Just Another Manic May (day)

So, I talked about the Map My Ride app that I installed on my phone late last week and used to track the data about my bike ride home from work on Friday.

On Saturday, after a cold (45 degrees), windy (20-25 mph winds with gusts over 30), and somewhat unappealing (little hail pellets from time to time) 25.25-mile bike ride through Hopkins, St. Louis Park, and Minneapolis, I sat down with some espresso and tried mapping the day's ride after the fact. Up until this point, when creating route maps for my team, I've used some old MN Bike Atlas maps and pieced them together into routes and, when the existing maps haven't been good or when I've made up new routes (like the District del Sol ride), I made my own maps using the ruler function in Google Maps and then doing screen prints and writing out instructions.Map My Ride was super easy to use to create a map - way easier than Google Maps. Here's the map of the route that you can share with anyone, by giving them a link.

You can share a more detailed map, and cue sheet, with other people who have signed up for Map My Ride. For example:

Doing this saved a ton of time compared to the old way I've been doing it. The hard thing to figure out, though, is how to share it with other people or use it without having to look at your phone all the time. (I have two different types of map holders for my bike, where I can insert a paper map or instructions.) The only way to print the maps is to order MVP access for the year, with a fee. I signed up for a year, which is $30. When I went to print, I got all sort of error messages about how I had 0 prints remaining or that the MVP membership didn't allow me to print, etc. To make a long story short, I've been emailing the Map My Ride people and now have the ability to save the maps and cue sheets as .pdfs. Good! I am still waiting to hear from them whether there's a limit to the number of maps I can print each year. When I signed up, nothing suggested this was limited, but the error message about 0 prints remaining makes me wonder. So, I'm still trying to sort that out. But, so far, it is looking good.

My teammate Dave, after I, for the first time as the route captain, managed to lose two of our riders on Saturday due to a mix-up in communication about where to take a turn on the route, suggested that we use sidewalk chalk to draw arrows to show where to turn. Note: This was not the finest display of my leadership skills. Note #2: There were leaves on the trees this week - there weren't any last week when I did this same route!

I was thinking that was a good idea, although you'd have to stop and draw on the ground at each turn. 

But then I saw this online on Saturday and then saw the real deal at a gift shop today. It's kind of goofy, but I'm almost sort of considering it. It fits on to any bike and leaves a trail behind you on the ground for others to follow. I wonder if you had about 10 people riding over the chalk line if it would end up disappearing so the end people in a group would still get lost. I might explore this further.

I am happy to report that we didn't lose the two people who aren't on our team and just joined us for the ride. In fact, they said they'd join us for other training rides. This is amazing, considering how crummy the weather was and they witness my abandonment of two riders.

Sunday was a much better biking day. I started at Stacy's and Travis' house and rode with Stacy the 20 miles to her parents' house. We had a mothers day cookout, with lots of delicious food, and then I rode back to St. Paul with Travis (oddly enough, it was another 20 miles). Here's a photo of Stacy and me before we left in the morning. It was in the 40s when we left and in the high 50s when we returned, with some moderate wind. It was nice and sunny, though!

After I got back home, I found out from Veronika that our team - Stacy's Cycling Supporters - is currently one of this year's top teams in terms of fundraising. (Some of you might remember that we won a trophy a couple of years ago for the sizable amount of funds we brought in for being a small team with no corporate sponsors.)

Veronika pointed out that I'm also listed as one of the top fundraisers, thanks to all of  you who have made a donation in support of my ride! I am the 8th highest fundraiser so far, although I'm certain to drop in the rankings since most people who are going to donate on my behalf have already done so and other people are just picking up speed with their fundraising efforts. The guy who has raised the most so far this year has raised $17,500. I checked out his page. I don't think he should count. He donated $10,000 of the $17,500 and one anonymous donor donated the other $7,500. While that's good that he can donate that much himself and knows of someone who can donate $7,500, I'm not going to compare myself to him. Not that I need to compare myself to anyone, really.

I'm so excited that I met my goal this year, and that some donations are still coming in for both the MS 150 and the MS TRAM. (I think with the TRAM donations I'm receiving, I might meet the minimum fundraising amount required, which means that I won't have to pay to meet the minimum. That's good, since the rides end up costing me money for hotels and transportation, as well as bike maintenance and gear, etc.)

This week it will be hard to fit in some rides between some of the stuff I have going on, but I'm hoping to commute by bike three times this week (T, Th, F) and get in two short rides this weekend. I'm really going to need to pick it up quite a bit, so I'm hoping that I'll catch up over Memorial Day weekend. It's supposed to be over 90 degrees tomorrow, which happens each spring in MN, but hopefully it will return to some more moderate (e.g., 70 degree) temperatures for a little bit before it starts turning in to summer. It's been a totally crazy spring, so we'll see what happens.

Thanks, everyone, for your support!

http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/MaggieMahoneyMS150