Update: Mystery Solved!

This is what I felt like for the last couple of days.

The mystery was: what happened to my bicycle helmet after I wore it for a ride with friends on Saturday afternoon? It had vanished by the time I wanted to go for a ride on Sunday morning.

On Saturday after my ride, I guess I left the helmet outside near the steps. The people who share the two-unit condo with us, and have the downstairs unit near where the bicycles are stored, returned from a bicycle trip of their own. Upon unpacking, they mistakenly thought the helmet belonged with their stuff, and they took it with them when they went for another trip on Sunday.

The old helmet, complete with bicycle gloves, is now back safe and sound in my possession, albeit jealous of the shiny new helmet that has now seemingly replaced it.

The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Helmet

Where have you gone?

On Saturday, I went biking with some friends along the Minuteman Trail, a ten mile paved-over former railroad track near my home that is heavily used by bicyclists, pedestrians, inline skaters, and other recreationists.

I biked the entire length, to Bedford, as fast as I could and then met up with my friends for a picnic lunch in Lexington Center, where we played a little frisbee after eating. My friends pointed out that I had some gunk on my head, where one of the pads inside my helmet had come off, and there was glue residue stuck to my scalp. Ha ha.

Later, we biked back along Mass Ave, and we along the way we stopped at Ixtapa, a Mexican restaurant along the Lexington/Arlington border, for some chips and margaritas, before finally making our way home for the day after a quick stop at a hardware store. More goo on my head.

It was a beautiful way to spend a beautiful day, as it was a warm (but not hot!) and sunny day to kick off a long Fourth of July weekend.

But here’s where things start to get a little strange.

I woke up the next morning, and because the weather forecast was predicting a hot day with scattered thunderstorms in the afternoon, I thought I would get in a quick bike ride in the morning. I put on my jersey, heart monitor, bike shorts, some sun block, sunglasses and my bike shoes and went outside. I went to get my helmet, and it wasn’t where I normally put it.

I had it the day before, so I knew it had to be around somewhere. Did I take it in the house? I went inside, and looked everywhere I thought it could be. No sign of the helmet. Did I leave it outside? I checked, and rechecked. No luck. I went back inside and turned the house upside down. In addition to all the normal places, I looked in the crazy spots: did I put it in the oven? The washing machine? Under the bed? Did it fall behind the couch? No, no, no, and no.

I made my way back outside. I looked through the bushes near our makeshift garden — I had watered a couple of plants after the ride on Saturday. I checked the raspberry patch behind the house, near our rain barrel. I looked in our shed where we store our recycling and our garbage, as well as our gardening tools. Nothing doing.

I was totally stumped.

So I went to a nearby bike shop and bought a new helmet, but by that time the skies looked a bit threatening, so I didn’t go for my planned ride. Oh well, there is always tomorrow. I had had that helmet for many years and I was planning to get a new one before my trip anyway, so it wasn’t that bad. But I can’t help but wonder what happened to it?

As I see it, here are the possibilities:

1) It is somewhere in or around the house, and I just haven’t found it yet. It’ll turn up at some point.
2) I left it behind, either in Lexington Center, Ixtapa, or at the hardware store on the way back.
3) After the ride, I left the helmet outside, and a random passerby saw it and swiped it.

I looked around pretty thoroughly, so I don’t think it is option 1. And as a regular cyclist, I think I would feel naked without my helmet (and attached biking gloves), so I don’t think it is option 2. So that just leaves option 3, which seems unlikely to me. Why would someone steal a sweaty helmet, particularly if they had to go out of their way to get it? Can anyone think of anything else I might have missed?

The Country Isn’t Going Anywhere….

I have decided not to go on my bicycle trip this summer. I still intend to make the cross-country trip, but unfortunately it won’t be in 2011.

There were several reasons that went into this decision to postpone the trek. The biggest one is, of course, the uncertainty at work. As I have stated in previous entries, my company, CambridgeSoft, was recently purchased by another company, PerkinElmer, and the purchase became official back in early May.

