Flight log - 2013-06-12

Finally after almost 11 months, I finally went flying again.  It was a pretty nice day, though it got rather warm toward the end.  Temp 30°C, wind calm, alt 29.92, very hazy, 1.6 on the Hobbs.  Hold at APE, followed by 3 approaches VOR-A@KVTA, GPS28@KLHQ, GPS27@KVTA, with 2 landings at KLHQ and 2 landings at KVTA. Happy to be back in the air.  Hand flew nearly all of it, the auto-pilot appears to be on the fritz.  IPC completed, so I'm legal to rent, legal to carry passengers, and legal to fly IFR.  KVTA is in the top middle with the red, yellow, and green (landings and trips around the pattern).  The hold is the purple loop at the top left.  KLHQ is at the bottom left (landing and trip around the pattern).  That little bump in the middle was when I turned on the autopilot heading back to do the GPS28@KVTA and it tried to do S-turns around the actual GPS track.  Harold is going to have the auto-pilot looked at by the maintenance people.

Yup, I'm still alive

As I commented last year, I don't tend to post here much lately, but I am still alive.  As you can see from the sidebar, I've started riding again this year (about a month earlier than last year, though I have no plans at present for a century this year), but have not flown in far too long, I hope to rectify that this week.  I still do plan to start posting more stuff here, but have had some issues with motivation that I hope to explain shortly.

The year in riding

I know I've been really bad about posting here.  There are things I've wanted to write about, but I just haven't been able  to make myself sit down and take the time to actually do it.  So, I figured I'd do a brief wrap up of my year in riding.  As you can see from the sidebar at left, I've done more riding this year than I have in a few years.  I had some motivation, Bill (my brother-in-law) started doing triathlons almost 2 years ago and we had talked about doing a half-marathon together in 2011, but due to knee problems, I was never able to really start training for that.  As a result, we revised our goal to doing a century in 2012 (my second, first since day 1 of TOSRV in 1997, his first).  We (I) decided we'd do the Hancock Horizontal Hundred since this is a very flat century that I've wanted to do for more than a decade.  I didn't really get into the training routine until late May, and then in June I started having back problems (see my upcoming Christmas letter for more explanation) and had to switch from the road bike to the recumbent.  I never really rode more than twice a week (with 1 or 2 exceptions) and I had breaks at inopportune times (like the Alaska cruise two weeks before the century), but I still managed to ride 830mi in 2012 including 5 organized rides (plus one more that I registered for, but then couldn't ride).  Below are some of the highlights & interesting numbers.

• Tour de Cause "Challenger" course - 41.69mi, 03:16:30, avg = 12.74mph, rainy and lots of hills
• Pedal with Pete - 47.61mi, 03:00:15, avg = 15.85mph
• Lancaster County Covered Bridge Metric Century - 66.46mi, 04:43:12, avg = 14.08mph, very hilly
• HHH - 100.85mi, 06:17:54, avg=16.01mph, really tough headwind section just after lunch, but fortunately found a group to ride with
• Trek Breast Cancer Ride - 42.54mi, 03:00:04, avg = 14.17mph, I had hardly ridden in a month

• Total # of rides = 28
• Total mileage = 830.02mi
• Total time = 56:03:44
• Avg. speed = 14.81mph
• Avg. length of ride =  29.64mi
• Avg. time of ride = 02:00:08

• Rides over 20mi = 20
• Rides over 30mi = 11
• Rides over 01:30:00 =  18
• Rides over 02:00:00 = 8

50@50 final update

There are a couple of other things I'd like to post on, but I'll save that for another time (mostly because I still can't bring myself to sit down and write about how fed up I am with this election season).
I accomplished my 50@50 goal when Sherry and I took our Alaskan cruise at the end of August.  It was a great trip and our first cruising experience was great as well.

Flight log 2012-07-13

Flight review complete. Temp was a very pleasant 23°F, but the wind got ugly for the final 2 landings. Winds 140@13G22. Alt. 30.19. Did the GPS28@4I3, cirle to 10, followed by 2 touch and goes, followed by VOR-A@KVTA, circle to 9, touch and go, and full stop. I used Foreflight on the iPad for the approaches, no paper plates in the cockpit.

