Author: lpaulriddle

Spoke Fun

lpaulriddle

This morning, I hopped on my single-speed bike and rode to the Seven Oaks neighborhood in Anne Arundel County. I think of this area as Severn, but the addresses actually are in Odenton. The route takes me through the vast industrial wasteland that lies just west of BWI Airport, encompassing the rental car complex and numerous faceless warehouse parks along Candlewood Rd. It then follows Harmans Rd over Route 100 (probably the most bike friendly crossing of that highway west of the B&A Trail) and eventually winds up on Town Center Drive. About 5 miles into the ride, on Candlewood Rd, I broke a spoke. It was on the front wheel, and (as expected) it knocked the wheel a tiny bit out of true, but not enough to make the brakes rub, so I wrapped the broken end around its neighbor and pressed onward, completing the ride without further incident. This was my first broken spoke in quite a while, and I think the first ever on this wheel. My general rule is “break one spoke, replace the spoke; break another spoke, replace the rim”. When I got home, I scrounged up a replacement spoke of the same length and fixed the wheel. I think the “new” spoke came from a wheel that I replaced on my old Giant OCR-1 several years back, as I had about 20 more of the same size in with all my other bike parts. I don’t know if I’m breaking any unwritten rule by reusing a spoke from an old wheel, but if there is a rule, I’m not sure why I kept all of the spokes in the first place. I guess we’ll see how the spoke does, and if it breaks prematurely, I’ll get rid of the others. To my untrained eye, the spoke seemed sturdy enough, so I bet it’ll be fine.

It was not a bad morning for a ride. A little bit cloudy, but mild, as has been kind of the theme this November. It was the second time I had ridden to that area of Odenton (first was in August), and the round trip distance was just shy of 25 miles. I probably won’t get out on the bike again until Tuesday, so glad I was able to ride today.

Pool Shoes

lpaulriddle

I finally got around to winterizing the swimming pool today. I usually do it around the second or third week of November, but this is the first year I can remember it dragging on until Thanksgiving. It’s been a mild November, with only 2 or 3 nights dipping below freezing. As long as it’s not a hard freeze, I can protect the equipment by running the pump overnight on cold nights. I suspect it seems like I’m closing the pool late partly because we had a very cool September, and didn’t swim much past Labor Day. Every year is different.

I finally got back to the climbing gym yesterday after about a 4-week break due to a strained pinky finger. It’s not 100% yet, but it’s improved enough that I’m comfortable climbing again, and I’m just going to take it easy for the time being and focus on improving my hand/finger strength and holding technique. I also tried out my new climbing shoes. I’ve been climbing with La Sportiva TC Pros for a year or so, and love them, but they are presently somewhere in California being resoled. (Hey, at least my shoes get to travel this year.) I picked up a pair of Scarpa Force Vs, with the intent of using them mainly as gym shoes. They have the same stiff Vibram XS Edge rubber as the TC Pros, and a similar flat-ish sole, but are about $40 cheaper. They also have velcro closures, and are much easier to put on and take off. The trade-off is that they are not quite as ridiculously comfortable as the TC Pros, although that’s not really fair, as they haven’t completely broken in. The fit seems good, and I had no problem tackling an array of routes in the 5.6-5.9 range. I think they’ll work out well.

T-Day Week

lpaulriddle

It’s a short work week, so I’m working on wrapping a few things up at work ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. Next week, we have our second virtual Shibboleth training class of the year. These seem to be popular, as the last one sold out, and we’re pushing 30 registrants for this go-around. I think we’re pulling in a new audience that we wouldn’t ordinarily see at our in-person trainings. The online format has given us an opportunity to revamp our course and training materials, which was overdue, and we’ve identified some things along the way that we can use to eventually improve the in-person training as well. I still greatly prefer the in-person format (and the travel) but can definitely see us continuing to offer some online training even after in-person resumes.

Early this morning, I rode my regular pre-COVID commuting route out to UMBC and back, which I try to do every week or two. BGE has been replacing gas lines in Relay since late spring, and the workers have dug up and patched (literally) every single road in town. It’s still ongoing, but seems to be nearing completion. I suspect next spring will bring a massive repaving project. Should be nice once it’s all finally done, but in the meantime, I’m glad I don’t have to commute through there every day any more.

