Our time in Goa has come to an end, and truthfully it was fairly uneventful here. We expected much more partying to happen than actually took place and I’m currently sick which doesn’t help matters. However, I do have to say that the sunsets are gorgeous here, and being on the water it’s not as hot as it could be (which is always a plus in my book!).

New Year’s Eve was marked with attempting to get into various parties unsuccessfully with one threat of getting arrested (long, long story). But the good news is that we avoided foreign police capture, had a great meal at this restaurant called ‘Over the Flames” and marked the coming of 2008 with a toast and talking about our goals for 2008. Here are some of mine:

1. Sell 3 photos to people I don’t know (2007’s goal was to sell 1, which happened in November!)
2. Bike one 50-miler (this is much less a fitness goal and more of a mental one).
3. Ship the new product I’m working on for Microsoft by the end of the year.
4. Take the bus to work at least 4 times a week on average.
5. Go home to visit my family at least 5 times. 2007 was marred with severe out of country travel restrictions due to my Green Card, but that has now passed. I’m anxious to see more of my niece and nephew!

I have some other more personal goals that I’ll opt not so share Hopefully everyone has thought about the coming year and has some goals set as well.
We fly out of Goa tommorow afternoon and, after 2 layovers, will end up in Cochin early evening. Well be spending 3 days there followed by 2 days in the backwaters of Kerala living on a house boat.

Happy New Year everyone!

Last Sunday, Chaitanya and I woke up at an ungodly hour to cheer Craig on as he participated in his first ever half-ironman distance triathalon. It’s an incredible thing to watch these athletes compete is such a difficult event. I even got tired from the sidelines watching them

Here are some pictures I took of Craig as he zipped by:

Congrats Craig!

After watching the race, I really miss being on the bike. I still haven’t ridden the bike in nearly 5 weeks due to the pain I’m still having in my right hand from the micro-fracture. The good news is that the pain is subsiding, so I’ll hopefully be able to jump back in the saddle before the month ends. (Un)fortunately there are no triathalons in my future

It’s official, I’ve suffered my first injury of my young biking career. 

After going with Suraj to buy his bike at Gregg’s in Green Lake, we started off on the Burke-Gilman trail from Fremont riding towards Ballard at about 5pm. After only about a mile, we hit a section of road with railroad tracks that were flush with the road surface.  We’re riding along and I’m thinking:

“I wonder why they have the bike path going in between railroad tracks? Seems dangerous.”

I’m going at a good pace (about 18-20mph) and the next think you know it, my front wheel catches the track, falls into a grove and I’m tossed off the bike onto the bare pavement. Ouch. 

There I was, sitting on the side of the road in a ton of pain, assessing my injuring with Suraj by my side. While we’re sitting there, we hear a loud crash and look over and see another guy just do the exact thing I did.  It’s bad to say this, but it made me feel a bit better about myself that this dude totally took a dive since he looked like he was a pro biker — if it could happen to him, then I didn’t feel so bad for bailing

Let me tell you, road rash is never good.  My knee was scraped pretty good, along with my hip, ankle and shoulder.  Luckily I had a small towel with me so I could try to stop the blood from gushing out of my knee.  While we’re sitting there, we look around on the ground and see that the road has the words “No bikes” painted exactly where we were riding.  Too bad this warning sign was completely faded and extremely hard to read.   Damn city roads!

I couldn’t get the bleeding to stop so we headed back to my car so I could head home to treat it with some antiseptic and such. Once I got home, all the fun started.  It was bad enough to take my initial spill, but picking out gravel from an exposed wound with tweezers almost made me want to pass out.  I had to pull out the hydrogen peroxide, tweezers and webmd.com even recommended using the sprayer from my kitchen sink to help clean the wound and gravel out.  Yikes.

Train tracks = 1.

Trevin = 0.

Over the holidays, one of the 2007 goals I set for myself was to complete the Seattle-to-Portland (STP) bike ride this summer over the July 14th weekend. 

Last sunday, I took one step closer in my quest to complete this seemingly impossible task.  I get tired driving 200 miles, and now I’m thinking of biking it?! 

My training started the second week of January with spinning classes at my gym to increase my aerobic fitness level and to see if I liked biking enough to actually complete STP this year.  It was far cheaper to buy a 10-class punch card for spinning classes than to buy a bike just to decide I hated biking :)  Besides, I think I’m a glutton for punishment with all my coworkers ridiculing me due to the padded spandex shorts.

After deciding I liked biking enough, I started on a quest for researching road bikes.  I’m usually a research nut when it comes to PCs and gadgets, but road bikes were a completely new world to me.  What made it worse is that there wasn’t a ton of online references, so I had to resort to asking friends and visiting bike shops in person to understand what I was getting myself into.  This helped me realize how much easy my life is when I’m researching other topics — I fire up Live Search (it really does return relevant results) or Wikipedia, and after 15-20 mins, I normally have a ton of information at my finger tips for me to dive into.  With road bikes, I was getting search results leading me to online stores fo various bike shops with no good objective information.  Wikipedia had a smattering of information about different bike components, but not much on the topic of buying a road bike.

After over a month of researching and shopping around, I finally settled on a 2007 Scott S-20 road bike.  It was pricier than I originally budgeted but after doing a bunch of research and test rides, this was definitley the bike for me.  Not only does the frame fit my body geometry the best, it has components that are of sufficiently high grade, that I can “grow” into the bike as I get better.

I was deliberating between a 2006 S10 and the 2007 S20 models, with the ‘06 S-10 discounted quite a bit (~$400) due to it being an ‘outdated’ model.   The biggest differences between the 2 were that the S10 has full Ultegra components whereas the S20 is full 105.  The S10 also has a different front fork (still carbon, but better quality and lighter). 

I really loved the S10 as I could surprisingly tell the difference between Ultegra and 105 components (though not the front fork), especially in the shifting of the gears.  The shifting was just that much smoother on the S10.  However, I couldn’t justify the extra $350 since I still had to fork out cash for a biking computer, patch kits, spare tubes and other accessories to just even begin riding on the road.

My spinning classes are completely whipping my butt every week.  Anyone that thinks that pedaling on a bike indoors at the gym is an easy task, I challenge you to try out a spinning class and be prepared to re-define the meaning of ‘tiring’.

This type of training is different than what I’ll experience for STP since spinning classes are more about simulating bike races with hill climbs and sprints, where STP is really an endurance event covering mainly flat roads.  I’m anxious to get on the road and start pedaling.

My bike has to be special ordered, but apparantly shipping is lightning quick since it should be ready for pickup this weekend. For anyone buying a bike, I highly recommend Sammamish Cycle in Redmond. Not only do they know their stuff about both mountain and road biking, but they are willing to take the time to really set you up for substantial test rides.  This is a stark contrast to many other bike shops in town, including the famous Gregg’s Cycles in Greenlake, which wouldn’t even put on SPD SL pedals onto the bikes so I could ride with my own biking shoes that I previously purchases. Image trying to buy a bike for a 200 mile biking event based only on a test ride in sneakers.

Now that the weather is starting to clear up, I should be able to get on the road pretty soon.  In my spinning classes I’m doing 20-25 miles a week, and I figure I should be able to do 30-40 miles a week once the weather gets consistently better and ramp up from there as I get closer to STP.

I’m currently shopping for a biking computer, so if anyone knows about these things and has a recommendation, shoot them my way!