Wednesday, July 29, 2009

The Shat reads Palin

As if you didn’t have enough reason to love Bill “The Shat” Shatner, I give you this:

I will say it again, if you have not purchased his latest album, do so. NOW.

Thanks Richard!

Bill O’Reilly, stupid or evil?

Seriously, is Bill retarded, or just so evil that he will spew any lie to get his way?

I mean WTF? Really Bill? A larger population causes life expectancy to go down? REALLY? I mean you COULD say that a small sample size can give misleading results, I mean right? THAT must be what he means. Let me just check the Google here… Hmm, Canada has a population of ~31 million, seems “statistically significant” to me. Its official, Bill O’Reilly is a moron.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Edible rubiks cube

I can solve that in 1 minute!

rubixsandwich

While I do loves me a unique sandwich, I also like things like lettuce, tomato, good bread, etc. BUT, the humor value on the rubikswich is pretty high.

via Seriouseats

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Some things are worth stopping for...

Haulin' ass home from Malechalooza on 80 trying to avoid downtown chicago I found out that the route 80 bridge over the mississippi is closed. So they routed me to 280 over the river back to 80.

While on 280 I see a sign for Maid-Rite. Hold on sweetheart, we are going in hot.

IMG00034-20090723-0527.jpg

Haulin ass from Malechalooza.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Monday, July 13, 2009

Haulin ass to Malechalooza end of day 2

And man is my ass sore...
Looks like I am basically hitting my numbers. I had some stopped traffic that ate into my stop time reserve from day one, so that was a bummer.

I am pretty happy with my average speed, but one tenth higher OR lower might be better.
:)

Malechaloosa end of day one.

Moving average at the end of day one was a low 60.1 and three minutes of stop time. I hit some stop and go traffic on the mass pike that tanked my numbers.

My plan is to hit the road at 6am and see if I can make some of that time back.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Malechaloosa T-0

So here we are starting off at all zeros, leaving from framingham.

Malecha Re-Onion 2009, T minus 3 hours

T minus 3 hours.
Packing the bike and here is the computer game, I mean gps showing all zeroes and ready to go!

This post is really just to test my phone/blogger connection.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Malecha Re-Onion 2009

PaulC has not had an adventure since Hanson, Sean and I went to the Sioux to get Clowntown, so I am due for one.

This isn’t much of an adventure, but its all I got. I am going to drive the bike to Northfield for the family reunion this year. I am leaving Concord Sunday afternoon, I will stay overnight at Melanie’s and head for Northfield Monday morning.

The total trip is 1,407 miles. On a trip that long my main focus is of course safety which includes finding ways to stay focused. So to keep focus and make the trip as quick as possible, I massage the numbers on the GPS constantly for the entire trip, and for this trip it looks like this:

I figure that I can easily hit a “moving average” speed of 55 mph. Moving average does not include stops of any kind: if the bike stops moving for traffic, it does not impact the moving average. But when I stop for gas the slow down and speed back up will impact moving average as will slow traffic. So I figure that I can easily average 55 mph, so I am going to try for 65. Now, I want to be safe doing that, so I wont go more than 10mph over the speed limit. Since most of the trip is on wide open stretches of route 90 where the speed limit is 65mph, that works out well. Of course, Toledo is slower, and Chicago is all but guaranteed to be stop and go traffic. But parts of 90 are 70 mph, so I think that it might work out.

The second number to play with is “stop time”, and importantly “stop time” vs. “moving time”. I am going to shoot for a stop time of no more than 10 minutes per hour of moving time. That FEELS like it should be a pretty easy goal, but we’ll see. If I hit stop and go traffic in Chicago, that will eat into my stop time. And don’t forget exit 12 on route 90 east of Madison! Cheese curds, A&W and fireworks! So that will prolly be a 30 minute stop including gas up.

More short stops eats into the moving average, but stopping for a break while traffic is slow could help the moving average overall. That's the massaging part. Of course the GPS is turned off when I stop for the night in Fremont Indiana and turned back on after breakfast, before I hit the highway.

So with those numbers plugged in (65 mph average moving speed, 10 minutes/hour break) I get:

 

Miles

Drive Time

Stop Time

total time

Day 1

159

2.45

.40

2.85

Day 2

692

10.65

1.77

12.42

Day 3

556

8.55

1.43

9.98

Total

1407

21.65

3.61

25.25

Times are hours and fractions of hours.

Day 1 is a bit off as I will drive straight through to Melanie’s with no stop, so that .4 hours (24 minutes) can be used the following two days. It will make a day go over, but the trip could still work out.

The “big unknown” for me is stop time. In the truck this schedule would be a BREEZE. But on the bike I can’t eat, or drink coffee. So how much time will that take up? Also, that’s a long haul on the bike, will I be forced to stop to stretch and give my back a rest? Dunno, I will let you know. :)

If you want to see where I am on the trip, you can follow me here as I will post from my Blackberry when I can, and you can also see where I am on this page. In the upper left corner there is a widget called “Where is PaulC?” That has my location updated every few minutes.