thoughts, diary and musings of John Marshall
Sam and I spent a delightful few hours building the Daisy MP3 player kit on Sunday. Sam did most of the work, the only thing I really did was deal with the surface mount chip, which was easier than I feared it would be. The whole thing worked first time. Thrilling, and made me feel 13 years old.
Delightful ride, easy pace, great company.
On Sunday Lisa and I rode ‘America’s Most Beautiful Bike Ride’. Lisa went around Lake Tahoe, completing 72 miles while I added the Truckee extension making it a century.
We started out at the same time, and finished within a few minutes of each other 
I was very happy with my final time of 5 hours 40 minutes. I had a good day, pacing with some fast guys and I only dropped at the final 2 mile climb to Spooner.
The weather was perfect - slightly cool but sunny and with lots of snow still visible on the peaks.
On Sunday I rode one of the local Santa Cruz century rides. It starts in Watsonville and winds up to Summit, back down to Soquel and then around Aromas, back to Watsonville.
I saw several people riding the 100 mile version on unicycles:
Apologies for the poor image quality. It was taken with my iphone while I was riding.
The ride stops were well organized with great food. Italian goodies at the Calfee factory, and they showed off their bamboo bikes. Crepes and pies at Gizditch Ranch.
My overall time was a disaster. I was very slow at the start, didn’t ride in a group much, took way too long at the rest stops chatting with people and 10 miles from the end I witnessed a crash and stopped to administer first aid.
Rode from home to San Jose today, meeting Lisa at our friends house. Lisa had ridden the Cinderella metric century earlier the same day.
It was the first time I’d ridden over the hill, and I babied my strained knee. I took Mountain Charley Road, knowing it’s one of the hills I’ll cover in the Santa Cruz Mountains Challenge, assuming I feel strong enough to tackle it. Reaching the upper sections of the road I was amazed by this structure
It turns out it’s a residence. Some careful Googling uncovered a fascinating story about this Santa Cruz mountains landmark
Just posted some photos from Cambodia and Vietnam. I took over 2,500 pictures and these are the best of the lot.
I’m thrilled to have finished the ride. It was a truly inspiring time and the spectators really made it special. They were cheering us on and singling out the TNT riders for special attention.
My final time was 6 hours 51 minutes, which was slower than I was hoping for. I’m fairly sure I could have gone faster, but the rest of my team might argue otherwise.
Waiting for the start
The first riders stream past while we wait our turn
Carrying our bikes across the first dry river bed
Fuelling up
Crossing the finish line. I’m second from the left.
Seth, Tom and myself, as featured in Cycling news coverage of the event.
Lisa did well, with a time of around 9 hours. We’re both hoping for faster times at Tahoe Century.
Lisa crosses the line
Impressive finish from a younger rider
Saturday Nov 3rd was our final training ride before El Tour De Tucson. 83 miles around Almaden valley.
I completed the ride in about 5 hours, and I’m pretty happy with that. The time doesn’t include the 4 flats we got (2 mine, 2 Seth’s).
Lisa did fine and we now consider ourselves trained, though I’m fairly certain to get some more significant climbs into my legs before we depart. We can’t ride for a week before the event because our bikes will be in transit.
I bought a new bike which I’d been thinking about for some time. I found a buyer for my trust Trek 5200 OCLV, precipitating an urgent search for a replacement. My requirements were carbon frame and Dura-Ace components. Many people on the TNT ride have exotic looking bikes and my Trek seems quite ordinary by comparison and I was tempted to get something unusual. However, I needed to get something quickly if I was going to have enough time to get used to it before Tuscon so I went for the Trek Madone SSL, knowing it has very similar geometry to the OCLV and thus would fit. I bought an 07 model on sale from the best bike shop in Santa Cruz.
Interestingly on my first ride I cut 5% off the time I did the day before on my OCLV. Identical bike computer, weather, shoes, pedals etc. Only the bike and tires were different.
My earlier leg cramps having resolved themselves, I rejoined the group on Sunday October 7th for a spectacular ride starting out in Milpitas and heading North West into the rolling hills.
Earlier in the year I installed a Dension IceLink in my SL55, and thereby came to experience the joys of integrated ipod playback while driving. The IceLink is imperfect because the integration with the COMAND head unit is limited. My CLK320 is a 1998 edition, and consequently has a pretty poor head unit by modern standards. It has no GPS, no text display and of course no auxiliary input (though it does have a cassette deck!). I therefore decided to replace the whole thing with a new head unit, and chose the AVIC D3
The D3 is a double din unit, while the OEM head unit is single. Mercedes installs a useless storage tray beneath the single DIN OEM unit, so pulling that out exposes a hole big enough to shove the D3 into, after removing the spacer bar. I figured this was easy enough to do, and hence ordered the D3 instead of one of the single DIN units with the pop out screen. I don’t like the way they look, plus I think it would partially cover the dash vents.