Speaking of commuting, two and a half years ago, I bought a new commuter bike. It is a Surly Disc Trucker. It served me well as a 3.5-season commuter bike, until I stopped commuting. Since then, it’s been my go-to bike for road riding, splitting duty with my venerable 2009 Masi single speed. Truth be told, it’s better suited for commuting and long-distance touring than it is for my typical 25-to-30-mile morning road rides. It’s quite the beast, with racks, lights, and full fenders, and it is a great rain bike. But, it’s heavy and kinda slow, and while I still ride in the rain occasionally, telecommuting has made it unnecessary, so I’ve been gravitating towards alternative ways to stay active on rainy days. Once I finally start going back to the office, it’ll be nice to use the Surly for its intended purpose again.

Today’s Ride

lpaulriddle

Today, I left home just before sunrise and rode a loop out to River Hill and back. Before 2020, I had never biked to Columbia, but this year, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve done it. I mostly go on weekends, but every so often, I’ll go early on a weekday, as the traffic is usually not all that bad. I typically pick up the CA path network on Tamar Dr in Long Reach. One of my routes takes me past Blandair Park, through Oakland Mills, and across Rt 29 at the pedestrian bridge to Lake Kittamaqundi. From there, I can head north towards Wilde Lake, or west toward Symphony Woods, as I did this morning. From there, the route continued south on Martin Rd, past Simpsonville Mill, and along Grace Dr, which runs parallel to Rt 32. I eventually wound up on Trotter Rd at the Middle Patuxent Environmental Area, where I found a couple of caches before heading home via Rt 108. The total distance was around 29 miles.

This is only the second time I’ve ridden out to River Hill, and truth be told, I’m not really crazy about parts of the route. Most of it is OK, but there are a few sections that are not very bike friendly — in particular, there is a bad section along Hickory Ridge Rd between Broken Land Parkway and Martin Rd. Route 108 is narrow in spots, and busy, though not as busy as it would be later in the day. Next time I ride out this way, I may look for an alternate route that keeps me on the CA paths for more of the ride. All in all, though, it wasn’t a bad Saturday morning ride.

2020 Memories

lpaulriddle

I’ve been reading through some of the stuff I wrote here back in 2005 and 2006, and it has brought back memories of things that happened back then that I had subsequently forgotten. 2020 has been such an extraordinary year, that I thought it would be worthwhile to write something about it while it’s fresh on my mind, so I can wax nostalgic in another 15 years or so.

I have been working from home since mid-March. I never thought I would do well as a full-time telecommuter, because of my ADD, but it has worked out better than I had expected. Having a dedicated office in the basement has helped, and over the past 8 months, I’ve slowly improved it, to the point where it’s now a better workspace than my office at UMBC. In early October, I bought an under-desk treadmill, something I had been considering doing even before COVID struck. It has been a real game-changer — it took a week or so to get used to it, but I’m now able to walk for several hours a day while working, which I find really helps both with concentration as well as my overall mood.

I’m obviously no longer commuting to the office by bike, but I am still riding a few days a week. One of the happy consequences of the pandemic (if there is such a thing) is that it has taken a lot of traffic off the local roads, which has made road biking much more pleasant. Some mornings, I ride my regular commuting route to UMBC and back home before work. Other days, I’ll ride somewhere else, like Columbia or the BWI loop, or I’ll take the mountain bike out and do a loop through Patapsco or Rockburn. On weekends, I’ll often head out early, take a longer road ride, and find a geocache or two. I haven’t been caching nearly as much as I did during my heyday of 2014-2018, but I still enjoy the hobby. Now, though, it’s more about getting exercise or spending time with the kids than it is about caching for its own sake.

In summer 2019, we joined the local climbing gym, and have been going pretty regularly (with the exception of 3 months it was closed this year during the shutdown). It’s another great way to stay in shape, but when you’re my age, you really have to take your time and focus on learning correct technique to avoid getting injured. I’m kind of jealous of my 14-year-old son, who is on the advanced climb team and can easily climb circles around me with seemingly no consequences. I hope he enjoys it while it lasts. 😀 We’ve also done top-roping outdoors, which carried a bit of a learning curve, and required an investment in equipment. Once I got to the point where I could safely rig top-rope anchors, the kids and I have been able to go out and have some fun at various local crags. That is something I had been wanting to do for quite a while, so I’m really happy we eventually got to that point.

