Stringing Pearls #7

Stringing Pearls #6

Stringing Pearls #5

Stringing Pearls #4

Cyclecaching Considerations: Sweat

Maybe you’ll think it’s crazy that I devote a blog post, however short, to sweat, but I spend a lot of time dealing with… sweat. During the warm seasons, I typically ride about 150 miles per week, which translates to, roughly, 10 hours per week in hot and humid Alabama. Now, unless you’re a serious cyclist, you may be wondering what all the hubbub is because you get on a bike every now and then and you sweat, but it’s no big deal. Right? But I’m not talking about just getting on a bike. I’m talking real road cycling at 20 mph, which means you must drink a 20 oz bottle of water every hour to avoid dehydration and death. I completed a century ride once 9 pounds lighter than I started. That’s the kind of cycling I’m talking about here. Ok, so what’s this have to do with geocaching? Not all that much and that’s why it will be a short post, but there are a couple of considerations that are unique to cyclecaching.

The first thing you need to know is that you’re going to sweat much more than if you’re just cycling or you’re just geocaching. Got that? I repeat… You’ll sweat much, much more when you’re cyclecaching than when you’re just cycling or just geocaching. That’s actually a partial lie because you sweat nearly as much when you’re cycling, but the airglow around you is drying it and making it seem as if you’re not sweating as much. But that same false wind is also cooling you directly and indirectly through evaporation and, when you stop and stand still, you heat up and the sweat starts to flow, baby.

So, whaddaya do about it? Two things. First, look for shade and retreat into it as much as you can. When I’m going to be out cycling and caching for three or four hours, I will look for shade at every stop and make use of it as much as possible. I will find the cache and, if it is in the sun, retreat to nearby shade to open it and sign the log. I will then replace the cache and retreat back to the shade to plan my next move (look up the next cache, the route to get to it, and select it on my GPS). Second, and I don’t do this nearly enough, you can bring a small towel. I purchased a couple of polyester, micro-fiber sports towels just for this purpose since cotton is very heavy and even heavier when soaked with sweat. Polyester doesn’t soak up as much as cotton, but it dries much more quickly.

On with the show!

Consideration #1: Don’t sweat the logs!

You’re hammering down a hot country road and you stop for a utility box or signpost cache. You grab the cache and look around for shade, but there is none to be found. As you stand there opening the nano and unrolling the tiny log, the sweat starts to flow and as you lean down to sign the tiny, weather-beaten log, a river of sweat pours off your forehead, down your nose, and soaks the log. Way to go, jackass. To be honest, I’ve never actually soaked a log, but I have dropped a couple drops onto one a couple times and was horrified. After a couple of times, I’ve learned to be very careful, which becomes a bit comical. Just try to go about signing a nano log without leaning over it. Of course, the alternative is to remove your helmet, take out your towel, and towel off your soaking, fat head prior to opening the cache, but that adds a lot of time when you’ve got a time budget and a pocket query burning through it. Regardless of your strategy to deal with it, you must keep this in mind to avoid leaving behind a string of stinking, sweat-soaked logs.

Consideration #2: TOTT care.

If you want to be properly equiped for any situation, you’re going to be carrying a few tools of the trade: a phone and/or GPSr and a pen is the minimum. My minimum kit also contains a log roller, small tweezers, replacement logs, and one piece of SWAG. So, what? So, you’re going to have to protect you’re TOTT from sweat. You’re phone and GPSr will be resistant so there not too much to worry about there. I keep my phone (iPhone 6s) in one of the pockets on the back of my jersey, which is really a wet place to be. It does well there except for the sweat running down the earphones cord, which guides the moisture into the phone through the audio jack. That causes a bit of trouble. Not that big of an issue when I’m cycling, but certainly an issue once I stop for a cache. My mitigation plan is to take my headphones off when I get to my first cache and only replace them (or not at all) when I’m leaving my last.

There’s a bigger issue with the logs and any tools made from ferrous metals (like the log roller and tweezers). I keep the replacement logs in individual plastic bags, within an overall plastic bag, within an overall tools bag, within a top-tube bag on my bike. Wait. What? I’ve used these BikeHard AeroStashR bags since 2009 when I got back into cycling seriously. I keep the replacement tube and bike tools in a Timbuk2 Seat Bag, but the top tube bag is for glasses, pen, my caching TOTT bag, and maybe another small thing or two.

BikeHard AeroStashR

And for an overall tools bag, I just recently started to use a Green Guru Small Zipper Pouch. I had previously been using a simple 3×5 ziploc bag, but somehow water got in and my log roller started rusting. To be honest, I’d bet the zipper on the Green Guru pouch makes it less water-resistant than a 3×5 ziploc, but it is certainly much more robust.

Green Guru Medium Zipper Pouch

So, that it. Short and sweat… I mean, sweet. Realize you’re going to sweat when you stop to find and log a cache. Take care not to sweat all over the damn logs. And figure out a good strategy to protect your TOTT. Otherwise, cyclecaching is a match made in… heaven?

