Back in January, my wife and I placed an order for a Subaru XV Crosstrek Premium with the CVT and a couple of the smaller options. We timed the order knowing it would take probably 4 months for delivery, anticipating that my car would be paid off before we got the car, giving us only one car payment and possibly a little time where we don’t have any payments. We took delivery of our Crosstrek today and timed it so our first payment is not due until June. My car has just under 50,000mi on it, so we should be able to pay off the Subaru before I need another. And with it being a Honda, it sure would be nice to get even longer out of it so we can enjoy a couple years at least without any payments.
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Last weekend, the wife and I made it down to Brown County State Park to hit the mountain bike trails for the first time. With my wife being more on the beginner-intermediate end of things, we didn’t venture onto anything tougher than Green Valley (no Walnut, Hesitation Point, or Schooner). We had a blast. I wrote a few weeks back that I had lost my Garmin Forerunner 205 after a trip to Texas. I thought it had to be at my house in Texas. I have made do for the past few weeks, borrowing my wife’s Forerunner and even using my Oregon 450 on an 8mi run in Houston. That became a real pain because I have been unable to sustain a long run in the past couple weeks because of some knee pain setting in around mile 5 or 6. I haven’t been able to track myself otherwise. I broke down and ordered a Garmin Forerunner 310XT refurb. It retained the training features of the 205 that I like, added the HRM sensor compatibility and foot pod compatibility I want to upgrade to (maybe next season) and had the bonus of also being compatible with my Tanita bc-1000 scale so I can finally start transferring metrics to Garmin Connect. I’m not sure how I’ll like tracking my metrics there or not. I’m going to give it a try. Tanita’s software is only okay. Got out today to attend a group ride put on by the Hoosier Mountain Bike Association at Ft. Harrison State Park in Indianapolis, IN. What a great place this is. I first rode here back in the summer and fell in love with the flowy trails here. They’re not super hard, but they’re a blast to ride. It’s also a good place to take beginners. There’s a little elevation change, but it shouldn’t be too much to discourage them if they need to work on their fitness. There’s a great beginner’s loop, too, where they can stay pretty close to the trailhead if they need to bail. It’s getting close to the “offseason” for many outdoor activities. Or, at least, the shorter days and holiday business tends to reduce our enjoyment of some of these things. It also happens to be a good time to take care of any maintenance you might need to take care of. Several years ago, I made use of the winter offseason to sew a couple of down quilts. I’ve been busting my tail on my thesis lately and not doing much else, so when a friend invited me out to Tyler SP on Sunday with the Morning Glory Yoga Run Club, I had to come. Most of the group was there to do a 16mi trail run in training for the Tyler Marathon. The longest run I’ve done has been just over 4mi (partially on trails, I might add) so I wasn’t up to that. But the time would give me the opportunity to do the whole ABCD loop. I have had a number of questions from readers about how to get some certain trail data onto their GPS. That answer is complicated, because it depends on the trail data and it depends on the GPS you have. If the trail data you want to use is a simple track from someone’s previous ride, you can load it directly onto your GPS. Fitness GPS receivers (like the Edge models with mapping) can do a Virtual Partner based on that file and do performance comparisons and whatnot. With a mapping handheld, you get a basic navigation (it warns you if you deviate from the trail, but not much more). If that .gpx track has more track points than your GPS receiver’s track point limit, you have to reduce the number of points in the track by simplifying it (some programs allow you to do this) or by converting it to a route, which will prompt you to turn (best used on roads where turns occur at intersections, than on trails where turns often occur dependent on terrain). I wish I could stake a claim on that word, but I can’t. I have no idea who came up with it, but I’ve been seeing it around lately.
After my ride in Indy and the mechanical I suffered (being the second time I had that particular problem recently), I decided I needed to replace some worn parts…particularly my 9 yr old XTR M952 rear derailleur. It still “works”, but I’ve had to bend the cage twice recently. It’s on its last legs, I believe. I got to ride these trails for the first time recently, though they’ve been open for a few years now, I think. I grew up just a couple miles from here and wish these trails were open when I started to mtb. Alas, they were closed to bikes long before I started riding. Yay for them being open now. The Hoosier Mountain Bike Association has done a great job with these trails. |
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