Preparing

Have a Heart, Day 1

Wheel full 70pxI did the resting part of my cardio stress test today.

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Wheel full 70pxThe doc injected me with a gamma radiation emitter, sent me away for an hour, and then rolled me into this donut  after hooking me up to a couple of ECG leads.  I then had to lie perfectly still for 12 minutes while modern medicine worked it’s technological magic.

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Wheel full 70pxCompletely painless and pretty boring. The machine produces a bunch of pictures that look like this.

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Wheel full 70px I can tell that I was not cut out to be someone who would interpret cardio stress test photos.   Supposedly the machine puts a whole bunch of these together and build a 3-D image of the heart and provides a lot of data about what it is doing.

Wheel full 70pxSo we’ll see. Part two of the test, the part involving me and a treadmill (ugh!), is coming up tomorrow morning.

 

 

The Final Route

Wheel full 70pxI’ve finalized the b2b route on Ride with GPS.  You can look at it on that site here [linkie].  This means I now have an official length: 4,129.7 miles/6,646.1 kilometers and fixed mileposts.  So, when you drill down far enough into the Ride with GPS map, the mileposts will show up.

RwGPS Milepost Example 800px

During the ride, then, when I say I’m at Milepost so-and-so, you’ll be able to spot exactly where I am.

Wheel full 70pxBear in mind that the finalized route is only based on the best information I have at hand right now.  Roads or bridges may be closed during the actual ride due to construction or for other reasons.  A levee top in Louisiana might be newly graveled and not reasonably rideable.  Or Google and the other mapping engines might just have a road or a biketrail wrong, and I’ll have to find an alternate.  But I will plan to stick as close to the route I have mapped as possible and will base my official progress on its mileposts.  I am guessing by the time this is all over I will have ridden between five and ten percent more than the 4129.7 miles, even if there are no necessary diversions.  Campsites and motels may be off the planned route.  I may have to go out of my way to stop at a bicycle shop for repairs.  I’ll make sure I keep you posted on those things, though.

Wheel full 70pxFinalizing the route allows me to develop some map products that I will be using on the blog to illustrate different things.  For example, a while back I divided the route into four 1,000 mile/1,600 kilometer stages and a fifth short remainder stage [linkie].  This was nice and uniform, but the stages were hard to grasp because by and large they began and ended nowhere in particular.

vxsge5

Wheel full 70pxSo I’m taking a different approach now.  I’ll still divide the route into stages, but there will be four of them of varying length and they are based upon the dominating characteristic of that portion of the ride.  Hence

Unfortunately, the Ride with GPS screen is a bit confusing because I am riding across the map from right (East) to left (West) and the elevation profile reads from left (start) to right (finish).  Oh well.

Wheel full 70pxThe four stages are, then:

Stage 1: The Long Warm-Up – Atlantic Beach, FL (mile 0) to Little Rock, AR (mile 1,380)

Stage 2: The Fifteen-Hundred Mile Hill – Little Rock, AR (mile 1,380) to Togwotee Pass, WY (mile 2,922)

Stage 3: Down the Roller Coaster – Togwotee Pass, WY (mile 2,9220 to the Columbia River, WA (mile 3,714)

Stage 4: The Road to the Sea – the Columbia River, WA (mile 3,714) to Pacific Beach, WA (mile 4,129.7)

