Late Nights

It was 2:15 am when I posted the pic below so I wasn't up to telling the story. After 3 hours of tweaking and testing I have the satellite mapping scenery linked into flite sim. The pic below is somewhere over the Grand Canyon and pretty spectacular, at least I think so. There are still some bugs to work out. The shot was taken at 23,000 feet which is about 20,000 feet higher than I normally cruise, but everything is smooth and the displayed framerate is high enough to feel like I'm moving. Next will be some low and slow tests to see how far I can take it. There are two more levels of graphic quality but I'm not sure the dell can handle much more. I have another gig of memory coming and that may make it as real as it's going to get until Microsoft gets on the ball and links their mapping and flight sim software together.

I attended the first meeting for the Active Transportation committee I'm sitting on. Our role will be education and marketing the new bike lanes, sharrows and active transportation in general. Yesterday was a meet and greet, some review of the structure of the 3 committees, the parent committee and who reports to who etc. The hour spent brainstorming was very productive and lots of ideas were tossed around. The first bike lanes and sharrows are due for spring of 2010 so that should be interesting. It was nice to meet some other bikers who are into it enough to get involved.

Success

Missing Days

Day 7-09
Apple cider, kolache and banana. Cheese & crackers. Pot roast, mashed potatoes, corn, garlic buns.
Day 8-09
Apple cider, oatmeal and banana. Fries and chili. Sushi at Wasabi (caterpillar roll, crunchy roll, spicy tuna roll, teriyaki chicken stir fry, tempura sampler, gyoza, miso soup and coffee. No I didn't order all that myself.
Day 9-09
Oatmeal, banana and apple cider. Cheese and triscuits. Tacos. 13 km on Eyowen.

First Monday weigh-in shows 1 pound loss. Have to start on Ethel I guess.

My cross Canada is stalled in Winnipeg. I tried a new free program that is supposed to let you fly over online map services, putting the satellite images onto the 3d mesh in FS but it's far too blurry, nothing like the advertised pix, look here. I wish! Still trying to find the answers, at least I got it working, many don't.

Day 6-09

Oatmeal, 2 bananas and apple cider. Hot chocolate. Cheese, crackers & water. Corn bread, triscuits, salmon, rice and d7up. 8km on Bridget.

What a long day. 4 games on the clock this morning and 3 more at the Gardens with Northwood this afternoon. totally rinked out. 3 more tomorrow then a meeting. Having Monday off is going to be a blessing.

Day 5-09

Poppy seed bread (told it's called kolache and very good for the heart!), banana and coffee. Cheese, triscuits, granola bar and water. Chicken taco soup, rice corn bread and water. Cereal mix, beef jerkey. 8km on Bridget.

It's been a weird day. I put out an email asking for administrative help with Northwood along with a request from the mother of the player who passed away for pictures of her daughter. I got back some video and a couple of shots. The dad works for the sponsor so they really want a picture of her in the uniform, it was her first year of hockey and she played just 3 games. I also got back some positive results from people who may actually want to get involved. Tomorrow I have 4 hours of timekeeping then another at the Gardens for Northwood games. Going to be a popsicle by the end of the day.

Day 4-09

Oatmeal, banana and apple cider. Cheese, triscuits, pickles and water. Granola bar. Chicken taco soup, rice, corn bread and water. Diet 7up and soda crackers. 16 km on Bridget.

Saw an interesting plan from the UK today. The government encourages employers to join a program that allows employees to buy a bike to ride to work worth up to 1000 pounds (about $1770 Canadian) with a voucher, then have deductions from their check BEFORE taxes to pay it off. It saves them up to 50%. It's called the Cyclescheme. Very modern thinking from an old country.

Day 3-09

Apple cider and oatmeal. Triscuits, cheese, pickles and water. Cheese, pickles, popcorn and poppy seed bread. Salmon, potatoes, corn and water. 6.5km walking

Day 2-09

Coffee and toast. Cheese, bread, granola bar and water. Pasta, bread and water. 13 km on Bridget.

