Rock Climbing

Dawn really hates the cold, getting her out to ride when its under 30 degrees is difficult/impossible. She's always been kind of interested in rock climbing and a new gym opened up in Glastonbury last year. We went and took the belay class and soon after signed up for a membership. We've gone 3 or 4 times a week since then.

Its really fun - in a totally different way that mountain biking (yeah I have to compare everything to biking).

Its much less aerobic, but much more strength oriented. Its also much more deliberate. We're both progressing in our ability to climb harder and harder routes. We have a lot to learn with technique for sure, but the main limiting factor seems to be hand strength. I can only hold onto a hold for so long before my hand starts to cramp or give out in some way. Some of that is because my technique is bad and I'm having to use my hands to hold on more than I should, but a lot of it is just plain (relatively) weak hands.

So far I am really enjoying it though. I see little bits of progression with every trip to the gym, which makes it rewarding to go. I'll admit its a bit frustrating to see some not so fit people climbing routes that I can't even start, never mind finish.

The negative of this is that my biking time has been cut back a bit. I have to figure out how to balance it better. Not a big deal I guess. I noticed the last two times I played bass my fingers were really tight too - hopefully that will subside as my hands get stronger.

Rolling the fatty

Given the high rolling resistance of the fatty, I usually take the RIP on group rides due to some deep seated fear that I won't be able to keep up. I had the fatty in the back of the Element from Saturday's ride, but at the last second that fear crept in and I swapped it for the RIP9 before I headed out for the Sunday ride (the RIP had a newly rebuilt fork on it too, which sweetened the pot). I got to the group ride on Sunday morning and found the fork had no air left in it, ugh. I aired it up and it seemed to hold ok for a few minutes in the driveway, so I went on the ride. Within a mile my fork was flat again. Two of the other guys on the ride brought fat bikes, I was kicking myself for not bringing mine!

I brought the RIP back to the bike shop and they found a loose air valve. I'm bummed I missed a ride because of the bike shop's error, but I must say its nice to have someone else figure the problem out.

While the RIP was in the shop another ride opportunity materialized, so I grabbed the fatty and headed out, no choice this time! Jeff and I had a great ride, the fatty was surprisingly capable and a lot of fun to ride. In the entire ride there was only one descent that overwhelmed the bike, I will also admit there were a few jumps along the way that I looked at wistfully as I absorbed the bump rather than boost and get one of those "moments of quiet" that Jeff likes to talk about. I wasn't pushing it too hard, but I am sure that I can go faster on the RIP than on the fatty. I can't say the RIP isn't fun, it is, but the fatty is fun too.

I'll be taking the fatty out on more group rides going forward, that's for sure.

Road biking - 1 year of experience

I have been a die hard mountain biker for 25+ years. I scoffed at road bikers, thinking that type of biking was boring and more suited to folks who are only interested in "fitness". I always say that I ride bikes for fun and that if it made me fat rather than kept me in shape, I'd be morbidly obese.

Last fall I had an epiphany about the number of bikes in the garage - I had NINE bikes in the garage and I really ever rode two of them. One by one I put the bikes up on Craigslist and got rid of them. After all that I ended up with some cash in my pocket. I was strongly considering buying one of those slack angled hardtail 29ers. My better half (and I use that phrase on purpose) convinced me that I would probably ride a road bike more often than I would a new hardtail. She reasoned that I already had a hardtail in the garage and it hardly ever got ridden.

I searched around a bit for road bikes, figuring late fall is a good time to find either used or new bikes, eventually settling on a Trek Madone 3.1 from one of the local bike shops (I should say it was surprising how few bikes in my size were in stock ANYWHERE).

I am completely surprised at how much I enjoy riding a road bike. Contrary to what I thought its not boring at all. Its not quite the thrill a second that mountain biking is, but its pretty exhilarating to go 50MPH down a steep hill with a turn at the bottom. Incidentally my max speed on the road bike is about 51MPH - I tried for a long time to break 50MPH, the only time I was able to do it was by drafting off a box truck, I am not sure it would be possible without drafting. I love the fact that I can jump on the bike and crank out a ride right from my house with very little set up and no drive time. I do hour long rides at lunch time pretty often.

