Goodbye Blogger
Given I write all my Blogger posts in raw HTML anyway, it shouldn’t be a big loss to move away from Blogger. It was convenient, that was all. “It’s too much work to support FTP!” Wah, wah, wah, cry me a river.
The thing that really pisses me off is the supposed .5% of users using FTP publishing is still a very large number of people when you look at just how big Blogger is. And all those poor people having to change everything just to satisfy Google.
In my view, Google has never been user-centric. And they’ve proved that awesomely well with their termination of FTP support. Thanks for turning into the Borg…
Struggling to Cope
I got derailed last night, and ended up saying I wanted to go back home. I’m such an unstable person. And now I’ve ruined everything. Maybe I can make it all alright again…
I’m sitting in lounge area at the backpackers, writing away on my EeePC, feeling rather miserable about what I have done. We’ll see what happens. Not even sure if I can get overdraft limit I requested for my bank account. If not, I’ll have to go back home anyway. Have run out of money fairly quickly.
Taras is rather annoyed with me too. Since he’s been at conference all week, he hasn’t really been able to hang out with me either. Hopefully get to see him after he gets back from his hike tomorrow. Think he’s still going for an overnight hike despite the horrible weather outside.
I dunno how to fix. I actually don’t want to go home at all. This is what I get for being so damn emotional and insecure.
Travels
Tomorrow begins my holiday. Meeting Ellen, staying in Wanganui with my parents before we head off to Wellington to join up with Taras. They’ve been up in Auckland for a week already.
After Wellington, and hiking somewhere (if I can get some gear sorted), we’ll be heading somewhere into the South Island with our bikes, without much in the way of plans. It’s going to be some fairly spontaneous three week crazy holiday.
Only thing that got me down is being away from my kitteh for so long. A month away is such a long time, especially with her still growing up and being very much in kitteh-mode. She’s at a good home, but it doesn’t help with missing her.
Miss getting out of the shower to find Boomer sitting on the shower mat waiting for me. Miss having to try fend her off in her attempts to jump onto my shoulder from top of the washing machine whilst drying self after shower. Miss her climbing up my back to perch herself on my shoulder to see what I’m doing in the kitchen. And I really miss her snuggles in the morning, and her licking my nose.
I hope she not grow up too much while I’m away. Sure once I start on holiday, it’ll be a lil easier….
Cycled the Lake
I surprised myself that Saturday in November, after a crazy morning just trying to get organised for the race start for the Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge.
Of all things I forgot to bring with me for a cycle race was my bike helmet! I hadn't even realised until I went to go put it on that I realised it wasn’t there. So I biked down to the race start, found some helpful helpers that directed me to the Avanti bike shop and bought myself a new helmet.
Then I snuck into a faster start group once I got back after being told it was too late to change my start group, which was a good decision. Half the people in the “faster” group were too slow anyways, so ended up passing many in the beginning. Note for next year: don’t underestimate how well I might do.
I passed a few people I recognised, and got quite a few comments about my cycling dress, some thinking it was a netball outfit, grr!. And despite a few minutes at a drink stop to refuel, I managed to finish within five minutes of my goal time! I was so impressed with myself to get there in the end. Was feeling nigh on impossible at the seemingly slow speed for the first half of the ride.
Next year, I definitely need to aim for a time under five hours, and in the meantime you can find photos of me riding around the lake, and what my GPS recorded for the event.
The Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge
Two days out, and I feel achy. The weather is getting crazy mad with dark overcast skies, and painfully strong winds, and rain forecast to pour down in the weekend. I’m not feeling entirely confident of doing well this Saturday.
After my Sunday ride, my thighs were worked over a little too much; could barely squat, and sitting down and getting up were painful tasks. That pain has mostly gone away, but my legs feel almost like jell-o after attempting to beat my personal best for the individual time trial last night.
The wind was so horrible, I managed a measly 24km/h average from home out to Kairanga school for the meet. It’s only 9.5km away! I fared a little better in the time trial, about 30 seconds slower than last week. On the upside, had a nice tail-wind home, averaging an insane (for me) 35.6km/h.
However, I probably should’ve taken it a bit easier home, trying to spin rather than push. But I don’t like spinning that much, unless I’m coasting along in a bunch, as it’s very hard on my knees. Maybe that’s caused by bad technique, I dunno.
Anyways, originally I was aiming for a five and a half hour finish; now I feel like I’ll be lucky to do it in under 6 hours. Still, I have two days to try and recover… should’ve stayed home last night!
Tour de Manawatu
I have never ridden so far, or for so long without a break—116 kilometres non-stop in just under four hours.
The weather was very nice, mostly sunny with the occasional spot of cloud; just an annoying head wind for the final few kilometres to the finish line when I was already spent.
I got dropped twice from the bunches I was in. The first time was a silly mistake not pushing towards front of the bunch before starting up small but potent hill/rise after the very long Cheltenham straight. The other was between Feilding and Bunnythorpe where I just didn’t have the juice to keep up—mainly due to biking by myself for a long while after dropping off the first time.
So that was my first of hopefully many rides of the Tour de Manawatu!
I Fail At Winning
Just got the email with the race results for the Palmerston North Marist Cycling Club’s Road Champs. And what an ultimately fail way to win my division…
In my division, the Senior Womens, it was between me and one other girl. And she didn’t finish. So all I had to do was cross the finish line. What a truly suck way to win a club title. Out of everyone starting for the 3 laps, I came 7th out of 10 riders. Yeah, that club title definitely doesn’t feel deserved.
Oh well, maybe next year I can do better and win the title more fairly.