Spinning Again for a Guinness World Record

December 10th, 2007

Last January George Hood rode an indoor bike for 85 straight hours in an attempt to set a new Guinness World Record. It seems that his record keeping wasn’t good enough for it to be recognized by Guinness. He raised some money for an Illinois police group so it wasn’t totally wasted effort.

The week after George’s ride, John Jurczynski was planning to ride for 50 hours to raise money for the American Diabetes Association while he was training for the Race Across America. He decided to try going longer than 85 hours. He ended up doing 87 hours. Since he decided to go for the record at the last minute, John wasn’t even sure what the rules were and figured it would be unofficial and it was.

In April Pete Masie and Wendy Gardiner both rode for 96 hours, 4 minutes and 8 seconds during training for RAAM as a 2 person team. I’m not sure if their ride was ever recognized by Guinness.

George Hood didn’t let his defeat in January get him down and in July he rode for 111 hours, 11 minutes and 11 seconds. His goal was to ride long enough that the record would be his for a long time.

John JurczynskiJohn “Blue Dog” Jurczynski finished RAAM solo last year and now he wants the Guinness World Record to be his officially. Along with Mike “Mad Dog” Gallagher, John started riding at 5 AM this morning at the Laconia Athletic & Swim Club as part of LASC’s 5th annual Cycle Mania fund raiser for needy children in New Hampshire. There will be relay teams riding along with John and Mike. Check out John’s website for more information and links to a couple promotional videos. Hopefully there will be some updates throughout the next few days.

Update: New record set at 113 hours!

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Ski the 14ers Book

December 9th, 2007

A few weeks ago I posted about Chris Davenport skiing all 54 fourteeners in Colorado in 363 days. He has a book with over 200 pictures that supposed to start shipping tomorrow according to the Ski the 14ers website. Amazon has Ski the 14ers available for pre-ordering. I think it would make a great Christmas gift. If you don’t know who to give it to, you can send it to me.

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Will Hiking the Manitou Incline Become Legal?

December 9th, 2007

No Trespassing Sign on Manitou Incline

The Manitou Incline is the Pikes Peak region’s most popular hike even though it’s not legal. The popularity isn’t surprising because where else can you climb 2,011 feet in just over a mile? Fit people hike it because it’s a great workout and less fit people do it just to say they did it.

In a front page article in today’s Gazette, the possibility of hiking it becoming legal is discussed. The 2 reasons that the Cog Railway hasn’t wanted people hiking it have been liability and parking issues.

The parking issues are real but not allowing people to hike legally hasn’t really made a difference. It doesn’t seem that the face it’s illegal has kept people away. By not having it legal, the parking may be worse for the Cog Railway since they can’t put up signs about where to park so it doesn’t affect parking for people taking the Cog. In a post earlier this year, I discussed where and where not to park when hiking the Manitou Incline.

I can understand their concern about liability. Of course I think hiking or other activities should be at your own risk and there’s always the chance you’ll get hurt. Unfortunately some people always want to blame somebody else when something goes wrong. There have been discussions in the past about giving the Forest Service a easement through land owned by the Cog. The Forest Service already has an easement for part of Barr Trail.

Spencer Wren, manager of the cog railway, said parking is a problem but they can deal with it. He said, “At this point, liability is our No. 1 concern. We are working on some stuff to deal with it, and I can’t be more specific now. We’re close. At this point, I don’t want to say anything.” He said there may be news by spring.

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Too Much Stuff

December 5th, 2007

Today Kent posted a link to the Story of Stuff website. It has a 20 minute video. It’s long but well worth watching. Most of the facts I basically knew already but it does a really good job of tying everything together and explaining what we’re doing to the planet.

I believe in cutting down my impact on the environment. I don’t totally buy into the green movement. It’s partly because it’s now become popular and companies are using it to market even more stuff. I also think there are so many simple things that can easily be done that get ignored because they aren’t something big and radical. A couple months ago I wrote about some ways to help the environment for Blog Action Day.

Of course we’re in the biggest stuff buying month of the year. I even have a cycling and outdoor gear search on this site. I also have a cycling and outdoor deals blog so you can buy even more stuff with the money you have. If you’re going to buy it, just make sure it’ll get used and then use it until it’s worn out instead of just out of fashion.

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Campylobacter Is No Fun

December 5th, 2007

Last Monday night I felt a little cold when I went to bed. I woke up a couple times during the night and felt cold. We drop the temperature in our house to 60 degrees at night but I’m normally plenty warm.

Tuesday morning I had a headache but Tylenol pretty much took care of it. By noon I had a worse headache and Tylenol wasn’t doing much good. I went home from work around 4 and was having chills.

I was hoping a nap would help and I’d feel better. Instead about the only times I got out of bed for the next 48 hours were for way too many trips to the bathroom. During that time I lost 5 pounds although it was mainly from dehydration and my weight bounced right back.

Thursday evening I felt descent. I went to work Friday and felt pretty good all day. Soon after I got home I started having bad abdominal pain and making trips to the bathroom again.

I got bad enough that I ended up going into the ER. Based on my blood tests, the doctor was pretty sure it was food poisoning and not the stomach flu that has been going around. He gave me some medication for pain and antibiotics to kill the bad bacteria.

Yesterday I got confirmation from my doctor that it was food poisoning. I also got a call from the country health department because I had campylobactor. Normally it occurs in isolated cases but sometimes there are outbreaks of it. They asked a bunch of questions about what I had eaten and where. They said most likely it came from something I ate over the Thanksgiving weekend but didn’t really pinpoint what.

Yesterday I spun very easy on the bike path for about 40 minutes. I felt pretty good so I headed over to Ute Valley today. I’ve been wanting to get over there now that I work close again. I could tell I was still pretty fatigued. I only rode about 45 minutes but that’s about all I had. I’m also still feel like sleeping a lot.

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