New England Fall Colors

Gee, here it is the 2nd of November. Where did October go? I've been taking pictures of the fall colors during the whole month, so I guess it's time to post them. They run from early in the season to around the 20th of October.




These three pictures are on the shores of Silver Lake in Wilmington. I bike by here a lot.





These shots are early in the season. The reds have been especially vivid this year. This forest is near the field owned by the 495th Radio-Controlled Flght Squadron near Andover, MA.








These 4 shots are in and around Billerica, Tewksbury and Wilmington.




I have a window seat at work. This is the view from my window looking out towards the neighboring cemetery. I love the combination of the yellow trees with the red bushes, and the backdrop of the trees surrounding the cemetery. The picture doesn't do it justice because I'm shooting through my window, but it's a great view. I saw a wild turkey run across the parking lot today.

End of September

This week was a really busy one. I taught the Advanced AutoMod class to 5 customers, 2 from Singapore, 2 from Ohio and one from Canada. This meant that I had to be to work at 7:30 or so to get things all set up, and then didn't leave until 5 or 5:30 on most days. They were great to work with, and we had a good week together.

On Wednesday Robert left for a short trip to Florida. He was going for some demos and meetings at Eglin AFB. He left at 6:30 Wednesday morning and returned home at about 1 AM early Saturday morning. Nyssa and I both missed him a lot!

I took Nyssa to the vet for her yearly physical. She's around 12 years old now, and is starting to show her age a bit. She has had a heart murmur for a long time, but it's getting worse, and so now we have to consider what we want to do to treat it - x-rays, echo cardiograms, drugs and stuff. I bought her a harness to use on walks, instead of the collar, which irritates her trachea and makes her cough more. I also found a cute little pink jacket for her, but will have to exchange it for a medium instead of a small. She seems to feel the chill more now that she is older.

We had nice weather until Friday, when it started raining - apparently the remnants of some tropical storm or other. Friday night Tiffany and Dan came over for steaks. I used the grill in the rain, and while I was getting it heated up, Nyssa saw the steam and started barking about it. She did this once before when I had a pot on the stove that had gone dry and was smoking a bit. A canine smoke alarm!

Tiffany has completed her coursework for an associates degree - here is a picture of her with her diploma.







Congrats, Tiffany!



Last night we had a mosquito in our house. Being the mosquito magnet that I am, I got a couple of bites before I saw the bug and squashed it. I really wish I weren't so allergic to mosquitoes - I have a couple of large red itchies.

It's hard to believe that September is all but finished. Our foliage is just starting to turn to the fall colors. It's late this year, because we had such a wet summer. However, it is expected to be especially brilliant for the same reason. I drove to Manchester, NH, on Thursday, and saw a bit of red here and there. Saturday during my bike ride I passed an area where all the trees had turned bright red. There are trees here and there on the way to church that have turned red. The next week or so will bring out the other colors, and I'll put some pictures up when I have some pretty views.


I wasn't able to do a lot on my thesis until the weekend. I pounded away at the code and couldn't get one particular thing to work, so I gave up for a while and went riding. About 10 miles into my ride I realized what I was doing wrong, and when I got back, I fixed the problem. Oxygen is so good for the brain! I'm just about finished with iteration 1 - all I have left is to feed back the results.xml document to the client, get the results nicely formatted, and then spin off a thread to launch the server-side activities.


We have a family in our ward with 5 little boys ranging in age from 9 down to 1 1/2. We have had them over and I have worked with the boys in the Primary when I substituted as the chorister. Their mom reported to me that the other day they saw someone who looked like Robert. Their 3 year old said, "Look, it's Sister Rains' brother!"


My Bosch bread mixer arrived this week. I now have a wheat grinder and a bread mixer, and have really enjoyed getting back into making bread. The whole wheat bread recipe from the Lion House Cookbook is especially tasty. It is also a good food-storage recipe - it calls for oatmeal, honey and powdered milk, in addition to the whole wheat flour.


I'm still looking for people to come to Boston to visit, so that I can go to some of the tourist attractions like Old Ironsides, the Freedom Trail and other places. Salem is a good place to visit in October, as they have all sorts of activities associated with their heritage and connection to the witch trials. The next 2-3 weeks will be especially beautiful as all the trees turn, and the coast of Mass. and New Hampshire is really pretty any time during the year.

