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My legs were tired and a wall of rain was on the way, but somehow I got out to Greensboro Country Park in time for 10 miles or so before dark, and almost before the display of lightning flashes that had me worried more than usual about getting zapped. I saw no way my 100mm wheels would protect me from a spark arc.

Location

It'll soon be time for the lovely but hilly Tour de Lions. Info at tourdelions.org. This year it's at a NEW LOCATION near Grays Chapel. See below for details.

Location

March 28 2009, Registration starts at 4:45 pm, the clinic starts at 5:00 pm and runs till 7:00pm. The cost is $15.00. The clinic is presented by USA World Team Members Harry Vogel, Hank Galbraith, and Mariah Richardson. This class is open to skaters of all levels, but you must be able to skate on inline skates. All skaters must bring a helmet, skates if you have them (rink rentals will be available if needed) wear tennis shoes, and dress athletically comfortable.

OK. I used to eat at Lucky 32 often, maybe twice weekly sometimes, and I love how it's a nice place to go eat where you can dress up if you like, or not. I have always loved the decor and the graphics of their marketing. I get a real kick out of how they had fabric made for their upholstery that carries forth the L32 motif. That L32 logo is genius (you can see it at the bottom of this article).

Eebee, Timv, Bryan and Roadskater went out for a skate for some of us at least to get over not being in Miami. We had fun.

Here are some pics for ye...

Location

From Dale: Valentine's Road Ride is set for this Saturday, February 14th.
Register at 11 AM, all riders off at Noon!

Routes are the popular 26, 33 or 53 mile options.
MapMyRide course maps are up on the web and linked on the Valentines Ride web page here:
http://cyclesdeoro.com/events/valentinesride.htm

Scenic routes, good food, drink, cycling camaraderie and even hilarity at times are in store for attendees!

AND it is charitable event!...The 2 cans of food each rider brings will go to a local food bank.

Location

The date for the next SkateStrong workshop has been decided, and it is:  Saturday, March 28th. Information on workshop can be found at:  http://www.skatestrong.com/

For those that don't know, the workshop is a fundraiser for Multiple Sclerosis Society -- 100% of the money goes to MS Society. It's for all levels, beginner to advanced. The content will vary a bit depending on who actually attends.

A few years ago at the US10K I met Heather Richardson from High Point Speed, just briefly, not a long chat or anything. But it was clear she was a powerful skater even at 10K, which is lots longer than most indoor types really want to do very often (that's a lot of laps on the tiny indoor inline circuits). The Greensboro News & Record has a nice story on her, point out that...

Richardson, a 19-year-old from High Point, is the reigning U.S.
champion in long-track speedskating's sprint events and recently
finished 20th at the World Sprints.

Another sidebar news item...WRAL reports that the Greensboro News and Record reports that Greensboro has "made the cut" in bidding to become the new home of the United States Cycling Hall of Fame. Supposedly GSO is in the "final four." Who knows how significant this could be, but at least it shows there are people in Greensboro trying to bring more visitors to the city, especially those who are interested in bicycling and other forms of active transportation. Thanks to Neil Belenky and the rest of the Greensboro task force involved in making the application.

After some days of often solitary study, testing, learning, failures and some successes (think Ubuntu Server, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Nginx, lighttpd, Memcache, Varnish, Squid, Alternative PHP Cache), I drifted to sleep as though it were the night before Christmas. Would there be snow? Would there be joy? So I awoke early on Inauguration Day 2009 with anticipation, and yes, my world had been treated to a fresh forgiveness of snow outside.

Location

Skaters and cyclists and others who participate in active transportation (walkers, runners, skateboarders, more) please come out to the open board meeting of the North Carolina Active Transportation Alliance on January 11 in Raleigh. As we transition into a new federal administration, it's an important time to make your voice heard in support of projects that favor more and safer alternatives to the automobile...especially human-powered alternatives.

Hey to all. If you've missed it so far, Tour to Tanglewood this year is September 26 & 27, 2009. This is perfect, coming 2 weeks before Athens to Atlanta, so Tanglewood can be your last hard weekend of hills if you want to make it that way. Or it can be a leisurely group skate for you fasties who want a longer taper. Regardless, it's music for the soul so come join us to help people who can't.

This year we wimped a bit on the skating in the new year bit, but we did go out for 20 or 30 minutes in Glenwood neighborhood, eebee and myself. The temp was in the upper 20s so we didn't stay out too long. We took a few photos, and I'll probably include a couple of them here. Enjoy.

I watch free TV, meaning I have an antenna (up in the attic no less, as I'm not sure I want to attract lightning, deal with installation woes, and risk the oak trees damaging the antenna when limbs land on the roof). I receive digital broadcasts, and don't pay for cable television (but do for internet). On good days I can get programming I would not get on cable, including broadcasts from Durham, Raleigh, Roanoke and more. Some days, however, I admit I have trouble getting WXII in Winston-Salem, or WUNC-TV from Chapel Hill or Winston-Salem.

Well Hurricane Hanna didn't really do too much as I recall, other than dump some rain and cancel Saturday morning's festivities at T2T. From my perspective, the current unnamed storm (well it's called "Invest 94L" as far as I can tell, Invest being short for Investigate, apparently; more confusingly it seems there was an Invest 94L that became Hurricane Gustav, but this spinner may not even get a name). See, I don't really know what I'm talking about, but it's the weather so it's usually OK, and I can learn as I go, maybe...we'll see).