The name of each stage is pretty self-explanatory.  I only gain 250 feet/76 meters in elevation above sea level-the aggregate climb is 19,500 feet/5,945 meters or so- in the first third of the ride.  No hill is over 150 feet by itself and grades are relatively gentle in The Long Warm-Up.  The second stage immediately becomes more challenging on leaving Little Rock, Arkansas.  The Fifteen-Hundred Mile Hill is pretty much just that- a long, long climb over the Great Plains of North America up to the spine of the Rocky Mountains at the Continental Divide at 9,659 foot/2,944 meter high Togwotee Pass, Wyoming.  This is a gain of just under 9,400 feet/2,865 meters, with an aggregate climb is about 45,000 feet/13,716 meters, a little over half again the elevation of Mt. Everest.  The Down the Roller Coaster stage is exactly what it sounds like- five progressively lower in elevation summits and a final bump between Togwotee Pass and the Columbia River in Washington state as I lose almost all the elevation I gained- 9,225 feet/2,810 meters- in the second stage.  The grades are sometimes steep in this third stage and the aggregate climb is 22,960 feet/7,000 meters, but there are full days that I can just put the bike on autopilot and coast downhill.  The Road to the Sea, the fourth and last stage, is no day at the beach (I have to wait for the end of the ride for that) even though it is the shortest part of the ride by far.  I will lose the last 375 feet/115 meters of elevation between the Columbia River and my destination at Pacific Beach on the coast, but that’s not near the whole story.  Numerous hills on this final stretch, some approaching 400 feet/120 meters in elevation, add up to an aggregate climb of 15,900 feet/4,845 meters.

We’ll look at the elevation profiles and some other information about each of these stages in a post coming soon.

David Edgren

 

 

 

Thinking outside the (pill)box

Wheel full 70px I take a lot of pills.  All recommended by my various docs, but “a lot” just about sums it up.  Here’s a week’s worth.

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That box is 9x2x1 inches/22.5x5x2.5 cm.  A month’s worth of my meds in four of these boxes fills about a third of a front pannier.

So two questions:  First, take a look at the list of what is in each day’s compartment.

Daily (prescription)

  • Allopurinol (for gout)- one 300 mg tablet.
  • Atorvastatin (for high cholesterol) – one 20 mg tablet
  • Azor (for high blood pressure) – one 10-40mg tablet
  • Bystolic (for high blood pressure) – one 5 mg tablet
  • Torsemide (for high blood pressure) – one 20 mg tablet
  • Dexilant (for acid reflux) – one 60 mg capsule or Famotidine two E40 mg tablets (alternate every 90 days)
  • Januvia (for Type 2 diabetes) – one 100 mg tablet
  • Invokana (for Type 2 diabetes) – one 300 mg tablet
  • Niaspan (for high cholesterol) – one 500 mg ER tablet
  • Synthroid (for hypothyroidism)- one 200 mcg tablet
  • Fenofibrate (for high triglycerides) – one 160 mg tablet
  • Cyanocobalamin (for Vitamin B12 deficiency) – one 1000 mcg tablet

Weekly (prescription)

  • Vitamin D (for Vitamin D deficiency) – three 50,000 unit capsules

OTC

  • Aspirin – one 325 mg tablet per day
  • Glucosamine and Chondroitin – two tablets per day
  • Potassium gluconate – one 595 mg tablet
  • Vitamin B complex – one tablet per day
  • Vitamin E – one 1000 unit capsule every day

Wheel full 70pxI’ll note that my endocrinologist wants me to stop the Invokana when I start the ride, as he doesn’t believe I will need it at that level of activity and he is concerned about its side effect of causing dehydration.  That leaves me on one diabetes med: Januvia.  My GP doc wants me to stop the Torsemide at the same time, based on the same concern about dehydration.

Wheel full 70pxSo what about the others?  I trust my docs (and my GP is an avid bike rider), but I doubt either of them is on any of these meds.  Does anyone reading this have any real life experience with taking one or more of these meds and bicycling to excess?  I’d appreciate your feedback.

Wheel full 70pxQuestion two is: how can I ditch the boxes. I need my meds separated into daily doses, as some of the pills are quite similar in appearance.  I am also concerned about keeping each day separate from a cross-contamination standpoint.  I think it would be a good idea to just handle one day’s worth of pills at a time.

Wheel full 70pxSo small zip-loc plastic bags?  Individual daily packets made with a Food Saver heat sealer?

Food Saver 800px

Something proprietary I don’t know about?  Your recommendations are very welcome- thanks in advance.

David Edgren

To-Do List 0.3

Wheel full 70pxCome tomorrow I’m two weeks away from leaving for Florida.  I’ve made huge progress on the to-do list, which was last updated here a month ago [linkie].