I picked up 2 gigs of ram for the Dell today only to find that the 4 slots were filled with 1/2 gig boards so my net gain was only 1 gig. Instead of installing 2x1 gig boards at the factory they cheaped out and used  4x1/2 boards so upgrading means replacing all instead of just adding two. Confused? So was the Dell tech. Their website leads you to believe that you will end up with the max memory that XP can handle. Took a quick flight in the Tailwind over Vancouver and the performance increase with even half of the ram I thought I was getting is visible.

The 10 year-old girl that was killed on Sunday in the ATV accident is one of our Northwood players. Can't imagine how the parents are handling that.

Day 1-09

Coffee & toast, turkey sandwich & water, poppy seed bread, beef, potatoes, salad, 1 pickled beet, cooler, ice cream and rhubarb crumble, bowl of special K. Very short walk. Not a great start.

Here We Go Again

Sometimes you just have to go back to what worked so I'm going to be posting it all again. Whatever passes the lips on the way in will be back here. I'm tired of slipping, sort of like having two paths of thought. One says eat right, the other says eat right now.

The Northwood season is under way and things are going well. In 9 games played to date there have been 5 tied. It looks like the teams are fairly even. Our Breast Cancer Foundation pins and t-shirt program is going well. Sal sold 108 pins yesterday and 27 kids got free t-shirts. I ordered 300 so more than 30% are gone in a day which paid for all the t-shirts, so it should get us back to even with a $900 donation and lots of kids happily in new NHL t-shirts.

I picked up a new plane over the weekend. It's a little homebuilt rocket that can get up to 200mph and cruises comfortably at 160. It's pretty easy to fly and has only the bare essentials for navigation. No GPS so radio navigation is a must. The Wittman Tailwind has acres of window so looking around is easy and makes the trip more enjoyable. I'm in Marathon and heading for Thunder Bay next time up.

Can't Beat Lance

He may not win another Tour but nobody can beat Lance at raising $ for cancer. His 7 custom painted bikes from this year's tour were auctioned off for 1.3 million with the bike shown here going for $500,000.

Wrong Tea Party

Trust

When to give it, when to question it, how much to offer, how to test it without destroying it, when to end it. I've asked myself all of these questions with recent Northwood hockey developments I won't go further into here. I had that little voice in my head telling me something was wrong but I didn't listen until it was too late. There are so few people willing to lend a hand outside of coaching that any help is welcomed. But I guess I have to learn to be more suspicious of 'volunteers' with motives other than the kids well being.

I thought up a new fundraiser which will help offset some of my darker thoughts about packing it in. Ford has a promotion where they supply pink hockey pins to The Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.  The league buys them for $3, sells them for $5 and keeps the $2 profit. I decided to order some t-shirts for any kid who sells 4 pins. I've already had people anxious to buy them so it looks like it should work well.

I managed something in Flight Sim on Tuesday that I've never been able to do prior, land a jet manually. The de Havilland Beaver is a pretty easy bird to land because you can slow her down to about 50 knots and float in, a Lear jet is another story as at 100 knots it starts to stall and fall out of the sky. I've done ILS landings a few times but this time I just lined up and used the landing lights to bring it in. My next big flight (around the world?) might be a whole lot faster.

A cold has kept Sal at home for 2 days and shes taking 1 more tomorrow because they have a busy weekend coming up. If you know her you know it's pretty bad if shes not at work. I've had the same but really no where near as bad. My ears are really plugged but otherwise I'm ok.

I've only riden back and forth to work a few times in the last few days, picking up groceries tonight and being off 2 other days. We're trying to find a hub for Molly so I can get her back on the road. The last time out I stood to cross Fort William Road and broke another spoke, just getting too old (the spokes not me). I'm going to try and make her fixed if we can find a hub, not too easy for 27" wheels but I want to keep the rim size because of the new tires that just went on. Fixed will mean no coasting, if the wheels are turning the pedals are going around too. Old school but something I want to try.

Toronto

if only it was this easy to go to T.O.