After the rush of spring conventions, things began to settle down a bit and my project list was pretty light. I was feeling kind of adrift, and perhaps a little bored with the routine I had fallen into, so it was time to make some changes.
Like everyone, I had always planned on getting back in shape, eating better and exercising, but ultimately fell short. I have managed to keep off the weight I lost a few years ago, but old habits and lethargy were once again settling in and I could see the downward slope from the crest of the hill.
It was time to act.
If there was one form of exercise that I ever really could say I honestly enjoyed, it was riding my bike. As a kid, and on through my teenage years, I lived to ride. Hell, it was nothing to ride my bike twenty miles, just to see an afternoon movie. Of course, a driver’s license put an end to that.
About ten years ago, I did have the idea to start riding again and bought a bike. But the neighborhood being what it was, and life happening around me, I never really got started and the bike ended up in storage pretty much unused.
This all changed about two months ago.
At the end of May, I retrieved the bike from storage and had it serviced. The next day I started riding. Now, without any real exercise on my part for the better part of two years, I needed to ease back into it. My last great attempt at getting in shape was taking up running and I followed the couch to 5K plan, which seemed like a good way to acclimate yourself to anything if you followed a similar structure.
So, I began my own “training” plan, setting distance goals and upping the distance each week until I reached my goal.
At first, I began with just a two mile ride, down the road and back. Living on something of a hill, this was harder than it seemed, but after riding it every day for the better part of two weeks, I managed to first do it without stopping in the middle, and then improve my time with each ride.
Now, my bike isn’t really a road bike, more of a hybrid with mountain bike tires, and I’ve never been comfortable sharing the road with motorized vehicles to begin with, so I figured it was time to take it off road. This turned out to be the best decision ever.
Not far from my house is the Cumberland Valley Rail Trail, so I threw my bike in the back of my car and drove over there to check it out. It’s a nice ten mile stretch between Shippensburg and Newville, and a perfect place to ride with some great scenery and gentle variations in elevation. Exactly the kind of track I was looking for.
I quickly began adding to my daily distances, 4, 6, 8 and now 10 mile rides. I’ve been averaging about 4 days a week, and in about a month and a half, I passed the 100 mile mark.
Since, my progress has kind of reached a high point. The week before I left for vacation a rode 43 miles in four days, and seem to be on target for reaching my next goal of averaging 50 miles per week.
There’s just one problem. I’ve outgrown my bike. When I bought this bike all those years ago, I had no idea what I was doing. It’s simply too small for someone of my size, and now that I’m starting to ride longer distances, it’s really beginning to hold me back. Add to this all of the innovations of the last decade and it’s clear that it’s time to upgrade, so I’ve started shopping around, with an eye to buy in the next week or two.
Now, as I’ve been riding there have been a few things which have absolutely contributed to my rediscovering a love for cycling.
Chief among these is my iPhone and the Cyclemeter app. I don’t know what I expected when I got my iPhone, having had a Blackberry prior, I just assumed it would be similar, but wow has it really changed how I do a lot of things. Cyclemeter is just awesome; it tracks routes, times, keeps records of your rides, and integrates with social media sites. Hands down, if you are even thinking of riding, you should get this app.
Now, of course having an iPhone with you on your ride can be a little unwieldy, so the next thing I needed was a way to mount the phone on the bike. I looked at lot of solutions for this, but ultimately settled on thinkBIOLOGIC’s bike mount for iPhone 4. I really liked the fact that its waterproof, having read many reviews of other mounts where people got caught in the rain and their phone was ruined, and it seemed to have a good shock resistant case that would protect it if it fell. It can be a little hard to see the screen though in bright sunlight, especially if you are wearing sunglasses and have a screen protector on your phone, but I feel the other tradeoffs are worth this little inconvenience.
Lastly, it occurred to me after about a month that my iPhone was also an iPod, and hey, I can listen to music when I ride. Having wired headphones plugged into the phone mounted on the handlebars was ridiculous however, so another solution was needed. To address this, I ended up buying Plantronics BackBeat 906 stereo Bluetooth headphones. These work great, initially I had some trouble making them work when I was carrying the phone in a belt clip holster on my ride, but once I started mounting the phone in the thinkBIOLOGIC case the performance has been flawless. (I think it was the magnet in the belt clip that was causing my phone to go into sleep mode if the phone was shaken too much.)
Now, would I have been as motivated to stick with it without these accessories? Maybe, but having the Cyclemeter data has been invaluable. I think everyone at heart likes to see improvement or have some tangible record of their efforts and this app has really motivated me to keep going.
In other news, I just returned from a week’s vacation in Jamaica.
Having waited until the last minute to make travel plans, we decided to forego our usual urban exploration type of getaway and just spend a few days relaxing in the sun on a beach somewhere. Earlier this year, I had listened to the audiobook of Ian Flemming’s Dr. No, and I guess that implanted the seed that we should go to Jamaica.
Turned out to be a fantastic idea, and I think it’s definitely a place I’d like to visit again. Perfect weather, perfect water and some of the nicest people I’ve ever encountered really made for a fantastic trip.
Now, I know this is not the usual content you’re probably expecting to see on this site, so for those who’ve managed to stick with me this long, here’s an update on what I’m currently working on.
Presently, I’m finishing up a couple of cover projects and starting the illustration for the sequel to Hard Spell.
I’m also pulling together stuff for the Chicago Comicon and the rest of my convention stops this fall. Hopefully, I’ll have a few things which I haven’t previously offered at these shows so stay tuned.
Lastly, because I’ve had a few inquiries, I’ve been exploring options for bringing my print store back online, and hope to have some things available on the website by the end of summer.
-Timothy
