First ride on a REAL highway

First off, holy crap it has been a long time since I posted. Unfortunately, I haven't been taking any hikes. That is mostly due to a very busy summer schedule with various sports and travel. I'm hoping to get back into that soon as I miss it. Backpacker Magazine has a contest set up for mapping unmapped (to them) hikes and getting prizes for how many miles you map. I had planned to do a bunch this summer (as there are barely any mapped in this area), but I just haven't gotten around to it.

What I have been doing is playing Ultimate (at least twice a week) and baseball. I joined an ultimate league in the area at the advice of a friend. You get assigned to a team (they try to make things even) and play one game a week on Thursday nights. Our team didn't do so well, going 3-7 in the regular season and then losing both of our pool play games in the playoffs and then our first (and only) game in the brackets. Despite not doing well, I had a great time, met some great people, and (I think) improved greatly at the game. I have PLENTY of things to work on in our fun pick-up games with friends. Hopefully, I can continue improving over the year and come back even better for next summer's league.

Another thing I did at the beginning of the Summer (31 May) was purchase a motorcycle. I've been riding it around mostly just for fun on back roads, but I have also used it to commute to school and also to run errands and go visit friends. I've taken a couple of long rides just to get out, too. A couple of weeks ago I headed out to Logan Mills, PA to take a look at the covered bridge there (some pictures here) Last night, I headed down to Greenwood Furnace State Park. I'd been meaning to go down there to go hiking for a while, but never made it. The route looked perfect to ride down though (mostly untraveled roads). I had planned to take a different way back than I went, but that road was quite broken and covered with gravel and loose rock (not the best riding surface). Instead, I decided that it was time to ride on the real highway and turned towards the Mifflin County Airport (right off of 322 just East of the reservoir and 7 Mountains). The frame to the right shows the (partial) GPS log of my trip. For some reason the my eTrex Vista shut off at Tussey Mountain and I had to turn it back on. Because of that (and the less than stellar Garmin Connect website), it is broken up into two activities.

Riding on the highway was not bad at all. I thought I'd be a bit scared, nervous, or tentative; but I was none of those. I just wound up cruising all the way home. The bike was nowhere near the top end of the RPMs driving at 60mph, but you still get a pretty good shake going that speed. Not at all uncomfortable, but I would NOT want to go all day doing that. I much prefer 55mph and lower. I suppose that you could put a smaller sprocket on the wheel or install a larger 5th gear sprocket and that would reduce the RPMs and give a bit smoother ride. Also, you can do some somewhat serious changes to the engine on the bike that I have (rephase the camshaft) that is supposed to smooth out the ride. I don't think that's necessary at this point (or possibly ever). I'll just keep fixing up the small things that are needed and slowly make the improvements that I want on the bike (like saddle bags!)

Montana

Spring Break was the other week and that means only one thing, Big Sky!! We did things a little differently this year. 1) The trip was Sat-Monday because of reason 2) I flew out of State College! When looking at flights back in August, it was less that $100 to fly directly from State College instead of BWI. That saves me an extra days travel and gas money. In the end, it didn't quite save me as much as I'd hoped. United at State College charged me extra for my boot bag because I used ski clothes to pad my boots in the bag. According to their policies, a boot bag only counts as a boot bag if it contains ONLY 1 pair of boots (and bindings). Being as I didn't want my boots destroyed, I padded them with clothes as I always do. The agent in State College then charged me an extra $35 for a second bag!

Other than the bags, the flight out was uneventful. State College to Dulles, then on to Denver, finally up to Bozeman. I had a delicious wrap in the Denver airport that wasn't too expensive! I got in kinda late to Bozeman, but still had an hour or so before Caitlin & Rogue arrived. Dad picked us all up and we headed up to the mountain, getting in just before midnight.

