On GPS and Riding to the ends of the Earth

The best way to describe the weather is biblical, as in Genesis 6. (Alright I know I am supposed to be a devote atheist but hey I spent like a million years in Jewish school so it stands to reason I'd have the Torah - or Five Books of Moses - memorized.) Genesis 6 sentence 1, as translated is: This is the line of Noah, Noah was a righteous man, he was blameless in his age.

Of course good Jewish theologians will tell you the reason that Noah was not just a plane righteous man who was blameless was because when G-d said he would flood the world and destroy everything Noah did not stand up to G-d and say, "No that's not right". Hence it would not be until Abraham, about 5 chapters later, that the first Jew came to be. And yes ever since good Jews have been contrarians who piss everybody off around them.

Anyway enough ranting on religion, it seems to me religion does more to instill hatred and violence than anything else.

So on to more interesting stuff, here is a dandy little utility for converting TCX (Garmin data files) into GPX (another Garmin format, XML actually, but can be imported into Bikely). It can also work the other way, although I am not sure if I can use this to navigate based on a map I drew in Bikely, I'll have to write about my findings later. The site is called GPSies and its so easy to use that well I don't think I need say any more about it.

I came across the following quotation that seems appropriate:

Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.

- T.S. Eliot

Question, am I the only person who thinks Eliot is an overly obtuse anglophile?

Am I the only person who cares?

I went swimming this morning, that was before walking (swimming) home in the flood. I did not swim long, but I went fast. What I need to work on is endurance, but it is very had to build endurance when you have to stop and turn around every 25m. What I need to do is swim in a lake. Maybe one day this summer I will ride up to my aunt and uncle's cottage and swim a couple laps there, then ride home, except the last 7km are really rough road, very much unsuitable for a road bike, even a Roubaix like Erin, and I'm not sure if there is a good road to get there, after all, the cottage is up in the Canada shield, so it is not exactly as if building nice straight roads, suitable for cars doing 80km/h is easy, there are only a few roads north and they are all pretty ugly.

The weather for the Victoria Day long weekend is looking pretty good, so far. If things hold up and all goes well, this ride to Rochester will happen and while I might be exhausted come Saturday evening, I will have bragging rights that few other people can ever match, a double century. And then on Monday night, two double centuries within three days! Lesley told me that if I did this thing, she would even be proud, that thought got me so excited I have started to prep Erin for the awesome journey to come... actually I plan to take a nap, Erin will get prepped over the coming week.