Tri-State Seacoast Century

Saturday was the Seacoast Century. This ride starts in Hampton Beach, NH, goes south to Salisbury, MA, and then north to York, Maine, hence the name. It was a beautiful day but quite crisp and cold, with a stiff breeze off the ocean most of the day. I took a few pictures along the ride, as there are plenty of photo ops.

Hampton Beach is a seacoast town with a long stretch of sandy beach. Friday afternoon after we got there, Robert and I went for a walk along the beach. The tide was coming in and we watched the waves break and crash for a while. We saw plenty of seagulls, and then had fun watching 4 little sandpipers scurrying around looking for food. We also saw some really strange tracks in the sand - long lines of what looked like a bike tire, with little blips and blobs of sand to the side. We later saw a guy with a metal detector and a long-handled scoop - he was dragging the scoop in the sand, which created the lines.

Saturday morning we showed up for registration around 7:10 and got signed in. Robert did the Quarter Century this year - he has volunteered previous years. This is the 4th year that we have participated.

The first 15 miles head south into Massachussets and then return. It's not particularly scenic in comparison to the rest of the route, but there are some nice beach-front properties that people rent during the summer, and lots of salt marsh land. After returning to the state park (where the headquarters are located), the ride heads north through town. The first couple of pictures are from north of town - once you get past the main beach, the coast is rocky and rough.




















The fall colors haven't hit this area yet - maybe in a couple of weeks - so it was the end of summer vegetation. Last year people were picking fruit off the bushes along the road. This year I saw the fruit - it looked like cherries or crab apples, but the bushes were scrubby and short.

A bit farther north there was a large ocean liner off the coast. You can see it at the top of these pictures:

















After wandering along the coast for a while the route turns inland, where we come into Portsmouth from the southwest. We cross over a steel-grate bridge which we are supposed to walk over, and then there are some large hotels just after the bridge and lots of boats in the docks.






















There is a big bridge from Portsmouth over to Kittery, Maine, which we are required to walk across. It's a steel-grate drawbridge, and in past years the bridge has been up when we got there, but luckily it was down this year and we could just walk across. There were some very nice boats tied up on the far side of the inlet that the bridge crosses.




















After walking across the bridge, I tried to get back on the bike, and my right shoe wouldn't connect into the pedal. I tried two or three times, and finally realized there must be something in the cleat. Sure enough, there was a small black rock lodged between the cleat and the side of the sole, wedged in so tightly that I couldn't get it out without tools. A nice guy stopped and produced a small screwdriver, which popped it right out.

A bit farther down the road there were a couple of elders walking along the other side of the street. I whooped and hollered at them in true Melvin Glade fashion.

There are only 2 sag stops on this century. The first is at headquarters at Hampton Beach, and the 2nd is at Fort McCleary, in Maine. Here's a picture of me with the park in the background. The little brown building is the restrooms. They serve up cookies and peanut butter sandwiches, and fill up your water bottles.

The next stretch goes up to the Neddick Point lighthouse, also known as the Nubble lighthouse. The first picture below is taken from York Beach - if you blow it up, you can see the lighthouse way off on the point. Then there are some shots of the lighthouse with with me in front of it.

The ride is an out-and-back ride, with a couple of loops on the way back that aren't on the way out. I decided yesterday that I don't like out-and-backs, because as you are passing the places that you have passed before, you know how much farther it is to the end. That can be discouraging. We also had a really stiff wind coming along York Beach, and then some more wind as we went from Rye to Hampton Beach again. But all in all it was a beautiful day and one of the best times I've had doing this ride.

Utah/Wyoming Trip

I just returned from a trip to Utah and Wyoming. I flew to Salt Lake on Aug. 24 and returned on Sept. 3. Here are some highlights of the trip.

I visited Sarah and Brent and delivered their wedding present. Here's a picture of the happy couple. They have a nice student apartment in Provo and are anticipating another school year at the Y.

I worked in SLC Monday through Friday on a project. Our customers have requested that we hook up a real PLC (as opposed to a soft PLC) to an AutoMod model so that we can demonstrate that trick. Dan and I spent most of the week poking around at a PLC and trying to figure out ladder logic and how to use the PLC to control our model. I iinitially didn't think I wanted to do ladder logic, but it's actually quite interesting. We're still having a few problems which I'll need to iron out early this week, but it's been a good experience.

Friday I left SLC and went to Afton to visit Mark and Lacy and the kids. Saturday afternoon Kort and Tristen and I went for a ride. Kort has a 2-wheeler, and Tristy was riding his trike. They wanted to take me to the pasture and we started out heading in that direction. I didn't know which pasture or how far, and after we had made it almost to the middle school, I decided that we had better turn around. Korty is an expert biker and was riding circles around us while I hung back with Tristy. His little legs were pumping the trike pedals for all he was worth, and if I got to far ahead of him he would holler out things like "Grandma, don't go so fast!" On the way back to the house we had a bit of hill, and Korty was very kind to help Tristy over the bumps when he got stuck or tired.

Sunday night we had a really violent thunderstorm with lots of wind, and then it settled into rain. Monday morning there was a bit of snow mixed in with the rain. Monday around 11 AM the clouds lifted to show snow on the mountains. This picture is from the back deck, looking at the mountains to the east of town. Star Valley is such a beautiful place.

Monday morning we played in the basement. The boys have lots of indoor toys to get them through the long winter. Korty loves to play with my camera, and took some interesting pictures to add to the ones that I took as well.

Korty with Bullie and Buckie in the background.

Tristen with his dinosaur shirt.

I had to take a "silly" picture before I could get the boys to settle down and do a good picture.

Here's the good picture.

Here's another picture of Tristen.

We had fun playing with Lincoln Logs and building lots of different houses.

This is a shot of Turbo in his Fido Fleece. Turbo is getting up there in years. A couple of weeks ago he was really miserable and when Lacy took him to the vet, he had slipped a disk in his back. But he's all better now and runs around outside. He likes to play tug-o-war with his puppy and his frog. One night he dragged both his toys into my room and was disgusted that I wouldn't get up and play with him in the middle of the night.

Mark is in the height of the hunting season, but he came home for the weekend. His leg gives him a bit of trouble, which I suppose is to be expected. He's okay riding, but hiking up and down the mountain is uncomfortable. Lacy is due in November, and is enduring the last few months of the pregnancy and wondering how she will cope with 3 boys. She's such a whiz at house-keeping, I'm sure she will do well.

Tuesday we went back to SLC and Lacy then drove to St. George to visit with her family. I stopped at my favorite stores in SLC, and also visited the cemetary where Mom and Dad are buried. It's such a peaceful place, with a nice view of the mountains. The last couple of times I have stopped there I have had a hard time finding the graves. I always stop too far east. Last February when Robert and I were there we had to look for a while, especially in the snow; this time I was able to find the headstone a bit faster.

Tuesday evening I met my friend Carolyn for dinner in Bountiful. I also drove around Bountiful and Centerville, and am amazed at how much things have changed. They have torn down the old J.C. Penny's building and replaced it with "The Village" - an apartment complex of close to 200 apartments. They also have a nice new LDS Distribution Center on the border between Bountiful and Centerville, plus lots of new stores and restaurants along 500 West.

I flew home Wednesday, arriving in Manchester at 5 PM, and getting back to Billerica around 6:30. Robert and Nyssa were both happy to see me, and Nyssa spent time sniffing my clothes thoroughly - I assume she smelled Turbo.

I bought a wheat grinder while I was in SLC, and it was delivered on Friday. I have spent the weekend making whole wheat rolls and bread, and it is really tasty. Is there anything better than the smell of bread baking? Nothing I can think of, except the taste of bread warm from the oven. Today's Relief Society lesson was about food storage, and I felt all virtuous because we're building up our supply of essentials like wheat.

Mass BikePike Tour 2008

So here's a link to what I've been doing this past week: The Mass BikePike Tour. You can check out the link to Bikely.com to see the maps and routes we took, and to get a sense of the planning that goes into getting a group of 100 or so cyclists together for a 3-4 day tour of Massachusetts.

After planning and training all summer, I showed up at Ephraim Curtis Middle School in Sudbury, MA, on Thursday, August 14th, for the start of the ride. Robert dropped me off at 7 or so and took a picture for a "before the ride" record. We were allowed to bring 2 duffel bags, tents and other camping gear, plus our bikes, helmets and other riding equipment. The tour organizer transported our bags and gear from Sudbury to each night's destination - it was our job to transport ourselves there on our 2 wheels.

We have had an especially wet summer in MA., and our hope was that the weather would clear up so that we could ride without rain. I don't mind riding in the rain, but I prefer not to. When you get water in your bike shoes, every pedal stroke squishes unpleasantly.

Day 1

Riders had a choice of 3 distances each day: 30, 50 or 65 miles. On Thursday I joined the 50 mile group. We left Sudbury and wound north through Lincoln into Concord for our first rest stop. Then we headed west to Acton, through Stow, Hudson, Marlborough, Southborough, stopping for another break in Hopkinton, which is the town where the Boston Marathon starts.

The weather was beautiful and sunny, but started clouding over in Hopkinton. As we were mounting up to leave, a guy pulled up and warned us that they had just broadcast a severe thunderstorm warning with lightning, hail and heavy rains. We were near a gas station with a large shelter over the pumps, so as the rain started we all grouped under the shelter. We waited for a while and didn't see anything worse than heavy rain (har-har), so we finally pulled out and headed to Upton.

The group spread out as the faster cyclists wanted to get out of the rain as soon as possible. I wasn't one of those, and several of us eventually got dropped from the main group and formed our own little sub-group, trying to navigate through the rain.

The worst problem we ran into was that our cue sheets - the sheets that tell us what road to take, how many miles to go, where to turn, what the elevation is, and where the ice cream is - disintegrated in the rain. We were wandering around a bit until Neil came up from behind. He had stopped to ask someone where the Northbridge Middle School was (our destination for the night), and so we followed his orange poncho and finally arrived at the middle school. All told we rode in the rain for around 14 miles, along some pretty high-traffic roads - stressful, to say the least.

The other difficulty that I had was that at one point when I mounted and locked my left foot into my pedal, it slipped because of the wet and the rain. I ended up with a nice abrasion and bruise, but no blood - much to my disappointment!

Shortly after we arrived, the rain stopped and the sun came out, so we were able to dry out, take a hot shower and get rested up. Redbones did the catering for dinner - we had brisket, salad, corn bread and other tasty BBQ foods.

While most of the participants camped out, I opted for the motel/bed-and-breakfast routine. I stayed at the Grafton Inn that night. This is a lovely little inn just off the town green in Grafton, with a pub downstairs and a list of all the owners going back to the 1790's. The room had an antique queen bed, and a fan in the window instead of air conditioning, and was very comfortable and pleasant.

Day 2

Friday morning we had a pancake breakfast courtesy of 10th Gear, a Christian youth cycling organization. My "taxi" to the inn was Arlen, who is one of the adult leaders of the group. He told me a bit about their work - they start kids out in middle school on short trips, and eventually work the kids up to participating in cross-country fund raising trips. If anyone has any used equipment they are happy to accept donations.

Here's a "before" picture for Friday morning. I opted for the 30 mile route on Friday, as the forecast still had rain in it, and I didn't want to be out in the wet for most of the day. In retrospect this was a very good choice. I found that the day 2 30 mile route was significantly more difficult than the day 1 50 mile route.

Central and western Massachusetts geography consists of towns by rivers in between hills and ridges. The pattern for day 2 was up to the top of a ridge, then down to the town, then repeat that for the 30 miles.

The beginning of the route took us past some lovely ponds and streams, and then the climbing started, heading up to Purgatory Chasm. We climbed from 311 feet to 580 feet in 2.3 miles, then stopped for a breather at the Chasm.

The Visitor's Center had some fun quilts hanging on the walls for decoration.

Some people went scrambling among the boulders and rocks - I decided to wait until I could return with grippy soled hiking boots instead of bike shoes with slippery metal cleats.

Leaving Purgatory, we climbed to 728 feet at the end of Purgatory Road in 1.09 miles, then dipped down to 511 feet in Oxford, where we stopped for lunch. Then over the next 6 miles we climbed to 876 feet, first on Muggett Hill Road (you know it's going to be a bad road if it has "hill" in the name), then on Masonic Home Rd, and finally dipping down to 748 feet in Charlton. Not to worry, though we're not done yet - we next climbed to 830 feet over 2.5 miles, in coming into Sturbridge, did a little dip down to Podunk Road, 787 feet, then climbed up to 826 feet in 2 miles to catch the right turn to Wells State Park, our destination. The day ended with a screaming descent to 613 feet to the park, followed by the attack of the killer mosquitoes.

We had beautiful dry weather all day until about 4:30 PM, when the rains started. We had dinner on a pavilion sheltered from the rain, but had to forgo smores around the campfire. The rain didn't quit until around 1 AM according to the campers - I was tidy and dry at the Comfort Inn in Sturbridge, but dreading the coming ascent out of the park the following morning.

Day 3 Saturday morning we woke to gray skies, dry roads and a nice breakfast at the motel. There were 15 of us staying there, enjoying the fact that we were warm and dry and ready for the day. After the ride back to camp, we started up the hill out of the park. We were pleasantly surprised that the 200 foot climb out of the park was much less painful than some of the 200 foot climbs the previous day. IMHO, the difference today was that the big climbs were at the beginning of the day rather than at the end, and that we were well-rested and fresh.

Our road went by Quaboag Pond, which provided a nice photo op. We followed the Quaboag River for a while, meandering through some gorgeous wetlands and climbing a bit into Brookfield, where we headed west on Long Hill Road. Notice the "hill" in the name of the road? This was a steep hill in addition to being a long hill, a climb from 626 feet to 921 feet over 2.48 miles. It levelled out in a few places, and then rose quite steeply.

I had planned to power over a small hill, but it turned out to be more steep than I thought, so I geared down, but something happened to my gears and they wouldn't mesh. So I came to a sudden stop, but couldn't get my feet out of my pedals. I thought for sure I was going down, but somehow I managed to free my right foot first, and then balance by leaning forward on my handle bars until I could disengage my left foot. I still don't know how I stayed upright - it was a pretty scary moment.

At the top of the hill we stopped for a breather in front of a house that had beautiful gardens. If you look closely at the picture on the left you can even see the trestle of their model railroad that winds through the garden.

Somewhere in this area we went through a lot of farmland. We stopped to catch a breather and take some pictures for people who think that Massachusetts is crowded and urban. We even saw some llamas on one of the farms.

Farms and Fields

The ubiquitous New England stone wall

The next stretch of road should have been one of those screaming downhill drives, a reward for all the hard work climbing up, but the road was in very poor condition - cracks, potholes, sand, ruts, and all kinds of challenges. I was really thankful that I had new brake pads - I had to stop several times to rest my hands and arms from pushing on the brakes. We had to keep our speed down to under 10 mph to avoid problems, and it was quite a bumpy jarring ride for a while.

We stopped in Warren for lunch on the town green. For those of you not familiar with New England, many of the towns have a green park in the center of town. Warren has a statue commemorating the battle of Gettysburg, a library, an old railroad station, and some nice shade and benches. We also collected a few more mosquito bites.

Left to Right, Bob, Gary and Neil

That's me, with the library in the background

A view of the library

The Civil War Statue with the town center in the background

More bikers. Bernie is 3rd from the left.

A group of us left Warren together, including Neil, Bernie, Elizabeth and myself. Lynne caught up with us a bit later. This was probably the best group that I rode with. We were well matched in speed and determination - some of us did uphills better, and others did downhills better, but we pretty much all kept together and had a lot of fun.

The last half of the ride into Belchertown was very pleasant, with some moderate hills, but nothing too difficult. I left the tour on Saturday afternoon, but the rest of the group continued on to Northbridge on Sunday. Robert picked me up in Belchertown, we had dinner at a pizza place, and then returned home. Belchertown to Billerica is around 70 miles on the Mass Pike, and my first thought riding in the car was "Cars go so fast!" It took a bit before I was comfortable with trees whizzing by as we drove along the road.

Lessons Learned

The first take-away is that I need to stop avoiding hills on my training routes. The coastal areas around Boston don't have the long steep hills that you find in the rest of the state, having more "rolling hills" than the long climbs. But there are a few places on my regular training routes that have hills that I have been avoiding because they are a long grind. The kinds of hills that I can presently handle are those that have some downhill before, which allow me to get part way up with my momentum from the previous downhill, and then that don't last too long, so that I don't run out of lower gears. I also need to do more interval training and weights on my off-season so that I'm stronger for the climbs.

The 2nd lesson: group rides are fun! When you are cranking out 50 or even 30 miles all alone, without any pauses or breaks, it can be a drag. Riding with a group of cyclists with similar abilities was great - we helped each other along.

The 3rd take-away was a bunch of new friends. I had interesting conversations with people from all over, and from all walks of life, about everything from biking and training to careers and life histories. I look forward to seeing members of the tour in other rides in the future.