The skiing was incredible! First couple of days had some flat light and crazy wind, but still great. The logs of my skiing escapades can be found here. Some pictures (taken by professionals) can be found here. They are all proofs, and you have to pay an arm and a leg to get them, but they're fun to look at! You can see my beautifully painted poles (which are due for repainting in this off season so LOOK out for brighter poles next year) and my dad's REALLY bright green jacket.

On Wednesday, we did a change over of personel. Caitlin & Rogue left mid-day, and Farmer John arrived that night. The skiing on Wednesday was some of the best. We received several inches of powder overnight and had great skiing in the morning. The afternoon had some flat light and we saw 3 people being attended to by Ski Patrol in a very short time, so we called it early that day.

At some point in the later half of the week, I tweaked my knee... yeah, same one as last year. Not nearly as badly as last year as I didn't fall on it or have harsh impact. Well, I did fall, but that wasn't the cause of injury, falling was just fun! This year, I twisted it slightly while skiing backwards as I was checking on those behind me. It wasn't too terrible, I was able to continue skiing on it all week, but I certainly felt that I tweaked it a little bit. Hopefully, some rest is all it needs to heal.

I did ski every day, both the morning and the afternoon. Yes, 8 days in a row. I was good until the last afternoon. Had we been there any longer, I would have had to take a day off to rest, my legs were really tired that last afternoon.

Food wise, it was great. Gary did his traditional cooking most nights, and I lessened the load on him by cooking my chili one night. Next year, I'll see about cooking 2 dishes so that Gary isn't on the hook as much. In addition, we ate out 2 nights. Wednesday, we went to the Montana Ale Works (down in Bozeman). I had an elk burger, which was delicious and the beer there is always good (mostly local micro-brews). The other time we ate out at the Lone Peak Brewery. Lone Peak is located down in the Big Sky Meadow Village (about a 20 minute drive from the mountain) and brews their own beer on site. The pub food was quite good, and the beer great, as well. We started going to the Ale Works last year and I think that we might add both the Ale Works and the Lone Peak Brewery to the list of yearly nights out.

There's much more to tell (if you want all the details), but I don't feel like writing everything about every day. Those are the general concepts. As usual, I had a blast and am trying to figure out how I can move out to Montana and support myself. Gary and I brainstormed again this year, and we may have come up with some feasible ideas... time will tell.

Snowshoes and Pants

Well this post is quite late. I went on this hike 3 weeks ago, but never finished this post and updated it. Here's the post as I originally wrote it :)

Those are the two new pieces of gear I wish I had for this weekend. I went out hiking with Jena on Saturday, Ryan had to work until 6am so she left her tired husband to sleep and came out with me. We did just over 11 miles out around the Little Flat Fire Tower. Link to the route is here.

It was difficult to make out many of the trails, the snow cover was pretty good and the markings were pretty bad. We hiked along the road for a while until we found a trail that we were sure what it was and where it went. At the top of Little Flat is a fire tower. Unfortunately, the fire tower is closed to the public due to vandalism. It would have been pretty awesome to climb it and see the view. There's a cabin next to the tower (I assume for the tower supplies?) that was locked up. We followed the Mid State Trail (a common theme on my hikes) along the ridge.

The trail was covered in several inches of fresh snow, hence the title of the post. In some places it was 6 or more inches deep. Snow shoes would really have helped for a lot of the hike (especially the downhill parts). Also, having actual hiking pants would have helped. Currently, all of my pants are cotton. Better pants would be quick drying, wind proof, and stand up to the thrashing dished out by nature. I'll soon get myself a nice pair (or couple) of pants. All of this stuff costs money though :( Speaking of gear, I got to use my new backpack on this trek! It was awesome! I didn't use a hydration bladder (just kept a water bottle on cordage as usual), but I did fill it up with other layers and food and all that. Not too much weight, but still very comfy.

All in all it was a great hike, the full picture album can be found here.

Shingletown Gap

Hiking on the day after squats and legs is rough. But it was a blast. This week I decided to head out to Shingletown Gap. There are tons of trails over there, but I decided to hike up to the top of the ridge. Link to my route is here.