We got a LOT of use out of our pool this summer. Someone was in the pool almost every day, and I myself probably used it more times than I did the past several seasons combined. Swimming proved to be an effective substitute for my afternoon rides home from the office, particularly on hot days (and we had a lot of hot days this year, especially in July). I tried a swim tether this year, and found that I liked it a lot. Our pool, while on the large side for a backyard pool at 40′ long, is still a little too short for swimming laps, and the tether let me swim for long periods of time without having to keep turning around.

Well, that’s enough for now, but I am going to try to get back into a habit of writing here regularly again. We’ll see if it actually happens.

I’m baaaack..

lpaulriddle

A few years back, I set lpaulriddle.com up on Ubuntu Linux running on a AWS EC2 instance. It ran just fine there, but to be honest, was kind of a mess. I was dreading the day when I would eventually have to update it or move it somewhere else, because I didn’t document anything that I did while configuring it, and thus, it would take forever to get everything working again.

Last summer, I decided to bite the bullet and redo everything on the site to run in Docker containers. That way, I’d have a repeatable build/deploy process that I could easily move around independently of the underlying support framework, be it ECS, another EC2 instance running Docker, or whatever. It’s still a work in progress, but it’s inching closer to completion. One of the first things I did was to move the MariaDB instance that hosts this blog’s database tables, into a container. This worked mostly OK: the blog still rendered just fine, and I could click around and read all of the posts the same as always. However, when I logged in at /wp-admin, It gave me a permission error, and I could not get to the dashboard. That effectively locked me out of the blog, preventing me from writing new posts, among other things.

About 4 months later, I finally got around to fixing it. Since I planned to move WordPress into a Docker container anyhow, I decided to start over with a fresh database, and just import all of my original blog content into the new instance. The catch was that I needed to somehow get into my old instance one last time to export the data. After some searching around, I found a snippet of PHP that I could add to my theme to bypass the permissions checks. That did the trick: I finally got back in, exported the data, and brought everything back up in a new, shiny Docker container. The blog is now powered by a Nginx front-end that talks to WordPress over a FPM proxy. Fun stuff.

Now that I can post again, I’ll try to write some more as the spirit moves me. As you can imagine, 2020 has been an interesting year with some pretty big changes to my daily routine.

Rain Gear

lpaulriddle

This year’s warm, wet winter has given me a lot of opportunities to break out my rain gear for my commutes to and from work. For years, my “rain suit” has consisted of:

  • Patagonia rain jacket with hood
  • Waterproof Gore-Tex biking gloves
  • Novara rain pants (REI house brand)
  • Regular, non-waterproof Altra sneakers with neoprene shoe covers (booties)

I should point out here that I ride flat pedals exclusively, having given up clipless a few years ago.

While neoprene shoe covers are useful as an extra insulating layer on extremely cold days, I’ve never been particularly enamored of them as rain booties. They do the job, but they’re bulky, and the soles get soggy and gunky if you have to get off the bike and do any walking. Also, the cuffs of my rain pants tend to slip off them while riding, leaving the tops open and often resulting in wet shoes and socks. On top of that, I’ve never been able to find a pair that’s large enough to completely fit over my Altras, so there’s always a slight opening at the back, providing more of an opportunity for moisture to get in.

This year, I bought a new pair of waterproof Altra Lone Peaks. These are marketed as trail running shoes, but I bought them with the intent of using them for mountain biking (I wanted something that was going to keep me dry when I occasionally stick my foot in the water during a stream crossing). Since they’re waterproof, I decided I’d see how they work for rainy bike commutes. My last few times out, I left the old sneakers and booties at home, and wore the waterproof Altras with gaiters instead. No more bulky neoprene shoe covers, and my feet and socks have been bone-dry after every ride. The shoes have nice, tough soles, and will hold up much better than booties if I have to do any walking. It’s a win-win all around, and I find myself enjoying my rides in the rain a lot more.

