Roger Bikes

Category: Off the Bike

  • Designing a home : 43/100

    Kate and I have decided to build a home on the land in Colorado. We already have a guest cabin built but its not quite a home. The main issue is the kitchen area doesn’t really exist. There is only one sink, in the restroom, and it was never intended to be lived in full time.

    Now that we have been on the land for a few years we have a better idea of what we want. Until we started trying to put things down on paper. Who knew that architecture was so hard?

    When we first bought the land I used SketchUp to design the driveway, water, septic, and propane. Now we are talking about a house and I am using SketchUp again. Its very intuitive, once you get past the steep learning curve. The free version is only available online but that is enough for our needs. Once we have a general idea we will have legit plans drawn up by a pro.

    The process is exciting and draining. How large should a bathroom be? Do we want a second floor? What about a basement? The options are endless. This is gonna be fun.

    Workout Details

    Strength training on the recommended routine this morning before work. Got up and going again for 2 days in a row.

  • Wordflow : 41/100

    Scripting.com is a blog run by Dave Winer. Dave helped invent RSS which does a lot of behind the scenes things to make blogs work. Anyway Dave blogs, a lot, and has lots of things to say about blogging. He had a recent tweet talking about how he uses Twitter for first drafts. Its part of his ‘wordflow’.

    I dig the term and idea of wordflow. Everything written starts in our heads caused by something else. Finding methods and ways of capturing those thoughts and bouncing them off of other people is a lot of what the web is about.

    I am using WordPress to write my thoughts down and then publish them for anyone on the web to read. There is a lot of complicated stuff happening when I use WP to do this but I don’t think about much of it. I just write, add photos (which I spend time on optimizing), and click Publish.

    Just over a year and a half ago WP pushed out an updated editor called Gutenberg. Before I started this site I had used Gutenberg, but not too much. Now I am using it daily and I have to say that I am sold on it, from a writing perspective.

    For writing it is very fluid and easy to use. There are occasional issues where a selection acts strange, but I just have to click somewhere on the screen with my mouse and everything is fine. The layout looks much nicer than the old editor. I think this is something that a lot of people overlook/dismiss about writing software. If I don’t enjoy working in the editor I probably won’t use it as much.

    Using Microsoft Word to write anything is annoying to me because the app itself is very cluttered. When I am writing I don’t need bold, italics, alignment, tab limiting, and all of the other options available in the tool bar. This is how the WP editor used to be. Now it is almost empty by default, and with the click of an ‘X’ in the upper right corner the screen is almost all writing space.

    Adding a link is as easy as copying the URL, highlighting the text, and hitting the enter button. Gutenberg creates the link and I can keep on writing. If you want an internal link highlight the text and either click on the link icon fly-out or press ⌘K. Then start typing and it searches through existing posts or pages. Hit enter and keep on writing.

    Before Gutenberg I would write in another app like Drafts or Ulysses, but now I write everything in Gutenberg. Its not as smooth as a native app but it is close enough.

    Now everything is stored in WordPress. This means it is easier to find everything and drafts are that much closer to being Published.

    Workout details

    I have almost fallen off the wagon with my workouts. I have not been getting up early enough to exercise before work. I can fix this by going to sleep sooner. Today I did get some strength training in and then walked enough to close my activity rings on the watch.

  • Forty : 40/100

    Forty : 40/100

    This featured photo is of Hesperus Mountain located east of us in the La Plata Mountains of the San Juan Mountains, in southwest Colorado. The summit is at 13,237 ft which is pretty damn high. I have not hiked Hesperus but I have been on the trails to the north and south.

    Workout Detail

    It was super cold this morning so I didn’t get nuthin done before work. Then we had dinner with friends, outdoors, and suddenly it was nighttime. Kate walked a few laps with me and then I walked a bunch more to get my rings closed.

    I haven’t been riding my bike as much lately. This is due to the high winds and also I have been enjoying working on the trails. Kate and I walk them every evening and talk about the day and plans for the land. I try to get a lap or two in on the smaller loops at least once before work starts. The walking meditation aspect is very comforting.

  • Winter in June : 39/100

    Winter in June : 39/100

    Getting some winter in June here in southwestern Colorado tonight. It was 46 at sunset. Now it is 41 and it will hit a low of 32 tonight. The mountains got a dusting of snow.

    Workout detail

    Back on strength training today. I did the recommended routine and felt ok on pull ups. I changed my hand positions between sets to see if that helped. It kinda did but overall pull ups are hard.