Green are done. Red are urgent need to do.

Physical Health

  • ADDED: Medical data tag/device/bracelet
  • ADDED: Update will and Advance Directives
  • Dietitian – UPDATE: Appointment 6/21/16 UPDATE 2: Done
  • Endocrinologist – UPDATE: On wait list UPDATE 2: Done
  • GP – UPDATE: Done
    • heatstroke?
    • salt tablets?
    • chafing
    • muscle pains
    • numbness
  • ADDED: Cardio Stress Test on 7/6/16
  • Dentist – UPDATE: Appointment for cleaning and exam on 7/11/16
  • Meds – UPDATE: In progress
    • Refills for meds that will run out
    • ADDED: Copies of current prescriptions from CVS
    • ADDED: Containers
  • Sunblock
  • ADDED: Sunglasses
  • First Aid Kit
    • ADDED: Blood Glucose meter and supplies –  UPDATE: Done
    • ADDED: Glycogon –  UPDATE: Done
    • ADDED: Rescue inhaler –  UPDATE: Done
    • ADDED: Aloe lotion
    • ADDED: Triple Antibiotic Ointment
    • ADDED: Zinc Oxide creme
    • ADDED: Hydrocortisone
    • ADDED: Vitamin “I”
    • ADDED: Disinfecting Wipes
  • Personal care items

Bicycle equipment

  • Added: Pedals – UPDATE: Done

Bicycle clothing, outerwear and shoes

  • Pants and shorts
  • Shirts
  • Outerwear
  • Rain gear
  • Socks and underwear – UPDATE: Socks done
  • Bicycling shoes – UPDATE: Done
  • Gloves – UPDATE: Done
  • ADDED: Headband – UPDATE: Done
  • ADDED: Skullcap – UPDATE: Done

Other clothing

  • Street clothes, ADDED: underwear and socks
  • Street shoes

Camping gear

  • Tent – UPDATE: Done
  • Tent “footprint” – UPDATE: Done
  • Sleeping bag – UPDATE: Done
  • Thermarest round pad – UPDATE: Done
  • Small USB flashlight

Other gear

  • Goggles – UPDATE: Moved to “Should I?” section
  • Helmet – UPDATE: Done
  • Helmet mirror

Routing

  • RidewithGPS
    • Finalize routing – UPDATE: Done
    • ID bike shops along route – UPDATE: In progress
    • ID lodging/campgrounds along route – UPDATE: In progress
    • ID Warmshowers locations along route – UPDATE: In progress
    • ID bike organizations/clubs along route
      • ADDED: Contact and provide routing info and tentative dates in area/request feedback DO ASAP
    • ADDED: ID Target stores along route
    • ADDED: ID CVS Pharmacies along route
    • Cue sheets
      • Print and laminate – ? Note: Are these necessary?- duplicates cue sheets on iPhone – UPDATE: Deleted, not going to do

Travel to JAX and final pre-ride

  • Pre-ride lodging/camping in JAX
    • Research
    • Reservations
  • ID JAX bicycle shop: Done- Zen Cog
    • Arrange assembly of bike in JAX
    • Added: Bike to ZenCog via Bikeflights – UPDATE: Done
  • Air travel ANC to Florida UPDATE: On 7/18-19/16 to JAX
    • ADDED: Make reservation DO ASAP – UPDATE: Done
  • ground travel Orlando airport to Zen Cog on 7/19/16

Tool kit and spare parts

  • tire bars – UPDATE: Done
  • hex wrenches – UPDATE: Done
  • spoke wrench – UPDATE: Done
  • Extra tubes – UPDATE: Done
  • Extra tire – UPDATE: Done
  • Extra spokes – UPDATE: Done
  • spoke nipples – UPDATE: Done
  • Quicklink
  • inflation gauge
  • patch kit
  • chain lube
  • ADDED: Zip ties (misc sizes)
  • ADDED: Duct tape roll
  • ADDED: Friction tape roll
  • ADDED: rip-stop nylon repair kit
  • ADDED: machine oil
  • ADDED: “100 mile an hour” cord
  • ADDED: Chainbreaker tool

