Who Switched Off The Light?

There is no denying anymore. Fall has arrived. I love the color everywhere and the cooler temperatures, but the getting-dark-early part of it, I wouldn't miss. And when day light saving time ends this Sunday, it's going to be even worse.

So tonight was kind of my last chance run after work while it's still light outside and then someone switched off the light.... FAST! ;-)

I got out of work on time, but by the time I finally started running at Furman, it was once again 6.30PM. I was wearing my safety vest, but left the headlamp in the car, since I thought I should be able to get 4 to 5 miles in before it's really dark. Besides, I planned to head out to the Swamp Rabbit Trail first as long as I still have daylight and finish up the run on the campus, where there is light everywhere.

From the parking lot at the McAllister Auditorium, I headed out to the dirt trail next to the soccer fields and dorms and from there on the Rabbit Trail towards Travelers Rest. My turnaround point was the BP gas station at mile 2.2. I headed back towards Furman and once again got into trouble with my stomach. At mile 2.7 I started walking and I thought I will have to walk back to the car. After maybe ten minutes I felt better and started running again.... Two motivations here: 1) this stomach stuff just starts to annoy me and I want to beat it, 2) all of a sudden, it got dark fast, especially on the trail, where there are no lights and a lot of trees around that take away the moonlight on top of it. Funny enough, once I started to run again, I felt fine. I turned back on the Furman Campus close to bell tower, took the little dirt bridge over the lake and then made a straight shot back to the car. Once the Garmin beeped for 4 miles, I hit the stop button and walked for another five minutes.

Well, I guess this is it with evening daylight runs for the rest of the year. But fortunately, the campus is well lit and as long as it doesn't rain, this is going to be my training stomping ground over the dark season! :-)

First Item On My Bucket List

No, I am not planning on kicking the bucket any time soon, but lately I had a revolving thought about bicycle travel and also some outside inspiration from books and magazines, that I feel I have to put it on record, so that it starts to become a more concrete goal. Besides, I am sure that when I start to think about other goals, I would soon be able to find other items for the list.

Anyways, back in summer, in one of my reading-like-crazy phases, I picked up several travel report books. One guy was hitch-hiking around Ireland with a fridge, two dudes rode around the world on their BMWs and then there was this guy, that circled the globe several times in every possible direction on his bicycle in the last three decades.


Source of picture is here.

Especially this last guy (Tilmann Waldthaler), made a career out of travelling on a bike. His very first tour in the 1970s, he did on a touring bike, built for him... At the time he was in Australia and basically biked through the Australian Bush on skinny tires. He also described the first time he saw a mountain bike several years later and how he embraced this new sport. He actually wrote a mountain bike guide for the Alps only to be shown the door when trying to sell his book to his editor, because there was no market for this content in the editor's opinion... Only to sell it a couple of months later, when the need for it was even evident to this said editor. This guy really works to live. It was the revolving theme in his book, that he took on a job, just to finance his next trip of several months. He said, he always worked and doesn't need a lot. While reading excerpts out of three decades of travelling on a bike, he made the impression of a grounded dreamer, if this makes any sense to you. Now he doesn't have to take a regular job anymore to keep on travelling. He travels and then writes books about it, gives speeches and showcases his pictures. He is a professional adventurer. Here is an interview with him in German.

Even though I admire this lifestyle, I am a creature of comfort. I can take camp sites, porta johns, heat and coolness, discomfort and dirt for a couple of days, but then I want to get back into civilization with all of it's amenities. And yes, this is maybe the most extreme case of bike touring that you can do, but between this and doing a bike ride around the block, there are tons of possibilities. It's just the question of which shade of gray fits to your abilities, your preferences, your wallet and your time resources.

More food for thought gave me an article in the Roadbike Action Magazine (August issue) about two guys that went from Canada to Mexico in around four weeks. Those guys did the structured approach (I like structure) and they travelled light... very light. They basically did this trip on their credit cards. They didn't carry food other than water, stayed in hotels every night, didn't even have a full change of clothes with them, so they washed every night. I read this article and first I thought, this is just crazy expensive, but on the other hand... I did three weeks of road trips before and I had to stay in a hotel every night and also had to eat out every night. Besides, if you don't have thousand things with you, you can use your regular road bikes for this trip (like these guys did) and don't have to buy/ rent a touring bike. On a road bike, you are also able to log some serious mileage as log as your legs and your butt are game for it.

We'll see... It's on the bucket list now and I am going to work from here! ;-)

Read It Out Loud!

Since I moved in with Terry, my commute has increased around 1,500% (no kidding, it went from around six minutes to ninety minutes) and with that the amount of time wasted. Seriously, there are 10,000 things that I would prefer doing during this time than sitting in my car. But since whining really doesn't change the situation, but negatively influences my mood, I was looking for things that would start making the commute less of a waste of time.

Yeah right, this post is about my discovery of audio books.