  • Windy day : 37/100

    Windy day : 37/100

    Woke up at 2am to the trailer shaking and the wind howling. The forecast for the day was that it would be windy but I didn’t expect it to show up at 2am. Not only did it keep me awake but Dazey does not do well with storms either. She was in the bed with us all night.

    The forecast was pretty accurate for the rest of the day. We has some rain with hail and lots of wind gusts. Its just relentless wind and the direction shifts regularly. On my drive to Home Depot about 40 minutes away I got blown around a bit. At one point there was about a mile of road with an inch or two of hail. I must have missed that part of the storm by minutes.

    One nice thing about windy days is that the temperatures tend to stay low. This was the case today and I appreciated it while working on the eastern end of the fence-line trail. The trail now connects from the western end to the eastern with the road as the return route. In total its about a 0.8 mile loop.

    The next step will be getting the northern end done so the full loop is on trail.

    Workout detail

    I spent 2 hours working on the trail. My elbow is feeling a little sore. Iced it a few times this evening. Now for bed.

  • Best laid plans : 36/100

    Yesterday I posted about taking a photo of the full moon rising. It was gonna be epic as it was happening within ten minutes of sunset.

    Unfortunately we had an overcast night tonight:

    oh well

    Sometimes you shoot for the moon and you get ‘nuthin!

    Workout details

    Got in a strength workout after work. It was raining lightly so I stayed cool. Pull ups felt good but my right elbow is getting some jolts of pain. They fade quickly but I need to keep an eye on not pushing too hard.

  • Shooting the Moon : 35/100

    Shooting the Moon : 35/100

    Tomorrow night is a full moon and I want to get some photos of it rising. To do this I first figure out where and when the moon is going to rise. I like using an app called The Photographer’s Ephemeris or TPE:

    The Photographer’s Ephemeris (TPE) helps you plan outdoor photography shoots in natural light, particularly landscape and urban scenes. It’s a map-centric sun and moon calculator: see how the light will fall on the land, day or night, for any location on earth.

    TPE marketing talk

    For tomorrow night this is what it tells me about the moon rise:

    The blue background represents light pollution. Darker is better.

    Now they have an AR feature that lets you visualize where the moon will rise on the horizon:

    I will either open the blinds or go outside tomorrow.

    Now I know where and when I need to be. The trick is to have all batteries charged and an empty memory card. Gonna want a tripod and a telephoto lens as well.

    Workout details

    Today was a bit of a mess. I had to run errands in the morning and then we had guests after dinner. I got some walks in but could have used more. Tomorrow I will get a ride in.

  • Cold Shower : 34/100

    Cold Shower : 34/100

    I have always been a long shower person. As a kid I would run the water heater empty and annoy the shit out of my family. My dad tried getting me to be more reasonable and I got a little better. However, to this day I love taking a long hot shower.

    Except when its warm outside. If the weather is warm then I have to finish my showers on cold. This has the double effect of cooling me off and waking me up better than any cup of coffee.

    I grew up in the mountains of Colorado where the spa and sauna life is everywhere. Beating the winter cold is all about getting ridiculously hot and then jumping into a cold pool or snowbank. The shock to the body was always talked about as therapeutic for sore muscles.

    In recent years the cold shower/bath therapy has been championed by Wim Hof. With his self titled Method, Mr. Hof (not to be confused with the Hoff) has pushed cold therapy into the zeitgiest. It uses a combination of breathing technique with cold showers to help practitioners with: “increased energy, better sleep, reduced stress levels, heightened focus & determination, increased willpower, and a stronger immune system”.

    From a scientific standpoint there is no good evidence that this method will cure any disease. However there is plenty of anecdotal experience to show that it has some benefits. For a couple hundred dollars you can get video lessons from Mr. Hof himself.

    For me getting the cold shower in the morning does a lot to help cool me down and get me focused. Going from hot to cold water takes a little practice. Personally I find that having it hit my head only to start with helps. It gets the initial jolt out of the way and hits your face. Once you recover from that shock getting the rest of your body cold is a little easier. Generally I try for at least 30 seconds. Sometimes I forget to turn on the trailer’s water heater and take the entire shower cold.

    Workout Details

    Today I had a hankerin for strength training. I took a 2 week break and was ready to get back to it. I setup my pull up bar in a new spot out in the center of our land. My pull ups are feeling very consistent. I feel I am now pulling the entire movement through my shoulders, arms, and lats. When I lower down it is controlled and smooth. I did 4 sets of 3 and may have enjoyed pull ups for the first time in a long time.