Unlike the Cubs, I think I'll actually do it eventually...

The resulting situation has left me, and other employees there, not knowing exactly what to expect. Again, no one, at either the former CambridgeSoft or at the new company ever told me that I couldn’t go. It was never presented to me that I would be in danger of losing my job if I were to go.

However, it was suggested to me that it might not be the best time for me to be away from my job for eight weeks. The more I thought about this, the more I realized it was true, but not in the way that I think it was originally intended — that the new bosses will be learning exactly what people at CambridgeSoft do, what their skill sets are, and what they contribute to the company, as well as what they will contribute to PerkinElmer, and if I am not there for eight weeks the message is clear: PerkinElmer can get along just fine without me.

But I actually don’t think that is true. If I were to be gone right now I would be about halfway done if I had stuck to my original schedule. And I don’t think PerkinElmer is at the level of detail of determining which employees are of value and should be kept. I think they are still in the initial stages of the integration, and are actually several months, if not more than a year, from doing that.

No, why I think it would not be in my best interest to go on this extended vacation is that there is suddenly a lot of work we are expected to do. The merger with PerkinElmer has raised several new opportunities, and I know that PerkinElmer expects a lot out of our new branch. We are learning PerkinElmer’s way of doing things, as well as integrating other newly-acquired companies as well. Suddenly my workload has grown, and if I were to be out of the office and away from my desk for an extended period, I would fall quite far behind.

The other thing that played a significant role in my decision is the weather. This spring has been a miserable one in New England, much colder than usual, with more grey, damp, miserable days that made it difficult to do much training. I fully expected to be making more longer rides in the days and weeks prior to my scheduled start than I was actually able to do. Not to mention the severe weather that has plagued much of the country so far this season.

Of course the weather will be different each year, and I’m sure each spring will present different obstacles to overcome. And as it was, I continued to bike year-round, even on the coldest, snowiest days of the winter, so it is not like I was completely out of shape.

But in the future, I will definitely plan to start my trip later in the year than I had scheduled it this time around. My initial consideration was to maximize daylight, but that wasn’t necessarily the wisest thing to do. If I were to leave, say, one month later, at the time of the summer solstice, I would be finishing up around the end of August, and the days are still pretty long at that time of year. And the temperature difference in the Rocky Mountains between May 21st and June 21st could be substantial.

Even though I have decided to postpone the trip — I’m still not sure how long: one year? two? — I still plan to train throughout this summer, going on longer rides, testing out my new pannier pack system, and camping out when I can. Marsha and I have will be attending a wedding on Cape Cod in a few weeks, and, weather permitting, I hope to be able to bike there and back (and we will be camping while there).

Also, it looks like we will be taking a trip to Toronto in July, and while I am not planning to bike all the way there, we will be taking our bikes with us and I hope to see some of the terrain that I will be covering whenever I do get around to the trip.

So I will be posting here throughout the summer and fall, providing training updates. Stick with me everyone, as things are just getting started!

The Death of a Dream?

Is the dream dead? Or just deferred?

After all the planning, the training, the purchases, getting used to a new bike and the new accessories, after learning what it is like to spend hour after hour on the road, I have recently come up against the biggest obstacle to my trip yet.

The company that I work for, CambridgeSoft, has been purchased by another company, PerkinElmer.

I always knew that an eight week trip would be stretching my company’s goodwill. However, I have been with CambridgeSoft for more than twelve years, joining the company when it was very small, just 30 employees at the time I was hired. During my years here, I have gotten to know the CEO and the upper management at the company very well, and I feel I have been a valuable employee, and that my contributions have been appreciated.

So an extended vacation, while out of the ordinary, would not be so taxing as to jeopardize my job security.