I should add that gaiters are essential in this setup. The rain pants go over the tops of the gaiters, which in turn go over the tops of the shoes. That way, there’s no way for water to get in. Without the gaiters, there would be a gap between the pants and the shoes, allowing water to seep in around my ankles. The Altra Lone Peaks have a convenient metal loop below the laces that is designed for gaiters, making them especially well-suited for this application.

Top 10 Geocache Finds of 2019

lpaulriddle

I did a lot of caching in the first half of 2019, but the second half saw the beginning of a slowing trend that has continued into 2020. With work and family commitments, my caching time has always been limited. I commute to work via bike most days, which limits opportunities to run out and find a cache at lunch time. I’ve already found most of the caches near me, so finding caches I consider “interesting” now requires driving at least 30 minutes one-way on Maryland’s congested roads. I usually do a lot of caching while traveling, but 2019 was a fairly light travel year (2020 is looking better in that regard). On top of all that, I’ve taken up climbing and mountain biking, and have become more active in my kids’ Scout troop, all of which cut considerably into the spare time I used to dedicate mostly to caching.

That’s not to say I’ve stopped caching, or have any intent of stopping. I’m still doing it; I’m just doing less of it, and I’ve become much more selective in choosing which caches to seek out. I’m also cognizant that my kids aren’t getting any younger, so am trying to maximize family time as much as I can. That often includes caching, but the kids don’t have quite the appetite for the hobby that I had during my heyday in 2013-2018. While I do still occasionally cache solo and with friends, I figure there will be plenty of time for that in the coming years when the kids are out of the house, and even more when I eventually retire.

What’s my point here? I’m not really sure. But in spite of my slowdown in 2019, I did find some pretty memorable caches. Here are my 10 favorites. As usual, these are in no particular order.

  • Merrygun (GC6WQTE)
    I figured it was about time I featured a cache by Vizardo on one of my lists. Vizardo’s caches are all very well-done, and tend to be physically challenging. Most of them are rarely found, probably for that reason. Merrygun was placed in 2016, and to date, has been found only twice. After the initial find, it sat lonely for a little over two years before I came along. It’s a multi-cache which requires hiking a few miles on the NCR trail. The final is in a great spot and has a lot of really interesting swag inside. If you’re ever looking for a challenging hike with a nice payoff at the end, check out one of Vizardo’s caches – you won’t be disappointed.
  • Double Dare – Fizzy Challenge (GC2PZXD)
    I used to be a big fan of challenge caches, but I’ve soured on them a bit lately, for various reasons that I won’t get into here. This cache made the list because I really liked the location and the hide. It is located outside Colorado Springs at around 10,000′ elevation, at the top of a large rock outcropping. Probably nothing special for someone who lives in that area, but I found getting there to be a fantastic adventure.
  • Orlando’s (GC82ZMB)
    Truth be told, there’s nothing particularly remarkable about this cache. It’s a typical hike at Liberty Reservoir that leads to a classic hide with a nice water view – pretty standard stuff for Liberty. It’s on the list as a representative of the Liberty Battleship series, which is possibly my favorite geocache series ever. Between February and April, I made countless trips up to Liberty, hiking dozens of miles and finding over 100 caches, all leading up to this final find, which I saved until October. There are many caches in the series with even better hikes and better views than this one, so think of this as a nod to all of them. Actually, this probably deserves more than one entry in the list. Instead, I’ll compromise and give a nod to:
  • Walking Home From Tumble Down (GC864P9)
    This one is on the list for both the puzzle and the hike. The puzzle was unique – sort of a virtual letterbox, as I think I described in my log. The hike was long, but the views at the end were worth it. It’s easy to get spoiled by water views at Liberty, but there was something about this peninsula that made it stand out, that I can’t quite put into words. Tranquil? Serene? Doesn’t quite do it justice – you have to be there. This is another one that won’t get nearly the number of visits it deserves (it sat for 13 days before the first find) but perhaps that’s a good thing.
  • Psycho Urban Cache #13 – Impossible! Give Up Now! (GCY72P)
    Not much to be said here – how can you find PUC #13 and not put it on your top 10 list for the year?!? Truth be told, I was just along for the ride on this adventure (OK, I did help others out with the ascending rig), but even so, nothing quite beats the thrill of making it to the top and spending a couple of hours up there soaking in the views. Of course, I only hung out for so long because I was petrified to start the rappel. But, I’m still alive to tell the tale. And later on, there was a really cool rainbow.
  • Great Egging Island (GC7B6HR)
    This was an awesome paddle-virtual that I tackled with my family. I had never paddled at Assateague National Seashore before. This particular area was calm, shallow and very warm in the summertime – lacking a kayak, one could easily reach the island with a SUP, or even a cheap inflatable boat or raft. The island itself was very peaceful and serene, in stark contrast to the launch area, which was packed with bathing-suit-clad muggles. On top of that, there were very few bugs on the day we visited, so we were able to hang around for awhile. Just a great spot.
  • Lee, Key, and Teddy (GC7B6WV)
    Continuing with the paddle-virtual theme: this one is located along the Potomac in Washington, D.C. I tackled it on a very hot, hazy, humid day, but got out early and was able to avoid the worst of the heat. It was really neat to see some of the D.C. monuments from the water. There are also nice views of Roosevelt Island, as well as Rosslyn, VA, among other sights. It was a great urban kayaking adventure.
  • America the Beautiful-The Final (GC4Q3R6)
    AtB is a series of caches in Gunpowder Falls State Park. The hike is several miles through rolling terrain along the riverbank, and the caches feature a wide variety of creative containers and hides. I tackled it on a sunny, seasonable January day after a very busy week at work. It was just what I needed to unwind and clear my head.
  • It’s all downhill from here… (GC27265)
    In mid November, a group of us tackled a hike on the Mason-Dixon Trail in York County, PA. This was our penultimate find of the day, and (surprise, surprise) my favorite of the day – because who can resist scrambling up on a rock?
  • 7/16″ (GC7M1TK)
    This is a hide by coiledpigeon near Loch Raven Reservoir. While this perhaps could be called “easy” by coiledpigeon standards, my kids and I had a great time hiking out to it, figuring out the first stage, and scrambling to the final. It’s always great to find a cache that we can all enjoy, and nothing beats quality time spent with my kids, especially nowadays, when they’re usually off doing their own thing.

