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April Miles: 167
Percentage of Monthly Goal: 100%
2009 Miles: 808
Percentage of 2009 Goal: 40%

April was a rough month, riding-wise. My commuter finally bit the dust, and I was without a bike for the better part of two weeks. After that we were out of town for spring break — we had a lovely trip to Monterey — during which I picked up an ugly head cold that kept me off the bike for another week. Good times.

Either way, and despite missing the troop ride, I was able to make it to within 1/10^th of a mile of my monthly goal. Which is pretty spooky if you think about it.

I’m set to get back on track in May. I finished the Bridgestone, and Stephanie bought me a new commuter bike. (More on that later on this week.) So even if I completely destroy one in the name of “fixing” it, I’ll still be able to ride to work.

My other big cycling acquisiting for April is a Road ID, also courtesy of my loving wife.

The general idea is that if I get hit by a bus and can’t account for myself, the EMT’s or whoever have a few people they can call to figure out who I am. Given that one of Stephanie’s riding buddies was in an accident and was only identifiable because of his Road ID — his bike was crushed under a bus and the EMT’s cut his jersey away (he came through everything just fine and is back on his bike again!) — it seems like a more than fine idea. (P.S.: Carter: if I get hit by a bus and they can’t get a hold of Stephanie, expect a call.)

March miles: 206.1
Percentage of monthly goal: 123%
2009 miles: 641
Percentage of annual goal so far: 32%

Well, I’m a quarter of the way through the year and about a third of the way to my goal. Pretty pleasing.

I rode much, much less than I wanted to during March. (I had to go out for a ride on the last night of the month just to crack 200.) There were the (for me) pretty standard mechanical difficulties. I say “standard” and “for me” because I still haven’t gotten over the whole “tinkering with the commuter” thing. This would be tantamount to deciding on Sunday evening to put a puffer on the Civic that you take to work every day. Needless to say, it ends up with the bike in more pieces than it would ideally be on a lot of mornings. There was also a certain amount of work angst that lead to either late nights or martinis, both of which make riding in the morning pretty unappealing. That seems to be clearing up, though, so no more excuses.

Well, except for the whole “while attempting to fix my bike, I’ve pretty well destroyed it” part. A few weeks ago I broke a pedal. In replacing it, I broke the crank arm it was attached to. In replacing that I ruined my bottom bracket. Got a new one in place there, and now the replacement crankset — which, admittedly, is very very cheap — is warped beyond recognition and hitting the chainstay with each and every revolution. So, yeah.

I’m damn, damn close on the Bridgestone restoration I’ve been working on since last year. The frame is out at the powedercoat shop right now and should be done by tomorrow. When I get that back, I’m pretty sure I have all the parts I need to put together a really nice weekend bike, so I can ride that while the commuter is dead. All there is to it is assembling a bike from parts. Which I’ve never done before. But I have a copy of Zinn and Sheldon’s always there on the internets. What could go wrong?

The riding highlight of the month was, without question, a bike camping trip with Fletcher’s scout troop. Glenn Trail Camp is an amazing place to camp. It’s ~6.5 miles up a road where only handicapped fishermen can drive. The camp is huge, usually empty, (on account of having to bike there, which most people for whatever reason won’t do) and immaculate. After we got to camp, the boys did another quick five mile ride up and down the trail (for a requirement for the cycling merit badge) and Stephanie and I got to tool around without our bikes loaded, which was wonderfully relaxing.

I’m really interested in doing some more bike camping. You can get away from civilization quickly, and camping just with your own group in the middle of nowhere is infinitely better than camping next to 30 people’s parked cars. Anybody interested in joining me?

February miles: 222.31
Percentage of monthly goal: 133%
Percentage of annual goal so far: 22%

February worked out pretty well in the bike department. Even counting a nine day stretch when I only rode once — for which my excuse of “it was raining” is super weak considering that I went to the trouble to put fenders on my bike — I rode in to work more often than not. I even got a few longer weekend rides in: one about 18 miles around the neighborhood, another 26 to and from the arroyo/Rose Bowl where Stephanie and Fletcher were taking an archery class and the USMC marching band was playing. (The band was very cool. The silent drilling group was impressive, but I guess not my thing.)