The interesting thing about road biking is that you really get out of it what you put into it. In mountain biking you encounter a steep hill - you have to go up it and on the steeper ones your heart rate is going to max out no matter how you get up. Roads tend to have less steep grades, so its possible to do a road ride and not really push your heart rate up - certainly you CAN max out your heart rate easily, but you don't HAVE to. I really don't know what that means from a fitness perspective, but it is interesting.

I have a lot of friends who talk about how much the road bike helps them in the woods. I'm honestly not sure how much I see/feel that. I guess I'm in better shape than I would be if I didn't ride all the times I did a road ride, but I don't feel it has really increased my speed in the woods all that much.

I hate riding when the trails are sloppy, the road bike really takes the pressure off that decision. If its above freezing, road bike is relatively comfortable, so its a really good option when the trails are wet.

Talking a bit about warmth - in mountain biking because you're moving slower and putting in more effort you can ride in lower temps and still be warm. In the winter I am almost always cold when I jump on the bike for a mountain bike ride. Its a lot harder to generate heat on the road bike, you pretty much have to have enough clothing on to be comfortable standing outside, if you are cold before the ride, you will be cold for the ride. In my case that means 30 F is about the lowest comfortable temp for road riding, any colder than that and its really hard to keep the warmth in and not be so bundled up that you can't pedal.

YMMV and all that stuff, just my experience.

Family trip to Kauai

We’re back from our vacation in Kauai, HI. This is the third time Dawn and I have gone there – but the first time the kids have gone. It’s a bit strange to me that we have never really been to another Hawaiian island besides Kauai, but our first two visits were so great that we decided to go there for our winter vacation with the kids. I suppose some of that is just knowing where things are helps facilitate the vacation to some degree. By all accounts it was a great vacation, Kauai delivered once again.  

The vacation started poorly, before we left the house we got a call from United Airlines saying the first leg of our trip to Dulles was canceled due to bad weather. We were told they could get us there on January 5^th at the earliest (the trip was scheduled to start on the 3^rd!). We booked four tickets on Amtrak to Washington and white knuckled the drive to New Haven to catch a “red eye” train (absolutely miserable!). It turned out getting to Dulles was the easy part, getting a plane out of Dulles was much harder. After six hours of messing about in IAD we finally got on a plane to LAX. Unfortunately it landed too late and we missed our connection out to Hawaii. We got four seats on the first plane out in the morning and United paid for two hotel rooms for us in LA. It was disappointing, but really only cut 6 hours or so of awake time out of our time on Kauai.

On to the good stuff: 

We rented a house in a resort area in the Poipu Beach area, it was a beautiful area and a nice house. The sunrise was beautiful from Poipu, and easy to see considering our body clocks were five hours ahead

What we would call a deck, the Hawaiians call a lanai, and this house had a huge one - we spent a lot of time out there.

"Shave Ice" is a popular treat in Hawaii, we had it a couple of times, good vacation food:

We bought snorkeling gear for everyone before we left, we spent many hours on vacation snorkeling off Poipu Beach,
which was within walking distance of the house we rented.






Locally grown rambuten:

Excellent Mexican close by:

Hanging out

Classic Hawaii scene:

Another sunset, ho hum

Walking to beach for a snorkeling session:

It’s hard to describe just how many fish and how many different types of fish are in the water there. It was really like swimming in someone’s well stocked fish tank. Fish of every size and color swam around in the reef protected waters. I kind of wish I had an underwater camera just to show what we were seeing, it really was incredible – just think of any undersea nature special you’ve seen, it was like that, really.  We also went on a guided snorkeling/whale watch tour, we didn’t take any pictures but it was a good (though cold) time and we got to see whales up close and swim with green turtles. That said we saw way more fish at Poipu Beach than we did on the boat. 

Scampering amongst the tidal pools was another favorite activity:

Various times during our visit we saw Monk Seals and Green Turtles resting on the beach. They seemed to have no worries about the people all around them, interesting that they have little fear of humans. 

I would be forgetting a big part of the wildlife in Kauai if I didn't mention the chickens and roosters, they are everywhere and LOUD

The first day we took a hike down to Mahaulepu Beach, it was a great hike along the coastline with excellent views. On your first hike in Kauai you take a hundred pictures in the first five minutes, slowly you realize that this beauty is everywhere in Kauai, the pictures don’t do it justice and it’s impossible to capture it all, regardless of how many pictures you take. 