Flight log 2012-05-18

I got checked out on the new G1000 C172 (I last flew the old one 3 or 4 years ago) today.  Next flight I'll have Harold help me get used to using the iPad with ForeFlight on the cockpit.  Temp 24°C, wind 100@07, altimeter 30.11, clear.  Just local flight, but the plane was up at Knox County (4I3) while they resurface the runway at KVTA.  1.0 on the Hobbs, beautiful day to fly.  The AMOD didn't lock on before take off, so I don't have the Google Earth track this time.

I'm still alive

I know I've been very quiet lately. There will be some new content comng soon.

Flight Log 2011-09-23 and 50@50 update

Sorry it took so long to post this.  In Sep, I visited my 49th state, Hawaii.  We had a wonderful time.  We spent most of the week on Maui, but we went to Oahu for a day, most of which we spent at Pearl Harbor.  Our last day there, I rented a C172 and flew around Molokai, Lanai, Molokini, West Maui, etc.  Temp 26°C, wind 050@15, alt 30.09, a few clouds @ 4000.   Alas, I didn't turn the GPS on to get the flight track.

Lanai from our timeshare the first morning

Honolua Bay

Arizona Memorial

USS Missouri

2 Pearl Harbor survivors, ages 91 & 95

With BGen Jerome Hagen, USMC(ret), author of War In The Pacific series

Sunrise at Haleakala

Elephant Island (off Molokai)

Molokai

Molokini

Bay on the way to Hana (don't remember the name)

Sunset over the surfers near Ho'okipa Beach

And another ride in the books

Longest ride of the year, 15.13 miles in 1:04:21.  I was loving the "out" part of the ride, I made the turn averaging 16.4 mph, but the head wind on the way back "in" was brutal (final average speed was 14.1mph).  Ah, well.  I'm not posting the links to runs/rides that start from home though.

I'm riding again, sort of...

For the 1 person out there that reads this, you may have noticed that my Cycling Log has some new entries in there in the last couple of months.  I have been doing some riding (and some, little, running) lately.  In May, my brother-in-law and I were talking about running in the Columbus (Half-)Marathon in Oct.  Unfortunately, shortly after we decided to do that, I tweaked my knee in one of my very early runs and was basically unable to do any training for nearly 2 weeks.  As a result, we've scrapped the half-marathon idea, but we do plan to ride a century in 2012 (not sure which one yet, part of me wants to do the first day of TOSRV, but part of my wants to do the Hancock Horizontal Hundred, we'll discuss it when I visit my sister in Oct).  So, since the knee stopped hurting I've run a few times (including a couple of 5Ks, the first with Erin, Shane, and Jen, and Sherry and Maggie walking about 2 mi; the second I thought was going to be with Jen, but she and Sherry ended up walking with the dogs and I ended up running it alone).  Given that I hadn't done a competitive run in well over 25 years (and I was at least 40-50 lbs lighter then), I guess I can't complain too much about the results.  In the meantime, the legs are feeling a little better the last couple of rides, and the avg. speed is picking up, though not yet back over 15 for a full ride yet.  No, I won't ride through the winter (at least not outdoors), but it has been kind of nice riding again.  I've ridden the Trek three times and the Stealth twice.  I need to get a new saddlebag for the Trek, I'm not sure what ever happened to the one I used to have, but I can't find it now.  I also need to fix the fairing on the Stealth, I lost a nut during the last Stealth ride.  I'm also seriously considering getting a RoadID, that would be an improvement over the 15-year-old business card I carry with me now.  The new HRM is a Garmin with GPS, so I'm getting accurate maps/distances (including elevation changes that I never had before).  Maybe sometime I'll post a route map like my flight tracks.  I'll have to think about that some.  I probably won't do that for any rides/runs that start from home, but if I do anymore competitive/organized runs/rides, I might do it then.  Here's a picture (coming in to the finish line) from the Dash for Donations 5K in July.  I look better than I felt :)

Update: I'm including links to both of those 5Ks (neither of which were actually 5K).
Dash for Donations
Dog Jog