Many moons ago I wrestled together some javascript and css to make a nice photo gallery software package for my brother Reuben. I decided today when I sat down at my computer after the last tests and saw that he also wrote his very first blog entry with the code I wrote more than half a year ago… that I should get that good code and put it into my own set of pages, considering traffic here has approximately tripled in the past couple months. Ideally I’d like to have written some “comment” functionality into this website by the time next summer rolls around. I’m trying to figure out a good way to do it, that is portable for both weBLOG entries and photos in the gallery. The way things are indexed at the moment I’m not exactly sure how simple that is to do.

The photo galleries now navigate a bit more effectively and you can preview the next thumbnail as you’re perusing your way through an album. I made similar changes on the Sea to Sea portion of the website to improve the coherence of the look.

So I squeezed my way through semester 7. My Quantum Mechanics final exam today came blasting right down the calendar and arrived all too soon. Any time I’ve had to write more than 2 exams back to back one of them often suffers. I think that’s mostly due to the fact that any time you select 3 of my courses at random from the past years your bound to get at least one stickler. I don’t think I really suffered this time though as a matter of preparation or skills with the course. The final was just too long! I probably could have made my way through all the questions in a full 12 hour day of work with some help from a good calculator and a textbook, but to do it in 3 hours with no discussion or help was a bit much.

Anyhow, Christmas vacation has arrived and I’m quite happy to get out of classes for two weeks and do everything other than work hard on school.

Today we passed the 100-cyclist mark for people registered to ride from SeatoSea next summer. It’s a good landmark but I continue to hope and pray that the number will continue to grow. I previously mentioned that 100 people would be biking next summer, that was a total including people who are only able to get enough time off work (or permission from their spouse etc.) to bike for only a portion of the ride. As things currently stand we’re bigger than the largest ever cross continental bike ride (Sea to Sea 2005) and at this rate I hope we’ll be breaking that record by a significant amount. More riders out there means more people to ride with, live with and get to know. More importantly though, it means that more money will be raised to support development work.

It’s no accident that Advent tradition is supposed to get one thinking about the coming of Christ. The word means coming, and in many ways it’s a time designed for reflection on what it really means that Christ Jesus showed up on earth. On top of that however is the reminder that we await another arrival. The first week of advent is one in preparing our hearts with an attitude of hope.

Yet, This I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him” The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him. It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

Lam 3:21-26

Being “hope week” this week, it’s been good to have the idea reinforced in my head that this isn’t about wishing, it’s about expecting. I don’t wish salvation through the arrival of a crying baby, I expect it. Similarly I don’t wish that the injustices of the world would be undone, I wait with expectations that God is bringing restoration to such situations. I don’t hope that the money raised next summer will help make a bit of difference. I have great expectations of what God can do with the bits and pieces that we can offer to him. One hundred people getting on bikes is something worth getting excited about, it’s worth having some hope that good things can happen as a result.

Google added a new feature to their maps software that I noticed for the first time today. It’s called “Terrain” and shows very roughly the topography of an area using a grayscale overlay on the green-brown-sand-snow kind of color schemes. I think it’s really quite something and even though the satellite view is really the more important one in most situations there are reasons in which this map style teaches you something that the satellite map cannot. Namely how the mountain ranges link together. Where the mountains “end” etc. I of course looked first at what kind of terrain we were going to be tackling on the bike ride next summer.

The first 4 or so days of the ride are going to be tough ones. Tougher than I realized. I remembered Washington State in two pieces from the time I visited. #1, the peninsula and the beach, and then the big desert along the river. I was a bit surprised as well as excited that we get some serious mountains right off the start. I also found out that the week between Boise and Salt Lake City doesn’t actually have any passes, it’s probably net uphill but there’s no King of the Mtns Jersey to be won there. I had the impression that it would be a tough week but the route actually skirts the bottom of the Mtn Range near Boise. The satellite map shows a big irrigation district but I figured it was in the midst of some serious hills. I shouldn’t say that it won’t be bad because you never know about wind, bad weather or crappy roads, but it’s not terribly hilly from what I can tell.

The Going to the Sun Loop in Glacier National Park was one of the things I decided to look at as I remembered the satellite imagery to be a bit ambiguous last time I looked. I’ve only seen one side of it and since I’ve heard good things about doing the loop in a day (136 miles) I wanted to see what the other side was like. It’s much more easily understood with the terrain option and quite obvious which side of the mountains you’re on.

The bike has returned from the shop. It’s awesome and I love it. I forgot how sweet it was to have gears indexed perfectly. I had them indexed to what I would consider “great” accuracy and shifting was “great” but since the return from the bike shop shifting is ridiculously nice. Oh, and the important stuff… The new handlebars are great, they’re a super-wide pair of drops, the widest in the cataloge and I really appreciate it. The ability to breathe fully may or may not be just in my head, I can see it from both angles, one I kinda expected it or two I have a minuscule improvement but am able to notice because I’m seeking the ability to notice it.