That about wraps it up for 2019. I wonder what 2020 holds in store?

Today’s chilly ride

lpaulriddle

It’s that time of year where I post about my cold-weather bike rides. This morning was my coldest ride of the season (thus far) so I’m just sharing a few quick stats and notes.

  • Time of day: 7:10am – 8:00am
  • Temperature: (average) 7°F
  • Wind chill: (average) -6°F
  • Conditions: partly cloudy
  • Distance ridden: 7.75 miles
  • Bike: ’93 Rockhopper with Schwalbe Marathon studded tires, Pedaling Innovations “Catalyst” flat pedals, flat bars with Bar Mitts

Clothing:

  • Head: fleece balaclava, “North Face” stretchy fleece head band, cheap UVEX safety glasses, helmet
  • Torso: Arm warmers, merino wool t-shirt, thin synthetic long sleeve pullover (“32° Heat” brand), winter cycling jersey (Canari brand), windbreaker jacket
  • Legs: Performance Triflex winter cycling pants
  • Feet: Wool hiking socks, cotton boot socks (top layer), Keen hiking boots with fleecy warming insoles
  • Hands: Gore-tex windproof cycling gloves with inner liner

This setup worked really well for about an hour of riding. I frequently have had issues with cold toes in the past, and adding insulated insoles to my boots seems to have really helped with this. I won’t say my toes were warm when I arrived at work, but they were not freezing either, which is an improvement over past rides I’ve taken in similar conditions. In lieu of wearing two layers of socks, I may consider buying a pair of more heavily-insulated wool socks for cold-weather cycling only, and seeing how they work out.

The cheap UVEX safety glasses also seem to be a winner. When I wear my regular cycling glasses with the balaclava, they have to go underneath, which allows more cold air to get in around my face (making descents a bit unpleasant). They also fog up constantly, so I end up sliding them down my nose so I can see, thus defeating their purpose. The safety glasses fit over the balaclava, and my helmet straps hold them in place. I did not have nearly as much trouble with fogging today, although based on what I wrote last year, the extreme cold may have had something to do with that. I’m curious to see how the safety glasses do in more moderate conditions.