Unfortunately, Mikey went to Florida this weekend and Kirk went back to Philly, so I was without hiking buddies. When I arrived at the trailhead, the parking lot was empty. This made me a bit worried about something going wrong and not having anyone around for help, but I went on anyway. Luckily, nothing bad happened and I stayed safe.

The start of the hike was not so good. Plenty of people appeared to have been on the trail over the winter, packing the snow down into a nice sheet of ice. The main parts of the trail on the way up were super slippery. If I stayed to the edge, I could walk on some crusty snow, or I would occasionally step off the trail just so that I'd have snow to walk in. I really wish I had a set of crampons and/or trekking poles. I might look into getting a set if I keep up with this hiking. The hike up was killer on my already sore legs, but with that good burning feeling to let you know that you're working!

Once at the ridge, I intersected the Mid-State Trail and headed southwest for a while. I came across my first wide open vista and took this panoramic.

Unfortunately, I can't find the software for panoramic stitching that came with my camera (and it appears it wouldn't work anyway with OS X), so I used a 3rd party software to do the stitching. It is a great product, but I don't really need to pay for it right now. So, I'll make due with the little watermark on the bottom of the image.

Eventually, I turned around and headed northeast and came to a sign for the Roman Tower. I was intrigued, so I followed the signed trail to check it out. Turns out, this is where Mark took me back in May when he visited. I hadn't paid much attention when we hiked it back then, too busy talking and being exhausted (was just after I was mobile again following my knee injury). This was one of the few spots where I had a clear view to the North. Unfortunately, it was cloudy at this point, so the pictures weren't so great. I did get a couple of shots of State College though, check them out in the album (click on any of the pictures).

All in all it was a pretty nice hike. Unfortunately, my new backpack hadn't arrived yet, sorta. I was torn between the Osprey Kode 30L Pack and the Osprey Kode 22. Amazon had the 22 for Free 2-Day shipping AND free return shipping, while the 30 was available from another seller through Amazon. I thought that I'd get the 22 and see how I liked it. It arrived in 1 day on Thursday of this past week (WOOO AMAZON and UPS!) and I really like it, but decided that I would like the 30L more (hey, more features and more space). So I looked online and amazon was now selling the 30L directly through them, free 2-day shipping woo! Also, they were having a President's Day sale where if you spent more than $100 (on certain items of clothing) you'd get $25 off your order. Apparently, this counted in the sale. So, I ordered the Osprey Kode 30 Pack in Alpenglow Orange. The coupon didn't work, but a really nice amazon chat employee fixed my order so that I got the promotion! The new pack should be here on Monday, not in time for me to have used it today. I'm pretty pumped to use it this coming weekend to break it in.

The Grainy Waffle

Muahahahaha. Probably shouldn't start a post with maniacal laughter, but that's all I can really think about. Last weekend, I went on a short trip to San Diego (left Friday, returned Monday). The laughter is because my sister had no idea that I was coming.

Backstory: Caitlin started running a while ago. She'd done some shorter races, and then a few half-marathons. Recently, she decided that she would run a full marathon. Due to the rigorous training needed, I was hearing through the grapevine (my mom) that this would most-likely be her first and last marathon. When she posted on Facebook about her friends running their marathons two weeks prior to hers and remembering how much fun it was to cheer on our family when a bunch of them ran the Marine Corps marathon, I wanted to be there to support my sister.

So, I fired off an e-mail to Rogue to see what (if any) the plans were for the marathon. He said that he was planning to go up and meet up with her at a few spots on the course and possibly a few friends would join. I looked up airfare and found that I had two options. Option A - I have a free roundtrip flight on SouthWest, but I have to drive to an airport that SW serves (i.e. Baltimore). Option B - I found a crazy cheap roundtrip fare out of State College on United. When I called my mom to tell her of my plans, she thought that it was an awesome idea and told me to fly out of State College and that she'd cover my ticket for me. THANKS MOM! An additional bonus, these would be some of the same flights that I'd take on my trip out to Big Sky in March.