It turns out that the closing date of the sale is expected to be right around the time I was planning to start my trip, within a month. While no one, from CambridgeSoft or from PerkinElmer, has said that I cannot go on the trip, or that doing so would risk my future at the company, it has been suggested to me that it might not be in my best interest to be away from the company for eight weeks, at the exact time that the two companies are starting the merge.

Lousy timing! If this had happened just a few months later, this wouldn’t have been an issue. However, it happened when it did, so now I need to decide what to do about it.

I have several options:
• Go anyway. In some ways this is a really appealing option. I’ve trained and mentally, I am prepared for it. While it is true that the two companies will just be starting to merge while I am gone, all indications are that PerkinElmer values CambridgeSoft and is not looking to make any personnel changes immediately. I doubt that the two companies will be completely, or even primarily, merged after eight weeks.
• Postpone. I could easily continue the training that I did last summer, going on some long trips to Maine, and around New England. Depending on how things shake out with PerkinElmer, I could just as easily go on the trip in the summer of 2012 as the summer of 2011.
• Split the trip up over three or four years. I could start the trip as expected, and go a quarter of the way, say, to Omaha. Then next summer I could go from, say, Omaha to Milwaukee. Or whatever. In that way I could go across the country, but not all at once.
• Scrap the cross-country part, and choose a smaller, prettier trip to do instead. Who really wants to bike to Omaha? Instead, I could choose to spend two or three weeks biking the Florida Keys, or the Pacific Coast, or across France, or do the RAGBRAI ride, or whatever beautiful ride I can think of.
• Forget the whole thing, and cry in my Cheerios.

In some ways, it doesn’t matter. I’m still training and preparing, so I can wait to make a final decision up until almost the time I was planning to start. In theory, I can decide exactly what to do later, and if I decide an option other than the first, I can even start later in the summer when the weather might be a little warmer. So I’m waiting, waiting, waiting…

If I end up delaying or canceling the trip, one positive consequence is that I will be able to attend the wedding of friends that is scheduled for early June, that I was going to regrettably miss, particularly regrettable because my wife Marsha will be the officiant!

One thing that would really haunt me if I end up changing my plans (other than my own personal disappointment) is that I would be leaving my friend Dan in the lurch. Dan, as I mentioned earlier, lives in Eugene, and was planning to bike with me for the first week or so, across Oregon. He bought a bike just for the trip, and he has been training and looking forward to the great adventure. However, Dan also works for CambridgeSoft, so he can understand the situation I am in, since he is in the same boat.

Out With The Old, In With The New

I’m pretty hard on my bikes. I ride my regular commuting bike throughout the winter, and the salt, sand, and melting and freezing snow can be very hard on the shifting components, brakes and braking mechanisms, and cables that run from front to back.

So every spring I need to take this commuter bike in for a rather extensive cleaning, usually a complete overhaul.

This year, of course, I had my touring bike that I could use while the commuter bike was in the shop being repaired. I tried not to ride my touring bike too much during the winter, because I didn’t want to do too much damage to the bike, so it would be in tip-top shape for spring training and for the ride itself.

So I recently got back on the touring bike, and it was a revelation! My regular bike was in pretty sorry shape, as I couldn’t shift gears — I gave that up back in January or so. I find that once I am riding through slush and snow, I don’t do all that much shifting anyway. And the brakes hardly work, so I needed to really squeeze the brakes just to gently slow myself down.

In contrast, the touring bike was in great shape, and to suddenly be able to shift and brake at will was fantastic. And I felt like I was just drifting along the ground, as my brake pads on my other bike were rubbing the wheel frames, constantly slowing me down and making it a real chore to gain any speed at all. Now, with things perfectly calibrated, I could go faster with less effort, and it was like I was hardly working!

Then, however, I got word from my bicycle shop that my commuter bike was toast. Perhaps that is an overly dramatic way to express it, but my bike would require so much cleaning and new equipment that it wasn’t worth it — I could get an entirely new bike for only a little more money.

