2002 Five Points of Life Ride - Ride Log

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

Week 6

Week 7

After

After Word...

December 31, 2002

Here it is, the end of the year. 2002 has been a spectacular year for me in many ways. I realized one of my dreams in being able to be a part of the 2002 Five Points of Life Ride. I met a ton of people that touched my life in some pretty powerful ways. I made some new friends, and maybe touched a few lives. I even got engaged! And I did all of this by just being me. Like I said, it was a pretty good year.

I have my New Year's resolution all figured out, so it seems I am all ready for 2003. Now I just need to find a noise maker and a party hat and it will be time to sing in the new year. (That is if I don't fall asleep before then!)

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December 24, 2002

Christmas Eve Day. I have the day off from work, and the weather forecast predicts rain for the afternoon. But at 7:00 AM I manage to find my way (It's still DARK out!) to meet a group of other cyclists, and go for my 4th ride since I finished the Five Points of Life Ride. It was a great ride, even with the overcast skies and gusting winds. On our way back I pulled my share into the wind, and had a few people mention just how nice it was to have me back with conditions as they were. It's also a good thing we got our ride in when we did, as the skies opened up at about noon, and did not let up until around 9:00 PM.

And as for this only being my fourth ride since I finished the Five Points of Life Ride? Some people have asked if I am ever going to ride a bike again. Well of course I will, as I truly do enjoy biking. The real reason is two-fold. The first one is that thing called daylight savings time. The week after the Five Points of Life Ride ended, time fell back, making it dark by the time I could get home and get out for a ride. And there was also the weather to deal with, and we have had a lot of much colder and wetter weather than usual this Fall. Of course there are those of you in other locales thinking "Just how cold can it be?". Well, 30's and 40's have been pretty common lately. And while I could go out and tough it through a ride at those temperatures, I didn't exactly move to Florida to enjoy that kind of weather. (Give me 80 degrees and sunny ANY day!)

The second part of why I have been very lapse in my exercise regimen as of late is that I need some down time from working out. I spent 7 full months working out almost every single day. Biking or running or lifting weights. So I think I deserve some time off for good behavior! This also give me time around the holidays to take care of all of those many details that need to be dealt with. And it also has given me a fair amount of time to attend to my other passion, that being photography.

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December 6, 2002

Tonight I ran in one of the first running races that I have been in since early last Summer. I am not really trained for this race, and since it occurs at 6:00 PM on a Friday night, I have to scramble just to get to the start on time. It was cold (Or at least cold for all of the Floridians present), and it was hard to follow the course in the dark, but I still had a good race and managed to finish in first place in my age group (40-44). So I guess all of my fitness that I gained on the ride is not lost...

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November 29, 2002

This is one of the biggest retail days of the year. That means that Kellie and I will be staying as far from any place that is selling anything as we can get! :-)

We actually spent our day outside shooting photos (I shot film and Kellie shot digital) of the "Winter National Olympics" Moto-Cross races. Lots of motorcycles flying through the air and digging through turns at incredible speeds just inches away from other riders. Everything from adults racing in the pro category to 5 year old kids out there giving it their all. You can understand why it was such a fun event to take photos of!

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November 8, 2002

Things are indeed starting to return to some semblance of a normal life. My running is going well, with another long run scheduled for tomorrow (13 miles), and I have been thinking of doing the Horrible Hundred (This ride is known for some serious hills, almost as difficult as any that we rode during the entire Five Points of Life Ride!) down in Clermont, FL next weekend. Kellie has gotten used to me being around the house every day once again, and this weekend there are about 40 things that I want to go take photos of, including several outdoor concerts with some serious caliber musicians, and there is also a motorcycle ride for charity with about 1000 other riders. So if nothing else I have plenty of things to keep myself occupied!

Over the past week or so I have managed to get all of the 2002 Five Points of Life Ride Photo CD's completed, with all but a very few of them left to mail out. At work I have taken on a new job function, so that will give me lots of new learning and new challenges to keep me focused. Every day when I see my bike parked in the garage I still pause for a moment to reflect on how much the two of us went through in just a few short months. But there is so much ahead of me that I need to look forward more than anything else. There are wedding travel arrangements to make, rings to buy, a tuxedo to select, photographers to confirm, etc. There is work to be done on the Habitat for Humanity house where I have spent the past two Saturdays, doing both framing and electrical work. (It is nice to have a wide variety of skills in that you can switch to whatever you happen to be in the mood for that day!) So, as you can tell, life is busy with plenty of fulfilling things to keep me from growing too restless and yearning to spend my days riding my bicycle. But there will still always be those days when the bike and I just need to go spend some quality time together. And those will still be some of the best days to come...

