Hotter'n Hell Hundred

Michele and I had a great ride at the rally, as we did last year we camped in our friend Gerald's motor home. This is a great way to stay at this rally since with 10,000 riders showing up all the local hotels fill up fast, and they charge you a two night minimum.

In the picture we made it to the Outlaw Rest Stop, some times also called the 98 mile outlaw beer stop . We were the first from our club to arrive and its just an old metal building out in the hot sun, its a right of passage you just have to experience to understand. This our friend Paul who also took the following picture of us.
We have left the outlaw and are going over the big overpass back into town in the picture below, this is a tough climb with 101 miles on your legs. Our training paid off and we did much better than we had expected with an average in the 19's doing the 102 miles in 5hours 14 minutes. We worked at keeping a steady pace and used the downhills to get maximum speed on the old Treck t200 tandem. We took 2 very short rest stops at 50 and 80 miles, my heart rate average was 148 and I burned over 4,000 calories.

We had a great weekend with the shopping and the crit races, now its back to work on the backyard project and finish the boat repairs, my next posts will be on these.

We rode through Hell's Gate

Dennis & Michele

TEBR

These pictures are from the Tuesday Night Bike Ride that meets at REI in North Dallas. This Greater Dallas Bicyclist ride has a group for everyone and all levels, we are in the renegade or unofficial ride. This ride is fast and if you do not keep up you will be dropped so bring a map and phone. As we head out I am on the right in the blue jersey just sitting in trying to save energy for later in the ride.

This is much later in the ride I am now on the left and struggling to hang on to my friend Gary Chaing's wheel, I eventually let a gap open and caught a red light,(I guess I didn't save enough energy) this was a hard ride on a hot afternoon. My computer showed 33 miles with a 20 average while dealing with traffic, red lights and a lot of hills and strong wind, can you see the pain in our faces, we are old enough to know better.

After a day of recovery this morning I ran 7 miles at an easy pace before work, I like running when I can't get in a ride because I can leave in the dark and its easy, just put on shorts and shoes and go.

We are still working on the backyard project and it is moving slowly but is beginning to take shape, hope it turns out like we envision it.

This weekend will be our last weekend ride before the Hotter'n Hell Hundred on the 23rd, after this we will do no hard rides to be fresh for this 100 mile challenge on the tandem.

Hopefully there will progress to report on the boat repairs on my next post.

Sea Ya
Dennis

This picture tells the story of July, hot and dry, it has been the 4th hottest ever here in North Central Texas. While we have still been riding the bicycles, it has been only 2 rides a week and you have to pace yourself and work at staying hydrated.

On August 2nd we left early and rode 60 miles in the heat on the Trek Tandem, it was hot and hard, but we are training to ride the Hotter Than Hell Hundred in Wichita Falls TX. the 23 of August and we will ride the tandem.

Being in the Mechanical Contracting business I have had all the work I can do and it has left me too worn out to work much on the boat, but I have the material to finish it with a copper epoxy bottom coating and should be able to complete it if we get some cooler weather, 105 to 107 is not good weather for applying epoxy.

The closest we have come to significant moisture is this picture I got of a rainbow to the West of us where someone must have received rain. Michele and I have learned to deal with the heat well and pace ourselves but don't let it stop us from doing things and we don't spend our summer indoors.

We are also working on the back yard, A tree limb fell and broke our large old deck so we are removing it and putting in raised beds to increase our garden space. While we are at it we will break out and remove our cracked concrete patio and replace it with flagstone set loose with granite sand for a natural look. I will post pics of the fall garden as we progress with this project.

Dennis