Misc Accessories

  • iPhone Quadlock case – UPDATE: Done
  • ADDED: iPhone Quadlock wet weather “poncho” – UPDATE: Done
  • Scosche cardio monitor – UPDATE: Done
  • ADDED: USB Hi-Capacity rechargeable batteries – UPDATE: Done
  • ADDED: Bad Elf Pro GPS – UPDATE: Done
  • ADDED: Hi-Amp 110 volt USB charger – UPDATE: Done
  • ADDED: Cadence sensor

Photography

  • Handlebar bag camera Canon “M” Series w/ lenses – UPDATE: Done
  • Flexible tripod – UPDATE: Done
  • Canon “M” Series remote shutter release – UPDATE: Done
  • iPhone Quadlock case tripod connector – UPDATE: Done
  • iPhone remote shutter release – UPDATE: Done
  • iPhone Sandisk card upload cable UPDATE: Done
  • USB camera battery recharger- UPDATE: Done

Handlebar stuff

  • Handlebar bag (part of bike purchase)
  • ADDED: iPhone Quadlock handlebar mount – UPDATE: Done
  • ADDED: Bar ends – UPDATE: Done
  • Handlebar tape – UPDATE: Deleted, not going to use
  • iPhone card upload cable – UPDATE: Done

Frame stuff

  • Frame mount pump – UPDATE: Done
  • Water bottles and cages – UPDATE: Done

Bike protection

  • Lock – UPDATE: Done
  • Security cable – UPDATE: Done

“Should I?”

  • Handlebar speaker? – UPDATE: Yes, done
  • Strava? – UPDATE: Yes, done
  • Solar panel? – UPDATE: Yes, done
  • Bounce box?
  • AAA?
  • Camelback?
  • GoPro?
  • ADDED: Goggles?
  • ADDED: Voice-activated recorder?
  • ADDED: “b2b” business cards with web address?

Budget

  • Spreadsheet – UPDATE: In progress

Miscellaneous

  • Upgrade iPhone data plan for iPhone – UPDATE: Done
  • ADDED: Theft, Accident and UIM Insurance
  • ADDED: Assorted zip-lock baggies
  • ADDED: Collapsible cup
  • ADDED: Plastic clothespins
  • ADDED: “b2b” pennant
  • Alaska “b2b” license plate

Wheel full 70pxIf I haven’t affirmatively decided to do any of the remaining “Should I?” items by this coming Friday, the 8th, they will fall off the list.  I may regret that, but you can’t do (or carry) everything.  Your continued input is greatly appreciated.  I plan to update the list weekly from this point on, and daily once I’m in Florida.

David Edgren

 

Welcome to My Humble Abode

Wheel full 70pxSince I am planning to be camping for 50 or so of the 70-some nights I will be riding, I wanted to spend some time carefully looking at what is out there in the lightweight tent world these days.  I have not had a new tent in close to a quarter-century, and that was only because The North Face company sent me a new one when the floor in the North Face two-person tent I bought at the Gart Brothers castle in Denver [linkie] in 1975 began to delaminate.  So I guess you might say I was seriously out-of-touch with the state of the art in that particular area.

Wheel full 70pxThe recommendation from almost all of my AT thru-hiker friends was “Big Agnes.”  Now, I had never heard of Agnes before, say, about two years ago, but it seems like she’s doing a land office business selling tents.  I looked over all the BA tents that  matched the rather short list of my needs.

  • Less than five pounds inclusive of footprint
  • Packs small and compact
  • Durable
  • As roomy as possible
  • Bulletproof (no, not real bullets- just nothing going wrong for 10 weeks)

I was really close to choosing one, then I read a bike journal entry by a guy who said that he had a MSR Hubba Hubba NX tent with him on his trip that remained standing in a violent windstorm that flattened his partner’s Big Agnes and bent some of its poles.  Talk about timing.  I checked out the MSR tent in the two-person variant.  It appeared to be everything I was looking for, criteria-wise.  So I left Agnes standing at the altar, and pushed the big orange Amazon button

Hubba Hubba NX

and now I own a Hubba Hubba NX two-person tent [linkie].