The SGV continues to be a wonderful place to ride. Cars are, for the most part, cooperative. The weather, absent the rain, has been perfect. Also, thank god for casual dress codes at work.

One thing I’ve definitely learned is that not a lot of people around here go out for weekend fun rides with fenders and a rack trunk. Clearly what I need is a Serotta with SRAM Red, a Sella San Marco, and a pair of Zipp 808’s. Otherwise I’ll never be cool. (Or broke.)

In riding news that doesn’t involve me going very, very slowly to and from work, I went out to see the penultimate stage of the Tour of California last weekend. The stage in to Pasadena has ended with a crit around the Rose Bowl for at least the last two years. I had an odd day with some weird schedule constraints, so I drove out to see it. The pictures of the race are on Flickr. Here are some of my favorites:

I didn’t get there early enough for a spot by the finish, so I settled for a corner on the bottom of a hill. There was a pretty good crowd there, including a gaggle of MTB’ers.

Astana — race leader Levi Leipheimer’s team (also that Armstrong guy) — was pushing the pace of the main peleton all day. It was impressive that they were able to keep the pack behind them so effectively.

George Hincape was in the break. He won this stage in last year’s race. I was really rooting for him to win this year’s, but he got edged out at the very end.

I was able to get a shot with both Armstrong (first in this shot, with the yellow helmet) and Leipheimer (third, in the yellow jersey) in it. Also (I think) Christian Vande Velde just entering the frame on the left and <insert name of Astana domestique here> up by Lance.

The race organizers said that 2,000,000 people came out to see the race in person. (Counting all eight days, I imagine.) They said that it was the best attended sporting event in California history, which I find to be a somewhat dubious claim on account of we had the Olympics not too long ago. Either way, the little crowd at my corner was certainly enthusiastic.

My 2008 new years resolution was to ride my bike to work 50 times. I made it, but just barely, making it to 50 in the second week of December. Fifty trips between Monrovia and Pasadena is about 1,000 miles. That’s not a ton of riding in a year, but it’s a whole lot more than I usually do, and it was 50 fewer car trips to and from the office. So I’m quite pleased with how that went.

There was one drawback, though. I never really felt like riding on the weekend or just around town or whatever, because it “wouldn’t count” in some odd, self-imposed way. This is a crying shame, considering both that I live in Southern California where the whether is perfect for cycling 99 days out of 100 and that cycling just for the fun of it is damn fun.

For 2009, I’ve set a similar goal but without the silly “It has to be going to/from work” provision. I’d like to ride at least 2,000 miles before the end of the year. That’s still not a crazy amount of riding — I’d hit that if I just rode to work twice a week — but it’s still a pretty good amount for me, and it’s realistic even if I have to take a few weeks off for whatever reason.

Here’s where I’m at so far:

January Miles: 212.66
Percentage of monthly goal: 128%
Percentage of annual goal: 11%

Of note is that there was almost a week where I was completely out of commission due to a ruined wheel. Something that will probably help me a lot is getting on the ball as far as maintenance is concerned. (Also finishing the Bridgestone so I’ll have something else to ride the next time I do something horrible to my commuter.)

Along similar lines, Stephanie and I have signed up to do the Livestrong Challenge ride in Austin this October. Briefly, this is a charity ride put on by the Lance Armstrong Foundation to raise money for cancer research, screening and survivor programs. We’re signed up to do the 90 mile ride, which is more than either of us have ever ridden at a go. It should be fun working up to that.

Shameless plug: as with any charity sort of ride, there’s a fund raising component. If you like what the LAF does and want to support their efforts by way of sponsoring us on this ride, you can donate via the interwebs. Here’s a link to my donation page, and here’s Stephanie’s.

Happy anniversary, Stephanie! What an amazing two years. I love you!

I found out today that people who don’t use Google Reader (and you really should) can read my shared items. So, um… yeah. That’s what I’m reading. I am sure that you will either be delighted and amused or you will not.

Also, I signed up for the FriendFeed thing. Does anybody else use that? It seems like it would be much handier in a world without news aggregators. However, we do not live in such a world, so I don’t quite get it. (Although it still makes more sense than Facebook. I just don’t get that one.)

