute hoot. Having just finished Lance’s second book Every Second Counts, I was intrigued at how Lance uses the data collected while cycling to analyze his performance on the bike. I don’t have any of the fancy gadgets that he does, like a heart monitor, but I do have a little Sigma cycling computer and I do collect basic mileage information. My only dilemma was what to do with the data.

For the past year or so, I’ve been transferring the data by hand into my Palm OS handheld using the handy application DayNotez. I enter all my workout information into it and I can pull it up to see what I’ve done at any time. However, the data is simply a note and there’s not much I can do with it other than refer to an individual ride. Then I stumbled across the web site Bike Journal and expanded my view of how I stack up with other cyclists.

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