Where I live, you can pay $100 US, and pass your written and driving without participating in either.

Oddly(?), I average exactly the same on hilly terrain as on flat terrain. Hilly terrain is much more fun.

Almost 2 hours on the trainer today. Can't wait until I can easily unclip the left foot again...

Your body is telling you to become one with the bike. Just embrace it.

Skipped work this afternoon to ride. Ended up eating ice cream instead.

Aero testing update [MENTION=406877]PepeM[/MENTION] and other interested parties.

I'm starting to get the gist of how this is going to go down, although still need to work with coach on the nitty gritty details of the plan.

I have four potential widths for my elbow pads on the TT bike and I have been riding in the second narrowest position. Today I went to the narrowest position, expected it to really affect bike handling but the effect seemed pretty minor actually. In the past when I tried to get a lower position, I kind of "fell" off the front of the pedal and lost a lot of power. But coach suggested if narrow seemed ok, that I try lower too. So I brought the elbow pads down 1cm in addition to bringing them into the narrowest position- sore neck and shoulders but power felt ok and I think I could adapt to the new position, so I'm game to give this a whirl. But it's possible a wider arm position would actually be more aero, because sometimes it opens your shoulders enough to get your head even lower, so what you lose by becoming a wind scoop is offset by getting your head lower. So you just have to see during your test.

So the basic testing items will be:
Baseline (current) position
Narrower elbows at current height
Narrower elbows at 1 cm lower height
Wider elbows, not sure what height yet- ideally both high and low
Current helmet vs helmet fitter has vs one of the three other TT helmets I have lol
Gloves vs no gloves
Current skinsuit sleeve length vs shorter sleeve length (might skip this one depending on how gloves test)
Current shoes vs shoes with laces
My FLO disc vs Coach's Shimano disc
My front FLO 60 vs Coach's tri spoke
I'd like to test shoe covers vs no covers but I think my list is already too long for the time we have

Anyway it's cool to finally start developing some sense of a plan. I need to talk to fitter too and see what his thoughts are. He does enough of these tests that he can sometimes just tell you that X is fast for everybody, so you don't need to test it.

This might be nuts, but I am seriously considering an Everesting attempt this summer. Anyone ever done it??

[MENTION=25227]Velo Vol[/MENTION]'s pal attempted it, didn't he?

A single-day attempt or one of those month-long "Everest challenge" type of things?

I'll sometimes do hill repeats- mostly in summer when I'm wanting to ride at a little altitude, we have a not-very-far-of-a-drive-to-get-to mountain that's an 8 mile climb, not much traffic, cooler temps, 2000 ft of climbing, and you wind up at an altitude of 8000 ft. It's got a fun descent.

But mostly I prefer my climbing to come as a natural consequence of whatever route I'm doing. Seems challenging enough to me without going to the extent of a contrived challenge.

Besides my Garmin elevation reads 20% lower than everyone else's. So in the end, it always seems a bit arbitrary and inaccurate to me. Once I wrapped my head around that concept, I lost a bit of enthusiasm for tallying elevation as an achievement unto itself.

But I totally think you should do eet!!! :)

Oh yeah, I do that every year. :p

If you attempt, it is the literal epitome of POIDH.

I took a course in high school. Didn't take a test, other than the written exam at the DMV.

No

Blog post that I read that explains why elevation estimates are inflated. No idea if the guy is right, but it makes sense to me.

Jeffrey Friedl's Blog » The Voodoo of Elevation Gain and Strava (and How I Get Around It)

Oh. Retro.

Fascinating, thanks for sharing! It gets to my general gripe that it's really really hard to get elevation data in general. Running races have their elevation charts, but they're generally iffy on accuracy. And 99% of race directors will describe their courses as "mostly flat and fast".

The inaccuracies in recording elevation are quite baffling but significant. I don't know why.

Even worse are the grades on some climbs that are registered... I have my trusty little device that I can manuallly measure a gradient, and I know that 23% shown on Strava or whatever, is more like 15% and that 15% on Strava is more like 10%. Still, the bragging rights are pretty good, and have led to stuff like the Everest challenges.

I failed my first driving test. Haven't been booked in 20 years. But 12 years of living without owning a car helped (ie, I could have been regarded as car-free, but I prefer car-ownership free, because I still used motorised transport on occasion -- buses, rarely rental cars, occasional lift to work when the weather was lousy). Still not good enough to be a respected contributor of the LCF, though.

There was a guy in another forum that claimed he was almost extraordinary among the cycling population because he rode a particular elevation gain every season. Heathpack, Machka and others piled in on that thread suggesting he was way off base on his assertion. Entertaining in its own way.

Elevation is very much dependent on the rider's location. And there is the Machka Paradigm -- your total elevation gain is zero if you start and finish a ride in the same location.

Adventures in Eating in Canada"

Had my first ever poutine today as a side dish with Montreal Smoked Meat, aka pastrami. SUPERB all the way around. My first cheese curds came along with my first poutine. Maybe the curds are better fried, but they were still good.

But dinner was very special. My daughter and SIL treated us to dinner at Chuck Hughes's restaurant, Garde Manger. We have watched Chuck on TV for years and think he is the bomb. Okay so funny story: the Uber (pronounced Yuber here) driver couldn't find the restaurant even though we all knew we were only about a block away. We had forgotten there is no sign. So we left the Uber car and started walking, using my IPhone for GPS. When we were right about there, we still couldn't see the restaurant. There was a guy talking to a woman at the corner, and I suggested to Mrs. rpen we go ask him for directions. When I was about 10 feet away from him, I realized who it was and called out, "Hey Chuck!" Sure enough it was him, and he couldn't have been nicer as Mrs. rpen gushed all over him. We aren't celebrity struck, but that really made the evening. He walked us back a half block to the restaurant and got us seated. Wonderful food and wine, service and ambience. Wonderful all around. Pricey but very highly recommended.

I started a course in civil engineering and found it boring as hell... probably more due to the antiquated teaching than anything else. But the most interesting aspect was discussing surveying.

And the only really accurate method, according to the tutor, is trig -- using a theodolite. GPS is subject to quite significant errors, along with altimeters.

What I can't figure is that there have been maps with elevation down to quite small heights for just about forver. Yet that accurate information appears to be ignored in the algorithms. The fact that Strava, from I have read, is now using "averages" of altimeter data to determine elevation is somewhat disturbing. Having used a basic bike altimeter in the past, it was just too much trouble to calibrate and keep calibrated.

I'm hating my forced week of rest right about now. Bike shop can't fix me up until Monday... which is odd, will they really be open at all then?

Are airplane altimeters as accurate as they would seem to have to be? Why are the same instruments not available for other purposes?

I did a BF search on Everesting and found exactly one thread.

Like any good 41 member, I bumped it rather than start my own.

I mentioned my coach did that a while back on Lookout Mountain, which is a hill [MENTION=351576]Heathpack[/MENTION] knows. It took him 15-ish hours, and he's a freakin badass. You need to find a hill that will give you gain that won't take an hour to descend. Steep enough to get it done in a short-ish time, yet not so steep you kill yourself.

You also need a recording device that will hold a charge, or the ability to be charged without killing the current ride, and starting a new one. The file must be continuous, and it must be uploaded to Strava.