In the beginning...

We are staying two nights in


Yorktown before heading out. Sara did some research on accomodations and found you can stay for free in a church owned house. I thought it would be bare bones, but that is not the case at all. Sheets on the beds and dishes in the cupboards. Amazingly kind.
I'm billing this trip as the affirmation of human kindness trip.
Four of us rode out to get groceries and we had a chance to compare equipment and styles. There is one recumbent (a bike which you sit on like a chair and pedal out in front of you), two Bike Fridays, one hybrid (like a mountain bike) and two traditional road bikes. Five people are carrying panniers (bike bags) and two have trailers.

Problems with Gas

So, I have struggled with how to carry my gas bottle. The old panniers had a perfect external pocket, the new ones have none.


So after extensive Internet searching, I decided to get a wire cage and stretch it. Works well.



Unfortunately, that took up one of my water bottle spaces and the third was too small after adding fenders, so a Jerry rig was in order. The third cage just needed to be moved back. A very sweet person I know gave me a small strip of aluminum, into which I drilled three holes. The cage is attached through two holes and the bar is attached through two holes, meaning the cage, bar and frame do share one of the holes. I rode today with no troubles.





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http://www.daftlogic.com/sandbox-google-maps-find-altitude.htm

To find the grade of a road:
use this site to determine the start and end elevations (use the meter scale result); use google maps to find the distance. Convert the miles into meters (enter the distance and "to meters" in a google search). The Equation is (rise ÷ run) * 100 Rise is the difference between the two elevations and run is the distance. For example if you rise 122 meters over 1.5 miles (2,414 meters), the equation would be (122÷2414)*100 This would give you a grade of 5.5. Thanks to Michael from Rochester, NY for the prompt to research this (he must have known the math would be easy, even for me)!



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MOO
Here are a few examples of the Moo cards which came in the mail today.
Moo.com allows you to submit up to 100 different photos to put on your 100 mini cards. The opposite side has space for your text and a line graphic. I put my name, blog address and a brief reminder of who I am, so that I can hand these out to people who want to see where I am in my journey. I only chose about 20 different images; the images I chose needed to format well onto the skinny cards and I wanted them to be photos I took while cycling (though one is not). Moo allows you to upload your photos and then there are tools online to zoom, rotate and crop the photos to the correct dimensions. I thought the upload time was quite reasonable.
Cost: $25 including shipping for 100. They came in a really robust two part box. These cards exceeded my expectations!


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