Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Very funny Bruce,
Your #5 about casual trail riders is missing your most favorite 
salve....beer. I ride with some cowboys once in a while and the 
saddle bags are always loaded. We make a 3 hour loop thru the hills 
and about 1/2 hr before home the beer is gone, the bags are full of 
empties clinking around and the classic no-no race to the barn is on. 
Those round little quarter horses can really scoot for home so we 
blast in all lathered up and puffing and they know they just rode 
over 20 miles because look at how beat their horses are. I never tell 
them they just rode my 9 mile training ride, they might want to hurt 
me. One time Ron asked me if my horse was okay because he noticed my 
horse was just damp on his neck, he liked my explanation that my 
horse didn't have to work as hard as his because of my lighter saddle 
and no saddlebags. Drinking beer, walking thru the hills telling 
stories, I would be an idiot for spoiling that with some complicated, 
new-fangled GPS technology mileage.
Don Huston

At 09:06 AM 3/22/2007 Thursday, you wrote:
>  There are old, tried and true ways of telling distance without all 
> this complicated, new-fangled GPS technology:
>   1) The curve of the earth causes an object to disappear from view 
> on the horizon when it's about 30 miles away. This is how I know 
> that when a rider disappears ahead of me over the next hill, he's 
> 30 miles away.
>   2) In the movies, they talk about something being "a day's ride" 
> away. I once rode my horse 100 miles in a day, so I know a "day's 
> ride" is 100 miles.
>   3) If I can hear my mother screaming for me at basecamp, I know 
> I'm within 100 miles of it. If I can make out what she's saying, 
> I'm within 50 miles. And if my spine is starting to de-calcify, I'm within 25.
>   4) I have to pee every five miles, so if I have peed 10 times, I 
> should be at the finish line of a 50. Twenty times for a 100. Which 
> is why keeping yourself hydrated is so important.
>   5) Some casual trail riders around my town tell me that when they 
> go out for a walking trail ride, they "must have gone at least 20 
> miles" in the three hours they were gone. So I know I can go 20 
> miles in three hours.
>   6) When it's cold out at night, I can make it to the porta-pottie 
> in a heartbeat. Let's see.......a heartbeat is about one second, 
> and the porta-pottie is usually 40 yards away....can someone help 
> me with the math here?..............
>   7) I have known riders that have gone off trail accidently for a 
> half hour but then returned to the correct trail. They often say 
> they went ten miles off course, so that would mean anyone off trail 
> is traveling at 20 mph, until they get back on track.
>   8) If my ex-wife gets within 500 feet of me, I get a rash.
>
>  These are simple tools that help me know where I am and how far I 
> have to go. Technology isn't always what it's cracked up to be. Dr Q
>
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Don Huston at cox dot net
SanDiego, Calif 



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Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net.
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