Stringing Pearls #3

Stringing Pearls #2

Stringing Pearls #1

7th Anniversary Bike Commuting & Why I Ride

Today is my 7th Anniversary of full-time bike commuting. “Big deal”, you say. “You started riding a bike to work, but why keep track of a date like that?”, you say. It is common for people to keep track of significant events in life, certainly birth dates and wedding dates, but also job anniversaries. The lifestyle change to full-time bike commuting is significant enough that many, if not most, bike commuters at least pay it a thought or a mention when it rolls around every year.

So, seven years ago this past January, I decided that I needed to get healthy and fit. And seven years ago this past June, I got back into cycling again. And seven years ago today, just over two months after getting back into cycling, I decided to start riding my bike to work. Every day. And I’ve loved nearly every mile and minute of it.

BRAG Day 7

Day 7 was a very easy day listed at 65 miles and only 725 feet of elevation gain from Statesboro to Savannah, GA.

The day started very early. Many BRAGgers are an early bunch, but Day 7 was quite different. I guess the need to ride 65 miles, get cleaned up, get bikes loaded, and then catch your ride (whatever that may be) had people starting especially early. By 05:00, much of the gym was stirring and so was I.

I think our entire group set out with little or no breakfast. The cafeteria was too far away to be of any help and there was rumor of breakfast burritos at the BBQ truck up on the hill, but everyone seemed to rely on the first rest stop to get their feed bag on.

I think the prep went without a hitch for everyone unlike most of the other mornings where one or more of us would have some glitch or would have forgotten something. Maybe you finally get in the groove just on the very last day, which would be irony, for sure.

The route started off nicely with a long bicycle path. If it was one thing I did not expect to find in a small city like Statesboro, it was a long bicycle path.

Bicycle path in Statesboro, GA

Steve had suggested that we stick together as a group through the first rest stop and then we’d all find our own tempo so we rolled as a group of eight or nine. Shortly after the bike path, we  hit some pretty dense fog. (You can see it slightly in the photo below.) We really felt like we were riding though soup (I called it a “big bowl of cyclist soup”) and everyone was remarking about how it was soaking them or sticking to them. For example, all the hair on my arms was thick with moisture droplets making it look a bit like white fur.

Alabama Chain Gang early on Day 7

Rest stop 1 on BRAG Day 7

At the first rest stop, we decided to keep rolling as a group since we were making decent progress. (We ended up with about 16 mph average for the entire 65 miles.) Then the shake and bake started, but I didn’t feel it was nearly as bad as the day before.

Shake and bake on BRAG Day 7

More shake and bake on BRAG Day 7

Lawrence pulling the Alabama Chain Gang Train

Rest stop 2 or 3 on BRAG Day 7

As we began to approach Savannah, we started encountering a lot of heavy traffic. We spent a few miles on a very large highway with a lot of fast-moving, very large trucks and we were forced onto the shoulder on the other side of rumble strips… into the debris. I’m sure we’ve all seen worse (The Chef Menteur Highway leading into New Orleans, for example), but you hate riding on the shoulder for fear of flats. And indeed, one of our group, Kristen, suffered a flat. Luckily, Steve Solomon’s superpower seems to be fixing flats. He can have a tire and tube off the rim before I can get my tools out of my bag.

We rode into Savannah proper through the docks and industrial side of the city and it wasn’t the most majestic of entrances. Sadly, one of the BRAG riders, a 61 year old woman, was killed when she was thrown in front of a dump truck within throwing distance of the checkered flags setup as the finish at Emmet Park.

The team settled into the box lunches catered for riders while I biked off to the Crystal Beer Parlor in search of Crab Stew and then picked up a few geocaches to earn my badge for Get Outdoors Day. (BTW. Savannah geocaches are quite hard to find. I only found two out of five caches I searched for; much lower than my usual ratio.)

Enjoying box lunches in Emmet Park in Savannah

Crab Stew (with cornbread and sherry) at Crystal Beer Parlor in Savannah

The rest of the day was a blur for me. I missed getting my bike on the truck and had to arranged for some other people from Huntsville to care for my steed. (I later learned that they opened a second truck. They really could have told me of that prospect rather than just turning me away.) I also ran around like a headless chicken trying to buy some drinks as I was getting a bit dehydrated after only having beer after the ride and I didn’t want to face the four-hour ride to Atlanta with that thirst. I never did get a shower and had to ride all the way home, stewing in my kit. Goat smell to go with my goatee, anyone?

I’ll post some some retrospection later after I’ve had a chance to sit and think a bit. Overall, I consider BRAG a fantastic experience and I’m so glad that Steve organized a group and that I was able to join them. I met a lot of new people, had some great experiences in cities I would never have visited otherwise, and had a chance to spend many hours in the saddle, which is one of the things I love most. If you come to this post by searching for information about BRAG and are considering joining for the first time, go immediately to signup. Don’t think about it; just do it. I hope this ride continues to be strongly attended many years into the future.