David Ernst Chats with the World

Jeff G and I, both planning on doing the [hilly hundred](http://www.hillyhundred.org/) in five weeks, decided to go on a bike ride today. I failed him on picking out a ride of “20-30 miles” as he requested. We went around Lake Lemon, which totaled 38.5 miles. It’s a nice ride, and features one of the steepest hills I am aware of (someone at the Hilly Hundred two years ago claimed that his bike computer said it was 23.5% grade at its steepest point. He pointed out that this was very slightly steeper than anything on the *Tour de France* of the same year. Impressive. Of course, they probably rode for miles at that slant in France, here’s it’s not even a quarter mile, I bet.) I **almost** made it up the hill, but hit a patch of gravel near the top, and since I was going about 2mph, I couldn’t keep the bike moving. Once I’d stopped, I walked the rest of the way. One day I’ll lick that hill…

I gotta get serious about food when I bike for that long… 20 miles without any substantial food is ok, but… yeah, woah, by the end I was really beat. Once back, we went to Dagwood’s where I quickly downed a whole vegetarian sub, and didn’t feel full (I’ve eaten enough of those to know that that’s weird). Jeff agreed, so we got some ice cream on top of that. that was two hours ago, and I feel just about ready to eat again. I’ve heard that strenuous biking burns about 500 calories per hour, in which case I should be due for an extra 1800 calories today, above my normally [recommended](http://www.stevenscreek.com/goodies/calories.shtml) 2800 calories. So, I should get eating! :) Some people see exercising as a good way to lose weight, and I suppose I think about that. But maybe I should just think about it as a license to eat more! :)

Being one who likes to offer up opinions and stories, I figured I’d enjoy having a *blog*. I figured I’d just sign up for and easy thing like blogger (don’t I get enough practice installing unix software?), but Kynthia was also interested in starting a blog and she wanted to install the software for one. Ok… we did some web research on packages (we found [an amazing resource](http://www.asymptomatic.net/blogbreakdown.htm) on blog software) and selected one (wordpress, because that’s what the guy who made the amazing resource in the last paren chose…). Installed beautifully, easy to use but still with some choice unix attitude shining through. :) In any event, Hello, Blog World! (more…)