Cliff couldn’t find a 27 tooth cog that comes for a 9-speed. Basically because they don’t exist apparently. That means I need to decide in the spring what I’m going to do for gears. I may have to go for an extended length dérailleur and then put a mountain cassette on the rear. That would make it possible for me to go even past a 27 tooth, all the way to 31 or something crazy low (well I guess 35 is technically an option but an unnecessary one).

The Cervélo went into the bike shop this afternoon for an overhaul in advance of the big ride next summer. The parts I ordered came in from out of town and I got the call to drop it off for the changeover, it should be back in a couple days a rather different bicycle.

• Bullhorns and Aerobars swapped off for a pair of drops
• I’m keeping the indexed shifters from the aerobars and moving them around to the drops, some touring style shifters
• Swapping TT brakes for some real ones
• Rear cassette changed from 11-23 to a 12-27
• New chain and cables
• I’ll be putting on some superfat tyres, well like 25mm, but that will have to come at a later date when stores start carrying summer stock again.
• Some white bar tape to tie things together and trick people into thinking I’ve been a roadie all along

The parts that actually needed to be changed were the cassette and handlebars. The bigger cogs will be appreciated so I’m able to manage climbing some passes next summer and not slaughtering myself in the process. The handlebar swap though is a matter of safety. I intend to ride almost everyday in a paceline (of sorts) and bullhorns are not the safest nor the most comfortable way to do so. So sadly I’ve given up the aero-position for the next year or so, I’ll probably miss it but I have to remember the tradeoff, my thighs will grow faster this way!

The snow arrived last night in sufficient quantity to test out the skis. I realize I’ve got some work to do to get my technique improved by the time I want to try some longer distances. I also realized the significant advantage of skiing in machine tracked snow, or at least deep snow. The trouble today was that when I followed someone else’s skis across the field the place that they had already been was packed hard and all around was soft, that meant that the tendency was for my feet to shift sideways out of the tracks. When my sore groin and hips caught my attention due to their extra work I put two and two together and realized that I knew what was going on. Some things you’re suprised to re-learn when you try them out for the first time in many years.

Today a few hundred students invaded the Substage area of the Students Union Building on campus. It wasn’t to study for the exams that are coming up in a couple weeks, it was because today, December 1, is World AIDS Day. The University of Alberta Dignitas Youth Chapter joined several other chapters throughout the country in hosting the “Race for Dignity” – a 12-hour stationary bike-a-thon fundraiser in support of community-based HIV care in Africa. Teams of participants pedaled stationary bikes for 12 hours in the University of Alberta’s Students Union Building (SUB) to support Dignitas International’s innovative community-based care model. For more information about that check out www.ualberta.ca/~dignitas

I scraped together a team of friends through my small group with IVCF and we covered the 12 hours of riding in style. Our team totaled over $300 in donations and contributed to the more than $11 000 raised today.

I rode the home stretch from 6pm through till the finish at 9pm. I threw a summer tyre back on my fixie and put it on a trainer. It turned out to be a bit of a higher gear than most team members of mine appreciated, oops, but that’s just how things turn out sometimes. I realized that even though I’m commuting back and forth to school that the whole end of my body involved with sitting on a bike seat is a bit out of practice for long stretches. I’ve got re-acquainting to do before I start packing on really long miles for the ride next summer. The legs felt OK though and I have no intention of letting them go jelly-like between now and the time the snow finally melts. I was satisfied that I’m still in alright shape and maintained an average heartrate of 148 for the post-warmup 2.5 hours of the ride.

I did a bit of an experiment with eating, mostly because I’m a sucker for gastrointestinal punishment and like to see how much I can process while still putting out decent power. There was way more food left at the end of the day than we were ever going to eat, and that gave me an idea. I decided to keep my heart-rate above 150 bpm and chow through food to see how many calories I could get in before I could tell it was going to be a good idea to stop. I cruised in full throttle:

• 2.5 bananas, 300 cal
• 1/4 chocolate muffin ~100 cals
• 6 cookies, ~150 cals
• 2 bottles gatorade 360 cals
• 3 oranges ~150 cals

All that (excess of a thousand) in about 40 minutes, then I could tell! I would have guessed I could have done around 1200 because my stomach was pretty empty, not quite I guess. I didn’t push it to the point of nausea, there has to be another experiment left for another day. It was an entertaining experiment and I managed to still ride well when feeling full, effort steady-plus or plus-plus and heart rate was above 165 for a sizeable chunk in there when I was at my fullest and there was some loud drumming going on to help push the pace.