Hola, Amigos. I know it’s been a long time since I’ve rapped at ya about the bikes, so I figured I’d fire off a quick update.

I’m a little more than one third of the way done with my new years resolution. Today was my 17^th ride to/from work. To celebrate hitting the 1/3^rd mark, I took the northern route home through Sierra Madre. (Map below.) Stan recommended this route the last time I talked to him. He was totally right. The bike lane along Orange Grove and the section of Sierra Madre in Pasadena was awesome, and there were way fewer stops than my normal route. I don’t know that I’ll be taking it in to the office any time soon — the road in to Sierra Madre is, um… steep — but it’s great for coming home.

Some things I’ve learned over the past few weeks:

• I don’t enjoy riding home when it’s over 100, although the middle 90’s are fine
• Cars put out a lot of heat. It’s really uncomfortable being next to them at stop lights
• The Arboretum feels like a giant air conditioner when they’re watering the north end of the property. Which is really nice after sitting next to aforementioned hot cars.
• I need exactly one gear to get to/from the office. So perhaps I’ll get a single speed as a backup bike.
• If you’re putting a new chain on your bike, be sure to read the instructions carefully, least you destroy the chain pin. (Not that I did this. No sir. Not me. Although many, many thanks to Stephanie for taking the bike down to Stan’s and getting the chain fixed!)

Oh, I must remember to give glowing mention to the trunk rack I got a couple of weeks back. It’s a vast improvement over a backpack. No messy straps hanging all over me, no ugly sweaty back when I get to work. If you’re looking for something big enough to carry a change of clothes and a person’s worth of wallets and gadgets and keys, I can’t recommend the Novara “Deluxe” Rack Trunk quite enough.

So anyway, yeah. Yay bike commuting. I’m genuinely enjoying both not being in the car and getting outside more often. I’ve lived in the land of inordinately good weather for almost 14 years now, and I really can’t believe that I haven’t taken any advantage of that until now.

Memestealing from Pat, Kitty, etc.

The rules, such as they are:

1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search
2. Using only the first page of results, pick one image.
3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into Big Huge Lab’s Mosaic Maker to create a mosaic of the picture answers. (Right click the mosaic to copy and save.)

And the questions/answers:

1. What is your first name? Corey
2. What is your favoriate food? sushi
3. What high school did you go to? East
4. What is your favoriate color? blue
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Bob Roll
6. What is your favorite drink? Martini
7. What is your dream vacation? Tofino
8. What is your favorite dessert? Scotch
9. What do you want to be when you grow up? retired
10. What do you you love most in life? Stephanie and Fletcher
11. What is one word that describes you? caffinated
12. What is your flickr name? cap

My new year’s resolution this year is to ride my bike to work at least 50 times. The first thing that I have learned from this is that I a master of excuse making. Between morning meetings, my employer’s occasional “dress like a banker” days, family scheduling, angst about being drenched with sweat at work and the good old fashioned lazy, I managed to go more than one third of the year without making any progress towards this goal. As of this week, however, I’m on my way.

The ride could not have been more pleasant. It was cool in the morning and not hot in the afternoon. Morning traffic was great. One driver waited at a four way stop and waived me through such that I wouldn’t have to come to a complete halt, which was totally cool of him. None of the cars got all up ons when I took the lane, which I did at every intersection. Exactly one car got within three feet of me. SGV drivers: thanks!

It took me about twice as long to ride — almost exactly an hour each way — as it does to drive on a bad day. (Although not an atypically bad day. Few of my drives in count as “good.”) That said, I got two hours more exercise than I would usually get, so I consider it a big time-saving win.

The home route through Arcadia’s peacock country may or may not be the best way to do things. I’m looking to avoid traveling on Rosemead or Colorado West of Baldwin, and this seemed an easy enough cut through, however I took a couple of wrong turns and ran in to some dead ends. Huntington in the morning was 100% reasonable; I’ll probably give it a go on the way home next time.

I’m planning to ride again next Thursday, and hopefully twice the week after that if all continues to go well.

Stephanie got me a subscription to Sirius for Christmas, and we were listening to its jazz channel this evening while doing the NYE thing. The first song I heard after midnight was Giant Steps. This bodes well.

Happy 2008, everybody.