Wheel full 70pxFor the “gimme the specs” minded folks out there, the tent weighs 3 pounds, 11 ounces and the footprint another 7 ounces, for a total weight of 4 pounds, 2 ounces.  Its internal dimensions (length x width x height) are 84 x  50 x 39.4 inches/213 x 127 x 100 cm giving total floor space of  29 square feet/2.7 square meters.  It packs down to a nice small cylinder about 18 inches/48 cm long.  The floor is 30D ripstop nylon 3000mm Durashield polyurethane & DWR, the canopy 15D nylon micromesh and 20Dx330T high tenacity ripstop nylon and the fly 20D ripstop nylon 1200mm Durashield polyurethane & silicone.  The poles are DAC Featherlite NFL.  The footprint is 68D 100% Polyester taffeta and folds up into a rectangle 8 x 10 x 1 inches/20 x 25 x 2.5 cm.  A review with really nice photos of the tent in the wild is here [linkie].

MSR Logo 250px

Wheel full 70pxThe MSR Hubba Hubba NX is on Amazon here [linkie] for a little over $300.  I paid $299 so it might come back down.  The footprint is here [linkie] for about $30.

Wheel full 70pxOh, and don’t cry for Big Agnes.  I bought one of her sleeping bags- more on that later.

David Edgren

The Bike that Beat the Baja

Wheel full 70pxI needed a bike to train on in Alaska for the couple of weeks before I head to Florida to pick up my Surly.  My son Jon had my Trek 7000, which he has been riding off and on…

…kids…

…for much of the last decade.  He was in “off” mode this summer and had taken the bike to the Anchorage Trek Store for a tune-up he didn’t have the money to pay for, so

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I’m back on the bike I rode the length of the Baja with- 1,000 miles/1,600 kilometers from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas- in 1994.

Wheel full 70pxI’m sad to say that Jon has let this great bike get into pretty fugly shape…

…kids…

…but there wasn’t anything that several hundred dollar bills couldn’t take care of. I had to get a new seat and seatpost

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a Bontrager saddle on a no-name seatpost

and the shop had already replaced the nice shifters I had back in the day with some low-end Shimano dreck.

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Soft-Ride handlebar suspension – those were the days

I also had the shop put on the pedals I bought for my upcoming ride.

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Wheel full 70pxMan, this bike does not weigh anything.  You drive the Surly.  You fly this particular Trek.

Have a heart… rate

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Wheel full 70pxThe Scosche Rhythm+ heart rate monitor [linkie] I ordered came in today.  I read a lot of reviews of all the non-chestband monitor devices out there and the consensus appears to be that the Rythm+ is pretty good.

Scosche Logo 250px

Wheel full 70pxIt took about two hours to fully charge and five minutes to set up, link to and add to my various apps.  You wear it on the forearm just below the elbow.  It looks to me like it works as advertised.

Please, sir, I want some more.

Wheel full 70pxDickens is so evocative, but Mark Twain probably nailed it on the head.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.

Wheel full 70pxA promise.  This blog is not going to turn into one long diatribe about healthy diet or weight loss.  Neither is a primary goal of the whole enterprise.  If I am successful, mind you, I believe they will be outcomes.  But I am obsessed with neither, and other than an open invitation to be a friend on myfitnesspal [linkie] so you can track what I’m eating if you’re interested and the results of my weekly weigh-in, I don’t intend to bend your ears about this stuff.

n.b. If you’d like to friend me on myfitnesspal you need to have a user account (which is free) on that app.  You can then send me an email here at info@b2bbiketrip.com letting me know that you have signed up and the email you used to sign up under.  I can then send you a friend invite.  Sounds more complicated than it should be, but it’s not my app. -de