So, I checked back in with Rogue and our plan was hatched. I was to fly in on Friday night and out Monday mid-day. Rogue made sure that Caitlin didn't have any work on Saturday as he was already committed to a tournament up in Santa Barbara. Then he made some fake plans for Friday night to make sure that Caitlin was available. The entire two weeks leading up I could not stop smiling every time I thought about the trip. On Friday, Rogue picked me up from the airport and we headed to the apartment. When Caitlin returned home, she was quite surprised (and I think/hope happy, very hard to tell in the mix of emotions). We then promptly went out to dinner where the first thing we did upon arriving at On The Border was to get a picture taken of the 3 of us! My mom always asks that when we're together we get pictures with each other, and we always keep not doing it.

After dinner, I don't remember much. I think we watched some TV and then I crashed. I know that I was very tired. Saturday, Caitlin and I headed up to Carlsbad to pickup her info and check out the Expo. The Expo was pretty cool. There was tons of gear, clothing, food, etc. Cait picked up a bum-pack running type thing so that she could keep her cell phone with her along with holding her number and some gels.

On the way back to the apartment, we hit up some yarn stores as Caitlin is making some baby Jayne hats and was out of the necessary colors. I had found out that there is a World Market right next to where they live. A couple of days earlier, I discovered that World Market sells Bundaberg Ginger Beer (the nectar of the gods!) and other Australian goodness. So we stopped there and I picked up a 4-pack of Ginger Beer and a sleeve of Mint Slices (as Caitlin hadn't had them while she was there). I am happy to say that she liked both. We went out to lunch at Red Robin. A word of advice, if you find yourself hanging out with somebody the day before his/her marathon, you need to be very mindful of what you eat. The rest of the day, we just relaxed.

Sunday, we were out the door by 5am to head up to Carlsbad. It was quite cold! Not what I expected for sunny Southern California! I loaned Caitlin my jacket (as she was only in running gear and a thin hoodie) to keep her warm. Rogue also gave up his jacket to wrap around her legs for warmth (pictures in the album). You can really see the family resemblance in these pictures. Check out that chin and nose action! We met up with Caitlin 5 times on the course and then just barely got to see her cross the finish line (Rogue and I had to run through a parking lot from the last time we saw her to the finish line to see her again). Then we met up with a bunch of other friends who came out to support Caitlin.

After much hydrating and moving around, we headed to Dan & Debbie's house where Caitlin showered and changed and then we all headed out for food. Everybody wound up getting the brunch buffet as it had everything that we were thinking about getting. It was mostly good, but certainly suffered from being out all morning. We parted ways after food and went back to the apartment to relax and watch some football.

Monday, I had wanted to see the beach while I was there so Caitlin took me to the La Jolla shores (where we always seem to go). Nice walk along the beach and then to the hotel where she and Rogue were married. Then she took me to Mt. Soledad, somewhere I'd never been. Got some pretty great views of the city and surrounding areas. Then the best part, she took me to the science center where she works. It is so freakin cool! All of the fun displays and stuff to play with, gah! She has the best job! Finally, we headed to lunch at a sandwich shop that we couldn't find... so we went to Panera instead. Then it was off to the airport to start my journey back home. Leaving the warmth and sun back to the snow and cold.

All in all, it was an excellent trip. A blast to surprise my sister. And always great to get to see and hang out with family.

Hiking

Today started one of my Non-New Year's-New Year's Resolutions. I'm sure that sounds like it makes no sense, but it does. Basically, I didn't make any New Year's resolutions because I either never have any good ideas or I never seem to follow through with them. This past week, I decided that I wanted to go hiking more.  Today, I decided that I would try to go hiking at least once every week.

