Photo Credit: Adelaide Now

Yesterday I rode in the BikeSA 2009 South Australia Amy’s Ride tour from Adelaide to McLaren Vale.  From the Amy Gillette Foundation:

Amy’s Ride provides the Amy Gillett Foundation with an opportunity to proliferate key messages of safe and responsible road use, increase awareness to the need for more shared respect, raise much needed funds and honor the memory of Amy.

The above photo is from the Adelaide Now story and photo gallery covering the ride.  As mentioned in the article, the weather was hot and sunny, and over 3,000 riders took part in the event.

I rode the 100km route that began at Flinders University, went down the Southern Expressway, then along the coast to Willunga, then up into the hills and finally back down to McLaren Vale.  The Southern Expressway, Willunga Hill and some other sections of the route were closed to car traffic.

The Expressway starts out with a steady 4km climb and ends with a fast downhill.  The next notable hill is 3km long Willunga Hill.  This one starts on the east side of Willunga and climbs at and average gradient of 7.5% for a total of 227m of elevation gain.  After Willunga Hill, the ride is mostly downhill with some very fast descents.

Not including my 10-15km commute to the start of the ride, my total time for the remaining 100km was 4:15 with approximately 40 minutes at rest stops/lunch.  I can’t give my usual data because even though my cyclo-computer  was working the night before the ride, it was not on the morning of the ride.  Oh well.  However, based on these estimates, my average speed was similar to that of my last tour, the 2006 MS 150.  Overall, this was a lot of fun, and contrary to what you may think, climbing Willunga Hill was definitely the highlight of the ride.

A few months ago I found another PC in the garbage.  Much like Trash Server, this one was (mostly) functional.  But unlike trash server, I didn’t really have a use for it.   This beige mini tower sports a 733MHz Pentium III CPU, a couple smallish hard drives, and a dead CD drive.  After sitting in the corner for a few months, the new trash PC has a use.

What are we looking at?  This is a 733MHz battery charger.  While it may not be the most efficient, it was certainly the least expensive (free) option.  Why did I do it?  I have an older dual-beam bike headlamp that has a 110V/60Hz-only charger (Australian AC power is 220V/50Hz).  To charge the headlamp batteries I could either buy a new charger or buy a step-down transformer to use the current charger.  Either option would have cost more than the headlamp.

After poking around the garage, I found my automotive 12V to 110V power inverter.  This would work fine as-is, but the headlamp battery charges overnight, and I don’t have many all-night road trips planned.  Obviously I needed a 12V power source other than a Subaru, and this is where the PC comes in.  The PIII, with it’s ATX power supply, makes a great 12V power source and a convenient flat surface on which to charge the battery.

Not much is going on here, so I’ll share some minor and likely boring updates.  I haven’t mentioned any computer issues, projects or upgrades recently.  So, here is one:  I swapped the 2.5″ 500GB 5400RPM hard drive in the newest of the Mac Minis for a 2.5″ 500GB 7200RPM drive.  In an equally interesting news, I used that 5400RPM drive to upgrade the TV Mac Mini from an internal 100GB plus external 250GB to a single internal 500GB.

While waiting for my 380GB disk image to transfer to the new drive via a painfully slow SATA to USB adapter, I made some unexciting changes to the Gunnar.  After reading about cloth grip tape and the interesting ways in which it can be applied, I changed the chainstay protector.  Don’t follow?

The Gunnar did have the standard inner tube chain stay wrap.  However, the Gunnar doesn’t see much trail use these days, so the inner tube was overkill.  I would just leave the chainstay bare, but it is pretty beat up.  What to do?  Start with two colors of vinyl electrical tape and a lot of patience.  Electrical tape isn’t the easiest to work with as it stretches, folds and sticks to everything (it is tape, after all). After several attempts, this was the result:

While not pictured, the grey and black electrical tape matches the grey and black Gunnar logos.  Oh, and this technique also works with inner tubes.  Inner tubes are easier to work with, protect the frame better, and will probably soon end up on the Eriksen: