The ride started at 8:15 or so and it took me 1:15 to climb 3000′ to the top in about 7 miles. The very last section of the ride, just before the peak where the party was had a 24% incline and was brutal. This was the first time (out of about 8 attempts) that I’ve actually ridden all the way to to the top without having something go wrong on that section of the hill. That incline is steep enough that a single rock, a chain issue, or anything out of the ordinary will completely throw you off balance and its too steep to start again. At the top, there were turkeys, beer, someone actually hauled a keg up on a bike trailer. Someone carried up an entire cooked pig to share, and there was no shortage of brownies, cookies, and other good thanksgiving food to be shared. Next year i’ll have to bring some food to share. I dont know if I’ll go as far as to carry a trailer on my bike, but we’ll see.

Here is a little video clip from my digital camera.
This was such a fun ride that I will for sure participate next year. I hope that I can get more of my friends to come with me as it would make a huge difference once we were at the top. The whole ride from my house was about 20 miles and the whole trip was about 4 hours long, and I was home in time for thanksgiving with the family, or I would have been if we had plans this year. My mom got sick at the last minute so we had a very low key day.here is a link to the message boards where everyone who participates talks. http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=359615

Once the glass on the deck was complete it was time to start spraying the hull once again. we put two coats of red gelcoat on the hull a week ago and now it was time for about 5 more. We actually ended up running out of red gel coat before the process was complete so I have to purchase another two gallons. The waterline stripe from its previous gel coat job was showing through even 7 thin layers of gel coat as you can see in the last photo.  I still have a lot of work to do to get this thing ready to sail but the process is nearing completion.  I still need to do some sanding in the cockpit to prepare it for gel coat and then comes the deck gel coat along with non-skid.  After that its just a matter of getting the thing rigged and spraying the foils (centerboard, rudder)

Here is a still image showing my ride, and in the app this is actually animated with speed and location controls.

Here I can compare my heart rate in red, to my speed in green and my altitude, all this at the same time as i’m viwing my map animation.

Here is a link to my profile on MotionBased which shows similar information, but in a web format.

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/2805054

http://www.youtube.com/viewplaylist?p=41358BA1DE3D28BC

More information can be found at http://shdh.org

I found most of the parts at The Home Depot tonight with Matt Jeff and Jeff. It cost me ~$34 including a new garden hose and seems to spray the water in a fine mist that will hopefully make nice snow if it gets cold enough outside. The only issue with this method for making snow, at least with the way its currently built, is the possibility that water will push back into the air hose and into the air compressor. This would destroy the air compressor and would most likely cause other problems since the air compressor is practically inside. The weather report says it wont be cold enough tonight so all I can do now is hope it stays cold for a while. You can see my pictures of this build on flickr

I remember as a child during a big freeze year we would run the hose all night to create an ice hill to sled down in the morning. I think I’ll try it again tonight and see what happens in the morning. There are sill a few more days of sub-freezing temperatures at night on the forecast and I hope to bring back some memories. Now if it would just snow so I can take some friggin pictures!