El Tour Wrap Up

Saturday was my big charity bike ride, El Tour de Tucson. It's 109 miles around the perimeter of Tucson. I've ridden 104 miles before, but it took me something like nine and a half hours and involved things like sitting at picnic tables and eating turkey sandwiches. El Tour is THE big deal bike ride for cyclists in Tucson, and it's kind of the culmination of the season, even though you can pretty much ride year round in Tucson.

The start was seriously intimidating. Being me, I only managed to drag my sorry self to the start line with about 15 minutes to spare. James did some last minute number pinning and unloaded my bike while I kept myself busy by being confused and nervous. I lined up in the silver section and pretty soon we were off. The start went much more smoothly than I anticipated and everyone in my section gave everyone else lots of room.

I joined a paceline with some Team in Training folks from Central California. They were good riders and lots of fun to ride with. We planned to stop at the first rest stop, but somehow I missed it and lost them. The next 25 or so miles was spent looking for people to draft without much success. Finally I met up with a guy from Phoenix whose name I forgot within seconds of him telling me, and we rode together for a while.

The ride is great especially because the intersections are controlled and bikes pretty much get to go no matter what. The flip side is it's a really bad day to be driving in Tucson. James and I were supposed to meet in a parking lot at Oracle and Rancho Vistoso. I arrived within minutes of my planned arrival time and hung around for about 20 minutes. As it turns out, James was stuck in El Tour traffic at that very intersection that whole time. We missed each other, and poor James spent the whole day driving around looking for me and never finding me.

At this point I've totally given up on making it in 7 hours to get a girly gold award thing. I rode solo a while, rode and chatted with some people, and generally had a fun time. I had plenty of energy the whole time and generally was in less pain than I usually am on training rides. I'll chalk it up to adrenaline.

The best part of the ride was definitely the final push up my old nemesis, Silverbell. I stopped at a rest stop just after Rattlesnake pass to fill my bottles and take off my armwarmers. I had a bizarre conversation with a volunteer who tried to tell me that it was "all downhill from here" and that we were currently at a higher elevation than the start. I knew this wasn't true at all, and argued with him for a minute. But then I looked at my watch and realized I had a chance of making it in my original goal time of 7 hours. So I hopped back on my bike and was off. I was still looking for people to draft with me, and I asked this guy who had been with me for the past few miles if he wanted to pull each other in. He said sure, and I mentioned we could probably make it in 7 hours, and he got really excited about helping me meet my goal. So Val and his friend Warren from Durango Colorado hammered all the way up Silverbell letting me draft most of the way. I did a few short pulls, and we were really hustling. It's the fastest I've ever ridden that section of Silverbell. Heather 1, Silverbell 0. Alas, we got stopped at stoplights three times, and finished in 7 hours, 1 minute and 12 seconds. I'm pretty happy with that result. I was shocked that I made it that quickly, and now I'm excited to see how fast I can do it next year.

Jonathan finished in just under 6 hours, so he got gold and won the recumbent division.

Here's a picture of me at Rattlesnake Pass. I still have my armwarmers on, but it's probably 70 degrees.

Soy yogurt

I haven't eaten soy yogurt in six years. The reason I know this is because it roughly coincides with when I met James. Not that James got me to stop eating soy yogurt, but because I remember that when I met him, I was on a Jackiesque food kick involving soy yogurt, lemon-ginger echinacea juice, and baby carrots.

This morning I ate breakfast, which is notable in itself. But the real surprise of the morning came in how much soy yogurt (or "cultured soy" as it is apparently called) has improved in the past 6 years. Not once did I think I was eating cherry flavored tofu or rotten soymilk. It tasted like a less tangy yogurt. Damn, I might even go buy some more.

Dork Machine

I've been working on beating my computer into submission so that it does exactly what I want, when I want it. My first attempt was installing ActiveWords, a program that recognizes keywords and uses those keywords to launch programs, open directories or files, or replace the typed text with a prechosen phrase. However, it was having problems recoginizing Firefox as my default browser, pretty much rendering it useless. And it hung in the background, slowing my computer down by logging every keystroke and trying to recognize my special words.

Luckily, I work with some people who are quite good at these things. Apparently, Windows has all kinds of built in functionality that has somehow escaped my knowledge. That's actually not surprising, because despite having used Windows for about 10 years, I've never felt the need to learn much about how anything worked. This has been a very successful defense against accidentally falling into a desktop support role at any of my jobs.

So thanks to my co-worker Will, I now know how to do scheduled tasks and customized keyboard shortcuts. I hit ctrl + alt + W and my five weather websites open up in tabs in Firefox. It rocks my world.