 One of many rainbows we saw in Kauai, however this one brought us a pretty good downpour during the last few minutes of our hike (enough for us all to get soaked!).

 The trail runs along side a golf course at one point, Aaron was dying to get out there and hit a few, at $240 for a round it was slightly out of our price range: 

How is this for varied terrain? One minute you're looking at this amazing mountain range, 

then next you're walking through tall grasses

and then you're walking on volcanic rocks. Amazing! 

Our next adventure was a horseback ride along that same coast we walked the previous day – we were in similar spots a few times, but we were mostly on a different trail with entirely different views. 

I have been on horse back rides like this three or four times, despite that (and Emily owning horses for a few years) I am not comfortable on top of a horse. I just can’t seem to get the rhythm, at speeds faster than a slow walk it’s pretty uncomfortable. 

Emily and Dawn seemed to fall right into it and even Aaron seemed to have a lot easier time than I had. 

We all had a great time, it was a good three hours, the guide was great I loved hearing about the land and the history.

We did an ATV tour on Kauai as well – we weren’t sure what to expect, the guide prefaced the ride saying it was a slow tour on easy terrain (which I found a bit disappointing). While the ATVs had governors on them, the terrain was rough enough to keep my interest. 

We all had a great time (again), we got a good history lesson on the land and got to see several famous movie sites. 

Raiders of the Lost Ark - where Harrison Ford swings on the vine and jumps into the river to catch the plane while the natives are chasing him:

The Descendents - where George Clooney is standing at the top of the hill and showing his kids the land they own:

 Jurassic Park - where the small dinosaurs were running through the field:

We saw some wild pigs on the tour (though they seemed a bit less than wild to me:

I'm probably using the word "beautiful" too much:

A quick video of Dawn on the ATV 

 

The last two days we did somewhat serious hikes. I’ll admit not everyone in our party was excited about the prospect of hiking, but at the end we all had a good time on both. We found a really good groove on both hikes where we were power hiking at speeds I haven’t really done before, I’m happy we’re all in good enough shape to do that kind of thing for that length of hike. 

The first hike was on the Na Pali coast (north shore), this is the first two miles of an 11 mile hike that Dawn and I have done twice about 15 years ago. 

It was as beautiful as we remembered. Four miles of fast-hiking over extremely slippery rocks proved to be quite a work out. Those rocks are covered in a thin layer of really slippery mud.

 I'm going to have to go to the thesaurus for a new word:

 At the end of the hike we had to cross this river to get to the "beach" and our picnic spot, again there's that slippery mud on all the rocks, it was quite challenging:

It was interesting to see the contrast between the conservative/upper class trappings of Poipu and the hippy/gritty feel of the north shore, it was quite a dramatic difference. 

The beach at the end of the hike was a small inlet where the waves came crashing in, the noise here is incredible, the sign by the beach said that 83 people had died there to date, I can't imagine anyone going in that water! Ok this picture doesn't do it justice, these waves are at least 10' high.

The second hike was Awa’awapuhi Trail in the western part of the island. On the way to the hike we stopped at Wimea Canyon - pretty impressive hole in the ground (nice win-doo).

Dawn and I had looked briefly at the Awa’awapuhi Trail on one of our previous trips to Kauai, but hadn’t ever hiked it. The trail starts at 4,700’ and descends from there to 3,500’. We fast-hiked the trail both directions, but on the way down we were pretty much jogging the whole way. The trail itself wasn't really all that great - more slippery Kauai mud, but mostly its just hiking through the forest

Once you get through three miles of slipping and sliding, the trail ends on a pali (ridge) that juts way out and above the terrain around it. It was strange to see helicopters flying below us as we stood on the pali. None of these pictures do it justice, just an amazing view and a great place to just sit and contemplate things. We ate our lunch overlooking the ocean.

Beyond the end of the trail there is a narrow bridge with a 500' drop on either side that takes you really out to the edge of the pali. Aaron and I went out first

We came back up to the top and went back down with Dawn. 

Despite her pretty severe fear of heights she somehow made it out there. 

Great trip, I think we are all thinking about how we can get back there. The final day we spent a few more hours hanging out down at the beach. Emily finally got to get the sunburn she wanted so badly.