    This morning I spent 30 minutes working the fence-line trail. Its progressing well.

  • WTF? : 33/100

    WTF? : 33/100

    Its hard to think of what to write about right now that doesn’t address the elephant in the room. The US, the country that I live in, is continuing to fracture across ideologies at a lightning pace.

    I remember the Rodney King video in 1991 and watching it on TV. I was 15 years old and had grown up in the mountains of Colorado. I played ice hockey and we would travel to Denver most weekends during the season. This exposed me to the city, but mostly to the suburbs. Basically nothing really happened while I grew up.

    Then the Rodney King video came out showing several Los Angeles police officers ruthlessly beat Mr King. News organizations around the world picked it up and broadcast it constantly. It seemed really hard to believe that Mr King was fighting back somehow, which was the defense of the officers. At 15 I knew it was wrong and that the officers needed to be held accountable for their actions.

    Fast forward one year and the trial of the 4 officers charged had them all acquitted. Los Angeles blew up. For 6 days people reacted to the verdict with anger and violence. Many people died, the camera footage was graphic and constantly on TV.

    Today I am watching hundreds of Rodney Kings and LA riots unfold at the same time. The police response across the country has varied from horrific to humanizing. I mentioned at work earlier that I am still in shock about it all.

    I started searching for how to be a white person and fight racism. My thinking was that I can use logic and reason to become a better white person. The good news is that you don’t have to study too much. You just treat everyone with the respect that you expect from them. Regardless of their skin color, sexual orientation, education, employment, or choice of music.

    Then we need to talk about this to everyone we know. I have friends and family that don’t treat everyone with respect. There are a myraid of reasons they think this way and I try to talk with them about it. Helping people see their prejudices is difficult but rewarding.

    Also we need to vote, but politics is a whole other can of worms.

    Workout detail

    Finally got on the bike for the first time in many days. It felt good to ride up the road a bit. Once I was warmed up I came back and road the fence-line loop a few times. It still needs a lot of grooming but its a fun loop around the property. Kate and I also did the post dinner trail walk.

  • Thirty Two : 32/100

    Thirty Two : 32/100

    Today marks the 32nd post in the 100 days of blogging challenge. This also marks the second month of the challenge with today being June 1st. I have written here a few times about the challenge and my approach to it. Mainly I am trying to write something more coherent than what I journal about, but I am also trying to keep it as a hobby type activity. The goal is the activity.

    Staying Active

    One of the most important things I have learned about myself is that I need to be active. Physically and mentally I need a challenge and a goal to shoot for. When I don’t do these things I get moody and generally unpleasant.

    For physical activity I have an Apple watch. The daily rings keep me focused on: moving calorie burn, exercise minutes, and standing for a few minutes each hour. Right now I have hit the Move and Exercise goals everyday since Dec 31st, or 154 days. I had a good streak going with the Stand goal too until last Wednesday. Hitting these goals gives me a few boosts: 1) I have been active all day and 2) I close the little red, blue, and green circles and remember the simple joys of life.

    One of the things that recently got me into hitting all those goals has been the sharing aspect of the watch. Anyone else you know with an Apple watch can share their daily activity with you. You don’t get the GPS of their run or bike, but you do see that they did a type of workout and for how long. You can have notifications let you know when someone has completed a workout or reached a goal. Its like having a workout buddy, but you don’t have to wait for them at the gym.

    The blogging challenge has had a similar effect. When I see someone else’s blog post I am encouraged to write. I also have the camaraderie effect of not wanting to let them down and miss a post. The variety of posts has also helped me think of new things to talk about and ways to express them.

    For a little while I dreaded writing these posts some days. That was when the habit of writing hadn’t formed and I was also overthinking things. The habit has formed out of sheer will power to sit at the computer and write at some point everyday. The overthinking things was overcome when Kate reminded me that I am doing this for fun.

    By being physically active I am helping to calm myself enough to sit and write. The activity also helps me find things to write about. If you do enough things in the day something memorable has to have happened.

    We have 67 more posts to complete the challenge. I still struggle to write these posts because I want to write something interesting, but I also want to go to bed.

    Workout detail

    I hung the last of the drywall this morning before work. Kate took the day off to help her dad and brother start the taping and mud process. After work I grabbed my rake and built a new section of trail. This part connects from the start of Kiss of Cactus. Then it meets up with the lower half of another new trail that is still in development. Then Kate and I went on an after dinner stroll to survey what has been built so far.