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November 6, 2002

Today I had a phone interview about what life is like after the ride is over. I have to admit that I like these interviews, and when I was asked if I have been doing any post ride events or doing any speaking, all I could say was that i could only wish something like that would come up. After all of the speaking on the ride, I really do know all of this stuff and really do understand how to make people listen. Now I just need a place to continue to spread the word...

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November 1, 2002

Now that I am working back into my running regime after basically no serious running since about the beginning of June, I have discovered a "problem" with my running. In the past I would go out in the mornings and run my typical 5 mile loop at around a 7:45 to 8:00 minute per mile pace. This week when I have gone out in the mornings I have been running 7:10 to 7:15 pace, about 30-40 seconds per mile faster than usual. This is indeed a good thing, and the other item of note is that at the end of 5 miles my pace is almost exactly what it was at the start. A nice steady even pace throughout the entire run. This weekend will be the ultimate test however, as I will be doing my first "long run" as part of my training for the Disney Marathon in just two months. Check back with me after running 11 miles on Sunday to see if all is right with the world...

Yesterday at work, not much got done by anyone. You see, it was Halloween, and almost the entire campus goes out of their way to decorate or at least dress up for the day. Some departments go all out and produce stage plays with multimedia interspersed throughout. Some serious work goes into this. Not being the type that is used to being in the limelight (Really, even with all of the attention that the Five Points of Life Ride gave, I am a behind the scenes kind of guy), I spent the day being a photographer. It was a nice way to spend a work day, versus being my usual nerd self. :-)

Halloween Photographer

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October 30, 2002

Tonight on my ride home from work, I was very aware of just how beautiful the sunset was. And the great part was that it was just as stunning as the one that I saw the previous night on my ride home. Add to that the very radiant and just as breathtaking sunrises I have been seeing over the past few days and it would seem that the world around us has something wonderful to share with us if we are paying enough attention to see it...

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October 28, 2002

I now know I have landed back into the real world. I spent a few hours tonight doing my 77th apheresis donation. It was a triple as is usual for me, and watching a movie while donating was a nice perk. (I never seem to have the time to rent or watch anything on video, so this really is one of the few places I get to watch movies) I know that my donation is far more important that what I see of it, and believe me I can now stand up and tell you in no uncertain terms just why everyone else should roll up their sleeve and do likewise. The strong images of people we met along the course of the ride are pretty powerful stuff...

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October 24, 2002

It would appear that my running is now the part of my routine that needs work. I went for a run the night before last, and today I woke up stiff from it (Mostly my hamstrings, normally my only tight muscle group). I know that the biking was good exercise, but not as intense as my running usually is, so it may take a while to get fully back to being a steady runner once again...

My eating habits have also changed, however for the better it would appear. (During the ride I was rather fussy about making sure that I was eating the right foods, and not just whatever happened to be available) This morning I had a much different breakfast than I used to eat before the ride. Today it was a banana and a "bunny milk". (The Nesquik flavoured milk with the bunny on the bottle). This was one of my better breakfasts before I would ride each day, and it also seems to work well for me when I just sit at my desk.

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October 22, 2002

Today was my first day back at work. I actually did have to think about what to wear to work today (versus wearing my jersey and bike pants every day during the ride). I also found myself staring at the bike lane while driving my motorcycle to work. I was driving in the correct lane, but my focus was in the lane where I guess my heart really wanted me to be riding.

Somehow all of my coworkers knew I wanted to go have Chinese food for lunch today. They were rather amazed at how I had two rather large plates when I first sat down. I must have been hungry? (I did lose about 9 pounds over the course of the ride, and all of my clothes now fit much looser) I also noticed when I went to leave the restaurant that I almost grabbed a few toothpicks for one of the other riders who used to walk around with a toothpick quite often. Maybe I'll grab some next time and mail them to him anyway...

Tonight I noticed that when anything happens around the house, it is almost reflex to take out my digital camera and capture it. Over the course of the ride I took somewhere in the range of 1450 photos, mostly digital. I am still sorting through all of them to put them together into a CD for all of the team members and support crew. We saw some amazing sights along the way...

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October 20, 2002

Home at last. I spent a good share of the day unpacking and going through the boxes of stuff that I accumulated over the course of the ride. Lot's of memories and lot's of smiles in those boxes. I took a long nap this afternoon, and when I awoke, the first thing to come to my mind when I noticed the time (5:45 PM at that moment) was that I needed to get ready for dinner at 6:30 PM (The default time for dinner every night during the ride). Then it sunk in, and I realized dinner would be whenever it was...

All day I had a desire to get on my bike and go for a ride, so at the end of the lighted part of the day I rode a 17.1 mile training loop I have ridden many times. Today it went very easy, at a much faster speed (6-1/2 minutes faster than my best previous time on this loop), without really trying hard. The sunset I got to experience on the final stretch towards home was absolutely fantastic, and it was indeed a ride as good as any that I have ridden.