I want to pick up a vented balaclava to replace the one I have been using. It seems to be plenty warm enough, but my breath condenses on the inside and then freezes. While this is not as uncomfortable as it sounds, I think a mouth/nose vent would eliminate this problem. Today, I also added a fleece headband, which I think helped a bit with air infiltration.

Two issues I have noticed with my bike in this kind of weather: first, the grease in my derailleur pulley bushings hardens up, and they squeak like banshees. Silicone spray seems to be a good short-term fix. Second, my 1993-vintage freehub occasionally “misses”, which is jarring and kind of annoying. The colder it gets, the more it seems to happen. It might finally be getting to time to replace these old hubs. I certainly have gotten my money’s worth out of them.

Top 10 Geocache Finds, 2018 Edition

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Once again, I had to make some tough eliminations to trim this list down to just 10. I’ll list the “honorable mentions” at the end of this post. Without further ado, in no particular order:

  • Hyndman’s Mail Path Cache (GCNXM9)
    A classic traditional hide on a mountaintop outside Hyndman, PA, which is due north of Cumberland, MD. This was a great hike in an out-of-the-way rural area, and a great find on a cache that had been lonely for 2 years. It got a couple more well-deserved visits after I found it in July, though.
  • Huh? Too (GC373XV)
    This is a puzzle cache hidden on an island in Liberty Reservoir. It took me quite awhile to get the final coordinates. The challenge was not so much figuring out how to solve it, but rather, where to look to find the solution. Thanks to NCPositronics, I had the opportunity to paddle a kayak on Liberty Reservoir for the first time ever (along with Alzarius, who joined me in NCP’s tandem kayak).
  • Diablo Point Cache (GCFE)
    A December 2000 hide located near the peak of South Mountain, just outside Phoenix, AZ. Quite the adventure hiking/scrambling 5 miles up the mountain in the 100° desert heat, but I came prepared, and lived to tell the tale.
  • USS Midway (a Virtual Reward Cache) (GC7B69J)
    This is my favorite of the virtual reward caches I have found to date. A very well-done scavenger hunt aboard the U.S.S. Midway, a retired WWII aircraft carrier which is now a floating museum on San Diego harbor. A definite must-do when visiting there.
  • Psycho Urban Cache #7 – A Good Day to Die (GCQHBH)
    What top-10 list would be complete without a PUC?? This was a fun urban spelunking adventure just outside Frederick, MD. It was noteworthy in that we completed it in the rain. The stage 1 tunnel was dry when we crawled down it, but after making the final find, we noticed water pouring out of it. I guess we finished in the nick of time!
  • Tarryall (GC18)
    This is the oldest active cache in the state of Colorado, placed in July 2000. I made the drive to it from Golden (just outside Denver) in February, dealing with some really dodgy weather along the way. Again, I lived to tell the tale. As with much of Colorado, the area around the hide is beautiful and bucolic. This find completed my first loop of the famous Jasmer Challenge.
  • VALHALLA (GC4YJD6)
    This is an extremely fun, creative puzzle/multi located in southern Maryland that doesn’t get nearly enough visits. The field puzzle by itself is worth a favorite point, but the hike is just as awesome.
  • The Catoctin Mountain Geology Tour (GC7R9VC)
    An ambitious EarthCache in Catoctin Mountain National Park that features some incredible views and a really nice hike. Definitely not one for the “numbers” cachers. 🙂
  • Extreme Geocacher Challenge (GC4N1EW)
    Another crazy adventure in Middle River, MD that involves doing fun, dangerous stuff. What more do I need to say?!?
  • The Ghosts of DelMar (MD/DE Virtual Challenge) (GC3VJWF)
    You might say that 2018 was a slow year for caching for me, but I did complete a few challenges that I had been working on for a long time. One of them was this one, which requires finds on every virtual cache in Maryland and Delaware. It was quite an adventure going after all of them, but well worth it.

Honorable Mentions (because I couldn’t just leave them out, could I?):

  • The Maryland and Delaware DeLorme Challenge (GCR7CH)
  • Ever changing Island (GC7B7XC)
  • Thousand Steps Cache (GC59AF)
  • DO NOT Release the Kraken: 1 (GC7WA3N)
  • Puzzle Prep – Cryptography (GC5JJ5H)