Cologne

I have not been biking as much as last year. Part of the reason is that on a few of weekends it has rained and that is when I usually do the majority of my miles.  Still, I am up to 1,500 miles for the first 3 months of the year which still puts me on a pace to bike around 6,000 for the year.

Last weekend I went on a business trip to Cologne, Germany.  The business part of it is 2 days and the travel portion s 2 days.  Surprisingly, not much jet lag as it was such a short trip my body never adjusted to the time difference.  Oh, and a lot of coffee drinking does not hurt.

A view of the Cathedral from the front and the back. 

In crossing the bridge from one side of Cologne to the other side,  you notice that people who get married affix these locks to the fence (below the picture of the train) with their names. As you can see this stretches the full length of the bridge.

The Rhine is a river that flows from Grisons in the eastern Swiss Alps to the North Sea coast in the NetherlandsAn overview of the Rhine River



Rhine River, Cologne another view

Rhine River, Cologne



Factoids

As I usually do not drive to work, but bike I do not really pay much attention to my car odometer.  However, below is either an interesting or crazy statistic:

Odometer reading on my 11 year old car   40,900
Last 3 years biked:                                      32,678

During 2011, I was able to ride 11,743 miles which was only 451 miles less than my personnel best in 2009. 

I think I need a little more balance in my life as I believe I rode past Jim on the beach bike path two Thursday ago.  It looked like Jim and I yelled "Jim" and he did respond,  but did not stop, but that could have been too much time on the bike.

I hope that everyone had a Happy New Year.

Please be safe, happy and healthy.

Hell on Wheels

This is not me riding my bike around town.  It is the name of a new show produced by my company that will premiere in AMC tomorrow night. 

The Beard is Back

The woman who I live with to whom I am related to by marriage has went on a 3 week vacation back home. As she does not like me with a beard, this is my chance to grow one.  The last time I grew one was on the 2009 trip. I have noticed alot more grey this time around,

The weather today was very nice. It must have been in the 70's.  I usually rest on Fridays and today my legs felt really strong.  I biked 117 miles today which was the second most ever. One of my goals this year was to bike 1 century a month or 12 this year.  Today I achieved that goal. I remember during our trip in 2009, my group would always round up to 100 miles on days we were close. Karen would say you do not get many chances to bike that many miles. Towards the end of the trip I was so focused on EFI on some days I would not round up. I regretted that and that is the reason I set that goal. Every time I bike 100 I always hear Karen's voice in the back of my head.

Quarterly report

Given that my job is focused on quarterly reports, below is my report for the 3rd quarter of 2011.


I bicycled 3,485 miles in the quarter. I was aided by seasonably low temperature and extra sunlight. Year to date I have biked 27% more miles than last year.

During the quarter I took a business trip to Amsterdam. A few pictures:

 
The current quarter has started very well and I am on pace for a little over 1,000 miles this year.
 
I enjoyed reading my fellow XC09 riders blogs. I was particular happy that Bob continued his long distance riding, Hank enjoyed his new roommate, Al's  blog was as funny as ever, Champ enjoyed the history along the route and Jim biked at the back of the pack.
 
Tom D- If you are reading this I really like the nickname for me on your blog.

Nice Jersey

While most of the country has suffered from a heatwave, it has been unusually cool this time of year. During the early morning the sun will shine until 9:00 ot 10:00 in the morning by the beach.

I received a nice surprise in the mail from Harry.  He sent me a very nice jersey from a bike centre in Liverpool.  By coincidence when I stopped to take a picture there was a bud light glass waiting there for me.  The glass was empty.

This past weekend I did an easy 160 miles. I say easy because the two weekends before I did some climbing around the mountains close to where I live.  I was somewhat nervous as this years training has not included that much sustained climbing.  This climbing was around 8 miles and took me up to an elevation of 2,300 feet which is high for Los Angeles.  On one of the climbs I biked through clouds that were moving from left to right. That was a pretty cool feeling (it really was cool as soon as I biked out of the cloud there was a noticeable increase in the temperture).  I was happy that I could do those rides and ofcourse happy to have another chocolate milkshake to reward myself for finishing the ride.

Baseball

Living and growing up in NY, it was either the Yankees or Mets. It is the Mets for me. This week I got to experience the All Star Festivities. The Home Run Derby was held the day I arrived. Although the pitching speed is not the same as a regular game, it is impressive to see the players turn on a ball and hit it a long way. In the finals it was Yankees (Robinson Cano) vs. Red Sox (Adrian Gonzalez). Both Players did well and hit a lot of homers. Cano won and what was pretty neat each player is allowed to bring their own pitcher to throw to them and he chose his Dad.

My company produces the short digital videos for a project called MLB fan cave. Two guys watch every game of the season in a space in New York City. You can see the videos at www.mlbfancave.com. The two guys were flown out to the All Star game and the Fan cave was set up at the pool area of the stadium. I visited the pool.

The morning of the game we got to go down to the field. We were able to have catch in the Outfield. Pretty cool to be throwing a ball on a major league field.

We saw the game which the National League won 5-1, and went home the next day.