I had a couple of audio books sitting in my book shelf for the longest, but really, at home I enjoy just sitting in silent and reading (very traditionally) a book with pages and everything. Lately, I didn't do as much reading, but this pastime comes in seasons for me. It's really odd, that sometimes, I finish up a book within days and sometimes it just takes forever... And it doesn't necessarily say anything about the quality of the book. But once again, I digress. What I meant to say before rambling off on other things was, that I had these audio books at home catching dust for years until I decided that this would be so much better than listen to those crappy radio stations around here that have a play list of all but five songs.

But now three weeks into this experiment, I am 1) hooked on audio books and 2) running out of material. Therefore the used book sale from "The Friends of the Greenville County Library System" last Sunday was perfect timing. It was already the second day of the sale and everything was half off. That is nice, but it was also clear that I would have much less to choose from. We got there five minutes before they opened the doors and there were maybe a hundred people already ahead of us. This was bargain madness! We got a little box and a map (!) at the entrance and I took off straight to the audio book section. The selection was slim and I sure wasn't picky, since none of the titles meant anything to me. So I walked out there with six audio books for USD 21.50. NICE!!! Now time will tell, if I got anything good, but I looked them up on Amazon in the meantime and it's quite promising! Here are my bargains:

• A Summer Affair by Elin Hilderbrand
• The Burma Road by Donovan Webster
• The Hornet's Nest by Jimmy Carter
• Bushworld by Maureen Dowd
• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
• Executive Power by Vince Flynn

This book sale is a great chance to stock up on books and they even have an almost new section. It's hardcovers and a little more expensive than the rest, but still no comparison to regular priced books. So put it down on your calendars:

The Friends of the Greenville County Library System will hold its next regular Book Sale on April 23, 24, and 25th, 2010 at Merovan Center, E-2. Friday the sale is 3 until 8PM and is open to members only. Memberships may be purchased at the door. Saturday the sale is open to the public from 10AM until 5PM. Sunday, the sale is 1PM until 5PM and is open to the public and everything is half price.

That might sound funny, but I can't wait to get in the car tomorrow morning and start on one of these, since I finished up Ken Follett's The Hammer Of Eden today!

Hiking Governor's Rock

Around here, we see wonderful fall leave foliage. It's what is everyone is talking about for weeks, it's just that beautiful. So how better to enjoy the color explosion than to go out there.

That's why we met up with some co-workers of mine to hike to the Table Rock summit in the Table Rock State Park. This is Table Rock from an viewing area in the valley:



As the title of the post already implicates, we didn't quite make it up to the top, but called it a day after reaching "Governor's Rock" about 2.3 miles into the Table Rock trail. But I jump ahead here a little.

The trail was classified as "strenuous" and for the 3.6 mile hike up to the top, they projected two to three hours. Most of the time, I feel like those classifications are pretty conservative, but they are pretty much dead on on this one.

Around 12PM we finally hit the trail behind the nature center. We had to register and everything, so they can make sure that nobody got lost on the trails in the evening. It was a beautiful day yesterday and of course the trails were packed. Especially, as long as we were on the Carrick loop which is an hour hike around the valley with some waterfalls. After we took the turn unto the Table Rock Trail, things thinned out a little, which made it easier for our group of eight adults and three dogs.

As soon as we got on the Table Rock Trail, the trail got a lot steeper. But heck, we are all in good shape and the time passed quickly with conversations and views. Half way up the trail is a little picnic shelter with a gorgeous view over to the Table Rock reservoir:



Shortly after the shelter, the trail meets with the Ridge Trail. This trail connects the two summits in the park. One of them is Pinnacle Mountain and the other said Table Rock. The trail flattened out some, since we followed the ridge line, which was a welcomed break for all of us. Just shortly before Governor's Rock, we had to start climbing again and one of the older dog ladies that were with us, had to be given a hand in a couple of sections. That was a flashback to a couple of weeks ago, when Terry had to carry Karma up the ladders at the Grandfather Mountain hike. But here is Emma's moment of weakness! ;-)



Up there on Governor's Rock, the views are just amazing. We sat down to soak it all in and to have a snack. There was a pretty colorful folk up to be seen as well. The college girls and a guy that lost his shirt, but managed to have a radio with him (he is in the background of the following pic). A guy with his son that already hike Pinnacle Mountain that morning and they were on their way up Table Rock, when we met them... By the way... The just got off the trail when we were about to leave the parking lot later on... These guys were moving. Also, we met an older gentleman who was spicing up his hike with some letterboxing.



On the rock I took a poll about who is going to join to go to the top, but it was decided that we will call it a day right there. After maybe half an hour, we started our way down again. That was a lot of pounding on the old bones, but there was certainly a pull in everyone to get down this mountain.



Once we got back to the nature center, we put the other half of our registration in the box and sat down on one of the picnic tables for a couple of minutes.

