Hale this morning

I was unable to meet up with John for a ride on Friday so we made plans to meet this morning for a ride at Hale - one of my favorite places to ride. Just on a whim I posted the ride up on Bikerag, no one responded so I figured it was going to be me and him. I got there and four others showed up so we ended up with a "real" group ride. We did the north side loop first and by the end of that section John was done and another guy had a problem with one of his pedals, so he was out. That left us with a group of four for the homestead side trails. It was a really good ride, good pace, pretty evenly matched riders, which is always nice. Great day, great conditions, great people, can't beat that.

Cold then warm

I rode with a couple of guys who also had the day off work yesterday. I woke up to cloudy skies and chilly temps. The weather guys said a high of over fifty, but it sure didn't look like it. It looked more like 40's and rain. I trusted them and headed out to the Comstock Bridge to meet up for our ride.

Back in the day this was a common ride because my brother lives nearby. It was fun to ride there again and see all the familiar spots along the way. One of the guys was just getting over and/or relapsing into a head cold, so we took it easy on the second half of the ride, but it was a good workout. I forgot to turn Strava on until we climbed the first hill, but I'm surprised there's only 1000' of climbing in this ride, it seems like one of the hillier rides. Anyway, great conditions, really nice to get out in the woods and crank it out. By the time we finished the clouds broke, the sun was bright, and the skies were blue.

There would be no KOMs today

Wow did I have a hard time getting out on the bike today. I just wasn't feeling it. I forced myself out the door and despite promises of 50 degrees, it was cold! I knew I wasn't going to be generating a lot of heat so I wore an extra layer, it was barely enough! I did the loop, it was great to get out, but I never got that burst of energy, I just kind of pedaled along. I don't mean that to be negative, it was a good ride and I'm so glad I got out. Sometimes just spinning along for an hour makes me feel good.


Oh and I won an ebay auction for a fretboard - curly maple. Its going to be nice!

More on the batar

I have been looking a lot of videos of people playing these eight string monstrosities. About 90% of the people who play these things are accomplished jazz musicians who have mastered the instrument to the point where if you listen without watching you would really think that there were two people playing. They are essentially playing chords with their left hand and plucking with their right. The chord includes the bass line, its hard to describe, but even harder to imagine actually being able to do.

Based on other videos of the same people they seem to mostly be guitarists who move over to the 8 string. I am, of course, coming from the other direction - a bass player who can kind of play guitar. I'm excited to try it out, but at the same time realistic that its going to be slow going and I expect to lose patience with the thing more than once.

I got my first shipment of parts this week, including the bridge, tuners, jacks and carbon fiber reinforcing rods.

I now have enough to start working on the neck, despite my best intentions I don't have the blank glued up yet. I'll try and get that done this week or weekend so I can start the build from there. I guess I'm only going to be able to go a certain distance here until I get a truss rod and fretboard. Now that I have the bridge I can work out the neck dimensions. I need to get my brother engaged to get the individual string pieces made.

Easter hop

I got up early today and did a ride up at Crandalls. That place has become really good, I like the mixture of techy (not much) along with the twisty, hilly tracks. Zig and Zag out there are classic, love 'em. The fact that its a five minute drive from my house just makes it all that much better.

I felt great heading out. I'll admit I was gunning for some KOMs (King Of the Mountain in Strava) early in the ride. I retook it for the sections I was hammering on. It felt really great to be out in the woods cranking out the miles - while I still enjoy road riding, mountain biking will always be my first love, being out in the woods and challenging myself technically is just too much fun. I think aerobically mountain biking is tougher - you can always pedal more slowly on the road, the terrain in mountain biking just doesn't allow for "taking it easy" at times.
 

Lunch ride

I know same old boring loop, but it is so great to be able to leave the garage, crank for an hour and be back in front of the computer. I have to figure out how to manage my effort better I end up having to rest on sections because I'm going to hard in other sections. I guess I want to be able to hammer the whole ride. I am certain its better to ride at 75% for the whole ride rather than riding harder and gassing out. I think a certain part of this has to do with me riding in gears that at too hard. I am trying to go in lower gears and spin rather than pushing high gears with more resistance. I have to read some books or something.

Lunch ride

I have a standard lunch loop of 14 miles that I can easily do in under an hour, its a good mixed ride with some good climbing, but nothing too serious. Today I decided to take the bike to do some banking instead of my normal loop. This ride looks weird on Strava since I took the shortest path in both directions (I needed to get back for a call). My house is basically at 900' above sea level and the bank is at 300' above sea level, so its pretty much all coasting on the way down and all grunting on the way back. It really wasn't that bad, once again the worst part of the ride was pointing the bike home, I wanted to keep going.