Grand Tour

I mentioned to a close friend who lives in Scottland that when I move back to Europe I'd like to go and do a ride with her. She replied back and said that she had a route in mind. I'm thinking she has something around Edinburgh in mind, or perhaps the Highlands, or maybe even the Isles of Islay. Distance wise I'm Thinking 60 to 160 km.

Then she sends me this map (left) and tells me this is the route she has in mind. Not being your typical American as I had, and more importantly paid attention to, geography in school. This is not a day trip. This is even longer than some of cycling's Grand Tours. " It's mostly flat, " she tells me. Except that I know there are mountains between Spain and France, and between Austria and the Czech Republic.

I guess my job as Sherpa, soigner, and mechanic is going to be to plot the course. On the bright side, that means I get to try and find the flattest route through. Which means that I will try and stay away from extended twenty-four percent grades. We'll see if/when this happens. If it does, I guess I will have to reactivate my FB account so that people know where we are.

Uh, Pearson?

So I'm not a big fan of textbook publishers. Even less of their websites designed to complement the text. I've found many errors and there are a lot of issues with the back-end programming (that would be you, McGraw Hill) that it's often distracting from the course material. Then there are sites like Pearson where you are always getting messages that your browser or OS are not supported. Seems Pearson doesn't like to support MacOS, iOS, iPadOS, or Safari. Which is odd considering I'm using Safari and I get the error that it's not supported and then the suggestion that I use...Safari. Wait, what?

Right. So don't use Safari, use Safari. Yeah. I'll get right on that. Makes me wonder if I'm the one who needs to be working on my degree or if perhaps someone at one of these publishers should be as well. I could go into a discussion about content, but I'll save that for another time. When I'm ready to tackle the question of what an editor's job is.

Until then, you all stay safe.

Sunrise

So one thing I am going to miss is the Texas sunrise. I pretty much like to watch it anytime of year. I think if I had to choose I would say late spring and summer would be my favorites. Really beautiful when you can be out on the bike watching the sun come up in the springtime over a field of Texas bluebonnets.

In the meantime, I'm back at Texas State taking the rest of my core business courses. I hope that after this I will be able to focus on my remaining CIS courses to get my degree. It's difficult only because the McCoy college seems so geared to getting you ready for a career in business, which is the correct attitude, but there doesn't seem to be a program that considers people like me who have completed their careers and are now just going back to get the paper. In any case, I'm hoping at most to have one more full semester.

Peace

XKCD

Saw this today on XKCD and thought it was funny. The mouse-over text on the XKCD site read, " Controls are a little hard to figure out ".

Let's Ride

So I have finally managed to find some time to ride the past few days. School took a much bigger bite out of my schedule than I thought it would. I scaled back my goal from a 5,000 mile year to just 3,000 but as of 21 August I still haven't even broken the 1,000 mile mark. Being hurt also didn't help. I think I lost about five weeks there. I've missed almost every ride I had panned to do this year due to either school or injury. I also don't like to ride alone so that has kept me from being a little more adventurous. I had wanted to ride from home to Texas State in San Marcos and back. That would have been between 72 and 80 miles round trip depending on the turn in San Marcos and if we stopped for food and drink. Ohh well, perhaps next year. I shouldn't have to take so many courses over the summer and then I can actually enjoy the break.