Patrick Anderson's Blog

This week, we had plans to visit friends on Friday evening in Colorado Springs. We weren't sure how late we'd get home and were worried we wouldn't be ready for an early morning bike ride. But thanks to the kindness of our friends, we stayed at their place Friday night and got the opportunity to ride with the Colorado Springs TNT group.

When we woke up Saturday morning, we had an email in our inbox. The Springs got a dusting of snow and our coach had been out to check out the roads already. He changed the start time and location of our ride to make sure we didn't have too much snow to deal with.

At 10ish, we met at the Old Town Bike Shop in downtown Colorado Springs. After checking out some gear in the shop for one of the new riders, we headed out on the streets. We made are way over to the Pikes Peak Greenway. It was still a bit chilly in the shady spots with the occasional slick spot from snow. I think the temp was right around 32 degrees.

After we got off the trail, we went up Woodmen Road. It starts off as slight incline and keeps getting steeper. By the time we made the left onto Orchard Valley Road, the climb was getting pretty steep and we were getting warm despite the near freezing temps. This climb was relatively short and not that steep compared to the training we did last year, but because it was only our second training ride of the season, it was still tough. 

Luckily it was over pretty quickly... and then it was back down the hill and the fun part of the ride. We had a nice easy ride back to our starting point and along the way I chatted with Natalie. She is a new TNT member. She told me her personal story of being diagnosed with Lymphoma just about 2 years ago. She underwent 6 months of treatment and is cancer free. That was a good way to finish the ride and be reminded the reason we are doing this in the first place.

I've know about Google Cloud Print for awhile and I even tested it just to see if it works. It allows you to do stuff like print documents from you Android phone or Chrome browser to a home printer... Even if you a thousand miles away. Pretty cool, eh?

For me, I hate printing and I am usually at home or at work with tons of printers, so I haven't had much need for it. That is until today. I was using my work laptop at home and wanted to print something out. Because I have Google Cloud Print setup, all I had to do was print to the cloud. I didn't have to worry about finding drivers or getting around my work laptop's security restriction. Just click and print. 

Today I just took a short warm-up ride by myself. I rode over to Cherry Creek State Park, did one loop and then came back home. It was a bit chilly -- maybe about 38 or so. I wore some of my cold weather gear, but not all. I'm still learning what combos work best on these chilly days.

For this ride, I wore an UnderArmour type shirt, leg warmers, full finger gloves, and a wind breaker. My core was warm and even hot at times, but my mid section and feet were freezing. Luckily, it was just a short ride, so it wasn't too bad. Next time, I'll go with the cycling tights and shoe covers.

In any case, it is all part of the process of learning about cycling. This is my first time riding in temps like these or in February. On Saturday, we have a Team in Training ride in the morning. Temps are expected to be around 20 degrees, so I will definitely have to be better prepared. 

February 16th Ride Map and Info at MapMyRide.com

I've been working on a problem that involves translating an Oracle database into MySQL. The conversion process has been working great – thanks to the great conversion tool provided by Intelligent Converters. Unfortunately, we hit a snag with it earlier this week.

Because of our specific requirements, we are storing som docs and images in the database as a LARGEBLOB. After inserting the converted data into MySQL, some of the larger files were being truncated.

After troubleshooting, we figured the problem was with the conversion/insertion process. To get around this, we had to increase the MAX_ALLOWED_PACKET to 16M and get a modified version of the Oracle to MySQL too. Problem solved!

After last week's kickoff meeting was almost snowed out, we were all hoping for good weather for the first day of training. That was not to be the case. When I loaded the bikes on our new bike rack, it was snowing again and about 15 degrees. 

Of course, our coach was prepared for this. We all met at Bicycle Village and had gear clinic and then did an hour of indoor riding using the trainers. 

This was the first time I have had an organized training session like this and it was a bit tougher than I had imagined. First of all, when you are riding on a trainer, there are no downhills or stoplights to give you a break. In addition, our coach kept us pushing ourselves to work harder. At each change in the music she brought, we were encouraged to change our cadence, gear or riding position. It made for a very good workout, but I'd still prefer to be outdoors next week.