Here is that website that I had talked to a few of you about this weekend. Crazy guy that is running the AT in 47 days.

http://www.whereskarl.com/

Craig

Here's the latest word from the Tour to Tanglewood Bike Ride & Inline Skate. We're on, provisionally, for Saturday, and it is very likely there will at least be a Sunday ride & skate. Again, while I'm not a wxpert, I believe Saturday will be a go as well. But it's not up to me, thank goodness! Here's the word from Derrick Huff:

Here's a notice from Joe Godfrey, Senior Park Planner, Town of Cary (slightly edited by roadskater, with emphasis added):

I am pleased to inform you that the Town of Cary will be issuing Holmes Contracting, Inc. a Notice To Proceed with the construction of the Chatham County segment of the American Tobacco Trail. We anticipate beginning construction on September 8, 2008 and completing the project in June, 2009.

As you know the project consists of the construction of a 4.68-mile long multi-use trail with two typical sections as follows:

Location

Wow this is some great news. The much-respected Tour de Moore has invited us to join them for the Sandhills Cycling Club's main event hits the road Labor Day. I sent an inquiry earlier this week to Rainbow Cycles and received this reply:

Yes we’d love to have road skaters at our event.  It looks like it will be a perfect day in the 80’s with some clouds.  You can register at active.com or print our registration form from our website sandhillscyclingclub.org.  How many skaters will you bring?
Craig Pryor
Tour Director

I know it's been a while since I've done any trip reports, and I'm blaming my new job on that!  :-)  It's easy to make time to write when you hate your job and are looking for any excuse to procrastinate.  But I actually like my job now, and care about the product I'm working on.  So the extra hours I had during the day to write have pretty much evaporated.  But I'm sitting on a plane right now, so it's a good opportunity to do some writing.

Paul's Cycling & Fitness is hit or miss, I guess I'd say, over the years, when it comes to Tour to Tanglewood Training Rides. I have to say it has mostly been a good experience, but with some exceptions that make it hard to get out of bed and go there for the training ride. A few years back, the route was so disappointing we quit early and drove back to Greensboro Country Park to skate. Usually it has just been one or two signs that they don't see this as the same opportunity that some shops seem to.

Paul's Bicycles training ride began on a beautiful summer's day with temps in the low 80s and a moderately sized group starting the 25, 36, and 50 mile loops. There were 6 skaters, who in the end splintered into individuals or pairs. Each, guided by their partner or own internal drive. The course, in my opinion, was the most demanding in terms of road surfaces which at times were very rough with some great climbs thrown in for good measure. A solo downhill at 39.0 mph prompted a whoop as the thrill of the day.

We had a great time at the Paceline Bicycles Winston-Salem Tour to Tanglewood training bike ride and inline skate. New skate friends came out and veterans of the tour we hadn't seen in awhile joined for a nice day of sun and sweat. Here are links to the photos and thumbnail route map for Google Earth:

The Paceline Bicycles Greensboro Bike Ride and Inline Skate was a fun, if relatively short (around 28 miles or so...I turned my Garmin Forerunner 305 on a bit late), training ride for the Tour to Tanglewood.

Today's skate and ride was moderately hot and covered some familiar territory, if in a different way.

I made the usual speed map, but also an altitude map and a heart rate map, the latter for your fun and amusement. I hit 179 at one point, but wasn't interested in staying there.

I neglected to start my Garmin Forerunner 305 so the start is not included, but we started where we finished, as you might expect.

We love that Tour de Kale! Sorry so long getting anything from my data and photos, but working for money is a bummer even when it's for really worthwhile causes. Here's the speed map from TdK, and we almost cracked 40 mph with just eebee and myself together at the time. MikeB was there and Northinsouth had daughter NorthinsouthJr there riding the bike and trailer, respectively. Beyond that I'll have to look back at my photos, but I remember meeting the guy that owned the whole place (Denton Farm Park) and he said he "worked there" in typical marvelous understatement! Now that's good people! It was great to see Kale and the rest of the family and friends so close to him, and to be so incredibly welcome just because we were on skates! We missed our skatepals and couldn't keep up with the Northinsouth crew or MikeB, but we had an awesome hot skate in the country day...and by the time we saw MikeB again we were really getting overheated but enjoying the sweat and toil of the road.

Here's the speed map from the Tour to Tanglewood Training Ride at the Clemmons Bicycle Shop. We made it up to almost 38 mph at our best but that was solo coming back down Dock Davis the the creek at the railway tracks where the bridge was replaced a couple of years ago. With four together we would have definitely cracked 40, probably 42 or 43. It was a blast and I got some of it on video but it's really no substitute. Clemmons is a great route on some of the Tour roads, sometimes in the opposite direction, sometimes in the same direction, sometimes day one, others, day two. It's good stuff!

Here's the speed map from the Spinz bike shop training bike ride and skate in High Point, Archdale and Sophia, almost up to Caraway Mountain. We maxed out at 35 or so but some of it felt faster because of the country side, lay of the land, and curve of the roads. There were some stiff climbs and it was a fun day of skatey company even if we weren't all at the same speed all the time. The rain at the end gave eebee a little spark since that's childhood weather for her methinks. Jack, eebee and myself cruised in after the others had departed...I think that was Andrew, Kim and Amy and I hope I'm not missing anyone here...we were not all really together before the start!