Lights stolen!

Stolen 2, originally uploaded by JamesZ_Flickr.

Some anti-social individual broke into our secure bike storage room at my apartment building and stole my lights, can you believe that!!! Fortunately not my cycling computer – that has my accumulate miles on it and I didn’t want to lose it!

Just fortunately there is no need to get another set as the days are so long now, so this can wait till the autumn and besides they are cheap anyway, so why bother stealing them?

I was also lucky that my front wheel was still there! Previously I have lost 2 front wheels because, whilst I have a strong lock around the back wheel, other people are foolish enough to lock their bikes by the front wheel. Then a thief comes along and steals this bike by undoing the front wheel and replaces the wheel with somone else’s. So, one should always lock up both wheels!

Useful links for people interested in science.

I thought it might be a good idea to post some links to other science blogs/website and video sites for anyone interested in these.  There are a growing number of these as many individual scientists take communicating science into their own hands. 

Good blogs:

Microbiologybytes:  says it is Microbiology in language everyone can understand.  I’ve only just found this and it does seem really good.

Pharyngula:   Pharyngula was recently named the top most read science blog by the journal Nature.  Described by Richard Dawkins as trenchant good sense, this is my favorite blog, written by PZ Meyers a Professor, evolutionary biologist and atheist at the University of Minnesota.

Partial Immortilization

Nature’s list of the best 50 science blogs

Video sites:

Finally video content for science comes to the Internet, some of the videos may not be to everyone’s taste – so you have been warned!

http://www.dnatube.com/  This is clearly a YouTube type clone, has some interesting looking lectures on there that might be of use to non-scientist – such as what is DNA and what is Gene. 

 http://www.labaction.com/ I liked this the second it loaded!  The first page has several videos of use to me – such as mass spectroscopy.

http://www.jove.com/ Journal of Visualised Experiments

Podcasts:

Nature

Science 

New Scientist 

Scientific American 

The Longest Day

gearup4cf today is reporting that the distance for the longest day on the bike ride is wrong, I saw that and thought oh good it isn’t 160km that did seem a lot.  Well in fact it is 181.2km!!!!!!!!!!!  Wow!  Lets hope there aren’t too many hills otherwise that is going to be a very long day.

Rockies

More Rockies, originally uploaded by JamesZ_Flickr.

Here are the Rocky Mountains as seen from our plane on the way back from the Burkholderia cepacia conference in Michigan. These are what stands between us and Calgary on the bike ride!!

Now is a fantastic time for Brits to sponsor me!!!!!!

Today the Great British Pound (no Canadians I’m not kidding, that is what it is called!), broke through the US$2 barrier for the first time since 1992.

The exchange rate for the Canadian dollar is similarly beneficial to the British, today’s exchange rate was CAD$2.26825 for £1.  When I arrived in Canada just over a year ago it was around $2 to £1.  So when you sponsor me, your sponsorship will go a long way!

From the BBC’s website:

 

So do you know someone who’s life is affected by CF?

As I say in the information page about CF , this condition is distressingly common in countries such as Canada, the US and the UK.  

Just in case anyone is thinking that they don’t know anyone who’s life is affected by CF, then I can tell all the Brits reading this (that is what us guys are referred to as in Canada!), that in fact you do.  Only if you have had your head buried in the sand for the last 10 years would you not know that Gordon Brown is the Chancellor of the Exchequer and quite possibly the next Prime Minister of Great Britain after Tony Blair steps down.  What you may not know is that last year he and his wife Sarah found out that their son has CF.

You can read about that here. 

Out on the road

Marine Drive this morning, originally uploaded by JamesZ_Flickr.

I’m planing on posting some pics from some of my training rides over the next few weeks, so keep checking back if you want photos of Vancouver!

This morning I went out early because it was forecast to rain all day today and then when I got up it was brilliant sunshine. So I went out down to Iona Beach by the airport, this was just from the beginning as I was heading out down Marine Drive, gives some idea how wide roads can be out here. This is a popular cycling route too, I was out amongst a lot of other people today, including a group who I was with all the way down to Iona Beach. Where I stopped for a drink, they all threw their bikes into a waiting truck and proceeded to run off down the jetty – must have been training for some kind of multi-discipline event. I was just pleased then to have kept up with them!!!!

Time to start training

I’ve just returned from vacation and the rain has finally abated in Vancouver, so it is time to start working up to the bike ride. 

So how does one train for a long distance ride like that?  Well, as I’m relatively new to cycling, I haven’t got any professional answers to this.  Last year when I went on the BC Lung Association ride I did train and this consisted of my daily cycling commute – which is 16 miles, plus usually one long ride on a weekend – eventually building up to a full days distance the weekend before (in the region of 65 miles).  Looking at some of the advice on some Internet sites this appears to have been a good way to go about it.

I’m still figuring out my strategy for this and I will post more on this in the future.  One plan I have is to extend my daily cycle to work from 8 miles to include a detour down the Vancouver Airport, this will give me more distance and also take me on one of my favorite routes – cycling should be enjoyable!!!!

In the meantime there are a range of websites that offer advice on such activities, below are a couple that I’m looking at.  Looking at these and others one quickly becomes aware of just how seriously some people take their cycling, I don’t think I’ll be going quite as far as some people do (where’s the fun in eating an exact number of calories in a day?) – not yet anyway!  One important point about this ride though is that it is not a race, the goal is to complete the distance so this is somewhat different to working up to absolute pace.

http://www.bikeforums.net/  (just discovered this big online big forum)

http://www.bikeforums.net/forumdisplay.php?f=47 (the touring forum, this seems the closest to what I’m doing)

http://www.bicycling.com/channel/0,6609,s1-4-0-0-0,00.html?location=_*topnav*  (bicycling.com seems to be a huge website with lots of interesting things on it)

http://www.bv.com.au/  (this is an Australian website and these guys seem to have lots of useful tips under bikes and riding)