MyFitnessPal icon

Wheel full 70pxThat said, I am currently morbidly obese.  The National Institutes of Health (NIH) define morbid obesity as: Being 100 pounds/45.3 kilograms or more above your ideal body weight, or, having a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 40 or greater or, having a BMI of 35 or greater and one or more co-morbid condition.  I’m pretty sure without checking that 357 pounds/162 kilograms has got to be more than 100 pounds/160 kilograms over my ideal body weight, but a few minutes checking on the Internet confirms that as a fact.  Using the “Hamwi Method” [linkie], one of the MediCalc website’s handy calculators [linkie] discloses my ideal body weight to be 202 pounds/~92 kilograms.

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Well, I guess not.  So I’d have to lose 155 pounds to be at an ideal weight.  First NIH criteria: Met.

Wheel full 70pxIt’s “Strike one, you’re out morbidly obese,” but let’s do the others just for grins.  As far as “BMI over 40” goes, I couldn’t tell you what my BMI is, unless it’s on the InBody report I posted [linkie] the other day…

…yep, there it is: 44.7, about halfway down the page on the left…

But 44.7 what?  Butter pats?  Frog’s eyelashes?  Some more looking on the ‘net led to me discovering that Body Mass Index is calculated by using the following formula

Body Mass Index formula

where m is your weight in kilograms and h is your height in meters.  Using the 357.2 pounds from Monday’s weigh-in to convert to 162.02 kg and my six foot four inches to convert to 1.93 meters, then squaring 1.93 to get 3.725, and finally dividing per the formula 162.02 by 3.725…

…following along at home?

I get just a smidgen under 43.5.  So still well over 40.  I’m morbidly obese times two.  Let’s go for three out of three.

Wheel full 70pxI see my endocrinologist tomorrow to talk about, mainly, my Type 2 diabetic condition and how my trip will impact it.  Fortunately enough, my diabetes is manageable through a combination of oral meds, but I have been concerned from when I started planning the trip that the change from a sedentary to an active lifestyle might upset the balance we have reached, with my A1C at or below 7 going back a good little while.  But diabetes is diabetes, a serious co-morbid condition, and my BMI is over 35, so…

[cue somber music]

I’m three for three.  Out for the count.  Morbidly obese by every measurement.  Well, that sucks.

Wheel full 70pxI’ve fought the scales since the 70s.  The then in force Army Weight Control Program, which if I recall correctly allowed me first to weigh 232 pounds/105 kg max, then 238/108 as I got older, was an every six-month bogeyman just waiting for me to trip up.  This was despite what would be objectively found to be a higher than usual physically active lifestyle.  I ran (ugh!), I backpacked, I biked.  A lot, actually. My little vanity piece here [linkie] describes in sad detail what happened as that slowed down then more or less stopped altogether.  The short story: my weight ballooned to just under 400 pounds/181 kilograms, at which point I considered bariatric surgery (which one of my daughters had, and is, 15 years later, a poster girl success story for).  I went through the six month period the insurance company (well, my insurance company, anyway) makes you go through to see if you can’t just lose the weight on your own and lost 40 pounds/18 kg.  I decided not to do the surgery based on that and other considerations, and have never looked back.  My weight has bumped around in the 360s for a few years short of a full decade now.  It’s been higher at times, mainly in the winter (which is hell for the sedentary here in Alaska) and at times of stress.  But I’ve eaten and drunk what I’ve wanted to and in the quantities I’ve felt like.  Shame on me for saying it, but sometimes, given the state of my health overall, that really hasn’t been such a bad trade-off.  I love to cook and I love well-prepared food.  I adore wine.  A gin & tonic or two are just what hot days are made for.  So I get 40 years of indulging myself in, but I’m beginning to realize that can’t go on.  You just can’t do that and dodge bullets forever.

Wheel full 70pxAnd, if it’s time to go, I’d rather go pedaling a bike than eating a steak.  Saying that required a closer call than I was comfortable with, so there is all the more reason to know that it is time for a change.

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I can do this.

David Edgren