Cycling and Blogging
Category: Cycling/Running/Fitness... Navel Gazing...
Posted Thursday, November 21, 2002 at 03:56 PM [GMT-6]

Today was a cycling day. I left early - around 9:30, before the wind picked up - and rode my usual 20 mile out-and-back route. It was a gorgeous day, temps in the 50s, clear skies and light winds from the west or thereabouts. Wind direction is important...a westerly breeze means I get a tailwind coming home, which is always nice. (OTOH, I've found that my best times for this route have generally occurred when I have a headwind on the last leg. Sounds counter-intuitive, I know, but I suspect I know the reasons. First, I'm really warmed up by the turnaround, so hammering back into the wind isn't as tough at that point as at the beginning of a ride. Second, if I'm riding against the clock, I know how fast I need to ride that return leg and can make a stronger psychological commitment. Third, the return leg is ever-so-slightly downhill. Which is probably a lot more important than the first two factors, but doesn't sound as, well, athletically impressive. After all, I can't claim any credit for the immutable effects of physics.)

Anyway, these rides grow increasingly precious as winter approaches. I never know when a ride might be the last for the season, or at least for a couple of weeks. And the alternatives aren't pretty: move the bike indoors for the windtraining sessions (boooorrrring), or climb on the treadmill for 4 or 5 miles (painnnnnnful). Can't complain too much, though; I suspect that I get more [pleasant] outdoor riding time than about 75% of the rest of the US cycling population.

The exercise is important, but the think-time is even more so. I ride the same route every time, and although I concentrate on traffic flow (self-preservation being a strong instinct) I'm also able to slip into a stream-of-consciousness state for several miles at a time, due to my familiarity with the route. This gives me time to mull over challenges, plans, dreams, fears, song lyrics, conjugation of Spanish verbs...you-name-it. And it was thus that I came to an important decision today regarding the Gazette.

It must be transformed into an all-CSS layout! (What...you were expecting that I'd solved the problem of peace in the Middle East?)

There's really no excuse for me not to get rid of all the tables and put up a CSS-compliant site. While my clients won't tolerate a site that looks bad in older browsers, this is a blog, for pete's sake, and, frankly, I don't care how it looks in IE3 for Windoze. And that's very liberating. Besides, maybe if enough of you IE3 for Windoze users keep seeing ugly websites in your browser window, you'll finally decide to upgrade...leaving us web designers with some extra time for solving other problems. Like peace in the Middle East. Besides, LOTS of blogs - some of them good - use table-free designs.

So, stay tuned for changes in this layout. Don't know when, don't know how, don't know exactly what...but the winds of change, they are a'blowin'.

I leave you with this link, to CoffeeGeek.com...you know you've got to have it!