My new ride

So I went into the bike shop and picked out a new bike. I use the bike primarily for commuting, but since I ride in all conditions year round, I have found that a mountain bike is the way to go for me. I picked out a Giant XTC 29, which is a newer variation on the bike that I had. The newer one is essentially the same, only with newer and better components, and 29 inch wheels, versus the 26 inch wheels on my old bike.

The innovation I am most eager to try is the addition of disc brakes, which is a system that uses hydraulics on a disc that is attached to the wheel, much like a car uses. This is quite different from the older biking braking technology, which is a pair of rubber brake pads that press directly against the wheel frame to slow the motion of the wheel. These disc brakes will last much longer than what I was using before, which I found I needed to have replaced twice a year. They are also better for the wheel itself, as the older brakes squeezing the wheel frame could easily grind in grit and sand, and could easily become misaligned to squeeze against the tire and breach the tire, causing a blowout.

Last year when I was investigating touring bikes, I considered getting some with disc brakes, but the model I eventually decided on did not have them. I could have had them replace the standard brakes that came with the touring model, but it would have been expensive, time-consuming, and it was an unfamiliar technology, which I was leery of using for the first time on a cross-country trip. Now I get to try them out at home!

Go South, Young Man!

Hey! I was looking at the map today, and I didn’t realize just how close I was going to be to Utah when I was biking through Wyoming.

View Larger Map

I think I’ll make a day trip, which adds about 40 miles to the overall distance, to say I went through an eleventh state.

Carrying On

This isn't exactly what my bike will look like, but it's pretty close

After discussing the pannier pack issue earlier, I ended up getting a set of Ortlieb packs. The set I got is what is in this picture — including the bright yellow color — except I ordered an additional bag, one that fits under the handlebars.

So the set that I got contains a total of six packs: two front pannier packs, two rear panniers, one bag that goes across the rear panniers, and one that fits under the handlebar. The set I got also comes with some smaller bags that clip onto the panniers, that are more firm and can hold things that need more protection or that need to be stored separately, as well as some safety wires that lock everything to the bike to make it harder to steal.

The front handlebar pack has a clear pouch across the top that can be used to hold maps, which is a neat feature.

According to the reviews I read about Ortlieb, they bags are most definitely waterproof. Most of the time this is a good thing, as keeping your stuff dry during rainfall is very important. After spending a day riding in the rain, the last thing I’ll want is to be changing into wet, clammy clothes before going to sleep.

However, the rainproof bags can be a drawback if you already have items that are wet, as they won’t get a chance to dry out if they are stored in a waterproof carrier all day. That could be a challenge in the mornings, for example, if I wake up to find my tent wet from rain or dew and I don’t have time to thoroughly dry it out before packing up and moving on.

Another potential problem is that the Ortlieb bags are essentially one big pouch, with little or nothing available for internal storing or separating. Online reviews suggested you need to be very organized to keep everything from getting mixed up, or suddenly finding that one thing you need from the bag at the bottom under everything else.

That’s partially why I got so many bags. I don’t yet know exactly how much stuff I am going to have with me — I’ll figure that out in the spring when I take some overnight training runs. But I might be able to split things up by bag: tent, sleeping bag and sleeping pad in the right rear pannier, or example, and clothes in the right front. Food and water in the left rear, with fix-it tools and supplies in the left front. Or something like that.

I figure I’ll try some longer rides with all the bags, and I’ll eventually leave any at home that I determine I don’t need.

Here is a preliminary list of the things I am going to have with me:

* Single-person tent
* Sleeping bag & sleeping pad
* Two or three changes of clothes
* Rain jacket
* Food and water
* Spare innertubes in case of flat tires, patch kit
* General hex bicycle tool
* GPS/bicycle computer
* Phone
* Sunglasses
* Money, credit cards, ID, passport
* (Head?)lamp
* Maps, contact info

Along with the bicycle itself and the panniers, that is pretty much going to be my entire life for eight weeks.