[Groop] Sergio's upcoming Con appearances

[Eric Chun]

Tone wrote:
>it was more realistic for me to only ride the 58 miles to the convention,
>then have her drive down in our minivan to pick me up along with my
>bike and any/all of the Groo stuff I might want to buy.

Why not drive both ways?

----Original Message Follows----
From: "Tone" <Tone at moon-shine.net>
Reply-To: Tone at moon-shine.net
To: <groop at groo.com>
Subject: Re: [Groop] Sergio's upcoming Con appearances
Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2007 18:24:03 -0400

             When Yodazone and M.E. told me Sergio would be at the
Baltimore Comic Convention on September 8th and 9th I got excited, but
maybe after I tell you guys what I did you will say I got over
enthusiastic. :-)
             Before I was informed of Sergio's upcoming appearance in
Baltimore I had known there was a Rail-to-Trails bike-way starting in my
city of York, PA and ending somewhere south of the Maryland border, and
I had been thinking about doing a ride on it, but I just never looked
into it. When I heard about Sergio's visit there in a couple of weeks
though, that obviously gave me quite an incentive to do some more
research.
             I printed out a couple maps of the rail trails I found on
the web, and typed out directions for the rest of the path to the
Baltimore Convention Center by using Google Earth as a guide. The route
seemed pretty straight forward, but it is 58 miles one-way and I have
not been riding as much as I use to before ending my job as bike
messenger in NYC back in December. I presumed I was a bit out of shape
and did not know how long it would take to bike down to Baltimore, so I
wanted to do a reconnaissance ride before the day of the convention to
see how realistic it would be for me to bike down there.
             Well, yesterday I did just that. In fact I did double the 58
mile length because after getting to the convention center I biked back.
Apart from finding out how practical it would be for me to ride down to
the convention center, I also used the possibility of buying tickets in
advance directly from the box office as an excuse to do the ride. Of
course advanced tickets can be bought through Ticket Master, but they
charge a fee of about $5.00, so I wanted to see if I could save a couple
extra bucks. :-) Naturally with the luck of Groo on my side, when I got
there I found out the convention center does not handle the sale of
advance tickets for public events, but they do have a box office on site
for the sale of any remaining tickets on the day of an event.
             By the way, for those of you, who can not imagine what it is
like to bike 116 miles, do not even bother! :-) I will tell you I left
my place at 6:23am, and I arrived at the convention center in Baltimore
shortly after 1pm, then I finally got back home right around 8:15pm. I
figured out each way probably took me approximately seven hours with
roughly a half-hour's worth of breaks included. If that was not rough
enough though, 1/3rd of the time it was raining, another 1/3rd the time
it was drizzling, and the rest of the time there was either spotty mist
or dry clouds. How is that for more Groo luck? At least I have a cargo
bike, so I was able to carry a bunch of extra rain gear and supplies.
However, my big-assed cargo bike is a single-speed, so I had even more
Groo luck when going up and down the hills in Maryland.
             Yesterday by the time I got home, I was telling myself there
was no way I would do a bike ride down to Baltimore and back in a day.
Last night I was wet, my toes felt numb, my legs were like Jell-O, one
of my knees hurt significantly, my thighs were aching, my butt felt
bruised, my back & neck felt sore, and my palms felt beaten to a pulp
from all the bumps in the road. While eating dinner I was telling my
wife I thought it was more realistic for me to only ride the 58 miles to
the convention, then have her drive down in our minivan to pick me up
along with my bike and any/all of the Groo stuff I might want to buy.
That way I could spend as much time as I wanted at the convention
without worrying about what time I would be getting back home, then my
wife and I could most likely go out to eat a nice meal somewhere in
Baltimore or along the way back home.
             Now it is 6:00pm the next day. I have had two good warm
meals, a nice long hot shower with dual shower heads both using their
massage settings, and a long pleasant night of sleep. On top of that my
wife massaged my hands, arms, shoulders, and back, then I also used a
heavy-duty vibrating heated massager on my thigh muscles. Right now my
palms still feel a bit tender, my butt feels slightly bruised, my thighs
still ache a bit, and that one knee only hurts a little. yet I find
myself wondering whether wrapping some kind of padding on my handle bars
and attaching my removable extra gel-padded seat cushion would make a
big difference on my next trip to Baltimore. I even find myself asking
whether the difference would enable me to do the complete 116 mile
two-way ride. Does simply thinking about doing something foolish warrant
the phrase, "Did I err?"  :-) I guess I will tell you if I go through
with another attempt. ;)
             Ride safe,
_TONE_



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