125 miles = one quarter.

I tweaked my blog a wee bit.  I used to have a training schedule under "Progress Report" on the right side.  I have replaced that with my profile for a great new site, the Plus 3 Network.  This site lets you log your miles, by hand or by uploading your GPS device, to count toward donating to certain charities.  You pick a sponsor, such as Trek, who will donate money on your behalf to the charities they work with.  If you go under the "Causes + Sponsors" tab, you'll see what I'm talking about.

EDIT: Whoops, I figured out you can't do much on that site unless you're a member.  So now my link on the side just has the homepage since my profile is only viewable to members.  But you can still click on the Sponsors + Causes tab if you want to look into it

I have been looking for a reason to ride, and now I have one.  So many times, I've bailed out on a solo ride during the week because I wasn't motivated.  Now, I have a reason to get out there and put in some wicked miles.  There is some fine print with the donation rate though.  If you enter your miles by hand, each mile only qualifies for $0.0025.  One quarter penny per mile or one single penny per 4 miles.  I did a 60 mile ride with Bob on Saturday and did another solo 64 mile ride on Sunday(I'll talk more about those later).  All that effort (especially with the wind!!) equals a massive quarter.  Now if I had a GPS device, like this one, each mile would equal $0.02.  2 pennies per mile.  So my weekend would have netted me $2.50!!  That's a huge difference.  Now my goal is to donate to as many of those charities as possible.  So I ordered a GPS device like the one I linked to before.  It's gonna be awesome.  The way I figure it(hey, stop shaking your head at me...) is that the money I spent on the device will kind of be like me donating that money to those charities.  But I get a cool device and really, really good motivation to ride.  Plus there's little goals with rewards to achieve.  I'm hoping to be one of the first 300 people to make 300 miles so I can get a pair of socks.  There's other goals too, but I'll tackle them when I get the time.

So that's the new direction I'm taking.  I'm going to ride my bootay off for charity.  Hopefully this website will take off and a bunch of people will join.  Maybe more charities and sponsors will find this website useful.  Any of you that read my blog and have a GPS device should really consider signing up.  It's an easy way to donate to some worthy causes.

Now on to the rides.  Saturday: I met with Bob at 8:30am at Crane Coffee.  We both had our heavy commuters, so going was slow.  Bob had yet to venture over the Bob Kerry bridge, so we went that route.  He used his handy dandy camera to take a video of our ride over the bridge.  We took the trails SouthEast until we got to the Wabash Trace trailhead.  We were trying to figure out a way back and decided to pretty much go the same way, but stop at the Riverside Grill for lunch.  I highly recommend the place.  The food was quite good, service was great, and the price was about medium.  Would've been nice to spend less, but I rarely do lunch on a ride, so it was nice change of pace.  After we got back over the BK bridge, we headed North to hwy 36 so we could mosey back toward Bob's place.  He lives out by Lake Cunningham, which is a easy shot toward the trail.  Ooh!! When we were riding along 72nd, we saw a B2 Stealth Bomber making some rounds.  That was purdy sweet.  My guess is that Bob will eventually put the whole ride experience up on his blog if he hasn't already.  Oops, I typed too soon.  It's on there.  So that was Saturday.  60 miles with lots of wind for a total of 5 hours!!!  Yeah, that's how mellow it was.

Sunday: I woke up and was weary of 2 things.  1, the wind was about the same as yesterday AT 7am with ominous looking radars of rain, and B, scheduled ride buddy Bryan had just done an absolutely insane running race the day before.  But it was just about time to head to Crane, so I suited up, put on a little sunblock since I had gotten sunburned the day before, and was just about ready to roll.  Then Bryan calls to dash my dreams of witnessing the mighty Blue Rocket's return to glory.  I will eventually see him ride the stunning machine I helped him recreate, but it will not be it's uh....2nd maiden voyage.  (Enough guilt laid on there yet, Bryan?)  So the ride itself, aside from the wind, was great.  All those ominous clouds stayed to the NorthWest and the temp was a nice comfy 70-ish degrees.  I did the old standby of taking Bellevue blvd to cross the Bellevue bridge and climb the bluffs to reach Glennwood before looping around and coming back on that glorious flat tailwind section.  For some reason, I averaged 18mph by myself.  I'M POOPED!!  But I can now say after every ride, "It was for a good cause."  I'm well on my way (A whole quarter!!) towards donating $25.00 to the Rails to Trails Conservacy.  It's going to be an awesome time.