In central PA, there are dozens of trails around, from short hour long hikes to all day (or multi-day) hikes. As part of my plan to keep from getting into (or possibly get out of) a sedentary lifestyle, hiking seems to fit the bill. Sure, I'm back to going to the gym during the week and I still help out with SCUBA on Thursdays (and the occasional Tuesday as necessary), but I've also noticed that the weekends are usually filled with sitting around the house mostly doing nothing.

I had decided on Friday that I wanted to hike the Indian Steps trail this weekend. I don't really need to do a full write-up on the hike, you can find much more information than I feel like typing here. I did post a couple of pictures to my album that you can find by clicking on the picture to the right. The drive in was interesting. From where we started the hike, you turn of PA-26 onto a dirt road. Because of the snow we've been having, it was a packed snow covered dirt road... through the woods... up and down hills. It was an awesome drive. I *almost* got the snow chains from the trunk just to put them on, but the SAAB wound up handling just fine without them.

After finding the start of the trail, we found a large enough area off the road where we could park (see picture). Mike and I loaded up and headed out up the trail. The steps were not created by Indians (as the name would suggest) but they are old and steep. The hike starts off going right up the mountain, so its a good kick in the pants. Once up, you follow the ridge westward for a while before looping back to where we'd parked. There were a couple of nice flat spots on the ridge with some picnic tables and a couple of fire pits. As the top of the ridge is along the Mid-State Trail, I assume they are places for overnight campers (as we also saw a trail sign that just said 'H20'). We were afforded some pretty nice views from the top; unfortunately, both Mike and my cameras' batteries had died so we didn't get many pictures. I did bring my GPS along with me (as I like to do for my travels) so you can see the track/stats here.

On the way back to the car, Mike and I got talking about various meats that we'd eaten or desired to eat: bison, kangaroo, alligator, rabbit, etc. After all this talk about meat on top of a good hike, we both were craving some steak. With no great steakhouses in State College (that I know of), and my talking about cooking some good steaks over the summer while at the beach, we decided to make steaks for dinner. After getting home, I headed out to Wegmans for my weekly grocery run and picked up a sirloin steak and some potatoes, also. Cut up the sirloin into a couple of steaks and hit them with the dry-rub I'd picked up over the summer. We fired up the grill and roasted the cut up potatoes and grilled the steaks to near perfection. He, Justin, and I feasted while watching some football and then parts of Transformers on TV. Truely a "manly" day.

le Tour

So, this year (as with every year) I look forward to watching the tour.  It started off this weekend and I got to watch PLENTY of tour coverage on Versus with Paul and Phil (the best cycling announcers out there).  Here's the rub, during the week, I'm in the office when live tour coverage is going on.  So I have a couple of options.

1. Record the live coverage or watch the replay when I get home in the evening.  I could do this, but it is always so much more fun and exciting to see the action live!
2. Watch one of the free feeds online.  I did that this morning via some links I found on CyclingFans.  The coverage wasn't bad, but there were drop-outs and not the best quality picture.  But for free, it is not a bad option at all.
3. Watch the Versus feed online via their TourTracker.  Unfortuantely, this option costs... $30!  Now, you get great HD coverage and probably extra awesome displays and information and all that.

I'm a bit torn.  For one, their FAQs says: "Are Phil and Paul the commentators for the live stream?  The live stream will have commentary throughout with a mix of Phil and Paul along with other commentators from Match."  So I do get some Paul&Phil.  But lets look at the pricing.  There are a total of 20 Stages plus the prologue.  They just completed Stage 3.  4 of those remaining will be on weekends.  An additional 4 will be while I am in California.  So, 20-3-4-4 = 9 Stages remaining where I could watch it online.  For $30 I just don't think it is worth it.

Versus, I would like to support you, I really would.  But $30 is just too much.  ESPN was great this year with the World Cup.  They offered every single match FREE online at ESPN3 (though I think there was a deal with academic institutions and Comcast).

For now I will either watch it through somebody else online or catch the recaps when I get home @ night.