Archive for August, 2009

The weekend, first Sarah’s camp

Right after work on Friday (everyone was waiting for me…) Sarah and Del and Dknick and I headed up to Sarah’s camp for the night/weekend. I just love being on the water, so needless to say I loved it. We went swimming that night, swimming the next day (king of the raft), I attempted to dive, we went tubing and I went waterskiing, we swam some more, I read my book, made a bracelet, and we came back later Saturday night. That pretty much sums it up! Some highlights…I managed to get Del off the raft at least once in king of the raft, though I couldn’t count the number of times he pushed me off. I think I just started jumping off myself haha. Tubing we got some major air, both Dan and Sarah had some unothodox tubing form, but they held on better than I could haha. The water was a little choppy, and I actually fell on two ski’s a couple times for the first time…and it was fun! I didn’t really get that much book read either, I tried but I think I actually fell asleep that hammock was just too comfortable!

Then the Great Race!

We got there early, and Lindz (how I actually spelled her name on the registration haha) did an awesome job of getting our packets quickly, by budging the giant line haha. We got Lindz a good position for the Kayak, kinda snuck it in up front too, but there was room. We got back to the car with about 20 minutes until race time, and so my Mom went out a little warm up run and I got on my trainer and started spinning and getting ready to get that CytoMAX in me. From the car, Lindz and I watched the runners get started as the gun went off, and about 15 minutes into the race I headed over to the changeover zone, extracting every last minute of warming up. A little under 24 minutes, I saw my mom coming and got the wristband from her and took off. I rode as hard as I could, never leaving the big ring in the whole race, on the gradual uphill out I held 15-17MPH and was passing crowds of cyclists. I kept in the aerobars pretty much that whole time too, and sipped on the remaining CytoMAX in my bottle. All the way out, I was breathing really hard as I passed everyone, and didn’t think I could go any faster if I tried. One dude passed me on the way out, on a full aero bike, and I tried to grab his wheel but it was uphill and made little difference. He was cruisin. Like I was blowin by tons of people, and he pretty much blew by me. Having ridden the course the week prior did help in the downhill, I knew what was coming, and didn’t touch my brakes. I kept crushing, and crushing, and crushing along haha and finally made it to the two steep uphills and sprinted up those. I love the sound of carbon wheels going side to side like that, the zing-zing… Anyway I knew there was two-mile, tailwind, gradual downhill to the finish and I had somehow caught some other fast riders that we going the same speed I was, and we pacelined into the last 1/2 mile, and then I took off to beat all them to the finish which I did. My dad snapped one pic of me coming in, I’ll have to see if I can get up here. I handed off to Lindz, and that was that. My legs were DEAD, and I rode with those other guys that I had come in with for a 2ish mile cool down and came back to the car where my Mom and Dad were waiting. I got changed, and we headed down to watch Lindz finish. We ran into Knickerbocker, which was good, and spotted Lindz as she crossed the line, and we all took the Kayak back to the car. Like every year, Lindz had to hit up the milk place, and the whole chocolate milk tastes like milkshake and was really good. Of course Dan tried a sample of Monster, even though he was pretty convinced that he wasn’t going to… And we got our food and hung out until they started putting the teams in order. Once they did, we found out that we got 7th in our age category…so that was let down for us I think, having won every year we’ve competed for the last four years, but hey it was fun. There were 28 teams in our age category too… The waves were really rough and I think they got the best of Lindz, and she said she was on little sleep from working late the night before…I got to go to bed at 10 haha. Here is what I have for results:

You can check out the race and full results at great-race.com.

And low and behold, a Bike Generator!!

Over the past few days, with the help of mostly Bill Coon, also his friend Michael, my brother Kyle, Paco wagner, and my Mom, I have made massive progress on the toaster! Sunday at Wagner’s whapatoola party, I got talking to Bill Coon and got him to go on a mission with me to get the generator hooked up. It was like 8:20 by the time we got to Home Depot, which was closed, along with every other freaking hardware place in the 315 …but it was late Sunday night haha. An unsuccessful trip to get parts to hook up the bike (looking for a pulley or anything really with a 5/8″ keyed shaft) but we got to test out the motor in his barn. We hooked up the Fluke multimeter, a really really nice multimeter, and spinning the big Baldor motor with a 990RPM drill got about 45-50 Volts DC out of the motor, exactly what we had expected. He also had some inverters lying around, which would have made it much easier to hook up a toaster to, but the inverters need a 12V input…so we actually dismantled a winch he had upstairs, which was rated for 12V, and did some (actually a shit load) of math to figure out that it was a 271 watt motor, and spinning it definitely generated current so it was permanent magnet, but before we acutally got a sprocket onto it, it was already 10PM and we had to call it a night.

So Monday, I called Nightingales after work and they actually had a 5/8″ bore pulley, so Paco drove me down and I picked that guy up. I called Bill and left a message, and I was on my way taking my bike and trainer down to his garage to get them down there when he called me back, and basically he couldn’t weld to that pulley, since it was die-cast, but he had went to Tractor Supply in East Syracuse during his lunch hour, and they carried a steel hub with the right bore, but didn’t have any in stock, so he had them call Auburn where they had one, and put that on hold. So I got my brother to keep me company and we drove out to Auburn and picked up that steel hub, returning the one from Nightingales on the way. I dropped Kyle off at our house, and headed straight down to Bill’s with that hub, and then Bill and I drove over to his friend Michael’s machine shop in his garage, where he had a lathe so we could take that steel hub down to the right size. There were more tools there than I think I have ever seen, pretty crazy. Shaving down the hub wasn’t bad (easy for me to say, Bill had to change the head or whatever on the lathe and actually do the work haha). Then we (Bill) spot welded the sprocket right on, the lathe and the digital ruler they used were good down to the thousandths of an inch. After letting it cool we took it back to Bill’s garage and got to work hooking it up. The hub with sprocket slid perfectly onto the shaft of the motor which was sweet, and Bill threw together a wooden frame to hold the motor while I hooked up the bike to the trainer and with the extra chain coming off.

I climbed onto his old road bike, and started pedaling away. There was a light bulb and his multimeter hooked up. As I shifted into this big ring, I saw that light begin to glow, and I kept spinning, and spinning, until my legs could go no faster. The light bulb kept getting brighter, and by the time that I hit 70V and my legs could physically go no faster, that light was shining bright! Powered by my pedaling! Success!!