I really enjoyed the hike. The weather was great, the trails were very nice maintained (thank a boy scout) and the company was great... But next time, I want to go all the way... Maybe we'll find another weekend this year to do it, since it's just half an hour drive for us. :-)

Before Meets After

Last night, I watched Biggest Loser. It's one of my favorite shows and maybe the only show that I really try to follow besides Project Runway. I know it's reality TV, but I like them... Not all of it, but enough to try to follow the seasons. But since I don't have any recording device at my disposal and don't stay at home to watch a show, if there is another activity in sight, I have to rely on reruns a lot of the time. But I digress!

Even after seeing so many seasons already, there is still interesting stuff exercise and nutrition wise that they are talking about.... mixed in with a lot of drama to fill up a two hour show. It also shows what the human body can endure. How many overweight people have you been talking to, that say they can never run because of their knees and because they are too heavy to run. If you have ever talked to me before my weight loss journey, you knew at least one! But those morbidly obese contestants on the show run on the treadmill all the time and they are fine. I guess, if you finally made this decision in your head, when you finally flipped that switch, then you stop making excuses!

If people don't make a conscious decision to change, then a 100K for the at home biggest loser won't be enough of an incentive either. You see very easily if someone stopped making excuses when they show the "after moment" of the contestant that was voted off the ranch. So last night, Dina got voted off and in her after moment she looked GREAT! She stopped making excuses for not working out and not eating right and just did it. I agree it's not easy to work and be a mother/father and so on, but if you want something really bad, you make time for it. And I think getting healthy is something we all should want really bad, because it makes us live longer and it makes us live a happier life...

I have been obese for most of my adult life. I wasn't an unhappy person and I wasn't unhealthy (based on my blood work etc) either, but how I felt inside didn't reflect the person on the outside. So at one point early last year, I decided for myself, that I want to look how I feel with the result that I feel happier and are healthier and look this way now too. Here is my "Before and After":

Since my friends back in Germany don't see me very often in person and some of them choose not to read this blog (no, I'm not mad! ;-) to see the latest pictures, I sometimes get the question on the phone, if I am able to keep off the weight. And that's alright, I wouldn't be the first to put it right back on, but I shared my strategies previously and it seems to work for me, so I am going to stick to them!

From A To B By Bike Powered By Google Maps

Source: http://googlemapsbikethere.org/

When I first got over here, I had a fairly new hybrid in my oversea container. I just started riding a bike again on a regular basis a couple of months prior to my move and wanted to keep up with it... that's why I spent some 500 Euros on the bike in the first place. Once I was here, the easy access to bike friendly roads and trails wasn't given and besides, I was a little pre-occupied with partying to tell the truth. I think, I made it on the bike once or twice before I got serious with exercising again last year and started my weight loss and triathlon journey.

Still, there was no easy access to bike trails, especially if you are used to Europe's bike trail network which basically let's you pedal for miles and miles and miles with hardly traversing roads. But since I was a little more familiar with the area by then and got to know other cyclist that shared their knowledge of the area with me, I finally ventured out on my hybrid on back country roads in the neighborhood. After I got frustrated with the hybrid and upgraded to my road bike, travelling on multi-purpose trails (my then I discovered the Swamp Rabbit Trail and the Hub-City Connector) was out of the question anyways, especially if you want to cover some ground and get a good workout in.

By now I know my way around. There are tons of resources out there to enjoy the road while on a bike in South Carolina. Here are some examples:

• Greenville Spinners: group rides, cue sheets, time trials... you name it
• Spartanburg Freewheelers: group rides, cue sheets
• Map my Ride: just type in your location or the area in which you want to ride and it spits out routes, if other users plucked them in there
• Cycle Carolinas: cue sheets for North and South Carolina rides
• Weekly rides organized by local shops e.g. Carolina Triathlon, Sunshine Cycle, The Great Escape

Those are all resources that I greatly appreciate and a lot of people put a lot of work into those.

But, what I was always missing was a routing opportunity for bike travel, especially, if you are not familiar with the area. I mean in terms of... I have a long weekend ahead of me, why not ride down to Charleston SC and back? Where do I look for this kind of information? Or if I decided to visit my friend in Lincolton NC over the weekend and would like to go there by bike? How do I find the most cycling friendly route? Or when we were in Tennessee for our summer vacation and had the hardest time to figure out a good route for a two or three hour trip?

Well, good news for us!

Google Maps made an announcement, that they are planning on having a "bike there" option in the future. The wording in the announcement says "soon" and I really hope that soon doesn't mean 2012, but spring 2010... There is no telling. There is also no information on how they make the classification in what is bike friendly or not bike friendly road, but it's a start.... I take it! ;-)

Today At A Convenience Store Close By

Look what I discovered:



You can get tons of German beers here, but I never even heard of "St Pauli Girl"... After some research on Wikipedia, I found out, that it's only getting distributed to the U.S. ... I guess that's why I never heard of it before.

Zum Wohl sein! ;-)